Sighing, Alex took his hand. He grabbed on like she was a life rope. His hand was fat and cold with sweat, like holding a dead fish. She swallowed. This was ridiculous.
She took a step toward the plane, but still he wouldn’t come. His feet were planted. “Come on,” she said. “One foot forward.”
It seemed like an eternity, but finally, an inch at a time, he lifted his foot and took a step. After the first, it was easier, and he stepped forward with her, eyes still clenched tight, following her lead. When they reached the ramp, he started to moan, but he kept walking. She led him to a station, tied him into a harness, and clipped him down. Then she walked clear across the plane to the other side and clipped herself in. She didn’t want to be anywhere near him for this trip.
CHAPTER 22
Sandra woke from a dream that she was riding a gigantic military plane. She felt disoriented, displaced. Where was Ryan? Gradually, she took in the fluorescent lights, the white walls and white machines, the sounds of curtains sliding on rings and distant people talking, the antiseptic smell. Where was she?
“She’s only just regained consciousness,” the nurse said. “She needs her sleep.”
A woman in nursing scrubs stood in the room, facing down three men in severe dark suits. Sandra recognized them as Agent Liddle and the two agents that seemed to follow him everywhere. Liddle’s face wore a scowl.
“This woman was at the scene of an apparent terrorist attack that claimed the lives of hundreds of people,” Liddle said. “I’m going to have to ask you to step aside.”
The nurse stepped aside. Liddle and his cronies surrounded the bed and loomed over Sandra. “It’s time for some answers, Miss Kelley,” Liddle said.
Sandra blinked. She felt strange. Her head was pounding with pain, but in a distant sort of way. She must be on some kind of medication. “Why don’t you start with the questions?” she said.
Liddle raised an eyebrow, but the set of his mouth didn’t change. He spoke with a false cheerfulness. “Feeling feisty, then? Good. The questions. Let’s see. Where is your sister? Where is Jean Massey? And finally”—his voice grew dark—“what in seven hells did you do to Muncy Prison?”
She thought, remembering. She had gone back inside to fetch Jean, but then… what had happened? “Where’s Angel?” she asked.
“That, my dear, is a question, not an answer. I ask the questions; you provide the answers.”
She was starting to feel irritated, despite the meds. “I don’t know where my sister is. I don’t know where Jean Massey is. Right now, I don’t even know where I am. And the prison was obliterated by a creature from another universe. Happy? Now where’s my friend?”
Liddle scowled. “Angel is being debriefed by two of my colleagues. If he’s cooperative, he may only be arrested. If not, he may find himself disappearing down a deep, dark hole of the kind only the intelligence services of the United States can create. And nobody comes out of those.”
“You don’t scare me,” Sandra said. In fact, at that moment, not even the varcolac would have scared her. She felt cushioned on a cloud of good will, and long-term consequences seemed like a distant curiosity.
Liddle leaned down into her face. “There’s a conspiracy going on here. You, your sister, your father, your boyfriend—you’re all involved. Who are you working for? Is it Turkey? Japan? What’s your goal? What are you hiding?”
He had one long hair growing out of his left nostril. Sandra could see it quite clearly, given how closely he was leaning over her. She felt a giggle rising to the surface, but she reluctantly tamped it down, realizing, at least in a distant way, that it was not appropriate for the situation. Instead, she just said, “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“I’m not fooling around here, Miss Kelley. Do you admit to being at Muncy Prison?”
“I don’t think I have to talk to you.”
“What sort of explosive did you use to destroy the prison?”
“I didn’t use any explosive.”
“What weapon, then?”
“I didn’t destroy it.”
“Did you break Jean Massey out of prison?”
Sandra sighed. “I want to talk to Detective Messinger.”
“You’re talking to me now.”
“Not anymore. You don’t believe me. This is a waste of my time.”
“And Messinger does believe you?”
“Look, bring her in here. I’ll tell her everything. Then she can tell you.”
“Is she part of your conspiracy, too?”
The sound of a scuffle down the hall caught Liddle’s attention. “Let me in! She’s my daughter, not some criminal. Let me in, or I’ll call a lawyer. I’ll call the press. Get your hands off me!”
Liddle stepped into the hall. “Let her through,” he said.
A moment later, Sandra’s mother turned the corner, her face red and her curly hair askew. Sandra grinned. “Mom!”
Her mother glared at Liddle. “You,” she said. “I might have known. Do you always conspire to keep mothers and daughters apart, or is it a special interest with my family?”
“I could arrest you for interfering with an investigation,” Liddle said. “Do you have information relevant to this case? Or am I about to throw you out?”
“Leave her,” Sandra said. “And send Messinger in. I’ll talk to her.”
Liddle held her gaze for a moment. “This is your one chance. I’ll bring in Messinger, but I will also be here. If you talk, good. If not, I will have you relocated to a facility of my choosing, even with your injuries. Under the National Defense Authorization Act, I can hold terrorism suspects, without trial and without access to a lawyer, indefinitely. Do not cross me on this. I will do it.”
He walked out. Sandra’s mother rushed over and wrapped her arms around her. Sandra threw an arm around her neck and held her close. Her mother’s thick dark hair spilled over her face, and Sandra inhaled her familiar scent. “I’m so sorry about Dad,” Sandra said.
Her mother leaned back. “I didn’t just bully my way through there to hug you,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “I found something.”
She held out a thin card. Sandra took it. “Dad’s phone?” she said.
Her mother nodded. “It wasn’t on your father’s body at the stadium. The police tore the house apart looking for it and finally concluded that it must have been tossed away in the blast and destroyed.”
“Where was it?”
“In the toaster.”
Sandra looked at her incredulously. “The toaster? But wouldn’t it have melted in there?”
Her mother smiled. “We haven’t used that toaster in years, not since Sean left home. Your father knew that. He hid it somewhere nobody but him would think to look for it.”
“But why?” Sandra bit her lip, trying to concentrate through the buzz of the pain medication. Her father had been in the kitchen when she saw him last, possibly right up to the point where his probability wave collapsed and he disappeared. “Do you think he hid it on that last day, when you stepped out of the room?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you could look at it, figure out what was so important that he had to hide.”
“I can do that.” Sandra took the phone and slid it under her sheet, just as Melissa Messinger came through the door. Angel was with her.
Sandra smiled in relief. “I thought they were going to disappear you,” she said.
“Not yet,” Angel said. “They tried, but I threatened to use my ninja judo jiu-jitsu on them, and they fled.”
“Is that a real thing?”
“I don’t know, but it has lots of J’s in it. Sounds impressive.”
“Look, I don’t think Liddle is kidding around,” Messinger said. “He’s on his way back in. You need to spill the beans, and it better be convincing, or he’s going to start throwing his weight around.”