He looks at the floor, then back up at me, and his eyes shine with an unpleasant light. “It wouldn’t be the first time you pretended to be her, would it?”
It’s as though he flushed liquid nitrogen through my veins. I am speechless, unable to move. Only when he squeezes my hands do I yank them away in reflex.
“What are you talking about?”
He smirks like a little boy with a secret. “You know.”
Without knowing how I got there, I find myself standing three feet away from him with my arms crossed over my breasts. “I’m leaving. I’m going to stay at a hotel. Tell the kids I’ll be back during the day.”
He blinks, then seems to come to his senses a bit, or at least to feel some sense of shame. “Don’t do that. I didn’t mean to upset you. You’re just so damn beautiful.” He stumbles over the ottoman as he comes toward me. My instinct is to jump forward and help him, but I don’t. I don’t want things to get any worse than they already are.
“I’m going upstairs to get my bags. You stay here while I do it.”
“Don’t be melodramatic. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“I mean it, Marc.”
Without waiting for a reply, I run up the stairs and grab my suitcase, thanking God I didn’t unpack yet. When I go back down, he’s waiting at the foot of the stairs.
“What am I supposed to tell the kids?” he asks.
“Don’t you dare use them against me like that. Tell them I got called away to a photo shoot. I’ll be back to see them. I just won’t be spending the night.”
He looks penitent now, but the sense of entitlement I heard in his voice only moments ago still haunts me. Before he sinks into drunken apologies, I push past him and leave without a word.
As I hit the sidewalk, a car door opens a few yards away and a dark figure floats onto the sidewalk.
“Jordan?” says a female voice. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m fine, Wendy. I’m just staying elsewhere.”
“What happened?”
My joke to Kaiser about Wendy making a pass at me comes back to me like instant karma. Someone made a pass tonight, all right. But I could never have imagined it would come from my sister’s husband. “Men problems,” I murmur.
“Gotcha. Where are we going?”
“A hotel, I guess.”
She takes my suitcase and starts toward the Mustang, then pauses. “Um, look… I don’t know how you feel about hotels, but I’ve got an extra bedroom at my apartment. I’ve got to stay with you no matter where you go, so, you know. It’s up to you. But that way we’d have food and coffee, toiletries, whatever you need.”
There have been nights I would have killed for a hotel room. I’ve slept in shell craters and been grateful for them. But tonight I don’t want a sterile, empty place… I want real things around me, a humanly messy kitchen and CDs and a crocheted comforter on the couch. I hope Wendy isn’t a compulsive cleaner. “That sounds great. Let’s go.”
I’m about to start the Mustang when a soft beeping sounds in it. “What’s that?” I ask, looking around in confusion.
“Cell phone,” she announces. “A Nokia. I recognize the ring. We use some at the office.”
“Oh.” I grab my fanny pack from the backseat, unzip it, and remove the phone Kaiser gave me back at the FBI office. “Hello?”
“Ms. Glass? Daniel Baxter.”
“What’s up?”
“I’ve been negotiating with Monsieur de Becque of the Cayman Islands.”
“And?”
“He says you can go on our plane, and you can bring one assistant to help with lighting, et cetera.”
“Great. When do I leave?”
“Tomorrow. A few of us have spent the last half hour arguing over who your assistant should be. I’m backing a member of the Hostage Rescue Team. If things take a nasty turn, he’d have the best chance of getting you out of there alive.”
“Is someone arguing with your choice?”
“Agent Kaiser has a different opinion.”
I smile to myself. “Who does the sheriff want to send?”
Baxter’s hand covers the mouthpiece, but despite his effort I hear him say, “She just called you ‘the sheriff.’” When the ISU chief removes his hand, he says, “The sheriff doesn’t want to send anybody. He wants to go himself.”
“You should let him go, then.”
“Is that who you want?”
“Absolutely. I feel safer already.”
“Okay. You’ll probably leave tomorrow afternoon. I’ll call you in the morning to give you the travel details.”
“I’ll talk to you then. And Wendy’s taking good care of me.”
“Good. See you tomorrow.”
“What’s happening?” Wendy asks after I hang up.
“I’m going to the Cayman Islands.”
“Oh.” She shifts in her seat. “What was that about a sheriff?”
“A joke. I was talking about Kaiser.”
She guessed as much. “He’s going with you?”
“It looks that way. For security.”
She looks out her window. “Lucky you,” she says finally.
The eternal plight of women. A minute ago we were fast friends. Now she’d like to revoke her offer to share her apartment. But her manners are far too good for that. I’d like to reassure Agent Wendy that she has nothing to worry about, but I don’t want to insult her intelligence. I start the engine and pull into St. Charles Avenue.
“Give me some directions. It’s time to get some sleep.”
“Straight,” she says. “I’ll tell you where to turn.”
I start down the tree-lined avenue, the streetcar tracks gleaming silver under the lights as the Mustang swallows them. The leaves on the trees look gray, but only a small part of my brain registers this. The rest is rerunning Marc Lacour’s remark again and again:
If only you could plead the fifth with your conscience.
9
Most flights to the Cayman Islands stage out of Houston or Miami, but with the FBI Lear, things are simpler. It’s Kaiser, me, and two pilots up front for the two-hour run from New Orleans to Grand Cayman, largest of the three islands that make up the British colony. The last time I made this flight, my knuckles were white for half the journey. I was covering the air convoy that American pilots take to the Caymans for the annual air show there, one “highlight” of which is the provocative overflight of communist Cuba. Fifteen years ago, this was no joke, and I’m happy to be cruising along with nothing more to worry about than a seventy-year-old Frenchman who for some unknown reason has requested my presence.
We’ve been in the air for an hour, and Kaiser is uncharacteristically quiet. I don’t suppose there’s much to say. Or perhaps I’m radiating enough hostility to discourage conversation. I can still feel my brother-in-law’s lips against my neck, and the emotional fallout is hard to shake. Most difficult of all is the remark Marc made as I rebuffed him:
