The Black Silent (35 page)

They walked along the path from the parking area and intermittent shallow steps formed of rock. Haley went to a man-made garden pond, which had a ceramic frog in it. In the bottom of the frog was a key. They opened the door to exquisitely planned, early-American decor. Haley went straight to a thermostat and turned on the heat. Then she went out the back onto the covered porch.

"Hopefully, the caretaker won't come around for the few minutes we're here," she said when she came back in. "We are really in luck. He's left the hot tub on. Either that or the local teenagers have figured out a good thing."

"First get me some bandages to fix your arm. We need antiseptic," Sam observed.

"Fair enough."

She disappeared again.

Haley found a bathroom and switched on the light. As she did so, she realized that anyone near the house might have seen it come on. A momentary glance took in a frightened, bedraggled woman. Her hair was a mess and it got worse from there. She tried to rub some of the dirt from her face as best she could and then used warm water and soap to finish the job. She wished there were time for a shower.

Quickly she looked in the cupboard under the sink and came up with a large first-aid kit. She switched off the light and looked out over a back porch rimmed with forest.

She audibly gasped. Standing five feet from the window and to the side was a shape that looked like a man. She looked closer and in the moonlight saw him back into the shadow of the house.

She ran back to Sam.

"Someone's out back, just standing there."

Immediately Sam seemed to come to life. He slipped out the front door, still sopping wet. For a moment she stood there in shock, wondering if they should flee. Then, determined not to be left behind, she followed him around the front corner of the house.

Before she arrived at the back, she heard struggling.

"Stop it!" It was a kid's voice. "Let go!"

Sam appeared, holding the hand of a teenager in some type of fighting hold where the boy's hand was scrunched to his side and behind.

"Tell the lady what you were doing."

"Going for a walk. Ouch!"

"You got one more chance to tell her what you were doing," Sam said. "If you don't, I'm taking you to the sheriff."

"I was looking in the window. I'm sorry."

"Go home," Sam said. "Think about whether you really want to be known as a lizard who sneaks around spying on women in the night. The neighborhood pervert."

Sam let him go and the kid disappeared like a wild trout from the hook.

"He came around the corner and ran right into me, otherwise I never would have caught him," Sam said. "Now we have to decide whether to stay here."

"I don't think he'll be bringing this up at home, but you never know." Haley shivered.

"It's a chance I'm willing to take to get warm."

They walked back toward the front door.

"Let's get in the hot tub and then put a bandage on your arm," Sam said.

"I'm not getting in the hot tub."

"Then just let me do your bandage."

"We'll get you out of your wet clothes and in a blanket first," Haley said. "Then we do the bandage."

She was already undoing the buttons on his shirt.

She stripped off his clothes about as fast as a man could peel a banana and she used speed and efficiency to cover for her nervousness. When she got to his undershorts, she hesitated, gave him a towel, and decided she should turn her back. He groaned from the pain of moving as he got the underwear off and the towel on.

"What's bothering you? Surely not a naked man."

"Nothing is bothering me," she said with clipped certainty.

Sam was close and massive and she felt like she very much wanted to put her hands on his body. For her it was an uncommon urge. For a second she thought about just letting go and doing it. There was the matter between them. Some things could not be left to fester unresolved for over a decade.

S
am was amused on an otherwise intense day. Haley, for all her brass, was obviously conservative in some matters. Wrapped in blankets and out of the wet clothes, he felt as though he might actually recover from the hypothermia. His clothes were in the dryer.

They found a frozen ham, used the microwave, and ate it half-thawed.

"How many days have you had like this in your life?" she asked. "This is my first."

"I've had days like this. But this one's been exciting enough to suit me."

He watched her as she went through the first-aid kit, pulling out bandage materials.

Her hair came down to her jawline and curled at the ends just below it. There was a slight tautness to her face, so there was a subtle inward curve between her cheekbones and her jaw, making her cheekbones more prominent than soft. It was a strong face; the eyes, reminding him of Sarah, were blue-green and thoughtful; the smile when it came was engaging; her even white teeth gave it confidence. Her brows were neither heavy nor stiletto thin. At the moment she showed no sign of panic or desperation. Being busy with a purpose was a good antidote, he knew from experience.

He was drawn to her face and he knew that under other circumstances he could gaze at it for pleasure. Her arms, he noticed, were firm in the muscle but slender and shapely.

He turned and engaged her eyes and it brought a slight smile.

He tried to handle the bandages but still shook so bad she had to help him. With his knowledge and her hands they went to work. Experienced in emergency medicine, he directed the cleaning of the wound and the slathering on of antiseptic. By the time they reached the bandage stage, he was a little warmer and steady again and he helped her fashion an impressive structure of gauze and tape in just about two minutes. Fortunately, it was an inch-long clean cut that didn't go into the muscle.

Leaning against him with her arm around his waist, she helped him out on the patio and got him to the edge of the tub. They stopped. She ran her hands over his chest and then put her face against it.

"There was a time . . .," she said, and stopped. Obviously she was displeased with herself for starting down the path.

He understood and in his own mind came to a dead-end wall. It was a large wall and would take some contemplation if he was to scale it. He climbed in the tub sans the blankets in order to get warm, but also to separate her from him.

"Why don't you find a suit and get in," he said.

She just smiled and held up her bandaged upper arm as though the answer to the question was obvious. And he supposed it was, but it had nothing to do with her arm.

"You could keep your arm out of the water."

She nodded but looked unconvinced. "With me friendly-fun hot tubbing is like a prelude at the symphony. You're about to tell me that sharing a tub is not even music.

Probably that you don't even
do
music. I don't unpack the instrument if I'm not going to play. And frankly, I'm in a state. And so are you."

"I won't even take a quick look at the program." He made a show of closing his eyes, illustrating that she could enter the tub unobserved.

"I can't," she said.

And he knew she meant it. So he left it alone.

"Sometimes I get the impression that you've become like a priest," Haley said.

"Consecrated. I do wish you would explain this consecration."

He could tell this was important to her. Perhaps if he had such a vow, it would make her feel a little less like her mother's daughter. Maybe there was a way for her to escape the shame that haunted her and still leave the memory of her mother with a mother's respect.

He would think on it.

It was polite and appropriate that they were both ignoring his sizable erection. One could be consecrated in the heart, if not the body, and obviously that is what she meant.

It was a gutsy suggestion for her and one likely to get turned down. On the other hand, he supposed he could reconsider his decision to hold inside himself the pain and perhaps fear—yes, it was also fear—of the missing memory.

"Think about where I am in life, Sam," she added.

It was an odd remark, but he understood it. There was a lot of self-awareness in Haley.

Emotionally she had been through the fire. She'd been stripped of her reputation and struggled with what was left of her dignity. The pain of her mother's humiliation lived inside her. If that weren't enough, everything she valued had been taken from her, except Ben— and now even Ben was threatened. And then there was the summer of '94, Sam's abrupt departure, and the long silence that followed. Probably years. He couldn't remember exactly how many. Haley would not have wanted to be angry when he came back, but Sam knew anger was a common escape from sorrow because anger wasn't as painful. Interestingly, she seemed to understand this about herself. It had happened with Sanker as well. If he honored Haley by telling her what had happened to him, maybe he helped her a little. Maybe he helped himself. If only he knew all of it. But he didn't know the most important part.

Sam had never told anyone, not even his mother, what had happened to Anna and him.

He pondered for a few seconds and felt the stress of indecision. It was not a familiar mental state. Normally, he made his decisions crisply and without hesitation, a habit that had kept him alive. But this was not that kind of decision. It was too big and too personal an issue to resolve in the middle of this emergency.

"Relationships come out of good times and bad times. We're having the bad times. Let's get this over with and have some good. Then we can talk."

The disappointment in her eyes pained him.

"We can't stay more than just a few minutes," he added as if to explain. "We should look at the papers I took from Ben's, just in case there is more than one relevant section."

In the end neither her pain nor frustration made him change his mind. In part he decided to tell her because putting it out in front of another human being was a moral challenge.

Partly it was because they had just faced death together, and still did face it.

"I was married to Anna Wade—"

"So the stories were true."

"The actress," he finished.

"She was murdered in a robbery."

"It wasn't a robbery. We hushed the torture part for her family. It's been part of my job in life to deceive the press, and we did that. We even deceived the police because they allowed themselves, on an official level, to be deceived. There was no one to prosecute.

The assailants died. That's why you can't tell anyone."

"The magazines said it happened at home," Haley said.

"It didn't. We were caught by some very bad people. They wanted revenge and information. They were torturing her while I was required to watch. In the process of torturing her they began on me. It was much worse than if they were just torturing me.

"They were cutting their way up my legs. It was a woman who did the cutting; the man with the grudge watched. I remember Anna being tortured, but I can't remember the end.

I do remember that when they were ready to castrate me, they made a mistake. They wanted me to participate in some manner that was . . . not important. They thought they had broken me and that I would do what they wanted. They said I could save my eyesight and they would let Anna live if she could, if I cooperated in their sick game. I didn't believe them. They were just crazy enough to take that chance with me.

"There were four of them, in all. Three men and a woman. Two of the men who were torturing Anna left the room. Anna was screaming, begging to die. The man and woman loosened one of my hands; they were going to make me participate. I know I surprised them, got my fingers into the woman's eyes. That's all I can remember. They found me wandering, semiconscious, I guess. Everyone was dead, with bullets in them, including Anna."

Sam sank a little deeper into the tub water.

"I must have gotten one of their guns and shot them. I tell myself now that I was saving us from the men, but I had to know it was a small, concrete room. Didn't I know Anna might get hit? Maybe I was willing to risk killing her to end her pain. She was pretty far gone already. Or maybe one of them shot her."

Haley had tears in her eyes, and so did Sam.

"Every night I tell myself that I wasn't trying to hit her," he said, "and every night I end the matter not knowing."

Haley put her hand on his.

"How did you escape?" she finally asked.

"We figured that it took me almost twenty-four hours to get my upper body free of the chains. Then I was able to reach one of the captors to find a key to the leg irons. I have a vivid memory re-created in my dreams of the bodies and the blood. I don't remember seeing Anna, although certainly I did see her body."

"Who
were
these people?"

"A man named Trotsky. He had been the right hand of a terrorist who killed people for money. I killed Trotsky. Gaudet, his boss the terrorist, is still in prison in France, where he can't be executed because they don't do the death penalty. He's really messed up physically after what some inmates did to him. There are some badass Muslim terrorists in that jail and he has a problem with them about some money he lost. Trotsky had a brother, who was a killer, and a crazy sister, who was even more vengeful than he was.

Together they worked on getting me. I suspect Trotsky's brother took money from some others to kill me as well. The torture was for

free."

"I am so sorry," Haley said. "I never could have imagined. I didn't mean to . . ."

Sam managed a smile. "It's okay."

"It's such a horrible story. Especially for your wife."

"It was much worse living it."

Sam felt a little relief, maybe not as much as he'd hoped. He knew that things now made more sense for Haley. It still did not explain the summer of '94 and the following months. He wasn't sure there was an explanation. There was only an excuse.

"Now you've got to get to work on those papers," he said.

While she began carefully sorting through the soggy papers, Sam let the heat soak into him; other than the immense pain of thawing out all the damaged muscle tissue, it felt good to get warm at last.