Volcano (13 page)

 
The police car
squealed a quick revolution and took off in hot pursuit.

Albert Kane got to his feet and dusted off his trousers.
Then quickly gripped the bench back as his knees started to falter. He wasn’t
the spring chicken that he once was, Albert thought with a grimace, bringing a
hand to his stinging shoulder. A warm patch of blood met the palm of his hand.
And someone had just about cooked his goose.

Ana stirred beneath the covers, the ache
in her bones calling her out of her slumber.
Somewhere through a
filtering haze, there was sunlight. Sunlight and coffee, she realized, her
eyelids opening to the
white-washed
walls around her
as her sense of smell kicked in.

There was a stirring in her peripheral vision.

“Morning, beautiful,” Joe said from the corner, where he
slouched in a ladder-back chair. “Miss me?”

Ana bolted upright in the bed, clutching the sagging covers
to her- naked, she saw looking down- chest. “J--”

“Shh,” he told her, getting to his feet. “Plenty of time for
explanations, but first...”

He made for the bed and a shriek sliced from Ana’s throat as
she remembered the pistol, the dark shadow moving through the trees...

Joe stopped in his tracks and surrendered two palms to the
air between them. “Hey, now,” he said, “
there
’s
nothing to be afraid of.”

“Nothing to be afraid of?” Ana said, backing up against the
headboard and pulling the covers in tighter. “Tell that to your evil twin
pressing a pistol to my head!”

“I can explain that,” Joe said with a placating smile, a
smile that tempted
Ana
to grab Joe’s wrist watch off
the nightstand beside her and lob it in his direction.

Joe’s lingering gaze fell on her bare shoulders and she
wriggled the covers on top of them. “Explain away. Start by telling me what the
hell happened to my clothes.”

“Oh that” he said with a laugh. “Ana, no
..
.”

She leveled him a look.

“Drying- outside. You would have caught your death and you
know it.”

“So, it was you? You in the woods last night?”

“Me in the woods- two nights ago.”

“Two?”
 
Ana leapt from the bed, pulling the bedclothes with her.

“Wait!”
 
Joe
nabbed his wristwatch off the
night stand
and trailed
after her.

Ana cinched the heavy comforter around herself and passed
through the threshold to the living area.

 
“Where are you
going?”

“Home!” she said, throwing back the cabin door.

Ana stood motionless in the whistling threshold.

All around her echoed wilderness. A green mossy trail led
through crook-fingered trees. At the far end of the path, a lush, green
meadow,
tumbled toward cascading mountains- purple-blue in
the early light.

“Where in the world
are
we?” Ana asked, slamming the
door and spinning back around.

Joe loudly snapped the watchband back onto his wrist, that
infuriating cock-sure grin settling beneath his auburn moustache. “Welcome to
Shenandoah.”

***

Mark took another swing at the bag and sent it swaying.

A hard left hook followed by a right cross that made his
target careen wildly toward the mirrors.

“Hold it!” Albert said, reaching up and deflecting the
swinging sack with his left arm.

Mark righted himself and rubbed the aching jaw that was no
less tense than it had been an hour ago when he’d come down to the DOS gym to
begin his work out.

“Sorry, sir,” Mark said, “didn’t see you standing there.”

“I’d say,” Albert agreed. Albert hefted the punching bag in
Mark’s direction. “Take another swing at it, son, if it will make you feel
better.”

Mark shook his head and stepped back off the mat. “Only two
things would make me feel better,” he said, perspiration dribbling down at the
backs of his ears.

Albert studied him a moment, then chose his words carefully.
“You think Ana’s with McFadden, don’t you?”

Mark stepped forward and took another slug at the bag. “You
of a different opinion?” he asked, his tone sparking with his intensified
physical effort as he gave the bag another hard
one, two.

Albert centered his glasses on the bridge of his nose. And
though it was a common habit of Albert’s, for some reason, the movement seemed
unnatural. “That’s what I
pray for
, Mark.”

Mark stopped mid-swing and steadied the reverberating bag.
Fact was
,
that’s what Mark prayed for, too. That Ana
was
alright
, no longer in danger.
But,
holed up- with of all people- Joe McFadden?
McFadden, the man she once
couldn’t get enough of?

Mark felt his stomach sour and cursed himself for losing his
touch. For letting raw emotion interfere with the very important task at hand.
Mark wasn’t looking at this as an analyst, dammit; he was stumbling through
every ounce of it like some embittered jealous husband.

Albert laid a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “You don’t have to
worry about Ana. Not in that regard.”

Mark looked over at his father-in-law realizing it must have
been written all over his face. But what was bothering him even more was what
wasn’t
written all over Albert’s. What was it about his father-in-law that had
struck him all wrong ever since he’d walked into this place?

“She loves you, son. She said so, only recently.”

“Recently?” Mark asked, unable to wipe the biting doubt from
his voice.

“And, even if she hadn’t said it,” Albert continued. “I
would have known. The two of you were meant for each other. Preordained, if you
will. Just as surely as Isabel and I-”

Mark turned and Albert’s hand slipped from his shoulder.
Mark steadied his grip on Albert’s opposite upper arm. “I appreciate what
you’re trying to do...”

The old man grimaced and pulled away. “Not trying to do any
damn thing but tell you the truth!
 
Now, you know and I know that Ana is safe. At least, that is both our
instincts. And, we’ve honed those pretty well over the years.

Mark stopped him cold with his best dissecting look.
“Albert,” he asked, suddenly realizing what had been bothering him. It was his
arm. Albert had been favoring his right arm, and using only his left. “What
happened to your-
”

Albert gave him a bulldog growl. “Some slimy bastards came
after me at Haines Point.”

“You were out at the Point
alone?
” Mark asked, incredulous.
Incredulous, though he didn’t know why. Despite his age and waning stamina,
octogenarian Albert Kane still thought himself invincible.

“Just a graze, God dammit,” Albert barked back. “Not a
fricking hole in my head.”

Mark held his tongue, knowing very well that’s what it could
have been. And, despite his snarling, Mark figured that Albert knew it, too.

“Sir, given the call for our resignations I don’t think
either of us should go taking any--”

“For Chrissake, son!” Albert shot back. “I may be old, but
I’m not an old fool. Won’t be making the same mistake twice! Besides,” Albert
said turning toward the door, “seems to me
you’d
be better off taking
some God damned action of your own rather than handing out advice.”

Mark flinched at the words that resonated with a biting
chord all the way down to his soul.

Just
who
the hell was he
supposed to take action against?
Other than one fricking, sorry-assed
cowboy, who was likely at this moment putting his greedy hands all over his
wife?

“What I’d suggest,” Albert snarled from the threshold, “is
that you get down to Virginia and take care of that baby girl of yours, then
get back here post haste and help me straighten all this bullcrap out!”

Mark nodded as Albert disappeared behind the thick glass
door. Then gave into his volcanic ambition and smashed the hell out of the bag.

Ana took another sip of coffee. “So, it was the watch, then?
A tracking device?”

Joe nodded, and carried his own mug over to the sofa where
Ana sat. “Unfortunately, one Hay Long could use, too. Only, I was banking I’d
get to you first.”

“Well, you didn’t,” Ana said, forcing a scowl, knowing all
the while Joe had done his
best-
better than his best-
to find her. Once again, she owed Joe her life. “But, in your case, coming in second
still wins you high honors. I would have died of exposure out there.”

Joe took a seat beside her. “Or something worse.”

Ana shivered, then pointed to the timepiece on Joe’s wrist.
“Aren’t we in danger of being found?”

“I disabled it,” Joe assured her, not half as sure of their
safety himself. While it was true, he hadn’t exactly had the time or the tools
to disassemble the tracker until they’d reached the cabin. And he wasn’t about
to destroy the damn watch. It was one-of-a-kind; it had been given to him in
Thailand, another lifetime ago- by someone very special.

“Just what is this place?” Ana asked, tugging the bottom of
Joe’s long flannel shirt over her thighs.

“Call it a retreat,” Joe answered. “Nice little get-away.”

“A safe house?”

Joe nodded and set down his mug. “Owned by your father.”

“My father?”

Ana tucked up her knees under the shirt and rested her bare
feet on the sofa cushion, heated by the warmth of the nearby fire. “Since
when?”

“Since, I don’t know,”
Joe
said,
stretching denim legs long in front of her and settling his heels on the coffee
table. “Must have had it for years, though. I know my Uncle Tom came here back
in the eighties.”

“Tom...? As in, Mooney?” Ana asked, trying to keep her eye
off Joe’s grizzly bear chest. A chest that, thanks to her use of his shirt, was
now covered by nothing but a v-necked undershirt that revealed a rough
smattering of reddish-brown hair.

“As in Mooney and his wife, my Aunt Peggy. Your Dad
apparently lent them this place years ago after their son, Charles, died...”

But the rest of the story was lost in the fire’s glow and
the swirl of Ana’s imagination that circled not around goings on in this cabin,
but at a particular beach house more than four years ago. A beach house in
Costa Negra that had belonged then to Joe’s same Uncle Tom.
A
place that had served as Joe and Ana’s refuge from the ravages of civil war.

“Ana?”
 
Joe stood
beside
her, extending her empty mug. “Man,” he said
with a chuckle, “better make yours a double.”

Ana smiled her thanks and then watched him walk away with an
unwelcome sense of melancholy. In all this time, he’d scarcely changed a bit.
Not nearly as lean or fit as
Mark
, he still had
something about him. Something very uniquely male and startlingly unnerving,
Ana thought, swallowing that observation as he returned and handed her a
steaming mug.

“You doing alright?” he asked with a look of concern,
settling down on the sofa beside her.

Ana had no clue how she was doing when Joe looked at her
with that hint of yesterday in his honey brown eyes. It had long been over
between them, by the time Ana had taken up with Mark. What
had been
between them, in actuality hadn’t ever been much at all.
Nothing
more that a suggestion of what they could have become.

“I was just wondering,” she lied, unbending her legs and
crossing them over, one foot positioned on the floor. “How it is that you know
about this place- a cabin belonging to my father- and I don’t?”

Joe scratched the back of his neck and lifted, with great
difficulty it seemed, his gaze from her calf. “I, uh... What was the question?”
he asked, looking up, his eyes crinkling slightly at the corners.

“The cabin?” she asked, lowering the mug from her lips.

“Oh, yeah.”
 
Joe
righted himself on the sofa beside her. “Well, like I was telling you, your Dad
lent this place to my aunt and uncle some time ago. Uncle Tom mentioned it to
me in passing.”

Ana raised her eyebrows.

“Alright, not in passing. Could be that it was a specific
comment.”

Ana set down her mug on the coffee table.

“OK, he told me very specifically about this particular
cabin...”

Ana crossed her arms and cleared her throat.

“...
back
when I joined the Company.
There
,” he said, “you satisfied?”

“
My father’s
cabin. How generous of your uncle.”
 
Ana narrowed her eyes. “Just in case you
ever got into trouble... Something you didn’t quite know how to get yourself
out of?”

“Well...” Joe slapped his knee and stood. “Say, were you
this bad at the DIPAC?”

“Oh, much worse,” Ana assured him.

Joe laughed, but backed up a step.

“And you don’t have to run away, you know. I’m not going to
tie you down and interrogate you.”

Joe coughed and shifted on his feet. “Look, I...”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Ana said, springing off the sofa. But
suddenly she was inches from his chin and had forgotten why his nervousness had
looked so ridiculous a moment ago. None of this was supposed to be happening.
None of it at all.
Ana was a married woman- and a
mother,
for God’s sake.

And, she reminded herself with a swift mental kick, a woman
who was very much in love with her husband. A husband who thought she was a
lunatic, a nagging voice chimed in- a man who’d begun to doubt her, until after
a period of so many doubts, Ana’d even started doubting herself.