“What if I feed you a little at a time?”
The question piqued her interest. “You have that much?” When he didn’t answer, she whistled. “Like I said before, you know the Homeland Intelligence Division does the dirty work for the visible agencies, nobody the wiser. Yep, you definitely know that. You’re a smart cookie. But probably you haven’t reckoned the depth of their involvement, which is why you’ve become a target. They’re afraid of you. They want to shut you up. And make damn sure no one else digs deeper.”
“I’m just an analyst.”
“Oh honey, you can’t use that excuse with me. You’re up to your eyeballs in shit. May as well wallow in it since the stink won’t ever rub off. You, John Jackson Coyote, have been framed for murder. Next will be treason, theft, money laundering, tax evasion, and God knows what else. You’re a marked man. A legend in your own time. Right now, every motherfucker believes the lies. But you want the truth. So do I. When you’re ready to work with me, let me know. How good is your memory?”
“Better than yours.”
She gave him her home address and a private number. “Anytime, day or night. Where can I drop you?”
23
Washington, D. C.
Sunday, July 27
WHEN JACK LET himself into her condominium, Liz was expecting him, pointing a semiautomatic between his eyes, hands braced but steady, eyes fierce and unblinking. It was unnerving looking down the barrel of a gun that could blow his head off.
“I was under the impression we had a date,” he said delicately.
“We did.”
He was about to switch on the hall light when she cautioned him with a guttural tone. He touched the spot just above the bridge of his nose and centered between his eyes. “Westerners have been taught this is the sure shot, the point of instant death. Eastern philosophies believe it’s the Third Eye of Buddha, the pathway to enlightenment and spiritual awakening. Ironic, wouldn’t you say?”
“It will definitely be your pathway to spiritual awakening.” A slight trembling of her hands revealed the first sign of physical as well as moral weakness. Either way, she wouldn’t be able to sustain her two-handed grip for much longer. She was still wearing the glittery gown from earlier in the evening, but in the dark of the foyer, the turquoise appeared midnight blue, setting off her bare arms in beatific perfection.
With meticulous caution, and while keeping his eyes zeroed in on hers, he lowered his backpack to the floor and closed the door behind himself. Like a dinner-party magician, he opened his hands, demonstrating they were empty. With a slight smile on his lips, he approached her without fear. Slowly. Cautiously. He didn’t want to spook her. The damn thing could go off. “Question is, do you have the guts to pull the trigger?”
“I had a good teacher.”
“I know,” he said smiling. “Me.”
“If you’re asking whether sentimentality will stand in the way, it won’t.”
He continued moving forward. She backed away from him, footstep for footstep, in her high heels and up on her toes like a ballerina.
“A woman who wears high heels to a duel,” he said, “isn’t really serious.”
Her face was flawless, her eyes huge, and the mole beneath her eye endearing. She glowed with audacity, assuredness, and too much sensuality for her own good. She parted her lips and licked them moist with the tip of her tongue. The honeyed skin of her face, white against the framing hair, glowed in the semidarkness of the room. She continued training the gun on him, the barrel now pointed slightly to the right.
“You’re gorgeous.”
“And you’re plastered.”
“I thought you were gorgeous before I got plastered, and I’ll think you’re gorgeous after I’m sober.
“I suggest your turn yourself in.”
“I’m out on bail. Or didn’t you hear?”
“Bail has been revoked.” Her smile was snide, callous. “They say you’re an armed and dangerous man.”
“What they say and what I am are two different people.”
“What did you do? Remove the ankle bracelet? Of course, you did.” Her laughter came out forced and hollow. “You’re too damned clever for your own good, Jack. Always have been.”
He nodded toward the semiautomatic. “When did you start carrying?”
She readjusted her aim, lowering it to a trajectory dead center over his heart. “When you murdered Milly.”
“You know I didn’t do it.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past you.”
“Where’s your date?”
“Went home.”
“What about Andy what’s-his-name?” He looked around the apartment for signs of a significant other.
“I sent him packing months ago.”
“For some reason, I got the distinct impression he was the one.”
“You know there won’t be anyone but you.”
“True love passeth all understanding.” He stepped closer. The gun barrel was mere inches from his heart. It was a Mexican standoff. If she pulled the trigger, death would come sure and sweet, and all his troubles would be over. Hers, sadly, would only just begin. “You’re not really going to shoot. Think of the mess it would make. The carpet. The walls. And the explanation that would never sound plausible. A preplanned rendezvous with your former lover, himself a wanted murderer?” He shook his head, a smile on his lips. “And the key you slipped to him earlier in the evening found in his pocket?”
She leered. “I can always remove it after you’re dead.”
“But how oh how will you explain him getting in?”
“I just arrived home, Mr. Officer,” she said in a breathy voice, “when this big bad man came out of nowhere, slapped his hand over my mouth, dragged me into my apartment, and tried to take advantage of me, at which point I struggled with him, managed to get away, found the gun I kept for self-protection, and shot him as he forced himself upon my person.”
“But men and women of the jury,” he said, taking on a courtroom voice, “the victim was her one-time lover.”
“And a known murderer.”
Drawing nearer, he spoke calmly. “True enough. But think of the questions. The grilling in the police station. Anything you say will sound lame.”
“Sort of like you and your dumbass story about a mystery woman.”
“They’ll cut you off at the knees. Like I was. You’ll be charged, convicted by the court of public opinion, found guilty by a jury of your peers, and locked away and forgotten. Well, nearly forgotten, because they’ll always connect you to me, the same way they will connect me to Milly.”
The slightest of smiles touched her lips. “You’ve always had everything planned out.”
“I didn’t plan on you.”
Her condo wasn’t very large but would do. Washington real estate came at extravagant prices, the tradeoff being space in exchange for convenience, safety, and skyline. The dimensions were cramped but intimate. She had a sense for decorating, for color, for optimizing space. Everything in the room—furniture, curios, paintings, posters, figurines, window coverings—was a throwback to another era. She had always been adept at dickering with secondhand dealers, scouring estate sales, and bidding at auctions. The eclectic collection fit the Liz he had known before, even if it didn’t fit the valued government lackey of today. It was comforting to know she hadn’t changed all that much. “Success hasn’t spoiled you.”
“You don’t know anything about me. About my life.”
He indicated the gun. “I’ll bet it’s not loaded.”
“You’d lose,” she said, smiling.
He believed her. Silence filled the space between them. “Well? Are you going to shoot? If not, I have things to do, places to go.”
“I’ll bet.” Her eyes narrowed. She was mocking him. Testing him.
He easily removed the pistol from her slack grip, reached back, and set it gingerly on a nearby table. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her. It was the kiss he reme
mbered from college years, the hard, unyielding stiffness of her mouth, the kind of kiss that said no when she really meant yes. He reached for her hand. With barely a murmur, she followed him through the double doors into the bedroom. City lights spilled through the bank of picture windows. The steady hum of traffic filtered inside from the busy street below. She reached back and undid the zipper of her gown partway. He obliged her by reaching around and finishing the job to the base of her spine. The gown fell away, revealing panties but no bra. She was dazzling, a portraiture of womanhood in her prime, certainly not the skinny college girl of memory.
She reached for his shirt and unfurled it over his head. They lay down next to each other on a vast bed covered with a patchwork quilt. Liz searched his face for the answer to a pressing question. For Jack, it had never gone away, the wanting of her. It would only be for this one night, he reasoned. To wash away the grief, to lose himself in the essence of her perfume, to forget his troubles, to erase all those lost years. It was the same for her. Their joining became an exquisiteness of being, as if their years apart had collapsed into a single breath. Liz had always possessed the indefinables of every woman everywhere. Toughness paired with frailty. Reserve matched with fire. Exuberance lined up with mastery. She simply had to breathe, to wriggle, to jerk away, to wordlessly say, Not here, there … not this, that. The dazzling energy she put out, the tantalizing essence of the superb package, the satisfying sounds she made when he touched her were all there as if the years had not interrupted a doomed relationship. He thought back on that relationship, which started so well and ended so badly. From first laying eyes on her, Jack recognized his mirror image in female form. They were both intelligent, both ardent, both complex. And both wanting more. It was because they were so alike that their relationship wasn’t meant to last.
“Do you believe in God?” she whispered, almost as an endearment, as if she had said sweetheart or lover. “I never thought to ask before. Or maybe I did but forgot the answer.”
“Are you having a come-to-Jesus moment?”
“Whenever I’m with you, it’s a come-to-Jesus moment,” she said on a purring breath. She raised his arms above his head and pinned them at the wrists, her eyes peering down at him, luminous in the darkness. “Do you believe in the power of prayer?”
It was love talk. A strange and quirky kind of love talk only two people who were familiar with every inch of the other’s body could have exchanged at a moment like this, when they were one.
“I prayed to God Almighty I would make love to you tonight,” he said, “and He answered.”
She gave him a love slap. He grabbed the offending hand and kissed each finger in turn.
People establish a space around themselves to keep from being hurt. Jack was no different from Liz in that regard. Without her consent, he could not have entered her space, and without his consent, she could not have entered his. The promise of intimacy without further obligation was offered from her to him and him to her. The warmth of her skin, the welcoming embrace of her arms, the touch of her lips, the yielding of her body, the surrendering of her soul, the climaxing of their mutual needs, and the cooling of their ardor was necessary to heal the scars of the past.
“I saw you with Brandon.”
“Oh, him,” she said, as if tasting something foul. They decoupled. She flipped onto her back and stared at the ceiling, breathing heavily, a thin layer of sweat glistening at her temples and along the sides of her neck. The wall she put between them was still erect, sturdier than ever, blocking entry into her weak spots … and her secrets.
“You looked upset when you came back,” he said.
“Do you believe in divine intervention?”
“What did he say to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about Brandon. I want to talk about you. And Milly. And why all this had to happen.”
“To answer your question, there is no god,” he said. “Or if there is, he isn’t a crotchety old man passing judgment from on high.”
“Who created you and me, if not God?”
“An electromagnetic field larger than the universe combined with a biochemical interface at the subatomic level that when intermixed with the space-time continuum, the fifth dimension, and an arbitrary recombination of deoxyribonucleic acid, populates earthlike planets with the seeds of eternity. In other words,” he said on a dry note, “we are an accident.”
“When did you become an existentialist?”
“When I met you.”
“Maybe God is testing us.”
“Would you test your own children? Purposely? Willfully? Cruelly?”
“If He brings the sickness,” she said, vomiting up the ecclesiastical pablum like dry cereal, “He can bring the cure.”
“Why would He bring the sickness in the first place?” When he was twelve, Jack prayed every night for God to cure his mother. After she died, he never prayed again, except perhaps in the dimmest part of his soul, usually when he was down on himself. “A divine being was invented by priests to enslave the weak and fearful.”
“Now you’re being esoteric.”
“I’m being practical. For instance, why did Milly have to die? Do you know?” He cranked his head to the side and studied her profile, her lovely nose, her succulent lips, her finely sculpted cheekbones, her tense brow, and her blinking eyes that searched for answers that would not come. He reached over and slid the tip of his finger from her temple to her chin.
The gesture broke the spell. She flashed him a whimsical smile, bright as the moon, and curled onto her side, facing him, fist to chin, one leg bent at the knee and the other stretched beneath, an unconscious pose that brought out her superb singularity. “You win. You have proven your thesis. There is no god. We’re truly alone. But,” she said on a wavering sigh, “I will go on believing in a benevolent God.”
“Then you will be disappointed.”
When it came down to who was more at fault for splitting up, Jack had always taken the blame. Like his father, he was a wanderer and a loner. He decided it was far better for him to leave her than to stay and watch her grow to hate him the way his mother had grown to hate his father. Far better to leave her before their differences became too stark and their similarities too ordinary. Because there were differences. Liz was ambitious where he was not. He was romantic where she was not. A curious reversal.
He lay beside her with the feel of her hip against his and her arm resting languidly across his chest. They had taken comfort in each other and exchanged intimacy for intimacy before he had to leave her, perhaps forever. He was keenly aware of the inevitable.
She was, too. “I wish … never mind what I wish. But when you look at me the way you’re looking at me now, I can see it your eyes … how I let you down.”
“You didn’t let me down.”
“And probably will again.”
He gathered her into his arms and made love to her once more, not the frenzied lovemaking of before but a methodical unwinding of an ache that could not be soothed, where the exhalation of a single breath lasted an hour and the leaving off a kiss took forever.
In his need to draw her nearer, he jerked his torso in a way that rocked his bruised ribs and ran a hot knife through his gut. He let out an involuntary groan.
She said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to―”
“Wasn’t you.” He was unable to contain the strain in his voice.
She turned on the bedside lamp and threw aside the sheet. The discoloration beneath his ribcage looked ghastly. Even though she probed his injuries with care, he couldn’t help but wince. “Who did this to you?”
His breaths came fast and heavy, exhalations attended by rumbling moans, inhalations reedy and stuttering. Up until this moment, he had managed to suppress the hurt like a man running from a speeding train. It finally caught up with him. And then ran him over. He struggled to get the words out. “A contractor.”
“A what?”
Innocent, innocent Liz. The girl who be
lieved in rainbows and men of good heart. “Someone they sent to get me.”
“What do you mean they? Get you for what?” But even as she spoke the words, he could see panic rising in her face, followed by realization, and finally denial.
Through unravelling breaths, he said, “Did you hear about the woman in the train station?”
“The story in the news?” She sat up and folded her legs beneath her, assuming a thinking pose, and reasoned fact against fact, stringing them together like a necklace of irregular beads on a thin thread. “The suicide?”
“Not suicide. She was pushed.”
“Why would anyone want to―?” Once again, the dark shadows of denial crept across her face. “Did you know her?”
He answered with a shake of his head.
“You’re not saying … you can’t be saying … but you are, aren’t you?” Liz was trying to understand what he just told her. “She was an aide to Congressman Billings. You don’t think it had anything to do with―”
“He was after me. She just got in the way.”
Liz had always been too smart for her own good, reading more into trifles most others ignored, and usually hitting the target with uncanny insight. Her chin trembled with mounting fear. Almost inaudibly she said, “What have you done, Jack? What the hell have you done?” Her confusions instantly changed to anger. Her brow tensed. Her eyes lit on fire.
“I didn’t cover my tracks well enough.”
“Then it’s true … what they say … that you hacked the system.”
Cyber Warfare Page 15
