Beyond Control, page 7
The information made her scalp tingle. Before she could ask for more details, the waiter appeared with the salad and the soup.
She sat staring at the fat white slabs of mozzarella lying on top of tomato rounds, the red-and-white composition arranged on green romaine leaves suddenly astonishingly unappealing.
Walker hadn’t touched his soup. He was looking down at the table—no, looking at her hand where it rested next to her plate. Lord, had he been thinking about touching her—the way she had?
“What’s your motivation for telling me any of that?” she whispered.
“When I called my source this morning, I was transferred somewhere else. I’m pretty sure there’s a trace on his phone.”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“No.”
Was that a lie? Unbidden, the thought popped into her mind that there was a way to find out. Before she could stop herself, she reached across the table and laid her fingers over his, knowing in that moment that this was why she had really agreed to meet him.
She had come back for more of what had passed between them—fearing she would never get it and fearing at the same time that she would.
She felt the warmth of his skin. But that simple sensation was buried below the swirl of awareness that enveloped her.
The breath froze in her lungs as she grappled with confusion, elation, terror, and a sexual pull like nothing she had ever imagined in her life.
It was more than she had bargained for. Although she had initiated the contact, she sought to jerk away.
He was too fast for her—and too determined. His hand turned upward, closing around hers in a grip that was firm and possessive.
She saw his lips move. Maybe he mouthed the word “Don’t.”
She wasn’t sure whether he had really given voice to the protest or even if she was capable of hearing over the ringing in her ears.
At the party the experience had been fleeting. And the surprise had added to the electric jolt of the connection. This time, as he forced her to prolong the physical link between them, the sensations fluttered, peaked, settled down to a buzzing in her body and in her brain that was as much physical as mental.
The sexual arousal was a steady background hum, transmitting itself along her nerve endings. Yet it was only part of the mix. Because even more overwhelming than the sexual component was the knowledge that it was happening to him as well.
She knew it, not just from the way his pupils had dilated. She knew it from the disjointed thoughts and emotions pouring off him like rain streaming down a windowpane.
An image flashed in her thoughts. She saw him dragging her out of her chair, pulling her into his arms, molding the length of his body to hers, so that she could feel the pressure of his erection against her.
The vivid picture was from his mind. A glimpse into the man’s most private sexual thoughts. It was what he wanted to do. Here. Now. Yet the two of them remained where they were, sitting at the restaurant table—their hands the only point of contact.
Granite Wall. Along with the sexual image, a strange name leaped into her mind, burned itself into her brain.
She had never heard of it before. But she knew it was important.
The contact snapped, and she realized Walker had lifted his hand from hers. But this time she didn’t turn and run. This time they sat breathing hard, staring at each other across three feet of white tablecloth.
“What’s wrong with Bridgewater?” he said, his voice gravelly.
“What do you mean, what’s wrong with Bridgewater?” she demanded, feeling her skin go cold.
“He was acting strange when he came back from Florida. You’re worried about it.”
“How do you know that?”
“You know how I know.”
He had spoken the truth, a truth she didn’t want to acknowledge.
“And what about Granite Wall?” she asked, trying to hold her voice steady.
It was his turn to blanch. “You picked up that name . . . from me?”
“Yes. You read it in a report, right?”
He nodded, then glanced around the restaurant. She did the same, relieved that no one was nearby. But still, they weren’t alone.
JORDAN ran a hand through his dark hair. He wanted to get Lindsay out of here—where they could be alone. But he forced himself to sit quietly across the table from her.
She looked away, not meeting his eyes, and he knew she was deliberately distancing herself from what had happened between them moments ago. Whatever it was. All he knew was that touching her again had left them both dazed and shaken and vulnerable.
Under the table he clasped his hands, squeezing until the pressure was near to pain.
They were both balanced on a knife edge of tension, and he realized that he was going to lose her. Unless he was the one who stuck his neck out.
On some deep self-protective level, he wanted to pretend that nothing extraordinary had happened. But he felt desperation rising inside him.
He simply didn’t know what he would do if she walked away. That truth made him reckless enough to moisten his dry lips and say, “Have you ever thought that you were different from everybody else?”
She had been sitting hunched over, her face averted. The question made her sit up straighter and focus on him again with an unnerving intensity, almost as jarring as the experience of touching her.
He needed some sign from her. She seemed to understand, because she gave him the smallest nod.
He swallowed hard and went on. “Have you watched the men and women around you pair up, and known that you were cut off from that kind of . . .” He wanted to say intimacy. But the word felt too loaded. So he settled for “sharing.”
“Yes,” she whispered, and he was sure she hated uttering the admission.
That one syllable and the way she spoke it gave him the guts to go on with a conversation that was so outside his experience that he was astonished at his own question.
“Have you ever felt like there was a buzz in your head? That you were being bombarded by radio signals that you couldn’t quite tune in?”
The effect of his words on Lindsay was startling. Her face went from wary to shocked, to hopeful, then back to wary again.
“Are you talking about yourself?” she whispered.
“Can you identify with the description?” he pressed.
When she gave him another almost imperceptible nod, he felt a little thrill of something close to victory.
“And then you touch a stranger—and suddenly . . .” He shrugged, let the sentence trail off, watching her eyes, seeing that she was following his unspoken logic. Something monumental had happened to them. At Senator Conroy’s party. And today. Well, perhaps not monumental in the grand scheme of wars and tidal waves, he corrected himself. But in the small scheme of his life, it felt near to cataclysmic.
“Of course, you could get up and walk away from me,” he added, his chest tightening painfully as he offered the suggestion. “Is that what you want to do?”
“No.”
“Then let’s try to figure out what the hell is happening. And why.”
“If you’re willing to tell me what someone named Todd Hamilton has to do with any of this.”
“Jesus! You got that out of my head, too?”
It was her turn to shrug.
“Another dead man.”
He heard her indrawn breath.
“We have to talk about it.”
They sat staring at each other, and he knew that talking was the least of what he wanted.
He heard himself say, “Come up to my apartment after dinner.”
“Why?”
“The papers you want to see are there,” he answered, thinking they both knew that was only an excuse.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
LINDSAY’S MOUTH WAS so dry, she could barely talk, but she managed to answer, “If I do, I take a cab and meet you there.”
“So you won’t feel trapped?”
“Exactly.”
To defuse the tension crackling back and forth between them, she asked. “Tell me about Jordan Walker.”
“Like what?”
“Where did you grow up?”
“New London, Connecticut. My dad worked in the Groton shipyards. What about you?”
“Darien.”
“So we’re both from the same state,” he murmured, although he’d already known the answer to his question.
“Coincidence.”
“I stopped believing in coincidence when I was doing one of my first stories—on income tax evasion. The wise guy at the center of the piece turned out to be connected to another story—where a woman lawyer tried to poison her husband. When that didn’t work, she hired the wise guy as a hit man. He was recommended by one of her tax evasion clients.”
“You mean the Martha Blaine case?”
“Yeah.”
Before she could switch the subject away from herself, he asked, “How was your childhood?”
She gestured helplessly with her hand. “You want me to tell you I didn’t know how to fit in? That I didn’t have many friends? That I focused on schoolwork rather than social activities.”
“Is that true?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And your greatest pleasure was losing yourself in a book—pretending that you were living someone else’s life—someone with warm, close relationships?”
“Are you reading my mind again?” she whispered.
“No. I’m describing myself. It seems that we’re a lot alike—even if we come from different social classes.”
“What? You asked where I grew up. But you already knew because you investigated me?”
“Just a Google search.”
“I should have done that with you!”
“But you were trying to pretend you weren’t interested.”
“Yes,” she admitted, then tipped her head to one side as she studied him. “I don’t need to do a background check to see you’re self-confident. In charge. You get people to say things to you that they wouldn’t tell their mothers.”
“Yeah. I taught myself to be pushy because I knew I could make a damn good in-your-face investigative reporter. If I only had the balls to do it.”
She laughed. “That gives me kind of a strange image.”
“Yeah. A badly mixed metaphor.”
They laughed together, and for the first time she wondered if she could actually like the man.
She’d barely noticed when the busboy took their unfinished appetizers away. Now they paused in the conversation as the waitress set down their dinner plates.
She was glad she’d only ordered a small portion of the ravioli. She supposed it was excellent, but she could barely taste the filling or the sauce. And Walker didn’t seem to be doing much better with his mixed grill.
When he put down his knife and fork, she looked at him inquiringly.
“I don’t think either one of us is too hungry. Why don’t we leave?”
“All right.” She hauled her purse off the floor and got out her wallet.
“My treat. I invited you.”
She might have argued. Instead she got his address. When he’d signed the credit card slip, they walked to the front together.
“It’s silly to take a cab,” he said.
“But I’ll feel like I have more control. There’s a front desk in your building?”
“Right.”
“And they can call me another cab when I’m ready to leave.”
“Yeah.”
She should be reassured. But as she rode toward Massachusetts Avenue, she felt like she couldn’t fill her lungs with air—because she understood that if she went to Jordan Walker’s apartment, her life would never be the same.
MARK Greenwood awoke from a bad dream—only to find that reality was no better.
He had been in the control center, and someone had come in holding a blaster from a fifties science fiction movie—and hit him with a death ray.
That was a dream. Right? Or was that reality?
“What’s wrong with me?” he croaked.
“You had a drug overdose. It’s affected your brain,” the man with the surgical mask answered. The same voice that had spoken to him before.
Fear twisted like knives in his chest. Was the guy telling the truth? It didn’t feel right. He didn’t take drugs. Ever.
Something had happened at Maple Creek—and they wanted him to tell them about it. But he was pretty sure that if he did, he was a dead man.
“How are you feeling now?” the doctor inquired.
“Did you ask me that before?”
“Yes. Does your head hurt?”
“Yeah. Why do you need a mask?”
“Just a precaution.”
“Am I contagious or something?”
“What can you tell me about your delusion—about the break-in at Maple Creek?
“It didn’t happen? It wasn’t real?” he asked stupidly.
“That was all a drug-induced fantasy. We’re going to get you straightened out.”
“Who are you?”
“I told you my name before. But you’re having memory problems. I’m Dr. Colefax. I’m here to take care of you. Everything is going to be fine.”
He should be grateful for the steady voice and the reassuring words. But this whole setup just didn’t feel right. Starting with the sharp, watchful look in the doctor’s brown eyes.
“How long have I been here?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
Oh, he was worried all right.
“What about Rota and Cordova? Are they okay?”
“They’re fine.”
Sure. Because I’m the only one having the drug problem? The only one affected? No, I saw Rota standing like a department store mannequin. Or is that true? Is it a fantasy, like he says?
He tried to sit up. “Let me out of here.”
“You need to rest.”
“No. I want a lawyer.”
“You don’t need a lawyer. You need to let me help you.”
A needle pricked his arm. And he floated away again—into a drug-induced safety net.
Some time later he woke again. It was dark, and he could hear voices. In his head? No, he could hear people talking in the hall.
“He’s sleeping.”
“Is the new treatment working?”
“We won’t know for several days.”
“I want to know what happened to him.”
“He’s tough. He doesn’t trust us.”
“We need to get his story. He’s the only one who came in contact with the intruders who’s still alive.”
God, no!
“Get him to talk. Then get rid of him.”
The voices moved away. He strained to hear more, but they were out of range.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Was it true? If Cordova and Rota were dead, why was he still alive? He didn’t know. But he understood one thing, all right. He had to get the hell out of here.
Cautiously he opened his lids a fraction, peering through his lashes. Once again he studied his surroundings.
Once again? He’d been here the whole time, since Maple Creek? Right? Or had they moved him from somewhere else? He still couldn’t think clearly. And nobody in this funny farm was helping along the process.
He was in a small room with bars on the windows. The only furniture was a metal chair. Ahead of him was a door with a rectangular window filled with chicken-wire-reinforced glass. There was another door—this one solid. Did it lead to the bathroom?
He had to get out of this cage. But if he did, would it make any difference? Would he only find himself in a locked hallway?
Deliberately he tested his memory, casting his mind back—to a time when he’d been happy. With the Becker family. With Aunt Jen and Uncle Eddie and Sid. The Beckers had taken him in when his mother had died, and his real father been too paralyzed by grief to take care of him.
The Beckers had welcomed him like a son. They’d given him a warm, secure childhood. Sid had taught him how to use in-line skates and how to keep his eye on the ball when he was up at bat. Aunt Jen had helped him with his math homework. And they’d all sat around the TV in the living room watching Orioles games, because even Jen was a fan.
She and Eddie were dead now. But Sid . . . Sid would help him. Help him get out of this place? Maybe—if he knew. But how the hell would Sid find out where he was?
A jumble of emotions swirled through Jordan as he drove home. He wanted to focus on Lindsay—what he’d felt when he’d touched her. But the dinner conversation had called up a host of images from his past.
Like the time in seventh grade when he’d been the only kid who’d gotten one hundred percent on a surprise history test, and Mrs. Garland had assumed he had cheated. She’d made him stay after school, and she’d quizzed him orally on a bunch of questions—some of which hadn’t even been on the test. He’d stood in front of her, spouting answers that came from his terrible determination not to have the school call his dad.
She hadn’t been able to give him an F on the test. But after that, he’d caught her looking at him, and he knew he had given her the creeps because they both understood where those answers had come from—her head. She had thought of the answer, and he had pulled it right out of her soggy brain. During the test—and later when she’d quizzed him.
He wasn’t sure how he’d done it. And he’d chalked it up to the strange things that sometimes happened inside his mind.
The experience with Lindsay had been similar—yet different. More tentative and at the same time more intimate. The thoughts he’d picked up from Lindsay had been random and disorganized. And there was another big difference, too. He hadn’t had any sexual feelings for Mrs. Garland.
He wanted . . . to make love with Lindsay. Not just the physical act. More. He wanted to fulfill the promise of intimacy that had bloomed between them.
He was afraid to find out what that meant. Terrified not to find out. And in agony that she was going to change her mind before she got to his apartment.
As soon as he stepped into his own living room, he started pacing back and forth across the carpet, clenching and unclenching his fists.
When she called from the lobby, he breathed out a sigh of relief—just before his heart started pounding so hard inside his chest that he was surprised he couldn’t see his shirtfront moving.
