Reflex (37 page)

Special Agent Becca Martingale joined Millie shortly after the Rapid Response Team pulled out.

She looked Millie up and down and frowned. "So, changing the image?"

"The hair, you mean?"

Becca nodded. "Yeah, and you got rid of the glasses—contacts?"

Millie nodded. "They're still after me. That's how I got Padgett. They set a trap for me and it didn't quite work."

Now that the FBI had arrived, the security guard was back by the door and watching her warily. Millie wondered if he'd told Becca about Millie's odd arrival. Becca saw Millie glance at the guard and said, "You want coffee? I want coffee."

Millie waited until they were walking down the hall outside ER before asking her first question. "What about Sojee Johnson?"

Becca sighed. "Sojee? Ah, I get it. Still no sign of Ms. Sojourner Truth Johnson. It would be very nice if we got something out of Padgett."

"He wouldn't talk for me. Will you be able to talk to him? Last time I saw him, he wasn't even breathing on his own."

"He was conscious a minute ago—confused. They think he'll be okay. You know about the implant?"

She nodded. "The Chem Warfare guy told me."

"Well, they were getting ready to cut when they kicked me out. They decided not to wait for the neurosurgeon. Instead, the attending is gonna make a small incision and simply cut the leads between the implant capsule and where the electrodes wrap around the vagus nerve. Where did Padgett set this trap you speak of?"

Millie swallowed. "Remember that we didn't tell you what Davy—my husband—did for the NSA?"

"Indeed. Anders said it was burn-before-reading secret, though from some of the context, I got that he was some sort of covert ops insertion specialist."

Millie shrugged. "That'll do to tell."

"What's that have to do with my question?"

Millie inhaled and held her breath while she studied Becca's face, motionless. She felt like a deer, frozen in a car's headlights. Finally, in one explosive exhalation, she said, "Do you remember the last time you saw me?"

Becca tilted her head. "Sure, it was on Fourteenth Street after they tried to snatch you. I ran up the alley when Padgett shot Bobby—uh, agent Marino."

Millie shook her head. "No. You last saw me on the roof of that Medical Building over in Alexandria. The one near Bochstettler and Associates." She felt in her jacket pocket and found the sunglasses she'd been wearing that day. "I don't have the baseball cap with me," she said, putting the shades on, "or the green plastic chair, but surely you remember."

Becca's eyes widened. "That was some trick. I nearly had a heart attack when you went over the edge. Want to tell me how you did that?"

I would love to.
Millie felt like crying, suddenly. "Can't."

Becca stopped dead and looked at Millie with a sour expression on her face. "Did you ever hear the story about the blind men and the elephant?"

Millie nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"How do you people expect me to do my fucking job! You won't tell me anything and then you stop trying and then I get pressure to shelve the entire investigation. Don't you want to find your husband and Ms. Johnson?"

"Are you talking about the NSA when you say 'you people?' " Millie felt her face go tight.

"Yeah."

"Well, I don't work for them, all right? Please don't lump me in with them. I know they've dropped the investigation—or at least they took Anders off of it. I won't go anywhere near them. I went to ground because whoever is behind this has somebody inside the NSA—they nearly got me again that same night, after I holed up in a motel out in Alexandria. The NSA delivered me to that hotel—they were the only possible leak."

Becca's normally calm demeanor was back in place and she began walking again. "You could've been followed."

"Cows could fly."

"So, who
are
you working for."

"Me, myself, and I. I'm looking for my husband, dammit!"

Becca looked skeptical. "Someone trained you, dear. That rooftop stunt was not the work of an amateur. We searched those stupid shrubs for an hour looking for your body."

Millie blinked, then her jaw dropped. "You think I'm an
operative!"

"How else do you explain it?"

"Nerve gas?"

Becca was
not
amused.

"I've a master's degree in Psychological Counseling and I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the state of Oklahoma, which requires lots of ongoing professional development coursework. I also did a two-year stint of supervised counseling before becoming licensed. I took a Community Ed class in African dance last summer and I've read extensively in the novels of John Le Carré.
That
is the extent of my training."

They turned the corner to the cafeteria. A metal grill blocked the entrance. According to the posted hours, it had just closed.

"Shit!" Becca said. "Explain the rooftop thing, then."

Millie licked her lips and told the truth. "I jumped." She saw the sour expression return to Becca's face and said, "Wait." She looked up and down the corridor. It was empty. "Okay. I'm going to show you how I did the rooftop thing." She jumped to the other side of the hallway, about eight feet behind Becca. She watched the agent frantically swivel her head left and right, then up and down. Millie cleared her throat and Becca spun around, one hand diving into her windbreaker, then freezing again as she saw Millie.

Becca's mouth worked for a moment before she managed to say, "Hypnosis?"

Now
that's
an idea.
She sighed. "No. Not hypnosis."
I am
so
tired of lying.
"You still want coffee?"

It was after sunset, but only just, in San Francisco. Millie jumped Becca to the Yerba Buena Garden outside of the Metreon, then caught her as the woman's knees gave way, guiding her to the grass. By the time Millie returned from the Starbucks on the first floor of the Metreon, Becca had mostly recovered, though she wasn't standing yet.

She accepted the coffee without comment.

"Do you recognize where you are?"

Becca pointed at the massive fifty-foot-high waterfall fountain of the Martin Luther King memorial at one end of the grassy plot, then north at Saint Patrick's Church. "I've been here before. Even this Starbucks." She stood, moving gingerly. "How do you do this?"

Millie shrugged. "I don't really know. It suffices that I can."

Becca's eyes narrowed suddenly. "Is this what Davy does for the NSA?"

"Right."

"But not you?"

Millie shook her head. "No."

Becca slapped her hand to her forehead. "Oh, my God. The foiled hijackings—ten years ago! Those airliners and the cruise ship. That was Davy? Or was it you?"

Millie's first instinct was to deny everything but she sighed instead. "Davy. Not me. This... is new to me."

"What
else
can you do?"

"I've given you my other qualifications. Are you in a relationship with problems? Do you have any childhood issues you want to work on? Then I'm your guy."

"Nothing else in a paranormal ability?"

"I can hang a spoon off the end of my nose."

Becca stood and took a pull on her coffee. Her brow was furrowed and she kept her eyes on Millie but didn't say anything for several seconds.

Millie said, "I wanted you to know so that when I started answering your questions, you wouldn't think the answers as crazy as they sounded."

Becca nodded. "So go ahead."

"I caught Padgett at my condo in Stillwater, Oklahoma. I think they suspect I can do this—teleport—because he filled my rooms with some sort of anesthetic vapor. I barely got out but I returned in time to see him check the trap." She neglected to mention how long ago that was. "I was asking him about Davy and he went into convulsions. It was weird—he'd just let something slip and BAM, like a spy taking cyanide or something, only, I swear, the only thing he'd put in his mouth was food I brought him."

"Brought him? Was he your prisoner?"

"He was my
guest,
briefly. Wait a second." She jumped to the Aerie.

As she wandered back to the low table where she'd examined Padgett's belongings, she unexpectedly slipped and dropped to one knee, to keep from falling. There was a puddle on the floor, its edges clearly drying, but a good half inch of water caught in one of the natural depressions in the floor. Her knee was soaked where she'd touched down.

She looked around, surprised. The cistern was thirty feet away and it was certainly too much water to have come from a spilled glass. She looked up, at the ceiling, looking for some sign that the water had oozed in from the ridge above, from a rare desert thunderstorm, perhaps, or a subterranean aquifer, but the stone above was dry and unbroken.

The front door was latched and everything seemed to be as she'd left it, including the collection of Padgett's belongings. She gathered them up and returned to San Francisco.

Becca jerked as she reappeared.

Millie handed her the plastic bag. "You okay? You look a little pale."

"I was just trying to think how the hell I was going to explain this to my boss without getting sent in for psych review. Then I started worrying about what would happen if you left me here three thousand miles from D.C. What's this?"

"It's the stuff Padgett had on him. Wallet, some fake ID, his guns. I handled them." She'd left Padgett's cell phone back in the Aerie. She was going to hold those phone numbers to herself for now.

"What did Padgett let slip? You know, right before he started barfing?"

"A clue. Something that confirmed another lead—like saying 'hot' or 'cold.' Sort of 'getting warm.' I'm not going to tell you, though. I want Davy out of there, first. Besides—now that you have the guy who shot your agent, are you going to go any further? Don't tell me you haven't gotten any pressure. The NSA's doing their best to pretend Davy never existed. Are they telling
you
anything?"

"I had a brutally brief talk with Anders when they reassigned him. The only thing I've gotten out of his replacement is questions."

"Questions?"

"Well, one question, asked several times."

Millie waited.
You know you want to tell me.

"They wanted to know if I'd seen
you."

It was warmer in San Francisco than it had been in D.C., but Millie shivered.

Becca's cell phone went off, surprising both of them.

"National call plan?"

Becca nodded. She punched the button and said, "Martingale." She listened for a moment and her eyes widened. "Jesus! One second." She covered the mouthpiece. "Can you get me back to the ER?"

"Sure."

Martingale talked back into phone. "I'll be right there." She disconnected and looked at Millie. "Padgett's dead."

"Dead? They said he was stable! Didn't cutting the leads on his implant stop the convulsions?"

"They'll never know. When they cut the leads, the implant exploded."

She jumped Becca to the sidewalk outside the ER.

"I've been around here too long," Millie said. "The NSA will be here soon. Maybe Padgett's people. Hell, I'm not convinced that Padgett's people
aren't
the NSA."

Becca paused, looking back, obviously torn. "You've got my number, right? You're the one who gave it to the hospital?"

"Yeah. I got it from Anders, though it would probably get him in trouble if they knew I was still talking to him."

"You are?"

"Sort of. E-mail. On the sly."

"I understand. His last talk with me was like that: a little more frank than his employers would probably like. Call me in an hour?"

Millie nodded and jumped. She went back to the hotel room in the Winnetu and lay in her bed, kicking around until the sheets were well disturbed. For good measure she took a shower and changed clothes. She thought it was a long shot, but after her encounter with the security guard on the beach, they might check her out. They might slip a five to the chambermaid to ask if there was anything odd about her.

So, mess the bed and the bathroom, give them evidence of occupation.
And if they call the room when you're not there, say, in the middle of the night?
Let them think she was shacking up with one of the radiologists. Hell, let them think she was working her way through the entire roster of symposium doctors. Well, they'd have dirty minds, then.

She felt a stirring of desire.
It's been too long. Who really has the dirty mind?
She unplugged the phone and conspicuously coiled it on top of the bedside table.
Let them think I don't like having my sleep disturbed.

The puddle of water in the Aerie was smaller when she checked on it. Again, except for the water, everything seemed untouched. She checked the door and scanned the canyon floor below. Nothing.

Could it have been Davy?

If he could jump as far as the Aerie, why wouldn't he have stayed?

She used a pay phone at D.C.'s Union Station. Becca, barely audible among a background torrent of other voices, asked Millie to hold a moment. When she spoke again, the background sounded different, much quieter.

"Sorry. Couldn't hear anything in there. Got the D.C. Metro bomb squad in and—you predicted it—two guys from the NSA. I've told them I don't know where you got to. It's the truth, after all."

"Thanks. How big an explosion was it?"

"Well, it only killed
him,
though the attending doctor's arm looks like it was hit by a ball-peen hammer. They found the remains of two U.S. Military M6 blasting caps among the fragments of the rest of the implant."

"You autopsied already?"

"No—the trauma team tried to save him, they were pulling the debris out of his chest as they tried to clamp all the leaks. They were gonna try and put him on a heart-lung machine. It was too much, though, even with them right there. He hemorrhaged like a sieve." She sighed. "Guy from the bomb squad recognized the blasting cap fragments—you can still see the leads. Some implant, huh?"

"Why?"

"Well, he'll never testify about his organization now. Myself, I'd prefer a simple nondisclosure agreement."