signal that he really wanted to leave.
“I wish I could tell you something either way,” I said honestly.
“Dryden doesn’t think we’ve been compromised. But we’re going on vacation, starting tomorrow, and the watch will be kept for anyone asking questions. We’ll be back. I would hate to move, but we just may have to. You know,” she added as she rose to her feet, “if you tell anyone about this, we may end up getting killed. I tried to talk to your husband, but I think he could tell we had secrets, because he wouldn’t meet with me privately, and Bill couldn’t make up his mind whether or not it was a good idea to talk to Martin. He figured that anything you knew, you would have told your husband, and he knows Martin better; and I’d just met you that one time, at our house. Now you know about us, and our lives are your property. But I had to ask if you knew anything, had seen anything. We have to know. We just have to.”
And without further ado she walked slowly away, a stout red-haired woman in fear for her life, whom I’d always known as the boring and self-effacing Bettina Anderson. She put her hand on her husband’s arm, said something to him quietly, and Bill shook hands with Martin in leave-taking.
I wondered what her christened name was. I wondered how her husband felt about hiding with his wife. I wondered if they had grown children in Chicago, what those children had been told.
“What was that all about?” Martin asked. I’d been so preoccupied I hadn’t noticed him approaching, and I jumped. “They’ve been asking me weird questions for a week,” he continued, “and wanting to meet with me privately without either one of them telling me why. After Bill was foisted on me by the Chicago guys, I smelled something strange about the Andersons, and I just don’t want to be involved in whatever trouble they’re in… after all my own problems with our government.” We exchanged a look; that was a time we didn’t talk about anymore.
“I thought maybe she had a thing for you,” I confessed.
“I was worried about that, too,” he admitted. “Though it didn’t have that feel… but all the secrecy. So, are you going to tell me?”
“I don’t know,” I said, dismay showing in my voice. “I don’t know if I can.” I couldn’t think of anything I’d ever withheld from Martin in our two years together, but I couldn’t dismiss Bettina’s plea for secrecy either.
“Can I think about it?” I asked Martin.
“Sure. I often feel I know more about my employees’ private lives than I want to know, anyway.” But I could tell by the set of his shoulders that he was piqued with me.
As we neared the exit (Martin good-byeing right and left to people who’d lingered to talk) we came face-to-face with Arthur Smith and his ponytailed date. Martin’s hand gripped mine more tightly. “Hello, Sue,” Martin said to the girl. “How are you?”
“Fine, Mr. Bartell,” she said self-consciously. “Have you met Arthur Smith?”
The silence held on too long for even young Sue to ignore. “So you guys have met,” she said nervously, finally aware there was something going on.
Martin and I gave Arthur identical stiff nods, and Martin said, “Night, Sue. See you in Ag Products tomorrow.” Martin held open one of the glass doors for me, and I stepped out into the cool evening air. Martin appeared beside me again, and took my hand. I heard the door swoosh shut, and then open again for young Sue and Arthur.
We stepped into a knot of people who had been tempted by the beautiful evening to linger to chat on the sidewalk; Perry and Jenny Tankersley, Paul and Deena Cotton, Marnie Sands (who seemed to be groping for something in her purse). Bill and Bettina Anderson had been waylaid by one of Martin’s division heads, a balding paunchy man named Jesse Prentiss, who was introducing his wife Verna.
Just at that moment all hell broke loose, all hell in the form of a swift and terrified gray cat which streaked across the circles of light and dark dappling the parking lot, a cat hotly pursued by a large and shaggy dog with a length of frayed rope flying from its collar.
There was a hoot of laughter here and there, an exclamation of alarm from those who couldn’t immediately see what was causing the hoopla, and a few halfhearted attempts to call the dog or grab the length of rope. The scene drew the stragglers in the parking lot together in a loose knot. After a moment the animals were gone, continuing their chase into the modest residential area on the next street. The yelping of the dog was still clear.
My eyes, like everyone else’s, had followed the cat, who’d bounded onto and then over a car parked in the shadows at the very far reaches of the community center lot. I listened with half my attention to the comments and jokes the incident had sparked in the little crowd, while trying to figure out if I had indeed seen a blond head in the car that the cat had cleared in her escape.
Sure enough, I caught a glimpse of blond again, and one of the sodium lights caught a gleam of glasses.
Well, well. To cap off a jarring evening, who did I spy lurking in the parking lot but Mr. Dryden. Agent Dry-den? Marshal Dryden? Even his protectee had only called him “Dryden.”
Was he waiting to see if anyone followed the Andersons? Or was he watching us?
I was so engrossed in my thoughts in the seconds following the animals’ exit from the parking lot that I was taken utterly by surprise by the sudden pressure on my back.
I heard a woman scream. My hand was ripped from its loose grip with Martin’s.
To my bewilderment I found myself being pressed down to the ground by a warm weight that I could not support, though my feet shuffled for balance and my knees braced to push back. I heard another shriek, and thought
In the long, long minute before the weight was lifted, as I lay prone under the terrifying burden, I felt something wet on my face and opened my eyes to see blood dripping to the gleaming new sidewalk a half-inch from my nose.
After a frantic little inventory of pains, I was pretty sure it wasn’t my blood.
Out of a cacophony of voices I discerned Paul Allison bellowing for calm, and I could hear one woman set up a steady howl for help-Bettina Anderson, I thought. “Ready on three,” I heard Martin say, and the shuffle of feet all around me. “One, two, three!” Martin said, and the weight on top of me was eased off. I had had the breath knocked out of me, and was frantically trying to take in air, with the usual result that I was foiling my own attempt.
I saw some knees hit the pavement beside me.
“Don’t move,” Martin said tensely. “Baby, is anything broken? Are you hurt?” Struggling for breath, I couldn’t answer.
“Call 911!” exclaimed a male voice, Jesse Prentiss’s, I thought. “You! Perry Allison! There’s a phone in the manager’s office to the left of those glass doors!” Running feet, light; Perry pounding obediently into the community center.
Running feet, heavy. “Who got hurt?” Dryden, breathing raggedly. So I’d been right; he’d been parked at the far reaches of the lot.
“Move back, people, police are on the way,” Paul Allison said loudly in his police official voice. “I’ve already radioed from my car. Step back, everyone, unless you’re an EMT.”
“I am,” Jenny Tankersley was saying as I felt Martin’s hands running over my body.
“Then get over here,” Martin snapped, and Paul Allison said in a shocked voice, “Has Roe been hurt?”
“She took a fall, she’s okay,” Dryden said-rather cavalierly, I thought. “But this man here is really bleeding.”
“There’s blood on Roe,” Paul pointed out tensely.
And then I could breathe. Nothing had felt as good in weeks as that deep intake of air.
“I’m okay,” I croaked. “Just help me up, Martin, I don’t think it’s my blood.”
I managed to push up with my arms to achieve a kneeling position, and then Martin lifted me up the rest of the way, frantically touching my head and neck to see where I’d been hurt.
We were a little apart from the activity now, which was centered on someone lying on the ground. The girl with the ponytail, Sue, was sobbing hysterically by one of the lampposts. “He just fell down,” she said over and over, “he just let go of my arm and fell down.”
“Not my blood,” I reassured Martin. This time he listened.
“Tell me how you’re feeling,” he said.
“I bumped my cheek on the pavement,” I gasped. I took another deep breath and started again. “I’m going to
