River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy) (2 page)

He appreciated the rewards of his new life, his new career, both tangible and otherwise. Better the rustle of wind in the firs than the rush of freeway traffic, the glow of stars at night than the flash and tawdry glitter of city lights. Better a sense of satisfaction than a steady yet barely adequate paycheck.

Dropping his hand to his lap, Ingersoll stared into the candle’s flame, which grew and flickered and reached ceilingward like a mutilated paw. He let the fire fill his vision. The silence was broken only by the hiss and spit of the candle. He willed his breathing and heartbeat to slow down.

The flame was
everything
.

The world fell away; in its place, a universe of yellow-white light embraced him.

After several seconds of nothing but this light, he saw himself walking through an indistinct glow. He looked down on that other Lawrence Ingersoll, as if watching from a height of twenty-five or thirty feet. His dark clothing had turned white, his hair gone as thick and snowy as Mark Twain’s. He walked on cobblestones made of pure light.

He knew this way well. The cobblestone road led toward a gleaming city, its spires and minarets jabbing at a golden sky. One of his spirit guides would meet him outside its gates. He hoped it would be Alicia, which would save time. Alicia was well-versed in ley lines, arcane energies, and the like; a noted spiritualist in her day, even before death, she had been a famous expert on the occult.

Along the way, though, an unexpected sense of unease—bordering on panic—clutched at his chest. The road twisted where it should not have, leading toward a bridge arching over a dry, reed-choked riverbed into what looked like dense forest. Ingersoll took a few steps back, trying to return to the spot from which he had been able to see down the straight, glowing road all the way to the city, but that view was gone.

Inside the riverbed, something rattled, like the river’s bones under a loose coat of skin.

The Ingersoll sitting safely in Colorado felt the other one’s growing dread, but at the same time part of him remained calmly detached.
This must,
he told himself,
be what Millicent Wong was talking about.
Something was screwing with the other worlds, near enough to the straight world to threaten it as well.

Time to pull out of the trance, before something terrible happened to the astral Ingersoll, defenseless on that road of light. As if reeling in a fish, he psychically tugged at his astral self.

But instead of drawing his astral self back to his world, his physical self was yanked forward, as if someone had jerked him from his chair. He flew through the ether and slammed into his astral self with enough force to make him sway unsteadily.

For the first time in his life, Ingersoll was totally inside his astral self, with no consciousness remaining behind in his inner sanctum.

And his astral self quaked with terror.

That rattling noise came from the river again, a dry, somehow covetous sound. Then a shape reared up from the riverbed, a shape Ingersoll thought he could make out until it flared into dazzling light. He blinked and threw his hands up protectively, but he could still hear it coming at him. Behind his hands, his eyes burned, as if the brilliant flame were cooking them, and they ran down his cheeks like hot wax. The top of his head smoldered from the inside, like he held a candle in his mouth.

For an instant, he saw himself sitting in his inner sanctum, through the eyes of his astral body. That wasn’t supposed to be possible. The head of his physical body head was thrown back, smoke wafting from beneath his hair, from empty eye sockets, from his mouth and nose and ears. His hands clutched at empty air. The desiccated rattling noise came from
him
, he realized, as the heat sapped all the moisture from his body.

The image flashed out of existence almost before it had time to register, and then the heat grew even more intense and the rattling thing from the river reached him as white heat overwhelmed his consciousness. He was back in his inner sanctum just long enough to know two things: the heat radiating from his body had set the drapes on fire, and his fear of death was actually much, much stronger than he had ever realized.

TWO

When James Livingston Truly raised his blinds and pressed his brow against the window of his small office on the third floor of the CIA’s New Headquarters building, he could see a sad, scrawny tree—a sapling eighteen months ago when he’d been assigned this office and this posting (dead end in every sense of the phrase)—waving crimson leaves like an underfed streetwalker trying to draw attention to her wares with a flashy red skirt.

Watching the bright leaves flutter in the morning breeze was preferable to sitting at his desk, because at least by the window, its glass cold against his palms and forehead, he was less likely to fall asleep. If last night hadn’t been the worst night of his life, it was only because the competition for that honor was so steep.

Around two thirty, while he slept in his Georgetown brownstone, a hammering noise had drilled into his skull. Truly dragged himself from bed, cursing the cold that seeped through the walls at night, and managed to stumble to the front door without falling down the stairs. The pounding continued until he opened the door. On his front stoop stood a mountain of a man dressed only in a long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, and work boots. He should have been an icicle, but he looked ready to kill.

Truly recognized the guy immediately, from pictures in his girlfriend Bethany Gardner’s house and wallet: the aggrieved husband. His short blond hair, squared-off jaw and chin, and slightly hooded blue eyes all looked like they did in Bethany’s pictures, although in none of those had he been wearing an expression of barely restrained fury.

He wore it now.

At five foot ten and one eighty-five, Truly was in reasonable shape. He knew he didn’t
look
like much of a threat, with his neat brown hair, round-cheeked baby face and wide, liquid blue eyes. Especially dressed in green plaid cotton pajamas. At least it was winter, so he wasn’t wearing his summer-weight silk Bugs Bunny boxers. Bethany’s husband edged two-fifteen and six-four, with reach to match, and none of it appeared to be the kind of useless weight that Truly wished, especially at this moment, had been hidden in those photographs.

That and the tenor of the pounding—not a polite knock but an insistent barrage—made Truly believe that Bethany’s husband (Perry, he remembered, a name he had always associated with wimpy little stamp collector types, a prejudice he would have to revisit) had come with a different sort of pounding in mind. Truly backed away from the door a couple of steps and threw the big man a friendly, confused grin. “Help you?”

“You’re Truly.”

“That’s right. And you are…?” He didn’t want to let on that he had already figured it out. He’d take any advantage he could get, however slight.

“I would think you’d want to know what the husband of the chick you’re fucking looks like, if only so you could avoid me at the supermarket.”

“Look, it’s late,” Truly said, trying to sound gracious but a little peeved. That last part, at least, was real. “Maybe you had a little too much to drink or something, made a mistake, but I don’t know what you’re—”

“Don’t bullshit me, Truly, because it won’t work. Bethany told me everything. How else would I have found you?”

It was, Truly had to admit, an excellent question. If he hadn’t just been snatched from a sound sleep, he might have thought of it himself. How had Perry Gardner found him? Only Bethany’s betrayal could explain it. He made a halfhearted beckoning gesture. “All right,” he said. “Come on in and we’ll see if we can’t straighten this out.”

Somehow Perry squeezed through the doorway, banging the door shut behind him. He smelled like he had opened a whiskey barrel with his teeth. “There’s nothing to straighten out except you,” he said, advancing on Truly with his massive hands bunched into fists. “You don’t fucking fuck other men’s wives.”

“I know that,” Truly said, “believe me.” At some point he’d have to stop playing innocent and focus on defending himself. He was awake now, and he could take the guy. Bethany had said Perry was a sports nut and a college jock, but he worked in an office at the Treasury Department. He was a middle management type, not a man who found himself in physical altercations very often. Besides, the booze that had jacked up his nerves enough for him to approach Truly would also hamper his reflexes.

Then again, it had been years since Truly had been in a real fight. He was trained, and he kept fit, running a couple of miles a week, working out in the Langley gym. But he wasn’t a big man or an especially strong one. And his training was largely of the lethal variety. If Perry didn’t back off, Truly might not be able to stop him without killing him.

“Look, you want some coffee or something?” Truly asked, still hoping to defuse Perry’s anger. “I think we should sit down and talk about this.” He started for the couch.

Perry surprised him by throwing a punch instead of another threat. Truly tried to dodge it, but he was hemmed in between the couch and a coffee table. The huge fist caught him in the ribs. The breath huffed out of him and he staggered back, raising an arm to block the next punch. He took this one on his left forearm and tried to catch Perry’s arm but missed. With another idea coming to mind, Truly feigned a stumble that landed him on top of the couch.

“Get up, you punk-ass motherfucker,” Perry said. He waited at a reasonable distance, apparently willing to give Truly a chance to gain his footing before continuing to pummel him.

Instead of rising, Truly reached under the couch and drew out an M9 Beretta pistol he’d cached there. He thumbed off the safety, pointed it at Perry and motioned for him to back up. Perry’s eyes went wide when he saw the weapon. Truly had no idea if Perry knew he was an operations officer at the CIA. The guy might think he was a cop or a criminal or just a well-armed citizen. “Dude…”

“I don’t want any trouble, Perry,” Truly said. “Which is what I’ve been trying to tell you since you showed up.”

“Then put away that gun,” Perry suggested. Truly gave that idea exactly half a second of consideration before deciding against it.

“I don’t think so. Seems like the first time you’ve been willing to listen.”

“I don’t want to get shot,” Perry said. “But you’re fucking my Bethany.”

“You don’t think I’m going to admit to that, do you?” Truly settled back on the couch, a brown and gold monstrosity that he’d been meaning to throw out or donate for about a dozen years now. He kept the nine-mil aimed at Perry. “But just to be conversational, let’s say I was. Hypothetically, of course. Two points come to mind. First, she must have wanted me to, so the discussion you really should be having is with her. And second, now that I’ve met you, surely you don’t think I’m stupid enough to ever do it again. You’re a walking tank, pal, and I won’t always have this nine on me.” He was dissembling. He was usually armed, just not with the particular weapon he kept hidden under his couch. Then again, in his trade dissembling was a way of life.

“I guess that’s true.”

“I know it’s got to hurt, Perry. Trust me, I never would have intentionally done anything to cause you pain. I’m still not saying it’s true—that’s something you’re going to have to work out with Bethany—but if it is, it was intended to be something you would never know about.”

Perry nodded, understanding that Truly’s was, in the proper spirit of Washington, D.C., a nonconfessional confession. He looked like he wanted to go a few more rounds, but the barrel of a gun resembled a gaping tunnel when it was pointed right at you. “Maybe you’re right,” Perry said after several long moments. “I guess we have some stuff to work out. Me and Bethany, I mean.”

“I guess you do.”

After a couple more minutes—during which Perry fumbled about like a naked man who had unexpectedly found himself inside a convent with no memory of how he had come to be there, lost, embarrassed, and deeply troubled—he went back out into the cold night. Truly stayed on the couch, his weapon in his hands, not trusting that Perry was really gone until he heard the car start up and drive away. He sat for another ten minutes or so, wondering why Bethany would have told Perry anything about their affair, much less give her husband his name and home address. Things had been fine between them, or so he had believed.

There were two points of view to any relationship, of course. And when one person thought everything was jim-dandy because he was able to see his girlfriend a couple of evenings a week, getting laid and enjoying nice but not painfully long dinners, once every month or two even spending the night together in a hotel someplace like Front Royal or Lexington or Baltimore’s harbor area, maybe the other was tired of lying to her spouse, or wanted to be able to spend holidays with him without thinking of the lover left behind, or to be able to hold her man’s hand in public without worrying about who might see them. Bethany had seemed subdued on their last couple of evenings together, reticent, which she had attributed to pressures at work, but which might also have been a sign—if only Truly had been able to read it—of growing discontent.

Their last really good date, he realized, had been to see Shawn Colvin at Wolf Trap Farm Park, at the end of summer. They had arrived before sunset, and sat on the lawn with a picnic basket and a nice Merlot. The sky had turned gold and then indigo, and stars popped out one by one like musicians walking onstage until they flooded the sky. Colvin’s voice had washed across them like honey. She sang about joy and heartbreak, triumph and despair, and he and Bethany had snuggled closely together against the cooling night air.