Cradle of Solitude (20 page)

That was a good thing, because there was a lot more activity around the marina than there had been on the way out that morning.

Or you're just paying more attention to it, she told herself.

Either way, she was thankful that the wheelhouse was enclosed. Several folks recognized the boat and waved as she went past and their inability to see her clearly meant she didn't have to explain why she was at the controls instead of Jimmy.

Or where Jimmy was, for that matter.

She carefully maneuvered the boat into its slip and then shut down the engine. She watched the activity going on around her through the darkened wheelhouse windows, waited for her chance and then made a break for it, leaving the boat tied up behind her.

Blaine Michaels had given Annja just seventy-two hours to solve the final clues and find the treasure. That wasn't a lot of time to begin with and she'd wasted several hours of it getting the boat back to dock. Annja was feeling the pressure as she got inside the rental car and pulled out of the marina.

She recited the third clue again to herself as she drove.

“‘Take the rifle to the place of Lee's greatest failure, where the Peacock freely roamed. Find the spot where my doppelgänger rests eternal, deep beneath the loam.'”

Now that she'd gotten a sense for how Parker had constructed the verses, she was fairly confident that she knew how to decipher this one.

The Lee in “Lee's greatest failure” was most likely Robert E. Lee. No other Lee held greater significance for the South. Parker would have known that his executive officer, Sykes, would understand who he was referring to immediately. That meant in order to locate her next destination, she had to figure out the place and
time where Lee had failed more spectacularly than at any other.

That it was most likely a battlefield went without saying. While Lee had his share of troubles as a young man, none of his personal failures would have meant as much to Captain Parker as the events that unfurled in the closing days of the war. Lee's actions and choices had significance at that point that went far beyond his own person. He was the symbol of a nation, the iconic presence who could rally the Rebels just by passing through camp, and his greatest failure, she reasoned, would have had national significance, as well.

Annja considered the major battles where Lee had been defeated. There was Cheat Mountain. He'd earned the nickname “Granny Lee” when his vastly superior Confederate force of fifteen thousand men had been unable to defeat two thousand Union soldiers. Seven Days, South Mountain and Antietam in 1862. Gettysburg in 1863, of course, followed by the tactical draws of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. The final defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia, the backbone of the Confederate armed forces, at Appomattox in 1865.

While the obvious choice might be Appomattox, something about it just didn't feel right to Annja. It hadn't been a failure in the sense that Lee had done something tactically wrong; he'd simply run out of the food, ammunition and the men he needed to keep the war effort going. That wasn't so much Lee's failure, she knew, as a failure of the nation.

Scratch off Appomattox, she thought.

Likewise, she could forget about the battles in the early part of the war, as well. Cheat Mountain, South Mountain, the Seven Days—none of them had any
major impact on the success or failure of the war overall. Both sides had been feeling each other out, getting a sense of this thing called civil war.

That left her with two choices.

Antietam and Gettysburg.

Gettysburg might be better known to the average American, she thought, but it was Antietam that held the most significance for the war effort. Lee had chosen to ignore his advisers and push north, into Union territory, rather than try to defend Vicksburg. His immediate goal had been to secure desperately needed supplies from the rich farm country of Pennsylvania, but his decision proved to be a monumental error. Antietam proved to be the bloodiest single-day battle in the entire Civil War, with more than twenty-five thousand casualties. It was the first major battle fought on Union soil, but it did not turn out the way Lee had hoped. The Confederacy lost control of its western region and Lee himself nearly lost his army. He'd been forced to fight his way clear at Gettysburg and the Antietam campaign had been the last time Lee invaded northern territory. From that point on, it had all been downhill.

There wouldn't have even been a Gettysburg if Lee hadn't lost the fight at Antietam.

Lee's greatest failure, Annja reasoned, was therefore Antietam.

That was where she had to go next.

It was all well and good, except for the fact that Sharpsburg, Maryland, was more than four hundred miles from her current location in northern Georgia. She was looking at seven, maybe eight hours of driving time and that was without any major stops.

There had to be an easier way.

Annja drove a bit farther until she saw a fast-food
restaurant ahead of her. She pulled into the lot and found a place to park. Taking her laptop out of her backpack, she fired it up and connected to the restaurant's free Wi-Fi service. Just a few moments later she connected to an online travel site and was looking to find the fastest and easiest way to get to Pennsylvania.

As it turned out, Antietam was only fifty miles or so away from Washington, DC. If she could catch a flight into Washington from either Atlanta or Savannah and rent a car on the other end, she could save herself several hours.

And if you rest on the plane, you might actually start to feel like a human being again, she told herself.

She checked the flight schedules. Atlanta sounded like the more logical choice, as it was the bigger airport, but as it turned out, a flight leaving Savannah at 5:20 p.m. not only got her into Washington sooner, but it saved her additional driving time as she was closer to that airport.

She booked the flight and then took a moment to check her email. There were several messages from Commissaire Laroche, first asking and then demanding that she get in touch. She didn't have time to deal with him, so she simply deleted the messages, telling herself she'd get in touch when this was all said and done. Right now, she needed to focus on finding the treasure and freeing Garin.

Realizing it had been hours since she'd eaten, Annja went to the drive-through, picking up a soda and a few cheeseburgers for the ride. As she was waiting for her order, three police cars went roaring past the restaurant, sirens blaring, heading in the direction of the marina.

The police could have been going anywhere, responding to a hundred different calls, but upon seeing
them Annja was convinced that the bodies aboard the
Kelly May
had been found and that any minute now they'd realize where she was and come looking for her.

The sooner she got out of there, the better.

The food server handed over her order and Annja drove off, getting on the highway and heading south toward Savannah as quickly as she dared.

The Savannah airport was larger than she'd expected, but not by much. She found the car rental return, dropped the keys and the rental agreement, unsigned since it was in Garin's name, into the slot and headed into the terminal. She checked in at one of the self-service kiosks and then quickly made her way toward security.

While she was standing in line at the security checkpoint, she noticed a man in a dark windbreaker and jeans a few lines over. Something about him looked familiar, but she couldn't place where she had seen him before. He glanced in her direction, his gaze sliding over her without showing any sign of recognition, and Annja decided that he was just another traveler waiting to get through security.

No big deal.

She handed her ID and boarding pass to the security agent, waiting a moment for him to review it, and then moved on and dealt with the X-ray machine. After
collecting her things on the other side, she headed for her gate.

She saw the man again a few minutes later, walking along behind her as part of a crowd of other passengers. He didn't have any luggage with him, which she thought was odd, though in and of itself it didn't prove anything, for he could have easily checked it at the ticket counter. But he seemed to be doing everything he could not to look in her direction and that sent warning signs flashing through her brain.

Something just wasn't right.

She'd seen a ladies' room down a short side hallway a few minutes earlier and decided it was time to see if she was imagining things or not. Without looking at him, Annja slowed, pretended to change her mind and headed back in the direction that she had come. She kept her head down and angled to the side so that she could see him out of the corner of her eye as she moved away.

Just as she'd suspected, he waited a moment for her to move ahead and then quickly broke ranks with the other passengers and headed back in the same direction she was going.

Now convinced that she was being followed, she began to be curious just who it was and what he wanted.

Her decision to come to Savannah had been impulsive, as well. If someone had been expecting her to go through an airport, the logical choice would have been Atlanta. After all, that's where she had been headed until she'd double-checked the times of the flights she'd needed.

There wasn't any reason for Savannah to be on anyone's radar.

She considered the possibility that he might be a fan
of the show and was simply too shy to approach her directly, but dismissed the notion as soon as it occurred to her. A fan would be openly staring. Even a shy fan would be trying to get closer, rather than hanging back and attempting to blend into the peoplescape.

No, whoever he was, he was up to no good. She could feel it in her bones. And she fully intended to confront him and to teach him the error of his ways.

The bathroom she was headed toward was at the end of a corridor that made two quick dogleg turns. She passed the first and kept walking, her ears straining to pick up the sounds of his feet on the tile as he followed behind her.

For a minute she thought he'd decided against leaving the protection of the crowd, but then she caught the sound of the soles of his shoes catching on the freshly mopped tile floor and knew he was still with her.

When she got around the second dogleg she flattened herself against the wall and waited. She'd had enough playing the mouse; it was time to be the cat, and this cat, at least, had sharp claws.

She could hear him coming toward her and she set her feet firmly where she wanted them, prepping them for the test of balance that was about to come.

As he came around the corner she grabbed him by the front of the coat and shoved him into the door of the ladies' room just beyond. It bounced open, sending him sprawling to the floor.

She followed him in and when he moved to get back to his feet she stuck the point of her sword against his throat and waited to see if he could take a hint.

He froze in place, his hands held out in a defensive posture.

“What do you want?” she demanded in a low voice,
not wanting to attract undue attention by yelling, but needing to release the anger she felt building inside her.

“Easy now,” he said. “No need for trouble.”

“You got trouble the minute you decided to muck about in my business,” she told him, pushing the tip of her sword forward slightly to prove her point. A tiny drop of blood spilled out where her sword met the skin of his throat.

He swallowed hard and Annja could see the pulse in his neck start to beat harder.

“Who sent you?”

His reply was immediate. Clearly, he wanted to be seen as cooperating. “Mr. Michaels.”

No surprise, that.

“How did you know where to find me? Have you been following me since the river?”

He shook his head. “I don't know what you are talking about. Mr. Michaels told me that you were on your way here and that I was to keep an eye on you.”

What? How did Michaels know where she was headed? She hadn't called anyone, hadn't told anyone what she was up to.

Her gaze fell on the cell phone sticking out of the man's pocket and the pieces suddenly fell into place.

How could she have been so stupid?

“When you see Michaels, you tell him to stay the hell away from me until I get in touch. You got that?” He nodded.

She pulled the point away from his throat and took a step back.

A look of relief crossed his face.

Annja quickly knocked it off his face when she brought the hand holding the sword down sharply, hitting him on the head with the blunt end of the pommel.

Her would-be tracker fell over unconscious.

Releasing her sword to vanish back into the otherwhere, Annja quickly frisked him, removing his wallet and cell phone. She then grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him into a nearby stall, leaving him propped up next to the toilet with his back to the wall.

Annja stepped out of the bathroom and retraced her steps, headed back toward her gate.

Behind her, a woman began screaming and Annja knew the thug had just been discovered.

He was going to have a hard time explaining what he was doing in the ladies' room and his lack of identification wasn't going to make things easier.

Too bad, Annja thought as she tossed his wallet into a nearby trash can.

When she reached her gate, she took a seat away from the rest of the crowd and took out the cell phone she'd been given by Michaels. Accessing the call history, she wrote down the last number called, knowing she was going to need it later. Once she had done that, she carefully pried open the phone's battery compartment.

She didn't know all that much about how cell phones operated, but she was savvy enough to recognize that the small black chip that was taped to the front of the battery shouldn't be there.

Michaels had been following her every move from the moment she left the
Kelly May
. He must have been afraid she'd just take the money and run when she found it, rather than going back for Garin.

Oh, ye of little faith.

Unwilling to let Michaels keep tabs on her every move, Annja was preparing to smash the phone beneath the heel of her hiking boots when another idea occurred
to her. She replaced the top of the battery compartment and turned the phone back on. A nearby snack cart selling ice-cream cones had a small crowd standing in front of it so Annja headed in that direction. She got close to a woman carrying three bags while at the same time trying to deal with two squalling children under the age of five.

When the woman's attention was elsewhere, Annja dropped the cell phone into the opening of her handbag.

With any luck, the woman would be headed for Argentina.

She checked the battery compartment of the phone she'd taken from her would-be pursuer, saw that it was clean and then programmed the number she'd memorized into that phone instead.

Fifteen minutes later, Annja boarded her own plane, content that she now held the upper hand.