Reflex (41 page)

It took Millie a while to find the chemical and biological protection gear: the gas masks, protective suits, and what she really cared about: the Mark I Nerve Agent Antidote kits. She scavenged four atropine autoinjectors out of four kits and put the empty foam cases and the leftover 2-PAM injectors in the Aerie. She didn't want incomplete kits left in the armory where, God forbid, someone should need it someday. Nor did she want someone to run across the 2-Pam; it was just waiting for the wrong combination of touches to send the spring-driven needle into someone's unsuspecting flesh like some striking snake. The atropine she put in a fanny pack and buckled it around her waist.

Her next stop was the interior of the winterized house on Great Pond Lane. She stayed well back from the windows and used her binoculars on Driftwood Hall.

There were more security cameras than she'd seen the night before.
Why didn't I see them?

She studied their positions, mounted near windows.
Ah. They were lost against hot backgrounds.

One shadowed corner looked good, where a dormer window projected from the slanting shingles of the main roof. She stared at the dark gray squares.
Fiberglass shingles, like the ones Dad put on his roof.
They'd be gritty to the touch and, depending on their age, might smell like asphalt, especially when warm. Despite the slope, she'd have no trouble staying in place. She'd want to creep very slowly, lest someone in the room below should hear her movements.

She took fast food back to the condo and ate there, next to her sign, next to the spot Davy had left his note.

He might come back at any moment.

Her sign looked forlorn and pitiful on the counter. As she chewed her food every rustle of sandwich wrapper, every smack of her lips echoed off the walls and floor tiles, and made her feel completely and utterly alone.

"He might," she said aloud. It sounded even more unlikely spoken aloud.

She wanted to touch base with Becca Martingale. She wanted to buy some pepper spray. She wanted to take a shower at the bath house in Santa Fe. But she found herself unwilling to move, unwilling to leave that spot.

"This is ridiculous!"

She jumped to the twenty-four-hour drugstore in the Virginia suburbs of D.C.—the one next to the Comfort Inn where they'd kicked the door in while she was bathing. She snatched a container of talcum powder off the shelf and rushed it to the counter. The cashier scanned it and said, "Two fifty-three." Millie threw a twenty down and rushed for the door. "Your change!" the clerk called after Millie. Millie yelled, "Keep it!" over her shoulder. She jumped back to the condo as soon as she was through the door.

He
probably
hadn't been there in the seventy seconds she'd been away.

"Probably." Never had a spoken word carried so much doubt.

Holding the talcum at arm's length, she sprinkled it liberally, letting it drift down to evenly coat the tiles before the sign. Then she took several steps back and repeated the process on a smaller patch. She walked across it and turned to study the result.

Her footprints were clearly evident in the talc, like tracks in dust.

What if he jumps into some other part of the condo?

Only a great effort of will kept her from sprinkling talc on every floor in the dwelling, but when she got back to the Aerie, she spread some there, too.

Becca Martingale's number switched directly to voicemail and Millie hung up before the message tone.
She could be on the phone. She could be in a meeting. She could be out of range of the nearest cell.
Twenty minutes later it was the same. On the next try, after five more minutes, Becca answered.

"It's Millie. Any developments?"

There was the barest hesitation and Becca said, "Sorry, Judy, I know I said I'd set up an appointment, but I'll have to do it later. Things are too hectic for a haircut right now."

Millie blinked. "You can't talk right now. How about in an hour?"

Becca responded doubtfully. "I'll want to take more off the sides."

"A half-hour?"

"Probably."

Millie looked at her watch. "I've got seven after. Call you at twenty-three till, uh, ten. Eastern daylight."

"Right. Bye."

She disconnected.

Millie went back to the condo. There weren't any tracks in the talc. She jumped across town to the University area, and found a shop that specialized in alarms, locks, and personal security devices.

"The best thing is pepper foam," the clerk told her. "It lets you know if you're hitting your target, it clings, and there's less chance of getting blow-back or hitting innocent bystanders."

He showed her a small one-ounce keychain model in the case, but sitting next to it was a larger four-ounce model. "I want
that
one."

"Oh... kay. That's the pro model, for cops and mailmen. It's a bit big for the pocket."

"I have large pockets."

"You're the customer."

She bought two.

Becca answered on the second ring.

"I was in a meeting with my boss and
his
boss. It seems that, now that we've got Padgett, the man who shot one of our own, we get to drop the investigation."

Millie's upper lip wrinkled. "Indeed. With two kidnappings ongoing?"

"What kidnappings? Mere innuendo. Ms. Johnson probably went back to the streets as is her wont and as to Davy, the NSA is saying they were mistaken. He is abroad, on assignment."

"Just like that? You drop it?"

"No. We don't. Not if you still maintain that your husband was kidnapped. We still have the witnesses from the restaurant and a dead NSA agent."

"And the two kids who saw the killing."

"What! What kids?"

"The ones who identified the angel on the ambulance. They saw Davy put in the ambulance."

Becca was silent for a beat. "The NSA didn't tell us there were witnesses to the actual murder. They just gave us the angel."

"Ah." Millie told her quickly about her interview with the Ruiz family and the subsequent analysis of the conversation by Dr. Henri Gautreau.

"So, the waitress, huh? It's
so
nice when we're kept in the loop."

"They told me they'd tell you what you needed to know."

"Oh, yeah. I've heard that before. Shit. So, yeah, we have lots of reasons to keep the investigation open. My boss sent a message back up the chain—he's about to retire and he has family money even if they yank his pension—he's threatened to go straight to the press if they pull the plug."

Millie felt her eyes water. "Good for him."

"Yeah—not bad for a
male.
As to developments, you tell me."

"What do you mean?"

"Everything we have is negative. Bochstettler and Associates claims Padgett was fired months ago and has produced paperwork to that end. We followed the money on the credit card you gave us and it comes from an account in the fake name started three months ago with cash. The IDs are forgeries, but good ones made with stolen official stock in the case of the license. His apartment in D.C. was furnished, but it was about as lived in as a hotel room. The ambulances haven't led to anything specific. The thugs under Padgett don't know anything though they fingered Padgett as their control and paymaster. They're willing to talk about stuff they've done for him but it's old and, except for that day of following you around, irrelevant." She took a deep breath. "But you, my dear, said you had something, but you didn't want anybody flushing the prey."

"Flushing the prey? Did you actually say that? I can't believe you actually said that. I never said that."

"So sue me. It's what you meant."

"I don't care if they run. I just don't want them to take Davy with them... or worse."

"It's not the usual kidnap situation. They can't use him if he's dead."

"They can't do anything to him if I get him back before they know I'm onto them."

"Are you that close?"

Millie bit her lip. "No comment."

"What if they kill you? Or capture you? I know what you can do, but the same was true of David, right? And they caught him. Shouldn't you have some form of backup?"

"This is your cell phone, right?"

"Yes."

"Jesus! I'm
such
an idiot. You want to talk to me, meet me where I last dropped you off."

"At the—"

"Don't
say it. How long?"

"Forty-five minutes."

"You'll be followed, but it won't matter." Millie hung the pay phone up and jumped away.

Still no footprints in the talc.

She found a waiting room on the second floor of George Washington University Hospital that overlooked the sidewalk on New Hampshire Avenue, where she'd left Becca the night Padgett died. The sun was bright and unobscured and the windows were mirrored so she was effectively invisible inside.

Becca was dropped by a car with government plates that then drove on. Millie grabbed her without warning, jumping directly behind, lifting, and jumping. It was so fast that Becca's gasp came only after Millie released her in the Aerie.

"You might warn a girl!" Becca looked around, adjusting to the dimmer light. She reached up to touch the rough stone ceiling then looked at the crude stone masonry wall and the windows. "Where are we?"

"This is our place, Davy's and mine. Our private place. It's a bit of a mess right now."

"But
where
is it?"

"Well, it's in the northern hemisphere but I'm afraid that's as far as I'm willing to go." She put a piece of piñon on the coals in the stove, leaving the door open. "You want some tea?"

Becca blinked. "Why not. Why is there talc on the floor there?"

Millie looked. The talc was trackless. "I told you, the place is a mess." She walked around the talc to put the kettle on the propane burner and handed Becca Davy's note.

Becca dropped into the big chair in the reading nook and took out a pair of reading glasses. She held them up, still folded, to look at the note through them, then jerked her head up, eyes large. "He's
been
here?"

"To our condo, in Stillwater, but here, too, I think. There was a water puddle here where none should be."

"A device implanted? Like Padgett!"

"Yes. Like the one that
killed
Padgett."

Becca put the glasses on properly and reread the note. She looked up blankly, her mind clearly racing. She gestured at Millie's sign on the counter. "What big house on Martha's Vineyard?"

Millie tilted her head to one side. "What will you do if I tell you?"

"Is it where he is?"

"Don't know. But I followed a lead from Bochstettler and I checked it out. It's guarded like a fortress and it's the Northeast—the ambulances, right? And you said something about Hyacinth Pope traveling to Logan. She might've connected to the Vineyard."

"Whose house is it?"

"Again, what are you going to do?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Not 'flush the prey.' "

"I can't believe you said that."

"Sue me. I'm willing to tell you, in the interests of backup, but I don't want you to go in until I've got Davy."

"And how are you going to deal with the implant?"

Millie bit her lip and decided not to mention stealing the atropine. Behind her the kettle started whistling. She said, "I've got to
find
him first. But I'm working on it."

"So you have no
evidence
that Davy's in this house, right?"

"It's very tenuous. You couldn't get a warrant, even if it was just some ordinary guy and from what I understand, he's not at all ordinary."

"Okay. I'll leave it alone unless you don't come back."

"It could mean his life, Becca."

"Oddly enough, I know that. What I'm concerned about is
you.
You don't exactly have the training for this. Don't you think you could be endangering him or yourself?"

Millie jumped the intervening ten feet, to appear inches away from Becca's face, like she did the night she'd scared Padgett off the balcony, only she didn't yell. Still, it was a good thing Becca wasn't on a balcony. The chair would've fallen over if it hadn't been next to the wall. Millie jumped back to the kettle.

"You've got to admit I have certain advantages."

"I nearly peed myself!"

Millie took the cups down. "You promise?"

"Swear on a Bible. I won't move unless you go missing. But I won't know if you're missing unless you check in with me before you go in."

"Deal." Millie took a deep breath, let it out, then said in a rush, "The house is called Driftwood Manor and it's on Great Pond Lane on the south shore near Edgartown." She felt a weight come off of her shoulders.
Burden shared, burden eased.

Becca pulled out a notebook and was writing the address down. "And it belongs to?"

"Lawrence Simons."

Becca's pen froze. "Oh, fuck."

Millie finally took the whistling kettle off the burner. "Well, at least you've heard of him."

The talc was undisturbed in both places when she returned from dropping Becca near Interrobang. Her overwhelming desire was to stay by the patch and wait.
Sitting on my ass.
Instead she located a Laundromat several blocks from the condo in Stillwater and took all her dirty clothes there.

If she kept jumping back to the Aerie and the condo to check the talc, at least she wasn't frozen there, immobile. She was proud of herself, of her resolve and fortitude, but when all the clothes were dry, she jumped them back to the condo before folding them.

You aren't fooling anybody.

She jumped onto the roof at twilight while she could still just barely see it through the binoculars. She was wearing her ninja outfit and she flattened herself against the tiles to blend in. Almost immediately the floodlights came on, below, as if in reaction to her presence, but she discounted that. It must be dark enough at ground level to trip the photocell that controlled the lights. In the resulting shadow she felt invisible.

Then why is my heart pounding so?

The air was cool but the roof was warm to the touch, residual heat from the sun, or, more likely, the house's furnace. She lay there, a shadow within a shadow, as the sky darkened in shades of gray-blue. She turned her head and pressed an ear against the shingles, closing her eyes. There was a humming, probably from the central heater blower in the attic. She didn't hear any voices but at one point she heard something that might be a distant door shutting. She didn't know whether it was on her floor or lower.