Sycamore Bluff

by Jude Hardin

  Books. Maybe that was the answer. Maybe people around here read books to keep from going nuts. Novels, biographies, travel guides, whatever. He would ask around tomorrow, and if everything panned out, he would go out on his lunch break, find a place undoubtedly called The Book Store, and load up. Thinking about it gave him hope. Surely books weren’t against the rules.

  “Goodnight,” Diana said.

  He turned and saw her leaning there on the wall that divided the hallway from the kitchen. She wore a long black nightgown that was totally sexy, and a heavy pair of pink socks that were totally not.

  Colt laughed. “What’s with the fuzzy footwear?” he said.

  “They keep my feet warm. You don’t like them?”

  “Sure. They’re the cat’s meow. They’re just not something I would have pictured you going to K-Mart and buying for yourself. Did your grandmother give you those for Christmas?”

  “These came from Neiman Marcus, I’ll have you know. I bought them myself. Thirty-six bucks. And I’m sure I have lots of things you would never have pictured me in, Mr. Millington.”

  She did a little thing with her eyebrows.

  Colt set his drink on the end table, got up and walked to where Diana was standing. He got close enough to smell the soap she’d just scrubbed her face with. “Like what?” he said.

  “Like none of your business. Goodnight.”

  She turned to walk away, but Colt grabbed her arm and pulled her to him and kissed her hard and deep. It was a movie kiss. A Rhett and Scarlet kiss. Diana resisted at first, pushing away with her hands, but then she melted into him and embraced him passionately and pressed her body against his.

  This is not the smart thing to do, Colt kept telling himself.

  But he didn’t stop.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  This is not the smart thing to do, Diana kept telling herself. Nicholas was an operative for The Circle, for one thing, and Diana had careened down that slippery slope before. All too recently, in fact. Colt was a freelancer, so the penalty for getting caught wouldn’t be as stiff as it would have been with Henry Parker, but intimate relations, even with a part-timer with limited access to national secrets, was still very much frowned upon. Plus, Nicholas was a married man. Not that his wife would probably ever wake up from the coma she was in, but still. Nicholas was a colleague, and he was married, and Diana wasn’t anywhere close to being over the ordeal she’d gone through with Henry.

  She kept telling herself that any sort of romantic involvement with Nicholas Colt was wrong and stupid and dangerous, but at the moment none of that seemed to matter. She needed this. She needed it so badly it hurt.

  She threaded her fingers into his hair and pulled him closer, kissing him hungrily, greedily. The taste of bourbon on his tongue was intoxicatingly delicious, like warm sweet candy. She put her hand between his legs, knowing it was only a matter of time now until he was inside her, knowing it was only a matter of time but unable to wait a second longer. She ended the kiss by trailing her tongue down the side of his neck, and then she started tearing the buttons off his shirt. First one, and then another, and then the entire line in a flurry.

  “Take me to bed,” she said.

  “Still trying to boss me around?”

  She leaned into him, pushed him against the wall, fell to her knees and glided her fingers down the length of his pants. She worked her way back up and squeezed his butt and then started unbuckling his belt.

  “I can be very aggressive when it comes to sex,” she said.

  “That doesn’t make you a bad girl.”

  “I like it a little too much, if you want to know the truth. Think you can keep up?”

  “Try me,” Colt said.

  Diana pulled his belt off and tossed it aside. She undid the clasp on his waistband, grabbed the tab on his zipper and pulled it down slowly and gently.

  And then the power went out. The lights, the furnace, everything. Suddenly, the house was as dark and quiet as a cave.

  “What’s going on?” Diana said.

  “Something must have tripped the breaker,” Colt said. “I’ll go check it out.”

  “Wait. Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “I thought I heard something.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Colt said.

  He felt along the wall toward the living room, and a few seconds later a cone of light appeared when he switched on a flashlight.

  “What are you doing?” Diana said.

  “I’ll be right back. The breaker box is in the garage.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I looked around while you were gone this morning. The man of the house needs to know these kinds of things.”

  “Forget about it. Let’s go to bed. I like it when it’s dark.”

  “We’ll freeze with no heat on,” Colt said. “Go on back and get comfortable. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Diana sighed. She could have sworn she’d heard something, but maybe it was just the wind. Anyway, she wasn’t overly concerned. She knew Nicholas had his gun with him, because she’d felt it on his ankle, and she knew he could take care of himself. She got up and walked to the bedroom, slipped out of the nightgown and slid under the covers in just her teddy. The house was already starting to get cold. Perfect time for the power to go out, she thought. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise. Maybe with a few minutes to think things over, she and Nicholas would both reconsider what they were about to do.

  She took her socks off, felt around on the bedside table for the bottle of lotion she’d left there, pumped some out and started rubbing it on her feet.

  Making love with Nicholas Colt, especially under the circumstances, would definitely be a mistake. Diana knew that. They had a job to do, and a romantic involvement, or a roll in the hay, or whatever this turned out to be, would only complicate things. The way it always did. But she’d been wanting to jump Colt’s bones since the day she met him, back in April, there at his little teaching studio. She’d initially contacted him under the pretense of being interested in guitar lessons. At the time, Colt had no idea that he was a potential recruit for The Circle, that they had selected him because of his previous investigative work, that the surgeon who’d worked on his feet after an assault in Tennessee had implanted a microchip between the fourth and fifth toes of his left foot.

  Of course he didn’t believe her about any of it at first. She had to shine the special light on his foot to reveal the blood tattoo—a red dot the size of a pencil eraser over the chip that identified him as an operative—before he even thought about taking her seriously. He was angry at first, feeling violated and all, until she told him how much money he could make if he agreed to work with her.

  He’d done well on that first assignment, as well as could be expected for someone with limited training and experience. He’d come through for Diana when she needed him. And, his wife had gotten caught in the crossfire, and had paid the ultimate price for his involvement.

  Well, not quite the ultimate price, but almost. Juliet was practically dead. That’s the way Diana looked at it. They probably would have pulled the plug already if it weren’t for the baby. As well they should. If Diana ever got into that kind of condition, that’s what she would want. In fact, she had recently gone to an attorney and drafted a living will, a document that specifically addressed all of those grisly end-of-life decisions that would have to be made in the case she could no longer care for herself or speak for herself. Who on earth, if given the choice, would want to linger in a vegetative state? Just shoot me, Diana thought.

  And that’s when she heard, from the direction of the garage, the unmistakable sound of glass shattering, followed by a grunt and a thud.

  She and Nicholas weren’t alone. Someone else was in the house.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  At 21:48 Sunday night, Stephanie Chase-Davidson walked into the television room and informed her husband that he had a phone call.

  Lieu
tenant Colonel David A. Davidson had been watching a football game, the Detroit Lyons against the New York Jets. Half watching, half dozing. It was a boring game, tied 3-3 in the third quarter.

  “Who is it?” he said.

  “It’s Vic,” Mrs. Davidson said. “On the phone in your study. Why is he calling that number?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Had Victor DeLorenza lost his mind? The phone line in Colonel Davidson’s study, the ops phone, the Bat Phone as he sometimes jokingly referred to it, was supposed to stay open for official military business at all times. It was a single secure line to the control tower, and with Colonel Blankenbaker on leave, it was especially important that Davidson be available to address any critical issues that the officers under him couldn’t handle on their own. The Bat Phone hardly ever rang, but when it did there was usually something major going on, something that Davidson needed to know about immediately.

  So of course Stephanie found it odd that an old friend, a civilian drinking buddy no less, was calling him on a telephone number normally reserved for the direst of emergencies.

  “Want me to tell him to call you back on your cell?” she said.

  “No, I’ll take it.”

  Davidson grunted himself up from the couch. He walked past his wife without saying anything, or even looking at her. Made his way to the study, closed the door and picked up the phone.

  “I thought I told you to never call this number,” he said.

  “I tried your cell, but it went straight to voice mail.”

  Colonel Davidson reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. The battery was dead.

  “I must have forgotten to charge it,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “I want to know what’s going on, DD. I don’t like being left in the dark. Last time we talked, you said—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Vic. Everything’s being taken care of. I was planning to call you in the morning. We should have some good news by then.”

  “Some good news, as in, we’re not going to have to tell Lenny about any of this?”

  “Exactly,” Colonel Davidson said. “I’ve contracted an exterminator to take care of the little rodent problem we discussed previously.”

  “An exterminator to take care of the little rodent problem? Are we talking in code now, DD? I thought this was a secure line.”

  “Yeah. I think you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, once that’s taken care of, we can cease production at The Factory and start on Operation Cleanup. We should have everything ready for the inspectors by the end of the week. We’ll just tell Lenny we had enough product warehoused to shut everything down in Sycamore Bluff a few weeks early. Which is true, basically. We have more than enough to get the ball rolling, and then we can expand later and keep the ball rolling indefinitely. There’s no reason for Lenny to ever find out about the Kyle Lofton incident, or the subsequent investigation. And if he never finds out, then he has no reason to—”

  “Kill the whole deal,” Vic said.

  “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Lenny’s a Phi Tau. He’s a brother. I don’t think he would ever leave us flat broke and out in the cold.”

  “I don’t want to be flat broke and out in the cold,” Vic said. “But I don’t want to be spending the next twenty years in prison either.”

  “That’s not going to happen. You worry too much, my friend. Nobody’s going to find out about anything. Especially Lenny. The way I see it, there’s no reason for him to learn how close we came to ruining his life, and ours. And, by the time anyone who knows what they’re doing comes poking around The Factory, the entire facility will be clean as a whistle. Like it never happened.”

  “You’re sure of that,” Vic said.

  “Positive.”

  “And you’re sure that the little rodent problem, as you so eloquently put it, is being taken care of.”

  “Positive.”

  “Would you care to elaborate, DD? Because, tell you the truth, I’m still really nervous about this whole thing.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “I do. But after the Needleman thing—”

  “That wasn’t my fault,” Colonel Davidson said. “Needleman went rogue on me. If you ever mention that again—”

  “Okay, okay. I just know how things can go wrong sometimes. Incredibly, irreversibly wrong. So tell me how it’s being taken care of. Please. For my own peace of mind. So I can sleep tonight.”

  Colonel Davidson looked at his watch. He’d already tied up the Bat Phone for too long, but Victor sounded panicky. Not a good thing. Victor going off the deep end now would be every bit as threatening to a successful launch as any outside influence. So Davidson decided to go ahead and fill him in on the details, but he needed to do it as quickly as possible, in case there was an emergency on the flight line and someone was trying to get through.

  “Do I need to remind you that all of this is top secret?” Davidson said.

  “I know that, DD. Who do you think you’re talking to, man? I’m in this thing every bit as much as you are. Maybe more. Just tell me how you’re going to get rid of those federal agents. If they find out what’s been going on there in Sycamore Bluff—and you know as well as I do that it won’t take them long to find out—then they’ll notify their director immediately. And then, boom, everyone’s going to know. Tell me how it’s being taken care of, so I don’t have to go out tonight and pick a bridge to jump off of when the time comes.”

  “All right. When we first started on this project, I figured it might be prudent to plant a couple of insiders of my own, a couple of guys who could take care of business for us if anything went wrong. Like an insurance policy, you know? So three months ago these guys, and their wives, were sent to Sycamore Bluff with fake credentials, much in the same way as the operatives from The Circle were sent there last night. They had my endorsement, so they weren’t screened as carefully as Joe Blow off the street would have been. Anyway, the phony creds were first-rate, so it wasn’t a problem getting them in.”

  “Who are these guys?” Vic said. “And why wasn’t I ever told about them before.”

  “Let’s just say they’re not exactly law abiding citizens. I promised them a hundred grand each for three months of work, and they jumped on it. Like I said, they were meant to be an insurance policy. I didn’t figure I would ever need their services, so I didn’t feel the need to tell anyone about them.”

  “Okay. Whatever. So how are you able to communicate with these guys?”

  “I made sure they were put on the monitor team, so they have access to the radio room and they have pass keys to all the residences. They’ve been checking in with me twice a day for the past three months.”

  “And these guys are going to take care of the operatives from The Circle?”

  “Yes. If everything went as planned, it’s happening as we speak. A pair of Ruger nines were on the equipment list for the Millingtons, and I’m assuming they retrieved them from the supplies in the helicopter before the crash. Of all the residents in Sycamore Bluff, they’re the only ones who have guns, and of course the serial numbers are documented. I got a report from one of my guys that John and Karen went to church earlier this evening, so I told my guy to go ahead and implement the plan we’d discussed previously. He’s going to enter the residence while they’re away and hide in the garage. It’ll be dark, but I sent him a pair of night vision goggles with the last supply shipment, so he’ll be able to see perfectly. Sometime after the Millingtons get home, he’s going to trip the main breaker switch and cut the power to the house. One of the Millingtons, John or Karen—probably John, let’s just say John—will head out to the garage to reset the switch, and my guy will then club him over the head with a lamp taken from the living room.”

  “Why a lamp from the living room?” Vic said.

  “So all the forensics line up. Stay with me. John Millington is an operative for The Circle. He’s no dummy, so naturally he’ll have his pist
ol with him when he goes out to the garage to check the breaker. Once my guy knocks him out with the lamp, Karen will hear the ruckus, and she’ll grab her gun and go to the garage to see what’s going on. Keep in mind that the house is still dark. When Karen comes out and finds John on the floor unconscious, my guy will then shoot both of them with John’s gun. It’ll look like the couple got into an argument, and that Karen hit John with the lamp, followed by John shooting Karen and then himself. Typical murder suicide. My guy will then turn the power to the house back on and get out of there. Nobody will miss the Millingtons until tomorrow morning when they don’t show up for work. By that time, the supervisors at The Factory will have explicit instructions to start shutting everything down. The last batch of product should come off the line around eleven a.m., and then the cleanup can begin. It’ll take days, if not weeks, for The Circle to send in another set of operatives to investigate the Kyle Lofton incident. By that time, we’ll be in the clear. All of the product will be out of there.”

  “I have a couple of questions,” Vic said.

  “Make it fast. I need to get off this phone.”

  “There’s obviously going to be a lot of feds around to investigate the murder-suicide, FBI and whatnot, and they’re going to be asking a lot of people a lot of questions. What’s going to stop one of the residents of Sycamore Bluff from spilling his or her guts about the emergency cleanup at The Factory?”

  “The non-disclosure clause in their contracts,” Colonel Davidson said.

  “Are you sure? All it’s going to take is one squealer, and—”

  “Look, every resident in town is going to be paid two million dollars on March first when the experiment ends. That’s four million per couple. A breach of contract—any breach of contract—automatically nullifies the disbursement of funds. You have a copy of the original agreement drawn up by NASA. Read it. It’s right there in black and white. The residents are not going to risk losing their big payday after six long years of hard work. They’re just not. And nobody is going to ask them, out of the blue, if they helped with the cleanup job. Why would anyone randomly ask a question like that? Nobody’s going to ask, and nobody’s going to tell. The original experiment will end in March, as planned, and by that time you and I will be billionaires.”