treat Cassandra, and the criminalists needed to set up their crime scene perimeter, no doubt using the parking meters and stop signs on the streets surrounding the warehouse to string up their caution tape. As I was thinking about all these things, I heard Ralph mention offhandedly to Lien-hua that Executive Assistant Director Margaret Wellington had arrived in town and wanted to swing by the scene. Great.
I realized that all in all, there wasn’t much else for Ralph, Lien-hua, or me to do here tonight, so we gave our statements, filled out the prerequisite paperwork. I turned in Austin’s cell phone as evidence, and then, as we were leaving, Ralph said to Lien-hua, “I bet that felt good. Kicking him like that.”
“No,” she said. “It didn’t feel good. None of this feels good.
None of it at all.”
Her words sent my thoughts flying back to Basque yet again.
That unforgettable night in the slaughterhouse. How it felt to hit him, to step over the line. And then, in light of Lien-hua’s words, I felt a dark surge of shame, because, unlike her, part of me had enjoyed the descent into the darkness. Part of me had wondered what it would be like to live on the other side of the line. And part of me still wondered, even after all these years.
Only after Lien-hua and I had stepped outside the warehouse and were climbing into the car did I notice that some of her blood was still on my hand from when I’d tried to stop the bleeding of the gunshot wound on her neck.
I laid my palm flat against my leg and held it there all the way back to the hotel.
60
10:02 p.m.
Tessa finished her poem about Riker, the guy who’d told Lachlan to give her whatever she wanted. Then she closed up her notebook and pulled out a book of nineteenth-century French short stories that she’d been wanting to read.
But after only a few minutes, her eyes weighed themselves down, and Tessa found sweet sleep coming to her in a tumble of dreams of ravens and sharks and dark waves kissing the shore.
10:14 p.m.
General Biscayne’s military escort plane leveled off for its final approach to the North Shore Naval Base on Coronado Island.
He figured he would have just enough time to drive to his sister’s house in Carmel Valley, and still manage seven hours of sleep before returning for the Project Rukh Oversight Committee meeting at 0800 hours-the meeting during which he would terminate the DARPA contract with Drake Enterprises.
10:26 p.m.
Back in her hotel room, Lien-hua Jiang checked beneath the bandage on her neck. Thankfully, the wound didn’t look serious, and overall she felt remarkably good, despite how unnerving the night had been. Her leg was bothering her, however. She’d felt a stiff achiness stretching across her right thigh ever since the water from the shattered tank had knocked her down, but it wasn’t until she pulled off her jeans to change into sweatpants that she discovered the deep and wicked bruise on her thigh. One of the metal bars must have speared her as it fell to the ground, and with all of the adrenaline in her system she hadn’t noticed how serious the contusion was until now.
Ice. That’s what she needed. Ice down the leg before going to bed. She grabbed the ice bucket, opened the door, and almost ran over Pat Bowers, who was standing in her path, his hand poised in mid-knock.
“Hi,” he said, his hand still in the air.
“Hi,” she said with a smile. “Are you practicing tai chi?”
“Hm?”
“Your hand.”
“Oh. Right.” He dropped his hand. “Sorry, I um… I just wanted to check on you. Just wanted to make sure you’re OK.”
“Well, thank you. I’m on my way to get some ice for a bruise on my leg.” She stepped past him, expecting him to ask if he could walk with her.
“Hey, can I walk with you?”
Absolutely. “Sure.”
They walked side by side.
Her hair was draped across the gunshot wound on her neck, and it surprised her when he gently slid her hair to the side. “Is your neck going to be all right?” Then his hand fell away.
“I think so. The bullet just grazed me.” They reached the ice machine, and she placed the bucket onto the tray beneath the ice chute.
“Here, I’ll help you.” He punched the button.
“Wow. Thanks, Pat. I don’t think I could have managed that on my own.” “No problem.” He stood awkwardly beside her as the ice rattled and tumbled into the bucket.
It seemed to take forever.
Then, when the machine was cycling back to sleep and the bucket was finally full, Pat reached for it. “I can get that for you.”
She’d already reached for it, however, and his hand barely missed glancing across hers as she picked it up. “I know it looks heavy, Pat, but I think I can manage.” For a moment she thought that if this night were being made into a movie, their hands would have touched. Guaranteed. And in a way she wished they had, even though it was a cliche, cliche, cliche.
As she led the way back to the room, she found herself walking slower than she needed to.
“You were good out there tonight,” Pat said. “Really good. Talking with Hunter. Helping Cassandra. Keeping us focused on finding her…” She could tell he was fishing for the right words, and it was kind of cute. “And this afternoon too,” he continued. “At the briefing… Very thorough. Very… professional.”
“Well, thank you, Dr. Bowers. You were very professional today too.” They reached her door. “I could see you piecing things together, almost thinking like a profiler.”
He let a smile drift to the corner of his mouth. “Lien-hua, here I come to check on you, and you insult me.” His five-o’clock shadow lent a deep masculinity to his face. “What possible motive could you have for that?”
“I thought you didn’t believe in motives?”
“Oh, I believe in them. I just think sometimes we have more than one influencing us at a time.”
The question begged to be asked, and so, trying not to anticipate the answer, she threw it out there. “So, what ulterior motives did you have stopping by here tonight, Pat?”
In reply, he lifted his hand as if he were going to knock on the door. “You guessed it before. Tai chi.” He began to move slowly through a series of tai chi moves. “Health benefits. Gotta stay fit.”
“Well, I hope that works out for you,” she said. “And once again
…” She flattened her right hand, lifted her fingers to her chin, then lowered them slowly.
“That’s sign language, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it means ‘thank you.’”
He repeated the sign. “You’ll have to teach me more sometime.
I’d like to learn.”
“OK. Sometime.” She slid the key into the lock and pressed the door open. She wanted this conversation to go on. She wanted to invite him into her room, but instead, she simply said what she was supposed to say to a co-worker who’d showed appropriate concern for her well-being. “Good night, Pat. I’ll see you in the morning.
Really, I’m glad you stopped by to see how I was doing.”
He gave her a slight nod, tapped the door with his finger, and said, “OK, see you in the morning. Take care of that leg. Your neck too.”
She stepped into her room, eased the door shut, stood beside it for a moment, counted to five, then cracked it open to see if he’d left. When she saw that he had, she closed it again and went over to tend to her vase of dying flowers.
