Louise Horn met him at the door, a deeply concerned, motherly expression on her long, narrow face. She was an air force major and worked at the National Reconnaissance Office as an image interpretation supervisor. She was almost as bright as Otto, and nearly as odd. Until Otto she’d never had any real friends or family; her parents were both dead, and there were no siblings. She and Otto had been living together for less than a year, but he was her entire world. There was no mountain too tall for her to climb for his sake, no task too difficult. His pain was her pain. She felt every bit of his hurt now, and her reaction was written all over her sad face. “What’s happened?” she asked, taking his coat and tossing it aside. Now that he was home and safe, his fear bubbled to the surface, and he began to sob. Louise Horn’s wide, brown eyes instantly filled, and she took him in her arms.
She was six inches taller than he, so she had to hunch over, but she didn’t mind. For Otto she couldn’t possibly mind. He was the most brilliant man she’d ever known, and he was in love with her. She would have gladly cut off her legs at the knees to accommodate him. For a second he was embarrassed. “They tried to kill Mac and Mrs. M.,” he blurted. His stepfather would call him a big baby if Otto cried when he was being sexually abused. It was a sign of weakness that he hated in himself. When he was on his own, before Mac and before the CIA, he counted every day that he didn’t cry a victory. He’d wanted to cry at the briefing in the auditorium and in the car on the way home. But he didn’t. “Are they okay?” Louise Horn asked. “I think so, but they’re in the hospital until tomorrow.” Otto looked into Louise Horn’s eyes.
“I should have known. I could have prevented it from happening. I could have helped. But I didn’t. I’m stupid, stupid. Baddest dog-“
“No,” Louise Horn said sharply. “You’re not stupid. You’re anything but.” “I’m going crazy, I’m losing it. Oh, wow, I’m not smart enough now. It’s going-” She took his hands. “Listen to me, my darling. You are not losing your mind, and you definitely aren’t losing your smarts.” “It’s lavender, but I can’t see anything else.” “The problem that you’re facing is a tough one, that’s all. You’ve been there before, and you’ll be in that stadium again. So break it down.
Analyze the pieces. Understand it. Make it yours. Absorb it.” She wasn’t ashamed of him. She wasn’t laughing at him or calling him names. There was nothing in her eyes except genuine concern. “One step at a time,” she said. “Thank you,” Otto told her. She studied his face for a few moments, then smiled. “I’ll make dinner for us.
Now tell me everything that you can. What are they doing in Puerto Rico, and what about Todd and Liz?”
TWENTY
SOMEBODY HAD TRIED TO KILL HER. IT WAS IMPORTANT THAT HE AND LIZ DROP OUT OF PUBLIC VIEW RIGHT NOW.
It was nearly 6:00 P.M. and off pi ste it was already getting dark.
Elizabeth was about twenty yards ahead and to the left of her husband, moving fast through the trees along the side of the last bowl before they came out over the ridge behind the groomed and lit slopes. It had snowed heavily last night and most of this morning. Most of the territory they’d covered today had been unmarked by anyone else’s skis.
The feeling was exhilarating. Liz had laid off the wine, as her doctor had told her, and she had skied well. Better, Todd had to admit, than he had. And she was four months pregnant. But he was getting worried about her. He’d wanted to quit two hours ago and return to the chalet.
She was pushing too hard, as usual, and she wouldn’t listen to him.
“This is my last shot before I get as big as a house, and everybody starts worrying about me again,” she argued.
He’d not been able to resist her big green eyes, the promise in her face, in the way she held herself. He saw a lot of his mother in her spoiled, willful, but almost painfully desperate to be needed. For somebody to depend on her. His father had made a killing on Wall Street before he was born, so Todd never knew what it was like to live an ordinary life. He’d grown up rich, so he never thought about money.
At least not consciously. If you wanted something, you simply acquired it. He was nearly thirteen before he understood the meaning of the word need, or the concept of dependency. He was allowed to pick from a litter of prize-winning English sheepdogs. He wanted to tie a paisley bandana around the dog’s neck and teach it to catch Frisbees on the fly. Flyer was his dog. He made his parents, and especially the house staff, understand in no uncertain terms that no one else was to go near the dog. No one was allowed to feed, water, or train the animal, which slept at the foot of Todd’s bed in the west wing of their Greenwich mansion, except for Todd. All went well for the first six months, until summer, when Todd and his parents left for their annual eight-week tour of Europe. Since nothing was mentioned to the staff, they thought the Van Burens had taken Flyer with them, and Todd’s parents had assumed that their son had given the staff instructions.
Flyer was Todd’s responsiblity. Flyer was eight days dead by the time one of the servants noticed the smell and opened young Master Van Buren’s room. Flyer had died of thirst and starvation, but not before the poor animal had tried to claw and chew its way out of the room.
Forever after Todd maintained an extremely acute sense of duty, of responsibility and of need. Not a day went by that he didn’t think about what had happened. He still had occasional nightmares about Flyer’s desperate attempts to escape. Elizabeth cut sharply left off the narrow track to pick up a series of moguls; on the side of a very steep and heavily wooded slope. “Goddammit,” Van Buren shouted. He turned after her, carving a sharp furrow in the powder, sending a rooster tail of snow downslope. She disappeared in the darker shadows amongst the trees, leaving him with no other option than to follow her tracks. “Liz! Goddammit, slow down!” He caught a glimpse of her bright yellow ski jacket farther to the left, and much farther down the slope than he thought she’d be, and she disappeared in the trees again.
He saw that he could bear right and cut her off near the bottom, where she would have to traverse toward him along the lower part of the ridgeline. They were less than three hundred yards from Earl’s Express Lift. He could make out the top of the lead tower but not the chairs.
The lights were on. It meant that the lower slopes were in darkness, and there was less than a half-hour of daylight up here. He spotted her yellow jacket again, then lost it, and found it again. She had made a sharp turn to the right and was just un weighting her skis, coming partially out of the powder, when there seemed to be a flash at her feet. She planted her left ski pole as if she was setting for a sharp turn to the left, but her body continued in a straight line. It was all happening in slow motion. Van Buren was above her and less than twenty yards away when she struck the hole of an eight-foot pine straight on. He heard the crash and snapping of the branches, then the watermelon thump as her helmet hit. She crumpled to the snow. Van Buren panicked. It was his wife and child down there. But then his training kicked in, and he skied down to her. He activated his emergency avalanche transponder that most off-pi ste skiers carried with them. The ski patrol would pick up the emergency signal and home in on the transponder’s exact location within minutes. There was blood on the side of Elizabeth’s head. It had run down under her helmet to the collar and right shoulder of her yellow ski jacket. Van Buren released his ski bindings, got rid of his poles, raised his goggles and tore off his gloves. He shook so badly inside that he had trouble keeping his balance as he ducked under the tree branches and knelt in the snow beside Elizabeth. Her eyes were fluttering, and her breathing came in long, irregular gasps. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth.