Alena came awake with a start, drawing a sharp breath and jerking a bit in the chair. She woke to a painful stiffness in her back and a headache that started above her right eye and spiked in deep. The sun was too bright, and she raised her head and turned away, settling down again where she had fallen asleep the night before — at David’s desk, in his office.
Memory returned, unwelcome. Then, much as she wished it, sleep refused to claim her again.
The doorbell chimed, its echo lingering too long.
“Son of a bitch,” she rasped.
Sitting up, she slid her hands across the desk and knocked last night’s whiskey glass onto the floor. It shattered on the wood, a few ounces of amber liquid dappling the boards, beading up like mercury.
Had the doorbell already rung once? Was that what had woken her?
Alena rose, pushing back the chair, and cast a baleful glance at the broken glass, as though it had leaped from the desk to its splintered doom purely to vex her. Unsteady on her feet, she paused in the open office door, surprised to find that she gripped something in her left hand. Even as she glanced down, fingers opening, she remembered clutching the thing last night, tapping the desk with it, idly passing it from hand to hand, contemplating it. As if it were some sacred talisman, she had fallen asleep with it tight in her grasp.
Now she stared at the object in her open palm — a shard of glassy, volcanic rock only slightly bigger than a marble.
The doorbell rang again.
“Goddammit!” Alena cried, and hurled the rock shard back into the room, where it struck one of the ocean charts David had pinned to the wall and fell harmlessly to the floor.
All of the charts and news clippings were still on the wall, all of the maps still spread on the table, all of the rock samples and photographs still arrayed on the shelves with her grandson’s books and journals.
Alena left them behind, hurrying down the stairs now that she had come fully awake. She ran both hands through her silver hair, unruly from sleep, and smoothed the front of the charcoal-black top she’d been wearing the night before.
When she unlocked the door and pulled it open, she found General Henry Wagner standing out on the sidewalk of M Street, his face drawn into the sorrowful grimace of a penitent child.
“Alena,” he said.
She put a hand to her head, massaging her right temple. “Hank,” she said. “Come in. I need an entire bottle of Excedrin.”
Leaving him on the threshold, she turned and strode into the kitchen. Her eyes itched and her head felt like someone had lodged an axe in her skull and just now decided to work it back and forth, trying to free it.
The general must have closed the front door and followed, because by the time she retrieved the Excedrin from a cabinet, filled a glass of water, and tossed back four of the pills, the man was standing in the kitchen half a dozen feet away from her.
Hank Wagner stood six and a half feet tall and had the build of a washed-up football star. Fifty-two or — three, he had done nothing to remedy his thinning blond hair or the failing eyesight that required thick glasses on gold wire rims. Sometimes dour, always intense, the general had always struck her as a good man who believed he had found his calling. If she would not have called him a friend, that detracted not at all from the respect she felt for him.
In the eleven years since he had taken the place of the general who had run her division before him, Hank Wagner had never once showed up at her front door. In fact, now that she considered it, he had never been to her residence.
“Alena, I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he said.
She considered putting on a pot of coffee, but realized that would be an invitation for him to stay long enough to drink it.
“Thank you, General.”
If it insulted him that she would remain so formal, Hank Wagner didn’t show it.
“How are you?”
Alena attempted a wry smile, expecting it to come off tragic and sad, but knowing even as the expression contorted her face that she had only managed brittle and bitter.
“My daughter, Marie — David’s mother — has severed all ties with me.”
The big man shrank a little. “I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
That smile again, no better than before. “Apparently she needs to blame me. I forged him, you see, from the time he was a little boy. His passion for science and discovery was my fault.”
“Alena—”
“No,” she said, and now, somehow, she felt herself relax. Maybe the Excedrin taking effect. “It’s all right. I’ll take the credit, and the blame. If my work inspired him, I think of it as a gift. And when my own enthusiasm flagged — it does sometimes, you know. I’m not as young as I used to be. When I faltered, he’d give the gift right back with fresh insight and inspiration.”
The moment dragged long enough to become awkward. Wagner seemed at a loss, as though trying to figure out how to frame his next thought.
“You didn’t come here to ask how I’m faring,” Alena said.
The general slid his hands into his pockets. “Not exactly.”
“You’ve got a case. Let me guess, the skeletons at Mount Kazbek?”
Wagner nodded, then gave a small shrug. “I’ve got to send someone. Sarah Ernst resigned yesterday, Ridge is dead, and without you and David … well, I need to rebuild, and I was hoping you could offer me some guidance. You know everyone in this field. Any suggestions?”
Alena rubbed her eyes. Her headache had begun to recede nicely, but the whiskey from the night before had still left her feeling like her skull was stuffed with cotton.
“There’s a little bakery up the street with excellent coffee,” she said. “Would you take a walk up there, pick me up a cinnamon Danish and a massive cup of the hazelnut blend, and whatever you want?”
Confused, the general shrugged again. “Of course. And then—”
“While you’re gone I’ll shower and change, and throw a bag together.”
Wagner held up both hands. “Wait a minute, Alena, I’m not asking you to do this. Honestly, I assumed … well, I just figured this would be it for you.”
Alena Boudreau narrowed her eyes. “Eleven years, and you don’t know me at all, Hank. My daughter won’t speak to me anymore, but David would be horrified if I let that stop me. Our goals have always been clear — keep searching, keep discovering, keep drawing back the curtains to get at the world’s mysteries.”
The general smiled. “David thought this case was a waste of time.”
“No,” she said. “He just had other things on his mind. And when I get back from Mount Kazbek, we’re going to talk about those things. If there are three of these habitats out there, you and I both know there could be more. The sooner we find them, the sooner we can destroy them, and we’ll save a lot of lives.”
“All that in exchange for coffee and a Danish?”
Alena chuckled. “Actually, you’d better make it two coffees and throw in a chocolate cruller. It’ll save me having to make David breakfast.”
“It’s a deal,” Wagner said. “As long as you’re sure he won’t mind.”
“Mind? He loves chocolate crullers.”
“That’s not what I meant. Is he going to be all right with you going away?”
Now Alena rolled her eyes. “Please. He’ll be thrilled to be rid of me. I’ve been hovering over him constantly. He says it’s very ‘un-Alena’ of me. Besides, the nurse who comes in to look after him is very cute. I’m sure I’m cramping his style.”
It was Wagner’s turn to chuckle.
Promising a swift return, he left for the bakery, and Alena let her smile fade. Everything she’d said had been the truth, but it did nothing to lighten her heart. Marie blamed her for what had happened to David, but no more than Alena blamed herself.