The vials of pills she kept in her purse were gone. White pills and blue pills. She took the blue if her mood sank low, like now, and she needed the comfort of an antidepressant, the white pills right before a therapy session with Allison, to calm her, to make it easier to talk about Brian and the Disturbed Fan. But the bottle had just been there on the floor, hadn’t it, when Allison got her a replacement rubber band?
She knelt, glancing under the chair and the coffee table, finally getting up and wandering the room. She went to her bathroom and found one bottle holding the sweet blue numbers. But no white pills. Where the hell had she put them? She should have asked Allison for a refill, but that was all right, she didn’t have a session for two more days.
She downed a blue meanie, as she called them, and went and sat in front of her window. She observed the shifting sunlight of the day from inside her cage. The thought nagged at her. Those pills had been in her purse this afternoon, she was sure of it.
Perhaps Allison had taken the pills, palming them when she rummaged through Celeste’s purse. But why, without telling her? And asking her to keep her secret for her, as if they were teenage girls, was downright odd. Actually unprofessional. Keeping a secret meant responsibility, and she wanted nothing to do with responsibility.
She got up and headed for the phone.
SIX
Miles slowed to a walk as he reached Palace Avenue. He scanned the office’s parking slots. Allison’s silver BMW wasn’t in the lot.
But he saw Sorenson walking through the front door, into the building. He carried a fat briefcase, the kind Miles had seen government lawyers use to haul massive files into the courtroom.
Miles ducked close to a cottonwood, counted to thirty, then went up to the steps and into the building.
Allison’s office was closed. He risked a quick listen at the door; he heard the softest tread of foot on floor. The hallway air reeked of paints and solvents and he heard voices upstairs, workmen discussing the renovations, the quiet voice of a woman asking when the work would be finished, she planned to relocate here from Denver and, damn, she needed an office before the rents went up. The painters laughed and agreed with her sense of urgency.
Keep them occupied, lady, please, Miles thought. Knock or wait? Confront Sorenson – but with what? That he wasn’t licensed? He considered the oddity of Allison’s request, a note tucked into his medication. She presumably couldn’t ask for help in front of Sorenson. So Sorenson was her so-called real trouble. She couldn’t call and ask for help, which might mean that Sorenson was going to be around her a lot. Or monitoring her calls…
That sounded ridiculous. Paranoid. But she’d said Sorenson was a doctor, and he wasn’t. So what was he?
He stepped away from the door toward the office across the entryway from hers. The door stood open, the beige paint on the walls fresh. The workers upstairs must be refurbishing these rooms as well. They could return at any second and he didn’t want to be forced to explain his presence. But he eased the office door shut to an inch, where he could still see Allison’s door.
Two minutes later, Sorenson stepped out from Allison’s office, locked the door with a key, and left the building through the front door. No briefcase in hand.
Miles watched Sorenson step out of his line of vision and ten seconds later the door he was hiding behind slammed into his face.
‘Jesus, mister, sorry,’ the painter said, peeking around the edge.
‘My fault,’ Miles managed to say. ‘Sorry.’
‘These offices are already leased,’ the painter said. ‘The ones upstairs are available.’
‘Okay, thanks, sorry.’ Miles fled into the hallway, then into the bathroom. Washed his face, counted to thirty. He heard, after a minute, the heavy tread of the painter’s feet going back up the staircase.
Miles hurried to Allison’s door. He fished the lockpick he’d brought from home out of his pocket. It resembled a Swiss army knife set, and he pulled a blade free and eased it into the door. He hadn’t picked a lock since he’d stopped his spying for the Barradas, since he’d walked into a meeting with the feds to help bring the Barradas down. Lockpicks were part of the world he’d left behind but when he got to Santa Fe, he’d bought a basic set of picks off the Internet. He had assembled, and hidden in a rented locker at the bus station, a cache of equipment and money in case WITSEC couldn’t protect him, in case he had to vanish on his own terms. Because, until he lost his mind, he’d always taken care of himself.
He wondered, as he bit his lip and worked the mechanism, if picking a lock of a person who’d asked him for help was a violation of the Memorandum of Understanding WITSEC had required him to sign. He wasn’t supposed to commit a crime. It wasn’t a contract, but the MOU laid out, in clear black and white, his responsibility as a freshly minted law-abider, and the government’s duty to protect him. If WITSEC found out he’d jimmied her locks, they could boot him from the program, and then he was dead.
He was crossing a line not drawn in ink or sand but in trust. But she wasn’t answering her phone and Sorenson – who wasn’t a doctor and had lied about being one – came and went at will from her office. He was afraid for Allison.
The lock clicked open.
He stepped inside, shut and locked the door behind him. He checked the office.
She wasn’t here.
Okay, then, he thought. She’s not here. He comes in with a large briefcase, he leaves without it, which means he left it here. And what’s inside tells me who he is.
He searched the closet; it stood empty, except for a hooded sweatshirt, a raincoat, an umbrella, a sealed cardboard moving box marked MISC, and a box of spare office supplies. He peered under her desk. Empty. There weren’t that many places to stash a large briefcase. He went through the office methodically, telling himself he should leave, he wasn’t a private investigator, he wasn’t the Barradas’ spy anymore.
‘I don’t think she’d appreciate you being here,’ Andy said.
Miles paid him no attention. No sign of the briefcase. Now it was more interesting; now it was an item Sorenson didn’t want found. But he’d run out of hiding places.
The phone rang. He let it ring. Five rings and then Allison’s voice-greeting on the machine, simply asking the caller to leave a message. A woman’s quiet voice came on: ‘Hi, Allison, it’s Celeste Brent, um, the medicine you gave me last week seems to have vanished, the white pills, and I guess I need to get a replacement.’ Pause, but he could still hear the woman breathing into the line. ‘And I’m not really comfortable keeping secrets for you. It’s nothing personal, I think we’re just crossing a line that we shouldn’t. So, please, don’t put me in that position again. If I’m being a bitch, I’m really sorry, call me and we’ll talk.’ The woman hung up.
Celeste Brent. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it. The fact that the name was familiar bothered him; he’d have to be sure and find out who she was.
Then he heard a voice in the hallway, heard the key slide back into the lock.
He stepped into the closet, eased the door closed so he could see a sliver of the office, and heard the door open, then shut.
The thought of Allison catching him here made his chest nearly burst with shame. But Sorenson hurried past the two chairs where Allison always sat with Miles, into her office. He couldn’t see Sorenson but he heard the creak of a chair, he heard fingers tapping on a computer keyboard for several minutes. Miles stayed still, careful to breathe silently through his nose, a panic surging up and down his spine. Jesus, what if Sorenson stayed here until Miles was supposed to meet Allison? The thought made his legs ache, his mouth wither dry.
The typing stopped. He heard Sorenson say, apparently into a phone, ‘The action’s loaded. Dodd doesn’t know.’ A laugh, a pause. ‘Tonight. Yes. Her house. No problem.’ Then silence.
Miles strained to hear. What did that mean? Who was Dodd? The silence was awful. He imagined Sorenson walking straight to the closet.
Then he saw a flash of Sorenson’s blazer, crossing the narrow viewpoint, then the rattle of a file cabinet
