“So do I—but, much as we might both like to make it our problem, right now it isn’t. We need to get Ambyr and Lucas and make a break. So get to the car, and tell Mitch we’re leaving. Ask him to clear a path to the far side of 34. I’ll get the other two set, and we’ll meet you there.”
“Got it.” Mike branched off toward the Empress as I stepped onto the deck behind the kitchen door. But before I could open it, Mitch McCarron came walking out. “Trajan!” he said, looking up at the storm clouds. “Say, you haven’t seen Kolmback, have you? Frank wants a word with him—he’s pretty pissed off about something, though he won’t tell me what it is.”
I couldn’t blatantly lie (not to Mitch), but neither could I be entirely forthcoming—if only because he’d effectively just told me that the other person trying to shoehorn information out of Curtis was Frank Mangold. I therefore had no choice, for the moment, but to bend the truth a bit: “Yeah, actually. We were coming out to find you and get our car in gear—Bass Hagen’s agreed to let us take Ambyr and Lucas up to Shiloh for a while, get them out of this business, and then you can tape the house off and have at it. Anyway, we ran straight into Curtis, who was coming out of the garage and headed like a bat out of hell up that hill.”
“Really?” And it was a testament to Mitch’s decency and trust that he accepted my story at face value. “Well, I wonder what the hell those two are up to…” He shrugged, then turned toward the Crown Vic. “You’re going to need some help getting out of here, I guess.”
“You read my mind,” I answered. “Mike’s getting the car started, and I’ll get the Kurtzes. Mind giving him a hand?”
“No, no, not at all,” Mitch said with a nod, holding the screen door for me. “But listen—on your way inside, maybe steer clear of Mangold. I don’t know what his deal is, but he’s on a tear, sure enough. You might just do as a target, if he can’t find the one he wants.”
“Thanks, Mitch,” I said, feeling even more guilty about not having told him all.
He paused before heading off Mike’s way. “Say—you don’t suppose that’s what made Curtis take off, do you? Knowing that Frank has a bone to pick with him?”
“It’d be enough to make me start running,” I answered. “If I could run, that is.”
“Yeah.” Mitch considered it for another moment. “Well, I’m gonna have a couple of my boys take a look up there. Maybe he’s just hiding, but it isn’t smart. Only gonna piss Frank off even more.”
It had been one of the oddest sequences of events during the investigation thus far; and, though I didn’t yet know as much, it was also the beginning of another warning to Mike and myself to lay off probing into the conspiracy we had detected…
Once inside, I returned to the living room couch and put our junior member on notice: “Take your bag and get out to the far side of 34, Lucas. Mike’ll be coming around in the car—we’re getting out. Very quietly, kid: keep clear of the vehicles, and don’t let anybody in the media see you.”
“Aw, come on, L.T.,” the kid whined. “I wanna be on Dateline NBC, dude, I’ll be famous!”
“You want Derek to be famous, too?” I asked: perhaps a little harshly, I realized, when I saw Lucas’ expression droop. “Just don’t screw around, right now. And where’s Ambyr?”
“Over in her room.” Lucas signaled toward the chamber beyond the stairs with a nod. “Getting the cat in his carrier.”
“Damn…I forgot we’d have to tell Clarissa about a cat. Ah, screw it, she’s taking your rodent ass in, she can take a cat, too. It can stay in Ambyr’s room; or, if Clarissa goes batshit, in the plane.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Lucas said, lifting his knapsack onto his shoulder with a groan. “Okay—I’ll make sure nobody sees me, and meet you at the car.” And with that, the kid was off.
As I approached the bottom of the staircase and the front door opposite it, I could see that the latter was open, and that the glare of portable camera lights was streaming through it. Moving quickly toward Ambyr’s room, I also saw that Cathy Donovan and Nancy Grimes were holding court before a mix of both local and national reporters, and trying to emphasize that the suspected “ringleaders” of a child-exploitation “gang” had already been questioned and were still under surveillance, and that they were sure that Derek Franco, while he had likely been lured from his home by one of the known “associates” of these ringleaders, would soon be found: which was all I needed to hear. I tried to push on, but my path was quickly blocked by Frank Mangold.
“You and me have got things to discuss, profiler,” he said. I sighed wearily, but before I could protest, he went on: “Who’re you actually working for here, Jones?”
“What gives you the impression I’m not actually working for this family, Frank?”
“I’m not sure, yet.” Mangold turned to glance at Donovan and Grimes. “But I’m not getting the whole story—and I just want to know if you’re one of the reasons why.”
“Frank, if someone’s keeping things from you, trust me, it isn’t Dr. Li or me. Our interest is in solving this case and getting this family back together—that is absolutely it. Anybody who has a larger agenda than that”—and at these words, Mangold’s buzz-cut head snapped around again, so that he was staring daggers through me—“is not somebody I’m either doing business with now, or have any interest in doing business with in the future.”
“Maybe,” Mangold said in his unsettling manner. “But I’m not so sure I buy it.”
“Buy whatever you like, Frank—but buy it somewhere else, and get out of my way.”
He grabbed hold of my arm. “Say—you haven’t seen that little shit Kolmback, have you?”
“Not lately,” I answered. “And I’ll give you about two more seconds to move that hand.”
Yet—surprisingly—Mangold did not rise to this blatant challenge, instead releasing his grip. “That fucker knows more than he’s telling. And I’m gonna find him…”
He moved off toward the kitchen without further communication, his points having been made; yet for the life of me, I mused as I approached Ambyr’s closed door, I still had no idea just what those points were. My first suspicion, and the one that made the most sense, was that they’d been a series of traps, designed to catch me in a lie; but I simply didn’t have time to consider the matter any further. Instead, I knocked on Ambyr’s door several times, letting her know it was safe by quietly calling her name into the jamb of the thing as I did.
{v.}
At first I got no answer, which didn’t bode well: if Ambyr was going to have trouble leaving her home, and had only realized as much when she started packing, it was likely going to take more time than we had to talk her around. So I tried a few more knocks and calls, then felt as much as heard a click vibrating through the door. Trying the knob, I found the thing unlocked.
“Hope you’re decent,” I said softly, as I cracked the door open, “because I’m coming in…”
The room was almost completely dark, the scarce light provided by whatever could get through the slightly open door and through lace panels backed by opaque blinds that covered the two windows: and that wasn’t enough for my eyes to adjust to quickly. I stood there helplessly, then turned with a bit of a start when someone shut the door firmly—from within the room.
“Ambyr?” I whispered, in what was now near-blackness. “Come on, now, no games…”
“Oh, it’s no game,” she replied, in a tone that was hard to define: one would not have called it sinister so much as ghostly. Then, without my hearing a sound, she got close enough from behind me to murmur in my ear, “Now you know what it’s like to live in my world…” The chilling quality in her voice was worsened when the next thing I heard was her laughing lightly from the other side of the room. My eyes had begun to adjust, and I could at last make out some of what was before me, in the eerie dimness:
On each side of the window frames heavy curtains of burgundy velvet hung from iron rods, the ends of which were molded in lattice li
nes around glass balls of, yes, an amber color. The dark blinds obscured all view of what was taking place amid the rising storm outside; while on a tasteful antique wooden bed frame and queen mattress lay a white lace spread of an equally traditional and pleasing design. A large, rolling black travel case sat on the floor, the handle of which was extended, as if prepared for departure. The fact that Ambyr’s cat sat in his large carrier next to the case, rubbing his face up against the thin black bars of the door the minute he saw me, further indicated that Ambyr had in fact gotten herself ready for departure. The only incongruous facts about the little scene were that she herself was still nowhere to be seen, while a small, portable iPod dock on an old chest of drawers was playing Puccini’s “E lucevan le stelle” from Tosca, heightening the sad, romantic, yet still-unnerving atmosphere of the room. All this, despite what was happening outside.
The sound and comparatively bright light of a match striking caught me completely unawares; and, startled, I made a move for my Colt. Yet even as I did, I saw Ambyr’s hands feel their way to light a thick candle on the opposite side of the bed; then she disappeared into the shadows once more. Seconds later, however, I felt a delicate warmth on my eyes and the parts of my face around them, and was reassured.
“Ah-ah-ah…” came a whispered warning in my ear. “You don’t really want to shoot the girl of your dreams, do you?”
I half-raised my hands to indicate surrender (even though she couldn’t see it, I realized), then smiled and turned around slowly. “I don’t know,” I said. “Have I ever met the girl of my dreams?”
“You bet your ass you have, Mister Doctor Jones, MD, PhD, who ought to know better,” Ambyr answered with a laugh, pushing me back toward the bed. She was wearing yet another summer dress, this one the color almost of flame. It suited her coloring, as did all her clothes, and by the time I felt the back of my knees touch the edge of the bed, I also felt the need to protest:
“We really have to get up the hollow, Ambyr. And this place is crawling with cops, as the saying goes; I’m not sure it’s just the right moment for—”
But then another sharp push sent me helplessly onto the bed, and before I could say any more, Ambyr had gotten on top of me, her own movements as lithe as a cat’s. “Oh, I’m totally sure that it’s the right time for dot, dot, dot,” she answered, again breathing the words into my ear in a way that was so electric that any aches and pains caused by my brief night of outdoor sleep simply vanished. I quickly discovered that the particular dress she was wearing was quite sheer, revealing—what had to be deliberately—equally thin, delicate undergarments beneath it. But what shocked me most, even as her hair fell over my face in a tumble and her mouth moved to meet mine, was her strength: she took my wrists and held them down so powerfully that it would have been something of a struggle, with only one leg, for me to get back upright. Her thighs, meanwhile, slid out from beneath the skirt of her dress and closed in on my hips hard enough to pin me; yet not so hard, on my left side, that I needed to cry out in pain. Eventually she let my arms and hands loose, and they moved, as if in a thoroughly practiced motion, around her back, my fingers feeling the heat of it for several moments and then beginning to toy, helplessly, with the straps of her dress.
“So,” she whispered in reaction, her lips still on mine. “They didn’t quite kill you with all that radiation, now, did they?”
“I—” It was enormously difficult to find the words: “I honestly thought that they had…” Feeling the need to regain some control of the moment, I said, “Why the opera, by the way? You didn’t tell me you liked it.”
“I don’t, really,” she answered, pulling her hair back into a murderously sexy ponytail. “But I figured you did, and it would get you in the mood.”
“What made you figure that?”
“Okay—” A look of deliberately theatrical yet nonetheless enormous pride filled her face. “After I listened to your class the first time, I went online at the Center in Fraser and found out that, guess what? There’s a Braille edition of your book about your hero.”
I pulled myself up on my elbows. “You’re reading about Dr. Kreizler?”
“Well, it took a while to come through the library lending system,” she answered, leaning down on her arms and again pressing her lips to mine. “So I haven’t gotten far. But you do talk about him being a big opera buff, so I figured it would work…Why, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Although I’d rather hear the music you would want to listen to, right now.”
“Oh!” She brightened and popped off the bed and onto her feet. “In that case…” I heard a few sharp clicking sounds come from the iPod, as the Puccini was silenced and then replaced by Roxy Music’s “More Than This.” Then she leapt back atop me, her every movement in the near-darkness unhesitating and precise. For a moment, her face hovered over mine, waiting for a response.
“My God,” I laughed quietly. “It’s a household of classic rock fans…”
“Hey.” She laid a playful little slap across my cheek. “Lucas got it from me, and never forget that. Besides…” She leaned down again to kiss me, my arms went around her, and her legs tightened once more as she spoke into my lips. “It’s the sexiest, most romantic fucking song in the world…”
“Yes,” I whispered, taking her warm face in my right hand. “Actually, it may just be…”
I wasn’t at all sure what we’d been up to, Ambyr and I, in the afternoons and nights leading to that stormy day. But as we lay there on her bed and listened to that song which has wrought decades of ecstatic havoc on so many people’s emotions (and which Ambyr had contrived to have her iPod play over and over again), all the while learning whether or not each facet of our respective bodies conformed to the other’s in the manner that is so essential, especially for two people who have sound reasons to doubt hasty decisions about becoming intimate with anyone, much less persons known for so comparatively short a time; and when we went on to find that our bodies did indeed so fit…suffice to say that our desires and, more importantly, our hearts raged increasingly toward that hungry compassion that is the only thing I have ever known to constitute human love. The fact that we were surrounded on all sides both by our antagonists from the state and by media hacks who would have loved nothing more than to catch a glimpse, through some narrow slit in the window blinds, into that room, while it gave me some little pause, only delighted Ambyr; and more and more, I found that I was allowing her to set the pace of what was apparently becoming our romance…
When we eventually sat up and began reassembling ourselves (one of us literally), I suggested to Ambyr that something rather more conservative than the dress she was wearing might be more appropriate for running the gauntlet of media jackals that were outside the house.
“Way ahead of you,” she replied, moving to a closet next to the bathroom door and pulling out a long coat of medium heaviness, one that might have looked quite sexy if left open, but that could also be made to look quite prim, if buttoned all the way up. Then she slid her bare feet into a pair of cork-soled sandals and spun toward me. “Well? Do I look okay?”
“Perfect,” I said, although the rather carefree note in her voice was beginning to have the same effect on me that Lucas’ similar tone had; and so I carefully asked, “Ambyr—when Mike and I got here this morning, you and Lucas were both understandably devastated about Derek. But now you seem so—so—”
“So…?” she said coyly.
“So—upbeat, I suppose I would say. What happened?”
“Think back,” she said more seriously, “to our little moment in the pantry.” She came over and put her arms around my neck. “Because that’s when I figured it out.”
“ ‘It’?” I asked, putting my own head atop hers. “Which it?”
She let out a long, somewhat sad sigh. “Faith,” she whispered simply.
Which was unexpected. “Hmm,” I noised, considering it. “Neither of you has ever struck me as particularly religious. Although,” I hur
ried to add, “if you are, it makes no difference to—”
She thumped an open hand on my chest. “No, you idiot.” Turning her face up to mine, with her eyes searching for just the right spot to fix on, she soon smiled and said, “How in the world did you ever get all those fancy-assed degrees? Did you bribe somebody?”
I had to pause. “I’m afraid I’m not getting you.”
“No,” she answered, putting her head back on my chest. “But I get you. That’s what I realized, and what I told Luke—oh, Jesus, don’t let him know I said ‘Luke’ to you, please, he’ll have a fit. He’s so serious about you guys. And that’s why he believed me when I told him that we should have faith in you. Well, you and Mike. If anybody can find Derek before anything bad happens to him, you guys can. And no, I’m not trying to say that it’s totally guaranteed. Derek is, you already know, not—like other people. And it can make him really stubborn, really determined, sometimes. So it’s possible that he’s gotten into a situation that could go bad, and nobody can stop it. But if anybody can, you and Mike are the ones.”
“Oh,” I said, swallowing hard once. “So—no pressure, or anything.”
“Yeah,” she answered, quite frankly. “You have got a lot of pressure on you, right now. And that’s one reason we’re going with you. I talked to Mike about all this, and he says you’ve had nobody but Marcianna for female companionship for way too long. Now, I love Marcianna, I totally get it; but you, Mister Doctor Jones, need something else. So as of right now—”
I didn’t let her finish, but leaned down to kiss the rest of the explanation away.
Once we’d gotten back out to the front porch, Ambyr rolling her bag and me carrying Tommy the cat in his carrier, we pulled Mitch McCarron, who’d already guided Mike out, and Steve Spinetti over and worked out a plan: I would make a statement, backed up by Steve, to the press, and as that crowd of information-crazed souls collected around me, Mitch would quietly get Ambyr out to the Empress, which was sitting on Route 34 pointed toward home. I would join them there, after which Steve and Mitch would seal the house as a crime scene.