Reflex (17 page)

Or maybe Nantucket? He'd never been on Nantucket but he'd spent several days bicycling around Martha's Vineyard once. He didn't
stay
there, but had jumped daily, right before Memorial Day. He'd tried it after Memorial Day, too, but it was far too crowded. The accent, once heard, was unforgettable. He'd heard that the accent on Nantucket was similar, only more so.

And there are mansions.

It would explain all the seafood.

He pushed on the top of the concrete cylinder with his toe. It didn't budge in the slightest, as if it were part of some massive rock outcropping reaching up from the bones of the earth. He was puzzled. It would take a crane to get the weight back out of that hole, but its placement looked deliberate and long-term.
Are they going to leave me out here in the open to graze upon the grass?

The brick walls enclosing the three sides of the yard joined the corners of the house and were at least eight feet high. The cast iron gate at the far end had gaps between the bars, but all he could see was a distant garage door framed by leafless shrubbery at the end of a gravel path. The house, as he'd noticed in the elevator, was three stories above ground, but there were big dormer windows jutting from the roof, hinting at substantial space in the attic. The basement was clearly evident, too, both in the windows peeking above window wells and the stairs opposite the wheelchair ramp, leading down to a door under the porch.

His eyes were slowly getting used to the light, and now he lifted his eyes to the sky, bright and blue and cloud-free. He took a deep breath. There were contrails high overhead and, after a moment's searching, he spied a lower jetliner.
Hmm. Bound for Logan?
If so, the house was north of him, and the gateway south. This certainly matched the sun's position.

Unless I'm totally wrong about where I am.

Miss Minchin was sitting on the porch steps watching him. He decided to ignore her. The chain allowed him a forty-foot circle that kept him pretty much on the grass, five feet short of the walls' border shrubbery and twenty feet from the gate and porch.

He shivered. To warm up he walked the perimeter—counterclockwise since his left ankle was constrained by the chain.
I'll wear a groove in the grass if they leave me here long enough. Like a dog on a chain.
He swung his arms and scuffed his feet as much as possible in the short grass. A circle would be visible from the air, from satellite.
Like a dog on a chain—and that's what they would think.
He stopped scuffing.

After fifteen minutes of this, Miss Minchin talked into her radio. He heard the static and a voice in reply, but couldn't make out what was said. She stood and came up the walk, halting where the arc of his circle crossed the cement. She tossed something shiny onto the ground and, curious, he approached.

It was a key, presumably the key to the padlock. He looked at her. She was holding the radio to her mouth and watching him.

He crouched and took it, still watching her. When she didn't say anything, he moved it toward the padlock.

"Now," she said, into the radio.

He felt the tingle in his throat and coughed. The key wouldn't go in, but then he turned it one hundred and eighty degrees and it slipped in, twisted, and the lock popped open. He got it out of the hasp, pulled the restraint open, and jumped.

He was in the box, gasping.

He had tried to go to Adams Cowley. He had pictured Adams Cowley.

He'd ended up here.

The computerized voice said, "Put the manacle on."

He jumped—not to Adams Cowley, not home to the Aerie, not to the condo in Stillwater. He jumped to the hallway, right outside the observation room, and opened that door. Even as he did so, he coughed and his throat tingled, but he managed, for one instant, to look at the three men inside the room, before his body flinched back to the box.

He closed his eyes, trying to eke everything he could out of the one glimpse. He'd seen a darkened room with a counter under the tinted window, a microphone, video monitors, a video camera, and three men.

Three startled men, staring back over their shoulders at the open door, their eyes wide open with surprise. One of them was Thug Two, the red-haired, hook-nosed man, and another was Thug One, the blonde he'd thrown against the wall. The blonde was still wearing a foam cervical collar, souvenir of his last encounter with Davy. Davy hoped it had hurt when he'd been compelled to twist to face the door. He hadn't seen the third man before. He was older, with a white lab jacket, dark hair gone mostly gray, glasses, sharp long nose. One of the video monitors had shown the bathroom tub and toilet and a rim of the sink, bright and clear, even though the bathroom light was off and the door shut.

Darkness will not hide me.

The computerized voice said, "Now! No more tricks. Put the manacle on."

Davy coughed and felt the tingle in his throat.

But I'm
in
the box!

He considered, for the barest instant, not obeying. It would counteract some of the conditioning, if they sent him into convulsions "in the box." It would be a grave mistake, on their part.

But he couldn't make himself face that—not now.

He crouched and put the padded restraint over his ankle, threaded the padlock shackle onto the last link of the chain, and put it through the hasp on the restraint. He twisted the padlock shackle into alignment and pretended to push it shut, using the motion of his hands to rap the body of the padlock against the stainless steel of the outer cuff with a muffled click.

Weirder things had happened. They might not check.

The tingle stopped and he exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He checked the border—he was still "in the box." So he dropped to the floor cross-legged with the unlatched padlock hidden beneath his calf.

They left him "in the box" for forty-five minutes. He imagined them talking to Miss Minchin and plotting a new punishment for him, but now that they'd removed the winch, there was nothing to pull him physically out of the box.

He imagined them doing it directly, muscle against muscle, maybe sending Thug Two in, but they probably remembered what had happened with Thug One. Davy looked over at the wall—the depression from the blonde's shoulder and hip were still visible.

Let them come.
He wasn't feeling that manageable just yet.

Miss Minchin entered the room and he tensed. He could slip off the manacle and jump behind her, drop her in the pit in west Texas, and be back in the box before the full convulsions kicked in.
But I'd still be in the box at the end of it.

Miss Minchin said, "Stick out your foot."

He extended the one without the manacle.

"Ha, bloody ha. The other foot." She raised her hand to the mirror, three fingers extended. She retracted one of them, waited a beat, and retracted the other.

Reluctantly, he extended his foot.

She looked at the open padlock and sighed, then looked meaningfully at the mirror. "Do I have to do
everything!"
She gestured at Davy. "Shut the padlock, vomit-boy."

"Shut it yourself." He pulled it from the hasp and tossed it across the room, followed by the ankle restraint. He stood up.

He didn't think he could lose this one. If they went ahead and sent him into convulsions, in the square, it would counteract the conditioning. He was visualizing the trauma center at Adams Cowley, ready to jump.

She looked down at the lock and manacle, then back up at him. "Don't mess with me, vomit-boy. You'll regret it."

He slapped her in the face, starting the swing before jumping. The impact swung her head around. She lashed out but he was already back in the box, his arm dropping to his side. The cough and tingle were momentarily there but fading already.

Miss Minchin had dropped back, eyes wide, hands raised, body flinching into some sort of martial arts stance. Davy's handprint was vivid on her cheek.

"Probably." Regret it, he meant. Davy held his breath, waiting, expecting the warning buzz. It didn't come.
What's a boy got to do?

He jumped, swept her rear foot from behind and was back in the square before she hit the ground. She rolled to her feet again, her hand held palm out to the mirror, as if to say, "wait."

He slapped the top of her head, hard, from behind, and she kicked back, cobra fast, but he was back in the square and she was dancing on one foot, off balance. She turned and reached for the doorknob but he knocked her spinning away with a body slam.

She scrambled up. This time, instead of going for the door, she came at him. He walked toward her slowly, despite the cough, and, when she committed herself to a front kick, jumped behind her, reached out and grabbed her collar. Both feet went out from under her and she landed hard, on her back.

This time, back in the square, he coughed again. An odd mix of dread and relief coursed through him. He waited—he wanted to be in full convulsions when he arrived, hopefully unable to jump. If he could survive anywhere, it would be in the Trauma Center.

He... jumped.

He blinked as the lighting changed and he was on hospital tile, doubled over, vomiting, coughing, defecating. His vision was tunneling down but he saw a pair of legs in scrubs turn toward him, a voice saying, "What the—"

No!

He was back in the box, on all fours, the vomiting stopped, weak as an infant
and soiled like one.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his head just as Miss Minchin kicked him in the face.

Curtis took her out into the Virginia suburbs and said, "Pick one. I'm pretty sure we're clean and our escort says the same."

Millie blinked.
Escort?
She swallowed. "Right." She didn't waste any time watching for the watchers. The cab was cruising a strip of hotels and stores. She saw a Comfort Inn with the vacancy sign lit beside a twenty-four-hour drugstore. "That one," she said. "Drop me at the drugstore, first. Need some things."

He pulled up. "Use the bug if you need help, or when you're ready," he said. "We'll be around."

"Sure," she said.
If I need anything I'll just talk to my bra.

At the drugstore she picked up a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, and a package of cotton underwear decorated with cartoon characters.
Davy would like these,
she thought.
Well, he'd like to take them off...
It was one of his favorite lines. "You know, that sweater would look
marvelous...
on the bedroom floor."

She felt an ache of desire, of longing, of anger.
Damn you, Davy. Get your ass back here. I need to get laid.

She paid cash for her purchases, then cash again at the hotel, using a false name on the registration card. When she was in the room, a second floor unit unfortunately close to the ice machine, she tried to relax.

The evening before, she'd been unable to sleep because Sojee was in the room. Now, she wanted Sojee back. Being hunted through the museum and attacked in the streets certainly changed the tenor of things.

Yesterday her search had been colored with feelings of hopeless desperation, of a search conducted for a needle lost in a limitless sea. Her motions and efforts had been driven by a need to be actually
doing something.
Now, when the hopeless scope of her search had revealed the faintest narrowing of possibilities, it was almost more painful than the previous abject hopelessness.

But the desperation is still there.
She laughed at herself.
At least
some
things remain the same.

She got into a hot bath, trying to relax as much as she could, but she couldn't come close to unwinding until she had climbed out and, dripping, leaned one of the room's two chairs against the door to the hallway and the other against the connecting door to the adjacent room. They wouldn't stop anyone capable of defeating the locks and bolts, but they'd make noise.

Then she sank back in the tiny tub and let the heat work on her neck and upper back muscles.

The second year of their marriage, Davy had taken a six-week massage course. The thought of his hands on her neck and back brought tears to her eyes. She sank back in the water, to let the tears wash away, but when she came back up, her nose had started to run. She could reach the toilet paper, but it disintegrated and stuck to her wet hands, useless.

She was stretching up for the thin hotel towel when she heard a heavy impact and the sound of splintering wood followed almost immediately by someone swearing and stumbling heavily. She heard the chair kicked violently forward, crashing against the dresser and then—

It wasn't a conscious thing. Her heart gave a tremendous thud and adrenaline surged through her, and she was sitting naked on the living room floor in her condo in Oklahoma with a surprising amount of water soaking the carpet.

Oh. My. God.

She scrambled through the dark room, to
her
bathroom, in a daze, surprised to find the old familiar towels and even Davy's ratty terrycloth bathrobe. She buried her face in it, clutching the robe like a drowning woman grabbing at a life buoy.

Jumping.

The damn thing was a pain but thank God it was there when she really needed it. Not wanted. She hadn't had time to
want.
She'd heard the circumstances of Davy's first jumps, but the sheer emotional force—well, she suspected she understood a bit more, now.

Here, a time zone to the west and slightly farther south than D.C., bright twilight still showed through the blinds, but it was dim in the apartment. She put her hand on the bathroom light and then jerked it away, as if it were hot.

They think I'm in D.C. but it doesn't mean they're not watching the condo for Davy.
And it didn't have to be whoever snatched Davy and attacked her and Sojee. If the NSA were still watching, they might move in thinking her one of the kidnappers or even a returning Davy.

And then they'd know she could jump.

She took a deep breath. She deeply regretted not having her wallet and her cell phone and, most of all, her glasses, but
thank God I was naked. That damn bug didn't suddenly go from D.C. to Stillwater and report its GPS-determined position.