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Chapter28
JEREMY TAKESa seat across from me and sighs, then Jean-Paul comes out and helps us fasten our seatbelts for takeoff. A number of minutes later, there’s adingand we both release our seatbelts.
Jeremy leads me to the rear of the aircraft, past another luxurious suite of comfortable chairs, a wet bar, and another couch. He unlocks a door at the rear and says, “All yours.”
“Thanks,” I say, brushing past him. “Just so you know, if the door locks behind me and I can’t get it open, I’ll shoot my way out. And to show you how grumpy I am, I’ll shoot out a couple of windows, too, just to see what the hell happens next.”
Then I close the door on him, turn, and drop the bags on the tiled floor.
Damn.
The bathroom here is larger than the one I have at home with Tom and Denise, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen a shower in an aircraft. I examine the shower stall, which is padded inside and has plenty of handrails and a corner where you can sit. There’s also a marble counter with rounded, padded edges, along with a toilet and a bidet.
I open the two shopping bags, examine what I have, and pull out a two-piece black pantsuit, a plain white cotton blouse, knee socks, beige panties, and a standard-looking white bra with underwire support. I like the fact that Jeremy didn’t lean on his French comrades to get me something frilly, girly, and utterly useless in the field.
The shoe bag has three pairs of black Clarks, in different sizes: 38, 39, and 40.
“Sure are being thorough,” I whisper.
Then I start to smell myself, realize there are soaps, shampoos, and hot water within reach. I sit on the toilet, take off my boots and socks, and rub my sore feet. Then I slip out the creased photo of my Tom and Denise.
A minute later I strip out of everything else, leaving the damnable elastic band around my chest for last.
I unsnap that little torture device, then for the next few moments rub, scratch, and move around my soft lady parts in a way that makes me feel like I’m a mama bear, stretching out after a winter’s worth of hibernation.
I look at myself in the mirror.
Hair a mess, dirt around my face and arms, scratches on my hands, welts along my chest and side. On one hand and the side of my face, the faint brown of dried-up blood. It comes back to me in a long flash of hard memory: the shooting at the farm, the shooting on the mountain trail. I’ve killed at least four men, and I bear their blood on my skin.
And now I’m on an unauthorized quest to find and kill one more.
I hug myself and think of my sweet Denise and my brave Tom, wondering how they are, what they’re doing. Then, in the private and quiet interior of this beautiful bathroom in this luxurious private aircraft, I start to clean myself up.
The few seconds I’ve spared for my family are enough for now.
It’s time to think about killing again.
Chapter29
WHEN Aphone starts ringing, Tom Cornwall looks at the illuminated clock on the nightstand by his too-empty bed, sees it’s 3:00 a.m., and switches on a light, fumbling around. Two of his burner phones are on the nightstand, and it takes him long and precious seconds to realize that it’s his house phone that’s ringing.
He tries to pick up the handheld receiver, knocks it off its base instead, curses, and fumbles on the bedroom floor to pick it up before the ringing wakes Denise. In this day and age, having a landline seems like an anachronism, but Amy has insisted that they keep one in the event the cell-phone networks get overwhelmed or their cell towers get sabotaged.
Tom gets out of bed, steps on the phone, swears again, and picks it up. ThinkingHey, it just might be Amy,he quickly answers it.
“Cornwall.”
A woman’s husky voice comes back at him. “Tom? It’s Victoria.”
He sits down on the bed, scratches his left side. Victoria, one of the reporters who works for Criterion, and who always insists on working nights. She loves surfing chat rooms and overseas news agencies—“We arrogant folks in this part of the world think things happen only when we’re awake,” she once told Tom over the phone—and her work often leads to Criterion’s getting the jump on the competition during the early-morning hours on the East Coast.
“Victoria, hey, what’s up?”
“Sorry to wake you, but I thought you’d like to get a sniff of this before I file my own piece.”
Something tingling starts along his feet and hands. Victoria—or Vicky the Vampire, as some call her in the newsroom, since she is never seen during the daytime—jealously guards her sources and her stories, and this phone call is out of place.
“Go on,” he says.
