Standing in the Shadows (31 page)

Chuck Whitehead pulled to a stop at the wide spot in the deserted road, not far from the Childress Ridge Lookout. He kept focusing on irrelevant things, like the colored plastic ribbons that the Forest Service tied around the trees. His hands were clammy. He felt the constant urge to pee. The last ten hours kept running through his mind like an endless video loop, ever since he'd gotten home from his job at the DNA lab. He'd said good-bye to the hospice home health aide who looked after his wife Mariah while he was at work, headed upstairs to check on her—and found a gun shoved up beneath his chin.

The man who held the gun had told him what to do, and he had done it. Every last detail. He had the proof inside his jacket. He could show them. He was cooperating.

He flipped off the headlights so as not to run down the battery, and was horrified by the near-absolute darkness. The hills hunched over him were black, the sky barely lighter. It was overcast tonight.

The man had told him that this was where they would give Mariah back to him, but how could they have transported someone as fragile as Mariah to such a deserted place? She'd been on oxygen support with a morphine drip for over two weeks now.

But the man had told him to come here, so here he was.

No police, the man had said. One word to the police, and Mariah would die.

Time crawled by, marked by his thudding heart, by his labored breathing, by the digital clock blinking on the dash. Someone knocked on the back window. He jumped and screamed.

He had done what was asked of him, he reminded himself. No one could fault him. He opened the door, forced himself to stand. The dim light shed by the interior car light blinded him and revealed nothing.

"Shut the door, please," said a soft, cultured voice. An older man. Upper crust, Englishy-sounding foreign accent. It was the same guy who had come to his house. South African, maybe. He shut the door. He had dated a South African girl once, his brain offered, hysterically irrelevant. Her name had been Angela. Same accent. Nice girl. His life was flashing before his eyes. Not a good sign.

His eyes were beginning to adjust. He made out a tall, thin figure in black. He appeared to be wearing a device that covered his eyes.

"Are you South African?" The words popped out, and he cursed himself. He might have just killed them both, asking useless questions.

The man was silent. "No, Mr. Whitehead," he said finally. "I am not. Because I do not exist. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he said quickly. "Of course."

The man came closer, reached for him. Chuck flinched, and then realized he was being patted down for weapons. What a ludicrous idea. Him, and weapons. The man satisfied himself as to Chuck's unarmed state, and headed off into the darkness. "Come with me," he said.

"Is Mariah here?"

The man did not answer. The gate creaked as he pushed it open. His feet crunched in the gravel. Chuck stumbled after him. If he lost the sound of those footsteps, he would lose Marian forever. He was losing her anyway, but not so horribly, so inconclusively. Not like this.

"Excuse me? Uh, sir? Please wait up. I can't see anything. Excuse me! Sir? I don't know your name—" Chuck tripped and fell, scraped his hands bloody, and got up. The steady, crunching footsteps were getting further away. He forced himself to a lurching run.

"You may call me Mr. Dobbs," the voice said gently.

Chuck followed the voice through the dark, ahead and to the right. Mr. Dobbs. His nightmare had a name. The lookout tower loomed above him. The trees made the darkness even denser. He stumbled into a pole, bashed his face, and whimpered. He would never find the road out again without help.

"Mr. Whitehead?"

The voice came from ahead of him, to his left. Dobbs must have night vision goggles to negotiate this pitch darkness.

"Hold out your left hand. You will find a wooden plank. Follow it toward my voice."

Dobbs's voice was helpful, encouraging. He caught himself feeling grateful, like a whipped dog that licked its tormentor's foot. He groped around, knocked his knuckles against a plank, and stumbled forward.

An eternity of splinters and shuffling.

"Stop, now. Put your hands in front of you," Dobbs commanded. "You will feel the rungs of a ladder. Climb it."

Panic weakened his knees. He was getting further, not closer, to any sort of place that his wife might conceivably be. "Is Marian here?" He felt like a sheep, bleating out his plaintive, repetitive question.

"Climb, Mr. Whitehead." Dobbs's voice was gentle and pitiless.

He climbed, straining toward darkness, with darkness pulling him from below. His aching muscles struggled against it.

He hated himself for how easily he had been unmanned, almost more than he hated Dobbs for doing this to him. Higher, impossibly high. The air felt thinner. It moved around him, cold against his neck.

"You have reached a platform. Put your foot out, at two o'clock from your body."

Dobbs was below him, on the ladder. If he let go, he might knock him off and kill him. And himself, too, not that it mattered.

And then he would never know what had happened to Mariah.

He groped with his foot, found the platform, and flung himself onto what he hoped was a surface that could take his weight. He landed like a sack of rocks and huddled there, weeping silently.

Dobbs climbed the rest of the ladder. "Do you have the documentation for the work you were requested to do, Mr. Whitehead?"

Requested
. What a way to put it. Chuck struggled to his feet and rummaged in his jacket. "I did the extraction from the blood sample," he said. "Just like you told me. I ran the probes, and it looked fine, the DNA wasn't degraded. I switched the cell pellets in the freezer. Just like you said. I've got the old cell pellet here for you."

"Put the cell pellet and the documentation down on the platform," Dobbs said. "Then walk ten paces straight ahead."

He paced. Wind whistled by his ears. He felt a sense of huge, empty space before him. "I printed out the test run results," he said desperately. "I modified all the computer records for Kurt Novak's ID file. I can show you how I—"

"Never say that name out loud again. Did anyone see you?"

"There's always a couple of grad students in the lab at night doing rush specimens, but they pretty much leave me alone," he babbled. "Everybody does, these days. I'm kind of a downer lately, what with—"

"Shut up, Mr. Whitehead."

He had to ask, one more time. "Is Mariah here?"

Dobbs clucked his tongue. "Do you think I am completely heartless, to bring such an ill woman to a place like this? Poor Mariah can barely speak, let alone climb a vertical ladder. Use your head."

"But I… but you said—"

"Shut up. I wish to examine these. Keep your back turned."

He waited. An owl hooted. Mariah had loved owls. She had big, round, owl-like eyes. Now huge in her wasted face.

"Very good, Mr. Whitehead," the man said approvingly. Papers rustled. "This is exactly what we needed. You've done well. Thank you."

"You're welcome," he said automatically. "And… Mariah?" Hope was stone dead, but the cold zombie of curiosity still shambled on.

"Ah. Mariah. Well, she is back in her bed, in your house. I deposited her there immediately after your car left the lab. I replaced her morphine drip, much to her relief. And then I took pity on her, and gave her what you were too weak to bestow."

The dark was scarcely darker with his burning eyes squeezed shut. He shook his head. "No," he whispered.

"Mercy," the voice continued. "The morphine, turned up while she watched. Her breathing getting slower. And finally, peace."

"No." He trembled under the lash of irrational guilt. "She didn't want that. She told me. She told me she would never ask that of me."

"Who cares what she wanted? None of us get to choose."

Hope had gone, and fear had gone with it. Chuck only listened now because he could not stop his ears.

"It will be clear to everyone what happened," the man said gently. "The message on the computer, a brief note stating your intention of joining your beloved wife in death, farewell, cruel world, et cetera. And now I offer you the luxury of choice, Mr. Whitehead. If you wish to die quickly, take two paces straight ahead. But if you would prefer to die slowly and painfully, that can be arranged. Easily."

Chuck laughed out loud. Dobbs had no idea what it meant to die slowly and painfully. He stared into the void beyond the edge.

He felt as light as air. An empty husk. If he took the two paces, he would drift away like a dandelion seed.

Perhaps if he were braver, luckier, smarter, he would have seen some way out of this trap. Apparently everything hung on his carefully arranged suicide. Nothing would hold up if he were found tortured and murdered, after all.

There was no coin left to bargain with this devil. His resources were tapped out. All his bravery, all his luck, all his wits he had given up to these last few months of tending Marian.

Dobbs had probably figured that into the calculations when he'd handpicked him out of all the DNA lab personnel. Smart of him to choose the man with nothing left to lose.

In his mind, he was already falling, toward a huge dark owl's eye. It regarded him with calm, merciful detachment.

He took the two paces. The world tipped, air rushed past his face. He fell into the owl's eye, and hurtled toward Marian's waiting arms.

Connor shot Erin a wary glance when they passed the sign for her exit. "I'd rather take you to my house than your apartment," he said. "The doors are better, the locks are better. The bed is bigger."

"I have to go home," she said.

He sighed. "Erin, I—"

"No, Connor." She gathered all her energy and made her voice resolute. "Cindy could call me there. My mom could call me there. My friend Tonia is bringing my cat back there. The clothes I need for work tomorrow are there. My employee ID, my bus pass, everything. Just take me home. Now. No arguments, please."

He flipped on the turn signal. She let out a silent sigh of relief. He drove aimlessly around, passing up several good parking spaces.

"Looking for a black SUV?" she asked.

He braked so sharply that she jerked forward against the seat belt. He parked the car without saying a word.

Connor rattled the broken lock on the front door of the building with a grunt of disgust "Someone should sue the landlord."

"He turns off your hot water if you give him any trouble," she said. "I've learned to leave him alone."

The elevator was still broken. She was grateful for his company as they ascended through the echoing stairwell. The decaying building was depressing at the best of times, but at this time of night, with her life the way it currently was, it would be unbearably creepy alone.

She dug the keys out of her purse. Connor took mem from her, pushed her gently back against the wall and pulled out his gun.

She sighed. Cops tended to be paranoid. She should know, having been raised by one. They had reason to be, and Connor more than most. She waited patiently while he unlocked the door, flipped on the light, stepped in. A moment later he gestured her in. "All clear."

"Thank goodness," she murmured.

His face hardened at the faint sarcasm in her voice, but she was too tired and wired to care. Let him be huffy if he pleased. She felt restless and tingling and strange tonight. She didn't feel like placating anyone.

Connor locked and bolted the door. "Erin," he said.

She slid her suit jacket off and flung it over a chair. "Yes?"

"I can't leave you here alone. I just can't do it."

She stretched her arms over her head, rolling her stiff neck. Connor's eyes wandered down and fastened on her breasts. She rolled her shoulders, arched her back. "You can't?" she said.

His eyes followed her every move with grim fascination. "No," he said. "Not after what I saw on the highway. Not with that worthless lock and piece of shit door. Not even if your locks were good."

She ran her fingers slowly through her hair, and tossed it. "Not even if I lived in a bank vault? Guarded by a platoon of Marines?"

"You're starting to get the picture."

She kicked her shoes off. One bounced off the wall and skittered to the middle of the floor, the other landed on top of a pile of archeology magazines. "So don't leave," she said.

His eyes narrowed. "I thought you hated my guts."

The uncertainty in his voice gave her an exhilarating rush of feminine power. He was vulnerable to her, too. She glanced at her watch, and unclasped it, tossing it on top of the dresser. "It's three in the morning, Connor," she said. "I'm too tired to hate your guts."

She went into the bathroom and let him puzzle over that while she washed her face and brushed her teeth.

When she came out, he was still rooted to the same spot, wary incredulity stamped all over his face. "You're sure?"

She laughed as she hooked her thumbs into her panty hose and shimmied them down. "Didn't you just tell me that I had absolutely no choice in the matter?" she complained. "I can't keep this straight anymore! Who is the boss around here, anyway?"

"Stop jerking me around," he said. "You know that if I stay here, we're going to have sex again."

Her eyes widened. "Oh, my. Don't be shy, Connor. Tell it like it is." She stepped out of the skirt, clipped it to the hanger, and hung it in the tiny closet, stretching up so that the blouse would ride up over her bottom. "The bed really is incredibly small," she said. "If you'd rather go home and get a good night's sleep, please feel free to—"

"Don't tease me. I'm not in the mood."

The harshness of his tone froze her into place for a second. She exhaled, and resumed unbuttoning her blouse. She tried to act nonchalant as she shrugged off the blouse, hung it up.

"Your energy is strange tonight," he said. "I can't tell whether you want to jump my bones or rip my head off. It's got me off balance."

She reached behind herself and unhooked the bra. She tossed it away and shook her hair back. "If you're so off balance, Connor, maybe you'd be better off lying down."