sorrow had turned to determination. It was the determination she'd learned as a child, to keep going, keep fighting the curse of her mother's heritage.
On this day she had been in such need of an ear to help keep her from a pit of depression that when she couldn't find Ben, she had gone to find Sam.
Haley had not been with a man in a year. Her mind still swirled with Sam on the weight bench. She opened her eyes and unplugged her ears and saw that her unwitting hosts were moving around. What if they came to the pantry? Now her heart thudded for a different reason. She opened her eyes as the woman stepped into her dress. Standing behind her, naked, her husband wrapped her in his arms as the dress remained draped around her waist. Her mostly nude body was enfolded in his, together a symphony of contours rolling the light.
Dear God, no. Why couldn't they be a typical, bored married couple? For a few moments Mr. Gentleman Farmer looked like he might be interested in a rematch.
'I've got to do the books, honey. Really. If you need more, it's in bed tonight,' she said.
Thank God, Haley thought.
But hubby didn't give up, kissing her neck, running his hands over her bottom. Slowly she started to become pliable and the woman's resolve melted. The dress dropped to the floor.
Didn't they realize this was Friday Harbor? Not Paris. Not Hawaii.
Haley closed her eyes and returned to Sam. As she spied on him through the crack at the door hinges, she marveled at the expressions on his face. One of those expressions was most important. It was not the look as he lifted the weights- the look she found so sexy that it made her grind her legs together-she would never tell anyone that-it was the look of Sam at rest.
Sam had a spotter in the room-after all, the weights were on the order of three hundred pounds, and you didn't lift weights like that without a partner. It was amazing that a man with a bad back could bench-press that kind of weight. The spotter was Jeffrey, Haley's cousin, who worked at the small gym. When Sam rested, he would sit up on the bench and Jeffrey would sit beside him, unconsciously mimicking him.
Sitting there, they looked like two old friends-except that one of them had the mind of a ten-year-old. There was nothing about it that was extraordinary except the attention that Sam gave Jeffrey. To watch from afar, you'd think that everything Jeffrey said somehow fascinated Sam. Perhaps it was guile or perhaps in some strange way Sam was able to remain interested in mundane stories about the tourists, or in the latest tale about the barber's new chair.
Something about Sam's interest in Jeffrey turned Haley on even more than the sweat and muscle and the body.
Jeffrey did most of the talking. He wanted to know how to do certain things with the weights. Haley watched as Sam explained and invited Jeffrey to give it a try. She found it difficult to put what she witnessed into words. It wasn't enough to say that Sam was a nice guy or that he cared about other people. There was a sweetness to this mysterious, wounded man that caught hold of her, that seemed at odds with the great caution that she felt.
There came a moment that day where her shame at spying and her caution about Sam overcame her desire to talk and she quietly left with all her questions still inside her.
Safely inside the car, with the motor running, she thought she felt something in her besides her own anger at the Sanker injustice. It was dim, intermittent, and gasping to survive. It lived under the load of stark despair, but it seemed to her like a tiny ember in the dark of the night.
It was hope. At that moment back in February, and only for an instant, she had thought Sam might be worth another try. The thought left as quickly as it had come.
Haley glanced at her unwitting hosts again. She was running out of time. The police must have completed their search. It was now or never. Unbelievably, Mr. and Mrs.
Gentleman Farmer were in full swing, starting over. They were in a deep clench.
Apparently not everyone was bored with marriage.
Haley slipped out from the pantry as the woman commenced a deep kiss. Three steps and she was at the back door, slowly pulling it open. It creaked.
'Hey,' the woman shouted. 'Oh, my God,' said the husband. Adrenaline shot through Haley. She stepped through the door and was out in the backyard, running with everything she had, watching desperately for the fence. Without thought she high jumped with her hand on a wooden post, the basic moves of her torso and legs left over from high-school track and field. Amazingly, she didn't rip her skin on the top strand of the barbed-wire fence. There was one cop car out on the road. Nobody behind her.
Fortunately, Frick's people had vanished. Unfortunately, they had probably moved toward the airport.
'How's the dog doing?' Frick asked the handler over the radio.
'He's running back and forth. I don't get it. In and out of a fire pit. Never seen anything like it. Darker than hell out here, except when the moon's out from behind a cloud.'
'I hope it occurred to you that you're chasing a pro. He's making an ass of you and that dog. He's escaping.'
'What should I do?'
'Don't try to follow a trail, just try to use the dog to intercept him along the beach and send cars along the roads in the nearby neighborhoods. Focus on intercepting him until you get a fresh scent.'
'Roger that.'
'The officers chasing after Haley Walther are calling,' Delia announced.
Frick took the phone.
'Have you got her?' he asked.
'Not yet,' his man answered.
'What's going on?'
'She was in a house. A couple was home. They didn't know she was there.' He went on to explain.
'How long ago did she run?' Frick said.
'Five or ten minutes.'
'Damn. She could go a long way,' Frick said. 'She's in decent shape. Figure a mile radius.'
'Maybe the airport.'
'Anderson's plane is down,' Frick said. 'Two men just checked it. Mechanic was there, but it's in pieces. Could be another plane, though, so scour the airport. We'll call in more men, cover the roads. There's a ton of houses in a two-mile circle.'
'Roger. She can't have gone that far.'
'Oh yeah? Just give her another ten minutes.'
Frick knew that something needed to change.
He called McStott on the speaker phone.
'Anything new on your end?'
'Yeah, they found something of interest.'
'Who they?' Frick said, annoyed at McStott's habit of starting in the middle of a thought.
'The men searching Lattimer Gibbons's house found some empty vials. The kind you would use for storing organ-ics in a freezer,' McStott said. 'It looked like stuff we found in Ben's lab. We think he packages whatever he's making with glycerol. That way he can keep it very cold without freezing and he can take out small portions at a time and he doesn't have a thawing problem.'
'What's inside these new vials?' asked Frick.
'We're working on that. Probably organics. But frankly there is no way we'll find out quick from a tiny bit of residue. In fact, we need more than a tiny bit. Assuming there is residue.'
'Well, if you've got it, can't you figure out what it is?'
'Not necessarily,' said McStott.
'Call me when you have something.' He hung up, disgusted, knowing that at any cost he had to find Ben, Haley, or Sarah.
CHAPTER 27
