Salem's Cipher (34 page)

97

Alcatraz

S
alem's unstable world rocked further to the right. The last time she'd seen Connor Sawyer was exactly one week ago when he'd scared her so badly that she'd peed her pants. He hadn't crossed her mind since Bel had shared her opinion of him back at the Minneapolis airport.

If we get through this, you and me, and we find out what happened to our moms, next time you see Connor, you flush him like the turd he is.

Here the turd stood, stupidly, blondly handsome, embraced by fog, streams of reporters splitting around him as if he was a rock in a river. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Bel called me.” He stepped closer.

The thickness of the mist carpeted her eyes and ears but heightened her other senses. “What?”

“Bel said you'd be here, that I should come and save you from yourself. She promised she'd take care of everything.”

Salem heard the words, understood each of their meanings individually, but couldn't combine them to make a larger story. They were square thoughts trying to breach the circle of her mind. “Bel would never do that. She'd never betray me.”

“She said you'd say that.” His voice sounded like he was smiling, but her disorientation had turned his head into a shadowy black thumbprint on top of his neck. “Come here, and I'll tell you what else she said.”

He grabbed her wrist, pulled her to his chest. A stranger would think they were hugging. He tipped his mouth to her ear, his lips brushing the tender curve of her lobe. “I liked your hair better long.”

She felt the sharpest kiss in the palm of her hand.

She swatted at it and glanced down.

He held a glistening needle. “I'm sorry, Lemming. They paid me so much.”

He began leading her toward the rocky edge, a rudimentary plastic fence the only barrier between Salem and the bottomless sea. She heard it roar and sing. The water had been hungry for her for years. She knew she should fight, but her brain was separating from its mooring in a way that made her care about nothing. Her bones seemed to be floating free.

A man walking by stopped. “Is she all right?”

“Seasick from the ferry.” Connor flashed his best law-school grin. “I'm getting her out of the sun. We'll be fine! You don't want to miss the speech.”

The man walked away.

Salem tried to open her mouth, to ask for help, but she was too spongy. Connor threw her arm over his neck and his hand around her waist, steering her away from the steepest part of the ledge, checking over his shoulder before ducking under a rope and stumbling down a steep embankment. They were out of sight of the crowds, on a tiny chunk of the island that hadn't been used in decades, its paths crumbling.

Connor reached a tilting utility shed and led her behind it, the building shielding them from the casual view of anyone who peered over the ledge. The shed also blocked the sun, turning the air ten degrees cooler here where it smelled of brine and damp. They stood on a table-sized lip that gave way to a steep, craggy pile of rocks and vines dropping sharply into the agitated sea.

“I think I need that messenger bag,” Connor said, setting her on a rock abutting the utility shed. He tried to lift it over her head. “Let go of it.”

She glanced down. She was indeed holding the bag with both hands. He tried to pry her fingers loose. He couldn't.

“Let it go. You don't want to make a scene, do you?”

Surprisingly, she found that she did. She loosed one hand from the strap, and with a remote, scientific accuracy, she grabbed Connor's balls and twisted. He fell forward, and still she didn't let go. When the effort of holding his testicles above his body became too much, she dropped him.

She stood. Her legs were shaky, but she was going to get to the speech. She was going to hand the bag to Hayes before the poison rocketing through her veins reached her heart. Her only hope was that she'd pushed the needle away fast enough that she hadn't received a full dose, that she'd bought herself enough life to complete her mission. She began float-walking back toward the main path, stumbling over the loose gravel, tripping on the vining plants. Behind her, Connor charged to his feet.

He lunged at her and pushed her over the side, toward the angry sea.

She screamed as she fell, reaching out for any purchase. Her hands found an ancient metal cord screwed into the slippery rock face above an eroding path no wider than Salem's feet. She scrabbled for the cable, its rust and fray piercing the palm of her left hand. Warm blood coursed down her wrist, but she didn't let go. She couldn't. The ocean would have her.

She squeezed past the pain and pulled herself up, arms quivering, until her feet found what was left of the rock path.

Connor Sawyer's head appeared above her, blocking the sun. She was just beyond his reach. His head disappeared and was replaced by his legs.

He was dropping himself toward the ledge on which she stood.

“Ready or not, here I come,” he grunted.

98

Alcatraz

J
ason was putting the final touches on the banquet table.

“Melissa!”

He glanced over his shoulder. The head of catering was staring at him. He pitched his voice high. “Yes?”

“Make sure her chamomile tea is hot,” the woman said. “They said she'll want it piping, and she needs it now, before she starts speaking.”

Jason nodded. “You got it.”

A screech of feedback outside the white catering tent indicated Hayes was just about to begin. Everything was happening exactly on schedule, following to the letter the plan that had been put into place one year earlier. Geppetto would have retrieved his gun from underneath the toilet bowl of the third stall men's room, where it had been taped. The gun had never been fired, the bullets specially constructed so they carried no scent. The dogs that had swept the island would not have discovered it.

Clancy Johnson would be in position.

The killers were three deep: If one failed, the next would step up.

Gina Hayes's life was no longer hers.

Jason was the first player up in the three-man killing team.

He began to prepare Senator Hayes's tea. With specially gloved hands, he dabbed the Polonium 210, a radioactive poison 250,000 times stronger than cyanide, into three of the teacups. It would be a gruesome death drawn out over several days as Hayes was poisoned from the inside out, her organs failing, skin splitting and weeping, her hair shedding in clumps, vomiting when she wasn't shitting her brains out. The poison was a favorite of assassins as it was undetectable, easy to smuggle, untreatable, and didn't begin working until well after the killer had left the scene.

The ensuing chaos, particularly if Gina Hayes was elected president tomorrow, would turn the country, if not the world, upside down.

Chaos was the ripest soil for the Hermitage's seed.

Finally, Jason would be good enough.

99

Alcatraz

I
f Connor reached her, he would toss her into the sea. If she let go, she would fall into the water without his help. She had no choice but to climb parallel to the water away from Connor, following the metal cord, her life a sputtering flame poised over the churning ocean.

She closed her eyes and put one hand over the other, her feet searching for purchase, moving as quickly as she could, which wasn't fast at all. The trauma was comfortable, almost, in its familiarity.

Water.

Death.

Shock unlocked shock.

Salem was defenseless as the full memory finally, horrifically, washed over her.

She is on shore, twelve years old and wearing her first bikini, so proud of its rainbow colors, of her flat belly, of the way the shadow of her hips curves on the movie screen of the dirty brown beach.

Her dad has gone into the water. She hears a sound by the cabin. She goes to check. When she looks back at the water, her dad is gone, has been underwater far too long, but she's too scared to save him, to even scream for help.

“No!” She is startled by her own yell. It forces her eyes open. Connor is maybe five feet behind her. Another twenty feet in the other direction is a doorway cut into the high wall of the Alcatraz recreation yard, from back when there was a stone deck on the other side, before the sea had eaten the rock.

Salem closes her eyes again. The drug Connor injected her with has turned her upside down, stealing her focus and her will. Her attention begins to narrow.

No
.

Because it didn't happen that way.

Salem is on shore, twelve years old and wearing her first bikini, so proud of its rainbow colors, of her flat belly, of the way the shadow of her hips curves on the movie screen of the dirty brown beach.

Her dad walks into the water. She hears something and puts down her book to walk to the cabin, thinking it might be Vida.

There's someone in the shadows.

It's the fat-fingered man, the one who had picked up the delivery three days earlier. He's come back for Salem. Somehow, she's led him on. That's why he's here, to see her in a swimsuit. She feels her blood drain from her.

She is paralyzed by fear. She looks toward the lake. Her dad has disappeared. The water has eaten him. If she goes in, it'll eat her too. She moans.

The fat-fingered man reaches for her.

She runs toward the lake. Nothing is more important to her than her dad.

She hits an invisible wall, landing on her back. She feels heat slide down her cheek. She can't move.

When she opens her eyes again, the sun has shifted. Her cheek is throbbing. It'll take five stitches to close that wound. Police guess she fainted and split her face when she hit the ground.

She hadn't. Someone had sliced her.

She hadn't just watched her dad die.

She'd tried to save him.

She had backfilled the details of her father's death because of shock and shame; shame because she'd believed she was the reason the fat-fingered man had come to the lake, because she'd fainted rather than save her dad, because she'd laid on her back while he died.

But that wasn't how it happened.

The realization dropped chains from her neck.

Her eyes shot open again. She tasted saltwater on her lips. Connor had closed the distance between them. He was reaching for her, his hand scant inches from hers. Slippery blood ran down her wrists from her death grip on the fraying threads of the wire, but she was faring better than Connor, who kept slipping off the slick rock. Salem's size and her lower center of gravity were an advantage, but barely. She knew she had to move, but whatever Connor had injected her with was turning her legs to mush.

The hungry ocean foamed below, a wet black tongue licking salaciously at sharp sandstone teeth.

Connor gripped her wrist.

His hand was cold. Their eyes met.

She could read his intentions as clearly as if he'd shouted them.

He planned to fling her into the ocean.

Salem tightened the grip of her other hand around the frayed cable.

The pain of metal gouging her flesh pierced the poisoned fog clouding her brain and galvanized her to action.

In a move she'd learned in Krav Maga, she twisted her hand under his, slamming the knife edge of her hand into the weak part of his grip. She'd seen Bel perform it successfully on Ernest, twice.

It worked. Her hand was free.

Connor's eyes widened, and they stayed wide because she didn't stop there. She flung out her leg and kicked him with everything she had, her strong, thick thigh powering the heel of her foot as it slammed into his stomach. He grabbed for the cable as he stumbled backward, but his grasping fingers missed and he tumbled over the ledge.

She didn't watch him fall, but she heard the wet
thud
before the ocean swallowed his screams and his body.

There wasn't time to feel or to catch her breath. She had to keep moving even though the effort expended to save herself from Connor was enough to send her to her knees.

The doorway through the stone was just ahead. She was near enough to see the catering table on the other side of the doorless frame, its top covered by a smooth white tablecloth, everything so normal and just out of reach.

If she could beg one final request from her body, one last hurrah before her system shut down, she could propel herself through that doorway.

She got to her feet and took another step on the crumbling ledge, focusing on the doorway ahead and the slippery shelf beneath her feet, poising to jump. She could do this. She
had
to do this.

Her legs threatened to collapse beneath her, but somehow she forced them to flex. Her left foot slid out from under. She fell heavily to one knee, saving herself from going over the narrow lip of rock by her grip on the cable. But when she tried to pull herself back to her feet, her knees wouldn't cooperate. She hadn't the strength to get herself off the ledge.

She was so close, yet she was going to fail.

Movement through the doorway in the rock snagged her eye. A woman was dressed in a white cooking frock and matching cap. One of the caterers, perhaps? She held a glass vial and was dropping liquid into the teacups.

Salem opened her mouth to yell for help.

She stopped.

She'd seen those eyes in Massachusetts, outside the First Church and then in the face of the woman wearing the black blazer inside the Hawthorne Hotel lobby. The same snake eyes had gazed at her from the face of the man who'd grabbed her outside the Dolores Mission, rested in the face of the beautiful man who'd held a knife at her neck at Beale's vault.

They all belonged to the same person.

This person, this creature, could change the shape of his face.

And he intended to poison Senator Gina Hayes.

The man glanced up as if he heard Salem's realization. His hand shot into the vest of his catering uniform. He pulled out a knife.

Of course. A weapon that would not raise alarms if transported by a caterer.

You could sneak in anywhere in a caterer's outfit.

Anger gave Salem the strength she needed to launch herself to her feet and through the doorway, toward him.

She was inside the catering tent, on firm footing, but still her legs were jelly. The fake caterer strode toward her with deadly intent, knife in hand. But Salem's sudden appearance drew the attention of several men in suits, who were also rushing toward her. Was that Agent Stone?

Time suspended itself.

Through the opening of the tent twenty feet in front of her, Salem spotted Senator Gina Hayes, her back straight and strong. If Salem yelled, she could get the Senator's attention. She opened her mouth, but only a croak came out.

On the other side of Hayes, facing Salem's direction, in the very front row, Bel stared up at the senator, her face tight underneath her disguise.

Security ran toward Hayes, intent on pulling her offstage into the safety of the tent. Before they could reach her, a shot screamed out, the sound echoing off the stone, even as Bel leapt in front of Hayes.

More gunshots cried in the sunshine as Bel fell to the ground, her limbs folding in on themselves like a broken doll's.

The last thing Salem saw before she was buried beneath the suits of men was a perfect rose blossoming on Bel's back.