Luckily there was a lock. She used it. A search for a blade produced nada. Breathing sounds amplified in the tiled room. Why are library restrooms so loud?
“There is nothing here, I cannot cut,” staring at her dark reflection in the mirror. The pristine walls contrasted violently with her dark hair and black jeans, and she realized what a mess she had become. Her face was dirty—DIRTY! The bruise on her forehead was purple circled in yellow. Why wasn’t it healing?
Moistened paper towels cleaned her up, but her breathing had yet to stabilize. Vision blurred, thoughts evaporated, replaced by the need to cut. She simply had to self-injure.
Linnux and Gramps are both dead and you didn’t go to their funerals.
Then, in overtones of a nightmare, a suggestion: the mirror. In the absence of a blade, glass will suffice. Her fist balled of its own accord. Arm drew back without thought. Heart raced. She knew then that she wanted this. Arm followed fist into the mirror, but, with nowhere to go they slammed into the wall.
The pain came quick, almost as quickly as the deafening sound of tinkling glass cascading onto porcelain. She waited a few tense moments with eyes closed, hoping there were cuts so she would not be forced to do this, her resolve wavering.
The cold sense of blood dripping languorous off of the hand stretched her lips into a smile of pure pleasure. The silence returned, the cold departed, blood dribbled and breathing relaxed. She looked down at the small but swiftly growing puddle of crimson relief.
Suddenly she experienced an intense shift in her perception; it was as if she was looking down at herself, a haggard young woman, bleeding and confused on a bathroom floor. It was a jarring, psychically violent and unnatural episode. She could see the pathetic helpless nature of her situation.
Something clanged outside her consciousness. The echo of it hung thick in the air, jolting her back into herself.
Then, without warning, two quick ear-splitting pops. Gunshots?
A knock on the door before it flew open. Lewis stepped inside. “There you are, Je—”
“What’s happening?” she tried to hide the blood. Failed.
“They found us,” he grabbed her right hand, the clean one, and yanked her out of the bathroom. “The TAC tracked us here.”
“How?”
“I don’t frigging know,” Lewis growled. “But I told you we shouldn’t have stopped.”
As he dragged her behind a bookshelf, Lewis ordered her to shut up. She crouched behind him while he moved for a window. Fleeing for their lives, Lexi realized she was calm. Self-injuring had proved to be soothing, and as always, there was no shame or guilt associated with it—self-injuring had become the one constant in her life.
Lewis led her through a sliding window down onto a side roof slick with yesterday’s rain. A wild cacophony of shouts erupted from somewhere in the library, swiftly quieted by the steady baritone of someone giving orders. Lewis leaped down to the ground ten feet below, displaying an unexpected level of athleticism. He caught Lexi with a combination of dexterous flesh and steel appendages. He noticed the blood. “You’ve been shot?” But after checking her hand a look of confusion breached his features.
Hearing something she did not, Lewis looked up. He led her from the sidewalk into the lot.
She was giddy. Why would anyone waste money on drugs when they could cut for free?
Keeping pace with the former FBI guy as he ran through the streets of Pittsburgh was no problem. In fact, Lexi wondered how he was managing to keep up with her, what with that bullet hole in his leg. The truck—the glorious yellow Dakota that had become their refuge, their home and means of escape—was parked down Ellicott at the end of the world.
Lewis shoved Lexi into the passenger seat, ran around the front end and hopped in. It started on the first try, but the sound frightened a nearby murder of crows. He cursed the birds as they flew up, the crows’ chaotic and sudden flight announcing their location to every Tom Dick and Harry for miles around. “Are they following us?” Lewis asked, barging onto Main.
“No, I don’t think so,” Lexi said, glancing back. “But won’t they shut off the traffic signals or use a helicopter to chase us?”
Despite their situation, Lewis chortled. “There were only three of them back there, and they looked green. Besides, the Bureau doesn’t exactly like to advertise its presence.” He relaxed. “I hope you found something worth the life of an agent.”
“I believe I did.”
Chapter 23
“What are you working on?” Lewis asked somewhere in western Ohio. Tenacious rain had grabbed hold of them in Meyersville hours ago and was still pelting them.
“My book,” Lexi sniped. “I need some normal in my life. I stink, my hair is knotted and greasy and I haven’t changed clothes in three days.” She was aware that he knew all this; she had made sure of it through the use of little noises and expressions for the span of twenty miles. She saved her work on the chapter titled Drug Therapy: The End of All Pains, and returned to the search for the Tower.
So far she had traced Dorl—or his family—all the way back to his role as a partner in the design of the USS Merrimac, and to his guise as a mysterious benefactor and unsung friend of Napoleon. These were stretches, she knew, leaps into the creases of time which she had no doubt some SCIA pattern recognizing analyst had already stumbled on and tossed aside as fantastically circumstantial. But even so, she began to feel that this man could be traced back much further, like Gramps had written on the back of that photo.
Dates and events passed before her eyes, even in sleep as she tried to find a pattern, a way to connect all the coincidences into one cohesive theory.
By Youngstown the lights of the big cities were distant memories, made darker by the mind-numbing rhythm of endless roads. A few miles outside of Akron Lewis agreed to stop at a small motel. The motel sign was missing a few lights, giving it the inadvertent name of Night Owl Mote.
The man under the fedora insisted on staying in the same room as Lexi, stating, “If we separate it will only point us out to the locals as a slight oddity. We can’t afford to be noticed.”
Lexi tried and failed to remember when she had last bathed. “I don’t care. I am not sharing a scumbag motel room with you. I’ll scream. How would that do for calling attention?”
Predictably, Lewis relented. He mumbled something unintelligible as he handed Lexi a wad of cash. “Fine, you go first, I’ll wait ten minutes, then go in and get my room.”
After paying for and finding her room on the second story of the chipped yellow Night Owl Mote, she locked the cardboard door behind. The musty stench of wet wood struck first, followed in quick succession by the aroma of clogged drains and vintage blankets. This was the final affront, the end-all know-all slap in the face that she was now and forever a member of the seedy underground world of fugitives, scumbags, and criminals.
She sat on the edge of the full-size bed, the dull orange blobs in the eggshell blanket resembling puddles of fresh vomit. Without thinking she flicked on the faux-wood TV to the news. A man with a hair cut suggesting he had failed to notice the death of the Eighties was discussing a stabbing episode that had happened only a few blocks from the Night Owl Mote. After that he livened to discuss the exciting developments in the Wormwood meteoroid.
‘According to NASA,’ Mister Eighties said, ‘Wormwood will pass close enough to discern its various colors by the naked eye.’ He smiled a full set of square teeth. ‘So make sure you are outside on the fifteenth, looking up in the western sky for a once in a lifetime sight.’ He shuffled some papers and looked up again. ‘NASA spokesperson Nathan Ryerson has also released to the public NASA’s theory that Wormwood is only a precursor to an asteroid of far greater size that, until recently, has been concealed by the miles wide span of Wormwood’s tail. As of this afternoon, it is not believed that the larger asteroid will follow the same trajectory, but one slightly askew. This is John Georges, WYNN News.’
Lexi flopped back onto t
he mattress, numb and tired. What did Linnux die for?
She let Satan out of his carrier and put his face to hers, envying him his simple life. The tuxedo cat looked at the ceiling, the walls, the puke-colored blanket—everything but Lexi. Such was his way.
Later, in the shower, water cascaded, warm and life-giving and almost orgasmic for its cleansing relief after going so long without. Steam filled the small room.
Following the shower Lexi moved in that intangible world of half-awareness that precedes sleep; that world we wish to prolong before another, smaller and even less conspicuous world embraces us. She forgot about the filth that must be lingering in the sheets, about the stench that surrounded her, and about the terror that had become her world, about stupid Wormwood and its mysteries. Sleep swallowed her whole.
The rude knocking began in her dream and broke through into the real world. It was him, she knew, the rogue who expected her to trust him when he wasn’t even honest about his work.
“Let me sleep.”
The knocking continued but no one spoke. Was that some taboo, some agent no-no? She fell out of bed, getting up close and personal with a rug straight from the pages of Better Homes and Gardens circa 1985. She tugged open the door.
“We have to go,” Lewis said, managing to combine poise with urgency. “They won’t be far behind.”
“Fifteen minutes,” she snarled to his broad back, and slammed the door. After attending to hair and makeup and dress, Lexi checked her computer, hoping her agent had agreed to give her an extension. There was a single e-mail, but the sender was someone called Vortex. She spammed it and packed up, sauntered out to the truck, hoping to aggravate the aggravator.
He was already in the Dakota, the cab uncomfortably warm compared to the refreshing crisp September air. Jazz clanged out of the XPlod’s. It was some brass piece most striking for its astounding ability to get under her skin in five seconds flat.
Back on the I-80 an hour later—after they had argued about music to the boiling point and finally agreed to play nothing—she asked, “Just how does the Bureau track people down?”
Lewis readjusted his seat belt and hat; tell tale signs she’d observed every time she had asked a question concerning his former employ.
But he surprised her when he responded. “It changes all the time. In the beginning it was all about technicals and the positioning of agents in strategic locations. But the boys in the Basement are the major players now, the SCIA.” Did that mean he was CIA? “I spent some time down there during my early years and you wouldn’t believe the things those boys can do.”
She could feel the rhythmic madness of the road setting in already, the eyes veering to the yellow and white never-ending lines, the dance of cars streaming past, punctuated by the occasional Yamaha FZ or screeching Kawasaki Versys. Lexi turned her head to Lewis.
“What exactly do they do in the SCIA?”
He looked over at her and for the first time she realized how unusual his face was; small features plastered onto a large head, giving him the appearance of a harmless innocent, kittenish when compared to the rest of his oversized body. Now she understood the fedora.
Lewis did not answer.
Lexi gave up. Fell asleep.
She awoke with a start, nearly kneeing the laptop off her lap. He was staring at her, an expression of curiosity playing across his pigmy features. “What?”
“You’re not like most women,” he smiled. When she asked why, he answered, “You haven’t cried. Not once. Most women would ball in your situation. And that day at the library, I know why you’re hand was bleeding.”
“Yeah,” Lexi sat up and gulped some warm flat Sprite. “I told you, I scraped it against the faucet when you scared me barging in.” She logged on. Leslie’s computer was powered by a processor she knew was not even on the market yet, and it had proved more than sufficient in every state they’d traversed.
Lewis made for the radio but Lexi slapped his hand away, watching his eyes come to life. “You did it to yourself,” he said. “You’re a self-mutilator. I wonder how many scars you have. Do you even miss your grandfather?”
Now she was the one embracing reticence—giving her full attention to the warm and non-judgmental glow of the Internet. Images struck again, the procession of vague recollections and half-formed ideas. Lewis snapped his fingers and she opened her eyes.
“You were conking out again,” his tone was softer now. “Do I look all goofy-ass like that when I conk out?”
She grabbed the bottle of Excedrin and pondered the ideas, a single thought breaking through, a connection both startling and enlightening. She checked Gramps’ digitized trove again to make sure she’d read it right. “There is a pattern.” She turned on the third movement of Beethoven’s Ninth and lowered the window as the idea grew into a fully formed realization.
“Linnux and Gramps were both right. We need to look into the Tower’s past and we need to focus on the dates. But there is something else as well.” Fatigue dissipated in the cool air.
“What else?”
“Something I found at the library and what we saw at the old box factory in Batavia.” Lexi pulled up the files on Gramps’ journal and the picture of the device at the box factory, running fingers through her shadow smooth hair. “It’s the technology. Do you remember what that facility was called that you dragged me to in Orchard Park?”
She watched with mounting impatience as he seemed to consider this. His mouth twitched by millimeters, the corner of his eyebrows lifted by just a few hairs. He’s considering lying, the dungeon warned.
“Helix of . . . I can’t remember. Damn it all. I remember we thought it was a genetics lab, the most advanced in the world according to the POF.”
“What if the Tower hasn’t been trying and failing in one endeavor after another,” Lexi emphasized every word by fingering the air, her enthusiasm anxious for release, “but was working instead in one field of science and technology after another, working toward one monumental work, an amalgam of every field. A single, perfect mechanical device.”
“That does what?” Lewis’ focus was now on Lexi. Of what interest could the road be?
“I’ve no idea what it might do.”
Assuming his serious SOB look again, Lewis said, “Make a list of all the technology he’s used, even the tech and fields of science Virgil merely claimed the Tower was into.”
She could hear the ruffled feathers of his ‘agent’ ego taking over. And she felt it again, what Simon had so often of late made her feel; that she was being deceived in some clever, albeit contrived, way. She considered her next words carefully, weighing the advantage of retaining knowledge from an FBI (or SCIA) guy against the importance of knowing who she could trust.
“I can come up with maybe four or five such items. But we both know where we can find more extensive files on the Tower.”
Watch how he reacts now.
She watched as they rolled past one large green sign after another announcing their imminent entrance into Indiana. The air was cool without being cold, warm breezes off the fields keeping the chill September in line. She waited for him to answer. He hesitated, which suggested he was either uncomfortable with revealing what the government knew, or fearful that they would track him should he decide to access the government files with his passwords. His eyes flicked back and forth between the road and the CD player.
“We need gas.”
A non sequitur—surprise surprise.
“Just listen, disclose nothing. Right?”
He turned on her, eyes wide and vacant. A bull seeing red. “Where did you hear that?”
Lexi’s smirk cracked her face. “Gramps knew that FBI agent, that Silas Godspeed. He heard things and he told me plenty.” She waited until he had stopped at a gas and food station and filled the tank before asking him to “Stop at the next motel, I need to rest and take some time to make the list.”
At a Red Star motel off exit 21 Lexi demanded her own room again and
was surprised when Lewis withdrew a wad of greasy greenbacks. “Six a.m.” He said.
“Where are you getting all this cash from?”
“Disclose nothing,” he smiled and walked away.
“Did he just make a joke?” she wondered to herself.
Hours later, when the Indiana sun nestled snug into the horizon and darkness fell, Lexi doused herself in Lucky 6 and sauntered over to Lewis’s room. He appeared at the door dressed only in blue-green boxers, his gun (literal gun, not euphemistic gun) held low in his left hand.
“I just wanted to talk,” she said, hands raised in mock surrender. “But if you prefer to draw attention to us, go ahead and shoot.”
He invited her in and threw on an AC/DC shirt. As he was pulling it over his head Lexi glanced around, found his black Eddie Bauer trench coat resting on the back of a chair.
“What do you want to discuss?”
She glided a few feet to her left and arched her back seductively before easing herself down into the chair. She wore only a thin t-shirt and Intimo boy shorts, showing off water-smooth calves, but was careful to keep in the shadows to prevent illumination of the thigh scars. She fluffed her hair as though it needed it, watching out of the corner of her eye as Lewis forgot his question.
“Come over here and find out,” she beckoned with her right hand while reaching behind with her left to plumb the pockets of the trench coat. She had never practiced the art of seduction. It was harder than it looked in the movies.
He took one step but then stopped, the lust in his eyes draining as the agent side took over. He approached. A sudden shift in the balance of the room.
How did he do that?
Lexi tensed as the air grew hot and thick and her hand fumbled. How many pockets are there? Ah! At last, there it was. She stood.
“Where you going?” Lewis loomed over her, all around her, filling the hot room with his masculine superiority.
She side-stepped him and slid to the door. “It can wait, goodnight.” As she scurried out, Lexi caught him staring at his coat. Walking around in skimpy clothing seemed silly of a sudden; she breathed a sigh of relief on entering her room. Satan was there to greet her, instant attention required.
The Fifth Descent of Lexi Montaigne Page 14
