“Garrett!” She stood up from her desk and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re going to love this,” she said, literally rubbing her hands together in anticipation.
“They’ve finally got a pill that will grow me a new foot,” said Garrett.
“Better! I’ve got the latest prosthetic on the market. Actually, it isn’t even on the market yet, but I wangled one for you by saying it would be tested by a Mountie under field conditions. The company loved the idea.”
“Long as I don’t have to give a testimonial on TV.”
“All they want is your honest evaluation of it.” She reached into a box on her desk, withdrew something that looked like a body part lost by C-3PO and handed it to Garrett.
“You are holding the most advanced prosthetic available in the world. Combines artificial intelligence with cutting-edge sensor technology. With this you’ll be able to detect where your foot is in space, enabling it to identify slopes and stairs after the first step using artificial intelligence, instructing your ankle to flex in an appropriate manner. It reduces the energy spent in reacting consciously to the environment.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” said Garrett. “Usually I’m not reacting consciously at all to my environment.”
She gave him a look. “That was my impression after you submitted your foot to a vat of salt water.”
“It wasn’t a vat of salt water, Marcia. It was the ocean.”
“Whatever.”
He turned the foot this way and that. It certainly looked like an impressive bit of technology. “How long will it take to fit me?”
“We can do it in an hour. It’s very user-friendly. There’s a fifteen-step calibration process, during which the device evaluates and memorizes your unique gait pattern. You’ll be walking like Yul Brynner when you leave here today.”
He stared at her. “Better than Walter Brennan, I suppose. Let’s get started.”
“One thing, Garrett. This is still a prototype. Two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of technology. The developer wants the assurance of an active field test. But it would still be nice if you tried to … ah … keep it dry?”
45
K
ITTY HUDDLED ON THE CATWALK
far beneath the oil rig and listened as the chopper circled to land. She knew whoever was arriving was expecting her to be the welcomer-in-chief. Well, they’d get a surprise once they managed to break into her room.
The seas had picked up and were very choppy now. Even though she was twenty feet above the water, mist still sprayed her every time a big wave hit the base of the concrete anchors at the right angle. The longer this kept up, the more likely she was to eventually become soaked from the cold water. She knew hypothermia would be a real possibility.
Her choices were bleak. If she stayed where she was, she was going to be in trouble soon from the cold. Her ninety-eight pounds, which had long been a staple of her sexual allure and professional power, provided not an ounce of fat for warmth. But what could she do? There was no way off the rig. To climb back above the lower level would mean she’d be much more likely to be found.
Her one consolation was that the rig didn’t appear to be operating currently as a working oil platform. There seemed to be remarkably few people on board. The place was so huge and such a maze of components that it would be hard for a handful of men to search it thoroughly. Slowly, she began to work out a plan.
If she climbed up far enough to get a view of the main platform, she might be able to see men looking for her once the search began. If she could then manage to sneak to an area that had already been searched, maybe they would miss her. It was a long shot, but the only one she had. She was already shivering. If she waited much longer, she might become incapacitated.
She steeled herself, got up, and began to climb the catwalk. Her fingers felt like little cubes of ice. Near the top of the walkway, the catwalk entered a hollowed-out section of one of the anchors. Here, she stopped to enjoy the warmth of being suddenly out of the wind and spray. There was a door, which she peeked through long enough to see that it led onto the main open floor of the platform. It would expose her terribly to go out there. Inside was another set of steps rising through the concrete tube that anchored the rig. She decided to stay inside for the time being and see where they went.
She climbed up to a small room at the top of the anchor. This seemed to be storage space, filled with cable and drilling equipment. Since the rig wasn’t actually drilling, maybe no one would have reason to come here. But she knew once the search began, storage rooms would likely be among the first places they would look.
Still, the room had a single window that gave her a view onto the second level of the platform. She could see the approaches to her hideaway and would have some warning if anyone was planning to enter her space. She settled down to wait.
It was warm enough to take off her soaking coat. She squeezed as much water out of it as she could, along with some that had penetrated to her clothes beneath. Then she stashed the coat behind a pile of cable. She wanted to be able to move quickly when the time came, and lugging a heavy, water-soaked coat would only slow her down and probably leave a trail of water as well.
She explored her surroundings and found a heavy wrench. It was the only thing that might remotely be considered a weapon. She clung to it and then picked up a hard hat. It would make her less recognizable outside.
She was about to settle down and wait when a siren went off. It blared for thirty seconds and was followed by a voice over a loudspeaker that announced all hands were to begin a search for “our missing hostess” was how the voice described her. It almost sounded like a game. They knew there was no place for her to go and that she couldn’t get off the rig. They had every expectation of finding her.
She thought grimly about the scene she’d left behind in her room. The man with his clothes off and his brains bashed in. It ought to give them pause. She wasn’t going to be anyone’s pushover any more. Having taken action, she no longer felt the sense of utter helplessness that had overwhelmed her ever since Lloyd had ordered her to take her clothes off. She’d fight tooth and nail if they caught her again, even if it meant being killed.
She peered out her window and saw a handful of men moving about the rig. A couple had climbed up into the superstructure and were exploring every crevice and cranny. Several others had begun to search the level outside her window. It would only be a matter of time before someone came into her room.
Directly in front of her was a steel ladder that ran up the side of a massive pipeline. About fifty feet up, there was a small steel platform that appeared to hold only an electrical box or grid center. It looked like a dead end, though she couldn’t actually see the base of the area to be sure.
She watched as men moved around the rig. She’d been right about one thing. There didn’t seem to be too many of them, though it was difficult to keep track as they appeared and disappeared. She counted only half a dozen within her limited sight range.
Two men started up the ladder, and she watched them climb to the open platform with the electrical panel. They only peered over the rim, then turned and went back down. She took this to be proof that the platform was a dead end, one they wouldn’t be likely to bother searching again.
It was her chance.
As soon as the men disappeared to another part of the rig, she opened the door, hesitated only an instant, then raced to the ladder and scrambled up it as fast as she could.
The platform with the grid boxes was better than she could have hoped. As long as she kept back from the edge, she was totally invisible from any other part of the rig. There was even a small indentation between grid panels where she could wedge herself, comfortably out of the wind. It wouldn’t hide her if someone else climbed up to look over the edge, but barring that, she felt a small degree of security for the first time since getting off the chopper.
She put her wrench and the hard hat on the steel platform beside her and settled down to wait, as men continued calling to one another all over the rig. They seemed excited at the search, something to help pass the time during their boring duty at sea. These men might be experienced roustabouts, but it was also clear they knew precisely what went on below decks on this particular oil rig.
She prayed DeMaio wouldn’t come back. He had undoubtedly been informed about what happened first thing and would be furious that his aide had been killed and his important guests spurned. They’d have to come up with some way to explain how the man was killed, though head injuries from falling objects on an oil rig were undoubtedly not uncommon. In any event, DeMaio would assume, like the others, that there was no way for her to escape. Eventually she would be caught and returned to her duties.
She thought again about Garrett. Sarah would give him her message, but there was nothing she’d said to give a clue as to her whereabouts. At least she had mentioned Lloyd. That would give them something to go on, though if pressed Lloyd would almost certainly say that he and Kitty had been together but he didn’t know what had happened after she left. Absent any proof, it would be a dead end for Garrett.
She lay on her back and stared at the clouds running across the sky far above. The sun felt warm and reassuring on her face. She could almost imagine she was lying in a meadow somewhere, without a care in the world.
Almost.
46
G
ARRETT SLAMMED THE PHONE DOWN
for the tenth time in the past two hours. He’d been trying futilely to get hold of Lonnie and in between had tried Alfred Nichols, the intel man in charge of keeping an eye on DeMaio. Lonnie didn’t answer, his cell phone turned off, and Nichols apparently wouldn’t take his call. He’d even put in a call to Ecum Secum’s Haven for Troubled Youth to see if Lloyd was around. Maybe he could squeeze something more from the scumbag. But no one knew where Lloyd was. He’d obviously gone to ground after his confrontation with the big man. That alone suggested he hadn’t told Lonnie everything.
Sarah’s insistence that he do something about Kitty put him on the spot. What the hell could he do? He wasn’t sure she would be on the oil rig and if he called in support only to find her not there, all he would succeed in doing would be to make DeMaio and whoever else was involved very cautious. Kitty would be hidden and guarded even more closely, maybe even killed, if they thought the authorities were getting too close.
He’d about come around to the idea that his best bet was going to be another sleuth attack by kayak. At night. His stomach churned just at the thought. Marcia would kill him if he screwed up his two-hundred-thousand-dollar foot in salt water again. Especially if the next time she saw the expensive bit of hardware it was attached to a corpse lying on a gurney in the morgue.
Where the bloody hell was Lonnie? He decided to drive back to the city to see if he could locate his cousin at any of his usual haunts. The hours-long drive seemed like a terrible waste of time. His mind was filled with images of what Kitty must be going through. He wasn’t exactly fond of the reporter, but no one deserved such a fate.
He also thought about Roland. The odds the fisherman could really turn his life around seemed remote. It would require a makeover of near-biblical proportions. Since they were kids together, Roland had been a sort of outcast. No one at their small school befriended him. Garrett had felt sorry for him and made one or two attempts to be civil, but the efforts paid no dividends. Roland was just an unpleasant character. And nothing about that had changed in the thirty-odd years since. It was going to be interesting to see how it all worked out.
He hit the greasy spoon on Barrington Street, but Lonnie hadn’t been seen since they’d been there together. He drove to a quiet residential neighborhood and located his cousin’s house on Henry Street. It was an inner-city street, an easy walk from the waterfront. The house was an attractive Victorian with an apartment on the third floor that Lon rented out to the college-aged daughter of still another cousin in return for some housecleaning and keeping an eye on the place when he wasn’t around, which was often.
The selection of the house had always seemed incongruous to Garrett. It was a neighborhood filled with young couples just starting out, lots of kids on the streets, a sort of Ozzie and Harriet environment. Lonnie liked it because it surrounded him with the normalcy he longed for in his own life. Garrett could hardly imagine what his cousin’s neighbors thought of the frightening-looking giant in their midst.
But no one was home. Garrett sat in his car in the driveway trying to think what he could do next that would be constructive when he noticed a van parked across the street with two men sitting in it.
One of the men was looking at him. Slowly he raised what looked like some sort of walking stick and rested it on the open window. As Garrett stared at it in puzzlement, the stick suddenly let loose with a loud crack and his rear window, inches from his head, exploded. He ducked instinctively as three more shots were fired, then the van’s tires screeched as it pulled in tight behind Garrett’s car, blocking the driveway.
He leaped out of the car and ran into Lonnie’s back yard, which consisted of a postage-stamp plot of grass surrounded by shrubs and flowers. The back yards of at least six other houses all intersected, with picket fences between each of them. He looked back to see if the men in the car were coming after him, but they appeared to have decided it was too much work to chase him through the warren of busy backyards with kids, barking dogs, neighbors mowing lawns and gardening. Too many witnesses. Or maybe this had just been a warning. The van backed out and roared off down the street.
By the time he got back to his car, his attackers had disappeared. He thought about what it all meant as he cleaned up the broken glass in his back seat and threw it in Lonnie’s trash can.
An old man who’d been sitting on a porch across the street cackled loudly.