He only chuckled at the suggestion, saying, “After Theresa O'Rourke sat in this chair? Don't count on another female chief here in your lifetime, dear, unless maybe you're bucking for the job?''
Now she laughed a hearty belly laugh, something she'd not done in a long time. For all his faults, Paul was quite human, and he made her laugh, and that was a good balm. “I wouldn't touch your job with surgical gloves and forceps, not even if they threw in my own personal yacht and my own island to sail it around, not for all the perks and bucks in the world, Paul, ever.”
“ Hey, it isn't that bloody bad…” He stopped to consider what he was saying. “As for the perks, hell, I earn every single one of 'em daily.”
She playfully patted his cheek, stepped briskly toward the door and turned for a final wave, saying, “I'll just bet you do.”
“ I do!” she heard him shouting from behind the closed door as she passed his secretary's desk, anxious to be finally escaping Quantico, wondering if maybe she'd have time to stop at the local bookstore in town for a guidebook on New Orleans. She knew next to nothing about the city. She'd never visited before. It would prove to be quite an adventure, most interesting and pleasant, she desperately tried to convince herself.
9
Away, and mock the time with fairest show: False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
Tahlequah, Oklahoma
He'd finished with the old woman whose body weight made the overhead beam in the barn irrrrk with a disagreeing give and sag. Matisak busily put away the last of the blood-filled canning jars into the ice-laden foam cooler which he'd earlier prepared. Teach, as he liked to call himself, had found the canning jars in the old lady's fruit cellar. He'd emptied the jars of their tomato, blueberry and strawberry contents, throwing the sugary muck to the hogs, and had washed each jar thoroughly. The jars amounted to a good dozen, more than enough for his needs.
Earl and Hillary Redbird had been gracious to open their hearth and hearts to Matisak, kind to allow him to stay with them for these many weeks now.
He'd returned to Oklahoma after escaping FBI authorities not far from here by kidnapping a pilot at a regional airport and forcing him to take him northeast into a storm. Somewhere over the Boston Mountains in Arkansas, the plane got into serious trouble. Unable to withstand storm and wind pockets, they were forced down in a remote meadow, which the pilot had called a miracle find amid the mountainous terrain below them. The pilot, a well-groomed, retired auto executive, was counting his blessings when the plane touched down, but before it even came to a stop at the end of the meadow, Matisak had slit the man's throat from ear to ear. His look of shock was pleasing to Matisak.
After feeding as well as he might on the other man's blood, Matisak slept like an innocent child in the cradle of the cockpit beside the dead man who'd called himself Norman Easthan.
The following day, Matisak heard the approach of a helicopter, possibly searching for Easthan, or quite possibly FBI searching more for him than for the now-dead pilot.
He tumbled from the cockpit and worked demonically to force the light plane into the trees nearby. He then went about the business of covering the plane and its markings with debris and brush.
He took as much money as Easthan had in his wallet, sixty-four bucks, and struck out on foot. He went in search of telephone poles, wires, homesteads, a road, preferably paved. He had reasoned that the people searching for him would not expect him to return to the Tulsa area, and so this plan pleased him.
He took his time returning, however, with stopovers in one small town after another, pretending to be a drifter and a hobo, doing odd jobs for people-all the inane work they put off forever. He worked for a place to sleep and, for appearances, a bite to eat. Determinedly, for a time he held his urge for human blood in check. He didn't want anyone discovering a corpse, which would point a dead finger in his direction. The FBI net had come too close for such encounters now. For the time being, he wanted Jessica Coran to wonder and wait, without a clue as to when and where he would strike.
His ultimate goal in life was to have her completely and wholly to himself, just long enough to bleed her, not once but many times. He knew just how much he could take from a victim before she lapsed into coma, and if he continued they'd die soon after; however, if he denied himself for that moment, allowing the victim's body to regenerate a fresh, new supply of blood, then he could take this refill as well. With Jessica Coran, he intended to take such good care of her as to have her produce blood for him as often as he liked, to use her like a milk cow, for as long as her body and soul could withstand the shocks he pledged for her. Either that, or he'd put his quest for her blood to the ultimate test, take it to the max-which he himself could no more survive than she. It would be an end which in truth would be a new beginning, one which promised an eternity with her. He hadn't completely decided which direction their fate would go in, not yet anyway.
But whatever his choice, it would take careful preparation, time and money. Still, nothing so petty as currency should stand in the way of a man's ultimate dream, he reminded himself.
So, his quest had brought him here, finally locating Tahle-quah, the old capital of the Indian Nation where Cherokee lohn Ross held court and sway as the president of the Indian Nation for most of his life during the 1800s. Matisak had some Cherokee blood in him, or so his family history went-relatives in the tribe, distant, yes, but what better relatives to have?
The Redbirds weren't exactly blood relatives-until now, tie silently jested-but while they were not kith and kin, the aid folks were living in the ancient house where Matisak's mother's mother had been born to Janie Elyse Elkheart, a quarter-blood Cherokee who'd married outside the tribe to Karl Matisak, a German immigrant who became a self-taught doctor who worked among the tribe, and learning just how good he was at faking it, set up practice some years later in Chicago for the better part of his life. Matt Matisak's grandfather had told him tales of how he had buried gold coins in gunnysacks under the floor of that old house whenever they returned. He'd hidden over two thirds of his fortune amassed in Chicago somewhere around the old place.
Matisak's grandfather may well have been telling tall tales for a wide-eyed grandson, but he'd left a detailed map of how to find the old house and its treasure for his grandson. The aid man had learned to detest his own son, Matisak's father, who was so overwhelmed by Matisak's mother, a big woman af Irish descent who had a way of making her husband and young son grovel for any and all things.
Young Matisak had never taken his grandfather too seriously, but he was in the area now, and he recalled the exact location from years of staring at a crude map the old man had left him, one which Matisak's mother had thrown into the fire. Matisak had come to Oklahoma to seek his fortune, whatever that treasure might be. But the Redbirds posed a minor problem now that Matisak had come for the coins. Even if it were anly a handful of gold coins minted in the 1800s, as his grandfather had said, they would be worth a small fortune, certainly enough to help him in his quest for his newfound love, Jessica Coran. It took money to keep up with the lady. She'd just jetted back to the mainland from Hawaii then to Oklahoma some six months before, and she'd been in the area only a short while, along with a hundred other FBI agents, so it had been too dangerous to get near her then.
Next time, he would choose the time and place, and he'd have the necessary provisions. He must reinvent the spigot, his control mechanism, his instrument of choice, the mechanism by which he could carefully drain her of every ounce without spilling so much as a drop, or he must acquire a new, high-tech mechanism which only money could buy. Either way, it would take some doing.