Reflex (32 page)

She jumped back to the island when he was still ten feet away from the coffee. He flinched and staggered, shifting the crutches to keep from falling.

She bent over and picked up the cup. "Forgot my coffee," she said. She took a sip. "Ahhhhhh. Just right." She smiled brightly and wiggled her fingers. "Toodles!" She jumped away.

The shadow of the pit's rim crept across the water as the sun rose higher. Using the binoculars, Millie could tell that Padgett had stopped shivering some time earlier but he must be quite cold, still. He waited on the tip of the island closest to the shadow's edge seated in the cheap plastic chair, waiting for the warmth of direct sunlight.

"Where are they, Mr. Padgett?"

He was seated with his back to the water's edge where the island narrowed, so she couldn't appear behind him. She stood there, comfortable in a bulky sweater, twenty feet away.

Padgett's mouth tightened but he did not speak.

"Shall I go get the bucket?" she asked in a light conversational tone.

He shook his head, then broke off, as if he hadn't meant to do that much. "Fuck off. I've taken much worse."

"Well, I believe you've certainly
done
worse to others. I'm not going to 'fuck off,' though, until I learn what I need to know."

"I hope they killed the kaffir bitch. You have no idea who or what you're fucking with, little girl."

Millie's eyebrows raised and she said mildly, "And you do?"

She jumped, appearing three feet away, not directly in front of him, but at an angle off to one side. Her swinging right foot caught the chair arm and Padgett toppled back, teetering for a moment at the point of balance, then over, splashing back into the water. By the time he'd thrashed his way back to the shore, dragging his bum knee, he was completely soaked.

Millie was back at her original post, twenty feet away. "That looks
refreshing!"

Padgett swore, snatched up a fist-sized stone, and threw it at her.

She flinched away, back to the Aerie.

Leave him,
she thought, trembling a little.
He's like a tea bag. Let him
steep
a while.

She dabbed at her sweater with the dish towel. When Padgett had hit the pool's surface some of the spray had splashed her arm. It seemed every bit as cold as the water from Nantucket Sound.

What I'm doing is illegal.

She was already guilty of kidnapping. What she'd been doing today in the pit was the sort of thing Amnesty International asked people to write letters about.

Millie shuddered.

Where do I draw the line?

She watched him from the rim. Padgett was shivering violently. Wet again, his only recourse was exercise, for both his clothing and the sleeping bag were soaked. Millie watched him strip naked, then wring as much water out of the clothes and sleeping bag as he could, before he spread them across the low mesquite bushes in the center of the island. Then he circled the perimeter of the island briskly, swinging the crutches savagely forward.

He can't keep that up for long. He doesn't have the calories.

She took no pleasure in watching the naked man. He was attractive enough if you discounted an incipient potbelly and liked balding men, which Millie generally did, but she couldn't forget who he was and what he represented long enough to enjoy even the tiniest bit of titillation. Right now, she just wanted him to be as miserable as she was and the only way she knew to do that was through physical discomfort.

I'm turning into one of them,
she thought.
If I ever get Davy back, he won't want me.

She considered taking Padgett's crutches away.

You
are
in a pissy mood, aren't you?

The plastic chair was still in the water, half submerged two feet from the water's edge. While Padgett was at the far end of the island, she fished it out and shook it. She swiped most of the remaining moisture off with the edge of her hand, then sat facing him. He looked cold, still, but the major involuntary shudders had stopped and he didn't look as blue around the mouth.

He slowed as he rounded the far end of the island, when he caught sight of her, but he still continued his circuit. As he neared her, he cut across the island to avoid her.

"Hot coffee, warm blanket, dry clothes, food. Yours in the blink of an eye."

He ignored her.

She waited until he had passed and was turning away from her before she added, "Ice water is also an option."

He faltered, one crutch tip slipping slightly through the sand, but he continued on his way.

She pictured herself with a bullwhip, laying the lash across Padgett's bare buttocks.
Might as well put on the leather corset and the thigh-high boots while I'm at it.
She jumped away, disgusted with herself, angry with Padgett, and on the edge of tears.

She went back to the cyber café in Manhattan and started an e-mail to Agent Anders. She was going to ask about Lawrence Simons but then remembered Anders's comment about the security of unencrypted e-mail, so she changed it to a simple request for a phone appointment. A half-hour later, just returned from throwing a bucket of Nantucket Sound salt water onto an unexpecting Padgett, she read his reply.

CALL LAST NUMBER AT 1300 PRECISE.

She used a pay phone in the Dupont Circle D.C. Metro station, watching the second hand sweep to the top before pressing the last digit.

Anders answered on the first ring. "Hello," he said neutrally, but when he recognized her voice, he said, "They've pushed me completely aside. I'm ordered back to Oklahoma City and when I protested, they said it was that or suspension. My boss didn't like it either but he said it came from so far up that it gave him vertigo just thinking about it."

She thought about that. "Even though you're the only contact with me they have? It sounds more and more like they know where Davy is or who has him and that they're happy with it!"

"I don't know. Perhaps. I'd like to think whoever did this actually has a good reason for what they're doing."

He's not contradicting me.
"Is this phone still clean?"

"I
think
so. As I told you, it's an anonymous prepaid cell. I'm in the locker room of a neighborhood gym. I've never been here before so they sure didn't bug it on the random chance I might drop by."

"Good. Who is Lawrence Simons?"

There was a perceptible pause before he said, "Pretty common name, isn't it?"

"I'd be glad to narrow it down. Do you want some addresses? Some phone numbers?"

"No!"

"So you know who he is?"

"I know who he
could
be. Give me a minute, okay?"

She put a couple of more quarters in the phone while she waited, to avoid any later interruption.

When he spoke again his voice was tentative. "First of all, don't say that name again, okay? It is a common name but one of the computers at Fort Meade might twig to it and flag this conversation for human review. Understand?"

She licked her lips. "Yes."

"How do you know that name?"

"Divergent paths led me to him. One from the man I call the Monk—remember him? Another from that firm of consultants the Monk seems to work for."

Anders said, "Have you seen the Monk recently or did you remember something you haven't told me?"

"Your turn, I believe. First tell me about Voldemort."

"Who? Ah, got you. He-who-must-not-be-named. Sinister but possibly apropos. We'll call him that."

"Is he in your organization—say, so high up you'd get vertigo thinking about it?"

She heard him take a sudden breath. "Well, he's not in the Agency. He's not in the government at all, but he is, hmmm, well, if the rumors are true, he's a man who whispers in ears. But only stratospheric ears, if you get my meaning."

Way up where the air is thin. Vertigo land.
"Ah. Why do these ears listen?"

"What I know is based on rumors over the years, right? I did see something on paper once but it was pulled and shredded almost as soon as it hit the file drawer. I'm not going into it over the phone but the reasons he is listened to range from money to fear. But there's no doubt he
has
influence and it's been exerted, in the past, in directions not unlike those favored by the BAd boys."

"Ah. The profit-no-matter-what school."

"What makes you think he is concerned in this?"

"Well, your reaction, for one. But I've linked him to the—to that firm. And other... reasons." She didn't want to tell him about the Vineyard. She had high hopes for the Vineyard, but she didn't want the slightest breath of her suspicion to reach the people who had Davy, lest they move or kill him.

She felt a stab of cold panic.
I shouldn't have mentioned his name at all.
She didn't know to what degree the NSA mainframes monitored random phone calls (which this hopefully was) and she didn't want to ask Anders for it was exactly the sort of phrase the computers might be scanning for—a trigger to record the entire message and flag it for a human to listen to it.

Anders asked, "How did you get your clue from the Monk?"

"Is Becca still looking for him or was her organization
also
discouraged?"

"I don't think they've been called down. It's hard to put pressure on that branch when one of their own has been, well, inoculated."

She furrowed her brow for a moment.
Shot.
"I understand. Push that group too hard and we'll all be reading about an attempted cover-up in the papers?"

Anders agreed. "It's happened."

"Well, I have a line on the Monk. Can you give me her cell number?"

He gave it to her. "You better call her right away before you lose him."

Millie thought about the shivering, naked Padgett stumping around the island at the bottom of the pit. "He's not going anywhere."

And he wasn't.

Padgett was curled in a ball, wrapped in the damp, matted sleeping bag. Sand clung to the side of his face where he'd lain on the ground and his eyes were clenched shut. He was still shivering so she knew he was alive.

She didn't talk to him but instead built a fire, bringing in charcoal starter and two armfuls of dry piñon logs. The crackling whoosh of the rising flames got Padgett's attention. By the time he'd dragged himself over to the fire, she'd returned with a twenty-ounce Styrofoam cup of hot chocolate and a brand-new sleeping bag, still sealed in plastic.

She set them down near him and jumped away. She didn't think he had the strength to swing or throw a crutch, but she didn't want to find out. Twenty minutes later, she brought a large container of Thai soup, shrimp with lemongrass, plus a box of pad thai.

She didn't watch him eat. It was hard enough even looking at him.
Hard enough to be both good and bad cop.

She used a computer in the Oklahoma City Public Library to locate the street where Lawrence Simons's home on Martha's Vineyard was. As the waitress had told her, it was on the South Beach, the ocean side, a mile away from the Winnetu Inn and Resort, down toward the wild area around Great Edgartown Pond.

She was pleasantly surprised to find the weather much warmer in Edgartown than on her last visit. The chill north wind had become a gentle southerly breeze and, though it was still below sixty degrees, the sun beat down warmly. The jacket she'd worn over her sweater was superfluous so she put it in the small suitcase she'd brought. She mixed with the small crowd of people who came off the ferry from Falmouth and, when the Winnetu shuttle showed up, she asked the driver if there was room at the inn.

"Some," the man said. "Off season and all that, but there's a radiology symposium starting tomorrow—they've got half the hotel. You don't have a reservation?"

"No," she said. "Got time off at the last minute. Spur of the moment thing. Hopped the ferry on impulse."

"Well, I'm sure they can find you some room."

He put her bag in the back with the others and she got into the half-full van behind assorted radiologists and a young couple on their honeymoon.

At the hotel she wandered the lobby waiting for the guests with reservations to check in first. Twice men asked her if she was attending the conference but she didn't think it was radiology they had on their minds. When the last doctor wandered off behind their bellman she approached the desk and made her inquiry.

"Seven nights? So you're not here for the conference? I'm afraid all the smaller rooms are taken but I can put you in one of the two-bedroom suites." He lowered his voice and added, "I can give it to you for the same rate." He looked around to make sure none of the other guests were in earshot. "Please don't mention it to these doctors, though."

Millie said, "Waiter, there's a fly in my soup! Keep your voice down, sir. If the other customers hear you—"

"—they'll all want one, too," finished the clerk. "Yes, exactly. Which credit card do you want to put this on?"

"I'm weaning myself off of plastic. I'd prefer to pay cash."

"That's over a thousand dollars, Ma'am!"

"Good thing you're giving me the
cheap
rate. How much over a thousand dollars?"

He punched some numbers into the booking computer. "One thousand, fifteen dollars, Ma'am."

Millie laid ten hundred-dollar bills and a twenty on the counter. "There you go."

"Yes, ma'am. If you'd fill out the registration card, please."

She registered as Millicent Jones and used the address of a home in Waltham, Mass. The house was real so the address was valid, but it was empty, for sale. She'd found it on a realtor's website. The phone was in the right exchange, too, but was the listing for the realtor.

She'd taken some pains to memorize both, so she could fill the card out naturally. Paying cash was unusual enough. She didn't want to arouse more suspicion by seeming unsure of her own address and phone number.

"Very good, Miss Jones."

The bellman led her up to her suite, on the third floor, with a patio that looked out over the dunes to the ocean itself. In the larger bedroom she carefully unpacked her clothes, no laundry marks, no unusual labels. She left three paperbacks in the small living room, some toiletries in the bathroom, and mussed the king-sized bed, pulling back the covers on one side and actually lying there for a moment with her head creasing the pillow, then pulling the covers roughly back into place.