Page 42 of Mean Streak

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T he phone deep inside his coat pocket vibrated.

He took it out, read the LED: BLOCKED CALL .

He answered but didn’t say anything.

“It’s me,” Rebecca said.

He’d lied to Emory about not having a cell phone. He had dozens, off-brands he bought in the supermarket, the kind that sold for practically a dime a dozen, disposable. They were used only to communicate with his sister.

Each time he called her, he gave her the number for the next phone, then destroyed the one he’d just used. That way, she always had an untraceable number to call if she needed to reach him in an emergency.

He braced himself to receive bad news. “What’s happened?”

“Special Agent Jack Connell came to call.”

He hadn’t seen that coming, and for a moment he was speechless. Then, in a stage whisper, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I wish.”

“When was this?”

“Today.”

After four years, Connell had showed up today . The day Emory was returned to her husband, when she’d been surrounded by law enforcement officers and media. Coincidence? The two events had occurred three thousand miles apart. What possible link could they have to each other? Only one. Him.

“What did he want?”

“What do you think? You.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“He’s still got the puppy dog eyes,” she said.

“Don’t trust them.”

“Oh, I didn’t. Not for a minute. He’s as manipulative as ever, but he really needs to brush up on his surveillance skills. He was parked down the street when I came home from work yesterday evening.”

“Why didn’t you call me then?”

“I thought he would give up and go away.”

“Fat chance of that.”

“I waited twenty-four hours before busting him.”

“He came alone?”

“Yes.”

“How long was he there?”

“Here in the house, for about fifteen minutes.”

“You let him in?”

“For fifteen minutes,” she repeated testily. “Then I sent him packing.”

“Doesn’t mean he’s not still watching you.”

“I don’t think he is.”

He had to trust her on that. She was savvy and elusive. Or had been until now. He asked the most pertinent question. “How did he track you all the way to Seattle?”

She explained how her former coworker at Macy’s had spotted her on a newscast. He began to relax a little when he realized that there was no connection between Emory and the FBI agent’s unheralded visit to his sister.

“It was stupid of me to participate in the protest,” she was saying. “I realize that now, but I never thought it would merit national news coverage.”

“But you’ve changed your appearance.”

“Not enough to fool Eleanor, it seems.”

“I remember her. You two were close.”

“She had a mad crush on you, I think. Before…”

What she’d been about to say was before Westboro . Everything had changed after that, but it was a waste of time to discuss what they both already knew, and prudently they shouldn’t talk too long. Especially in light of Jack Connell’s recent reappearance. “You didn’t leave him alone, did you?”

“Only to go to the bathroom, and—before you panic—I listened at the door. He peed and washed up. He wasn’t in there long enough to do anything else. But I thoroughly checked the room after he left anyway.”

Good girl. “What did you two talk about for fifteen minutes?”

“He mentioned Salt Lake City. Texas and Kentucky, too.”

“I don’t suppose they were vacation destinations on his bucket list.”

“Don’t be cute. He asked what I knew about a soccer coach. I played dumb, but of course he didn’t buy it.”

No mention of North Carolina or even the region. No mention of an Atlanta physician who’d gone missing for four days. Breathing more easily, he switched subjects. “How’s Sarah?”

“We’ll get to her. How are you ?”

“All right.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t bullshit me! You don’t sound right. Are you sick?”

“Healthy as a horse.”

“Then what’s going on?”

Rebecca had always been able to detect an evasion. A lie she could spot from a mile off. He should quit while he was ahead. “Look, I’d better go. Thanks for the heads-up about Connell.”

“I had to warn you. He’s still on your trail.”

“If he was hot on it, he wouldn’t be pestering you. One thing, though. You’re sure it was your friend who put him on to you? He might have been lying about that.”

“He wasn’t. I checked. After he left, I called Eleanor.”

Rebecca was scrupulous about covering her tracks, and thereby his tracks. It took him aback that she had reconnected with her friend in New York.

“She verified that Connell had come to see her and only after she had called him.” Sounding defensive, she added, “I enjoyed talking to her. She’s married now. Pregnant with her first child. It was good to hear her sounding so happy.”

He bowed his head low, tucking his chin into the collar of his coat, pained that his sister felt it necessary to make an excuse for enjoying a chat with an old friend.

Her loyalty to him had cost her dearly. He probably knew of only a fraction of the sacrifices she had made, and was still making, in order to protect him.

“I’m glad you called,” he said thickly. “Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

“Don’t you dare hang up!”

“I’ve talked too long already.”

“You asked about Sarah.”

His heart hitched. “She okay? Jesus, Connell didn’t—”

“No. I threatened him with emasculation if he went near her.”

“And then I’d have to kill him.”

“Unnecessary for the time being. In answer to your question, Sarah is doing great.”

“Still playing the cello?”

“There’s a recital in a few weeks. I wish you could be here for it.”

“I wish I could be too.” A silence followed, and it stretched out until it took on more significance than merely a lapse in conversation. “What aren’t you telling me, Becs?”

When she was twelve and he was fourteen, she’d smacked him every time he’d taunted her with the pet name.

Over time, however, she’d come to like it, even though his using it usually signaled a shift in the tenor of their conversation.

It was the verbal equivalent of getting to the heart of the matter, of the kid gloves coming off.

“Sarah and I like it here,” she said. “She loves her school. She has tons of friends. The shop is doing well. Outperforming my projections. We’ve made a home here. If I were to uproot us again—”

“I didn’t ask you to uproot the first time.”

“No, it was my decision alone to leave New York. But as long as Jack Connell had me on his radar, he was going to be a pest, and I hated having my life monitored.

“Then, too, Sarah and I needed a fresh start, away from that jerk I was married to. I don’t regret leaving Manhattan.”

She paused to take a breath. “But moving to a different city now, assuming another name, having to lie to everyone in order to establish a new identity, I don’t want to do it again.”

“I don’t want you to either,” he said, meaning it. “Stay where you are, Becs, and live your life. Don’t consider me every time you make a decision. Your happiness and well-being, Sarah’s, that’s all that you should take into account.”

“But now that Jack Connell knows where I am—”

“You can’t betray me to him because you don’t know anything.”

“He doesn’t believe that. He’s certain that I know where you are.”

“Then he’s wrong, isn’t he?”

“And so are you.”

“Am what?”

“ Wrong . Something’s going on. What?”

God, she was tenacious. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

Ever attuned to the slightest nuance, she asked, “What did you do this time?”

“You know better than to ask.”

“Just tell me so I won’t have to worry.”

He hesitated, then said, “I got crosswise with my neighbors.” Experience had taught her to read between the lines. She wouldn’t guess that, this time, he was speaking literally.

“Plural?”

“Two of them.”

She made a small sound of regret. “How crosswise did you get?”

“They’re still breathing, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Don’t get nasty. I just want to know what happened.”

“Actually, Becs, you don’t. If you don’t know, you won’t ever have to lie about it.”

“For God’s sake, when will you stop?”

“When I’m finished.”

“Or until someone finishes you.”

“There’s always that possibility.”

She gave a huff of mirthless laughter. “But I’m not supposed to worry?”

He didn’t have a response for that.

“If you’re done there, wherever there is, you’ll be relocating now.”

He looked at the building across the street from where he was leaning against a utility pole. Visiting hours at the hospital were over, so there weren’t as many people coming and going as there had been earlier.

The two men who’d escorted Emory into the ER earlier in the day had driven away in their SUV. The news vans had departed after the press conference. Shortly after ten o’clock Jeff Surrey had left in a late-model European car.

Somewhere in that building Emory was alone, and would be for the rest of the night. That should relieve his mind. It didn’t.

To his sister, he said, “I can’t relocate right away.”

“You always do. Immediately.”

“Not this time.”

“What makes this time different?”

He couldn’t tell her or she would be even more worried and afraid than she was. If he told her about Emory, she would advise him to turn his back, walk away, leave it alone, and do so tonight, now . He didn’t want to hear it from Rebecca. He knew it already.

“I have to wrap up something here before moving on, that’s all.”

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“No.”

“Does it have to do with Westboro?”

“No. This is something else.” Before she demanded to know information he wouldn’t share, he gave her the number of another burner phone. “Same rules. Call it only if you have to.”

“I will. Will you call me?”

“Sure.”

After a beat, she said, “You’re taking on more trouble, aren’t you?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Swear to God,” she said, “if I knew where you were, I would call Jack Connell right this minute and tell him.”

“No you wouldn’t.”

She blew out a gust of breath and, with defeat, said, “No, I wouldn’t. But he did say something about you today that I can’t get out of my head.”

“This ought to be good.”

“He said that it might actually be a relief to you if you were found.”

“A relief ?”

“That was the word he used.”

“Then he’s full of shit. If he comes around again, tell him to fuck off.”

She laughed. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Her laughter was a good note on which to end the call. Before either of them became maudlin, before they had to actually say good-bye, he disconnected. Then he removed the battery from the phone and ground the phone itself beneath his boot until it was broken into bits.

He knelt and swept all the pieces of the phone off the ground into his hand and dropped them in his coat pocket to dispose of later.

Then he dug into his jeans pocket and took out the tiny silver trinket, the token that he’d kept as a tangible link to Emory, not realizing until today what vital importance it had.

Thoughtfully rubbing it between his fingers, he gave the hospital one last look, and, convinced that nothing untoward was likely to happen tonight, he started back toward where he’d left his truck. He had a lot of work to do tonight. Busy work. Tasks that should keep his mind off Emory.

But wouldn’t.

For four years, he’d lived with loneliness and had even reconciled himself to it.

But in only four days his tolerance for it had expired. It had begun to hurt.