Reflex (3 page)

Davy shook his head. "If you've got something coming up, why not just insert your man? I mean, with two weeks you could probably put Madonna in place without detection."

Brian rolled his eyes. "It's not an insertion. It's an extraction. The subject is on the critical mass geometry team for their tactical nuke and is under constant watch by the Civil Security Forces."

"I thought they'd stopped development. Wasn't that part of the deal?"

Brian shook his head. "Ostensibly, yes. They shut down the factory. Research? That's unclear."

"Is he defecting?"

"His only daughter went south fifteen years ago. He has grandchildren now that he's never seen."

Davy gulped the rest of his cup. "Spell it out, Brian. Is. He. Defecting. Did
he
come to
you guys?"

"His daughter did. Subsequent contacts were made directly with him and he was eager and willing."

"Okay. Just so it's not a snatch."

"It's not." Brian snorted. "Too bad you're so particular. You're awfully good at it."

Davy shook his head. "I may have been good at it. Didn't keep people from dying."

Cox didn't push it, shrugging instead.

"How soon does it have to be?" Davy asked.

"He's scheduled to talk at a conference in the capital on the eighteenth. We thought we'd do it from a hotel room."

Davy rolled his neck and felt muscles relaxing. His shoulders dropped as tension drained from his back. "Okay. Let's do the flight from Tokyo sometime next week. Tell me when to pick up the ticket and the passsssssporrrt." Davy blinked. The word had stretched oddly in his mouth. He felt himself smile, then he began to laugh softly.

Cox's eyes widened. "Davy?" He reached across the table and lifted Davy's chin, then put his thumb on Davy's eyebrow and lifted, pulling the eyelid up so he could see Davy's eye. "Oh, shit! Jump out of here. You've been drugged!"

This was even funnier and Davy started laughing harder. Jump? Why not? He tried to picture the alcove in the Johns Hopkins Emergency Room and it just wouldn't come. He thought about the cliff house in Texas but it just didn't stay in his mind. "I can't." He said.

Cox pulled a phone from inside his jacket and held down one of the keys. He listened for a moment then said, "Avenue H and Nineteenth Northwest. Coffee shop called Interrobang. It's a snatch."

An ambulance pulled up outside, its lights flashing but with no siren. A driver and paramedic jumped from the front doors, then two more uniformed attendants jumped from the back and pulled a gurney out.

Cox began swearing, his eyes swiveling between the door leading back to the kitchen and the ambulance attendants just now entering the restaurant's main entrance in the next room. "Can you walk?"

Davy giggled.
Why would I want to walk?

Cox stood suddenly, picked up his chair, and threw it through the large plate glass window. Davy watched as glass floated through the air like snowflakes in a blizzard. People were screaming someplace, but he couldn't be bothered to turn his head to watch. Cox grabbed Davy's coat front and hauled him bodily to his feet, then stooped suddenly.

Davy found himself hanging over Cox's shoulder, head looking down, then the world was spinning and they were outside, crunching through the field of diamonds on the sidewalk. It was raining again. He could feel his butt getting wet through his jeans, and the diamonds were gone, and Cox's footsteps had mutated from crunching to pounding steps increasing steadily in speed.

Runs pretty fast for an old guy.

All he could see were Cox's legs splashing down the pavement. He could feel a pounding in his ears as blood rushed to his head but it was just another fact, another observation, seemingly unconnected to anything important.

Nothing seemed important.

He saw something hit the sidewalk near Cox's running feet and felt stone chips cut his face. The sound of a gunshot followed, lagging behind, and Davy's orientation changed suddenly, his head swinging wide as Cox abruptly turned a corner and increased his pace, his pounding feet hitting the wet puddles hard enough with his feet to splash water up into Davy's face.

Davy was still giggling softly with odd gasps each time one of Cox's feet hit the pavement. His head was swinging from side to side and he caught glimpses of the street in upside-down fragments, left, right, left.
Oh, it's Nineteenth.
This was the way he'd come earlier.

Cox stumbled and Davy heard the gunshot immediately after. Cox managed three more steps then went down, spilling Davy into a puddle. Davy rolled sideways through the water and fetched up against a storefront security grating facing back toward Cox and the street.

Cox tried to get up and fell again, crying out through clenched teeth. Between the water and the darkness, Davy couldn't tell where Cox was hit, but he clearly couldn't put weight on his right leg.

There were running footsteps, several pairs, getting louder.

"Can you hear me?" Cox said.

Davy managed a slight nod.

"I don't get out of this, tell Cindy she's the best thing that ever happened to me. Her and the boys." He rolled over and raised his head to look back, then reached into his jacket. Several bullets slammed into him and he fell back, his hand flopping out. His cell phone skidded across the pavement.

The waitress from the restaurant walked into view, a boxy automatic pistol held extended. Her perfect hair was mussed, now, rain-wet and coming out of the bun, and her mascara was running in dark broad streaks down her cheeks like she was bleeding from the eyes, but her tie was still tightly knotted and her steps were precise.

Cox groaned, a bubbling rasping sound, and the woman took one quick step forward and put another bullet into Cox's head.

Davy felt something wet splash across his face, but it wasn't rain. It was warm.

Three more men came into view, the ambulance crew. One of them dropped to Davy's side. "Christ, is he hit?"

The waitress with the gun said, "That's not
his
blood."

Blinding light filled Davy's eyes as a vehicle pulled up, turning the men into dark silhouettes. They took him by the arms and hauled him up and pulled him, toes dragging through the puddles, to the back of the ambulance. In the distance, the sound of multiple sirens began to grow louder.

"Let's get a move on!"

As they paused at the back of the ambulance while one of them opened the door, Davy's slumped head saw the slightest movement, across the street at the mouth of an alley. A tiny figure, a child, crouched behind a trash can, staring.
Oh, yeah. That's
their
alley.

Then he was tumbled into the ambulance, facedown on the floor, and it was accelerating. He felt fingers on his wrist, then something stabbed deep into his left buttock—
Hey!
—rousing him
almost
enough to visualize the library in Stanville, Ohio.

Then the ambulance took a turn and kept turning, spinning, like a top, and the lights went completely away.

"I know Joe loves me, but,
Christ,
the things he does sometimes. Last night it was the laundry thing, again."

Millie was working through lunch, trying to make up as many of her missed appointments from the day before as possible. What she really wanted to do was run around in circles screaming but she couldn't see any way that would help.

Sheila McNeil was thirty-five and having problems with her husband after four years of marriage. From everything Millie had heard in the past two months, a large part of the problem was Joe's: a fear of intimacy that drove him cyclically between approach and avoidance. Sheila's attempts to get Joe to come in for some joint sessions had been unsuccessful to-date, so Millie's current strategy was working on Sheila's coping skills and reducing the woman's tendency to obsess on her husband's actions instead of dealing with her own.

Millie made an encouraging "I'm listening" sound in her throat.

"It's just as you said. I was trying to get him to talk about his feelings again, why he didn't want to see somebody, and, pow, instant argument because I left a load in the washing machine for two days and now it was getting mildewed."

Millie nodded. "How did you handle it?"

"I told him I'd take care of the laundry but he was avoiding the real issue."

"And?"

"He stormed out and started doing the laundry."

At least he was still in the house.
In the early years of Millie's marriage, when Davy had stormed out of an argument, he was usually thousands of miles away.

"How did you feel about that?"

"Angry. Hurt. Pissed off. Then it struck me as funny, but I decided that laughing at him wasn't going to improve things."

Millie smiled. "That's an improvement."

"Yeah. Beats feeling guilty, any day."

The intercom buzzed and Millie frowned. "Excuse me, Sheila." She lifted the handset. "Yes, Loraine?"

"I'm very sorry to interrupt, but there are some FBI agents out here who insist on talking with you."

Is it about Davy?
Millie looked at her watch. "Didn't you tell them I'll be done in five minutes?"

"Yes, I did."

"Tell them you told me they're waiting and that I said I'll be out in five minutes."

She did her best to concentrate on Sheila for her remaining time, but it was hard.

"Our usual time, next week, but call first to confirm, all right? My life has become a bit more hectic than usual, right now."

She followed Sheila out into the outer office.

There were four men in suits waiting in the office. The oldest of them was looking at Millie, clearly differentiating her from Sheila.

He knows what I look like.

Sheila, wide-eyed, lingered, putting her coat on slowly.

Millie sighed. "Step into my office, please."

Three of them trooped inside and the fourth one gestured for her to precede him.

Polite? Or keeping me from bolting?

She went to her desk and sat.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Rice," said the man she'd already picked as the lead.

Yep, he knows me.

The man was slightly shorter than his companions. He had a touch of gray at his temples and he didn't quite explode with the over-exercised physique that the others had.

The
Mrs. Rice
would've normally pissed her off but right now it just made her think of Davy. "I'm not so sure it's that good an afternoon, actually. Who are you?"

"Agent Anders. Could you tell us where your husband is?"

She didn't know whether to be relieved or frightened. At least they hadn't said Davy was found dead.
I saw him two nights ago, seconds before he was probably seen in Washington D.C. And how do I explain that?

"May I see some identification, please?" She was stalling for time, but didn't like the way his eyes widened slightly at her request.

"Certainly." He pulled an ID wallet from inside his jacket, exposing a brief glimpse of shoulder holster and gun. He held it out toward her, but pulled it back when she reached for it.

"Agent Anders? I'm nearsighted. How do you expect me to read it?"

He leaned forward again, reluctantly. The ID was not FBI, but National Security Agency.

"Well, at least your name is Anders, Thomas P. And these other gentlemen, Tom?"

Anders nodded reluctantly. "Also NSA."

"Where is Brian Cox?"

He countered with "Where do you think he is? And your husband?" His expression wasn't challenging. It reminded Millie of mirroring, a technique of therapy designed to draw out the patient, answering questions with other questions. Anders's posture was patient and still, like a benevolent praying mantis.

People give themselves away to this man willingly.
In another life he might've made a decent therapist. She tried again, offering a piece for a piece. "My husband is missing. Where's Brian Cox?"

"Missing since when?"

Hmmph. More mirroring.
"Two days, now." She needed to leave it sloppy. She wasn't going to explain Davy's teleportation if they didn't know about it. She needed to leave time for him to get to D.C. by conventional means.
And there is no way in hell I'm going to talk to them about
my
little trip from Texas to here!

Anders stared at the wall behind her for a moment, then nodded sharply as if making a decision. He took a cell phone from his belt. "One moment and I'll answer
your
question." He punched a speed dial combination then, after a moment, spoke. "Anders here. The asset
is
missing. His wife hasn't seen him for two days." He listened again, then said, "All right." He put away the phone.

Millie shuddered.
Asset?
Wasn't that the same as saying, "thing"?

Anders squared his shoulders and said, "Brian Cox is dead. He was found in D.C. on Nineteenth Avenue Northwest. He'd been shot several times, then again in the head at close range."

Millie took a sudden, deep breath through her nose. "Oh, the poor man. Did he have a family?"

Anders winced. "I'm afraid so."

You were avoiding thinking about his family, weren't you?
She shook her head.
And Davy?
"Davy was meeting with him," she said, since they must've known that.

"Yes. Cox told his unit's duty officer. She took your message off the voice mail system early this morning. I'm stationed in Oklahoma City and they dispatched me."

"I haven't seen Davy since he, uh, left for the meeting."

Anders noted the pause. "Gentlemen," he said to the room at large. "Establish an inner perimeter."

Millie blinked.
Inner implies outer. How many men did they bring?

The other agents looked briefly surprised, then trooped out, closing the door behind them.

"May I sit?" asked Anders, indicating one of the chairs she kept against the wall for group sessions.

She nodded.

He moved it in front of her desk and, well,
settled
in it. Sitting wasn't quite accurate—too much of his weight was still on his feet. He took a deep breath and said, "You probably don't recognize me—I think you saw me only twice." He pursed his lips and frowned. "I worked David's case ten years ago and was on the perimeter team when we took you into custody."