Betrayed by Trust

by Frankie Robertson

  “You name it. The kids are in school. Greg is on deadline. Steve just started a new job and can’t get time off. Bob can’t leave without telling all his people to go, and they have a shipment to get out. And, of course, the radio said there’s no danger.”

  I sat down. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t ask Dan to leave his family behind.

  “Take me over to Sissy and Bob’s,” Gran said. “They’re just up in Middletown. It’s a little farther away from TMI, and I can keep working on Sissy. She trusts my hunches more than the others. If I can get her to go, the others will fall in line.”

  Dan frowned, but before he could say anything, I put my hand over Gran’s and said, “I’d rather you came with us.”

  She sandwiched my hand between hers. “Danny found a good one when he found you, dear. Thank you, but I still have chicks to look after, even if it’s more like herding cats.”

  A few minutes later we were on the road, Gran riding shotgun because she knew the way. As we turned north onto PA 441, she pointed past Dan, who was driving, at the cooling towers rising from the sandbar in the middle of the river. “Look. There’s no steam coming from number two.”

  I didn’t have to ask if that was unusual. Traffic going past the power plant in both directions had slowed, as drivers rubber-necked to see what might be going on across the water. A police car followed by an ambulance sped by going south, but they didn’t take the causeway to the island. Then we were past the plant and traffic picked up again. Twenty minutes later we pulled up in front of Aunt Sissy’s gray and white clapboard house northeast of Middletown.

  Sissy welcomed us with cookies and hot cocoa, and her Golden Retriever, Jasper, greeted us with licks and nose nudges. I twisted Mark’s MIA bracelet, fidgeting in my need to get going.

  Dan murmured near my ear, “We’ll just stay a few minutes. Maybe we can change Sissy’s mind.”

  His words reassured me, and I shivered as his warm breath on my neck reminded me of last night’s lovemaking, when I still felt safe and secure.

  I nodded. I didn’t want to delay for even a moment, but I also didn’t want to be seen as a troublemaker, the new spouse who couldn’t get along with the family, who wasn’t polite enough to accept a moment of hospitality. “Maybe we can use her phone,” I murmured back. “We need to change our flight out.”

  The four of us, plus Jasper, sat in the formal parlor. Sissy took down a pet gate to let us in. I didn’t think anyone had been in the room since the Eisenhower administration except to dust.

  I tried to sit quietly as my mother had taught me to when visiting older relatives, but after ten minutes of polite chit-chat between Gran and Sissy and Dan about everything but the elephant in the room, I was a wreck. Why was Dan dawdling? Why wasn’t Gran telling Sissy she had to go?

  Jasper came over to me and put his head in my lap. I couldn’t not smile at him, and the feel of his silky ears under my fingers soothed my nerves a little. He looked at the little plate beside my cup, which still had half a peanut butter cookie on it, licked his lips, and rolled his big brown eyes at me. I had to laugh.

  “Is this what you want?” I said, picking up the cookie.

  “What do you say, Jasper?” Sissy asked.

  Jasper made a peculiar sound deep in his throat that was half whine, half growl.

  “That’s the way he says, ‘please,’” Sissy said.

  “Well, since you ask so nicely,” I said, and gave him the cookie.

  Jasper took it with great delicacy and munched it happily. Then, with my plate empty, he lay down at my feet with a sigh.

  Sissy continued her detailed account of organizing the local flower show. I finished the last of my cocoa, and stopped the nervous wiggling of my foot for the fourth time. When Sissy finally took a breath, I jumped into the conversation. “Didn’t you want to make a call, sweetheart?”

  “Sure.” Dan stood up with an abruptness that told me he’d just been waiting for an opening.

  Sissy waved him off to the kitchen phone, and Dan left the room. A long fifteen minutes later, he returned. “I got us on a flight to O’Hare. We can surprise your folks.”

  “That’s great,” I said, but Dan’s expression told me there was another shoe getting ready to drop. “What?”

  “It’s not until seven thirty.”

  I shot to my feet. “That’s eight hours from now!” The room tilted abruptly, then Dan was by my side, guiding me back down into my chair. “I’m really getting tired of that,” I grumbled.

  “Don’t worry,” Sissy said. “The dizziness usually goes away after a few months.”

  “Or maybe it’s just that when we start getting bigger we can’t stand up very fast.” Gran added.

  “That’s something to look forward to,” Dan’s said.

  The room steadied again. “What, me getting bigger?”

  Dan chuckled. “I think the correct answer is: there will just be more of you to love.”

  Gran laughed. “I always said you were a quick study. Anyone for gin rummy?”

  “No,” I said, getting up more carefully this time. “No cards. We’re not waiting to fly out. We’re leaving now. We’ll drive to Philadelphia. Fly out from there.”

  The humor faded from Dan’s face.

  “Trust me on this. The emergency isn’t under control. Whatever is happening over there at TMI, it could still go either way, and I’m not waiting around to find out if my baby is going to be irradiated. If it all goes to hell, we’re too close here.”

  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Sissy asked. “The man on the radio said—”

  “I don’t care what the moron on the radio said! I’m not going to put my head in the sand and expose myself and my baby to God knows what levels of radiation!”

  Gran raised her brows at my outburst, and Sissy looked shocked. I didn’t give a rat’s ass anymore. Dan put a warm, steadying hand on my back.

  I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” I said in a slightly calmer tone. “But this really isn’t open for debate.” I looked at Dan, hoping I wouldn’t see flat refusal there, but he was looking at his grandmother.

  “Sissy,” Gran said, “Marianne gets hunches, like I do.”

  Aunt Sissy’s eyes widened. “Oh—”

  The doorbell rang, and I jumped. Dan took my hand in his warm one, while his aunt and Jasper went to see who was at the door. I squeezed Dan’s fingers as they curled around mine. His touch soothed my nerves, and, for that moment, I felt as though nothing bad could happen as long as he held my hand. I smiled at him sheepishly, embarrassed at pitching a fit. His wink told me he understood. A few moments later Sissy came back, followed by Jasper and a man in a dark suit. He carried himself like Dan did, in a way I’d come to recognize as former military.

  “This man says he’s here to take you somewhere,” Sissy said.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Collier?” the man asked.

  Dan stepped in front of me, his posture alert and ready. “Yes?”

  “I’m Thornton, from the Harrisburg office. I have a car waiting. Mr. Kincaid contacted us. He thought you might need some assistance evacuating the area.”

  I glanced from Thornton to Dan. Dan’s expression was a neutral mask. “That was very thoughtful of him,” he said.

  “Oh dear,” Sissy said. Her gaze met Gran’s, then skittered from Dan, to Thornton, then back to Gran. “Evacuating? This sounds serious. Maybe I should call Bob.”

  “Maybe you should,” Gran said. “And Greg and Steve, while you’re at it.”

  “I’ll get our bags.” Dan led Thornton back to the front hall.

  When Dan returned, Gran said, “You must be pretty important for your boss to send a car for you.”

  “Not me, it’s Marianne. She keeps the place running.” Dan smiled so convincingly, I almost believed him.

  He hugged his gran, then his aunt Sissy. “I’m sorry our visit was cut short. Next time we’ll stay longer.”

  I felt a surge of anxiety when he said that,
though I could see no reason for it. Then it was my turn to kiss Gran and Sissy goodbye. “Are you sure you won’t come with us?” I asked Gran.

  “No, dear. I’ll stay and help Sissy herd the family out of the area.” Then Gran speared me with a sharp look. “Don’t you worry about us. You take care of each other and your baby. No matter what.”

  I wondered if she’d had one of her premonitions, but now wasn’t the time to ask. “We will.”

  When Dan and I finally made our way outside, Thornton opened the rear door of the big black Cadillac for us. I wanted to ask how Kincaid had known where to send the car, but there was something in Dan’s expression that made me decide to hold my questions until later.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MARIANNE

  Four months later, early August

  What do you think of this one?” Janna held up a pink onesey embroidered with a heart and the words, “Daddy’s Girl.” The two of us were enjoying a Saturday afternoon shopping trip, something we’d done too seldom in the last few months. We’d already made a stop in Mother’s World, a maternity clothing store, now we’d moved on to Baby’s World.

  “I’m having a boy,” I said, but I took the tiny terrycloth outfit from her and smiled. I could just imagine how a little girl would wrap Dan around her finger.

  “Have you decided on a name, yet?”

  “Evan, for Dan’s grandfather.”

  “You never know,” Janna said. “Those tests are wrong sometimes. You might have to call her Evangeline. They told my sister she was having a girl. She got everything in pink. Her husband had to return a ton of stuff before they brought Charlie home from the hospital.”

  I didn’t argue, even though it wasn’t just the ultrasound that told me I was having a boy. I knew. “Okay. I can always use it as a baby gift for someone else.”

  My friend had already moved on. The bell on the door jangled announcing a new customer as Janna held up a box with a picture of a woman with a band across her chest and a bottle dangling from each breast. Big blue letters labeled it a hands-free breast pump bra. “Are you going to need one of these?” Then she looked past me and her eyes widened.

  I turned to see Barry standing behind me, looking slightly horrified. His gaze darted from the box to my chest then back to the box before he finally looked me in the eyes.

  “Uh, hi,” he said.

  I didn’t want to be rude, but couldn’t stop myself. “What are you doing here, Barry?”

  “I was on my way into the office and I saw your car. I thought I’d stop and get you a baby gift.” He picked up a teddy bear from a display. “What do you need?” He glanced at Janna, who was openly listening to every word.

  Baby’s World was not on the way to the office from Barry’s place, and what was he doing going in on a Saturday? I frowned at his clumsy lie and started meandering away from Janna. Barry followed. When we were out of earshot, I picked up a set of baby monitors and held it in front of me like a shield. “Are you following me?”

  Barry took the box from me. “No. I came to give you a heads up.” He lowered his voice. “Dan may be doing some overtime for a while. There was an explosion at the headquarters of Le Premier Industries. Lucius Altesse was seriously injured.”

  A chill shivered down my spine. “Conrad?”

  Barry’s gaze sharpened. “You have feelings for him?”

  “What do you care?”

  “He was a target, Marianne. A sperm donor. You don’t know him.”

  And what did that make me? An incubator? “He was nice. I’d hate to see him killed.”

  “He’ll have to die for junior there to inherit Aldwyn.”

  I rubbed a hand over my tummy. “Preferably not until junior is old enough to handle it.”

  Barry shrugged.

  “So? Was Conrad there?”

  He shook his head. “He was supposed to be, but he was late. At least that’s what we’re hearing.”

  A horrible thought made me feel a little queasy. “It wasn’t the Trust, was it?”

  Barry shook his head. “I doubt it. That’s not the way Foxworth works.”

  “Thank goodness.” I didn’t want to work for an organization that would resort to murder to achieve its goals.

  “But the Path will probably blame the Trust anyway.”

  “All right, Marianne. Hold this,” Kalisa handed me a metal model of a horse that was also a coin bank. “Do you get anything from it, like who it belongs to?”

  As usual, I tried to open myself to whatever I might sense. As usual, I felt nothing. It was just an interesting and cold piece of metal. “No. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She spread a map of Oregon on the desk in front of me. “Now take one hand and move your fingers slowly over the map and tell me if you feel anything.”

  I was seated at her desk in her bright and sunny office. I did as she asked, running my fingers back and forth over the paper, a few millimeters above the surface.

  After Dan and I had returned from our interrupted honeymoon, Kincaid had added training my nascent psychic ability to my duties. I no longer had free time for playing Adventure. When I wasn’t logging invoices and other data into the computer, I was with Kalisa being tested, or honing my intuition. Kalisa had tested me to see if I could see remotely, if I could predict the sequence of Zener cards both in isolation and with a partner, and if I could move small objects with my mind.

  Almost universally, the tests were a bust. Whatever ability I had was elusive, apparently centered only on events that affected me directly. Kalisa wasn’t discouraged, though, and she always had something new to try. The map test was meant to find objects and people from a distance.

  Once again, however, I didn’t detect a thing. My fingers reached the bottom of the large map without any hint of finding the owner of the bank. I dropped my hand into my lap. “Sorry. Nothing.”

  “That’s fine. Try this one.” She pulled another large map out of the stack. This one was of the state of Washington.

  I half closed my eyes, putting myself into a kind of unfocused, there-but-not-there, state. I wanted to feel something, to have something to show for all the time we’d been working, but I didn’t want to imagine a result that wasn’t real.

  A distinct sensation pulled my fingertip to the paper as if it were drawn by an invisible magnet. “Oh!” Excited, I opened my eyes, and then frowned, disappointed. My hand had drifted from Washington to the stack of maps off to the side. My finger was stuck on a city in British Columbia.

  “Does that invalidate the test?”

  Kalisa frowned. “No.” She rummaged in a drawer, then pulled out a huge, detailed street map of Vancouver. She unfolded it, then put it in front of me, replacing the previous one. “Try this.”

  Without thinking, I put aside the metal horse so I could use both hands to run over the street map. Kalisa’s brows rose, but she didn’t say anything.

  I glanced at the horse and shrugged. “I don’t need it for this.” I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did.

  I repeated the test with the city map. Within a few seconds both of my index fingers were drawn to the same place, and as they zeroed in on the intersection of two streets a wave of dread washed over me. I stiffened and drew back.

  “What is it?”

  “Something bad is going to happen there.”

  Kalisa frowned again, but took note of the location I’d pointed to. “Do you know what?”

  I bit my lip. The feeling I’d experienced was cold. Deadly. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was going to happen. “No.”

  “Can you try?”

  I spread my hand over the place where the sensation was strongest, but all I felt was a sense of utter cold. There was nothing useful for me to hold on to. I fisted my hands on the map. “What good is being psychic if it doesn’t give me enough information to do anyone any good?”

  Kalisa patted my hand. “I think that’s enough for one day.”

  I pulled my hands away fr
om the map, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of anxiety. “That didn’t have anything to do with who owns the metal horse, did it?”

  Kalisa shook her head. “I don’t know what that was about.”

  I returned to my desk. The feeling of dread lingered, hanging over me, and I caught myself staring into space more than once, the cursor on my computer screen blinking impatiently.

  Two hours later, an all staff meeting was called in the boardroom. Formerly the Victorian mansion’s parlor, the boardroom’s wood paneling, Lincrusta ceiling, and art deco wallpaper had been carefully restored. Brass and crystal chandeliers reflected in the polished wood of the long conference table. A dozen of the top staff sat in the padded leather chairs. One of those sitting was Barry. He’d been promoted two months earlier to assistant chief of the chapter’s department of field investigations. His attempt to foul Foxworth’s plans for me hadn’t hurt his career in the least. The rest of us stood around the periphery, overflowing into the dining room through the open pocket doors. I chose a spot along the wall behind Barry so we wouldn’t have to look at each other for however long this meeting lasted. An all staff meeting was rare, and most of those present looked at their neighbors curiously, asking if anyone knew what was going on.

  When Dan arrived, he made his way through the crowd to my side. He stood close, but didn’t put his arm around me. I wanted, as much as possible, for people to regard me as a fellow professional, not as his wife. It was getting more difficult to dress for the office since I’d started having to wear looser clothes a month ago; there wasn’t a lot of career-oriented maternity wear out there. Tony, the head accountant, glanced over his shoulder and saw me, then stood and offered me his chair. A beat later Barry started to rise, too.

  I wanted to say no thanks to Tony’s offer, I was only five months pregnant, not an invalid, but Dan pushed me forward with a slight pressure on my back. I didn’t want to sit next to Barry, but I accepted Tony’s offer rather than make a scene.

  When everyone had crowded into the room, Mr. Kincaid joined us. The group fell silent. Into the quiet our director said, “An hour ago, while on a trip to our Vancouver office, Mr. Foxworth was killed.”