Love on the Run

  I felt sick-cold. “That’s awful,” I said. “Mo!”

  “Yeah, real awful.” Her voice slid toward tears. “Not the worst, though. We saw him, Chuck, I mean. He must have been trailing us. We got out of the lawyer’s office, and I looked across the street, and there he was. Hiding in a doorway, but I know it was him.”

  I could hear my father’s voice in the background. Although I couldn’t distinguish the words, I could tell he was furious. I must have looked upset, because Ari got up and came over. I gave him a quick summary.

  “The lawyer may be right,” Ari said. “He knows the situation in California better than I do. She’d best take his advice.”

  “Mo,” I said. “Did you hear that?”

  “Yeah.”

  I held the phone away from my ear so Ari could hear her answer.

  “I think,” Maureen continued, “we’re going to do what the lawyer suggested, which is to try to get me into the witness protection program because I can testify about Chuck’s dealing. It’s creepy, isn’t it? They’ll maybe protect me as a witness, but death threats to some ordinary woman—they won’t do anything about those.”

  Ari winced. “I’m afraid so,” he said. “It’s obvious that Chuck knows where you’re living. You need to move somewhere else.”

  “Yeah,” Maureen said. “Kathleen offered to take us in. I’m going to call her.”

  “Good idea,” I put in. “She’s got that big house.”

  “With an eighteen-foot fence around it.” Maureen’s voice got a little stronger. “And all those dogs.”

  “And a husband who’s an ex-Marine. Jack owns even more guns than Ari does.”

  She managed a weak little laugh at that. Although I tried to think of soothing things to tell Maureen, and we chatted for a while more, she stayed on the edge of tears the entire time. Not that I blamed her, mind. Not at all. Ari hovered by the phone, looking grim, until I clicked off so Maureen could call Kathleen. He sat down on the couch and continued looking grim. I swiveled my desk chair around to face him.

  “I’m really scared,” I said.

  “I don’t care for the situation myself,” Ari said. “If Trasker’s using methedrine, and Maureen’s quite convinced he is, then he’ll behave erratically. Men in this situation tend to be determined to get their revenge no matter what the risk to themselves. Being irrational will make that tendency worse. However, if he stops worrying about his own survival, he’ll be easier to find and arrest. Irrationality works both ways.”

  “What if he kills Maureen? Having him arrested then isn’t going to do us any good.”

  “True. I’ll call Sanchez in the morning to see if he can do anything. I’ve been afraid of this all along. The situation with the restraining orders …” Ari shook his head and scowled. “The laws in these situations do more to protect the man’s rights than the woman’s life.”

  My stomach clenched so hard that I felt like vomiting. An evil thought made things worse.

  “What if he hires someone to kill her?” I said. “We won’t even know who to look for.”

  “Very unlikely. He’ll want to do it himself for the satisfaction.”

  I felt too sick to comment.

  “If Chuck causes trouble at Jack and Kathleen’s, she may have to leave the area entirely,” Ari went on. “Go to a place where he won’t think to look for her.”

  “Oh, great! Take the kids away from everyone they know, disrupt her whole life, and here he’s the goddamn criminal, not her.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s the way it works. I’m worried about what will happen once the children return to school. He may try to get at her through them. They can’t stay shut up in Kathleen’s house forever, though I suppose the family can get them a tutor until the situation calms down. Eventually, these men give up. It usually takes a year, perhaps less if the woman’s lucky.”

  Lucky. For a minute or two I couldn’t speak, thanks to a combination of terror and fury. I got myself under control. “I wonder if we could lure him onto a deviant level and then leave him there.” I wasn’t joking. “He’d fit right in on Interchange.”

  Ari came out with his sort-of-laugh, sort-of-snarl chuckle. For some minutes we sat and stared at each other. My sister was one of the lucky ones. What would happen to a woman on her own or one with only minimal family to help? I shivered again.

  “There’s nothing we can do till morning,” Ari said. “I’ll call Sanchez then.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “I might as well look over the trans-world codes again.” Ari opened his cram book. “Some of the details are irritatingly hard to remember.”

  “I believe it. I guess I could get some work done. I really wish Cryptic Creep would get back in touch with me. I never thought I’d say that, but that’s the way things go sometimes.”

  “Have you ever tried getting in touch with him? Initiating the process?”

  “There are times when you’re positively brilliant.”

  “Of course.” Ari smiled at me. “I’m glad you recognize it.”

  I refrained from throwing something at him. He stood up from the couch.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen studying,” Ari said. “I know you need privacy to work.”

  I thanked him and swiveled around in my chair. Since Cryptic Creep had often appeared on the blank flat screen of my computer, staring at it seemed a logical place to start. Nothing happened until I realized I’d have to do more than just stare. I formed a memory image of him in my mind and tried projecting that out onto the screen. Again, nothing, though I did eventually see the image as if it truly did exist. Sound—that’s what I was missing!

  I spoke aloud, softly, “In the name of the Peacock Angel, let me see him.”

  The black circle with the seven arrows began to form on the screen. When I repeated, “In the name of the Peacock Angel,” it snapped into focus. Cryptic Creep, however, did not appear other than in my memory. As I contemplated that memory image, it finally occurred to me that I knew his name because I knew his doppelgänger here on Terra Four.

  “Keith,” I said. “Father Keith, priest of the Peacock Angel. In that name I would see you.”

  For a moment, nothing—then the familiar face swept into view, surrounded by the black arrows like a halo or crown of thorns. The familiar fluting voice, higher than ever out of sheer surprise, sounded in my mind.

  “Nola!” he said. “Which …?”

  “Not the one you know,” I said aloud. “Do you know what a doppelgänger is?”

  “Yes. I owe you a profound apology. I can only contact you for a few brief moments, you see, before the power supply overloads, and so I jumped to conclusions when I saw you.”

  “You use some kind of machine for this?”

  “Yes, of course. Don’t you?”

  “No, but don’t worry about that now. The other Nola, is she missing?”

  “Yes. My niece.”

  No surprise there.

  “Are you a churchman? Of the Peacock Angel, I guess it’d be.”

  “Yes, a bissop.”

  Their version of bishop, I figured, both adapted from the Greek episcopos.

  “I take it,” I continued, “that your church aligns itself with the principles of Order, decency, and other such virtues.”

  “Most assuredly.” He sounded amused by my question, but as he spoke, his voice became more and more urgent. “We all must serve the Eternal Light, each in our own way, and fight against the darkness in our souls. This world was created perfect. It’s our sins that have soiled and torn it. The Peacock Angel can only repair his handiwork with our help, sinners though we are.”

  This moral structure sounded even grimmer than the Catholicism of my childhood, but on the whole I felt relieved. I could tell that he was speaking the truth as he saw it, which made him very unlikely to be an enemy.

  “Is there also a heretic cult of the angel?” I said. “Worshipers of Chaos.”

  “Yes! Which is why I worried, why I ??
?” The image began to fade.

  “Quick!” I snapped. “I’ve been approached by one of your doppelgängers. He seems to be a threat.”

  The image flickered out. The arrow circle vanished. I could only hope that he’d heard me. Restoring contact immediately was out of the question if his power supply had just overloaded. I needed time to think, anyway. I was pleased that he’d confirmed my theory about the existence of two forms of Peacock Angel worship, but a complicated situation had just become worse, especially since we’d be leaving home soon. I doubted that Bissop Keith could find us once we’d reached another world level.

  Spare14 called later to confirm that very trip.

  “Willa will be free tomorrow, thank heavens,” Spare14 said. “She’s the best world-walker on the team. Nathan, I’ve made arrangements with our TWIXT linkman in the Republic of America. New York City will be your alleged home office while you’re on Six. I’ve finalized your cover story. You’re bringing an important witness—that’s O’Grady, of course—to make a deposition. The Axeman’s been put on the trans-world Most Wanted list, and TWIXT have good reason to believe he’s hiding out on Six. O’Grady can recognize him and Murphy’s assailant as well.”

  “How is Murphy?” I asked.

  “Recovering on One. I decided she’d be safer in a new location.”

  “Probably wise, yeah. Uh, what happens when Nathan and I need to leave Six?”

  “Oh, you’ll have transport orbs, don’t worry!”

  “Good,” Ari said. “Will we eventually go after the Axeman?”

  “Yes, of course. Reconnaissance first, however. We need to understand the situation on Six before we proceed.”

  As the call progressed, Ari had a lot of questions about procedure as well as possibilities. Once we’d gone through them all, Spare14 ended the conversation with a cheery, “All should go well. It’s only a very short stay.”

  I went to bed in a less than optimistic frame of mind. Although Ari went right to sleep, I lay awake for some time, worrying about Maureen and the kids and brooding over the scraps of information that Bissop Keith had given me. As soon as I got back from our short jaunt to Terra Six, I promised myself, I’d contact the bissop again.

  Maureen at least would be safe over at Kathleen’s. For a while, anyway. I tossed and turned, trying to forget that the fence, though tall, was chain-link. Someone—Chuck—could shoot through the holes. Was he a good shot? Did he have a sniper’s rifle with a long range? I didn’t know. I was reminded all over again of how much I hated guns. He knew where Kathleen lived. He’d been there. The family had tried to welcome him when Maureen first brought him round. He’d responded by moving her to the edge of the Bay Area, all the way out to Livermore, where we couldn’t see what was going on with them.

  Ari turned over onto his back and began to snore loudly enough to make my brain quiver. I relieved my feelings by poking him viciously in the ribs. He woke up and muttered something in Hebrew.

  “You’re snoring,” I said.

  He muttered something else and turned over onto his side. The snores shrank to a tolerable level. I’d just managed to fall asleep when one of the security alarms by the bed went off with a soft but insistent chirping. I woke and sat up. Ari was already out of bed and pulling on his jeans.

  “Qi alert,” he said. “Someone’s trying to scan the flat.”

  “Should I turn on the light?”

  “Yes. This alarm registers energy beams only. No one’s physically breached our perimeter.”

  I took this to mean that no one had broken into the flat. I leaned over and turned on the bedside lamp. Ari touched the alarm unit to silence its chirp. His laptop sat on top of the dresser by the bedroom window. When he flipped up the lid, the screen lit and Hebrew letters lined up in tidy columns. I scooted over to his side of the bed to watch.

  “Could you put that into English?” I said.

  “Certainly.” He tapped a few keys,

  The text changed to tidy columns of incomprehensible abbreviations in the Roman alphabet. No, I don’t know why I bothered to ask. For a few minutes Ari stared at numbers scrolling across the top of the display.

  “Attack’s repelled,” he said eventually. “It came from dead west at a distance of maybe two kilometers, maybe less. From out to sea, in other words. From a boat, I suppose.”

  “Or a psychic Venusian squid.”

  Ari wrinkled his nose, started to snarl, hesitated, and blinked at me. “Sorry,” he said, “I keep forgetting that those are real.”

  “Very real, and they can gather Qi from seawater. Like, to blast at someone.”

  Ari frowned and sat down on the edge of the bed. “More projections like Belial?”

  Belial was a squiddish Chaos master that my team had managed to corner and arrest.

  “Maybe. Their species doesn’t produce world-walkers.”

  “But consider the transport orbs. This time they might be physically here.”

  “Huh, I wonder if this is why Ash wanted Murphy’s orbs, for transporting squid clients. She and the Axeman might be playing their old game—trans-world coyotes.”

  “Why would the squid want to come here? Our oceans are filthy.”

  “I dunno. Maybe they’re running from the law on their own world. We know the cephalopods have a justice system.”

  “Criminal psychic squid on the run.” Ari’s voice faded toward hopelessness. “I should have been an insurance adjustor. My father was right.”

  I glanced at the clock: three fifteen, way too early to get up. Ari reset the alarm, then stood up to take off his jeans. I lay back down and admired the view.

  “I’m having trouble sleeping,” I said.

  He grinned at me. “Just leave the light on,” he said. “I can do something about that.”

  And he did. Afterward, we both slept till the conventional clock alarm went off at seven.

  For our trip to Terra Six, Ari wore what he always called his “police clothing,” a navy blue pinstriped suit with a white shirt and yellow-and-red-striped tie. Since I was going as a witness, not in some official capacity, I wore jeans but with a proper blouse, the flowered red-and-white one, and a gray suit jacket. I brought a shoulder bag, too, to carry transport orbs, some of Ari’s little electronic devices, and an extra clip for the Beretta.

  I also decided to leave my engagement ring in the wall safe in our bedroom. It was too beautiful to risk damaging or losing. In my job, the chance of damage and loss tends to run high. Ari opened the safe and brought out a blue velvet jeweler’s box. I noticed that it contained three small drawers. When I held out my hand for the box, he didn’t give it to me.

  “Um, Ari,” I said, “is there something wrong with that box? Like, it’s going to explode if I touch it?”

  “What? Nothing of the sort! Just being helpful. If you’ll hand me the ring, I’ll put it away.”

  “Ari!”

  With a sigh he handed the box over. I put the engagement ring into the top drawer, then checked. As I suspected, the other two drawers held wedding rings. I glared.

  “I got a much better price on the set,” Ari said, “by buying them all at once.”

  “I am not marrying you!” My voice may have gotten a trifle loud.

  “No need to shout! I thought, well, you might change your mind. Once we’re both older, perhaps. Menopause sometimes does odd things to women’s minds.” He stepped back out of range.

  Had he not done so, I would have kicked him in the shin.

  Before we left, we had important phone calls to make. I called my second-in-command Annie again, and Ari got in touch with Lieutenant Sanchez. Sanchez waffled about getting Maureen into the witness protection program, but he did have important news, which Ari relayed when he finished the call.

  “Someone tried to get in to see Evelyn Murphy,” Ari told me. “She claimed to be Murphy’s sister, but oddly enough, she didn’t know that Murphy had been transferred to another hospital.”

  “Was she blonde
?”

  “Oh, yes. And when the nurse at the desk asked for ID, she turned and ran out of the lobby.”

  “It’s a good thing that Spare14 got Murphy out of there.”

  “Yes, I’d say so. Ready to go?”

  I was. We took a cab down to our arranged meeting place, South Park, an oval of greenery some blocks south of Market Street. Willa, we were told, would be arriving there from Terra Three around ten in the morning. We arrived early, but we had only a short wait before Willa, dressed in her disguise of scraps and cast-offs, stepped out of a small grove of trees. She carried her shopping bag, crammed with junk. I was expecting her to bring out a focus orb, but instead she hurried over to us.

  “We’re going to Spare14’s office,” Willa said. “Not to Six. Something real bad has happened, but I don’t want to explain it twice.”

  “Is Murphy okay?” I said.

  “Yes. That’s not the problem, and thank God for that!”

  Since Willa had already contacted Spare14 with one of TWIXT’s high-level communicators, he was waiting for us at the office. As we came upstairs, I noticed that the bloodstained carpet had been removed. He’d brought chairs into the outer room, the one that held his desk and files. We all sat down and looked at Willa. She spent a moment or two rummaging through the clumps of stuff in her shopping bag. Eventually, she brought out a small leather card case.

  “Here, Nathan.” She handed it to Ari. “Your new ID, compliments of HQ.”

  Ari flipped open the case and showed me an Interpol ID different from the one he usually carried. Under his picture it listed his home office as New York City, Republic of America. He slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Willa set her bag on the floor and considered the three of us in turn.

  “The problem I’m having,” she said, “is knowing that none of you understand math. It would be real easy to explain if you did. It’d still be a bitch and a half of a problem to solve, mind, but at least you’d know why.”

  “I shall be perfectly happy,” Spare14 said, “to trust your opinions on the matter.”

  Ari and I both nodded. Although I had no idea how much math Ari knew, I myself had studied only two years of high school algebra—and that, my teacher had told us, wasn’t even real math.