'Should we evacuate the house?'
'I doubt that's necessary, ma'am. We'll be checking every inch around here. Keep your doors locked. Someone else thought they might have seen her just down the way, but she's probably not going to crash through a window. She's running.'
Then Frick's men were asking about the neighborhood and who was away for the holidays and how they might get in the neighboring houses. Haley checked her watch and nearly choked. The goal was for her to pick Sam up in thirty minutes and she was stuck in a genteel country house. She resisted panic and the urge to run out the back. It would be suicide until Frick's men were finished with their search.
Quickly she glanced around and noticed two small wooden-slatted doors off the kitchen, probably a small pantry. There was another cubbyhole with a computer, where someone had been working. She had to move or be discovered. Haley proceeded from the vestibule into the kitchen. On the far side of a large counter was a spacious family room done in green leather and fabrics echoing forest themes. No place to hide there.
'Are the neighbors just through the trees there at home?' the officer asked the couple.
'No, they aren't,' the husband said. 'They went to the sunshine for the holidays.'
'We need to get in.'
'How about if we give you the key and you bring it back?' the wife offered.
Haley tried the small slatted doors.
Sure enough, it was a tiny pantry, just large enough to hold her and her bag of clothes.
The doors had an external latch, so she had to leave them slightly ajar.
The officers left, and Haley heard someone come back down the hall. She peeked to find the woman heading for the computer. Her heart sank. It seemed 'Mr. and Mrs.
Gentleman Farmer' were going to hang around the kitchen.
'I'm tired,' the man said. He was tall and slender, sandy-haired, square-jawed, and had a confident face.
Haley did a double take. The man had caught up with the woman before she reached the computer. Now it seemed as if he were rubbing her backside with his pelvis.
Haley watched, looking for any advantage or opportunity this bit of romance might offer. The woman, trim and blond, wore an elegant, pale green dress with a judicious application of makeup. Perhaps she'd had something in mind at the start of the evening.
'You're a voyeur, dear,' she said.
'What do you mean?' He kept hugging her from behind.
'You were watching me in the shower.'
Ugh. Haley wished they would take their growing passion to bed.
'I love you…' Then the man whispered something more.
Haley imagined it was dark and sexy. Then he began planting little kisses on her neck.
Maybe he did have some understanding of females. Then he started gently rubbing her shoulder. Prince Charming was obviously working hard at it.
Haley cursed her bad luck.
'Why can't you do this when you haven't been spying on me?' the woman asked, giggling as he kissed her ears.
'I was hardly spying.' He tried a kiss on the lips.
Time was crawling. It occurred to Haley that she was carrying her dry clothes. It was risky to change now, but the clammy clothes were making her shiver. Carefully, Haley began undressing. It took less than two minutes, every second more nerve-racking than the last. As fast as she could, she pulled on the dry clothes. She was desperate to leave and get to Sam.
She heard faint rustling sounds.
'Maybe we should wait until bed,' Mrs. Gentleman Farmer said. But the woman didn't really sound at all interested in waiting.
Haley glanced back through the crack, unable to deny herself the next installment.
'I guess not.' The woman answered her own question.
Haley bit her lip to keep from laughing.
Now they were French-kissing and the man had his wife's dress unbuttoned. As the soft light played over their bodies, Haley felt the red moving up her neck. For just a second she watched them delving into tender intimacy. When she closed her eyes, images came back to her from thirteen years previous. She was nineteen. It was the Fourth of July. On each day of his three-day visit, she and Sam went to a dock off Brown Island, a friend's pier. They would lie in the sun and talk for hours, and watch the water-the sleek grace of the sailboats, the noisy grind of the powerboats. On the third and final day of his visit, Sam covered her back with suntan lotion. His light touch had given her pleasure. She hadn't known what to think or do, but he was reaching much more than her body.
From his fingers came a longing, almost more than she could bear. Haley recalled his whispers and his promise and the pain of it all. He said he would love her forever. Sam was not a man of idle words. Then came the days of waiting. She switched channels and was back in the closet.
More movements of a chair and the sound of the man's zipper. Heavy fabric hit the floor. His jeans.
'I love you,' he whispered over and over.
'You are so good,' she said. 'So damn good.'
It wasn't an original thought, but Haley could tell that Mrs. Gentleman Farmer meant every word. Through some slight miscalculation of her peripheral vision, Haley saw what was happening and made herself look away.
The last time Haley had spied on someone, she'd been watching Sam. They were adults then. It had happened nine months ago, not long after his return to San Juan Island to convalesce. Sam was on a weight bench, his enormous chest expanded, sweat covering his body, his breathing rough, like an old train.
Sam's face looked more intense than Haley had ever seen it. Here, apparently, he let the demon out of him, in the sweat and in the great blasts of air. Fighting the iron, he showed no good manners or signs of culture, he wore no disguise to keep the guttural aspects of the mind from rising to the countenance. At the weight bench Sam was something different.
Back in the closet Haley caught a glimpse of the woman's head flung back as she sat astride the man, her body and soul seemingly in perfect harmony with his. Haley put her fingers in her ears to stop the sounds of their lovemaking.
In her mind Sam's body gleamed, his long, flowing hair tousled. The sweat sheen traced the exquisite contours of muscle and sinew free of fat. He had the proportionality of a ripped gymnast. All her senses had been captive to the image of Sam: the steady rhythm of his breath, the deep groans near the finish, the quivering of muscle as he forced the weights, his arms like spring steel, his chest a beautiful smooth landscape of powerful curves, and the lower abdomen rippled like the rolling tan sands of the Sahara.
Haley removed her fingers from her ears for a moment. From the resonance in Mrs.
Gentleman Farmer's voice, she seemed to be in the homestretch. Their rhythm could be heard in the squeaks of the chair.
Sam was laboring under the weights. As she had watched him, something beyond the heat of the sexual wanting, mixed with nervous caution, had stirred inside Haley. It felt like some sort of spiritual event. Nothing massive, nothing like a rebirth or revelation, no burst of hope like spring flowers. It felt subtle and growing, a conviction, at one of the worst periods in her life, that things would start over for her.
The research-theft scandal had been in full bloom. Days before Haley had received a letter so terrible that it had sent her after Sam, desperate that he'd talk to her, reassure her. The letter had come from her dearest college friend and roommate, but it had a cold, distant tone and none of the warmth of their many months together. The worst part was the final line:
For whatever reason, you have chosen to betray a fellow scientist. You disdain academic pursuit. I'm afraid there is no place here for you at the present time. I don't know how, but there must be a way to redeem yourself. For the moment I cannot recommend you to the director.
Her 'friend' had signed it, Trying to understand.
The letter had shaken her badly. Ben was in Seattle, with no way for her to contact him.
For a few moments she had been utterly despondent, but then, as was usually the case with Haley, her
