'Did you hear me? Wouldn't it be fun?'
'Hang on a second, Kerry, I'll be right with you!' He watched the news item in horror. It felt like a boa constrictor had wrapped itself around his chest and was squeezing the breath out of him. Yesterday he saw this guy boasting about new leads, and today he was a fugitive? And it was a coincidence he was being called in from vacation? Two hundred IQ points started rowing in the same direction. 'Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-'
'What'd you say, honey?'
'Be right with you!' His hands were shaking like he had malaria as he reached back into his case for his laptop.
He never wanted to do this; a lot of Area 51 people were tempted-that's what the watchers were for, that's what his algorithms were for-but he wasn't like the others. He was an it-is-what-it-is kind of guy. Now he desperately needed to know. He entered his password and logged onto the pirated U.S. database stored on his hard drive. He had to work fast. If he stopped to think about what he was doing, he was going to balk.
He started entering names.
Kerry came out of the bathroom, dressed to the nines in a slinky red dress with her new watch gleaming on her wrist. 'Mark! What's the matter?' His computer was snapped shut on his lap but he was bawling like an infant, big chest-sucking sobs and torrents of tears. She knelt down and threw her arms around him. 'Are you okay, honey?'
He shook his head.
'What happened?'
He had to think fast. 'I got an e-mail. My aunt died.'
'Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry!' He stood up, wobbly-no, more than wobbly, in a near faint. She rose with him and gave him a giant hug, which prevented him from falling back down. 'Was it unexpected?'
He nodded and tried to wipe his face dry with his hand. She got him a tissue, rushed back to his side and daubed him dry like a mother tending a helpless child. 'Look, I've got an idea,' he said robotically. 'Let's go to L.A. tonight. Right now. We'll drive. My car's overheating. We'll take yours. We'll buy a house tomorrow, okay? In the Hollywood Hills. A lot of writers and actors live there. Okay? Can you pack?'
She stared at him, worried and perplexed. 'Are you sure you want to go right now, Mark? You've just had a shock. Maybe we should wait till the morning.'
He stamped his foot and shouted in a juvenile fit. 'No! I don't want to wait! I want to go now!'
She backed away a step. 'Why the big rush, honey?' He was scaring her.
He almost started crying again but was able to stop himself. Sniffing hard through blocked nostrils, he packed up his laptop and turned his cell phone off. ''Cause life's too short, Kerry. It's too fucking short.'
JULY 30, 2009
T heir room overlooked Rodeo Drive. Mark stood at the window in a hotel bathrobe and through parted curtains mournfully watched luxury cars take the turn off Wilshire onto Rodeo. The sun wasn't high enough to burn off the morning haze, but it looked like it was going to be a perfect day. The suite on the fourteenth floor of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel cost $2,500 for the night, paid for in cash to make it a little harder for the watchers. But who was he kidding? He looked into her handbag to check Kerry's mobile phone. He had switched it off while she was driving and it was still off. She would be on their radar already, but he was playing for time. Precious time.
They arrived late, after a long drive through the desert during which neither of them spoke much. There wasn't time to plan things but he wanted everything to be perfect. His mind drifted back to when he was seven, waking up before his parents and rushing to make them breakfast for the first time in his life, pouring out cereal, slicing a banana, and carefully balancing the bowls and cutlery and little glasses of OJ on a tray that he proudly presented to them in bed. He'd wanted everything to be perfect that day, and when he succeeded, he solicited their praise for weeks. If he kept his wits, he could succeed today too.
They had champagne and steaks when they arrived. More champagne was on its way for brunch, with crepes and strawberries. A Realtor would meet them in the lobby in an hour for an afternoon of house-hunting. He wanted her to be happy.
'Kerry?'
She moved under the sheets and he called her name again, a bit louder.
'Hi,' she answered into the pillow.
'Brunch is coming, with mimosas.'
'Didn't we just eat?'
'Ages ago. Want to get up now?'
'Okay. Did you tell them you weren't going into work?'
'They know.'
'Mark?'
'Uh-huh?'
'You were acting kind of weird last night.'
'I know.'
'Will you act normal today?'
'I will.'
'Are we really going to buy a house today?'
'If you see one you like.'
She propped herself up and showed her face, which was brightly illuminated by her smile. 'Well, my day's starting pretty nice. Come over here and I'll start yours off nice too.'
Will drove all night and now was cruising on flat land through Ohio, going for broke, driving fast into the dawn and hoping he'd skip through unscathed, avoiding speed traps and unmarked staties. He knew he couldn't make it all the way without sleeping. He'd have to pick his spots, Motel 6 kinds of places near the highway, where he'd pay cash and pick up four hours here, six there-no more than that. He wanted to be in Vegas by Friday night and ruin this motherfucker's weekend.
He couldn't recall the last time he'd pulled an all-nighter, especially an alcohol-free one, and it didn't feel good. He had cravings for booze, for sleep, and for something to squelch his anger and indignation. His hands were cramped from gripping the wheel too hard, his right ankle sore because the old Taurus didn't have cruise control. His eyes were red and dry. His bladder ached from the last large coffee. The only thing giving him any solace was the red Lipinski rosebud, succulent and healthy, stuck into a plastic water bottle in the cup holder.
In the middle of the night, Malcolm Frazier left his Operations Center and took a walk to clear his head. The last piece of news was unbelievable, he thought. Un-fucking-believable. This abomination happened on his watch. If he survived this-if they survived this-he'd be testifying at closed Pentagon hearings till he was a hundred.
They'd gone into crisis mode the moment Shackleton switched his cell phone off and the beacon was lost. A team converged on the Venetian but he was gone, his Corvette still in the valet lot, the bill unsettled.
What followed was a very dark hour until they were able to turn things around. He had been with a woman, an attractive brunette whom the concierge recognized as an escort he'd seen around the hotel. They accessed Shackleton's mobile phone records and found dozens of calls to a Kerry Hightower, who fit the woman's description.
Hightower's phone was pinging towers along I-15 westbound until the signal went dead fifteen miles west of Barstow. It looked like L.A. was a likely destination. They fed the description of her car and its tag number to the CHP and local sheriff departments but wouldn't know until an after-action investigation that her Toyota had been in the shop and she was driving a loaner.
Rebecca Rosenberg was eating her third postmidnight candy bar when she suddenly blasted through Shackleton's encryption and almost choked on a gob of caramel. She peeled out of her lab, ran clumsily down the hall to the Operations Center, and burst into the scrum of watchers, her white-girl version of a sixties Afro bouncing on her shoulders.
