Runaway. Part 19

"I don't care. Why don't you pick?"

"Top," she said promptly. And then she winked.

They headed further back in the house. Ed and Warren came out of one of the rooms and walked behind them as they reached the end of the hall. There a door opened onto a huge storage room. She saw David, Tommy, and Diane standing in the middle of the room, looking around. The room had shelves built all around the perimeter of the room, stuffed with supplies that the previous owner left behind. Maddy saw rows of canned goods, boxes of MREs and other freeze-dried foods, gas masks, propane and kerosene containers. On the floor sat two small generators. In the middle of the room was a folding buffet table with metal chairs tucked in all around it.

"Holy c.r.a.p," Warren said. "I guess we won't starve if the hunting doesn't pan out."

"We're counting on you two to keep us away from the canned beef stew," David said. "The hunting will be plenty good here." He turned to look at everyone in the room. "Can you believe this? It's better than I even imagined."

Diane gave him a hug, but everyone else stood there looking a little sh.e.l.l-shocked. Suddenly, it seemed they really were in Idaho, in a brand new home.

Maddy went to unload her things and make up her little underground room.

Jan was running well ahead of time for her flight to Spokane. She'd traveled so little in her life that she took quite seriously the airline's suggestion that she get to the airport two hours ahead of her flight. She made it through security and found it was still ninety minutes before departure.

O'Hare Airport was a small country in itself and she was locked into the city that was Terminal 3. She found her gate, crowded with pa.s.sengers for a flight just starting to board. She backtracked to a nearly empty gate and took a seat by the window. It was just starting to rain. She checked the weather app on her phone for the third time that morning. A storm was heading toward them. The race was on to see whether it reached Chicago before flight time. Her phone lit up with a call. It was Peet.

"Are you at the office?" Jan asked. "Do you know if Catherine has left yet?"

She'd had no word from Catherine since the call at the bar the evening before, other than a text telling her she'd meet Jan at the plane. Catherine had not been at the office before Jan left for the airport, but Vivian reported that Catherine had breezed in with a suitcase and was busy on the phone in her conference room.

"I was over there a few minutes ago," Peet said. "Catherine was still there."

"She's not going to make it here on time."

"Sure she will. Listen, I just got a call back, finally, from Detective Hock in Winnetka."

"And?"

"He followed up with the Michigan police after I told him what you found up there."

"And they said there's nothing they can do, right?"

"Actually, there isn't anything they can do. They checked Conlon's house and asked around and agreed that he's left town, but as far as they're concerned there's nothing wrong with that and there's no evidence he has a minor with him."

"I'm surprised they did as much as that."

"Hock also said there's been no response on the BOLO he put out nationwide for Conlon's car. He's probably not driving his own car anyway."

"Okay. We'll be heading to the first property as soon as we land."

"I've also taken the precaution of telling the Idaho police that you'll be in the state looking for a missing teen, just in case something happens," Peet said. "It might help if they have some kind of heads-up about you."

"Have you found out any more about who the buyers are on some of those properties we identified?"

Jan and Peet had spent time on the phone the previous day with Penny Harper, a real estate agent in northern Idaho who agreed to help them out. Her base was Coeur d'Alene, but the amount of land she helped people buy and sell spread out for hundreds of miles from that city.

"She's on it, but the information takes time to track down. The recent sales aren't recorded with the county yet, so she's contacting the agents who handled the properties we identified. There's no telling whether they'll get back to her or tell her who the buyers were."

"I'll be wandering around Idaho forever if that's the case."

"You won't be alone at least," Peet said. She sounded like she was teasing. "And a girl's gotta sleep, and stuff."

"Don't start on that," Jan said. The funny thing was, she wanted to talk about Catherine. She didn't understand why Catherine hadn't called her again after the short conversation last night. She didn't understand why she wasn't furious about having to play second fiddle. But she didn't know how to talk about this stuff. She only knew how to pretend that everything was okay.

Peet laughed. "You're so much fun to tease, Jan. I'll call as soon as I hear anything else from Penny."

By the time the boarding agent had called the last group of pa.s.sengers for her flight, Jan was pacing back and forth at the gate. The storm had held off, but Vivian reported that Catherine had left the office just half an hour ago. What was the matter with her? Did she think they'd hold the flight for her? Maybe Catherine was one of those people who thought everyone could work around her needs and her schedule, to the extent they thought about it at all. She turned to see Catherine walking toward her, wheeling a case behind her and looking more relaxed than she should, in Jan's opinion.

"They've called everyone on," Jan said. "We should get in there."

"Of course." Catherine smiled. "I'm surprised you're not already on the plane."

The plane closed up not long after they were seated. They were in a two across section, far back in coach. Jan put Catherine's bag in the overhead bin after squeezing other people's coats and shopping bags out of the way. When she settled in her aisle seat she saw Catherine looking intently at her.

"We have so much to talk about."

"You get right to things, don't you?" Jan wedged her laptop bag under the seat in front of her and buckled in. "Don't you think we should talk about work first?"

"Certainly. Here's how I see it. We're going to Idaho. If you have a plan, I'm fine with it. If you'd like me to consult on a plan, I'm fine with that too."

"Peet and I worked up a plan."

"That's fine then."

They were quiet for a bit while the flight attendants squawked over the PA system and they got underway.

"How upset are you about what happened at the hotel?"

"I don't know if upset is the word I'd use," Jan said.

"It was ugly and I'm so sorry you had to go through that."

"Had you just told your girlfriend about me? Is that why she acted that way?"

Catherine sat with her back to the window, angled toward Jan. She looked like she'd lost some of her calm and most of her confidence. "Part of what I wanted to say to you today is that I'm not going to lie about anything. I hadn't told Ellen about you before you came to the hotel. She simply leapt to the conclusion that I had an out of town lover. I don't know how she could have possibly got wind of that, but we did have a nasty argument on the phone the other day. Any time I make noises about the relations.h.i.+p being at an end, she accuses me of having a lover."

"Was that such a leap? You've had other lovers since you've been together."

Catherine kept her eye contact. "I did take a lover once and Ellen found out about it. All I can say is that it's not like it's a regular habit. It was still wrong to do, but I'm not a player, Jan."

Jan had interviewed many witnesses over the years and she thought she was a pretty good judge of when someone was lying and when they were being sincere. She thought Catherine was being candid with her, but knew also that she wanted to believe that. Catherine had been a spy, after all, one who'd fooled harder cases than herself.

"When Ellen first found out that I'd slept with someone else, it seemed like the final blow to a relations.h.i.+p that was cracked straight through. Instead of breaking us apart, we stayed together, but rather more in the way that prisoners are kept together in a cell than anything approaching a loving relations.h.i.+p. I felt too guilty to leave her and she felt too angry to let me go."

"It sounds awful." Jan found this totally believable, having had a glimpse of Ellen's venom.

"Still, none of that has anything to do with you, and I am so sorry you've been dragged into it."

"But didn't you drag me into it when you decided to sleep with me?"

Catherine looked pained. "I dragged you into it when I realized that I felt something for you. Felt a lot for you, almost right away. Then I knew it could be a mess."

Jan did not like sitting on a high horse. She was extremely vulnerable up there, having no claim to any higher moral ground than Catherine. How many women had she slept with herself whom she didn't really feel anything for or know anything about?

"So you knew you felt something for me before we slept together that first night?"

"Let's just say that at that point I knew I was really, really attracted to you. By the end of the night, I knew it could be something more."

The drinks cart rattled down the aisle and stopped in front of them. Catherine ordered a b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, Jan a c.o.ke. When it moved on, Catherine continued.

"I know that you're probably more than a little wary of me, and I don't blame you. But Ellen and I are over. We talked well into the night and it seems, at least for right now, that she's accepted that. It will take awhile for everything to get sorted out."

She looked at Jan for some kind of response.

"I don't really know what to say."

"The only thing I need to know from you is whether I'm crazy to think there may be something between us. Am I imagining that?"

The self-a.s.sured woman who strode through the airport minutes before now looked like a very uncertain girl, and Jan realized that the vulnerability wasn't all on her side. She wanted to wrap Catherine in her arms and rea.s.sure her. Instead, she reached for Catherine's hand.

"No, you didn't imagine it."

They sat quietly side-by-side, hands together, and then their arms pressing against each other, trying to push into each other's s.p.a.ce as much as possible. Jan felt the charge racing through her body, now familiar from each time she'd been in Catherine's presence.

"Do you feel it right now?" Catherine said.

"Yes."

They stayed that way, their bodies humming like an electrical plant, until the flight attendant stopped by with her open garbage bag and they tossed their drinks into it. Catherine collected herself.

"While we're on the plane, and I can't run away from you or any of this, I want to tell you everything," she said. "I want to tell you my worst bits so you can decide if you want to stay and see where this goes."

Jan doubted Catherine was going to tell her anything that could trump shooting your own father. But she was curious.

"You don't have to tell me anything. I'm not interested in your past," Jan said. But she was lying. She was interested in everything about her.

"You will be when I tell you this, because there are certain things I think I have to be honest about if I have a chance of really having you in my life, really knowing me for exactly who I am. What I'm not interested in is anything less than that."

She looked at Jan, as if for permission to continue. It was Hobson's choice for her. If she said she didn't want to know, then it was as if she were saying she really didn't want to be truly close to Catherine. If she listened to whatever confession she was about to make, withholding her own secret was the worst kind of lying, and she didn't want to start out that way with her. She nodded at Catherine to continue.

"You remember I told you I worked for years at MI6, the British security force."

"Kind of like our CIA."

"Kind of. The Brits have a very long history of spying; we're quite keen on it. My father was an intelligence officer before going into medicine, and I'd wanted to join up from a very early age. And somehow, I made it happen.

"For ten years, everything was fantastic. I had great a.s.signments, great working partners.h.i.+ps. It wasn't all high-wire excitement. A lot is boring a.n.a.lytical work, interrupted by moments of terror. But I was well suited for it.

"Then the war in Iraq happened. MI6 and our military intelligence were very active there, both in tracking and sorting intelligence and in the specific mission of finding Saddam Hussein. I can't tell you all that much about our operations, but it's just the one day, the one moment you need to know about."

Jan couldn't imagine where she was going with this. But she could see Catherine had taken on an almost robotic quality as she recited her facts.

"My partner, Adam, and I had been working to identify individuals who may have known where Saddam was. We got as far as finding some blokes who might know the men who knew where he was. It's all a matter of inches, really, and this was one of the first solid leads we had.

"Adam and I went out late at night to track this guy, and we caught up with him on the outskirts of Basrah. He was alone, coming out of a house, and even though there was a curfew on, he didn't seem the least concerned about breaking it. We circled around him and managed to slip him into an alley without much fuss. Adam was putting restraints on him as we were going to take him in for interrogation. I covered, but I didn't do a good job of it. Suddenly, three men were on top of us, screaming at the top of their lungs. Adam and I fought like the devil, but this is the only salient thing about it. One of our attackers took hold of my arm, my gun hand. I don't remember clearlyI think he had me in a choke hold. I just remember struggling as he wrapped his hand around mine and pulled the trigger. And Adam went down.

"I would have gone down next, of course. And there were bad moments afterward when I thought it would have been better if I had. But a British patrol came round, drawn by the noise, and our attackers and the target scrambled. So I was safe, and Adam was dead."

Jan took Catherine's hand back into her own.

"It must have been terrifying," she said. Really, what do you say when someone tells you a story like that? She had no reference point. She was trying to imagine herself in the same situation and couldn't even get a picture in her head. How would she feel if Peet had been shot under the same circ.u.mstances?

"I suppose, but we're well trained to handle situations more chaotic than that. I failed, and my partner died. I left MI6 shortly after that."

"But you loved it, or at least that's what I heard you say."

"You can love something and then it can go incredibly sour. In a heartbeat. There was an investigation afterward, a friendly fire sort of thing. They didn't find anything they could charge me with, or even suspend me over. But it didn't matter. I was finished. You can't shoot your own partner and ever expect to work in the field again."

"Is that when you joined Global Security?"

"Yes. Ellen had been after me for a long time to take a private position. She was thrilled."

"But you were not."

Catherine looked sad, her loss fresh again. "I hate it, to be honest. And that's what I want to becompletely honest. The first interesting thing that's happened to me in six years with this company is coming to Chicago and meeting you, but that's not really job related, is it?"

"I hope not."

"Does this change your mind about anything?" Catherine looked at her nervously. "You're the first person I've told that story to. Ellen thinks I left the agency to please her."

"I'm glad you shared it."

Catherine snuggled closer to Jan and leaned against her shoulder. Jan tried to open her mouth to say she had something to share also, but it remained clamped shut. She hated herself for it.

The night fell quickly on their first day on the ranch. Maddy sat around a fire ring that had been built behind the cabins, near the vegetable gardens. She nursed some kindling underneath a couple of split logs she'd found behind one of the cabins, feeling anxious for the flames to grow and cast off some of the impenetrable darkness all around her. She found the quiet and the darkness spooky, so unlike her suburban landscape that her imagination started to run wild, mostly along the lines of a horror film, something her brother may have watched.

She saw a flashlight coming from the buildings and heard Kristi whistling. She whistled a lot, which was mostly annoying, but right now the most welcome sound Maddy could think of. Flames started to lick around the logs and take hold just as Kristi reached the fire ring. Tommy walked silently behind her.

"Look, you're a regular Girl Scout," Kristi said. She turned off the flashlight and sat on one of the large flat rocks circling the fire.

Maddy shrugged. "I got sent to camp every summer," she said. "When you finally get old enough, just about the time you swear you'll kill yourself if you get sent to summer camp again, they start teaching you some useful things. Like how to start a fire."

"Anything else that's useful to us out here?" Tommy asked.