Holland’s father, in the course of their discussions about law enforcement and his experiences over the years, had revealed some of the code words he had used with his associates on investigations. She thought of that as soon as she entered her hotel room at the Seaside. What she wanted to use didn’t come to her until she flipped open her cell and started to press the speed dial for her father. She stopped, closed the phone and thought for a moment.
She was troubled by the interrogation she had just experienced. Again, instinctive alarm bells rang. Am I becoming paranoid? she wondered. So what if she was? Most of the country was paranoid nowadays. With the security cameras reproducing faster than rabbits and located in places Americans had never dreamed of seeing them, with the computerization of personal histories and with medical information all placed in quick access files—including DNA IDs—the human soul itself was in jeopardy of being tracked.
Why should I be any less under a microscope, even before all this? Holland thought, which of course made her wonder more about Wyatt. He certainly had to have been scrutinized as well and as much as she had been. And yet, there was something different, something going on that was well beyond standard operating procedures. Where did all this lead? Perhaps her father’s information would help her understand.
She opened her phone again and pressed her father’s speed dial number. He answered so quickly, she suspected he had been sitting by the phone.
‘Where are you? What’s happening?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ she said casually. ‘I’m in Florida. Everything’s fine. You know that gift I asked you to pick up for me for Terri’s birthday? Will you pick it up and send it for me? I’m not going to be back in time. Oh,’ she added before he could speak, ‘I forgot to tell Roy I was going away. I won’t be able to meet them to celebrate as I’d hoped. I’ll call him tomorrow. Tell him, if he rings you, or if you ring him before I ring him.’
Her father was silent a moment. She knew he had picked up on the word, ‘ring.’ It was very English to use it for a phone call, but not common in America. It served as a signal. The listener was to call back using only an untraceable line.
‘Will do,’ her father said. ‘Where can I reach you?’
‘On my cell. The battery’s low so I’ll be charging it up for twenty or so minutes, but you can call this hotel if you want to get back to me sooner,’ she said and gave him her room number. Anyone listening in would see that as proof she wasn’t doing anything clandestine.
‘OK. I’ll call Roy,’ he said, ‘and get back to you. Take care of yourself.’
‘Will do,’ she said and closed her cell phone. She was out of the room instantly and down to the lobby.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to the desk clerk. ‘I’m going into the bar. I’m in room 202, Byron.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m expecting a call. Could you transfer it to the bar? It should be coming any moment.’
The receptionist, a young man with thin blonde hair and rather feminine, diminutive facial features, smiled and nodded.
‘Will do,’ he said.
She thanked him and went into the bar, taking a stool in the far corner, where she saw the house phone. There were two couples at the bar. She had just been served her martini when the phone rang and the bartender asked her if she was Holland Byron. She nodded, smiled and thanked him, and then took the receiver.
‘Where are you?’ her father asked immediately.
‘Hotel bar. Had the call transferred.’
‘Why these precautions, Holland?’
‘Wyatt and I are the targets of an internal affairs investigation.’
‘You were on the PJ cases?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s that well known already?’
‘Lead story on most networks.’
‘Someone is plugged into the pipeline and is leaking information. They seem to believe that it could be my partner. Connors had made him lead investigator. He was the only one with direct contact with Connors and an agent from internal affairs is implying that the things Wyatt told me Connors had said were never said. Also, things he was supposed to have told Connors, Connors seems not to have known.’
‘Where is this Wyatt Ert now?’
‘They took him off separately.’
‘They wouldn’t assign someone to a PJ case without a background check that would be so intense it would include his DNA,’ her father said. ‘Let me tell you what I’ve learned. First, there is no record of a Wyatt Ert or any Ert at Roc Shores. Who told you he had attended?’
‘He did.’
‘He’s pretty clandestine, Holland. I have a good source at the FBI and there is no agent with that name. Someone could have lent him to the bureau for one reason or another, but that’s it, and if he was lent, someone might have gotten to him.’
‘If he was lying to me, he didn’t lie all the time. This last victim…he was truthful about that. I checked up on what he had told me and it was true.’
‘Good double agents always tell the truth part of the time.’
‘I don’t know what to think, Dad. I feel like I’m in a free fall or something.’
‘I just received that pill you sent.’
‘I don’t know if that’s important anymore.’
‘Just be very, very careful. At this stage of things, good people are often sacrificed. I’ve got one more contact I’d like to tap.’
‘Don’t do any more.’
‘It’s not a big deal. You just be careful and you’ll be fine, I’m sure,’ he quickly added.
It sounded more like a prayer.
‘OK, Daddy,’ she said.
‘I’ll get back to you if I learn anything else. In the meantime, call me if you need anything. I’m here for you. Always,’ he said.
It brought tears to her eyes.
She took a deep breath. ‘Thanks, Daddy,’ she said, then hung up and thanked the bartender.
She had just started to sip her martini when she heard the phone ring again and watched the bartender go to it and answer. He looked at her and then turned his back to her to continue talking. Something in the way he held his shoulders unnerved her. Another alarm bell sounded. She put the martini down and turned to look at the other people in the lounge, including the couples at the bar. Maybe it was her imagination, but it seemed as if they were all looking at her—some askance, but others speaking softly to each other and keeping their eyes fixed on her.
And then it hit her.
This hotel.
It wasn’t just chosen by accident.
The bureau had its own safe houses and this was one of them.
Once again, she worried about her father. He thought he had called from a safe phone to a safe phone. She started to lift her martini glass again and then stopped, eying the liquid. Maybe some sedative had been put in it.
Yes, I am getting paranoid, she thought, but I’d better be.
She paid for her drink and left the bar. The more she thought about her present situation, the angrier she became. Why was she incarcerated here? Why was she forbidden to leave the grounds for two days? She had done nothing wrong and no one could prove anything otherwise. Not only was she brought here and told to stay, she was under glass. Everywhere she looked, someone was watching her, listening in on her conversations, probably observing her through clandestine cameras, and Landry Connors didn’t have even the courtesy to call her and explain. He could have at minimum asked her as her favor to him to be patient while things were sorted out.
Fuming, she headed up to her room. For a few moments after she entered, she stood by the window and looked down at the pool. Right now, it looked like a half-dozen kids, splashing and screaming, had driven the adults out to sit and sulk on their loungers. She shook her head, thinking about how quickly and firmly her father had come down on both her and Roy if they were annoying anyone else, especially adults. It was as if the family unit today were simply coming apart, the discipline and structure melting, slipping off to leave some loose confederation of personalities vaguely tied to each other by some DNA.
Maybe the hotel wasn’t what she thought. Maybe it was just another resort. Regardless, she wasn’t in the mood to go lounge at a pool anyway. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate on a book and she certainly didn’t want to bake in this hot sun. A hot shower was what she needed. After that, she would think about what to do, what demands to make. One of the first things her father used to do whenever he returned from some unpleasant experience or some event that angered him was to jump in the shower.
‘Feeling clean and refreshed has a calming effect,’ he told her.
Maybe it was all simply psychological, but once she was in the stall and the warm water pounded her shoulders and ran down her back and over her breasts, she felt her lungs loosen and her body relax. She could breathe easier. She finally found something about which she could smile, another one of her father’s personal remedies. There was still something to be said for age and wisdom, she thought. She would have told him, but then he would have put on that damn gloating smile. She had certainly inherited her arrogance from him, although her mother hadn’t been lacking in self-confidence.
All this death and intrigue made her a bit too nostalgic. If Wyatt had been there, he’d have had some negative comment to make about the power and value of such feelings. She was sure of that, although she was still intrigued about the reason why he was so cold at times. There had been much about him that annoyed her, but she didn’t hear any instinctive warnings. She hadn’t felt any deceptions, just personal reluctance. It was as if he had been confused by her questions, unsure of the way to answer or what to answer.
She wrapped the large bath towel around herself and blow-dried and brushed out her hair. At least for a little while, she felt like a woman again: she felt feminine without being ashamed or threatened by that feeling. She didn’t have to prove herself to the male dominating types around her. She didn’t have to be a tough guy.
She started to hum I feel pretty…from West Side Story and then broke into laughter.
An echo of that laughter followed.
Only it wasn’t her laughter.
It was Wyatt’s.
She spun around and saw him standing there.
‘I know,’ he said raising his hands. ‘I have a habit of sneaking in on you while you’re taking or just after you’ve taken a shower.’
She stared at him as if she wanted to confirm she wasn’t imagining his presence. He shrugged.
‘How did you get in here?’ she asked. ‘I don’t mean my room. I mean the hotel itself.’
He shook his head and then sat on the bed.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I mean, I don’t know exactly how I knew how, but I must have been here before and must have entered this place in a covert manner. I found a side entrance that led past the kitchen and to a service elevator.’
She stepped out of the bathroom. The look on his face was curious but also somewhat frightening because it was filled with struggle and pain. She felt as if she were alone in a room with a total lunatic, some psychotic who could explode into lethal violence at any moment. Just stumble over some trip wire and he would explode.
‘Why would you say you must have been here before but can’t remember?’ she said softly. ‘You’re not making any sense, Wyatt.’
‘I know,’ he said.
She eyed her pistol on the chair where she had draped her dress. He caught the glance.
‘Don’t worry. I’m not here to harm you in any way,’ he said. ‘If anything, I’m here to help you.’
‘Help me? How did you get away? I mean, weren’t you being interrogated by internal affairs?’
‘Yes, but they’re convinced you’re the mole in the agency, that you leaked the information about our investigation and the deaths of these PJs to the press.’
‘Me? They told you it was me?’
‘Through your father,’ he added. ‘They claim you called him from a landline at our hotel in LA. Did you do that, Holland?’
Instead of answering, she shook her head and said, ‘I don’t understand this.’
‘Like you’re fond of saying, Holland, it’s not brain surgery. Did you call your father from a landline to avoid any trace on your cell or from your room?’
‘Yes, I called him. I called him about you,’ she snapped back at him. ‘I asked him to dig around and I was worried about someone listening in.’
Wyatt grimaced. ‘Why?’
‘I thought you were behaving in a weird manner. I didn’t understand and still don’t understand why you are so secretive about yourself and why you behave like some sort of schizophrenic. Listen to what you just said about how you entered this hotel.’
He nodded and smiled. ‘Under the circumstances, schizophrenia is probably a logical side effect.’
‘Why? What circumstances? What the hell are you saying, Wyatt?’ She tugged on her towel because it was slipping off.
‘Just a moment,’ she said, going to her suitcase. She took out some clothing and went into the bathroom, but left the door open. ‘OK, talk,’ she said, ‘but I have to warn you, I think this place is bugged. Maybe you know that through your magic watch,’ she added. ‘You still have that, don’t you, Wyatt?’
She peered around the corner to see his reaction.
He held up his wrist to illustrate that he was indeed wearing it.
‘No indication of anything,’ he said. ‘No tracking devices, no bugs.’
‘Maybe you need to get your money back then,’ she said and returned to dressing. ‘So?’ she continued. ‘Talk, Wyatt.’
‘Where do you want me to begin?’
‘How about with who you really are,’ she said, stepping out and zipping up the side of her sundress.
‘I don’t know how to answer that. I’m not completely sure yet.’
‘There you go again, Wyatt. Can you tell me in twenty-five words or less how anyone except an amnesiac would not be able to answer the simple question, “Who are you?”’
‘It won’t be in twenty-five words or less,’ he said.
She sat across from him at the small desk. ‘OK. It doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere very soon. Use as many words as you like.’
He looked down at the floor for so long she thought he was going to simply get up and walk out, returning to that cryptic ‘I don’t recall’ mode.
Then he raised his head. ‘You’re looking at a very modern version of Lazarus,’ he said.
‘Lazarus. Oh, so now you’re telling me you’re someone who was dead and brought back to life?’
‘Yes. I was brain dead,’ he said.
‘Don’t tell me it was Jesus who called you back,’ she said dryly.
‘Only if he has returned in the guise of a research scientist at Roc Shores,’ Wyatt replied.