Instead, Paige merely said, “Good morning.” If it was John on the other end, she didn’t want to appear eager.
“Good morning, Paige. It’s Suzanne.” Her realtor. Wife of a friend of Darby’s. “I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time to call.”
Paige glanced at the clock radio. Ten thirty-five. She’d been up since dawn, sitting on the motel-room balcony, staring at the gulf waters with an unread Vanity Fair in her lap, wondering, always wondering, about Darby, trying to feel more grief, trying not to hate him for the stranger he’d become in death.
“I didn’t expect to be looking at houses until the afternoon,” Paige told Suzanne.
“It’s not about buying a house, Paige. You’ve got an offer on yours. Full price.”
“I accept,” Paige said. She had no enthusiasm for the house deal or for the search for a new house. Both were simply necessities as she struggled to put her life together.
“There’s a hitch,” Suzanne said.
Paige waited.
“The gentleman made it conditional to speaking to you personally by noon today.”
“Impossible.” Paige was doing her best to remain hidden. Since the attack and the purse snatching, she’d switched motels along the gulf shore every second night, checking in under her maiden name.
“He wanted your number.” Suzanne rushed on, anxious to exonerate herself. “I refused, of course, because of your instructions. But I didn’t see the harm of dialing it myself and handing him the phone. After all, the market’s been tight for a while and a full-price offer...”
“He’s standing right beside you?”
“Sitting, actually. In my office. With a copy of the signed offer in his hand.”
Paige felt an echo of the fear she’d been trying to push aside ever since the daylight purse snatching. Who would want to talk to her this badly? And also had the money to trace her like this? It couldn’t be good.
“What does he look like?” Paige asked.
“As much as you could ask for.” Suzanne laughed at her own clever double answer; the guy would assume they were still talking price. “I’d give you more details, Paige, but he is sitting right across from me in my office.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Paige said, impatient at the misunderstanding. “Is he fat?”
“Hardly.” Suzanne’s tone showed she enjoyed keeping her side of the conversation ambiguous to her guest.
“Short? Any pieces missing from his ears?”
“Not at all. I didn’t realize you had a checklist so, um, particular.”
Paige was not in a bantering mood. Fat or short with snipped ears covered the guys who had attacked her.
“I’ll speak to him, then,” she said. “But do not give him my number or where I’m staying.”
“Absolutely. That’s why I did it this way.”
Seconds later, Paige heard an unfamiliar voice.
“Thank you,” the voice said. “My name is Slater Ellis.”
“I’m. afraid I don’t recognize your name.”
“I’d be surprised if you did, Mrs. Stephens. I flew in from Los Angeles this morning to introduce myself to you. We need your help.”
“We?”
“Three lost boys.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Neither do I,” he told her. “That’s why I bought your house to reach you by telephone.”
***
“I started to work the stock market in my late twenties,” Slater told the redheaded woman with the watching eyes. “Whiz kid and all that stuff. Graduated to the high-end bonds and stock options. I was absolutely fearless. Turned out I simply didn’t know enough to be scared. In the bond market that helps – not to understand what it means to risk losing a couple million dollars before you finish your next cup of coffee.”
Slater was aware he was speaking quietly. He tried to decide why he was keeping his voice so soft, even as he spoke. “One by one the guys I started with dropped out. Ulcers. Heart attacks. Booze. Like combat, I guess, but without the weapons. Me, I lost my nerve. Started playing it cautious. Deadly mistake. Like walking a tightrope. Once you start to think about the fall...”
Paige Stephens wasn’t saying anything to help him along in the conversation. She’d insisted on a restaurant overlooking the marina; she had emphasized – before introducing herself – that Suzanne the realtor was waiting in the parking lot, and from the first minute, she had made him carry the bulk of the conversation. So he’d begun by trying to explain why he was able to buy her house when he had no intention of moving into it.
“Anyway,” he said, feeling lame but seeing no way out except to doggedly finish, “when I quit, I had enough to live on if I managed it properly. So I’ve spent the last few years doing just that. Managing it properly.”
Slater stared beyond her at the forest of naked sail masts that filled the view. “And to tell you the truth, the worst part is I’ve basically felt useless during the entire time.”
Why was he telling her as close to the truth as he’d told anyone in years?
He glanced at her and caught the trace of a smile. Then he understood why he’d been speaking so quietly.
This woman made him shy. Merely the trace of her smile bewitched him. What was going on? He wasn’t a kid, wired hot by hormones. He’d learned enough the hard way to understand the big L didn’t happen because you both liked the way the other looked.
Slater didn’t like feeling the way he did – hands like blocks of wood, tongue like a sock, and each word from his mouth just another stupid sound. He’d been like this in his teens, before he’d discovered most of the mysteries about women, the way they moved during an embrace, what they expected to hear, how to make them laugh.
Right now, looking at her, he could probably make a good guess about the designer’s label of her two-piece silk suit, name her perfume, and offer and make good on the offer to take her to Paris and any of a dozen restaurants he knew there from previous trips.
So why was he suddenly scared, a country bumpkin ready to knock over a water glass?
“I probably won’t eat,” she announced. “I’m only here because you mentioned my husband’s name during our telephone conversation. And you needn’t go on about the house. I have no intention of selling it to you under these conditions.”
“There didn’t seem to be any other way to find you,” Slater said. He wasn’t whining, was he? “Nobody at the International World Relief Committee could tell me how to contact you. I got your house address out of the phone book, and I drove by and saw the for sale sign in front with your realtor’s number.”
“I believe I said you needn’t go on about the house.” Although she smiled, he understood.
Slater shut his mouth, hard. Clunked teeth.
This one was cold. All right, he’d play it her way. Lots easier not caring what she thought.
“I’m guessing you have good reason for your privacy,” Slater said as introduction to what he wanted to discuss. “Suzanne told me why you’re selling your house; she told me about the break-in.”
The redhead stiffened. “That’s only part of it,” she said. “And I’d rather not share the rest.”
“But I knew about your husband before I flew out here. In fact, that’s why I wanted to see you.”
“I’m beginning to wonder about your sense of hearing. I said you’d Find me reluctant to speak on the subject.”
Slater waved away a hovering waiter. Not often – maybe once every couple of years – would he lose his temper. Now he was on the verge. He’d done nothing wrong to this woman, nothing to justify her attitude.
“Tell you what, lady,” he said. His voice dropped to a whisper the way it did when he struggled to hold back rage. “You’ll find me reluctant to speak on this subject.”
Slater dropped onto the table a Montblanc fountain pen he’d been holding in his right hand.
He pushed his chair back and stood.
“I’ll tell you
something else. If you want me to speak to you again, ever, you’d better get off your ice throne before I manage to make it to my car.”
He walked away. Before he’d passed two tables, he felt ridiculous for the tantrum he’d thrown. Like a wet-diapered one-year-old. Probably less because of her stubbornness and more because this woman wouldn’t make eyes with him. Stung male pride. But he’d made his stand; no way could he turn around now. With the time he had left in Florida, risky as it might be, he’d have to track down some of Darby’s business acquaintances.
She reached him in the parking lot as he fumbled for the keys to his rented car.
“I’m off my throne, Mr. Ellis,” she said to his back. Her voice trembled. “Please tell me where you found my husband’s pen.”
It gave Slater little satisfaction to have won, however, for when he turned, her eyes brimmed with tears and the hand that held the pen shook.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no right to force you to –”
“Please tell me where you found my husband’s pen. Please. Please just tell me.”
It hurt Slater to watch her bite back the tears.
“Yes,” he said. “I will.”
They shared a bench near the pier. A light wind rattled cables on the aluminum masts of the moored sailboats. Two pelicans nearby stoically shared the top of the same wide, wooden post. Suzanne still waited in her car among the Mercedes and BMWs that overlooked the restaurant and marina.
“I gave it to him when he was promoted to head of his department,” Paige told Slater. “At the time, a Montblanc was double what I could afford.”
IWRC. To Darby. With love, Paige. Tiny, discreet engraved letters down the side of the gold casing of the fountain pen. It hadn’t taken Slater much detective work to trace the pen to Clearwater, Florida.
“If it weren’t for the pen,” Slater said, “I doubt you’d have reason to believe me. As it is, I won’t blame you if you decide against it anyway.’
He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring at a low island in the gulf. “I might have mentioned I retired to New Mexico, in the mountains just outside of Los Alamos. About a week ago, late at night as I drove home, I nearly ran over a boy...”
Slater explained everything. Waking up in his own blood and stripped of his clothing. The thefts around Seven Springs. How he’d set the trap, expecting to catch one boy, not three identical except for differing numbers tattooed on their foreheads. Their strange reactions to television, radio. How he’d discovered what language they spoke and the phone call with Ben Austad. The overnight cross-country drive to Santa Monica.
“You’re right,” she said as he paused for breath. “It does seem bizarre.”
Slater snorted. “That’s only the beginning. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for what I learned in Santa Monica.”
Slater took his eyes off the island and briefly dazed a glance at Paige. She sat stiffly upright on the bench, hands folded in her lap. She turned her head and didn’t flinch as their eyes met. Her eyes had dried, traces of mascara smudged at their edges. Slater looked away first, telling himself not to be stupid about his adolescent surge of attraction.
“It took some time,” he said, his focus back on the island against the horizon. “Ben’s Latin was a little more formal than theirs. And it seemed there were a lot of cultural barriers. With half of his questions, he had to stop to clarify some of his references. 1 mean, how do you explain television or telephone to someone from the cave ages?”
He stole another glance. It seemed he couldn’t get enough of just looking at her. He told himself to blame it on years of being a hermit.
“In short, what these kids described was a laboratory. Paige, it was all they knew. Big rooms, beds in a corner, a gymnasium set to play on. Someone raised them using a language that’s been dead for centuries.”
“How can that be?” Paige asked. “You can’t keep kids hidden forever.”
Slater shrugged. “You should have been there in Santa Monica. Ask them how old they are – they don’t understand the concept of years. Then have them ask you about the fire up there.”
“The Are up there?” Paige’s voice held more life, more animation. Slater liked the sound of it.
“The fire up there,” he repeated. “What would you answer?”
She thought about it. Slater admired her profile, the tiny beads of sweat on her forehead, the tone of her skin.
Her eyes widened with sudden comprehension. “You’re not telling me they’d never been outside!”
“I’m telling you exactly that. Nine, maybe ten years old, and they didn’t know what the sun was. Or moon. Cars? The night I nearly ran him down, the kid had been standing in the middle of the road, trying to figure out what the approaching lights and noise of my truck were. Paige, it’s spooky.”
She said nothing to his last remark. Probably wondering whether to believe him.
He continued. “The spookiest part was when one of the kids showed us your husband’s pen.”
“No.”
“He’d clutched it the entire time he was on the run, naked, in the mountains, then he’d hidden it in his clothes. Finally he trusted us enough to show it.”
“No.”
“This is the strange part, Paige. He told us it came from a man they’d never seen before. A man who showed them how to escape.”
“I cannot believe this,” she said.
Slater wondered. She was a poor liar, if indeed she was lying.
“Near as we can figure, he let them understand the air-duct system could take them outside. We asked if he spoke Latin. They said no.”
She was rigid now. Hands clenched.
“What is it, Paige?”
“Nothing,” she said. Another lie, Slater thought. It had been the mention of the air ducts, if his guess was right.
“Unfortunately, the more answers Ben and I heard,” he said, keeping his thoughts hidden, “the more questions we had. Who was the man, and why would he help them escape? Where was this laboratory? Why were the kids in there?”
The pelicans fell forward into flight and recovered just barely above the water to slowly wing across the harbor.
“Paige,” he said. “I told you a bit about my background in the money markets, how I’ve lived my retirement by managing my own portfolio. I do it through a computer – home base or laptop. I plug into the nearest phone line, monitor my stocks, explore others. The details of the internet are boring, but the essence is that through the telephone, I can go online and tap into virtually any public information out there. That’s why I’m here.”
“IWRC on the pen,” she said.
“Yes. International World Relief Committee. I tapped into the archives of business magazines and pulled up any articles with reference to IWRC. I saw Darby’s name.”
“Unexpected death?” she said. Bitterness or pain, Slater couldn’t tell. “Or did they report it as suicide?”
“The latter,” he told her. “Just a couple of paragraphs, most of it on the search for someone to replace him. You can understand why Ben and I decided to look into this. A pen with his name found in an unusual place and a suicide – I thought maybe you could help.”
“This is difficult for me,” she said.
“Someone has held three boys prisoners for their entire lives. I wish I didn’t have these questions.”
They shared silence for some time. Slater turned his face to the sun and closed his eyes, concentrated on the feeling of warmth.
“Go on,” she finally said.
“So I got to thinking that maybe money is involved. IWRC is public. I pulled up their financial statements. One contributor caught my attention. TechnoGen. It –”
Slater stopped. Paige had flinched again, become rigid once more. He gave her time to say what was on her mind, but she only stared at the same island he’d earlier used as a distraction.
“TechnoGen also trades publicly,” Slater said moments later. “I’ve thought of investing i
n it myself. It’s on the genetics frontier. High-priced stock, but profitable. By then, after listening to the kids, I was ready to clutch at any straw. Here they are, identical, tattoos on their foreheads, raised in a laboratory. I didn’t want to reach the horrible conclusion. Except there’s a pen – small as the link is – somehow connected to TechnoGen. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Again, a long silence.
“The Institute,” Paige finally told him. She sounded extremely detached, “Darby once wrote about something he called the Institute. In a letter I found after he died. And he mentioned TechnoGen.”
She paused. So long that Slater couldn’t help breaking in.
“What else?” he asked. Incredible. He had been playing this like some sort of game, barely able to believe it himself. Now she was confirming enough of it to let him understand the enormity of the situation.
She didn’t answer.
“Come on,” he said. “IWRC is in Florida, TechnoGen in Pennsylvania. I found those kids in the mountains of New Mexico. They didn’t walk a thousand miles barefoot and naked. How about Darby’s travel schedule? Was he ever out to New Mexico?”
Something about her body language had changed. Briefly, she’d been involved in the conversation, almost an ally. Now her hands were pressed tight together, her shoulders square.
“You know something, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, almost a sigh. “There are some things I can tell you.’
She drew a breath, came to a decision. “I’d rather wait until tomorrow. Will I be able to call you then?"
“I’m flying back to Los Angeles tonight.”
“Tomorrow.” She was firm about it. “One way or another, I’ll call you there. I owe you that.”
Slater stood. He knew this conversation had ended.
“Certainly,” he said. He wrote Ben Austad’s name and phone number on Suzanne’s realty business card. “You can reach me here. Will you pick a time?”
“Noon,” she said, taking the card and placing it in her purse without looking at it. “Nine your time.”
“I hope you can help,” he finished. “Those three weren’t the only kids in the lab.”
***
Shaded by scrub oaks along the street, Zwaan waited in a parked rental car behind Del Silverton’s patrol vehicle. If he were a man who enjoyed beauty – which he was not – he would have found the wait pleasant as he watched the county building, which overlooked Ashley Pond, a tranquil, tiny lake surrounded by grass and tall, stately trees. The sky was cloudless blue, the soft air filled with the muted songs of birds and insects.
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