A Hideous Beauty (16 page)

My cell phone rang. The anonymous-caller tone. It was in my floor-side pocket. I started to roll over on my back to get it, remembered my injury, then rolled over onto my stomach and retrieved the phone. The display had a number I didn't recognize. I did, however, recognize the area code. Six one nine. San Diego. “I need to take this,” I said.

“Who is it?”

“I don't know.” I flipped open the phone. “Hello?”

“Grant?”

I'd only heard an afternoon's worth of her voice, and then mostly angry tones, but I'd heard enough to recognize it. “Miss Ling,” I said.

“Is this a bad time?”

I took stock of the moment. I was lying on the floor of my former girlfriend's apartment hiding from anonymous headlights
while trying to explain to her that an old high school rival, who was possibly dead, was trying to kill the president of the United States and, for reasons unknown, implicate me in the plot.

“Not at all, Miss Ling,” I said.

Her head propped in her hand, Christina watched me with interest.

“Maybe you should call me Sue,” Miss Ling said.

“All right . . . Sue.”

Christina rolled her eyes in exasperation.

“You didn't show up at the library this morning,” Sue said.

“Um . . . no, I didn't. I had to return to Washington. Urgent business. Unexpected.”

“More urgent than meeting an angel from heaven?”

I tried to sit up. It hurt too much, so I returned to my side, squirming to get comfortable. “Did he show up?” I asked.

“No. Not in the library.”

I knew it! I grinned victoriously. “Somehow, I'm not surprised,” I said.

“He visited the professor earlier, though.”

“Earlier. Convenient. When no one else was around.”

“I assume the professor was alone. I didn't ask. Abdiel didn't come to the library because he knew you'd returned to Washington.”

She knew I was in Washington. When Jana called, she thought I was still in San Diego. I grinned. Miss Ling had talked to Jana. That's how she knew I'd returned home.

I played along. “It makes sense he'd know I'd returned to Washington,” I said. “Angels are pretty well connected.”

Christina frowned. “Angels?” she mouthed.

I shrugged.

Getting up in a huff, she went to the kitchen. The light came on and cabinet doors opened and closed.

It was awkward talking on the phone on my side. I tried to sit up. A yelp of pain erupted from my lips.

“Are you all right?” Sue asked.

I did my best to sound fine. “A little stiffness from the flight, that's all,” I said.

Sue Ling already had a low opinion of me. I didn't want to justify it by telling her about the dog bite.

Christina's voice came from the kitchen. “Do you want some coffee?”

I covered the phone. “That would be great,” I shouted back.

“Is that Christina?” Sue Ling asked.

I cringed, hoping she hadn't heard the exchange.

“Um . . . exactly why are you calling, Miss . . . um, Sue?”

The voice on the other end of the line cooled. “The professor asked me to take another look at your book. To dissect it . . .”

“Dissect it.” This conversation was going downhill fast. “OK . . . so you called to give me a review?”

“I found something. Something disturbing.”

“Disturbing. Factually or grammatically?”

“Does Christina have a copy of your book in her apartment?”

I frowned. “How did you know I was in Christina's apartment?”

“I didn't, until now.”

I cringed. She had set me up, and just like a guy, I walked right into it.

“Um . . . let me check,” I said.

In order to get up I had to crawl on my hands and knees to the padded benches that rimmed the alcove and use them to push myself to my feet. I poked my head in the kitchen. “Christina . . . Do you have a copy of my book?”

Her hand was atop the coffee grinder. “Who's on the line? Your editor?”

“I'll tell you later. Do you have a copy?”

Christina didn't appreciate being dismissed. When she walked by me it felt as though someone had left the refrigerator door open. She went to the alcove and pulled a book from the very shelf I'd used to push myself up.

“Thanks,” I said sheepishly. To Sue on the phone, “All right, I have a copy.”

“You'll need a paper and pen.”

Christina had just placed her hand atop the coffee grinder again when I said, “Do you have a scratch pad, or something I can write on?”

She yanked open a drawer, rattling its insides, and rummaged around until she found a scratch pad which she flung at me.

I mouthed the words
thank you
to her. I was definitely going to have to do some damage control when this call was over.

Pulling out a chair from a small tea table, I sat down slowly on half of it, placing the book and scratch pad in front of me. At the top of the pad was a female cartoon mouse, her gloved hands clasped against her chest as she gazed amorously at her counterpart male on the far side of the pad. Little hearts floated between them.

Beneath the graphic, Christina had written: “Call Dr. about birth control pills.”

Tearing off the top sheet of the scratch pad, I turned it facedown and placed it at the far side of the table.

“I'm ready,” I said to Sue, my mind on Christina.

Birth control pills?

The coffee grinder buzzed to life. I had to wait for the grinding to stop before I could hear what Sue had said.

“You'll need to repeat that,” I told her.

“Go to chapter one,” Sue said.

I opened the cover and saw my autograph and inscription to
Christina:
“My light . . . my inspiration . . . my ever-present help. With love, Grant.”

“Are you at chapter one?”

“Almost. All right. There.”

“First word.”

“First word? Don't tell me you're going to review my book word by word?”

“Just write it down.”

I wrote it down. “All right, now what?”

“Chapter two. Second word. Write it down.”

I flipped the pages to chapter 2. “None of this is making any sense,” I said.

“You'll see. Chapter—”

“Three,” I said. “Third word.”

“Correct.”

“I'm sensing a pattern here.”

“Smart boy. Keep working your way through the book.”

“How far?”

“You'll know.”

As I turned from chapter to chapter, a growing sense of horror came over me.

“I don't believe this!” I cried.

Coffeepot in hand, Christina looked over at me.

“Are you saying you didn't write it?” Sue asked.

I stared at the words on the scratch pad. My words.

“Of course I wrote it,” I said. “But I didn't mean it. I mean, not like this. I'm going to have to check my manuscript.”

“It's hard to believe the wording is mere coincidence,” Sue said.

“You took the words right out of the prosecuting attorney's mouth,” I replied.

Christina set the coffeepot down, her fear having been resuscitated.

“What do you want me to tell the professor?” Sue asked.

“What do you mean?”

“He's the one who instructed me to review the book. He's going to want to know your response.”

“My response? Tell him I didn't write it! That I wrote it, but didn't know I'd written it, because I never would have written this. Tell him I'm going to check my original manuscript.”

My emotions were getting the best of me. I fought for control. I told myself not to panic, to attack the problem. “How did you find this?” I asked her.

“I'm good at recognizing patterns,” she said.

I sighed. “I wonder how many other people who are good at recognizing patterns will recognize this one?”

“I have to go,” Sue said. “Someone else is calling me. It's Jana. Is her phone call going to make me angry?”

“You mean you haven't talked with her today?”

“Did you make her cry?”

“No! Everything's fine. We talked earlier, it's fine. But you haven't talked with Jana already today?”

She hung up. I closed my phone.

“Who's Jana?” Christina asked. “And Sue? My, you were a busy little boy while you were in California, weren't you?”

“Not now, Christina.”

“Not now? Not now? You stalk me for two days, then force your way into my house—”

“I didn't force my way into your house!” I protested.

“That's exactly what the police report is going to say unless you start talking. And here's a news flash for you, buster: I know we agreed to cool things off for a while, but taking calls from your girlfriends while you're with me in my apartment is beyond rude, it's mean.”

I handed her the piece of paper. It was the only way I could think to shut her up.

Her eyes grew wide. “Grant, this isn't funny.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You shouldn't write things like this, not even on a notepad . . . my notepad!”

“How would you feel if I told you I not only wrote it, I published it?”

“Grant!”

I patted the open book. “A sequential pattern. One word per chapter.”

“Why would you—”

“I didn't! Someone is messing with me!”

She stared in disbelief at the note. “Well, whoever they are, they're doing an outstanding job.”

CHAPTER
13

O
n most nights it takes me ten minutes to drive home from Christina's apartment. Tonight it took longer because I had to walk the first two blocks to get to my car.

My apartment is a cozy one bedroom on Thirty-fourth Street within walking distance of Georgetown University. Call me nerdy, but I like the atmosphere of a university neighborhood, and it's only ten minutes to the White House and fifteen minutes to the Library of Congress.

Christina was waiting for me when I arrived at my apartment. She insisted on taking separate cars. She said that if an army of Feds jumped out of the trees and bushes she wanted to be able to put her Toyota into gear and drive away as though she didn't know me.

When no army appeared, she sprang out of her car and shoved me into the apartment faster than I could unlock the door, which resulted in collision.

While my laptop booted up, I searched for the printed copies of the manuscript. There were two: an early first draft
and the final draft. They were somewhere in the back of my bedroom closet buried beneath empty printer boxes, worn-out pairs of shoes, and stacks of clothes that no longer fit.

While I was rummaging, my computer played the Hallelujah Chorus, signaling it had booted up. I used to have Robin Williams shout, “Good morning, Vietnam!” but after a while, that got annoying.

“It's ready,” Christina said, in case I hadn't heard Mr. Handel. She hovered in front of the computer, nervously working the page from the scratch pad between her thumb and forefinger. The hearts floating between the cartoon mice were taking a beating.

I fell into the chair in front of my corner desk. Most of the biography had been written on the road or at a desk at the White House. But a good number of late-night hours were spent here in this corner polishing the manuscript.

I put the cursor through its paces, opening folders to get to the master manuscript file.

“I can't believe you wrote this,” Christina reiterated.

“No matter what we find in the file,” I replied, “I didn't write that sentence intentionally.”

“Are you saying your subconscious wrote it?”

Is that your defense, Mr. Austin? That your subconscious wrote that sentence?

“I'm saying I didn't write it,” I said to the prosecuting attorney in my head, loud enough for Christina to hear.

“Maybe you did it as a joke or a dare and forgot to fix it before it went to press.”

“I think I'd remember something like that.”

“Maybe it's a prank and only a limited number of copies are printed with these words, have you thought of that? Do you know anyone in the White House or at the publishers who would play a prank on you?”

“It's not a prank, Christina.”

I clicked on the manuscript file. “Here we go,” I said.

Christina bent over my shoulder, her cheek close to my cheek. It seemed to take the file forever to open.

The title page appeared.

I clicked an icon at the top of the window and a list of chapter headings appeared to the left of the text. By clicking on each heading I could navigate from chapter to chapter.

“Here we go,” I said, the mouse hovering over the link that would take me to chapter 1. “The first word of the first chapter in the published book is
when,
correct?”

Christina consulted the scratch paper. “Correct.”

“We don't want to see the word
when.”

“That's right,” she said.

I took a deep breath.

Click.

Chapter 1 appeared on the screen.

“Yes!” I shouted, thrusting my fists into the air.

The first word of chapter 1 was
it.

Christina's voice trembled. “Chapter two, try chapter two! We don't want the word to be
he.”

I positioned the cursor on the chapter 2 link.

Click.

My heart fell to my stomach.

“What?” Christina cried. “Does it say
he
?”

All the exuberance had drained from me. “Second word . . .
he,”
I said.

A new fear was born. What if most of the words of the condemning sentence were present in my text?

Christina motioned me to continue. “That could be just a coincidence. Go to chapter three. Chapter three.”