by David Hosp
“Is that it?”
“No,” she replied. “After I called you from the gas station, I was waiting for you inside, but the guy at the counter was giving me the creeps, so I went outside and waited for you around back. After a little while—about twenty minutes before you got there—I saw the guy who attacked me go in and make a call. Then he came out and drove away.”
Jack sat back in his chair, trying to absorb everything she’d told him. None of it made sense.
“What do you think?” she asked nervously.
“I think you need some antiseptic for those scratches,” he said after a moment. “I also think I need to digest all of this for a little while. There’s a convenience store at the gas station across the road; I’m going to go get something you can put on your cuts. When I get back, we can talk through this all again and try to come up with a plan.” She looked crestfallen. “Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly, “we’re going to get to the bottom of all of this.”
“I’m not sure I want to be alone,” Sydney admitted.
“I won’t be gone for more than five or ten minutes,” he assured her. “The door to this room will be in my sight the entire time, and I’ll make sure no one comes near the place.”
She seemed comforted by the thought. “Okay,” she said. “I need to call my mother, anyway. I was supposed to be back in time for dinner.” She looked at her watch. “I don’t want her to worry.” As she continued staring at her wrist, she noticed the grime with which she was covered and seemed to realize how she must appear. She gave Cassian an embarrassed smile. “I think I have to take a shower, too.” A final tear traced a line through the dirt and grime on her cheek. “It’s been a really crappy day.”
Jack leaned forward and took her hands in his. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, “but I promise I’m not going to let it drop until I do.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
LYDIA CHAPIN SAT on the divan in the opulent living room of her palatial house in the nation’s capital staring off into space. Water beaded on the side of the glass of chilled vodka that had remained untouched on the coffee table since she’d placed it carefully on the coaster in front of her nearly a half hour earlier. The house was silent and she absentmindedly fingered the pearls on the long strand that hung from her neck. Her eyes were glassy as she ran through the milestones of her life in her mind, scrutinizing them for the misstep that had led her here—to this moment of loneliness, fear, and despair.
The sharp cry of the telephone, electronic and cruel, shattered the silence, and she rose with efficiency and crossed the room to the receiver that hung from the wall near the bar. “Hello?” she said with strength and assuredness she didn’t actually feel.
“Hello, Mother, it’s Sydney.”
“Good God, Sydney, do you know what time it is? I’ve been worried sick about you! Where are you? You were sup
posed to be home for dinner. It’s as though you don’t even care about Amanda. She was distraught, in case you care. I had to give her a sedative and tell her it was aspirin to even get her to sleep. I suppose I really shouldn’t be surprised, though. After all, you’ve always—” The words came firing out of her like water out of a fire hose, pounding relentlessly until Sydney cut her off.
“Mother, please listen! I was attacked!” It sounded as though she’d shouted the words more in self-defense than in explanation.
“Attacked? What are you talking about? Don’t be silly.” Lydia tried to sound calm, but her pulse was racing.
“Mother, listen to me! I was attacked. I’m in Virginia now, and I’m not going to be home until tomorrow.”
Lydia was silent, and it took her a moment to realize she wasn’t breathing. She forced her lungs to expand. “Are you all right?” she asked finally. “Are you hurt? And what are you doing in Virginia?”
“I’m okay,” Sydney replied. “I’ll be fine. Detective Cassian is here now, so I’m safe. I don’t have time to explain this all, but I wanted you to know I’m okay, and I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Nonsense,” Lydia said, regaining her composure. “I’ll send someone to get you. Where in Virginia are you?”
Sydney hesitated. “I’m about two hundred miles southwest of D.C.”
Lydia carefully considered what to say next. “Tell me where.”
Sydney sighed heavily back into the phone. “I can’t tell you, I’m not even sure myself. I have to go.”
“I don’t even know what to say, Sydney,” Lydia responded in a voice tinged with anger.
“Then don’t say anything, please.”
“What are you doing so far away? Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Lydia demanded, the desperation in her voice growing more evident.
“I mean I don’t know!” There was silence as they both tried to figure out what to say. “Like I said, I don’t have time to try to explain this all. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have a better idea of what’s going on. Please tell Amanda I love her, and I’m sorry I missed dinner.”
The line went dead and the silence engulfed Lydia again. She stood at the bar, cradling the receiver to her ear, reluctant to let it go. “Sydney?” She spoke quietly into the receiver, knowing already that the connection had been broken. A moment later there came a chime, and the dial tone returned. Lydia looked at the phone as if confused, holding it up and examining it before replacing it on its cradle on the wall.
How has it come to this? she wondered again. Then she returned to the divan and sat down, her legs crossed at the ankles, her back rigid as she reached for the drink on the table.
z
Sydney stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom examining her face. The shower had helped her appearance significantly, though there were still angry lines in the flesh covering her forehead and chin. The bruises on her throat, she suspected, would take weeks to fade.
She stepped back to examine the rest of her body. She was standing naked on the worn terrycloth bath mat, her hair still wet and hanging in clumps at her shoulders. She had several pronounced scratches on her forearms and hands, and there was a bruise and a cut on her shin where she’d collided with a low-hanging branch in the woods.
She reached over to the pile of clothes she had, slipping on her panties and bra. Then she picked up her pants and shirt. The pants were okay. They had a few mud stains on them, but a brief soaking in the sink and they’d be wearable again. The shirt, however, was a total loss. It was stained through with dirt and sweat, and had several lengthy tears that would be difficult to hide in the sunlight. She looked around for a robe to put on, but quickly realized that this was not the sort of place that would offer such amenities. She frowned as she considered putting on the same clothes once again without even giving them a rinse. Just then there was a knock at the bathroom door.
“Jack?” she called out hesitantly.
“Yeah, it’s me,” came Jack’s voice. “I thought you might want these,” he said. The door opened a crack, and Jack’s arm reached into the bathroom. Clutched in his hand was what looked like a bundle of fabric.
Sydney took the material out of his hand and looked at it. There were two T-shirts that proudly proclaimed I . Jack Daniel’s, and a pair of nondescript sweatpants.
“The fashion section at the convenience mart was a little lacking,” Jack called out, “but I did my best.”
She smiled as she pulled on the sweatpants and one of the T-shirts. “No, I appreciate it,” she said through the door. “I was just trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to wear. These will be fine, at least for the moment.”
“I also got you these,” he said, his arm reaching into the bathroom again, holding out a small spray can of antiseptic, a toothbrush, and a small tube of toothpaste. “I thought they might make you a little more comfortable.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be out in a minute.” She finished cleaning up and the
n looked at herself in the mirror quickly again before walking back out. The scratches were still evident, but the antiseptic seemed to have helped. And though her hair was still wet and matted, at least the dirt was gone from her face.
When she emerged from the bathroom, Jack was on the phone. The wallet she’d taken off her attacker was open on the bed in front of him. “Thanks, Deter,” he was saying. “Yeah, the faster we can find out the better.” He hung up.
“Who was that?”
“One of the forensics guys at the office,” Jack replied. “I gave him a detailed description of the FBI identification card and asked him to run a search to see if the name John Marine checks out.”
“You think it may be a fake?”
“It’s possible. Looking through this wallet, there are a few identification cards with different names on them. If it is a fake, the quality is spectacular. On the other hand, usually ID cards like this are kept with the badge, not separately. There’s enough that’s odd here to check it out.”
“Maybe he had his badge in a different pocket,” Sydney speculated. “I didn’t go through his pants very thoroughly.”
Jack shrugged. “We’ll know shortly. I’ve also got them running down any calls from the pay phone at the gas station. There are lots of ways to route calls to defeat a trace, so it’s probably a dead end, but it’s worth a try.” He pulled a chair over near the bed and motioned for Sydney to sit. Then he perched on the corner of the mattress so they were facing each other. “I want you to tell me again everything you remember about today.”
Sydney took a deep breath and told him the story again from the beginning, covering every detail she could recall. It took more than an hour, and he interrupted her often, asking follow-up questions, and forcing her to flesh out every possible detail. When she was done, he was left shaking his head, much as he’d been after the first time she’d told him the story. He frowned as he thought about the man who’d attacked her.
“And once the attack began, this guy didn’t say anything to you? He didn’t ask for anything, or make any threats, or anything like that?”
“No, nothing like that.”
Just then the phone rang. He went over to the dresser and picked it up. “Cassian here,” he said. He listened as the voice on the other end came over the line. Sydney could hear the voice, but couldn’t make out any of the words. After a moment, Cassian said, “Okay, Deter, thanks for your help.” He hung up the phone and looked at Sydney.
“What is it?” she asked.
“My guy at the office came through. He ran a check on the ID. There’s no one named John Marine at the FBI. Also, the identification number’s a fake.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that the man who attacked you isn’t working for the feds. He probably has the IDs so he can intimidate people. Some private detectives use ploys like that to make getting answers easier. There was a PI’s license in the wallet as well, with the name Lee Salvage on it. Mean anything to you?”
“No, should it?”
“I don’t know. According to my guy, that’s a name that checks out as real, so we’ll have him run down back in D.C. If this was him, though, my guess is he won’t be at his home or office anytime soon.”
Sydney looked at Cassian, her eyes wide and searching. “So what do we do now?” she asked.
“The first thing we do,” he replied, “is go back to the Institute and do some poking around.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
THE RIDE FROM THE MOTEL to the Institute the next morning took a little over a half hour. With Sydney on the back of Jack’s motorcycle, clinging to his midsection as the machine raced along the highway, conversation was nearly impossible. That was fine with Jack for the moment; after the awkwardness in the motel room that morning, he was afraid of what he might say—and terrified of how she might react. Silence between them was welcomed for the moment.
It wasn’t his fault, he told himself. They’d spent another hour the night before going over everything Sydney had seen at the Institute, and everything that had been said in her conversations there, until both of them were exhausted and she was emotionally spent. Then he’d taken the bedspread and laid it on the floor, stealing one of the pillows off the bed and settling in for sleep on the stained carpeting, allowing Sydney sole occupancy of the queen-size mattress. He was just starting to nod off when she’d spoken to him.
“Jack?”
He fought off slumber as he opened his eyes. “Yes?”
He could sense her struggling with her emotions. “I know this is going to sound pathetic, but I’m freaking out a little.”
“It doesn’t sound pathetic at all. After the day you’ve had— the week you’ve had, in fact—most people would have completely broken down by now.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, but I’m pretty close to losing it at this point.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
She didn’t answer immediately, and Jack could hear her breathing. Finally she spoke again. “Would you mind sleeping on the bed with me?”
“You sure?”
“I am. Don’t worry, I’m not going to take advantage of you or anything,” she joked nervously. “I’ll just feel better if I know there’s someone here with me.”
Cassian got up off the floor with his pillow and walked over to the bed. He pulled up a corner of the sheet and slipped under it, making sure to keep his body as close to the edge of the mattress—and as far away from any temptation he might have with her—as possible. He wedged his pillow behind his head and kept his eyes focused on the ceiling.
“Thank you,” she said, her body turning away from him and her face toward the wall.
“No problem,” he replied, the muscles of his throat tense with the warring impulses of his body.
He lay there for several minutes, listening to his heart pounding in his ears, afraid to move at all, lest the momentum of rolling over should break his will and carry him toward her. And then, as he lay there wondering whether his mind would ever clear sufficiently for him to function, it happened: she rolled onto her stomach and her leg slipped across the invisible boundary between them, her foot brushing against his calf with neither fear nor apology.
At first he thought she was asleep, and that she was unaware of the contact—that it was inadvertent and unfelt. But as he listened to her breathing, he sensed a change. What had been shallow gulps broadened into deep, relaxed waves rolling one into another with a rhythm that was at once natural and full. And as he felt her body collapse into comfort with the connection she’d made to him, he noticed his own body releasing the tension that had been building since he’d first received her call earlier that evening. One by one the muscles in his arms and legs unwound and the weight of his body settled into the mattress, his leg pushing ever so slightly into her ankle.
Finally his neck relaxed and his head fell fully into the pillow, lolling to the side toward the center of the bed. He looked at the silhouette of her back, only inches away, smooth in its definition as it rose and fell with her breathing underneath the thin cotton T-shirt. Then he closed his eyes and they both fell asleep.
When he woke in the morning, it took a moment to orient himself. He was no longer on his back, but had turned in his sleep onto his side toward the center of the bed. One arm was tucked under his pillow, and the other one, he noticed with some surprise, was draped over Sydney’s torso, her own body folded neatly into his in unison with his shape. He had no recollection of the incremental shifts that had brought them together, and he wondered how she would react—whether she would think he’d taken advantage of the situation somehow. He lay still for a moment, enjoying the feeling of their bodies breathing together even as he wondered how to extricate himself, until he realized from her breathing pattern that Sydney was awake as well.
Neither of them moved for several moments, until Jack rolled toward his side of the bed, swinging his legs to the floor and heading to
ward the bathroom. He did it in one fluid motion to avoid any uncomfortable morning greeting, and by the time he’d reemerged, freshly showered, both of them seemed willing to behave as though nothing had happened.
Nothing had happened, Jack reminded himself as his motorcycle glided up the long driveway to the Institute’s main building. It wasn’t as though they’d shared a passionate night of lovemaking, after all. And yet, somehow, the connection they’d made seemed more intimate than sex, and it unnerved him.
He parked the bike and headed up the front steps with Sydney in tow. Rounding the corner into the main foyer, she pointed him around toward the hallway that led to Dr. Mayer’s office. One of the orderlies behind the main desk rose to stop them. “Excuse me, ma’am, sir, you can’t go back there!” He was hurrying around the desk as he spoke.
Jack pulled out his badge and flashed it at the man. “Yes we can,” he said. “This is police business, and unless you want to personally get hit with an obstruction charge, you’ll sit right back down.”
The orderly hesitated, looming over the desk in indecision. “Don’t you need a warrant or something?” he asked.
“Don’t sweat it,” Cassian replied, already guiding Sydney down the hallway. “We’re just going to talk to the man in charge.”
At the end of the hallway, they turned left into the small waiting room outside Dr. Mayer’s office where his secretary had her desk. The room was empty, and the two of them walked through it toward the door on the far wall that led to Mayer’s office. The door was open, and Cassian could see a prim little man in his early fifties sitting behind the desk. There was an older woman sitting in the chair in the center of the room, across from him.
