In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel (23 page)

Finally out of the weather for a moment, she
shook off the excess snow, then dug in her pocket for the handful
of change. As she stood there in front of the machine feeding
quarters into the slot, she mulled over the text of the email.

“Heavy symbolism of the season. Merry
Xmas
,” she mumbled to herself as she made her selection.

A can of cola audibly clunked its way along
inside the humming machine and then thumped into the tray below.
She pulled it out and stuffed it into her coat pocket, then began
feeding more coins into the slot.

“Heavy symbolism of the season. Merry
Xmas
... Santa Claus? No. Ten. Too many letters... Yule Log?
Seven. Not enough...”

She pressed the button and another soft drink
clunked, rattled, and finally thumped as it arrived in the tray.
Again, she stuffed it into her pocket and started shoving more
quarters into the machine. It could be a long night and she wanted
this to be her only trip out into the storm.

She sighed and shook her head. Whoever sent
this bizarre file wasn’t making it easy, which either meant the
information was extremely sensitive and probably even classified
above her grade...or maybe they were just screwing with her. She
wasn’t quite sure which option she wanted it to be. The
implications that came with the former weren’t very good, and the
latter would just piss her off. That wasn’t good either.

She was reaching out to punch the illuminated
cola button for a third time when she heard a man’s voice. Speaking
in a harsh whisper from what seemed mere inches away from her ear
he said, “
It would be your fault that I would have to kill
them.”

He was so close that she could feel the moist
heat of his breath against her skin. A sharp mélange of cigarettes,
peppermint, and mothballs invaded her nostrils, making her eyes
water and eliciting an involuntary gag in the back of her
throat.

Constance’s heretofore preoccupied mind
shifted immediately into fight or flight. She knew the service
corridor was a dead end and the voice had come from her right,
which was between her and the exit. Flight was out of the question,
so fight it would have to be. Falling back on training and muscle
memory she began her mental count.

Three: Move.

She sidestepped, taking herself in the
direction opposite that of the voice.

Two: Draw.

Halfway through the step, metal tinkled
bright noises into the night air as the handful of change landed in
a sudden shower against the cold concrete. Even before the coins
struck, her arm was sliding smoothly along her side, her now empty
hand catching the front of her coat and pulling it back in a single
motion. Three fingers wrapped comfortably around the grip of her
Sig Sauer and her thumb slapped against the release. With that
accomplished, she pulled hard, lifting and rotating the weapon on
the axis of her wrist, index finger slipping in through the trigger
guard. If absolutely necessary she could now fire from the hip.

One: Aim.

She completed her sidestepping turn as her
right arm began to straighten, pushing up and forward.
Simultaneously her left arm lifted as well, elbow cocked and held
close into her side; wrist locked and palm cupped over her right
hand’s firm grasp on the butt of the P226. Completing the forward
push and locking her right arm straight, she kept a rearward
pressure with her left, ending the motion in a textbook Chapman
stance, her finger resting on the trigger.

Her heart was racing in her chest as she
sighted along the carbon steel slide of the .40 caliber handgun.
She felt as if she was moving in slow motion, but in reality it had
taken just under four seconds from the moment she had let go of the
coins until she was fully into her defensive posture. However, she
knew full well that it took less than a second to squeeze a
trigger, and she could very easily have already been dead.

Of course, that was if the man behind the
voice was armed, or in this case, even there. At the moment, she
was staring straight ahead, locked in a tight stance, with her
weapon aimed at absolutely nothing.

Snow was blowing past the opening of the
service corridor, just a few feet away. Other than that she saw
only the empty parking lot, and from this angle, two of the room
doors on the other side of the motel.

“Federal Officer!” She called out, holding
her position. “Show yourself!”

The only answer was a soft moan of the wind
as it whipped tumbling white flakes through the pale yellowish
lights that were spilling out into the parking lot. Her heart
continued to pound against her ribcage as she began to move
forward. In four measured steps she was standing right at the edge
of the opening.

Cocking both arms close in to her body she
hugged the left wall and carefully peeked out toward the back of
the complex. Seeing no one, she took a partial fifth step, quickly
twisting first to the left, then back to the right. Her eyes were
wide open, even against the sting of the wind, and her firearm was
held firmly in a close quarters firing position.

Still nothing.

She stepped fully out from her cover position
and scanned the parking lot. Other than the blowing snow, there was
no motion at all. She looked down at the white blanket covering the
ground. Besides her own, there wasn’t a single footprint to be
seen.

No scuffs.

No trails.

No impressions at all.

Nothing.

She shifted from tight, shallow breaths to a
slow, deep inhale as she started allowing herself to relax.
Unlocking her arms, she lowered the weapon and slipped it back into
the high-ride holster on her belt. After popping the thumb break
into place she stumbled back a pair of steps and pressed herself
against the cold brick wall. She swallowed hard and then let out a
heavy sigh.

This had gone too far. Now she was hearing
voices and even smelling odors that weren’t even there. That was
Rowan’s thing, not hers. She didn’t talk to ghosts. He did.

This had to be her overtaxed mind playing
tricks on her: exhaustion induced hallucinations, and that was a
very bad thing. She was no longer just tired and spooked; she was
paranoid and reckless, which made her a danger to herself and
everyone around her. This simply wouldn’t do, and Constance knew
it. She reached up and rubbed her forehead, then closed her eyes
and tried to swallow again, but her throat was too tight, and her
mouth had gone dry.

A half minute later when her heart rate began
to taper back to normal, she pushed away from the wall and stepped
back along the service corridor. Hands shaking, she knelt down and
picked up the dropped coins that were obvious and shining in the
dim light but didn’t waste time searching for latent escapees; she
was having a hard enough time as it was. Finally, she stood and
punched the cola button before feeding more freshly chilled
quarters into the slot on the vending machine’s face.

Both pockets and the crook of her arm full of
cans, she headed back to her room. After arranging the soft drinks
in the sink, she scooped snow from the hood of her car into the
small, plastic ice bucket and poured it in on top of them. It took
five full scoops before she was satisfied.

Once finished with that task, she locked the
door, threw the security bar, and shrugged out of her coat. Kicking
off her shoes, she padded around the bed, methodically gathering
the sorted piles of case reports and supporting documentation, then
moving them over to the top of the long dresser, keeping them
organized as best she could.

Finally, she dug out her travel alarm and set
it for midnight. The mystery of the Christmas song was going to
have to wait a few hours. If she didn’t get some sleep right away,
she was going to hurt someone, or worse—shoot someone dead. She had
just proven that possibility to herself in spades.

She didn’t bother to undress. She simply
crawled onto the bed then pulled the rumpled comforter up around
her shoulders and hugged herself as tightly as she could. As she
lay there, she didn’t even try to rationalize to herself why she
was leaving the lights on. She was too tired to deny her fear. It
was easier to simply embrace the emotion and make it hers.

It was just pushing 5:30 in the evening when
Constance finally gave in to her jittery exhaustion, and
consciousness skulked away into the shadows. She fell into a
tortured sleep that was filled with a painful nightmare. The terror
playing out in her mind was stark—the images a contrasty black and
white, save for the red suit worn by the faceless man.

And then there were the vile, horrible things
he was doing to her, over and over again. No matter how much she
begged, he wouldn’t stop. He just kept telling her, “
It would be
your fault that I would have to kill them...”

While she tossed and whimpered through her
slumber, across the room on the desk sat the notebook computer. Its
cursor was still winking patiently below the words, “ENTER
ENCRYPTION KEY.”

C
HAPTER
17

7:01 A.M. – December 24, 2010

Greenleaf Motel

Hulis Township – Northern Missouri

CONSTANCE
stood beneath the sputtering
jets of the partially calcified showerhead and soaked in the warmth
it was raining down upon her. She would have actually been willing
to settle for a temperature that wouldn’t blister her skin, or send
her into instant hypothermia—either one—but somehow she’d had a
stroke of luck. With some accidental finessing she had fine-tuned
the stream of water to a cozy in-between. Given that the day before
the shower control had seemed to have only two settings—those being
freeze and scald—she wasn’t going to complain.

She finished rinsing the conditioner from her
hair, then turned in place and allowed the running water to splash
across her shoulders, sending a cascading sheet of the warmth down
her back. The uneven drumming of the spray actually felt soothing
to her sore muscles. Closing her eyes, she relaxed and soon began
to drift. Floating somewhere in that comfortable void between sleep
and wake, she felt herself falling and jerked upright with a sudden
start. In her struggle for balance she reached out and placed her
palm against the tile wall to steady herself.

She had slept right through the alarm clock
when it started chirping at midnight. That is, if what she had been
doing could actually be called sleep. She wasn’t so sure,
especially since she was nodding off now. She had finally awakened
a little past 2 A.M., tangled in the comforter, and hanging upside
down off the side of the bed with her cheek mashed against the
scratchy carpeting. She assumed the uncomfortable position was what
had finally rousted her from an unconscious state. Of course, the
way she felt right now she might well have been lying like that for
hours.

Her clothing and hair had been damp with
sweat. Her mouth had been dry. Her muscles had seemed weak, and her
body had been achy. It still was, in fact. All in all, she felt
pretty much as if she had just burned out a high fever.

At first, that’s exactly what she thought
might have happened. The sudden onset of a short-lived virus wasn’t
out of the question, especially in the face of exhaustion, and it
would certainly explain quite a bit. For one thing, there was her
uncharacteristic anxiety. If she had been coming down with
something, then that might be a reason for her addled emotional
hypersensitivity. Then there was that strange voice she’d heard,
which was obviously a hallucination. And then there was the
nightmare about the man in the red suit, something that could very
easily have been a fever-induced dump of her subconscious given the
imagery associated with the investigation at hand.

But then there was that bizarre email and the
even more perplexing attachment it bore. She had made it a point to
check on that as soon as she managed to untangle herself from the
bed. Much to her chagrin, it was still there. If she’d had a
choice, she would have preferred that it be a figment of her
imagination as well. This case didn’t need any more weird
complications than it already had.

However, her wish for that vexation to
disappear had not kept her from almost immediately parking herself
at the desk and staring at the screen while trying once again to
solve the bizarre riddle. That was almost five hours, three
somewhat chilled cans of soda, and one high-energy,
caramel-peanut-butter protein bar ago. Not to mention, countless
note pages filled with the scribbled strings of characters she had
attempted. Unfortunately, none of them garnered anything other than
the same old result: INCORRECT KEY!

She knew there had to be something about the
puzzling clue she was missing. It was most likely painfully obvious
too, since that’s how riddles always seemed to work. But for the
time being, her weary brain had reached a dead end.

She had finally decided it was time to step
away from the computer for a while. Clear her head. Find a
different perspective. Maybe even get something a little more
substantial into her stomach.

But, then she saw herself in the mirror. At
the sight, she thought about just climbing back into bed, but her
stomach was putting up a noisy protest. Food definitely couldn’t
hurt. She’d been running close to empty for too long. However, she
was definitely not going out in public until she cleaned herself
up.

Letting out a resigned sigh, Constance pulled
aside the thin, plastic curtain and reluctantly stepped out onto
the bathmat, then she reached back into the shower and turned off
the water. She wanted to stay in there forever, but she knew that
wasn’t going to accomplish a thing. She still had seven murders to
solve, and an eighth that would be happening in less than
twenty-four hours if she didn’t.