Cold Betrayal (9 page)

Patricia nodded. “Just a minute.” She disappeared into the hut. When she returned, she thrust a tiny piece of paper into Enid’s hand. Holding it close to the light from the flickering candle, Enid saw a string of numbers and a single name—Irene.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s a name and a phone number,” Patricia answered. “Memorize both and then throw the paper away. Better yet, burn it so no one can find it. When you get Outside, go to a phone and call that number. Ask for Irene. She’ll help you. She tried to help me, but they caught me before I could get to her.”

Enid memorized the string of numbers. Not quite trusting her memory, however, she also kept the slip of paper, hiding it away in a crack between the baseboard and the Sheetrock in the bedroom she shared with Gordon. It had been there for months. Today, just before she and Aunt Edith left for town, Enid had taken the tiny piece of paper out of its hiding place and slipped it into the pocket of her jacket along with the sandwich.

Enid had never used a telephone. She realized that was the first thing she would have to do once she was Outside—find a phone and figure out how to use it.

After all, it wasn’t as though she had never seen one. There was a phone in the house—a heavy black thing with buttons on it—that sat on the desk in the room that was Gordon’s office. Aunt Edith was the only woman in the household who was allowed to touch it. Enid had noticed that the men in The Family, the Elders and also Bishop Lowell, had little things that they carried around in their pockets that were evidently telephones, too. Enid knew they talked to one another on them, even when they were outside, but she couldn’t imagine how the phones worked since they didn’t seem to require wires of any kind.

She also knew that there was a phone at the gas station. She had seen it hanging on the wall just outside the restroom door. The problem was, that one had slots for money—coins—so you evidently had to pay to use that phone. Money was something Enid didn’t have.

•   •   •

During the months of planning, worrying, and waiting, there were times Enid had doubted this day would ever come. Now it was here—a cold, overcast day with occasional flurries of snow. For good or ill, she and her baby—a girl she would name Ann after her own mother—were riding into the darkening night in a pickup truck belonging to a pair of complete strangers. Children in The Family were constantly warned to avoid contact with everything from Outside and most especially Indians. Strangers were evil heathens and were to be avoided at all costs. The problem was, this old couple didn’t seem the least bit evil.

It was well past dinnertime by now. Nervous beyond bearing, Enid had been unable to eat any breakfast or lunch before the doctor’s appointment. When Aunt Edith questioned her about that, Enid had said she wasn’t feeling well. If you were pregnant, that was always an acceptable excuse for not eating.

Now, though, with her stomach growling, she fingered the pilfered cheese sandwich. After being crushed against the door and the armrest, it was probably much the worse for wear. She was tempted to pull it out and eat it but decided that would be rude. There wasn’t enough to share, and she couldn’t very well eat in front of these people who were kind enough to give her a ride.

The man took his hand off the wheel, reached over, and put his hand on the woman’s ample thigh. Enid cringed. When Gordon touched her leg like that, she knew that he wanted her to hurry up to the bedroom as soon as dinner was over and her kitchen chores were done. In this case, the woman patted the man’s hand in return and left hers resting on top of his. There didn’t seem to be any underlying message in the man’s gesture. They continued to ride along in what struck Enid as a perfectly comfortable silence.

Then, to Enid’s surprise, a telephone rang. It sounded just like the one on Gordon’s desk. She was astonished when the woman bent down and pulled a tiny device out of her purse. It looked just like the phones Gordon and the other Elders used, and the bright light from the screen lit up the cab of the speeding truck.

The woman did something to the screen and then held the phone to her ear. “Hi, Ramona,” she said. “We’re on our way. We’ll be there in an hour or so. No, we haven’t had dinner. Okay. See you then.”

Enid remained focused on the phone in the woman’s hand, amazed that on the Outside even women were allowed to use them. Perhaps the woman was some kind of Elder—but was it even possible for a woman to be an Elder?

The woman stuffed the device back in her purse. “Ramona’s cooking dinner,” she said to the man. “It’ll be ready about the time we get there.”

The man nodded and smiled, while the woman turned back to Enid. “Our daughter,” she explained. “She and her husband run an RV park north of Flagstaff.”

“Could I use that, please?” Enid asked, pointing toward the spot where the phone had disappeared into the woman’s purse. “I don’t have any money, but there’s someone I need to call.”

Shrugging, the woman retrieved the phone and handed it over. “You’re welcome to use it,” she said. “We have plenty of minutes. You don’t need to pay.”

Enid managed to locate the slip of paper and pull it out of her pocket, but once she had the phone in her hand, she looked at it in complete befuddlement.

“Don’t you know how to use it?” the woman asked.

Enid shook her head.

The woman took the phone back. She did something to it, and it lit up. “Who do you want to call?”

Wordlessly, Enid handed over the slip of paper. One at a time, the woman punched the numbers into the phone. When she finished, she handed the device back to Enid. “It’s ringing,” she said.

With her hand trembling, Enid held the phone to her ear. “May I help you?” a woman’s voice inquired.

“Irene,” Enid managed. “I need to speak to Irene.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman answered. “Did you say Irene? I’m afraid there’s no one here by that name, but if you’re looking . . .

Enid didn’t wait to hear more. With those few words her only source of hope had been snatched away. Irene was the only person Patricia had said might help her. Without Irene, Enid and her baby were Outside and completely alone.

Not knowing what else to do, Enid handed the phone back, and the woman returned it to the purse. As they continued south, Enid held her hand to her mouth and stifled a sob, but she couldn’t hold back the curtain of despair. With Irene gone, Enid had no idea where she was going to go or what she was going to do.

Without anyone to help her, no doubt Enid would be caught and returned to The Family. Most likely she’d be sent down to join Agnes and Patricia in tending the pigs. If that’s what happened to her, fine, but what would become of poor Baby Ann?

6

O
nce Athena left, Ali made a quick call to B.

He listened to what she had to say. “So much for not getting sucked into the middle of it,” he said resignedly, “but it does sound as though she could use our help. Go ahead and give Stuart a call.”

Stuart Ramey was B. Simpson’s right-hand man at High Noon Enterprises. In person, Stuart’s social skills were somewhat lacking, but his personal foibles didn’t necessarily make themselves apparent in telephone or computer transactions. He had, with some difficulty, overcome his fear of flying, enough to make a few flights in the course of the last few months, but elevators were still an absolute no-no. He lived to work and mostly lived at work, which allowed him to schedule his life around whatever time zone B. was currently occupying.

In the past Stuart had lived in his office on an unofficial basis, making do on an air mattress on the floor of an office that was usually cluttered with leftover pizza boxes and other fast-food takeout debris. A few weeks earlier, while Stuart had been out of town on an enforced holiday, B. had taken advantage of his absence and had remodeled that corner of High Noon’s warehouse space into a combination office/studio apartment, complete with a bathroom, shower, and tiny kitchenette.

Stuart had returned to an office/studio combination that was now truly his private domain, and he loved it. What Ali appreciated about the new arrangement was that Stuart’s office now looked more like an office and less like a slovenly college dorm room. How Stuart’s private apartment looked, now safely shut away behind a closed door, was none of Ali’s business or anybody else’s.

Ali’s call to Stuart was answered by his new assistant, Cami—short for Camille. Cami Lee was a recent graduate of UCLA. She was a bright young Asian woman who had arrived at High Noon with a ready smile, boundless energy, and a cum laude bachelor of science degree with dual majors in both computer science and electrical engineering. To everyone’s relief, she seemed able to take Stuart’s lack of interpersonal skills in stride. Ali was thrilled that B. had managed to snap Cami up before anyone else could.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Reynolds,” Cami said when she answered the phone. “Mr. Ramey is on the other line. Would you like to hold or do you want him to call you back?”

Marveling at how young Cami sounded on the phone, Ali opted for holding and looked out the window while she waited. Over the course of the afternoon, the sky had darkened. The winter storm the weather forecasters had predicted seemed to be blowing in from the west. With the phone to her ear, Ali stepped over to the gas-log fireplace and turned the flame up another notch.

By the time she returned to her chair, Stuart was on the phone. “Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

Ali spent the next ten minutes summarizing the situation with Betsy Peterson in Bemidji. “What’s our interest in all this?” Stuart asked when she finished.

“Since local law enforcement agencies are discounting what Athena and I regard as a real threat, I want High Noon to build a security safety net around Betsy,” Ali answered. “I want fully monitored electronic surveillance of her home. How do we go about making that happen?”

“Well,” Stuart said, “you’ve got a choice here. It can be done cheap, quick, or good. Pick any two.”

“I’m choosing quick and good,” Ali replied.

“As in spare no expense?”

“Yes,” Ali answered. “Athena will be the official client, but the billing is to be sent to me. I’m assuming you’ll have to locate some outside assistance.”

“Absolutely,” Stuart said. “I’ve been to Minnesota in the winter. I’ve no intention of going myself, but I’ve got a contact in Minneapolis, a guy named Joe. He’s good. He’s also someone we’ve worked with before, and he might be willing to handle the job.”

“Okay,” Ali said, “if he agrees to take this on, let me know before you make it official so I can clear it with Betsy.”

“Right,” Stuart agreed. “The only way to make this work is to have her full cooperation. Do you know if she has a computer?”

“According to Athena, probably not one that’s up to date. I understand Betsy has Wi-Fi in the house that may not be functioning at this point. She most likely discontinued the account once Athena moved here.”

“We need to find out for sure,” Stuart said.

“Talk to Athena,” Ali advised. “She’ll be able to tell you what you need to know.”

“The thing is,” Stuart cautioned, “most ordinary computers won’t have the kinds of advanced electronic capabilities we’ll need.”

“You have carte blanche,” Ali assured him. “Plan on getting whatever we need to do the job right.”

“Okay,” Stuart said. “Will do.”

Ali’s call waiting buzzed. “Get back to me, please, Stuart. I’ve got another call.”

Ali switched over. “Any room in the inn?” Sister Anselm Becker asked.

Sister Anselm, a Sister of Providence, was also Ali’s best friend and had served as Ali’s matron of honor at B. and Ali’s Christmas Eve wedding at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas. It had taken a special dispensation from the mother superior at St. Bernadette’s, Sister Anselm’s convent in Jerome, for Sister Anselm to be absent from the convent on Christmas Eve.

When she wasn’t at home in Jerome, Sister Anselm often operated as a special emissary for Bishop Francis Gillespie, head of the Catholic diocese in Phoenix, who for the past dozen or so years had routinely dispatched Sister Anselm to hospitals all over Arizona where she served as patient advocate to mostly impoverished people who had no one else to intercede on their behalf.

“Of course,” Ali said. “We always have a spare bed for you. What’s going on?”

“I’m still here in Jerome dealing with construction issues,” Sister Anselm explained. “I have to be in Flagstaff for a meeting early tomorrow morning. With a storm blowing in, I don’t want to be driving back and forth to Payson in ice and snow.”

St. Bernadette’s had been built by the Sisters of Charity in conjunction with a parochial school in the early 1900s while Jerome was still a thriving mining community. When the mines shut down, so did the school. After lying dormant for a number of decades, the convent had been reopened by the Sisters of Providence as an R&R center and retreat house for nuns from any number of orders who needed a place of quiet contemplation and respite where they could recover their mental and spiritual equilibrium.

The programs offered at St. Bernadette’s, many of them facilitated by Sister Anselm, may have been up to the minute, but the physical plant itself, now over a hundred years old, was falling down around the sisters’ ears. Months earlier, a building inspector had threatened to red flag the convent and throw the resident nuns out into the street.

At the time, B. Simpson had been worried about a badly injured teenager who had come to his attention. The kid, Lance Tucker, was a talented hacker. He was hospitalized in Texas having already survived one failed homicide attempt. Fearing another, B. had negotiated a treaty with his friend Bishop Gillespie. In exchange for sending Sister Anselm to Texas to look after Lance, B. had agreed to tackle the daunting project of bringing St. Bernadette’s into the twenty-first century. Since Sister Anselm had already established a close working relationship with B., the mother superior, Sister Justine, had appointed Sister Anselm to serve as construction supervisor for the convent’s complex remodeling project.

Rehab work had been scheduled to begin in early January. The nuns from St. Bernadette’s had decamped to a diocese-operated retreat in Payson in order to be out of the way. The facility in Payson, usually open only during the summer months, was a camp of sorts where priests from Phoenix could go to escape the valley’s all-consuming heat.