Double Vision (16 page)

An image of JT, calmly giving Attila the order to wait—and it had been an order—before he merged back into the trees to search for Baby, popped into her mind. He had gone back to look, despite the risk. “What is he, then? An undercover cop?”

“He's a contract agent for the CIA. With Lopez's connections outside of the country, they wanted in on the action.”

Rina studied the shadowy landscape flashing by, fewer and fewer houses now and longer stretches of farmland interspersed by glimpses of the sea on the right, which indicated they were headed south. The prospect of having to cope with a murder inquiry, retelling the past few days and hashing over her relationship with Alex, wasn't a pleasant one, no matter how necessary. The unpleasantness was highlighted by the fact that she wasn't just a key witness. For years, she had also been a suspect in the case. “What happens now?”

“We're taking you to a safe house for tonight. Translate that as meaning we're checking into a motel until Genius—” she jerked her head at “Attila” “—can get the interviews done.”

“Then what?”

Taylor's hand gripped hers. “WitSec. Witness Security. I'm sorry, Rina, but there's no other option. You need to disappear at least until the trial, and probably for a lot longer.”

Beaumont, Texas, three months later

A
divorce, a new identity, a new town.

Rina, now known as Rina Mathews, should have been happy she had escaped Alex's tight grip with her life, but she couldn't settle. Stepping back from her easel, she studied the still life she was working on. The moment she had picked up a brush and started painting, she had known this was what she was meant to be doing. Sculpture had satisfied a creative need, but now that she could see color,
light,
the urge to sculpt, powerful as it had been, had faded.

Out of curiosity, she had walked into the foyer of the building that had commissioned her last piece, which she had finished in the weeks following the bust. Even though she had created it, the sculpture had been subtly unfamiliar. She was used to relating to it by touch, not sight, and picturing it in her mind in a three-dimensional, spatial way, not glinting in sunlight with water pouring over the delicate rills.

Rina continued to study the canvas, her gaze slightly out of focus, letting the swimming light register so she could reproduce the glowing bowl of peaches she had set on a small table beneath the dappled shade of an oak.

The FBI debrief and the slow, painstaking dissection of her life from the time of the accident through to the present day had been intrusive and unsettling. It hadn't taken hours, it had taken days, and had involved repeated questioning until the evidence was as clear as “Attila,” otherwise known as Paul Hennessey, an agent from the Portland field office, and Marc Bayard, the special agent from D.C. who was heading up the investigation, could get it.

On top of the evidential work, they had requested that she undergo various forms of therapy, including hypnosis, to try to unlock her memory and retrieve the account numbers. Rina had been more than happy to agree, despite the fact that she had been in and out of various clinics for years trying to achieve the exact same result. If wanting to remember made a difference, then she should remember. She had seen what Alex was firsthand; she knew what had driven Esther, and what she had been fighting to avoid. Esther had died and Alex had destroyed their family, but if the money could be salvaged and used in some way to capture Alex, that would be a victory of sorts.

The sessions had been interesting, and at times harrowing, but apart from clarifying what she had already remembered, they hadn't been able to unlock anything new.

Bayard's distinct lack of humor at her inability to remember wasn't improved by the fact that his investigation, which had taken months and cost millions of dollars in man-hours and federal resources, had been compromised. Despite the tight security, Alex had been tipped off. Bayard had closed in on his cocaine operation, making significant arrests, but Alex and Slater had escaped and Cesar had died, taking a mountain of evidence with him.

JT had penetrated Alex's organization, following a trail of stolen armaments, in this case missile components destined for the Middle East, but the shipment hadn't materialized. To further complicate matters, a military nuclear arms specialist, a chemist and two administrative officials from separate military bases had died, reducing the suspect pool to almost zero. The executions had all been carried out in different parts of the country, but they had occurred on the same night and in the same way—two shots to the chest, one to the head.

With most of the players dead and Alex gone to ground, JT and Bayard's investigations were stalled. But on the plus side, he was now wanted on a number of counts, including illegal entry into the country, grievous bodily harm, murder and conspiracy charges. Rina's testimony would put him away on the murder charge alone.

Once her statements had been made and the legalities of her participation in the case as a witness for the prosecution had been finalized, Rina had met with Ed Marlow of WitSec.

Ed was a U.S. Marshal in his mid-fifties, lean and clean cut, with a precise way of speaking that cut out any possibility of gray areas. He had given her two options: the East Coast or the South.

Her knee-jerk reaction against going anywhere near Boston, where Alex had supposedly gone to school, was enough to make her settle for the South. Moving so far away from Winton made sense, and it was in line with WitSec's policy that, with the risk that Alex would find her, she cut ties with her old life. Relieved as she was at the promise of safety and anonymity while she waited out the months before Alex was found and put on trial, Rina couldn't dismiss the nagging worry that putting all those thousands of miles between her and her past also made it less likely she would ever locate Baby.

Taylor had searched for Baby in the days following the bust, but he hadn't been sighted on any of the neighboring properties and he hadn't turned up in the local pound or the animal shelter. She had handed Rina the photo she had used for her inquiries, a snap of Baby she had taken just months previously. In a last-ditch effort, Rina had circulated the photo in Wiston's local paper for several weeks, but seemingly, Baby had disappeared from the face of the earth.

Touching her brush to her palette she delicately smudged the outline of a peach so that the shape appeared to shimmer on the page.

Three letters, followed by four numbers, popped into her mind.

She blinked at the sudden intrusion. The numbers, clear as day—black on white—winked out. Suddenly cold, she painted the letters and numbers onto the canvas before she could forget them.

Heart pounding, she studied what she had written. For a split second, knowledge hovered at the edge of her mind. Then it slid away, leaving her mind blank.

She stared at the figures, trying to recapture the relaxed looseness of mind that had allowed the memory to surface, but her mind was once more locked down. It was entirely possible that this was just some kind of short circuit, a random wisp of memory left over from her childhood and, like the indented numbers she had found on the notepaper in Alex's desk, another dead end.

From the configuration, the numbers could be a vehicle license plate. She would pass the information on to Ed Marlow, to give to Bayard to check out.

After lunch, Rina walked to her local shopping center. As wonderful as it was to be able to see and to have the freedom to go wherever she wanted without assistance, she couldn't get used to not having Baby by her side.

She stopped at the newsagent and picked up a number of newspapers, including the local one. Reading the written word wasn't her strength, but she was improving. WitSec had helped rehabilitate her. For two months she had been enrolled in the same kind of intensive language lessons and training program that a foreign refugee was granted, with one difference—she had been the only pupil in the class. Marlow had personally overseen the program. He knew how important her testimony was, and he was as interested as Rina in making sure she could blend comfortably into Beaumont.

With the papers and a glossy magazine tucked under her arm, Rina began the slow trek home, enjoying the afternoon breeze and the warmth of the sun. So far she had resisted buying a car, for the simple reason that she didn't have a driver's license and the walk to the shopping center only took a few minutes. She had started driving lessons a few weeks ago, and was booked in to take her test, but, like reading, managing a vehicle wasn't her best skill.

A kid with a golden retriever on a leash walked out of a gate and crossed the road to a park. Rina's chest squeezed tight as she watched the boy unlatch the lead and let the dog streak across the grass.

As happy as she was in Beaumont she couldn't forget Baby, and she hadn't given up on him. Marlow would have a fit if he knew, but she had kept her contact with Taylor, and through her was continuing to try to locate him.

Fifteen minutes later, she collected a glass of water and a dictionary from the sitting room and carried them, along with the papers, out to the picnic table she'd set up beneath the oak. Anchoring the papers with the bowl of peaches and the glass of water, she began to read the first paper, stopping to check words as she went. After twenty years of reading selected information through Braille publications or listening to what was served up on television or radio, access to the huge variety of information available in newspapers was like a drug; her mind soaked it up like a sponge.

Her photographic memory was still intact. She had tested herself, curious to see if after years of zero visual stimuli she could still do her childhood trick, and had found to her surprise that the odd quirk was still there.

Turning to the classifieds, she reanchored the pages. Automatically, her gaze ran down the lost-and-found column and snagged on a snapshot of a dog in the pet's section.

She studied the picture, frustrated at the grainy texture of the newsprint. Frowning, she bent closer. Her elbow connected with the glass, water splashed across the table. Jumping to her feet, she grabbed the paper, pulling it away from the moisture and letting the wet part of the page drip onto the grass. The breeze gusted, tugging at the rest of the newspaper and sending it tumbling over the lawn until it caught in the thick tangle of shrubs at the far end of the yard.

It was Baby.

Rina stared at the photo. The caption said the dog was called Baby, and it
looked
like Baby, but, after months of searching, she was well aware that there were plenty of pets that carried the same name.

She was almost certain it
was
Baby, but the fact that whoever had put the ad in the paper had gone to the extra expense of paying for a photo made her cautious. Just the name and the description would have been enough to catch her attention, but the photograph had drawn her like a magnet. It occurred to her that if whoever had placed the ad knew she had been recently blind and that she would have difficulty reading the written word, then inserting a photograph to make sure she saw it made a lot of sense. There was also the chilling fact that no one outside of the FBI team that had rescued her, and her contacts in WitSec, knew she could see—other than Alex.

Carrying the papers and the dictionary inside, she began systematically searching the other classifieds. The local paper didn't have the ad or the photo, but the other major tabloid did.

Rina stared at the second grainy print of Baby. Anyone finding a missing dog would naturally advertise in the area the dog was found. It didn't make sense to conduct a nationwide campaign. The cost would be prohibitive. It set the seal on her suspicions.

Alex was trying to find her, and he was using Baby as bait.

Cold congealed in her stomach. Alex had controlled and manipulated her life in an effort to extract the account information from her. Now he was actively hunting her. He would throw every resource he had at trying to find her.

The fact that an advertisement hadn't been placed in any of the local papers was a reassurance that, as yet, he had no idea where she was. The FBI had been compromised, but WitSec was secure.

She studied the phone number listed in the ad, and any doubts that she might be paranoid, or flat-out wrong, died.

The area code was for Winton.

 

Rina dialed Taylor and got put through to her answering service. A frustrating two hours later, Taylor returned the call.

“I'll check it out,” she said crisply. “Don't, whatever you do, ring that number.”

“Don't worry.” As badly as Rina wanted Baby back, she wasn't stupid enough to jeopardize her life, or the case against Alex.

Within hours Taylor rang back. “We've got a line on the guy who's keeping Baby. His name's Gomez. Apparently, he's related to one of the security staff. According to Gomez, his cousin was picked up after the bust and the dog was left in his garage.”

“He's lying. Alex is behind this.”

“That's what Bayard is hoping.”

“When can you get Baby?”

There was a brief silence. “First of all, Bayard's not letting me take part in the op. Second, you have to understand that retrieving Baby is not Bayard's priority. He'll retrieve him if he can, but it's Slater and Lopez he wants. Everything else comes second. He's organizing an agent who looks like you to meet with him, then they'll move in. The bust is timed for four-thirty tomorrow afternoon. That gives Bayard time to get in place and it's a believable time scale, since Lopez is aware that you'll probably have to fly in.”

Rina's fingers tightened on the phone. She had already done the logic; she knew the way Bayard would have to play it. She wanted Alex and Slater caught, too, but she also wanted Baby safe. “You'll call when it's over?”

“Nobody else.” Taylor's intonation was dry. In theory she wasn't supposed to know where Rina was, or have any contact with her. To cover up Rina's involvement, Taylor had told Bayard that she was the one who had seen the advertisement. “Which brings up another point. Don't use your landline to call me. Buy a new cell phone and use that. If Marlow finds out you've broken security, he'll go crazy. I'm wiping your details off my phone, just in case.”

The precaution made sense. If Rina had been thinking straight she would never have used the landline.

Hanging up, she stared through the kitchen window at the backyard, barely registering the purple splash of shade on the lawn or the heat shimmering off a neighbor's tin roof. Shoving a loose tendril of hair behind her ear, she began to pace. The thought that Alex had Baby sent a shudder through her. He had shot Cesar as coldly as if he was shooting at a target on a range. She knew from the reading she had done that it was suspected that Alex had shot his own father—at point-blank range.