Cold Silence (A High Stakes Thriller) (10 page)

She passed an antique wooden coat rack that she'd missed coming in. Bright-colored baseball caps hung off a few of the limbs like fruit off a tree. She stopped and pushed aside a heavy leather jacket. Behind it was the small red jacket that she'd sent Ryan to school in the day before. She turned back to Peter.

"He gave it to me when he took my jacket," Peter said. "I was going to give it back when he gave me mine." He paused.

She ran her hand over the smooth, satin-like fabric, forcing herself to refrain from leaning forward to smell it. She felt a large lump in the jacket pocket. She pulled out Ryan's handheld Gameboy and shook her head. He knew he wasn't supposed to take it to school. But the thought of her baby tucking it away in his pocket and sneaking it off to school made her smile. He had grown up. He was growing up, she corrected herself. Dear God. She prayed he was still.

"That's R.J.'s, too," Peter confirmed.

Travis walked back into the room, holding a slip of paper. He frowned when he saw her holding the jacket.

She put the Gameboy back in the pocket. "I'll just leave it here."

Travis looked confused.

"It was in his jacket pocket," Peter explained.

Travis raised his eyebrows at his son. "You borrowing each other's toys?"

"We always share stuff."

"It was nice of you to loan R.J. your jacket, Peter. When R.J. comes home, I promise not to let him borrow it again. And I appreciate your help."

"Sure, Mrs. O'Brien. Tell R.J. to call me when he gets home, okay?"

Cody didn't answer him. She couldn't bear to.

Travis walked her to the door. "Please let us know if there's anything we can do to help."

* * *

Cody held the mobile phone in a trembling hand. She had to call. To find Oskar Kirov, she'd have to rely on someone. She thought about Mark's old colleagues, but she'd never known any of them well enough. The one man Mark had trusted without question had died the same day he did. She'd been through the people from her own past.

She needed help: information on Kirov and his most recent associates.

She paced across the basement floor again. She'd gone over the names in her head and there was only one person who could potentially help her. One person whom Cody still thought she could trust. Jennifer Townsend. They had been close when she was at the Bureau.

Cody stared at the phone, the memory of that morning in New Orleans flashing back at her, the heat almost blinding even now. She had never discovered the source of the leak, but she was sure it had come from the Office of Professional Responsibility, the Bureau's version of Internal Affairs. They were the only ones who had access to her whereabouts.

No, Cody had to trust someone, and Jennifer Townsend was her best bet. That was what this was now—a gamble. If she didn't make the call, she knew she'd never see Ryan again. And that was not an option. With a deep breath, she opened the phone, powered it on, and dialed the number from memory.

It was one o'clock in the morning there. She would just leave a message with what she needed and let Jennifer know she'd call back.

The phone rang twice and then someone picked up. "Computer Intrusion Squad," a woman's voice answered.

Cody hesitated. "Jennifer?"

"No, this is Mei. Can I help you?"

Cody shook her head and then forced herself to speak. "Is Jennifer in?"

"No, she's..." Mei paused and Cody felt herself holding her breath. "She's gone. Can I leave her a message?"

"No. This is her sister. I'll just call back." Cody hung up before Mei could say anything else. Damn it. Since when did agents answer each other's phones? Would Mei have recognized her voice? She gripped the phone in her fist and hoped Jennifer was still on speaking terms with her sister. They'd never been close.

Furious with herself, Cody punched in the number for Jennifer's old pager, and when the recording started, she dialed the code that they had established to mean the other one needed help: 911, then a 0, then the last four numbers of her badge number from the Bureau. At least Jennifer would know who called. And, she hoped, Mei wouldn't. With that finished, she returned the phone to its spot under the storage cabinet in the cold basement, grabbed a shovel, and headed outside in the dark.

Cody worked with an efficiency she hadn't felt since right after Mark's death. Shovel in hand, she followed the path out back to the small plot she'd dug when they had moved into the house. She began to dig. The rain had stopped, and though the air was still cool, sweat trickled down the back of her neck and her back. She ignored it.

Her heart pounded, throbbed even as the earth crunched beneath her shovel. Her throat burned.
Crunch.
Dump.
Crunch.
Dump. She moved in perfect strokes without slowing or stopping. Anything to avoid thinking about Ryan. It would do her no good to think about him. She had to work. And the night was the best time to do it.

Gather the equipment, her files, clear the house of their presence in case someone came, and find out as much about Kirov as she could. Figure out what would be next. Why would he bother taking her son if he knew where she was? Why not follow them home and take care of them both at once? A child was high maintenance—even if all you intended to do was kill him.

The thought ripped through her like an electric shock and brought her straight to her knees. "Oh, God." She tried to pull herself up but noiseless sobs racked her. Be strong, she told herself. Be strong for Ryan. She wiped her face with her hands, feeling the granules of dirt scratch her skin.

In the years since Mark's death, she had always been strong for Ryan. But if something happened to him—if he was—She couldn't even think it. It couldn't be true.

"You need help?"

Cody spun around on her knees, gripping the shovel like a weapon in front of her. It was almost eleven at night, and the last thing she'd expected was another voice.

Colonel Walter Turner hung his upper body over his side of the fence and stared down at her, rubbing his hands together against the cold air. Her neighbor was retired military, and everything about him made Cody uneasy. In one of the three or four times she'd been forced to share dialogue with him, she'd made the mistake of calling him an ex-marine.

"Once a marine, always a marine," he'd quipped in response. "It's like being black—you can't take it out of me. Right down to the grave."

Colonel Turner was everything Cody sought to avoid—aware, observant, suspicious, nosy, and highly intelligent. And the combination was one she wanted to stay as far from as possible.

"Just doing yard work," she lied. She'd chosen this hiding spot before she'd met Colonel Turner, but in hindsight, she should have picked a spot as far from his side of the fence as possible.

"Looks like some serious work to be doing by yourself in the middle of the night. You need help?"

"No. Thanks."

"Didn't see the boy come home tonight."

Cody stood and started to move the dirt she'd dug up into small piles. Without looking at him, she said, "He's staying at a friend's."

"Glad to hear it. I hope they were playing outside some today. He spends too much time on that computer, if you want my opinion. Kids these days, communicating through machines, blowing things up right and left. Real blood, those games show. Don't learn anything about people—don't learn to respect life and death. That's why we got all these kids walking into school with guns. It's like some damn game."

Cody didn't answer. Instead she shuffled the dirt in small circles, waiting for the colonel to leave.

"You in trouble, girl?"

The paternal tone of his voice caught Cody by surprise and she looked up.

His eyes caught hers, holding their stare with his own. His dark brow furrowed, the vertical lines between his eyes like exclamation points as he watched her.

Tearing her gaze away, she shook her head. "Just trying to get some work done before"—she paused to put her mouth around her son's name—"before R.J. gets home tomorrow." Pressing the end of the shovel to her chest, she let it dig in until it was painful. The sensation was almost a relief.

"I know trouble, and I can smell it on you sure as that dirt you're working in."

Cody felt the anger wash over her, pushing aside the fear and the hurt. "I'm very busy, Colonel. Perhaps you could leave me alone."

"Okay, Miss Cody, but I know something's up. I didn't spend thirty-seven years in the armed forces—"

"Go away, Colonel," Cody said, letting the frustration slip off her tongue. "Please," she added.

He turned his back and walked away, uttering something she couldn't make out.

Cody turned back and moved faster, digging through the dirt in the dark until she heard the clink of her shovel against the buried box.

Chapter 9

Travis watched Peter sleep long after he had read him another chapter of the latest Harry Potter novel and tucked him in. He had blue and pink stains around the collar of his red flannel pajamas from the bubble-gum ice cream. Travis, too, felt slightly ill from the McDonald's cheeseburger and french fries he'd eaten in record speed. And Mrs. Patriarcchi, or Mrs. Pat as they called her, was ready to crucify them for passing on the pork chops she'd prepared. He'd promised they'd eat them tomorrow.

He watched Peter lick his lips in his sleep and wondered if he was imagining more bubble-gum ice cream or some of the magical treats from the Harry Potter story. He knew he should get to work, and yet he just couldn't get himself to leave the room.

Running a start-up meant crazy hours. And because of the flexibility he needed with Peter, the extra time usually came in the middle of the night. Still, he wouldn't change what he had for the world. It was thrilling, even if it had its stressful moments. They would fix the program glitch. He knew they would. He only hoped they could find some money to tide them over until then.

Trimming the fat was the first necessity. They were hiring four new programmers to work fulltime on the glitch. Once they got through the initial troubleshooting phase, they wouldn't need so many technical people. He hoped that would hold things for a while. He was also pushing his designers to move on a new version before things got stale in the marketplace. New innovations, new features, they needed to push forward as quickly as possible.

Though everything seemed strong to him, the company's valuation was dropping with every failed dot-com, and he was starting to see critics of the software get more print space. He reminded himself that it was the industry, but he knew the employees were taking it hard. When so much of their compensation was tied to what the initial public offering stock price might be, it was tough to see valuations fall. That was if the stock even went public. It would.

He leaned forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees and watching the gentle wave of Peter's chest as he breathed. And despite all the company concerns, his mind still shifted constantly to R.J. O'Brien.

Cody O'Brien had made it perfectly clear she didn't want his help. But damn if he could just step aside like that. He tried to picture the man taking R.J. Had the danger been that close to his own son? He wiped his palm across his knee and shook his head. He didn't know what he'd do.

He watched Peter and let his mind work on the puzzle of R.J.'s mother. There was something about her, something more than what she said. He pictured her wiry frame, the snaking tendons in her fingers and hands. She was strong, exceptionally strong. He had seen the outline of her muscles beneath the shirt she'd worn.

She was thin, too. He'd seen a lot of thin women. Most of the ones he met these days were straight and flat from birdlike eating and whatever ridiculous aerobic ritual they suffered. But the O'Brien woman was different. She wasn't thin. She was lithe, strung like a cat and ready to pounce. Her dark hair and light eyes were stunning, and yet she seemed to do everything possible to make herself unattractive.

Maybe it all came back to the husband. He knew it was possible that it was just as she said. Women were abused. He didn't doubt it. And he'd heard the statistics.

It could happen to anyone. When he'd been building his business, he'd had an employee who'd seemed to have it all. And yet he'd discovered that her husband had been abusing her. He'd been shocked. He'd even met the husband and never thought for a moment that it was possible. He was being naive. Just because R.J.'s mom came across stronger didn't mean she wasn't exactly like his employee had been.