Reflex (35 page)

No. Unfortunately.

"The keys made it to Caracas but we're giving the boys the night off. Jet lag. We'll go oh-eight-hundred—that's nine in Caracas. Set your alarm or, if you want, you can leave a wakeup call with
me.
I'd be glad—"

Davy jumped away, back to his room, without letting her finish. He was hoping she'd find it as annoying as any other person who'd been cut off in mid-sentence.
But I doubt it.
Hyacinth would see his reaction as her victory.

Let her.
If Hyacinth thought she was in the driver's seat, she'd be less vigilant.

Maybe I
should
sleep with her. Let her have her way to put her off guard.
He felt his body responding to the thought.
You just want to get laid. Stop rationalizing.
He called up the memory of Brian Cox's blood splashing across his face in the rain and the scars above and below Hyacinth's collarbone. The ache subsided.

A shower is called for.

He started the water running before undressing. The boiler in the basement was huge, but it took some time for the heated water to run through the pipes to the third floor. Once it reached his bath, though, the supply was unlimited. Long showers had saved his sanity. After the messy and shameful episodes when they'd trigger the device, it took a long time under the water to feel clean again.

But another thing he'd noticed: when the bathroom door was open and the shower was running at length, it filled the bath with clouds of steam and coated the mirror in the bathroom with moisture.

It blocked the camera.

Before, he'd used that privacy to cry, to rage, and to masturbate. Now, it was time to use it for something else.

Slowly, to start.
He began with a simple jump of a mere three feet, from one end of the tub to the other. He stood relaxed, his feet spread. There was a shower mat but it didn't extend the entire length of the tub and he didn't want to fall on his ass. He took a towel from the rack and spread it over the uncovered part of the tub. Wet, it clung to the enamel and he felt more confident.

He changed his orientation with each jump, always facing toward the opposite end of the tub. He stepped up the pace, jumping twice a second easily, three times a second. His vision spun. The two shower walls, one with the showerhead and controls and one with a towel rack, blurred together and then the figure appeared, like a ghost in the mist, facing him, there and not there.

"Shit!" He shoved his right hand out and recoiled away. The shower head banged into the back of his head, the water valves stabbed into his butt. The figure in front of him also threw an arm forward, flinching backward, and vanished.

Oh.
Despite the scrape on his posterior, he started laughing.

It's like a Firesign Theatre record: "How can you be in two places at once when you're really nowhere at all?"
He remembered a time right after they'd begun conditioning him when he couldn't face himself in the mirror.
No mirror. Can you face yourself now?

It took him a moment to get it again. He was struggling and his knees were getting weak. Jumping had never tired him before, but this was draining. He was about to give it up again but there he was, blurred, two sets of features overlapping, like the showerhead and the towel rack blurring together. He reached out cautiously with his right hand—both of them—and his fingertips touched, solid, yet with an underlying vibration, a shaking. He dropped his hand and stared at the face.

Not a mirror.
It wasn't what he was used to. He had regular enough features but apparently there was enough asymmetry to render the features familiar yet strange.

Push it.
He changed his destination, trying to hold onto his original post at the showerhead end of the tub, while switching the other terminus to the Aerie.

His ears popped hard and the shower curtain swirled around him at a sudden gust of wind. The difference between the sweltering hot shower and the icy unheated air broke his concentration and he found himself standing completely in the Aerie. The governor kicked in and he was back in the bathtub, on his knees, vomiting up part of his lunch.

It had only been an instant—the device had kicked on in warning mode. The bathtub had already been his intended destination and he counted it a great victory that he hadn't flinched back to the square to vomit in front of
their
eyes.

He cleaned up with the shower still running, the steam still swirling, washing the vomit down the tub drain. He hoped they hadn't heard the retching over the noise of the water. The tub clean, he stood with his head tilted up, his mouth open, letting the water run into and out of his mouth, rinsing the taste, soothing his throat.

When he bent over to turn off the water, the room swam, and he had to steady himself against the wall to keep from falling. He thought it was the heat at first, but realized quickly that he felt drained—exhausted. He did a sketchy job of drying himself and staggered, more than walked, into the bedroom. He stared at the dresser across the room but it seemed unimaginably far. He dragged the covers back on the bed and let himself fall.

He struggled to think.
Did they drug me?
It was nearly dinner time and he'd last eaten five hours before. He felt like he'd been awake for days and, despite an overt effort to keep his eyes open, he plunged into sleep.

Padgett was sleeping, fully encased in the new sleeping bag, stretched out by the dying embers of the fire. She left another six-pack of water and a resealable bag of beef jerky near his head.

She found the night vision goggles at B&H Photo, the same place she'd bought her binoculars.

"That's over three thousand after tax."

"You're paying for sensitivity and resolution," the clerk told her. "This is third-generation technology—much more sensitive to infrared. Wildlife will show up against the cold background like a torch."

The wildlife she was concerned about walked on two legs, but what showed up looked like nothing human.

Beyond the private beach sign, she saw a series of blotches in the scope, spread among the dunes. When she approached one of these from the land side, having jumped past it, she found it was a mostly buried video camera housing hidden in the dune grass, its little seven-inch antennae virtually invisible among the brown grass strands. She put one fingertip on top and found it slightly warmer than the surrounding air.
Enough to show up.
She was profoundly grateful she'd splurged for the best goggles in the store.

Hmph. No wonder Bob the security guard showed up to check me out.

She kept low and studied the surrounding dunes. She didn't see any more dots overlooking her current location but that didn't mean there weren't any more cameras. And they were probably all low-light devices, designed to pick up moving persons, day or night. She pursed her lips.

Tread softly. Take it slowly. Don't scare them off.

She jumped away, first to the Aerie to change clothes and leave the night vision goggles in their case, then back to the restaurant in the Winnetu, the Opus, where she ordered a ridiculously large dinner. She lingered over the meal, giving anybody who might be interested a chance to study her. When she was done she took the leftovers in a large takeout box back to her room.

She delivered them to Padgett followed by a fresh load of firewood. Five minutes later, when Padgett was hunkered down before the rebuilt fire and eating, the new sleeping bag wrapped around him like a shawl, she came back. "I particularly liked the bread with roasted garlic spread," she commented. She knelt down and extended her hands to the warmth, directly opposite him across the flames.

He glanced at her but didn't say anything. He went on to the Seared Langoustine and Foie Gras. At the first whiff of aroma from the Styrofoam box he froze, then looked up at her. "Nice. What restaurant?"

Oh, are we talking now?
She studied him. His attitude had changed slightly. It was more casual and relaxed than just a moment before.
It could be the food.
No, the man had just started. Too early for a change in blood sugar. He looked like some of her clients when the topic on hand had strayed too close to something they didn't want to deal with. He was deliberately casual,
artificially
relaxed.

"That
restaurant," she ventured. "On the south shore of
that
island. Just a mile down the beach from
that
house."

"I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about," Padgett said, but it came too quick and he knew it.

She smiled broadly and Padgett threw up.

It was sudden and convulsive and titanic, seemingly everything in his digestive tract geysering into the fire.

Millie fell backward recoiling from the roiling cloud of steam and the smell. She scrambled back as the convulsions continued.

She stood, and came forward, hesitantly.
Epilepsy?

Padgett was lying on his side now and his head was getting dangerously close to the fire. Rather than walk around him, she jumped to the far side and pulled his shoulders back. The spasms were continuing and, she realized, not limited to emesis. He'd voided his colon as well.

I've got to get him help. He's going to choke to death at this rate.

Unlike Davy, she didn't have a major trauma center jump site memorized. She'd never been anywhere near the one Davy used, the Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore.

But I must've walked past the entrance to the ER at George Washington University Hospital a dozen times while I was putting up those stupid posters.

It took her a second to concentrate, no mean feat as Padgett thrashed at her feet, but she tried it and found herself on the sidewalk of New Hampshire Avenue, fifty yards away from the ambulance driveway where it cut through the building itself. She sprinted forward, up the drive, and went toward the door at the ambulance loading ramp. A hospital security guard stepped forward saying, "Whoa, Ma'am. You've got to go in the other—" But she dodged around him and twisted through the just-opening automatic door into the antiseptic smell of the trauma center. She heard footsteps as the guard hurried after her and a figure in blue scrubs positioned himself in her path, his hands raised.

She stopped, looking around, taking in the smell and feel of the site.

"Lady—you can't come in this door! It's for the trauma patients!"

She turned to face the security guard and gave him a level look that caused him to pause, one hand outstretched, apparently in the act of reaching for her arm.

She held up her finger and said, "Hold that thought, will you?" Then jumped.

Padgett had stopped vomiting but his breaths were coming in wheezes punctuated by short, barking coughs. She grabbed him under his armpits and jumped.

"Whoa—shit!"

In the few seconds she'd been gone, the security guard and the man in scrubs had walked forward to where she'd vanished. The security guard tripped over Padgett's legs and stumbled forward. The nurse or doctor dressed in scrubs fell backwards.

Other figures in scrubs came forward. Millie didn't know if they'd seen her disappear and reappear or any portion thereof but she didn't care. She just started talking.

"Five minutes ago he began vomiting and voided his bowels, accompanied by uncontrolled spasms. He just ate some seafood but he knew what he was eating and didn't mention any allergies. He's had a recent near-hypothermia experience but has been in a sleeping bag in front of a warm fire for the last eight hours. He was lucid and apparently fine right up to the first convulsion." She looked around at the staring faces. "Is anybody getting this?" She looked down at Padgett. "Oh, God—he's stopped breathing!"

That did it. Out came the masks and gloves. One shouted, "Possible code yellow!"

Millie stepped back and the whirlwind descended.

The security guard stayed with her, hovering, but he had put on one of the ear loop procedure masks just like the medical staff, and was pulling on latex gloves.

When she glanced at him, he flinched, so she said, "Let me guess, you'd rather I hung out in the waiting room?" She was feeling odd—disconnected.

The staff had lifted Padgett onto a gurney and one of them straddled Padgett's body on the table as he snaked an endotracheal tube down his throat, even as the others rolled the whole shebang into a room labeled "Resuscitation."

"The admissions clerk needs to get some patient info," the security guard said. It was hard to read his expression through the mask but he was still looking at her as if she had two heads and one of them would bite him. He gestured to a masked woman with a clipboard approaching from the door that led into the waiting room.

Millie made a soundless, "Ah," and turned to the clerk. "Do you want to do this in your office?

"We've got a room over here."

She led Millie off to the side, a room with a chair—more of a booth actually—separated from an adjoining booth by a glass window. The woman took the chair on the other side of the window after shutting Millie's door. She took off her mask and smiled through the glass before she started asking her questions through a two-way speaker.

Millie was patient. "His name is Lewis Padgett. I don't know his address. I don't know his social. I don't know his insurance provider. I don't know if he has any drug allergies or allergies of any other kind—he is not and was not wearing a med-alert bracelet. No, I cannot give you permission to treat—barely know the man, but since he is unconscious, I don't think you guys have to worry about
that."

The woman wore a pained expression on her face. "We really need more information."

"I know a number you can call—I believe that they'll be able to give you all sorts of information about him. They will probably assume responsibility for him, too."

"Financial responsibility?"

"I don't know about that but at the very least they'll have his social security number." With trembling lips she gave the woman Special Agent Becca Martingale's cell number and her name, but not her title and employer.