Fear

by Jeff Abbott

  Nathan let the ice bucket fall to the floor, walked past Miles, threw himself back on the bed. ‘I’ll remember that when you start talking to air.’

  ‘We don’t need trouble with the motel, we don’t need attention, we can’t have anyone remembering us. Do you understand?’

  ‘Sir, yes, sir,’ Nathan said into the pillow. ‘But I can’t calm down. I can’t. I need my meds, man, now.’ Desperation kicked in to his voice.

  ‘Miles, take it easy,’ Celeste said. ‘He can’t help himself…’

  ‘I’m sick of it. Sick of being sick.’ Miles stumbled outside. The air, in May, was still chilly, cooler than the high desert of Santa Fe, and fingers of snow hid in the shadows of the heavy pines and furrows of land between the rental cabins. The air was crisp in his lungs, against his face.

  He walked away from the car, from the motel, from the intermittent swoosh of passing cars heading the final two miles to Yosemite.

  I can’t do this, he thought. I can’t keep them calm and straight and focused. He had no real plan after finding Edward Wallace, and he didn’t want to admit his uncertainty to himself or to the others. How did you expose a conspiracy and have anyone believe you? What if, in bringing Frost to light, he killed the medicine’s chances for acceptance and production because of its illicit creation? What if they got caught just because they went to get food and a television fan recognized Celeste? The whole enterprise was tottering, ready to collapse in rubble and dust, burying him under what he thought had been an impulse, a need to Do the Right Thing.

  He stopped at the motel’s corner, leaned his head against the brick. He took a fortifying breath of mountain air. He could do this. He had to, he had no choice. Celeste needed Frost, so did Nathan. They needed help. They needed him.

  ‘No one really needs anyone,’ Allison said to him from the corner.

  He raised his head and she was leaning against the bricks, dressed in the clothes she had worn the last morning of her life.

  His breath caught in his throat, he shook his head, closed his eyes. Counted to ten.

  He looked again. She was still there, her arms crossed.

  ‘I – I…’ he started to say.

  ‘Miles, your path is clear. It’s simple. Load the gun. Find a private place. Leave a note if there’s anyone you want to say goodbye to – such as DeShawn and Joy. They’d miss you’ – and she shrugged – ‘but they didn’t really know you long enough to care about you.’

  He tried to speak; nothing came but a harsh hiss of breath.

  ‘No one blames you for not wanting to hear Andy bitching in your head for the rest of your life. Years and years of him talking.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re worried about failing your – friends. You worried over failing me. But I failed you, Miles, I gave you false hope.’

  He clenched his eyes shut, ran his fingers along the even lines of the bricks. A man from another room walked by him and Miles felt the burn of his curious stare.

  ‘And that’s all Frost is,’ Allison said. ‘False hope. You don’t really think Nathan is better, do you? He’s not. It doesn’t work.’

  He whispered a prayer. ‘She’s not real, I know she’s not real, even if she was she’d never say these things, it’s the sickness.’

  He opened his eyes and ran into the space where she’d stood, but there was only the Sierra breeze.

  She was gone. He pressed his palms against the brick wall. Nathan and Celeste were real, they were his responsibility. He had to get a grip. If he stayed strong, Celeste and Nathan could stay strong. So they could get the drug. He craved it now; strange to want something you’d never had, but he needed Frost to be real.

  So get moving.

  He walked back to the room. Nathan sat on the bed, watching a celebrity poker tournament on TV.

  ‘Nathan, I’m sorry I yelled.’

  ‘I’ve got five hundred years of bad luck from mirrors,’ Nathan said. ‘You yelling doesn’t scare me.’ He shook his head at Miles with a dawning fear. ‘I haven’t had Frost in days, man, and I’m falling apart. I got to have it, man.’

  ‘Be straight with me. Was it your mom you called?’

  He nodded slowly. ‘You don’t believe me.’

  ‘I was under the impression you didn’t get to talk to your mom at all when you were in the hospital. So I know you didn’t call her every week.’

  ‘True. But I did call her last night. I told you she’d be expecting to hear from me because I didn’t want you to freak that I’d called her.’

  ‘Then I believe you. Try to rest.’

  ‘Miles.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘About your friend that died. You can’t stand there and let someone shoot you. You just protected yourself.’

  ‘There’s a lot more to the story, Nathan.’

  ‘How do you know if you don’t remember?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Window dressing. Are you sorry you’re alive?’

  ‘No. I’m not.’

  ‘There’s your answer, then.’ Nathan closed his eyes.

  Miles went to the open door of Celeste’s room, knocked on the frame. She came out of the bathroom, drying her face with a towel. He closed the door behind him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing to apologize for,’ she said.

  He wanted to tell her he’d seen Allison, but the words dammed in his throat and he swallowed.

  ‘You wanted to change my hair before we go,’ she said. ‘Let’s get it done.’ She went to a bag; they had stopped in Fresno, bought clothing basics and knapsacks at a tweny-four-hour WalMart. She pulled out a pair of nail scissors. ‘You cut my hair, then we’ll dye it.’

  ‘I don’t know how to cut hair,’ he said.

  ‘I haven’t set foot in a stylist’s shop in forever.’ Celeste ran a hand through the thick mop of dark hair. ‘I’m not vain. Just cut it off.’

  ‘I’ll chop away.’

  She grabbed his wrist. ‘Cut, not chop. Big diff.’

  So he wet her hair, because when he got a haircut the stylist wet it, and he started trimming off the length with hesitant snips, almost afraid she would scream in horror if he cut too much at once, taking it slow, loving the heavy dampness of her hair between his fingers. She sat on a chair, in front of the mirror, and he kept a wastebasket under where he cut off the lengths, moving the basket with his foot to catch the falling tresses.

  ‘You’re gonna bite through your lip,’ she said.

  He let his lip go from between his teeth. He cut off a series of locks of her hair, smoothed it back with his fingers, gently rubbing her scalp.

  ‘That feels nice,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  He stopped. A stirring awoke in his chest. His mouth went dry. ‘How short do you want it cut?’

  She watched his face. ‘Most pictures of me, it’s at least shoulder length. It’s how people remember me. Give it a pixie cut.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Cut it boy short. No worries, Miles. I won’t get mad even if you shave me bald.’

  So he cut it short, diving the scissors close to her scalp, leaving a couple of inches of growth, gentle around her ears.

  ‘You’re doing a good job,’ she said.

  ‘I’m getting hair everywhere.’

  ‘You don’t have to be perfect.’

  ‘Why do you cut yourself?’ He kept his eyes on the scissors, poised above her damp hair.

  ‘Better that than seeing dead people,’ she said, and then instantly added, ‘I’m sorry. That was unfair.’

  ‘It’s all right. But I hate to see you hurt yourself.’

  ‘I don’t have an answer. I hate it. Allison said I cut so I would feel again.’

  ‘I hate just a paper cut. Doesn’t it hurt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t you feel anyway? I feel empty.’

  ‘Yet you’re not, Miles. You know that you’re not. Because you’d be dead if you were empty and you fought
to save me, to save yourself. You feel, Miles, but I bet it’s not emptiness.’ She studied him in the mirror. ‘Did you leave a woman behind in Florida?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ever married?’

  ‘No. I try not to be one for needing.’ He smoothed out a length of her hair, trimmed the end of it.

  She ducked her head out from under his hands. ‘You’ve cut off enough of my mop,’ she said. ‘Absolutely horrible. I’m completely unrecognizable. Thank you, I love it.’

  He dusted her threads of hair from his hands into the wastebasket, read the instructions on the hair dye, slathered on the gunk to make her auburn-haired.

  ‘I wish you were giving me red-red hair,’ she said. ‘Like Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett. Never sad watching them on TV.’

  He spread the concoction through her hair and she sat while he rinsed his hands.

  ‘If we don’t find Frost, or Edward Wallace,’ she said, ‘what do we do?’

  ‘You and Nathan go back to Santa Fe and tell the police what happened. You can’t hide forever.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m out of Witness Protection. I guess I’ll go make a new life for myself.’

  ‘Do you have another trial to testify in?’ she asked.

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  ‘It’s a logical question,’ she said. ‘Witnesses are witnesses because they testify.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m supposed to.’

  ‘So you’re not done.’

  ‘No. I still will testify.’

  ‘Then WITSEC will have to protect you again.’

  He would probably be in jail for fighting DeShawn, but he didn’t want to admit it to her. ‘I’m done with WITSEC. I broke their rules. I’ll hide myself.’

  ‘You can’t hide.’

  ‘You hid yourself. Just behind a wall. I’ll do it behind a new identity. Or I’ll go far away. Cyprus. India. Thailand. It doesn’t matter.’

  He sat on the corner of the bed; she stayed in her chair.

  ‘When you killed that man,’ she said, ‘did you have your breakdown right away?’

  He listened to the sound of his own breathing. The walls were painted an awful beige-green. From the other room he heard Nathan’s soft snore. ‘I only remember me speaking, him drawing his gun, me shooting him, him falling, me falling. That’s it. No details. It’s a silent movie with frames missing.’

  ‘So how can you be sure it was so decidedly your fault? He drew his gun.’

  ‘He tells me it was my fault. He told me I killed him with a word. I’m afraid to remember.’

  ‘He’s a figment of your imagination.’

  ‘No. He’s our disease, given life and breath and voice.’

  ‘If we had Frost, right now, would you take it?’

  ‘I – I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know because you don’t want to remember. It might be worse than what you think happened.’

  The confession was still folded in his pocket.

  ‘And you told me a minute ago you couldn’t worry about what people thought,’ she said. ‘I’m people. Quit worrying.’

  ‘I never saw your show.’

  ‘You didn’t miss much.’

  ‘Tell me how you won the five million.’

  ‘No. When this is all over we’ll rent the Season One DVD. I don’t want to give away the ending.’

  ‘I know the ending. You win. Tell me.’

  So she did, chewing up the thirty minutes with talk of secret blocs and voting and backstabbing, and he checked the clock and said, ‘Time to rinse your hair.’

  She stood. He jetted on the faucet and she ducked her head underneath while he cupped the water and rinsed the dye from her hair. She toweled her hair and made the wet cut spiky with her fingers. She looked different enough from the woman in the newspaper photos to pass a casual inspection.

  ‘You can tell me about the shooting, Miles. I won’t hate you. I couldn’t hate you.’ She turned and her face was inches from his. ‘I couldn’t hate you. Ever.’

  ‘You should know,’ Andy hissed in his ear, ‘that I’m never going to let you get close to another person again.’

  Miles flinched. ‘We can talk about it later. Let’s find Edward Wallace.’

  He pulled the thin phone book from the side-table drawer. It covered the scattering of communities near Yosemite. He ran a finger along the residential listings. ‘Edward Wallace. He’s listed. Not trying to hide.’

  ‘We could just call him and ask him about Allison.’

  ‘No. I don’t want him shoving us off. You and Nathan stay here.’

  ‘I want to come with you.’

  ‘No. It could be dangerous,’ he said. ‘Besides, I’m experienced at getting information out of people, you’re not. Please.’

  The hurt shone in her face. ‘Well, sure, since you’re so experienced. I’ll just sit in my disguise and talk to myself.’ She crossed her arms and sat down.

  ‘I’ll come back with Frost,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, great,’ she said as he shut the door.

  Celeste stood at the window and watched him go. Then she went back inside and stood over Nathan, curled in quiet sleep. Gently she touched his cheek, as if to reassure herself that he was still there. Then she found Edward Wallace’s address in the phone book and wrote a note for Nathan. She put it by his bedside and he opened his eyes and reached out and grabbed her arm.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going to help Miles.’

  ‘No, Celeste. Stay.’ His voice was quiet; not jagged.

  ‘Let go of my arm, Nathan.’

  He didn’t. ‘You need to stay. This is over now, Celeste, and you’ll be safe.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She tried to free her arm; Nathan tightened his grip.

  ‘I did it for all of us. He’ll be here soon.’

  ‘What have you done-’ She wrenched free from him, hit him in the chest, spun for the door. She opened it and saw Groote – the man from Santa Fe – running toward the room from the motel office, his eyes lasered on hers. She slammed the door, fumbled to engage the chain lock, missing, and then Groote powered against the door with all his muscle and fury and she landed hard on the worn carpet.

  He leveled a gun at Celeste’s head.

  Nathan threw himself at Groote, and Groote whipped the pistol hard across Nathan’s face, cutting his cheek. He kicked Nathan, pile-driving him onto Celeste.

  Groote closed the door, threw the dead bolt, aimed the gun at them.

  ‘Hi, Nathan. Don’t light any fires. Nice to see you again, Mrs. Brent. Don’t scream.’ His smile chilled Celeste’s skin. ‘We need to talk.’

  FORTY-ONE

  Edward Wallace’s windows needed a scrubbing. The sides of the bungalow cried for a fresh coat of paint. But a gleaming Mercedes stood in the driveway, at odds with the tumbledown air of the home. Not a home; just a house where someone lived.

  Miles remembered Allison’s neat tidiness; he couldn’t picture her at this house. But then, she’d lived a lie; he didn’t know the real Allison at all.

  Miles went up to the porch, knocked. He heard a shuffle of footsteps; the door opened a crack. Miles saw a sliver of face: blue eye, blond hair, unshaven cheek.

  ‘Mr. Wallace?’

  ‘It’s Doctor.’

  ‘My apologies. Doctor Wallace. We need to talk.’

  ‘I don’t believe in God or fund raisers.’ He shut the door.

  Miles leaned forward, spoke low against the door frame. ‘Allison sent me. Or I guess you call her Renee.’

  Four beats of silence. Then the door opened.

  Edward Wallace matched the picture of the man in the wedding photo; tall with a thin, intellectual face and the lean build of a marathon runner. He held a sleek automatic pistol in his hand, aimed at Miles’s stomach. It trembled in his grip.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Miles Kendrick. I knew your wife. At least, I thought I did.’

>   Edward Wallace bit his lip. ‘You’re the federal witness.’

  Miles kept his surprise off his face. ‘Allison told you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you mind pointing your friend away from me, Doctor Wallace?’

  Wallace lowered the gun. ‘I would have missed. I don’t know anything about guns.’

  ‘I have about a thousand questions for you,’ Miles said.

  ‘Well, I have only one answer. You and I are both dead men,’ Wallace said, ‘unless we help each other.’

  FORTY-TWO

  ‘You gave me a chase, man.’ Groote knelt down near Nathan, keeping the gun firmly aimed at Celeste’s head. ‘Now. No more fighting, okay? It only hurts us both.’

  Nathan’s mouth trembled. ‘No. No.’

  ‘Thinking about the time we spent together?’ Groote said. ‘I don’t enjoy hurting people. But no pain for you, no gain for me. Talk to me, and I won’t get out Mr. Screwdriver again. At least not on you.’ He grabbed Celeste, who had wriggled free from under Nathan.

  ‘Don’t,’ Nathan said. ‘Don’t hurt her.’

  ‘Then help me, Nathan.’ He ran the gun barrel along the top of Celeste’s new haircut. ‘But I want to know where Frost and Miles Kendrick are.’

  ‘Miles is gone,’ Celeste said before Nathan could answer.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To get Frost,’ Celeste said.

  ‘You’re cooperative, Mrs. Brent,’ Groote said.

  Celeste swallowed. ‘I don’t want you to shoot us.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘An hour. Not sure,’ Celeste said.

  ‘You were in a tear-ass hurry to leave when you came out of the door,’ Groote said. ‘I heard you loved the great indoors.’

  ‘Nathan works my last nerve,’ she said.

  ‘He has that effect,’ Groote said. ‘But you’re working my nerve. You people chose the wrong guy to screw with-’

  The phone rang.

  ‘Let it be,’ Groote ordered.

  ‘If it’s Miles,’ she said quietly, ‘he’ll expect me to answer. He’ll wonder where we are. I don’t answer, he’ll be on his guard.’

  Groote shoved her toward the phone. ‘Answer it. You warn him, I put a bullet in Tin Soldier.’ He grabbed Nathan’s hair, jerked the young man close to him, jabbed the gun hard against Nathan’s temple.