Come Unto These Yellow Sands (13 page)

“Yes. So?” He closed his eyes and waited rigidly for word of disaster or terminal illness.

Bernard said only, mildly, “She was…er, asking after you.”

Swift’s eyes opened. “Was she.” It was not a question because that was a question he wouldn’t allow himself to ask.

“I think she would like…”

Swift stubbornly held to his own silence as Bernard’s voice trailed away.

Bernard said abruptly, “If this thing is ever going to be healed, you’ll have to make a…a reciprocal gesture, you know.”

Now that was almost funny. Swift couldn’t quite keep the quiver out of his voice. “Reciprocal gesture? What gesture is she supposed to have made? Telling you she remembers I’m still alive?”

“You’re not the only one who lost him, Swift.”

He wasn’t expecting the kick in the guts. The burn that closed his throat and blurred his vision caught him off-guard. Words were beyond him, and it was a struggle to get the next breath without making a betraying sound. He could only cling to his silence and hope it sounded like strength and hardness rather than the childish desire to give in to a grief there was no healing.

“She and Ralph are good for each other, but it’s not the same. Nothing could be. She still…I’m not saying she was in the right. I’m only saying she did the best she could given…who she is.”

Swift struggled to keep that tidal wave of emotion pushed down in his chest.

“Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“You must realize by now that some of the things she did were done to protect you when the, er, outlook was not hopeful.”

“Yes.” Those weren’t the things he couldn’t forgive, and Bernard had to know it.

“She’s…sorry. She misses you. She just doesn’t know how to say it.”

The words tore out. He couldn’t stop them. “Tell her to write a poem.” Swift disconnected with a shaking hand.

The phone call from Bernard rattled him enough that he forgot all about Ariel and the ultimatum he’d given her until he was in front of his Reading Poems seminar and his cell phone rang.

Max.

There were the usual titters as he excused himself and stepped into the hall. Through the door he could hear Susan Hogg’s prim, muffled voice reading Pablo Neruda’s “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines”.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Max was brisk. “Cora Corelli denies planting the bag of coke in your john.”

“I don’t care what she says. She did it. She had to have.”

“She swears up and down on a pantheon of saints that she wouldn’t know where to get such a thing. And, to be honest, I believe her.”

“Max, I swear to you—”

“Stop.”

Swift stopped.

“Listen to me. We need to have this straight between us. I don’t think you’re using again. I know you’re not. I’d have noticed.”

Because he was a cop or because he watched Swift for the signs he’d slipped back into using? Or both? The thought of either bothered him.

“Then unless
you
planted it, Cora wanted to get me arrested.”

He said it to provoke, and he could tell by Max’s tone that he’d succeeded. “Do you want a serious answer to that?”

“No. But no one else has been out to the house. Cora used the bathroom to, her words, freshen up. And if it’s true that Tad is using again, maybe she found the coke in his things.”

“Yeah, well about that. I went back through Tad’s rap sheet and as far as I can find, his drug habit seems to amount to nothing more than smoking weed a couple of times with some other punks.”

“Oh.” Swift was ashamed that he felt even the least disappointment that Tad’s drug problem should turn out to be so trivial, but there was no denying he’d felt an added kinship believing Tad had fought free of serious addiction. Not that he wished that—God forbid—on anyone, but every success story reassured him that his own victory was real and lasting.

“Cora Corelli is an average suburban housewife. I believe her when she says she has no idea where to get hard drugs.”

“All right,” Swift said wearily.

“This is someone who knows your history and has a certain amount of street knowledge.”

“All anyone has to do to know my history is to Google me. It’s all there.” Swift added, “Or they can look back through
my
rap sheet.”

Max ignored the challenge. “So…next move. I want you to call a security company.”

“Come on, I’m not going to flip out and turn the place into a damned fortress.”

“Listen, Swift. Someone planted coke in your home and then made an anonymous phone call to the police. Someone wanted you arrested. Possibly to put you out of action, possibly to destroy you. That much is for sure. If the Corelli woman is telling the truth—and I think she is—then someone deliberately set you up.”

“I already know that.”

“So unless you think your cleaning lady has it in for you, someone broke in.”

“The cleaning lady comes today. And I think I’d have noticed if someone had broken in.”

“I don’t. Not unless they broke in while you happened to be standing there.”

“Well,
you’d
have noticed, right?” Swift said a little waspishly.

“I wasn’t looking for a break-in. I wasn’t expecting to find
anything
, to be honest. I figured some asshole wanted you harassed for giving him a bad grade on a test. But as far as breaking into your place—it wouldn’t be hard to do. A determined kindergartener could get in without a lot of trouble. You don’t have any kind of security system, and the locks on the windows and doors are mostly original. I’ve told you before you need to invest in some hardware.”

“Please don’t say I told you so. I’m having enough of a bad day.”

“Then I won’t say it. But here’s Jerry King’s number. He’s good and he’s reasonably priced.”

Max quoted the number, and Swift typed it into his BlackBerry.

“Got it,” Swift said.

“Okay.” Max’s tone changed. “Are you really having a bad day?”

Swift’s heart lifted. “It had a great start, which helps.”

He could hear the smile in Max’s voice. “Yeah. It did. If I can get away, should I come by tonight?”

Swift was smiling too as he said, “Yes. Try.”

Max rang off and Swift checked his messages again. Still no word from Ariel. It was now one thirty. It looked like she was calling his bluff.

It wasn’t a bluff though. Swift wasn’t about to risk his newly rescued relationship with Max again. There was only so much you could do to help people. The rest of it they had to figure out for themselves.

On his lunch break Swift called his old therapist, Dr. Bayer, only to discover that the Safe Horizon clinic was closed. Dr. Bayer had moved her practice to Florida. Two years ago.

Maybe someday that would be funny. Right now? Not so much.

Once Swift had seen Dr. Bayer a court-mandated three times a week, but gradually it had tapered down to once a week, then once a month and then, finally, nothing. It had been three years since his last session, but it had reassured him to know Bayer was there if he got into trouble.

He was not in trouble now—at least he didn’t think so—but it would have been good to talk to someone who already knew him and his history. The idea of starting over with a new doctor felt humiliating. Was that silly? Probably. It was certainly illogical. But he’d been proud of the fact that he had moved beyond needing counseling and therapy. To seek out a new therapist, to admit that he still might need help, was too much like acknowledging failure.

Besides, if it got back to Dr. Koltz and the college administration that he was once more seeking counseling for drug addiction, it might send up warning flares. They were liable to assume he was using once more or losing the battle to stay clean.

Anyway, it had been just a thought. He didn’t really need to talk to Bayer or anyone else. It would have been comforting, perhaps, but he was all right. He’d been all right for six years now. He wasn’t going to do something stupid. Whatever he was feeling right now was simply the result of stress. And there were other ways to cope.

Even so it did feel like being in the middle of a complicated high-wire act and looking down to realize they’d removed the safety nets.

The day passed with no word from Ariel, and when his classes were finished for the afternoon, Swift walked across campus to her dorm. This, judging by the flutter of excitement in the henhouse, turned out to be a miscalculation. Professors did not casually visit students in their dorms and have it go unnoticed.

On top of that, Ariel wasn’t in her room and hadn’t been back to the dorm in the last twenty-four hours, so it was a wasted trip. Swift trudged back to his office. A red light was blinking on his desk phone, but when he listened to the message, it was Shannon Cokely bitching yet again about Tess Allison’s failures as an MFA advisor and asking to come see him.

Shannon would not be happy until she had Swift as her advisor, and yet as far as he could tell, Shannon thoroughly disliked him. She certainly would dislike him if she had him for her advisor, he thought grimly. Maybe he should give her what she wanted.

Dismissing Shannon from his thoughts, he returned to the problem of Tad.

He had been excusing the possibility of Tad committing patricide as a tragic consequence of his drug addiction, but it turned out Tad didn’t have a serious drug addiction—though seemingly news to his stepmother. Then again, a lot of people lumped all drug use together, like an occasional joint was the same as sitting around doing coke every night until the sun came up.

No drug habit to feed meant Tad might manage to stay on the run longer. Even so, Swift was convinced that Tad was getting help evading the cops. The boy’s face had been plastered on the local TV stations and in the newspaper, so he couldn’t be staying in town. He couldn’t buy his own groceries. Someone
had
to be helping him.

Swift was betting on Ariel, and if she thought she was going to avoid him by staying away from her dorm, she had another think coming. Swift had a list of contact names and emergency numbers, and he was going to go right down the list until he found someone who could lead him to her.

Nor was he going to give her a heads up with a phone call.

On his way out of Chamberlain Hall, Dottie called to him.

“Professor Swift?”

Swift turned around and walked back to her office. She had her desk angled to make it easy for her to keep tabs on anyone entering the building through the main doors.

“Yes?”

“Are you leaving for the day?”

“Yes.” Swift glanced automatically at the clock behind her desk. It was four thirty. No reason that he
shouldn’t
be leaving, and no reason for him to feel guilty about leaving. “That’s right.”

“Is everything all right?”

He didn’t trust the bright concern in her yellow-green eyes for one second. “Of course.”

She smiled that tight little smile that looked like it hurt. “I just wondered.”

He understood that she wanted him to ask
why
so that she could then tell him something guaranteed to upset him. He resisted. “Nope. Everything’s fine. Night.”

“All those phone calls today,” Dottie persisted. “We were all a little concerned.”

Don’t bite
, Swift warned himself, but Bernard’s earlier comments rankled. “Since when do you monitor my phone calls?”

“I hardly have time to
monitor
your phone calls with
my
workload,” Dottie said with just the right blend of offended hauteur. “I know
I’d
love to be able to go home just once before five o’clock. We’re all aware of your past, Professor, and we do try to be sensitive to that. I’m sorry if it appears to you like we’re
monitoring
you.”

Great. The story making the rounds tomorrow would be that he was suffering from a persecution complex. Swift looked pointedly at the clock and said, “Thanks for your concern. Seeing how busy you are, I’ll let you get back to work.”

Dottie’s mouth flew open in instinctive protest, but Swift had turned and was already on his way down the hall to the main entrance.

He fumed silently all the way to the parking lot, but by the time he was driving out through the school gates, he had cooled down again.

Dottie had disliked him from the first instant he’d stepped foot on the CBC campus, and now she thought she could needle him with impunity. Well, let her. Sticks and stones, right? People he cared much more for had said a lot worse, and he’d survived that. He could survive Dottie.

He followed the directions he’d jotted down to the Rhoem residence on Sandy Beach Lane.

It was an ordinary residential house on an ordinary residential street. Swift parked by the curb and walked up to the front door. No one answered the doorbell though a dog began to bark in the backyard.

Swift knocked and then rang the doorbell again, but it was clear no one was home.

He turned at the sound of an approaching engine. A black, souped-up monster truck with giant tires roared up to the curb. Both cab doors flew open. Hodge Williams jumped down. He reached up and helped out Ariel.

Denny Jensen sprang down from the driver’s side.

The three were halfway up the cement walk before they noticed Swift standing beneath the yellow wooden portico.

Denny stopped, grabbing for Ariel’s arm, preparing to run. Hodge’s good-natured features fell into unfamiliar hostile lines. He squared his shoulders and started up the path toward Swift.

Chapter Eleven

It’s the 23rd century. A blood-sucking vampire has stolen away in the cargo hold of a Starfleet Training Academy spaceship. As the academy’s highest ranking recruit, it’s your job to capture the vicious alien before it can reach Earth and feast upon the overweight, er, unsuspecting population. But not long after you reach the cargo hold, the space vampire corners you. What should you do?

If you decide to abandon ship and flee to the escape pods, turn to page 12.