“I need to know.” Then a long pause. “Are you seeing her?”
I knew immediately. “Cheyenne?”
“Yes.”
“We’re just friends.”
She waited for more.
No woman wants to be strung along while you play the field looking for someone better.
“It’s true.” I felt no duplicity in saying the words, but, because I knew how Cheyenne felt about me, I did feel a ripple of sadness. It seemed like no matter what I chose to say to Lien-hua, I would end up hurting someone in the end.
I repeated, maybe for Lien-hua’s sake, maybe for mine, “Cheyenne and I are just friends.”
“Pat, when a woman looks at a man the way she looks at you, she’s more than a friend. Or she wants to be.”
My heart was hammering, not just from the desire to take Lien-hua in my arms and see where the moment might lead, but also from the terrifying truth of her words: He’s in love… he aches for intimacy… he’s confused…
“At one time,” I said, “we were almost more than friends, but.. .” There was so much to say, to explain, but right now, only one thing really mattered, and I let myself say it. “Whenever I was alone with her, I ended up thinking about you.”
Lien-hua gazed at me in the gentle night, the moonlight playing in her rich ebony hair. “If I were to ask you what you want, Patrick Bowers, right now, in this moment, what would you say?”
The answer was simple. Clear. Immediate. “That I want to be with you.” I took a tight, uncertain breath. “What about you? What do you want?”
Softly, she put her hand on the side of my neck, her thumb gracing my cheek, and for a long tenuous moment she looked into my eyes, hiding nothing.
Then, she drew me close and answered my question with a kiss.
And I answered her back.
73
Astrid joined Brad in the car he’d stolen especially for tonight.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes,” he said.
She slipped on the wig.
Tucked her hair beneath it.
As far as they knew, the Marine at the gate to Quantico had never seen Brad, so that wouldn’t be a problem, but the soldier had almost certainly seen her.
Long ago she’d discovered that even though women tend to remember the features of a man’s face, men recognize women not so much by their facial features but rather by their figure, clothing, and hair. Most women learn this eventually: if you change your hair color, put on a distinctively different outfit, lose some weight, the men in your life, at least those on the periphery, will barely recognize you.
And so she was confident that tonight, even if the guard had already seen the woman she was impersonating, it wouldn’t matter. Especially since Astrid was using the fake driver’s license Brad had acquired and the same model car as the woman drove-he’d even borrowed the actual plates from her vehicle for this evening.
“She won’t notice that they’re missing,” he’d told Astrid yesterday. “No one would notice that their license plates were changed. It’s one of those things you just don’t pay attention to.”
“Why not just steal her car?”
“Because, that she would notice.”
She’d given him permission to do it.
She finished with the wig. “I’ll take the wheel.”
“Okay.”
He got out of the car, and she slid into the driver’s seat. When he’d climbed in again, she asked him, “Do you have him? Is he in the-”
“Yes.”
“And the dog?”
“It’s all taken care of.”
“And you have the shovel?”
“Yes.”
Then Astrid aimed the car toward the entrance to the FBI Academy. Tonight, the greatest taunt, the greatest thrill of all-an extra body in the FBI Academy’s body farm. And as she and her man buried it, she would tell him about their child. Predator. Prey. Death and life. The climax of their game. The cycle of all things. People see what they expect to see. With the actual license plates and the same model car, with the driver’s license, wig, and similar outfit, she did not expect that the sentry would give her any trouble. After all, why hassle two National Academy students returning to their dorm? But just in case the Marine did, her partner had his Walther P99 hidden beneath the jacket lying on his lap. And more than one body would be left behind at the farm. Predator. Prey. Death and life. Their child. The cycle of all things. “When we get there,” she told him, “I’ve got a surprise for you. Something I need to tell you.”
As I watched Lien-hua drive away, I tried to sort out my feelings.
Holding her, kissing her, had brought everything back.
The hope.
The electric desire.
The confusion.
As well as the struggles to make things work and the biting pain I’d felt when we parted ways last month.
Maybe she was right about me, maybe I hadn’t been able to open up the deep parts of my heart since Christie’s death and that’s what had caused me to drift away from the people I loved.
All because of a lingering hue of grief still crawling around inside me.
The lights of her car flickered into and out of the trees. Fog was circling into the night and made the taillights look like blurred brushstrokes from a watercolor painting.
Few can decipher even fragments of their meaning…
Finally, the night mist swallowed the car’s lights, and I returned to the living room, where I found Tessa lounging on the couch channel surfing.
Click.
Click. Through the stations.
The Sherlock Holmes book and a copy of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sat next to her on a pillow.
“You said good night to her?” she asked.
“I did.”
Click.
I took a seat on the couch. “I’m not sure if I should thank you or be mad at you for inviting those two over here without asking me first.”
“Let’s go with the thanking me one.” She landed on the news. A gas station nearby had exploded, and the authorities were speculating that it had been caused by a gas leak from an underground storage tank.
“From now on, keep me in the loop,” I said.
“Right on.” Click.
Click. A baseball game in extra innings.
“Did it help?” she asked. “Having them both here?”
Honestly, it seemed to make them simpler and more complicated at the same time, but I just said, “Go back.”
“To what?”
“The fire.”
Click. Click. She found it.
A young man who’d been working at the station was missing, and it was feared he’d been trapped inside. Gas lines were fueling the fire so the fire crews were having a hard time suppressing it.
The gas station was located on a road that ran along the outer perimeter of the Quantico Marine Corps Base.
“So,” she said. “More confusing.”
“Yes.” My attention was on the news.
Timing.
Location.
It’s random, Pat. Forget it.
Tessa waved her hand in front of my face. “Hey. You still there?”
“Sorry. What were you saying?”
“No, you were: that things are more confusing now that you made out with Agent Jiang.”
I blinked. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
“You were thinking it.”
“No, I-you were spying on us.”
She shook her head. “Not this time, but thanks for confirming my suspicions.”
Man, I hate it when she does that.
I took the remote from her, turned off the television, and tried to sound stern and parental. “Go to bed, young lady.”
“All right, Dad.”
A few minutes later as I was getting ready for bed myself, I realized that the St. Francis of Assisi pendant Cheyenne had given me was still in my pocket.
I pulled it out, hesitated for a moment, then set it in my dresser drawer and slowly eased it shut.
The Marine standing guard at the front gate to Quantico leaned toward the car window. “Good evening, ma’am.”
“Hello.”
He accepted their driver’s licenses and shone his light toward Brad. “Sir.”
“Good evening, Sergeant.”