She could do this.
She pushed the IV pole into the corner, grasped the handrail and, taking her time, descended to street level. The exit door warned, “Security alarm will sound if door is opened.”
She stopped, took several long breaths, gave the door a push and sprinted outside—onto a sidewalk beside a busy city street. Thank God. Thank God. She could quickly vanish. Straightening her shoulders, she joined the stream of people and disappeared into the city.
She would never be Cecilia again.
*
In her cottage kitchen, Kellen assembled her salad on her plate and sat down at the eating bar. She picked up her fork, put it down and rubbed the scar on her forehead.
Ceecee. Ceecee. Where are you? Come back to me…
Max Di Luca reminded her of the man in the corridor. The suit. The size. He didn’t look tired anymore. And she wasn’t sure, anyway. She’d been intent on escape. She’d only glanced.
But if that was the truth, she had known him before.
In Philadelphia.
31
That day, Kellen didn’t return to the resort. If they had needed her, she would have gone, of course. But with a skeleton crew and few guests, she was able to handle the couple of crises from her phone. She wasn’t avoiding Max; she was taking some much needed downtime.
Besides, a new memory was nudging itself up from the depths of her brain…
A park, trees bare of leaves, openmouthed pedestrians running. A man with a thin, familiar face who spoke with an Italian accent. He held a Beretta Pico to her forehead…
In the background, a man raced toward them and…
And nothing. Whatever happened then…was gone.
But that explained her scar, and why she woke up in the hospital that was maybe a mental ward and maybe not, and why when she woke, she was afraid someone was trying to hurt her. Maybe she wasn’t crazy. Maybe if she knew all the facts, she would at least understand what had happened.
Maybe Max could tell her.
She should ask him.
Instead, Kellen pulled up her laptop and went to work, approving menus, viewing the employee roster with an eye to who might be the biggest baddest importer/murderer in the world, studying the resort’s blueprints and wondering where Priscilla could have stashed the tomb art. The architect had designed the resort for visual impact, not working efficiency. Storage closets hid in absurdly inconvenient locations, narrow maids’ stairways twisted and turned behind the walls, old-fashioned dumbwaiters that had once lifted and lowered linens and plates from level to level… Even if Priscilla Carter had hidden the tomb art somewhere in the resort, one of the housekeepers could have found that gross figure of a man with his massive penis, shrieked in horror and tossed it all in the garbage.
Kellen sighed.
The phone rang.
It was Annie. Her warm voice asked, “How are things going?”
My friends are mad at me.
I’m being haunted by a ghost or tormented by someone who knows my past, and I’m not sure which is worse.
Nils Brooks wants to kiss me.
Your stupid nephew thinks I’m a delicate flower. Or a quitter. I don’t know which is more insulting.
“As well as can be expected. Employees are jumping ship at an alarming rate. I hope you’re all right with this, but I’m approving every unexpected request for vacation and leave, and offering a bonus when they return.”
Annie’s voice grew somber. “You’re doing exactly the right thing. They’re nervous about the murders?”
“Add to that the weather.” Kellen glanced at the radar. “We’ve got another big storm coming in. It’s four in the afternoon and like midnight out there. You know. The darkness is difficult even without finding a corpse or two.”
“When I get back, I’ll send you on vacation whether you want it or not!”
“I wasn’t hinting!” Kellen remembered Birdie, and no matter what Kellen felt right now, Birdie needed time off. “But Birdie and I would like to go somewhere sunny.”
“I’m glad to hear you’ve relented at last. Do we have enough employees to keep the resort running?”
“Yes, but only because we have so few guests.”
“I never thought I would say that’s a good thing.” Pause. “Did Max make it?”
“Yes.” Kellen inserted a pause of her own. “He’s gone to acquaint himself with his security team, for what they’re worth.”
“What did you think of him?” Annie sounded anxious and nervous.
“I barely met him.” Already she’d spent too much time with him. “He seems fine. He knows the sheriff, and that’s good.” I knew him before, didn’t I?
“Max is a Renaissance man. He knows about security and resort management, and wineries and… Well, he’s very accomplished.”
“So you’ve said.”
“Am I overselling him?”
“A little.” And that makes me wonder why.
“I simply want you to feel as if you can trust him to do his job.”
That was a good reason why. “Thank you, Annie. I’m glad to turn security over to him.” In the background, Kellen heard a burst of noise, children’s voices shrieking in wild delight as they ran through. “You need to go and enjoy your vacation. I’ll talk to you later!” She hung up before Annie could say goodbye, sat and looked at the telephone. She should be asking probing questions, asking for honesty.
Maybe later, when the murders were solved, the Librarian arrested, winter had ended, world peace had been declared…
She wanted to know, but she didn’t. Ignorance was comfortable, safe, without challenge. She was, in fact, tired of standing tall and facing all confrontations with her chin up. She wanted to slump for a while.
Although she and Max did sort of click. Until he thought she’d be glad to run away from her responsibilities. Damn him. Until that moment, he was doing so well.
That evening, she sat with all the lights in her cottage dimmed and watched out her bedroom loft window, watched to the west and the way leading up from the dock.
She saw nothing.
That meant nothing.
The smugglers could be out there with special lights and drones that allowed them to see in the dark, with guns and bombs and traps, and all to bring a few bloodstained relics to a greedy smuggler and his wealthy, grasping collector of illegal goods. Kellen thought about Afghanistan, the battles she had fought, the deaths and destruction she’d seen, and fury held her in its grasp. She hadn’t carried a rifle through the treacherous mountains so Americans at home could break the law and fund the very terrorists she’d fought.
Fate led Cecilia in a straight line from the hospital to stand in front of an Army Recruiting Station. She looked in the window at the two people in uniform seated at desks inside. She looked back in the direction of the hospital, looked around at the busy streets, the indifferent people. Danger stalked her here. She didn’t know what danger, but she knew something terrible had happened and she needed to get out of this town. What better way to disappear than into the massive organization called the US military?
Pushing open the door, she walked in. Her mind immediately assembled a catalog of data on the officers:
ARMY RECRUITERS:
ONE MALE, ONE FEMALE, PLEASANT AND BRISK, SKEPTICAL WHEN LOOKING ME OVER, DISCOURAGING ABOUT MY CONDITION AND ABILITY TO PASS THE STRINGENT PHYSICAL. PRODUCE STERN WARNINGS ABOUT DRUG USE. IMPRESSED BY KELLEN’S DEGREES, SATISFIED BY PHOTO ID.
The male recruiter, Sergeant Barnes, said, “With these credentials, we’ll send you to Officer Candidate School.”
“If you pass the physical,” Sergeant Rehberger snapped. She was more realistic, less hopeful of Cecilia’s chances.
Cecilia nodded at her. “I’m good with numbers, data structure, patterns.” As she spoke, her mind was collecting more information about the recruiters, this station, how to turn the details of this situation to her advantage. She could give answers that they wanted to hear, because by their body language and by logic, she could anticipate their needs.