In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel (29 page)

The more she thought about it, the angrier
she became. Why her? Why was she being set up to fail, and why had
the same been done to the other agents before her? What were their
sins that had landed them in this hell? But more importantly, what
had they discovered that they were now complicit in hiding?

Her mind raced through scenarios, none of
which made any more sense than the files from which she was
working. Why they had been redacted by the process of apparently
deliberate—and definitely egregious—omission was obviously a part
of this mystery. One thing that kept coming back around was her
bizarre phone conversation with Agent Keene.

What was it that he’d told her? ‘Call him
after Christmas Day if she still had any questions but that he
didn’t expect to be hearing from her… Not about this case
anyway?’

What kind of sense did that make? It
certainly sounded as if he knew something but wasn’t about to spill
it. If there was a brass ring out there, and he and the other
agents had grabbed it, why wasn’t this case solved? Why was she
here now? And why was there almost certainly going to be another
body cooling in the morgue if they had already found an answer to
this puzzle?

She sighed and stepped back from the bed,
slipping her fingers up through her loose hair, pushing it away
from her face, and holding it atop her head. Staring at the piles
of useless paper was just giving her a headache. She’d only been at
it for a few minutes, but she was already dying for a break.

She gave in to that desire. With a sigh she
wandered over to her suitcase and dug out the bottle of ibuprofen.
Then, she opened a warm soda and washed down a pair of the caplets
with a quick swig from the can. She knew she should probably just
lie down and try to nap as much as she could. It was going to be a
very long night in a very creepy house, and she needed to be
clear-headed and alert. Wearing herself down even more by chasing
her tail wasn’t going to help accomplish that at all.

She started to take another drink, then
stopped herself, held the soda can in front of her face, and glared
at it, her mouth twisting into a thoughtful frown. Continuing to
pour caffeine into her system wasn’t going to do her much good
either. Shaking her head, she dumped the can into the sink, then
walked over to the desk and sat down. Hopefully the ibuprofen would
start kicking in soon, and she could relax. However, until that
happened, she wasn’t going to be able to even think about sleeping.
While she waited for the marriage of human biology and
pharmaceutical chemistry to be consummated, she could pass the time
checking her email. Maybe when she was finished with that, the pain
would be dulled, and she would feel up to cleaning the papers off
the bed again.

She reached out and thumped her middle finger
on the touchpad, causing the slowly winking amber light on the
front edge of the notebook computer to hiccup mid-flash and then
glow solid blue. There was a soft whirr, the screen flickered for a
second, and then it flared to life. Staring back at her was the box
with the taunting prompt: ENTER ENCRYPTION KEY.

Constance skated her finger over the pad,
pulling the arrow-shaped cursor down to the task bar, then started
to click herself over to the email client. Her finger hovered over
the button, hesitating as she continued to stare at the leering box
in the center of the screen.

“Oh, what the hell…” she muttered, then
shifted forward in the chair and moved her fingers up to the home
row of the keyboard.

The prompt was still winking in the
encryption field, so with a quick series of taps she spelled out
“FRUITCAK” and dropped the fifth digit of her right hand down on
the enter key with a heavy finality. The system whirred, flickered,
and then as she’d seen countless times before, it announced:
INCORRECT KEY!

“Yeah, figured as much…” she mumbled.

She started to drag her finger across the pad
once again but stopped. Pursing her lips, she creased her forehead
and slitted her eyes for a moment. Reaching forward, she allowed
her fingers to stab the alphanumerics once again. This time she
keyed in “FRUITC8K.”

She stared at the eight simple characters for
a moment, then stiffened her index finger and drove it down with a
deliberate stab against the return key. Falling slowly back in the
chair as the screen winked and the hard drive whirred, she frowned
at the computer and waited for the inevitable error message.

The drive continued to spin, and the backlit
LCD panel flickered as the computer clunked through the hackneyed
routine. Five seconds passed, then ten. After fifteen, Constance
raised an eyebrow and started to sit forward. At twenty-five, the
installed reader software was opening. At thirty, it had maximized
to fill the display, and a document was in the process of
loading.

Judging from the progress on the status bar,
it was sizeable.

AFTER
a while, you discover that
darkness isn’t really what you think it is.

You get used to it. And when you do, it stops
being the absence of light. In a way, it becomes its own kind of
illumination—a mix of blue, and black, and gray, with shapes and
shadows everywhere. There are things you can see, and things you
can feel, and things that you just somehow know.

That’s what darkness really is.

Of course, the getting used to it part
doesn’t happen right away. Accepting the darkness for what it is
takes some time. Constance didn’t know how long a span that
happened to be, but since the world around her was a mix of blue,
and black, and gray with shapes and shadows everywhere, she knew
she must have been in the darkness for at least that long. But to
tell the truth, she really couldn’t be sure, because in a peculiar
way, it seemed like it had been much longer, and it seemed like it
had been no time at all.

A terrible noise pierced Constance’s skull
and she pressed her palms tight against her ears, squeezing her
eyes closed to shut out the brilliant darkness. Now the sound of
her own breathing became loud and inescapable, trapped behind her
hands to echo inside her head.

She waited.

The terrible noise, blunted only slightly by
her hands, reverberated against her again. She steeled herself in
fearful anticipation of the next blast, but it didn’t come.

Now only the sounds of her breaths filled her
ears.

She let go and drifted.

Constance was so cold that her skin was numb,
but that didn’t stop the pain. It couldn’t. Not on the inside, and
that’s where she felt it most. Her body was aching in ways she had
never known before, even during her time at Quantico. Back during
those first few weeks of physical training at the academy, more
than once she’d been certain she was going to die. But this wasn’t
like that at all. This was worse. And it was different.

It wasn’t just physical.

It was beyond merely that. It was a violating
kind of ache that never ended. It pulsed straight through her core,
making her want to vomit. In fact, her mouth tasted sour, so she
wondered if she already had but that she’d simply forgotten.

The terrible noise came again, loud and
urgent. Behind it was a strange rattle. She reached to press her
hands against her ears again, but the noise was too quick for her.
It rang out and penetrated her skull with its violent sound. The
rattle forced her to clench her teeth as it filled her head with a
disharmonic chord.

Then silence… And the silence continued.

Constance sighed. The ache seemed to be gone
now, but it had left a phantom in its stead. While the pain itself
had faded, the violation remained, and the bitter taste of bile
still survived on the back of her tongue.

The silence shattered like crystal.

The terrible noise bit into her brain,
forcing a familiar pattern to form. Sharp notes escalated in front
of a hard plastic chitter. Midway through the awful chime a loud
clatter joined in, followed almost immediately by a dull thud.

Then the terrible noise sounded again and
again.

Constance came awake with a start, snapping
her eyes open and sucking in a quick breath. It was a mix of blue,
and black, and gray with shapes and shadows everywhere throughout
the room, but the shapes and shadows were different than her recent
memory. Or was that memory just a dream? She blinked and exhaled
hard, fighting to push away the fog that was clouding her head.

The urgent peal of her cell phone tore a wide
swath through the quiet once again. She breathed in, then exhaled
with a deep groan as she rolled over and reached for the
nightstand, fumbling through the shadows for the screaming device.
Her hand came up empty. She shifted then pushed up on her elbow and
groped some more, sending her eyes along with her hand to go
searching in the blue and the black and the gray. Still
nothing.

She yawned and then cleared her throat. The
fog was starting to lift, and she vaguely recalled a clatter and
thud. Rolling forward onto her stomach, she thrust her arm over the
side of the bed and pawed the carpet below. It was rough and cold.
She was ready to give up when her fingers brushed against something
hard. She wrapped her hand around it and then rolled over onto her
back.

The device had fallen silent. She cleared her
throat again and swallowed hard. Her throat was dry and her mouth
not much better. Trying to will away the remnants of sleep, she
held the phone up and aimed her bleary eyes at its glowing
display.

It read: 5 MISSED CALLS.

She started to thumb over to the lists when
it began to bleat out a familiar ringtone once again. She pressed
the answer button, cutting off the tune, then lazily pushed the
device up against her ear.

“Yeah, Ben…” she answered; her voice was as
thin and arid as her throat.

“Constance?” Ben’s concern was wrapped
tightly around the words that issued from the speaker. “You
okay?

She coughed, then cleared her throat a third
time. It didn’t really help. “Yeah…” she croaked. “I’m fine…”

“I wake you up?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sorry…” he replied, although it was relief
that threaded through his voice. “When ya’ didn’t answer right away
I started ta’ get a little worried.”

“Like you needed another excuse,” she
mumbled.

“Sue me.”

“Too much trouble,” she replied, her words
quiet and lazy. “What time is it anyway?”

“‘
Bout ten after five.”

Her heart thumped and she rolled her eyes
quickly around the shadowy room. “In the evening, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” she breathed.

“When’d ya’ finally crash?”

“Around three.”

“That ain’t much sleep. Wanna just call me
back later when ya’ get up?”

“No…” she grumbled, pushing herself up and
swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “Getting up now. My
alarm is set to go off in another few minutes anyway.”

Just across from her the heater was blowing,
but the room still felt cold. She stood up and padded over to it,
then checked the controls. The dial was already set to high;
however, lukewarm air was all that seemed to be pushing up from the
vent. She positioned herself in front of it anyway, stretching in
an attempt to loosen a few kinks.

She turned slowly and allowed the air to blow
up across her back as well. It really didn’t help much. After a
moment she gave up trying to get warm, wandered over to the door,
and flipped the light switch. A soft glow filled the room, but to
her it seemed as bright as the sun, so she squinted against the
onslaught.

“You still there?” Ben asked.

“Yeah… I’m here…” she replied, her voice
still a tired mumble. “Just trying to wake up.”

“You’re pushin’ yourself too hard, hon,” Ben
told her. “You really should’ve hit the sack when we got off the
phone this mornin’.”

She stretched again, letting out a
semi-satisfied groan, then admonished, “Stop being such a mother
hen. I had something I had to follow up on. You know how it
works.”

“Yeah, I do…” he replied. “But did it get ya’
anywhere?”

She glanced over at her notebook computer. It
was in standby mode once again, screen dark and power light slowly
winking its amber glow. He had asked her a fair question; however,
she honestly didn’t have a solid answer.

“Not sure yet,” she breathed softly as her
mind began to wander. “Right now I’m still trying to connect the
dots.”

“Prob’ly be easier if ya’ had some more
rest.”

She didn’t reply because she had stopped
paying attention to him. While still holding the phone to her ear
she stepped over to the desk and tapped the computer keyboard. The
machine whirred back to life as she watched. A moment later when
the display clicked on, the multi-page document was staring back at
her. She had saved the unencrypted version to her flash drive as
soon as it was done loading this morning, but she found some solace
in the fact that the original had not inexplicably disappeared
while she slept.