Cold Silence (A High Stakes Thriller) (11 page)

He pulled himself up from the chair and set the Harry Potter book on the bedside table. Then, wiping the moist hair off Peter's forehead, Travis kissed his sweaty brow. Peter licked his lips and rolled his head away from his father.

Travis padded down the hall in his bare feet, the cool hardwood floors moaning as he went. He passed his bedroom but couldn't imagine sleeping. He entered the small, dark room next to it. He had a full den downstairs, but he used this room to do some of his quieter work.

Leaning back, he settled into the chair and rubbed his eyes. He pictured Peter waiting for him outside the school. What if Peter had gone missing? What if his damn job cost him
his
child? Jesus, was it worth it? He had to do something to help Cody.

She'd told him not to help, but he couldn't just sit by. Hell, he felt responsible to start with. He wrestled with that for a moment, wondering if he really could have done anything about it. Maybe R.J.'s dad was just going to show up there anyway. Maybe a few minutes wouldn't have made a difference.

He grabbed on to the moment of relief that thought brought but couldn't sustain it.

He forced himself out of the chair. What was he thinking? This was her child. He was all she had. He left the room and walked down the curved staircase to the cold marble floor of the foyer and on to his den. It was too late now, but in the morning he'd have to help. For now, he should focus on how to make his company's money last until they could get more, if they could get more.

He sat himself down at his desk and pulled the brass cord to turn on the lamp. The light created a green hue in the dark room and branded bright spots into his vision. He leaned forward on the desk, staring down at the budget numbers.
Marketing expenses,
he started. They'd have to cut back there immediately. He made a red mark next to that.

He kept reading down the list until the numbers grew stale and their meaning was lost on him and his eyes pulled themselves closed like shades being drawn down by heavy hands.

Chapter 10

Cody pulled the last picture from its frame and sealed them all in a gallon-size Ziploc bag. The four pictures of Mark she had saved were already safely there: one of them on their wedding day; one of the three of them only minutes after Ryan was born, Cody with dark black circles under her eyes and a sweaty brow; and the third of Ryan and Mark roughhousing. It was the last picture she'd ever taken of Mark.

There was also one photo of her entire family as they had been that last Christmas. She studied their faces, the smiles, the bright colors, all the kids. She and Mark had been pinched in the center, Ryan in Mark's arms. There had been fifteen of them that day, and they'd barely all squeezed into the picture. She refused to even consider how her family had grown in her absence.

Pushing herself onward, she tossed the plastic bag in the pile of things that would go—tax records, social security cards, two Zip disks of all her system backup that she'd mail to a post office box she had in Austin, Texas, and a small sack of clothes for herself and Ryan. She erased the rest of the files on the computer and checked for prescription medications in the medicine cabinet. There was only one, cough syrup with codeine, from the time Ryan had been sick last winter. She tore the label off and put it in a bag of papers to be disposed of.

She checked her medical supply kit and then added it to their bag of clothes. The house was clear. It could as easily have been a corporate apartment or a hotel room as anyone's home. She had been sure to systematically destroy records with their names: old bills and checks were always destroyed. Cody had only one Visa card and it drew money directly from a bank account at a Northeastern bank. The bank statements were accessed only via a password on the Web. She could do that anywhere.

She took a last look through Ryan's room, lifting his favorite teddy bear, Nicky, off the bed and pressing it to her nose. The bear was named after a puppy they had had before Mark had died. The scent of Ryan pushed her to move on. She tucked the bear under her arm. He would be thrilled to see it when she found him.

She went through the rest of the rooms with the bear in one arm and checked and rechecked for any evidence of her existence. Only her fingerprints would be left. And only for a few hours. It was the last thing she needed to do in the house. But first she needed to take care of the documents.

If the Russians showed up before then, they might or might not check for her prints. There was nothing she could do about that. She'd always known there would be something left. She took out the postal card that noted the change of address to her second P.O. box in Savage, Minnesota, and set it out to make sure it got mailed first thing. There were other P.O.

boxes, all routed and rerouted to each other in a circle that only she understood. She would use them as they were needed, open new ones and close them as they moved.

She carried the last things downstairs to the basement. Then she took a final look around the house and wondered what someone would think when they entered. It had never had much in terms of personal charm. But it felt cold and foreign now, even to her. She turned away from it before the thought struck her too deeply, and set to work in the basement.

She shredded the papers to be disposed of and packed the bag of clothes, medical supplies, and Ryan's Nicky into a large plastic container in the back of the car. The container was always in it, usually empty. But it was important to her that the car looked as it always did, even if she was on the move.

When the car was packed, she set the bag of pictures on the seat beside her. Those had to be hidden separately, but she needed to take care of something else first.

She pulled the car out of the garage and down the street in the darkness. Once she'd turned right onto the next street, she flipped the lights on and drove for fifteen minutes through the Oakland hills until she was certain no one was following. She took two turns and got onto Highway 24 and headed for Jack London Square.

When she'd first arrived three years before, they had been starting to rebuild the Jack London Square area. A theater had been added; Yoshi's Sushi had moved from Claremont to the square. There were a few big shops: a Beverages and More Cody had never been in, a Cost Plus where she always bought chocolates for Ryan's stocking at Christmas and cola-bottle gummies for herself. She wished her trip there today were for something so sweet.

She passed the central area and followed the street three blocks to a much quieter area. The large produce markets she passed were closed up, even the early-morning trucks nowhere in sight. A few people milled about in front of Yoshi's, probably discussing the late show that had ended an hour before. It was the quietest part of the night now.

In a few hours, huge trucks would arrive to unload goods for the day. Cody would be long gone by then.

When she and Ryan had just arrived, Cody had sought out a safe place in one of the buildings to use for a hiding spot. She'd had to move her stuff because of one building after another being torn down until she'd discovered the loft where she went now. It was the only building in the area that still had not been updated.

She'd actually found the spot through an article in the paper. The eccentric owner had been written up for refusing to either sell or update his building. He said he'd sell it when the price hit $100 million but he was at least a decade away. In the meantime, he lived in the top loft and the bottom sat filled with junk from the home he'd had. His home had been bought by some construction company that was building condos. He'd been ripped off, he'd said, so keeping the run-down, vacant warehouse was his way of getting back.

Cody had staked the place out a million times. Despite the article, the guy seemed pretty normal to her. She sympathized with getting screwed by the system. Glen Kunka was probably in his late fifties, early sixties, and drove a gray diesel Mercedes that he pulled into the bottom part of the loft at night. He worked at a small bookstore in Berkeley, one of those that had barely hung on after the big chains had taken over. Cody had been in once and bought something. He'd been friendly and helpful, but not intrusive. She'd liked him. Unfortunately, she knew she couldn't go more than once at the risk of being remembered.

Mr. Kunka always had a stack of books under his arm when he entered his home. He turned off the main light sharply at nine, and a small light usually shone until almost midnight. She always wondered what he was reading but had never been close enough to tell.

He left every morning at nine and returned home at seven in the evening. Even the days he didn't work, he went out—usually to the streets near the bookstore where he worked. He did some shopping, or sat in the park and read. He led a quiet life, and for that Cody envied him.

She drove past the building and turned the corner before parking. She shut her lights off and waited. Ten minutes passed before she moved again. There were no lights, no motion but the cars speeding along the freeway in the distance.

Unlatching the car door slowly, Cody moved with quiet purpose, taking only her gloves and a small dustpan and broom. She shut the door behind her until she heard the lock click and headed around the back of the building, pulling on the gloves as she walked.

She entered through the same tight, square window at the back of the downstairs space where she always did. The small back lot was surrounded by a tall, rotting fence that protected her from being seen by the tenants next door.

Stepping up onto an old spigot on the back of the place, she climbed onto the windowsill and opened the window toward her. It moved a few inches, then locked in place. She reached inside, lifted the ancient fastening mechanism, and the window opened with a slow, low moan.

With the dustpan and broom tucked in the back of her jacket, she moved through the window on her belly. Her eyes closed, she lowered herself toward the floor until she could feel a file cabinet teeter beneath her foot.

She eased herself down onto the corner of the cabinet and then to a crate and finally to the floor. A heavy film of dust coated everything like paint, and she was careful to disturb only a small edge of it on the cabinet to avoid being detected. A small cloud of dust rose as she passed, and she covered her nose and mouth to avoid sneezing. Nothing had been moved in the space since she had started to come here over a year ago, but she never knew when it might happen.

Crossing to the far corner, she slid the two boxes away from the wall and edged open the door that had originally held the central electricity for the building. It was the ancient knob-and-tube electricity, and neither that nor the space had been in use for years. She reached her arm in and loosened the heavy flame-resistant pouch from its spot behind the wall. She opened the small lock on the bag using Mark's birthday as the code. Then, sitting on the floor, she took stock of the contents. Her current passport, reading Cody O'Brien, and RJ.'s. Those she took out, along with six thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. That would be enough to get them out of the country, and from there she would have access to funds from a Swiss account. But that was a last resort. She would never be able to work abroad, and she feared for how they would survive.

She took her second passport, the one that read Emily Page. She might need another one down the road. There was no matching passport for Ryan. She would worry about that later. She could find a social security number for Ryan easily enough with the obituaries and a little research.

She wondered if he would ever get to be Ryan James Riggs again. On his tombstone. The words sneaked up and slapped her. She didn't let herself even imagine it. It would do her no good now, and her energy had to be expended on the belief that he was still okay.

She found one last picture she had stored in the plastic bag and stared at Mark and Ryan. She focused on Ryan's tiny body in Mark's arms and pulled her breath in as though Oskar Kirov held it in his hands. She forced the photos from her white knuckles and locked the pouch before tucking it into her jacket to be mailed to one of her P.O. boxes tomorrow. With the money and their passports zipped into a money pouch inside her shirt, she pushed the boxes back against the wall. Pulling out the small dust broom she'd brought with her, she smoothed the dust on the floor so the path of the boxes was no longer visible and headed back to the window.

As she hit the ground outside, she looked at her watch. In and out in five minutes. She was slowing down. Too much thinking, not enough action. She was tired. The fear was slowing her down. That was exactly what Kirov would have wanted.