Vanessa logged off her computer at eight and dialed Sam’s extension.
“The Smiling Buddha?” Vanessa asked, naming a Chinese restaurant two blocks from the paper.
“You’re on. Meet you in the lobby in ten.”
Vanessa walked to the ground floor. As a practicing paranoid, she scanned the street outside while she waited near the front door. Two men were talking in a doorway across the way. They did not look threatening, but Vanessa didn’t trust anyone. Inside her oversize purse with her cosmetics, address book, and tissues was an unregistered.357 Magnum loaded with hollow-point rounds. One advantage of being an army brat was her ability to shoot anything, anywhere. Her father had taught her about guns from an early age. She’d hunted deer and even bagged big game in Africa on a safari as a teenager. The togetherness had stopped when her mother died, but the skill remained.
“What did Gorman think of the rat tale?” Sam asked as they walked toward the restaurant.
“Loved it. He’s such a prick. But he did put me onto something interesting. Real news, for once,” Vanessa said, filling him in on the Little League massacre as they walked.
“Oregon is nice this time of year,” Sam said. “See if you can wheedle a trip out there. Maybe ask him to send a photographer along.”
“Sounds good,” Vanessa said as they passed a clothing store. She stopped for a moment, apparently to look at the dresses in the window, but really to check the reflection from the other side of the street. The men from the doorway were a half-block back. One was tall, the other short and stocky. Both wore windbreakers and jeans. Vanessa’s heart started to pound, but she didn’t say anything to Sam, who tolerated her paranoid fantasies but never encouraged them.
An hour later, Vanessa and Sam were reading their fortunes. Sam was coming into big money, but Vanessa was supposed to be wary of strangers. It was after nine and there was a hint of rain in the air when they left the restaurant. They had taken separate cars to work, and they reached Sam’s car first. He gave Vanessa a peck on the cheek and said he’d see her at home.
Vanessa looked for the two men who had been waiting outside the office, but the streets around the Exposed building were empty. A page from a newspaper flew down the street until the wind plastered it against a chain-link fence. Over the fence were the remnants of an abandoned warehouse that was destined to become some upwardly mobile couple’s dream condo. Vanessa thought she saw someone moving through the rubble and hurried to her car.
A man was standing in the shadows of a doorway across the street. He wore a hooded sweatshirt and looked homeless, but people engaged in surveillance often used disguises. Vanessa locked her doors as soon as she was in the driver’s seat. A face pressed against the glass of the passenger’s window. Vanessa reached into her purse without thinking. She saw messy red hair and cheeks covered with stubble. Bloodshot eyes stared in at her. The man knocked on the window. Vanessa extended the Magnum. The man jumped back, his eyes wide with fright. Vanessa gunned the engine. Her car fishtailed down the street. She cut the wheel and raced down a side street, putting a building between her and the derelict. Just before she turned, she looked in her mirror. The man was standing in the middle of the street watching her.
Vanessa zigzagged through town until she was certain she wasn’t being followed. The adrenaline was starting to wear off when she pulled into the dark end of a parking lot. Her hands were shaking. Who had sent the man after her? Had he been after her? Panhandlers had accosted her many times. That was an occupational hazard of working in the Exposed building. Had she overreacted? And what about the two men who had followed her and Sam to the restaurant? Maybe that was innocent, too. But what if it wasn’t? What if they were spotters who kept the man in the hooded sweatshirt aware of her movements? And if there were three men working together, there could be more.
Sam! She had to warn him before he arrived at the apartment. They might be waiting for her. She pulled out her cell phone. Not Sam. If anything happened to him…She dialed Sam’s cell. It was turned off. He would be home in minutes. Vanessa dialed 911.
“There are men at my apartment,” she screamed hysterically, hoping the urgency in her voice would spur the dispatcher to action. “They’re killing my boyfriend.”
The dispatcher tried to get her to calm down, but she gave her address and disconnected the phone. If the cops got there fast enough, Sam might be okay. She started to tear up and gulped down air. She couldn’t afford to be hysterical. She had to think.
Vanessa couldn’t go to the apartment, but she didn’t dare use a credit card at a motel or hotel. The people who were after her would trace her if she charged her account. Vanessa had just been to the ATM and had two hundred dollars less the price of her dinner. She started the car and drove into Maryland to a large motel run by a chain. She paid cash and gave the desk clerk the phony ID she always carried with her. Vanessa also carried real and counterfeit passports. As soon as she was in her room she called Sam.
“Thank God,” Vanessa said when she heard his voice. “Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? Has something happened?”
“I can’t talk now. Has anyone searched the apartment?”
“Searched the…Vanessa, what’s going on? There were cops here when I got home. They said a woman told 911 I was being attacked. Was that you? Did you make that call to the cops?”
Vanessa was about to answer when she heard a voice in the background.
“Who’s that?” Vanessa asked.
“One of the policemen. He wants to talk to you.”
“I can’t.”
What if her cell phone call had been intercepted and the men at the apartment weren’t really cops? She wanted to tell Sam to run, to leave town, but another man took the phone and started asking her questions. Vanessa cut the connection.
It seemed as if hours had passed since her meal with Sam and her flight to the motel, but it was only a little before eleven. She slumped down on the edge of the bed, exhausted. She had gotten a kit with a toothbrush and toothpaste from the front desk when she checked in. She brushed her teeth, washed up, stripped off her jeans, and crawled under the covers. When she closed her eyes she thought of Sam.
Vanessa had taken few lovers since getting out of the institution. Most men ran after learning that she’d been in an asylum. Those that thought screwing an ex-lunatic was kinky ran when they learned the depth of her obsession. Until she met Sam Cutler at a bar near her apartment three months ago, Vanessa had not been with a man for a little over a year. Sam was a freelance photographer who had worked all over the world. She had been reluctant to let him get close to her at first, but he had persisted and she had dropped her guard.
Sam could tell great stories, in bed he was creative and had endurance; but the best thing about him was that he was not judgmental. It had not fazed him when he learned that Vanessa was an ex-mental patient. When Vanessa told him about the Unit, he had calmly accepted its existence as a possibility. Vanessa had talked Patrick Gorman into giving Sam a job, and she had started to believe that she might find happiness at last. What if something happened to him now? What if he died because of her?
Vanessa felt empty inside and tired of her life. The people who were after her had so many resources and she had so few. She couldn’t run forever. If they were hunting her, they would catch her eventually. She started to cry in the dark. After a while she drifted off to sleep.