Dark Dreamer (29 page)

“We can pay you,” Dwayne assured her.

*

The happiest place on earth was a smile-required zone heaving with the smell of warm churro and the sighs of exhausted parents. Cara got her picture taken with the Little Mermaid. It looked like she was squeezing one of the sea nymphet’s clam-covered breasts. She posted it home to Islesboro, figuring the CIA had better things to do than intercept her mail. She then located that kitsch nirvana, the Enchanted Tiki Garden. She was ten minutes early for her rendezvous and slid into a spot near some grandparents who were getting right in the spirit of things. She couldn’t see anyone who looked like an FBI agent.

Island drums beat, and Jose the animatronic parrot performed his shtick. The termite-infested tiki room of yesteryear had been rebuilt since Cara last saw it, the dusty, decrepit birds replaced with sleek new examples of taxidermy. They still squawked out the same alarmingly perky tune, and Cara found herself singing along silently as if the words had been lodged in some deep cavern of the mind, just waiting for the opportunity to tumble out.

A tourist with a Grecian Formula–tinted comb-over plunked himself down in the chair next to hers, juggling his camera and a Dole pineapple whip. He was in baggy peach shorts, a loud shirt, sandals, and a panama hat that still had the price tag on it. Several tiny pieces of bloody tissue clung to his chin where he had cut himself shaving, all but proclaiming him as newly separated. No self-respecting woman would send her husband out the door in that condition.

Mr. Not So Cool leaned toward her after a short interval and asked if she could take his photo. Picturing her contact sighing over this transitory bummer, Cara fired off a hurried snap and handed the camera back, trying not to be really obvious about scanning the room.

“Enjoying the show?” the tourist asked.

Cara blinked. This scrawny suburbanite couldn’t possibly be her contact. Any loser on the make would try and strike up conversation with a lame-ass question like that one. If Vernell got out more he’d have known that and dreamed up a more original pick-up line.

Just in case, she replied carefully, “I prefer the Jungle Cruise.”

To her complete horror, the tourist asked, “Would you mind showing me the way there?”

This could not be happening, Cara thought. Obviously this moron, recently cut loose by his wife, was trying to hook up with a single female for his Disney adventure. Asking her to take him to the cruise was exactly the kind of response a guy like him would make.

She rose from her chair and said, “Listen, I’m not interested. Okay?”

The tourist took her arm. “I’d really like your help finding that Jungle Cruise.”

A built guy turned around and intoned in a deep bass, “Hey, pal, the lady said she doesn’t want to go.”

Wisely, her would-be date dropped her arm. Cara smiled her thanks at the hunk and moved to the back of the room, wondering if her buff defender was the man she was waiting for. Suave, fit, elegantly dressed in Tommy Bahama gear, he looked like he could be an undercover fed. Relieved to have made the connection, she settled into a spare chair and waited for him to make his move. Instead, to her disgust, the tourist got up a few minutes later and beat a path straight for her.

“Christ,” she muttered as he slid into the next chair. “Can’t you guys ever take no for an answer?”

He picked off one of the bloody dabs of tissue and said, “Vernell sent me.”

Cara groaned. “I am such an idiot.”

“Shall we take that walk to the Jungle Cruise?”

She smiled feebly. “My pleasure.”

*

Marvin Perry was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted. Phoebe could tell by the way his glacial eyes narrowed a fraction when she asked to speak to whoever was in charge.

“What’s this about, Ms. Temple?” he inquired softly. The nails of his right hand whitened a little. His fingers weren’t resting on the table so much as pressing against it.

“My session with Dr. Karnovich went very well, as you know,” she said guardedly. “But I told him only some of what I saw.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. She had written down the gist of it on toilet tissue and Dr. K had suggested she keep the juiciest details off the session tapes so she had some key information to sell.

“What are you saying?” Agent Perry asked with quiet menace.

Phoebe contemplated the variables. She had never been a successful gambler. Cara said the problem was lack of confidence. Somehow hers communicated itself to card dealers and slot machines. A man like Marvin Perry would see straight through her attempts to horse-trade for what she wanted most, which was to go home. Yet, despite her uncertainty, she had an edge over him, and they both knew it. He wanted what she had, and she could sense he resented the hell out of her for that.

He had expected her to be a fake, Phoebe realized. That would have been easier for him. His breed preferred not to bring certain ideas to their equations. People like Phoebe were inconvenient because they gave rise to doubts, to the awful possibility that reality was not black and white. In Marvin Perry’s world, psychics were attention-seeking crazies who had never solved a single case. Belief in life after death was the kind of nonsense that clouded the judgment of Joe Average, making him rush off to church each Sunday just in case God was really watching. The Perry type needed no such reassurance. Their lives were not plagued by humanity’s eternal questions: Why am I here? Is there an afterlife? Will my sins be judged?

For a moment Phoebe felt almost sorry for her handler. What a dilemma she must represent. He badly wanted any information she could provide, but he also wanted her to fail so he could be proved right.

Smiling to herself, she proceeded to both thrill and disturb him, announcing, “Agent Perry, I know where there’s a dirty bomb.”

*

“Get me on your next flight to Portland, Maine, please,” Cara told the ticket agent at the United counter.

Her heart thudded. Vernell wasn’t going to be happy, but so what? She had read her new instructions carefully and had followed them to the letter. Except that when she arrived at the Greyhound bus depot, she simply couldn’t do it. Taking a bus to Seattle, then crossing to Vancouver, was the diametric opposite of what she really needed to do. She needed to go home. The compulsion was overwhelming. She had no idea what was happening with Phoebe, but she knew they were on the same page and that somehow everything was going to be okay.

She had walked out of the bus station and flagged a cab to LAX. Now she was about to spend the next eight hours flying. To get to Portland, she would have a layover in Chicago. Would the CIA track her down and be waiting for her there? She couldn’t fly under her Diane Harris alias. Security regulations meant you had to carry a photo ID matching the name on the ticket.

As the agent slid her driver’s license back across the counter, Cara wondered if her name had already triggered a series of alarms. She tried to read the ticket agent’s face for signs. He looked robotically cheerful as he handed over a couple of boarding passes and thanked her for choosing United.

Cara made it through security without being arrested and vacillated over whether to kill the next eighty minutes in the Red Carpet Lounge or at the gate. She chose the gate, thinking her chances of making a getaway would be better if she was in a crowded public place.

She flopped down into a plastic chair and refrained from laughing hysterically. In the space of a few days her life had spun so completely out of control it was almost funny. And now she had wantonly disregarded FBI instructions because she had a feeling she had to get home. She suspected the urge had filtered from Phoebe’s unconscious into her own. But what if it was more than that? What if Phoebe was sending a signal intentionally?
I’m losing it,
she thought.

Only she must have said it out loud because the woman sitting opposite her lifted her dark head and said, “Hey, Cara,” like they were old friends.

“Fran!” Cara knew she was blushing. She struggled for something cool to say. This was the first time she’d ever run into a one-night stand after the one night.

Fran read her mind. “I know. Weird isn’t it?”

“For you, too, huh?” She looked good, Cara thought. Hot, actually. And a little older than Cara had thought at Girlbar. Jeans. Button-down white shirt. Nice boots.
Really
nice boots. Cara gestured at them. “Valerie Coe?”

“No one ever knows that!” Fran hitched her jeans up her leg a little. Her black boots were inlaid with midnight blue leather in a naturalistic pattern.

“Outstanding.” Cara coveted them instantly. “Is she still taking no new customers?”

“She only has one pair of hands, I guess.”

“It’s just as well. I don’t need another excuse to spend money on boots.”

“Tell me about it. Lucky I have a career. I could never buy these if I had to wait tables to finish college.”

Cara tried to remember what Fran was studying and came up blank. “Remind me. What’s your career?”

“Okay. I realize this will be the end of a beautiful friendship, so for the record I just want to say it was great while it lasted.” She grinned. “I’m a trial consultant.”

“Is that like Gene Hackman in
Runaway Jury?
”

“Kind of, although I think I’m better looking than him.”

“I’d testify to that.”

A busty woman two seats along from Fran fired off a frown in their direction. She wore heavy make-up and a fish emblem on her lapel. In her spare time she probably wrote letters to the school board insisting they teach teens abstinence instead of birth control.

“I have a suggestion,” Cara said. “Why don’t we continue this conversation in the comfort and privacy of the United lounge? I have a spare guest pass. Want to use it?”

“Best idea I’ve heard all day.” Fran got to her feet and picked up Cara’s cabin bag, dropping it on top of her own larger wheelie.

“Where are you headed today?” Cara asked as they strolled along the walkway.

“Portland, Maine.”

“Me, too.”

“That’s home for you, right?”

“Almost. I live on Islesboro.”

“No shit. That’s where I’m staying.”

“At this time of year? You’re brave.”

“My grandmother lives there,” Fran said. “She hasn’t been well lately, so I thought I’d go spend a few days.”

“God, I probably know her,” Cara said.

“Dotty Prescott,” Fran supplied. “She lives in—”

“Ames Cove. My grandmother used to play bridge with them.”

“Oh, my God. Are you Elizabeth Temple’s granddaughter?”

“One of them.”

“This is too bizarre.” Fran stopped walking so she could clap her forehead a couple of times. “I can’t believe I never made the connection.”

“Why would you?” Cara asked. “We didn’t do last names.”

“I’ve seen your photo. My Gran’s only been trying to fix me up with you for about five years.”

“Wait…are you the granddaughter with the pet armadillo?”

“I liberated him a while back.”

Cara burst out laughing. “Every time you’re in town, I have to dream up some excuse Dotty hasn’t heard before so I can avoid coming to dinner.”

“I promise I won’t let on.” Fran resumed walking.

“I have a better idea,” Cara said on an impulse she didn’t feel like suppressing. “Let’s date. You know, just while you’re on the island.”

Fran’s gleaming hazel eyes found hers in a look that said she hadn’t forgotten a minute of their night together. “I’d like that.”

*

“Are you sure I need to be there?” Phoebe glanced across the backseat at her minder.

Marvin Perry was cleaning the sunglasses he wore on the rare occasions they left Langley to venture into the outside world. “Those are my orders.”

“And I’m going home afterward?”

“Yes.” Marvin Perry’s chill blue eyes registered an emotion she could not identify. Grudging respect? In a tone of mordant resignation, he said, “You’re a smart woman, Ms. Temple.”

“Please call me Phoebe. I mean, we are spending rather a lot of time together.”

A few muscles moved in his face, bringing him the closest to a smile Phoebe had ever seen. “Okay, Phoebe. And I’m Marvin.”

Their vehicle, the middle car in a small fleet of three, stopped at a security gate, and their driver exchanged a few words with a uniformed guard before they were signaled through.

Marvin slid on his eyewear and returned to his topic. “When did you decide to ransom your information?”

“I didn’t. I decided to go home. But I got the impression that your bosses had other plans.”

“You have to see it from our point of view. There’s only one of you. Given your capabilities, it is imperative we prevent other parties gaining access to you.”

“What other parties? Aren’t you guys
it?
”

“Phoebe, there’s not an intelligence agency in the world that wouldn’t trade damned near anything for an asset like you. If you fell into the wrong hands the consequences could be unthinkable.”

“No one knows about me except you people,” Phoebe reminded him. “I think you’re being paranoid.”