Lost Cargo (19 page)

She gingerly pulled the shower curtain back in the master bathroom, the shower curtain she planned to replace because it didn’t match the tiles. Worrying about the color seemed frivolous when an intruder might be hiding behind it. Mercifully, nobody was there.

And nobody was behind the guest room bed or the rest of the jumbled furniture she’d shoved in there. Two green eyes stared out from a closet jammed with clothes and Christmas decorations. Shadow. So this was where he was hiding today. The cat sneezed.

Nobody was in the small office. She was the only person in the condo.

The animal attacks in the news were making her crazy. She went back to the cookbook. Irish Soda Bread would be easy as long as they had all the ingredients. In a few minutes she’d see what they had in the kitchen, but right now she was too tired to move.

Somebody was in the condo. She knew it. Her skin crawled. The overwhelming feeling blew away all her logical proof like straw in the wind.

She put the cookbook down.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” a man said behind her back.

Lisa screamed and jumped up. She screamed and screamed and screamed. A man holding tools stood behind her. The balcony door was open. She’d forgotten about the balcony. He’d been out there the whole time.

The man stepped back. “Lady, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you! I didn’t know anybody was home!” The murders in the neighborhood. Through her screams she realized he was an ordinary looking, balding, middle-aged man with two chins, thick hands, and a wedding ring, not her idea of a murderer, but since she didn’t know what a murderer looked like, he would do.

She moved around the dining table. “What are you doing in here?” she gasped.

“I’m a locksmith,” he said.

Lisa’s eyes dropped to the company logo on his pocket.
Ignore his clothes. Run
.

“Lady, I’m sorry, really, really sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” he insisted, spreading his grimy hands in explanation. “We were called out to change the locks. The one on the balcony was giving me a lot of trouble, or I would’ve been gone by now.”

“Someone called you to change our locks?”

The man placed a business card on the table. She took it, careful to keep her distance. The card looked legitimate, but any criminal with a computer could print a card.

“Yes ma’am,” he went on. “Ian Mitchell. We had a cancellation, so he said to go ahead and do it today. The front desk let me in. Sorry I frightened you, lady. I had no idea anybody was home.”

Lisa grew furious. The man seemed to be telling the truth. He knew her husband’s name. Ian had no business letting somebody in the condo without talking to her first. And the idiot at the desk didn’t say a word about a locksmith.

“I’ll confirm that, if you would just stay right where you are. Don’t move.” She kept her eyes on him and called the concierge. “This is 940, Lisa Mitchell. Did you let a locksmith in here? My husband told you to let him in? Well, I wish you’d said something when I stopped for the mail because he frightened me to death. You thought I knew? Yes, I will talk to my husband.”

Livid, she hung up and faced the locksmith. “My husband called you to change the locks when I wasn’t home. How did he think I was supposed to get in my own home?”

“He told us to leave the keys at the desk,” the locksmith said.

The man left after a final string of apologies. Lisa locked the front door. She pictured Ian with an oblivious look on his face while she’d been creeping around the condo, terrified out of her mind. He was going to catch hell for this one.

When the brilliant sun sank below the black treetops, Lisa turned on the lamps, still simmering. Light gleamed over the bare wood floors, which no longer seemed abandoned, but full of the promise of a new home. She organized the books, emptied two boxes, came across a pewter clock, and placed it on the mantle.

Five o’clock. He would be home soon.

Next, she rolled out the cream-colored carpet and stood back to size up the room. It would do until they could hang the pictures. Instead of a warehouse stacked with furniture, the living room finally looked like a real home.

She started dinner, baked trout with butternut squash soup, and opened the balcony door for air. The door didn’t need a lock. They were nine floors up. What a waste of money.

Ian walked in, right on time.

“Honey, I’m home,” he called.

They fought through dinner. Ian didn’t seem bothered by the whole thing, which made Lisa madder than ever. After dinner they moved into the living room. Still annoyed, she silently picked at his appearance. He looked like a professor ordered up from Central Casting with his trim beard and curly gray hair, turtleneck sweater, tweed jacket, and wire-rimmed glasses. His calm smile only made her want to attack. How could he teach philosophy with all those fine, rarified thoughts, and be so oblivious to his own wife’s feelings?

He set a glass of white wine in front of her. “This is how Bogie used to seduce Bacall, except he did it with a cigarette. The living room looks great. I’m proud of you.”

“Yes, well, if Bogie did to Bacall what you did to me today, she would’ve scratched his eyes out. You’re not making up to me like that. I can’t believe you let somebody in this place without telling me.” She took the wine and sat back on the sofa.

“We just went through this,” Ian said peevishly. “Do you plan to fight about it all night?”

“He scared me to death. You don’t seem concerned about that.”

“I told the concierge to let you know the locksmith was coming. She obviously didn’t do her job, but I left you a message. You need to leave your cell phone on and you need to check the messages.” He waved his hands. “How many times are we going to go over this? There are a lot of things to do when people move. I was trying to help.”

“He scared me. He could have gone through our things. You can’t let service people in here when we’re not home.”

Ian shrugged. “He had a cancellation. He said they could do it today. Otherwise, we would’ve had to wait two weeks. We don’t know who else has keys to this place.”

“What if he’d stolen something?” she insisted.

“But he didn’t,” Ian said. “And he was recommended by the building. The man does most of the locks here. He has a good reputation.”

“I’d like an apology,” Lisa said stiffly.

“You’re obsessed with crime,” he told her.

“What did you say?”

“I said you’re obsessed with crime. Ever since we moved here, it’s all you think about. You’re suspicious about everything. In fact, you started in on it after you talked to your brother, warning me not to walk in Rock Creek Park. Every time you turn around, you think somebody is out to get you. We have a beautiful new home, and you don’t seem to enjoy anything about it.”

“Oh, so you think I have a problem,” she said.

“I didn’t say that, but since you bring it up, yes, maybe you do have a problem.”

“The deaths in the neighborhood don’t bother you.”

“There are some things you just don’t seem to grasp, Lisa.”

“Oh, really? What don’t I grasp?” she shot back. There it was, Ian’s favorite word,
grasp
.

He blinked behind his glasses. “You don’t seem to grasp that while all cities have crime, everybody in the world is not out to get you. The deaths in the neighborhood have nothing to do with the locksmith. Of course, I feel sorry for those people, but things happen. The police officer had a high-risk job, and the woman walked her dog at night and took her chances.”

“It wasn’t just a dog bite,” she said.

“You’re obsessed with it,” he told her.

Lisa knew he didn’t read the stories in the paper. Nobody gunned the victims down in an ordinary street robbery. The newspapers had used the phrase “animal attacks.” Of course, it was farfetched to think an animal attack could happen inside their building, but that was beside the point. Her nerves were on edge. She didn’t want strangers in her home. He should understand that.

Furious, she got up and found her cigarettes.

“I thought you quit smoking,” he said. “It’s not good for your diabetes.”

“I’m not ready to quit. I’ll quit if and when I feel like it.”

“Nobody smokes anymore, Lisa. Nobody.”

“Oh, so I’m nobody,” she said.

“There you go again. I’d like to have a wife who doesn’t smell like an ashtray.”

“If your nose is that sensitive, why don’t you get a job sniffing drugs at the airport?”

“That’s clever, Lisa. So I’m a dog.”

She went out on the balcony, shut the door so hard it rattled, and fumbled with the lighter. “Jerk, always telling me what I don’t grasp.”

Another lecture from the great Ian Mitchell. She always gave in and smoothed things over. Well, she was good and sick of it. This time he would have to make the first move.

Cool night air crept through her clothes. She wished she had a sweater, but she was too mad to go in yet. Laughter floated up. People were talking on the patios nine floors below, but when she leaned over the rail she couldn’t see them. Or maybe they’d just gone inside. Light from the ground floor windows lit up the trees all along the edge of the lawn. Even though it was the end of October, the grass shone a brilliant green against the black forest.

It made her nervous to look down, so she leaned against the chilly stone wall to smoke. Bright light from the living room window cast sharp shadows across the balcony. They would have to get curtains this week. She could almost feel Ian looking at her. Maybe he was sorry. Maybe this time he would actually apologize.

She glanced back at the empty window.

“Your call,” she said stubbornly. She lit another cigarette and let her eyes stray.

The giant was on the next balcony, fifteen feet away, watching her.

Lisa caught her breath and stubbed out her cigarette. After she locked the balcony door, deeply grateful for the new lock, she tried to calm her racing heart. Ian was in the dining room working on some notes. “Let’s not do this to each other,” she forced herself to say. Playing Miss Peacemaker again, but her hands were shaking and she didn’t want to fight anymore.

He turned around, got up, and to her relief put his arms around her.

“Sweetheart, this is all stress from moving,” he said. “It’s getting to both of us.”

You’re suspicious about everything
.

She started to tell him about the horrible woman on the balcony, but his words stopped her cold.

The shadows lengthened over the grass. Tech 29 squeezed his cluster of eyes shut and rubbed more thermal pain spheres into his shattered arm. The nerve-deadening spheres darkened the folds of his skin from pale blue to the dark green color of the prickly evergreen bushes he was hiding behind.

His arm began to grow numb again. It would mend in the ship. He was lucky he escaped with both arms. Go back a one-armed tech and that would be the end of his job. Worst of all, his camouflage was wearing thin. He watched his feet fade out and appear again, first the toes, then up to the ankles. Not a good sign. Not good at all.

The two locals working in the yard in front of him were taking their time. The older one banged around in their battered red vehicle, putting away tools and throwing brush in the back. They would be going soon. Someone in the house had turned on the outside lights. In a few minutes it would be too dark for them to see.

The alien scrutinized the road for a glint of silver, a gleam, any clue that might look like the tracker, but his hiding place was too far away to make anything out. He couldn’t sense the tracker, which worried him more than anything else. The pieces would still be on the road if a car had crushed it. He should be able to sense something.

Loud music blared over the lawn. The closest local, a tubby male in a fluorescent yellow shirt who seemed to be the leader, held a device to his ear.

“D.C. Dan Yard Works,” the local said, scratching his paunch. “Yeah, this is Bill. Oh, yeah? Yeah? Whaddya mean I don’t get a third man tomorrow? So I’m stuck with Doggie again? Wonderful. Every single goddamn thing he does, I gotta do it all over again. We shoulda finished an hour ago.” Bill jammed the device in his sagging pants. “Babysit an old refried hippie with sawdust for brains, some job.”

He grabbed a long tool and blew leaves across the lawn toward Tech 29’s hedge.

Heart pounding, keeping his head down, Tech 29 skittered along the brick wall of the house. Bill reached the hedge. The leaf blower hit Tech 29 with a blast of hot air. The alien swallowed his pain, held his broken arm against his body, and scrambled into the open. They didn’t seem to see him. His camouflage was still working.

Bill moved on, pulling up his pants, blasting more leaves from behind the hedge. The brown leaves flew everywhere. Trapped against the garden wall now, Tech 29 found himself in the middle of the rustling flurry. To his alarm, the leaves stuck to his clothes and blew up around his ears.

Doggie stepped away from the truck with his mouth hanging open.

“Doggie, lookit the leaves,” Bill said.” Lookit!”

“Leaf man,” Doggie breathed. “It’s a freakin’ leaf man.”

“Lookit that, wouldja lookit that,” Bill said.

”Oh, man, oh, man, a leaf man,” Doggie said.

Still invisible, Tech 29 crept along the garden wall, looking for a way to dash between the two. The leaves on his clothes went with him. Then his camouflage disappeared. He found himself face to face with them for ten terrible seconds until the camouflage blinked back.

“He’s got six eyes,” Doggie screamed. “I seen the dude! Six eyes!”

“Get him!” Bill pounded across the grass, belly bouncing over his pants. He dropped the leaf blower, spread his fat hands, and took a swipe at the air, spinning around, swiping left and right like a blind boxer.

Tech 29 sprinted for the sidewalk, still coated with leaves. He couldn’t cross the river of traffic. Headlights glared and horns honked. “Leaf man,” someone yelled. The two locals were falling behind, but he could still hear their shouts and footsteps by the time he slipped through a gate into a dark yard.

A dog gave a ferocious bark from behind a window and rattled the glass trying to get out. The alien began to run, holding his shattered arm against his body, his footpads moving soundlessly over the bricks until he found an alley and scaled the gate at the end. He had to get back to the ship.