Ashes (9 page)

In a way, he did not mind. Welcomed it, in fact. It brought his instincts back into sharper focus. Anxious as he was to start on the mission, there was no hurry. He and Robert had talked about it, and they both knew that a cold trail suited his purposes better than a warm one. “They’ll still be watching their backs,” Robert said. “There’s nothing official linking them, but they know better than to let down their guard. You’d do better to wait a while. You stand a better chance of working your way in.”

So he waited. It was hard, because there was nothing concrete to tell him when it was time. No dossier from his superiors, no phone call. He could not even risk a letter or phone call to Robert, though if the penalty would have fallen on his head alone he might have tried it. But he could not put Robert at any more risk, especially now.

He did not wait for things to become safe. There was no such thing as safety. There was only an acceptable level of danger. His prey would never let down their guard completely, and his former employers would never stop watching him. All he could hope for was that he would have enough time and wiliness to throw pursuit off his trail and lose himself in the world of his prey.

Sean bided his time, kept up appearances, and made arrangements quietly. Erased the hard drive of his computer and destroyed all correspondence, no matter how old, taking special precautions to leave no trace of communications with Robert or Monique. Bought timers for his lights and television. Set up a bank account and arranged for his utilities to be paid directly out of it. Went shopping, paid cash, slipped the supplies he needed for the job in with ordinary household items. Got the money and papers he needed from his hiding places.

There came a morning in early September, when the Florida air hung thick with humidity. Robert had once told him about a rainstorm down in Brazil, when the water came down so heavily that people actually suffocated. Sean hadn’t believed it, but on some Florida mornings he conceded such a thing might happen.

He woke, not drifting up from sleep but all at once, as he always did. It was time. There was nothing to tell him this. He simply knew.
Go. Now.
It didn’t take him long to get ready; his preparations were well-made. He showered, dressed, called a cab, gathered up his two travel bags. He looked like a man headed for the airport, on business or perhaps to visit his aged mother. Stopped at a diner on the edge of town, perused a newspaper’s classified ads, made a few calls from the pay phone. Sean found a man who wanted to sell a van, wanted cash fast, no questions asked and as little paperwork as possible. An unsavory type, no doubt, but he would be dealing with a lot of unsavory types from now on.

Once in the van, Sean drove north. He did not look back once, not when he left the county that had been his home for four years, not when he crossed the border into Georgia. He knew that no matter how things ended, he would never see the house in Florida again. He would miss the DVD collection in the months ahead, but beyond that he had no regrets whatsoever.

Because he was doing the right thing. He was sure of it. Though he was not superstitious, he felt he’d been given a sign. At the diner he’d found the latest issue of
People
magazine. On the cover, a photo of the bombed building in Los Angeles.
Six Months Later...
the headline read. On page 32, a
Where are they now?
feature. Two photos of Jennifer Thomson. The first was
the
photo, the icon. The second a blurred, grainy picture, obviously taken by an amateur with a cell phone, Jennifer walking with her head down and holding a cardboard moving box. The caption read,
Jennifer Thomson’s narrow escape from the building captured the attention of the entire nation. She received considerable criticism for selling the rights to her story, which is currently being optioned for a book and a movie for television. Ms. Thomson did not return phone calls for this article. Her agent, Amber LaSalle of Ellis and Associates Representation, said that Ms. Thomson has moved to British Columbia, Canada.

He took the magazine from the diner, and now it lay on the passenger seat of the van. British Columbia. It would make bringing the perpetrator to her a bit more difficult, but he could not blame her. He’d been to British Columbia twice, both times for pleasure rather than business. Once for R&R after a particularly dangerous mission; once for a weekend with Monique, when they’d both happened to be in Vancouver. He’d always wanted to go back there. So cool and green, so quiet. Peaceful. A good place to start over. For that was what she’d done, taken what she could and started over.

Go on, Jennifer,
Sean thought as the road north unrolled before him.
Lick your wounds, and don’t worry. I’ll make sure you get justice.

M
ining was a business of rock and dirt, Jennifer mused, but you wouldn’t have known it from the offices of Salto Family Mining Supply. The lobby was glass bricks and brushed chrome, pale gray cubicles, and a steel-blue carpet that had recently been steam-cleaned; a faint smell of cleaning solvent still hung in the air. Other than the name on the door, the only hints at the company’s nature were the catalogs and brochures, arranged in an attractive fan shape on the lobby table, and a few trade publications. While she waited, she picked up one of the trades.
Ornamental and Miscellaneous Metal Fabricator.
Now that was some light reading.

Jennifer hadn’t expected the owner, Alex Salto, to look the way he did. A whiff of cologne preceded him, and he stood in the lobby, smiling, running a hand casually through his thick black hair. “You must be Jennifer. How nice to see you.” His dark eyes had a dancing light in them; he seemed to be contemplating some secret but pleasing prospect. His teeth were a little too white, a movie star’s smile, but perhaps that was just the contrast between his smile and his black mustache.

She stood, held out her hand. “Yes, I’m Jennifer. It’s good to meet you.” They shook hands; his hand was not soft but smooth, uncallused; she let go before he did.

“Care for some coffee?” he asked as they sat down in his office. His leather upholstered chair creaked as he settled into it.

“No, thanks.”

“Tea? Water?”

“No, thank you very much.”

Alex shrugged, gave her a grin. When he spoke, his voice was as smooth as his hands. “Well then, let me tell you about our little enterprise. I say little, but actually we’re the second largest mining supply company on the Sunshine Coast. We provide supplies for copper mining mostly. Do you have any copper jewelry? No, I can tell it’s not your color. Anyway, as you can see.” He gestured around the room with a casual wave, and she noticed that his nails were manicured. “This is just the business end of things. You won’t be getting dirty here. The job’s mostly files, phones, setting up client meetings, that sort of thing. Can you do all that?”

“Yes, I can. It’s all down there in the resumé.”

“Ah.” He picked up the resumé from his desk and glanced at it. She had the feeling this was the first time he’d given it a serious look. “What’s your typing speed?”

“Seventy-five words per minute.”

“Fast fingers. I like that.”

She didn’t quite know what to make of that, so she said nothing, gave an uncertain smile. He smiled back, offered her his hand again. “Well, Jennifer, welcome to Salto Family. You can start Monday. Sound good to you?”

“Sure,” she said.

* * *

T
echnically, she didn’t have to take the job. She supposed she didn’t have to work at all, at least not for a while. Amber LaSalle had done her work well, and there had been enough money for the move, to lease the house at 314 Douglas, to get some new furniture and odds and ends. There had been enough for a car, one of the new VW beetles. Her brother Jim, an accountant, had helped her invest the rest.

But once the unpacking was done and the new furniture and dishes purchased she found herself sitting in her house with an entire day and evening ahead of her and nothing to fill the time.

She felt like kicking herself. She had, at least for a while, what most people would kill for — the time and money to pursue whatever she wanted. Except there was nothing she could think of to want. She knew what she
should
do. Write a novel. Learn to paint. Take up needlework. Read the great works of literature, for real this time instead of the Cliffs Notes. Sign up for guitar lessons. Start puttering around in the kitchen, see if she couldn’t whip up something on that big stove besides TV dinners. Go to the craft store and buy things like dried flowers and ribbons and glitter, make cute decorations for her new lodgings. Anything.

But she knew how to do none of these things. It didn’t occur to her that she could learn. Set adrift, surrounded by flotsam, she grabbed at the buoy that was most familiar and the one that seemed most likely to keep her afloat, and climbed aboard as an admin for Salto Family Mining Supply.

“Salto Mining? Oh, they’ve been around since my grandma’s time,” said Suzanne, as she took the foil off a plate of brownies and put the plate on the dining room table. She was watching Hannah and David Reisman again, as well as the Joplin twins from two blocks over. “Around for donkey’s years, as Bill would say. I’m sure Alex will give you the whole song and dance if he hasn’t already.”

“What song and dance is that?” asked Jennifer as Suzanne poured milk for the children and coffee for herself and Jennifer.

“Oh, the usual. Grandfather immigrated to Canada and built the business out of nothing.” Suzanne shrugged, raised her voice slightly over the children’s clamoring for brownies and polite
Thank you Mrs. Delacroixs
. “You’re lucky. Jobs are kind of tight up here now. When do you start?”

Monday, she went in and Alex introduced her to the rest of the staff. Brandy, who handled billing, Tracy in accounting, Cammie and Betty who handled the orders, Darren and Phil the sales reps. Alex took her to lunch that first day and as Suzanne had predicted, gave her the song and dance. Told her all about his grandfather, Renaldo, who emigrated from Portugal with nothing much beyond the clothes on his back and became a self-made millionaire. Told her about his second home, up in the woods, he held a New Year’s Eve party there every year and she should be sure to come, it would be a blast. Noticed that she was from the States, told her about his last trip to Seattle, how bad the traffic was getting. Later, she realized he hadn’t asked her a single thing about herself.

* * *

A
drift, she sought the cold comfort of routine. Each morning she woke, showered, drank coffee, drove to work. She filed, made coffee, ordered supplies, and mailed out letters. She typed up press releases, interpreting Alex’s illegible scrawl as best she could, smiling at the compliments he paid her, politely refusing his suggestion that they go out for a drink some time. She brought her lunch three days a week and ate out with the office girls the other two days. They ate pasta or Chinese or salads, and all they knew about her was what she told them. After work she drove home, made her simple dinner, soup or a sandwich or a microwave entrée. She drank wine and watched TV. Not the news, never that; not the U.S. news with its wars and rumors of war, not the Canadian news which still seemed to her a broadcast from a foreign country. She watched sitcoms and
Jeopardy.
Sometimes she rented movies, romantic comedies the details of which she could not recall later beyond boy-wins-girl-back and happily-ever-after. Sometimes in spite of three or four glasses of wine she lay awake for an hour or more before dozing off, but when she did sleep it was deeply and without dreams.

On weekends she slept late. Mowed her tiny lawn, swept the walk, pulled weeds. Asked Suzanne’s advice about the coming winter, and what clothes she would need. She shopped for those clothes, boots and scarves and wool pants, did it feeling like she was buying presents for someone else. She could not truly believe that she would have cold and snow this winter, for her time in Haven Cove still felt unreal, like a vacation. It did not feel like home. She had not made it her home yet.

Sometimes she woke, lay staring at the ceiling. Her bedroom was the one room her predecessors had not worked their decorative will on. Nor had she, for she could not think of what she wanted the room to become. So it remained a white box, and some mornings, as she looked up at the ceiling, its tiny cracks and textures already familiar, she felt unable to move, as if she lay under something far heavier than a duvet. There was no fear, no sensation of being crushed or trapped. Just immobility, a strangely free sensation, for if she could not move, that also meant she didn’t have to.

* * *

S
he’d been at work for a month, was reviewing the morning’s schedule when Amber LaSalle called. “Jennifer. How are you?”

“Fine, Amber.”

“Keeping busy? Not too busy, I hope?”

“No, not too bad.”

“Oh, that’s good to hear. Listen, I was wondering if you would be coming back to California for the holidays. Have a nice, warm Christmas.”

Though Amber was always polite and did her work well, Jennifer couldn't quite make up her mind how she felt about Amber. Jennifer was never comfortable with the deal she had made and consequently never comfortable with Amber either. “I could make it down there for a few days. Let me put in the vacation request.”

“Let me know the details as soon as you can. I’ve got a ghostwriter lined up for the book we discussed. He’s terrific.”

“Thanks, Amber. I have to go, I’ll call you in a few days to set things up. Bye.” Jennifer hung up quickly. She never could talk to Amber for very long, and it wasn’t Amber’s fault. Amber’s voice always brought Jennifer back to her visit to the bombed building, when the air was still heavy with the scent of destruction, to the billboard with its pictures of the dead, and Madeline Danvers asking her how she liked being famous.

There was no point in thinking about any of it now. It was the past. She busied herself with the schedule, and when Alex sauntered in she asked him about having a few days off around Christmas.