Obsession

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  Who just happened to work for the CIA. Who would flash badges if necessary and blather something about her being taken into custody for her own protection.

  The shopkeepers and everybody else would give her up like she was contagious.

  Same with calling the police. The Agency outranked them. Even if she talked them into shielding her for a little while—by offering to talk to the detectives, say, about Lisa’s murder—Ed would soon get her back. She would be foolish to allow herself any illusions about that.

  That left Dan. Her good neighbor had helped her before. But . . . but he was a doctor, and no match for CIA.

  Just thinking about running to him made her head pound.

  Anyway, she had agreed to leave him out of this. If Ed ever found out about his existence, Dan would be in danger.

  Katharine faced the horrible truth: She was on her own. This was like her own personal episode of Survivor : She had to outwit, outplay, outlast.

  Bennett tapped on the window again, harder than before. Now his face was scrunched up into a ferocious frown.

  Game on.

  Rolling down her window, she had no trouble coming up with a ferocious frown of her own.

  “What?” she snapped.

  His eyes widened slightly. Her tone had taken him aback, she was pleased to see.

  It took a couple of seconds, but he recovered. “You trying to ditch us again?”

  “You’re damn right I’m trying to ditch you. I’ve had one or both of you with me for the last three days. You know what? I need some space.” The bus was out of the way at last. Traffic—Thank you, God—was beginning to move. She started to roll up the window again. “Go away.”

  “Wait.”

  Bennett stuck his hand in the window, preventing her from rolling it up all the way. She thought about continuing regardless, but making him truly angry, which crushing his fingers was almost guaranteed to do, would be stupid. The car was moving now, slowly, as successive vehicles took their turn at the stop sign, and Bennett walked along beside her, his hand folded over the top of the glass.

  The scowl she gave him was fierce. “I said go away.”

  “But . . .” The ferocious frown had been replaced by a look of confusion. “Where are you going?”

  “If you must know, to get my cat. Look, I’ll meet you back at the town house in about half an hour, okay? I just need to be by myself for a little while to clear my head.” She cast him an irritated look. “And by the way, I’m rolling up the window.”

  "But ...”

  This time, as she stepped on the accelerator, she kept her finger on the window button. Bennett snatched his hand back, then just stood there in the middle of the street, frowning after her as she took her turn at the stop sign at last. The black Mercedes was, she saw, some six cars back. She had never even seen it coming.

  Taking a deep breath, trying to will her heart to slow its frantic pounding, she drove through the intersection like the coolest cucumber around, and watched in the rearview mirror as Bennett turned and scurried between the opposing lanes of traffic until he reached the Mercedes. Slapping a hand on its hood, presumably to warn Starkey of what he intended to do, he darted in front of the car, opened the passenger-side door, and ducked inside.

  At that moment, Katharine crested the rise and was, briefly, out of sight. The Beltway on-ramp was close, she knew. The discreet sign with its accompanying arrow at the side of the road made that clear. Wistfully, she thought about just ignoring the Mercedes behind her, pulling onto the expressway, and roaring west, as far as Saint Louis, maybe, or even California. Forget this nightmare: She could start a whole new life.

  But she knew Ed would never let her go. Not like this. If she went, she would have to have enough time to get well away, and then she would have to hide. The thing to do, then, was outsmart him. She would continue to act all huffy and fed up with the lack of privacy—not that it was much of a stretch—and in the meantime she would go pick up Muffy and see if, maybe, Cindy wanted to visit for a while. Like several hours. Maybe even order in pizza and watch a movie or something. The thing was, tomorrow was Wednesday. A workday. Under the circumstances, she had taken the week off, but Ed was still going in, and when he was working he was in the office every weekday morning by seven. Probably he wouldn’t want to stay up as long as she was planning to stay out.

  If she could just avoid a showdown over their relationship tonight, tomorrow might provide her with another chance to get away. As long as she kept her cool and didn’t let anyone suspect that escaping was what she was trying to do.

  Traffic wasn’t a whole lot better on the other side of the intersection, she found to her dismay, and a moment later discovered the reason: POTUS—the president of the United States—was on the move. Police cars, lights flashing, blocked the street as the presidential motorcade, flags flying, rolled past on South Alfred Street.

  Just another Tuesday evening in and around the capital.

  Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw the Mercedes top the rise. Okay, forget trying to give them the slip. She was definitely going to get her cat. The problem was that she couldn’t remember where her good friend Cindy lived.

  Having brain damage was starting to get very, very old, but there didn’t seem to be a whole lot she could do about it. Luckily, the solution occurred to her almost instantly: Cindy’s phone number was programmed into her phone. If she input the number into the Lexus’s GPS system, it would come up with the address and direct her there, too.

  Muffy, here I come, she thought, and reached for her phone. A few minutes later, with the GPS’s mechanical voice directing her, she left Old Town behind for its more modern surroundings. Cindy, it turned out, lived out toward Franconia in a fifties-era subdivision. The houses were sturdy brick or stone ranches; the lawns were small and dotted with such child-friendly amenities as aboveground swimming pools and plastic play-houses and swing sets, and children were everywhere.

  Although she could conjure up a vague picture of Cindy in her mind, that was all she could do. She knew that they were good friends, but she couldn’t remember anything else about her. Not what she did for a living, not how long they had known each other, not whether Cindy was married or had a family.

  The realization made her stomach tighten.

  Cindy’s house was the third one from the left on Woodland Street. It was a modest brick ranch with a fifties-era picture window, a small front stoop, and an attached garage. As Katharine pulled into the short driveway that ended at the closed garage door, she glanced back the way she had come. Sure enough, there was the Mercedes, just turning down the street.

  Katharine realized that her palms were sweaty. Her heart rate was up. Knowing that Starkey and Bennett were following her on Ed’s orders was really starting to put her on edge. Turning off the engine, she shed her jacket and put on her shoes, then, in T-shirt and slacks, headed for the front door. En route to the house, she had tried giving Cindy a call to let her know that she was on her way, but the answering machine had picked up. Still, she could see through the open front curtains that the TV was on—a cartoon was playing—so she felt fairly confident that someone was home.

  “Hi,” she said to the man who opened the door in response to her knock. He looked to be in his early thirties, average height, a little on the stocky side, with short, tobacco-brown hair and a round, jovial-looking face. He was wearing khaki shorts, a blue Orioles T-SHIRT, and flip-flops. A big-eyed, blond-haired toddler in a diaper and pink T-shirt peeked up at her from behind his legs. “Is Cindy home?”

  “She’s at the hospital,” the man said. “Lindsey’s finally having that baby.”

  From the way he just opened the screen for her to enter, she presumed they knew each other. At a guess, she would say that she was looking at Cindy’s family, her husband and little girl. Also, he clearly thought she knew all about Lindsey, whoever that was, and her baby, when the truth was she didn’t have a clue.

  “Finally,” she echoed, f
iguring she was pretty safe with that. The living room was creamy yellow with lots of chintz. A pink baby blanket and pillow were on the couch. A half-full baby bottle sat on the oak coffee table.

  “Oh, listen, I heard what happened with you. Man, I’m sorry. That kind of thing’s why we moved out to the burbs.”

  “Thanks. Yeah, it was bad.”

  As he closed the door behind her, Katharine got a glimpse of the Mercedes pulling to a stop across the street. She felt herself tensing. Her pulse kicked it up a notch. Her stomach did the full pretzel. With Cindy at the hospital for who knew how long, the prospects of staying at her house for hours to avoid Ed didn’t look good. In fact, she was clearly going to have to come up with plan B.

  “You here for your cat?” His eyes slid away from her as if he had spotted something. “Oh, wait, there it is. I gotta tell you, Cindy loves that thing.”

  Katharine looked, and there in the doorway that led into a hall that presumably led to the bedrooms stood Muffy. Almost the size of a beagle, the cat was a puffball of fluffy white hair that nearly reached the floor. Ears, paws, tail, feet, and flat, round face were charcoal-gray. From the midst of all that gray, a pair of china-blue eyes stared at her.

  “Hi, Muffy,” she achieved by way of a greeting. The strongest emotional reaction she felt upon seeing her pet was surprise that the thing was so big. But of course she had known that. She had just forgotten, was all. Just like she had forgotten so many other things.

  Her throat threatened to close up at the thought. Knowing that chunks of her life were missing was really starting to get to her.

  “The carrier and food and everything’s in the kitchen,” the guy continued cheerily. He plopped down on the couch, and the little girl climbed up on his lap. A moment later, the child was settled cozily in the crook of his arm with the bottle in her mouth and the pink blanket over her while they both watched TV.

  Katharine realized that she was expected to just help herself.

  Okay, then.

  She walked toward the cat, who waited until she had almost reached it to turn around and stalk away, tail held haughtily high. It led the way into the kitchen, which was small and cheerfully cluttered. Near the back door was a tan plastic pet crate: obviously Muffy’s carrier. Two small ceramic dishes nearby held dry cat food and water. A yellow bag of Meow Mix, its top rolled so that it was clear the bag was only about a quarter full, sat on top of the crate.

  Katharine cleaned the dishes, then picked up the food and the cat carrier and placed them both on the counter. She put the dishes inside the carrier, which still left plenty of room for the cat. All things being equal, she decided not to take a chance on carrying Muffy outside in her arms, or letting him—her . . .

  With a quick widening of her eyes, Katharine realized that she didn’t know whether the cat was a male or a female. Jesus, how could she forget a thing like that about her own pet? Her breathing came a little faster as she chalked up one more inexplicable hole in her memory.

  This is so not good.

  Okay, so she had a cat of undetermined gender. That was not the point. The point was that she didn’t want to let Muffy ride loose in the car. There was too much potential for disaster.

  With everything in readiness, she looked around for the cat.

  Muffy was crouched under the oval-shaped maple table, looking up at her through the chair legs.

  “Here, Muffy. Here, kitty.”

  That earned her a disdainful swish of a tail. “Come on, Muffy,” she tried again, going down on all fours and stealthily—at least, she was trying to be stealthy, although with the cat watching her every move stealthy didn’t seem to be happening—scooting the chair Muffy was crouched behind out of the way. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

  As soon as Katharine reached toward it, the cat bolted, hightailing it for the bedrooms, nails scrabbling over the hardwood floor in its haste.

  “Dammit.” Katharine stared after the cat. Clearly Muffy hadn’t been pining away with longing for its owner to come back.

  “She’s probably under our bed,” Cindy’s husband called from the living room as Katharine got to her feet. “That’s where she goes when Sammy Lou here chases her.”

  Katharine took a deep, calming breath.

  “Thanks,” she called back.

  She had learned two things, Katharine thought as she found the master bedroom and surveyed the large bed, under which her cat presumably lurked: Cindy’s daughter was named, or nicknamed, Sammy Lou, and Muffy was a she.

  Good to know.

  The bedroom had cream walls, oak furniture, and a rose-and-cream gingham spread over the king-size bed. It also had a dust ruffle that reached clear to the hardwood floor. Katharine had a thought, and closed the door behind her. Then, crossing to the bed, she dropped to her knees and lifted the simple white ruffle. Muffy was under there, all right, crouched right in the middle. Those blue eyes fixed on Katharine’s face, shining balefully at her through the under-the-bed gloom. Taking a stab at reading cat body language, she interpreted that look to mean that Muffy was not particularly pleased to see her.

  Well, guess what? The feeling was starting to be mutual. If it hadn’t been for Starkey and Bennett out there waiting to see her emerge with her pet, she would have let the animal visit with Cindy’s family for a while longer.

  But Starkey and Bennett were out there, which meant she needed the cat.

  “Here, kitty,” Katharine tried again, infusing her voice with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. “Come here, Muffy.”

  Muffy twitched her tail, but that was the only part of her that moved. Katharine extended an arm in her direction, saw that that wasn’t going to get the job done, cursed under her breath, and dropped to her stomach. Then, thankful for the hard smoothness of the floor, which made the job easier, she started sliding under the bed.

  For the first time, she was truly glad she was now so skinny. Otherwise she wouldn’t have fit. The bed couldn’t have been much more than a foot off the floor.

  Unmoving, eyes gleaming even brighter than the ring on Katharine’s hand, the cat watched her scoot toward it. Then, when she was within inches of being close enough to grab it, Muffy took off, scrambling for the far side of the bed.

  “No,” Katharine cried, and lunged after it like a crocodile after a duck. She caught it, too, her fingers raking through inches-thick fluff and hooking around—yes, hooray!—a collar that had been hidden in all that hair.

  Shouldn’t I have known about the collar?

  Muffy promptly turned around and hissed at her with all the venom of a cobra, and Katharine let the whole I-am-losing-my-mind thing go as she went eyeball to eyeball with a totally ticked-off cat.

  “It’s okay, Muffy. Good girl, Muffy.”

  Hiss or no hiss, Muffy wasn’t getting away. Luckily, the cat showed no propensity to actually attack. It made like a dust mop with claws, staying belly to the floor and trying to dig in for traction as Katharine grabbed hold with her other hand, too, and pulled the cat toward her. Keeping one set of fingers locked around the collar just in case, Katharine inched her way back out from under the bed, pulling Muffy, who dragged her claws over the wood every inch of the way, with her. Finally, they were both out from under the bed, and, grimacing at the necessity, she picked the cat up.

  Muffy promptly hissed at her again.

  There was an identification tag or something dangling from the collar, a longish gray plastic rectangle almost hidden in all that fur, and Katharine was tempted to check it out, to make sure her name was on the tag and she really was the cat’s owner.

  Because Muffy seemed to remember her even less well than she remembered Muffy.

  But she didn’t bother, because she knew already what the tag would say: Muffy was hers.

  Apparently, they had some owner-cat bonding issues.

  Sighing, Katharine tentatively petted the cat, who hissed right on cue, carried her to the kitchen, and stuffed—there was no other word for it, because Muffy resis
ted valiantly—her inside her carrier. Then, with Muffy glaring angrily out through the metal grate, she picked up the carrier—it was heavy—and the bag of cat food and headed toward the front door.

  “You got everything?” Cindy’s husband asked as she walked back into the living room. He was whispering, because Sammy Lou had fallen asleep in his arms.

  “Yes, thanks. And tell Cindy thanks,” Katharine said.

  He nodded, and Katharine quietly let herself out the front door.

  The first thing she saw was that it was full twilight now, with the kind of soft, gray dusk that happened only in summer. Lights had come on inside the houses. The smell of freshly cut grass hung in the air. Fireflies blinked like tiny white Christmas lights all up and down the block. Cicadas sang. Other insects whirred. Noisy children played hide-and-seek a couple yards over, and a woman stood on a porch toward the end of the block, yelling for somebody named Eric. Presumably, Katharine thought, a mother summoning her son home.

  The second thing she saw was that the Mercedes was still parked in front of the house across the street.

  Okay, time to come up with plan B.

  Problem was, she couldn’t seem to think of anything right at the moment.

  Eyeballing the black bulk of the waiting car, feeling Starkey and Bennett watching her although she couldn’t see them through the tinted windows, she warded off an attack of the shivers and quickly loaded Muffy and the cat food into the backseat before sliding into the driver ’s seat herself. Starting the car, turning on the lights, she reversed down the driveway, then headed for the top of Woodland Drive. From there she turned north toward Old Town.

  She never made it. A car emerging from a side street pulled out in front of her just before she reached the next stop sign, the last one she would come to before entering the outskirts of Alexandria in fifteen minutes or so. From the stop sign on in, it was pure windy country road. Gorgeous during the day but, she had to admit, a little spooky at night. Of course, with Batman and Robin on her tail, at least she didn’t have to worry about random kooks and carjackers.