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“Dr. Moore, I mean,” she continued as she pulled a foil-wrapped package out of the cooler. If the smell from the dining hall could have best been described as banal, then what wafted from that cooler was something akin to heaven. “It happened a couple of months ago. That’s why Alice had to come stay here, why he had to hire me. Her previous caregiver died trying to get out. Of the house, I mean. Not the job.” She snickered. “At least, I don’t think that’s the case.”

  “Do they know who did it?” Andrew asked.

  Suzette shook her head. “Dr. Moore told me the local police, the FBI, the Massachusetts Fire Marshall’s office, they’re all investigating. He had a nice house in Weston, a ritzy suburb of Boston, but he wasn’t there at the time. There was no one home but Alice and the nurse, what’s-her-name. They think it might have been a group of animal rights zealots. PACA, I think they’re called. People Against Cruelty to Animals.”

  She peeled back the foil to allow a puff of steam to trail out. “I hope you like fried chicken. It’s still hot. Probably crispy, too, for the most part.” With a wink and a smile, she added, “It’s my grandmother’s recipe, passed along from generation to generation of women in my family since the Great Depression.”

  “Top secret?” he asked. “You’d have to kill me if I learned it?”

  This time, she laughed. “Now you’re catching on.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Not good, Andrew thought some time later, flat on his back, naked except for sheets that lay swathed around his hips.

  After the meal, Suzette had pulled a fifth of tequila out of the cooler. “How about a shot?”

  “How about,” he’d agreed, figuring what the hell. In the past forty-eight hours, he’d nearly died in a car wreck, been arrested on federal felony trespass charges and been shot in the face. Twice. I’ve earned a drink, if nothing else.

  Two hours later, Suzette slept on her stomach beside him, her face turned away, her arms and legs spread-eagle, her blonde hair spread about her head in a messy tumble.

  Not good, he thought again.

  They’d downed tequila until they’d both been slurring and shit-faced. When she’d stood, wobbling off balance and stumbling, he’d leaped to his feet, catching her clumsily against his chest. “I think I’d better go to bed,” she’d told him with a laugh. Then, in a lower, husky voice, she’d added slyly, “Want to tag along?”

  Moore had promised to shoot him if he caught him in the apartment. In equally no-uncertain-terms, Prendick had promised to have him arrested and prosecuted for similar trespass. But as Suzette’s hand trailed to the waistband of his jeans, then further south from there, Andrew had found all at once, he hadn’t given a shit.

  “Yeah,” he’d told her. “I think I will.”

  Not good, he thought again, pinching the bridge of his nose, behind which a dull but steady throbbing had begun to stoke. Slowly, he sat up, wincing as the mattress beneath him creaked. He glanced at Suzette as she murmured in her sleep, but she didn’t stir. Not good. Not good at all.

  Not the sex. That part had been good indeed. Very, very good. But the sound that drawn his tequila-sedated mind out of the murky depths of unconsciousness had been the sound of the front doors to the apartment opening, of footsteps fading as they crossed the foyer.

  Dr. Moore had returned.

  And that’s very, very bad, Andrew thought. He leaned over, hands outstretched, groping in the dark until he found his jeans. Piece by piece, he recovered his discarded clothes, which had been shrugged, kicked and tossed in every which direction.

  “What about Alice?” he’d groaned as he and Suzette had stumbled together into her bedroom and she’d kicked the door closed behind them. Already, they’d been tangled, kissing and clutching at each other, yanking at shirts, fumbling with pants.

  “She’s sleeping,” she’d replied. “The other side of the apartment, next to her father’s room. They have supper together, then he puts her to bed, goes back to the lab until at least midnight.”

  Maybe I can still sneak out of here without getting busted, Andrew thought. Redressing clumsily, wobbling and hopping from one foot to the other as he pulled on his boxers and jeans, he kept a wary eye on the bedroom door, the thin sliver of faint light he could see beneath its bottom edge. Here’s hoping, anyway, since the last time I checked, I wasn’t born bullet-proof.

  He crept toward the door then hesitated, returning to the bedside. “Suzette?” he whispered, leaning over, giving her shoulder a slight shake.

  She grumbled something inarticulate and turned her head away from him, hidden beneath the nest of her hair.

  “Suzette?” he tried again, shaking a bit more. She answered with a snore.

  “Shit,” he muttered, because he figured that’s what she’d think he was when she woke up and found him gone. A big, steaming pile of shit.

  On her bedside table, next to the empty bottle of tequila and an opened pack of Marlboro lights, he saw a notepad and pen. He jotted her a quick note: Thanks for supper. Then, as an afterthought, because this still made him sound like a callous jackass, he added, And the rest.

  He started to sign his name, then shook his head. She’d know it was from him. Who the hell else would it be? How many other guys did she invite for dinner and a fuck tonight?

  Biting back his breath as he eased the bedroom door open, he slipped out into the hallway. He stole toward the living room, watching as the front doors came into view around the corner of the wall.

  Almost there, he thought, passing the kitchen, hugging the wall, his gaze darting about. Just a few more steps.

  “It’s locked.”

  Alice Moore’s voice, coming from the shadow-draped living room, was loud enough to startle him.

  Andrew whirled, eyes wide. “Jesus!”

  In the gloom, he could see her, a small silhouette sitting on the floor by the coffee table. He didn’t need light to know what she was doing. The soft scritch-scritch-scritch of her pencil tip against her notebook page was a dead giveaway.

  “Alice,” he whispered, managing a shaky laugh. His heart was jackhammering beneath his sternum. “Hey, hi. I didn’t see you there. I was just…uh, I…”

  “I know what you were doing.”

  He blinked. “You do?”

  “Yes. You and Suzette were having sex.”

  “What?” This came out as little more than a gulp.

  “Sex,” she said again. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “No, of course not,” he fumbled. “I just…I didn’t think that.”

  “I have an IQ of one seventy-five.”

  Andrew blinked again, impressed enough to momentarily forget his mortification. “One seventy-five? That’s pretty good.”

  “It’s considered high genius,” she said.

  “Really good,” he amended.

  “Benjamin Franklin is estimated to have only had an IQ of one sixty. Charles Darwin, only one sixty-five.”

  Only? he thought.

  The scritch-scritch-scritch resumed in earnest as she worked on her mathematics equation and Andrew forced himself to move, to hurry for the door.

  “I told you. It’s locked,” Alice said.

  Andrew froze. “What?”

  “The door. You need the key code to get out.”

  By this point, Andrew was at the threshold. Turning, he grabbed the knobs and turned them futilely. “Shit,” he whispered, his panic level rising.

  Suzette would know the code. He turned again, meaning to retrace his steps, return to her room.

  “She can’t help you.”

  Frozen again, Andrew sought out Alice’s form among the overlapping shadows. “Suzette knows the code, doesn’t she? I mean, she goes in and out of here all the time.”

  Alice stood, setting her pencil aside. “She’s been drinking. She’ll be out until the morning. I said she can’t help you, not that she couldn’t.” Padding around the side of the sofa, she drew near enough for the dim light to cut across her face. “You don’t liste
n very well, do you?”

  Andrew frowned. “I listen just fine.”

  “No, you hear just fine,” she said, her expression impassive, her eyes fixed on him. “You don’t listen for shit.”

  As he stood there, startled into silence by this, she turned to the key pad. “Each person here sets his or her own pass code, a four digital decimal number between 0000 and 9999. That leaves at least ten thousand available combinations.”

  Andrew stifled a groan. “Ten thousand?”

  “At least,” Alice said.

  “I don’t suppose mine will open this door?” he asked, hopeful.

  She shot him a look. “Not likely.”

  He couldn’t hold back a groan this time.

  Reaching up, she punched in a series of four numbers. To Andrew’s surprise, the red light meaning the door was locked switched over to green and he heard the soft click as it unlocked.

  “You know the code?”

  “Daddy always chooses binary numbers, using only zeroes or ones. He says they’re easier to remember. That means there are only eight possible combinations within the four-digit limit. I guessed the right one my first day here.”

  “Thanks,” he said, impressed.

  She turned and walked away, returning to the living room.

  “Uh, right.” He reached for the door. “I should go now. Good night, Alice.”

  All he heard in response was the ghost-like scritch-scritch-scritch of her pencil.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lila had fucked him one last time before dumping him, and to Andrew, that had been the most painful and humiliating part of their breakup. When they’d finished, he’d tried to kiss her, but she’d turned her face away. “Gordon and I… he’s been calling me again and we’ve decided to go to counseling,” she’d said.

  “What?” Stricken, he’d sat up in the bed, looking at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Andrew, he’s my husband,” she’d begun.

  He had shaken his head. “You’re getting a divorce.”

  “He’s asking for another chance. He wants to try. We’ve been married fifteen years. I owe him that.”

  He’d left her apartment and driven home, not the dormitory room he’d shared at the time, but his childhood home, the house in which he’d grown up and where his parents still lived. His father had been gone on a flight and his mother hadn’t come home from work yet. When she’d arrived, Katherine had found her son curled in a fetal coil on the couch in the darkened living room. Even without him saying a word, she’d known somehow, had understood. She’d gone to his side and knelt, drawing him into her gentle embrace. He hadn’t cried since his sister’s death, but he’d wept in that moment like a grief-stricken child, mourning the loss of his first love.

  * * *

  The next morning, Andrew woke to a heavy, fervent pounding on the door to his room. He peeled back his eyelids and blinked blearily, bewildered at the bedside clock. Ten minutes after seven. He’d drawn the curtains closed before turning in, and a pale seam of new morning sun cut a crooked diagonal across the floor.

  “Mister Braddock?” he heard someone call, then more of that incessant thud-thud-THUDDING.

  With a groan, Andrew sat up, swinging his legs around until his feet hit the floor. No more tequila, he promised himself, because Suzette’s one-hundred proof variety was doing a number on the inside of his skull. His tongue felt leaden and tacky, like he’d been sucking on a sweaty gym sock in his sleep. Stumbling out of bed, he limped toward the door, raking his fingers through his hair.

  Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. That had been one of his mother’s favorite sayings. With this in mind, along with memories of Dr. Moore’s face twisted with murderous intent as he’d brandished that chrome-plated pistol, Andrew didn’t immediately open the door. “Who is it?”

  “Corporal O’Malley,” a familiar voice called through the door. “I’ve got some good news for you. They just hauled your Jeep in from the wash-out.”

  “Fantastic.” Andrew opened the door. “How does it look?”

  O’Malley laughed. It was all of the answer Andrew needed.

  * * *

  After dressing and trying to comb down the wild, askew mess of his hair, Andrew tromped down to the compound’s parking lot. At the back, a small outbuilding stood, featureless cinderblock walls painted a non-descript shade of tan with a flat roof, no windows and a large, rollaway door—the compound’s garage.

  Inside, Andrew stood with his hands shoved deep in the hip pockets of his jeans, his shoulders hunched against a damp morning chill, and watched as soldiers unhooked his Jeep from the tow straps securing it to a Humvee. The thick smell of diesel exhaust hung in the air.

  The entire exterior of the Wells company truck was caked in mud, so thick it was impossible to see even a hint of the paint beneath. As he drew near, one of the soldiers wrestled the hood open on the Jeep, and Andrew grimaced to look inside. The engine compartment looked like it had been hosed down in sludge, with twigs, dried leaves and pine cones tossed in for texture and variety.

  “Shit,” he said. So much for driving out of here once the roads are cleared.

  He hadn’t thought much about the creature he’d seen in the road that night, the thing he’d hit—and had since just about convinced himself that he’d imagined—but curious now, he studied the underside of the hood, then the top, looking for any tell-tale damage from the impact. The roll down the hillside had caused too much to discern one dent from another, however.

  “Shit,” he said again, opening the passenger side door, then dancing back as brown water slopped out, splashing in a sudden puddle around his feet.

  The Jeep’s interior was hidden beneath a shroud of mud, enveloped in a sour, swampy odor. The airbag, now deflated, hung from the steering wheel, heavy and waterlogged. He hadn’t secured his tablet computer when he’d left his last surveying site, and winced to see it on the floorboard, camouflaged—and undoubtedly ruined—beneath a veil of mud.

  “Shit.”

  His area maps were unrecognizable, having disintegrated in the water. Like strips and scraps of paper mache, they lay strewn about and stuck haphazardly to the dashboard, upholstery, floor mats and windows. Sticks, leaves, pine needles and pebbles carpeted the seats and flat surfaces.

  He reached for the glove compartment, tugged it open. Another impromptu flood splashed out. Grimacing as he reached inside, touching the slimy, muddy ooze left behind, he fished out his soggy wallet. As he held it out, pinched between his forefinger and thumb, and watched it drip onto the top of his boot, he frowned. “Shit.”

  “You’ve got water in your crank case,” the soldier who’d popped the hood said. While Andrew had been rooting through the cab with disgust, he’d been tinkering around in the engine compartment, tugging here and there, prodding at this and that, pulling dipsticks out for inspection.

  Only it turned out to be a she, not a he, as evidenced by her voice as she said this, and surprised, Andrew turned around.

  “Uh, hey,” he said by way of clumsy greeting. “Santoro, right?”

  The corner of her mouth hooked slightly. “Santoro. Right.”

  She looked different now in broad daylight and when not soaking wet. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a tight, prim bun secured at the nape of her neck. Her skin was a light olive tone, warm and golden, her eyes dark brown and round. He’d forgotten how short she was, how diminutive and slight.

  “You know cars?” he asked.

  “I’d better.” She returned her attention to the waterlogged ruins of his Jeep. “I’m a nine-H-one. A track vehicle repairer.” Because this was Greek to him—and apparently obvious in his face—she added slowly, as if addressing a moron, “I’m a mechanic.”

  Other soldiers within earshot laughed at this.

  “I saw water on both your oil and transmission fluid dipsticks.” Santoro leaned over the engine compartment momentarily, then turned, cradling one in her hand to show him
. “We can’t even think about starting this thing until we change out the oil and filter. And there’s no way I’ve got anything that can fit this here at the base. Not to mention we’ll need to get up under there, take out your oil pan and try to clear the silt from it, too. The way your truck was laying in that ditch, you’re probably looking at water in your gas tank, too, plus past the seals on your crank case, CV joints and axles.”

  “Is there anything you can do?” Andrew asked.

  Santoro dusted off her hands then tucked them in her back pockets. “I can recommend a good scrap yard if you’re ever up Long Island way.”

  The other soldiers all laughed again.

  “Thanks,” Andrew muttered, scowling as he turned and stomped away. The headache the tequila had brought on had abruptly intensified.

  * * *

  “Hey, Romeo,” he heard Suzette call as he walked back toward the barracks. He looked up and found her strolling along the outermost edge of the landscaped grounds, where the lawn met the forest. Alice was with her, or more accurately, a fair pace ahead of her, eyes pinned on the ground, seemingly oblivious to anyone or anything around her.

  Andrew mentally calculated the likelihood that he could simply take off running, duck back into the barracks and avoid what was sure to be a post-coital confrontation. It had been his admittedly limited experience in life to date that women—even when they’d been the instigators of a sexual encounter—did not like to feel like they’d been ditched in the aftermath. “Oh, uh, hey, Suzette,” he said, raising his hand in a half-hearted wave as he tried not to cringe. “You’re up early.”

  “Her choice, not mine,” Suzette said, nodding to indicate Alice. “We do this every morning.”

  “Hi, Alice,” Andrew said as she walked past. Without even glancing up or grunting in reply, she continued trudging along.

  “She’s counting,” Suzette said helpfully.

  “Counting what?”

  “The number of steps she takes. It’s another one of her fixations. Right now, she’s counting how many are in the circumference of the yard. She knows exactly how many there are to get from her room in the apartment to just about anywhere on the compound.” She came to a stop within three feet of him. “What’s that?”