Talk (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  A—Check "calls" file. Rich is updating us on the hot line. Dr. K.'s working on-screen for buzzwords. Stuff pops up occasionally, so keep an eye out.

  When you love someone, you want to kill anyone who has ever hurt that person. I am not upset for the reason you think. I love Jessica. I love Jessica. Her past comes with the package, as does mine. I love you too, oh bitchy (and wise) friend —W

  Smiling, Alexandra picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Kessler.

  Hurt Guy slept again for about two hours and Jessica told herself to relax, there was nothing more she could do but pray—which she had, about every fifteen minutes—and try to think about what she was going to do. She thought about stabbing Leopold in the head with the sharp end of the steel curtain rod when he arrived the next night, but then she also thought about getting electrocuted while trying to get out of this house. And what might happen to her if she didn't kill Leopold or disable him.

  He'd said, "Two of them are dead."

  He must have meant Hurt Guy and Bea. But what had Bea done? Surely he wouldn't have killed her for selling a couple of stories to the tabloids about her. Or would he? Would he perceive that as hurting her?

  She better play it safe and try to get this bedroom looking as normal as possible, which meant trying to rehang those red velvet curtains. The second time she fell off the chair with them, she gave up in disgust and went around the bed to check on Hurt Guy. She found that his one good eye was cracked open again.

  "I'm trying to pick up this room so that nutcase doesn't know anything's happened," she explained. "He's coming tomorrow night and I'm trying to figure out a plan. Until I do, I'll keep you hidden. So don't you worry about anything. I used to be a nurse, you know," she lied, "and I know you're going to come out of this just fine."

  "I don't think you should move yet," she cheerfully continued. "I have you wrapped in a towel and I'll change you and clean you up. Don't worry about it, it's okay, seeing that I was a nurse and all." She checked his towel. Her instincts had been right. He needed changing. She had recently signed a new ten-million-dollar contract and here she was changing diapers. Ah, well, poetic justice, she imagined. You do what you gotta do.

  She came back with a washcloth, bowl of water, toilet paper and fresh towel.

  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

  18

  Hurt Guy started moaning about three o'clock in the morning. Jessica turned on the light. Anthony Trollope's Small House at Allington was face down on the bed; earlier she had been reading it aloud. She crawled to the edge of the bed and looked down. Hurt Guy moaned again and Jessica saw that his one good eye had tears in it.

  The shock must have worn off and feeling must be coming back to him. His wrists and ankles still had black-purple slashes on them from the wire that had bound them; she was certain he had several cracked, if not broken, ribs; his nose was mush and his mouth was but a swollen gash. His jaw might be broken. His arms and legs did not appear to be broken, but heaven only knew what internal injuries he had.

  All she could think to do was keep feeding him aspirin and some kind of nourishment and keep him clean.

  She felt his forehead. He was not quite as hot as before. That was good. She smiled. "You're doing much better. I know you're in pain, but that's because your body has started the healing process.· Your body is mending itself. What we need to do is try and help your body as much as we can." He whimpered a little, but stopped when she stroked the one square inch of unmarked flesh on the side of his face. 'Tm going to get you something to eat," she whispered.

  She heated a can of chicken soup and strained out the noodles and meat. It took nearly a half hour, but she got a cup's worth of broth into him. Then she fed him warm milk with sugar. Then applesauce with aspirin. He didn't need changing yet. Jessica picked up the novel and read to him about the perils of Lucy's love life for a while. The lid on his good eye wavered and then closed and he drifted off. Jessica turned off the light and went back to sleep.

  Alexandra walked into Cassy's office and found FBI Agent Kunsa sitting behind her desk and Dirk Lawson in the comer at the conference table.

  "She crashed next door on Langley's couch to catch a few zzz's," Kunsa explained.

  "Good. Will and I got some rest too." She looked at him expectantly. "So, anything new?"

  He glanced at his watch and scowled. "What time is it? Damn knockoffs never work."

  "Two after six," Dirk called.

  "Another night gone," he mumbled, resetting his watch.

  There was a brief knock on the door and then Detectives Hepplewhite and O'Neal entered the room. Hepplewhite looked particularly tired and rumpled in the same clothes he had been wearing the day before. "Any word?"

  "Fresh coffee's over there," Kunsa said, pointing to the coffeemaker in the comer. The detectives made a beeline for it. "I was just about to tell Alexandra that we've logged more than three thousand calls over the hot line already."

  "She knows," O'Neal said. "We've been routing the call lists to her and Rafferty."

  "They're not yours to route," Kunsa said irritably.

  "Oh, yeah, they are," Detective Hepplewhite countered, turning around. "That's NYPD manning those phones."

  "And she's NYPD?" the agent asked.

  "Might as well be for all the help we're getting from you," O'Neal muttered.

  "I heard that," Kunsa said.

  "Good," O'Neal said, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

  "We're working together, guys," Dirk reminded them.

  "So what exactly are you guys up to over there?" Hepplewhite asked, bringing his cup of coffee over to sit with Alexandra. "I hear you're only looking at the hot-line calls from or about New York State."

  Kunsa's head jerked in Alexandra's direction.

  "No magic," she said, shrugging. "We know that you guys are working every angle, so for the sake of expediency we decided to listen to what our instincts are telling us. We might get lucky—sooner—that way."

  "But why just New York?" Agent Kunsa asked. "Why not the tri-state?"

  "We know that whoever kidnapped Jessica had to have access to the plans of West End, and to Rockefeller Center, the latter of which—Rockefeller Center—had to have been obtained on a moment's notice, since we changed the venue of the party at the last minute. So we're going on the assumption that the person or persons had to be working with Con Edison, or the city, or the state, to have that kind of access at their fingertips. And if he or they are with Con Edison, or the city, or the state, they'd have to live in New York State in order to hold that job. And past that point, we're just going on the assumption that he or they are keeping Jessica somewhere close to where they live, somewhere they know well and can easily get to." She shrugged again. "In New York State."

  "That's good," Dirk said, nodding.

  "Lucky you to have the luxury of working with so many ifs," Agent Kunsa said. "If my people worked like that, all of our kidnapping victims would be dead."

  "That's what they're on board for, Norm," Hepplewhite said. "To do it differently. And all the power to them since I don't know where the hell we're getting at the moment."

  Detective O'Neal sat in another chair and addressed Alexandra, "If your theory's right, and this guy works for one of the outfits here in New York, how do you explain how he bypassed the system at the farm?"

  "If he knows the system we use here at West End," Alexandra said, "he'd know what to expect at my house."

  "But to get into your house in broad daylight?" O'Neal persisted. "With four of you there?"

  "We think he got up there that night, while they were downstairs playing bridge," Kunsa offered.

  "One bodyguard was with Jessica, the outside guard was watching the house from the front. Whenever Leopold was there, we know he bypassed the alarm system in the circuit box in the bam. A place where he also could have tapped the phone line—the phone line de
voted to the alarm system—to place the call to West End that killed Bea Blakely."

  Jessica stretched, luxuriating in the size and warmth of the bed, half dreaming she was home. And then she jerked herself awake and sat up. There was no sound from Hurt Guy.

  Her heart sank. He must have died. She climbed out of bed and walked around the bed. Hurt Guy's one eye was open a little wider and he said, “Ahh.”

  "Good morning!" she cried, relieved, kneeling to touch that one good area on the side of his face. "You look much, much better this morning!"

  He groaned and she laughed, because he knew she could understand him. He was telling her that he didn't feel any better. And given that some of his wounds this morning were oozing yellow-green pus, she didn't wonder.

  "You really can hear me now, can't you? Just say ah."

  "Ah," he said.

  "Great! Now listen, since I don't know your name, I'm afraid I've been calling you Hurt Guy. I know you're getting better and everything, but I've got to call you something. Is that okay, Hurt Guy?"

  “Ah."

  "All right then," she said, "close your eye and let me check to see what's going on down here, okay?" He did and she did and found that he needed changing. She went into the bathroom and used the john herself and then headed back to him with the towel that had dried overnight, a washcloth, toilet paper and basin of water, and proceeded to clean him up and change him.

  She gave him an ambitious breakfast: half a cup of instant oatmeal with tons of sugar and butter, and aspirin in applesauce. She herself had yogurt and coffee. When he dozed off, she put on her exercise gear and skipped rope for a good fifteen minutes, lifted a few weights and then went to take a shower and get dressed.

  He was still asleep. She made her bed and cleaned up the kitchen. When she came back into the bedroom she found him awake, and so she went through the whole routine with him all over again.

  "Morning," Cassy said, coming back into her office at nine o'clock. She had showered and changed into fresh clothes.

  As she poured herself coffee, Kunsa filled her in on the track Alexandra and Will were taking, about focusing on calls into the hot line either placed from or regarding sites in New York State. "Huh," she said thoughtfully when he had finished. "They could be right, but I don't know. Has there been anything more on that boat that was seen in the vicinity of the lot where the Con Ed truck was found?"

  "Not yet. We're still working with the partial registration number."

  "What about the helipad?"

  "No, that's a definite no. He didn't take her by helicopter."

  Cassy sipped her coffee. "So what do you think? How did he get her out of the city?"

  Agent Kunsa looked miserable. "I don't know that he did take her out of the city."

  "But if he did, how do you think he did it?"

  "By water or by road."

  Cassy sighed, walking over to her desk and sitting down. "I can't believe we're just sitting here."

  "This is what we do," he said. "Wait until more information comes in from the field."

  "I just can't sit here and do nothing," Cassy told him. "For God's sake, Norm, she's been gone for over sixty hours. And you said if I held that press conference, if I dared him to contact us, he would. Well, I held that damn conference, I dared him to contact us and what do we get? Nothing. And we're nowhere. And now you expect me to just sit around here with you and wait."

  When he didn't argue with her, Cassy cinched up the side of her mouth in disgust, turned to her computer and punched a button to boot it up.

  "Norm," she said a moment later, sounding alarmed. "Norm!"

  He jumped up from his seat.

  "Get over here," she directed. "Look at this."

  He ran around the desk and looked over her shoulder at the screen. "What is that?" Plastered across her computer screen was a head shot of Jessica, looking back at them.

  "I don't know what this is," Cassy said. "I don't know where it came from. I just booted up the computer and—"

  They froze as the sound of Jessica's voice came out over the computer speakers.

  Jessica: And may I ask if it's Thursday? (pause) Ah, I guessed right about that, too. Good.

  There was a long pause; Cassy and Kunsa looked at each other. "It's a tape," he whispered.

  Jessica: I, um, appreciate the quarters. They're very nice. It's very thoughtful of you to make my stay as pleasant as possible. (pause) Would you like to sit down?

  Cassy lunged for a pen and paper and frantically started writing in shorthand.

  Jessica: Will you be eating with me? Do you want me to cook something? Or shall we order in? (pause) I'd like the company and you must know how much I order in. (pause) Why don't you surprise me? Bring dinner tomorrow? Say around seven?

  When the audio stopped and Cassy had finished writing, she looked back up at Norm in amazement.

  "Thursday," he said. "This tape is from last night. She's still alive."

  Tears sprung into Cassy's eyes as she reached to her intercom. "Chi Chi, get Dr. Kessler in here immediately, please. Tell him there's something on my computer he needs to preserve."

  "Can you save it?" Norm asked her.

  "I don't know. I don't know what it is." She had punched in another telephone number. "She's alive, Alexandra, she's alive! We know for a fact that Jessica's still alive!"

  "So, Hurt Guy, let me tell you what's happening."

  The slit over his good eye was open.

  "That nut Leopold is coming to dinner tonight. I figure the nicer I am to him and the more I know about him, the better our chances are of getting out of this alive. Because you will, you know," she told him seriously. "I know you must feel like hell, but the change in you has been miraculous. You're going to make it, no problem," she lied.

  It looked like a tear forming in Hurt Guy's eye again.

  "So when he comes tonight, you'll have to be very quiet. I'll feed you before he comes and that usually makes you sleepy, so with any luck you'll just sleep through it."

  The reality of this man's situation was starting to panic her. There was something terribly wrong with the wounds on his right hand and she wondered if what she saw might not be a precursor to gangrene. And although she kept cleaning his wounds with witch hazel, one of them on his head was oozing horrible-looking stuff, and she knew he had needed something to fight off the infection some time ago.

  Then she calmed herself, reminded herself that her grandfather and thousands of people like him had sustained injuries such as this in World War II and had survived. (She sorely wished, however, she could get over the feeling that people today, certainly kidnappers—no matter how polite or thoughtful—were not made of the same stuff as her grandfather's generation.)

  "I'm going to start reading Small House at Allington to you again," she announced. "I know you missed a lot of it last night, but you'll catch on." And she sat on the floor, leaned back against the bed and began to read to him. She had the horrible feeling that Hurt Guy was dying.

  "This one, this one!" Will cried, pointing with a shaky hand to a call listing on the computer screen:

  4:09 p.m. Salt Springs, Pennsylvania. Resident next to park saw Dodge van midnight parking lot. Park closed. Heard voices. Thought kids, but heard male and female voices. Saw man help staggering woman into back of van. Went to see if woman was okay, but van took off. Partial plate, New York M4E 8—.

  "That's right over the New York State border," Will said excitedly to Alexandra and Agent Cole. ''To get there from New York City, they probably took Route 17, and then back roads to Salt Springs."

  "So?" Debbie asked.

  "So get me the possible plates!" Will cried.

  The agent took out her cellular phone and dialed. Then she held out her hand for the call sheet. To Alexandra she directed, "Call up that list of the electric-power people on your computer."

  Hurt Guy slept for much of the afternoon. His fever was raging again and Jessica feared what would happen when the aspirin
ran out, which, she figured, would be tomorrow morning.

  She spent most of the afternoon lying on the bed. She needed her rest; she needed to build up her strength. She also knew she needed to get the hell out of here and the only way was going to be through Leopold.

  How to play it?

  She'd have to kill him.

  No way. She couldn't do that.

  No, she'd have to tie him up somehow, overpower him and tie him up or lock him up somewhere. If she tried and failed, God only knew what he would do. But if she didn't try, Hurt Guy would surely die and so would she in the end. That twitching hand, skittering eye, turning-his-back thing was not good. She suspected he was going to become sexual very soon. Or try to be. And that she'd probably die resisting him.

  She had to find a way out of here.

  They came bursting into Cassy's office where Cassy, Kunsa, Hepplewhite and Dr. Kessler were huddled. "We've got him, we've got him, we've got him!" Alexandra cried, rushing in with Will and Wendy. "It's one of two guys and they're both in upstate New York."

  Kunsa's mouth dropped open and he looked to Agent Cole, who had piled into the room behind them. "I think they have it," she acknowledged.

  "Okay, envision this," Alexandra said, standing in the middle of the office. "Our kidnapper grabs Jessica at Rockefeller Center and threatens her with the fake bomb to get her to go with him. He leads her through the underground passageways to come up by the Sixth Avenue entrance of the NBC building. Wearing Con Edison ponchos and hard hats and boots, they board a Con Edison truck and he drives her to the Twelfth Avenue lot. They leave the truck, he puts Jessica in the back of an unmarked Dodge van and drugs her. He drives up the Hudson River Parkway to cross either the George Washington Bridge or the Tappan Zee, and takes Route 17.

  "The kidnapper exits somewhere around Binghamton and cuts down to Salt Springs Park, an isolated place where, he knows, in the darkness he can walk Jessica around a bit. The neighbors see the van and Jessica stumbling around and worry it might be some kind of sexual assault. Just in case, they try to get the license number. Yesterday morning they hear our appeal on the air about Jessica's kidnapping and they call in, not knowing if it could be of any help."