The Collective (24 page)

Boyce nodded, reaching out and gesturing for the phone. “If the sister calls to set up a date for her brother’s memorial service, I’ll deal with her. She needed a friendly voice to deliver the news, but you’re too close to this. I’ll handle any contact with her from now on. And if she attempts to get in touch with you via other channels, just refer her to me.”

Herc hesitated.

“Herskowitz? Are you hearing me?”

“Loud and clear, sir,” Herc said. “Loud and clear.”

Leyla sat up on the carpet, playing with the rubber animals spread around her. She loved the panda the most, and smiled and beat her heels on the floor whenever she managed to knock it over. There were other toys, too—the big plastic car keys and the weird snake whose segments were different textures,
each making a different sound—and she seemed content to play on her own, at least for the moment.

Cait sat tucked in a corner of her sofa, legs folded beneath her, and sipped at a glass of iced tea to which she had added too much lemon and not enough sugar. The modest flat-screen on the wall revealed CNN talking heads and scrolling headlines that crawled along the bottom of the screen like ants marching to a picnic.

The phone remained silent—both a taunt and a temptation. She had come home to more than twenty messages, some from friends teasing her about A-Train and others from newspapers and TV news producers trying to interview her about the incident. Cait had erased them all to free up space on the machine, but hadn’t called anyone back.

Now the news had moved on. Washington politicians squabbled, undermining one another and the nation. A D-list Hollywood skank had survived an overdose that no one dared refer to as a cry for attention. Fires raged in California, consuming thousands of acres and millions of dollars’ worth of real estate.

Worst of all were the two stories that involved children—the infant stolen from a hospital up in Maine and the string of crib deaths in the Midwest that Jordan had told her about, which the authorities were now admitting might actually have been murders. On weekends, the news seemed more than ever like an endless loop, and she had seen each report at least twice already. Add to those the family—including three-year-old twin boys—who had been killed in Fort Myers, Florida, and it had been a horrifying week in America.

She knew that such things happened all too often, but now that she was a mother, they cut her more deeply than ever. And yet she allowed the hideous news to wash over her in a constant drone. Whenever one of those stories came on, she sipped her iced tea and looked at Leyla, playing on the floor, and her heart clenched with fear and a love so ferocious that sometimes she thought the two emotions might really be just one.

Cait glanced at the time in the corner of the TV screen. Jordan and Sarah Lin ought to be arriving soon. That would be
good. Being interviewed, telling the story of the attempted abduction—and of her brother’s sudden death—would make her feel like she was doing something. She needed that. Reaching out to the television audience would be sort of like recruiting allies to her cause, and she needed allies right now.

Lynette’s question from earlier in the day resonated. She had insisted that she had people she could call, and there certainly were such people, but what comfort could they possibly provide? The people closest to her in the world were Auntie Jane and Uncle George, who had dealt with enough today, and Sean.

Don’t think about Sean
.

Her friend Ronnie had left a message asking if she would be willing to beat him up, somehow making sexual innuendo out of the whole thing. Take away innuendo and Ronnie wouldn’t have any conversational skills at all, but he was a good man. She and Jordan and Ronnie had been the Three Musketeers while serving in the Guard—one for all and all for one—and he had been one of the few who had never teased her about her relationship with Nizam. A blond tank of a kid named Stu Chadbourn had been the one to tell her about Nizam’s death, though Ronnie was the first to say he was sorry.

But she’d see Jordan soon enough, and she didn’t want to go through the process of explaining it all to Ronnie over the phone.

Then there were her two best friends from high school. Miranda and Nick were polar opposites still, one aloof and conservative and the other a portrait of laissez-faire, yet she had realized over the years that both had managed to set themselves apart from the world of ordinary people. Miranda had been privileged from birth and had crafted herself a life as both a prominent corporate lawyer and a Boston socialite. Nick Pulaski lived in a room over his divorced mother’s garage and did just enough carpentry to keep himself in pot, beer, and gas.

She didn’t really know them anymore. Or, perhaps more accurately, she knew them too well. But either of them would come if she called, even if only for old time’s sake. Cait knew
there was power in shared experience. She herself cherished the best of her childhood memories so fiercely that she would have been willing to do almost anything for Nick or Miranda if they needed her, not because they meant anything to her now but because of how much they had once meant to her.

There were others, from before, during, and after Iraq. Even Upstairs David would have offered her a shoulder to cry on and a sympathetic ear.

But what would she say if she called them? How insane would it all sound? Could she tell Miranda Russo that she thought her brother might actually be a spy, and that she feared he might have been killed because of it? Ronnie and Jordan would believe that, but Cait was not sure even she believed it. Sean vanished from the world for weeks at a time, his movements veiled in secrecy. Wasn’t it possible all of this was another feint, a part of his work? She hadn’t seen a body, and wondered if Herc had. This morning, her brother had been a voice on the phone, and now he was ashes in a jar, and his government employers wanted her to think those had been Sean’s wishes?

Bullshit. He would never have wanted to hurt her, to deprive her of a chance to say good-bye, and that left only two possibilities. Either the whole story had been a lie and Sean was still alive somewhere, or he had been cremated so quickly in order to prevent an independent autopsy that would reveal the true cause of death.

Cait hated how much easier it was to believe the latter. After all of the hints Sean had dropped and the jokes he had made, it seemed all too likely. But the idea that he was gone, that she would never see him again, alive or dead, was too surreal for her to accept.

On the floor, Leyla began to fuss. She had flopped over and pushed herself up, as if she might start to crawl. Most of the time she seemed too lazy to put much effort into learning. Even now, she was trying to reach the plastic keys, which were her favorite thing to gnaw on, without actually crawling. The keys were just out of reach and the baby’s face turned red with irritation.

“Come on,” Cait said. “You have to learn to do these things for yourself.”

When trouble came, the McCandless family had always circled the wagons. That hadn’t changed, even if she and Leyla were the only McCandlesses left.

The doorbell rang.

Cait flinched, picking Leyla up and holding her close as she turned to look at the door. It took her a second or two to realize it must be Jordan and Sarah, and then another second to feel foolish.

Even so, she flashed on the locked metal box on the floor of her closet, and the gun that lay within it, nestled atop her life insurance policy, her bank bonds, and Leyla’s birth certificate. An extra clip and a small box of ammunition rested in her sock drawer.

Cait put Leyla on her right hip and held her away from the door.

“Who is it?” she called.

“It’s us,” a male voice said.

“Jordan?”

“Yeah, Cait. It’s me.”

The restatement—from “us” to “me”—felt personal and intimate, and a rush of gratitude went through her. He was a good man, and he had always cared for her. He had been her friend before in times when she had felt incapable of reaching out for one, and here he was again.

But when she opened the door and saw the concern not just in Jordan’s eyes, but in Sarah’s as well, her heart began to break all over again. Cait had been forcing herself to be strong, to do without the support that friends might give her. Now she reached out and pulled Jordan to her, hugging him close with one arm even as she carried Leyla in the other.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Thank you so much for coming.”

“Of course,” he replied, his breath warm on her neck, his newly trimmed beard scraping her skin. She couldn’t suppress the delicious shiver that went through her.

“When Lynette told me what was going on, I asked her for the assignment,” Jordan added.

He seemed not to have noticed the reaction he’d gotten out
of her, and that was good. Her life was confusing enough as it was without trying to examine her feelings about Jordan too closely just now.

Cait stepped back, smiling at him. “I asked for you, too.”

Jordan returned her sad smile, but then Cait turned to look at Sarah Lin. They had only worked together a few times, but Sarah had impressed her as friendly and smart and professional, much more open and human than some of the other reporters at Channel 7—especially sports asshole Mike Duffy.

“Sarah,” Cait said. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

The reporter stepped inside, smiled at Leyla, and then focused on Cait.

“We’ll do everything we can. We’re going to help you catch these guys.”

Cait faltered a bit, and she knew Sarah must have seen the doubt in her eyes. But the reporter probably didn’t know the whole story yet. She didn’t know about Sean.

“More than anything, I just want the truth.”

Still stiff from her flight, Rachael Voss stood in the second-floor corridor of the Comfort Inn in Bangor, trying to figure out how to knock on the door to Room 227 while carrying a cup of coffee in each hand. After a few seconds, she gave up and just kicked the door a few times. The café across the road brewed a decent cup, and the smell alone enticed her. She took a sip, and then kicked the door again.

“Okay, okay!” came a voice from the other side.

“I hope you have your pants on,” Voss said.

Her partner opened the door, his hair mussed from the pillow, still half-asleep. “Funny.” But Josh didn’t look amused. His expression was grim, his eyes haunted from the discovery,
only hours before, of the remains of the Kowaliks’ newborn daughter.

Voss glanced at the worn gray gym shorts he must have just tugged on and smiled, trying to lift his spirits. “Those will do. I take it I interrupted nap time?”

“Every cop in the state of Maine is out beating the bushes for this guy. If he’s still here, they’ll find him,” Josh said, with what she knew was false confidence. “I knew I wouldn’t be any good without some rest. It’s not like we got any last night. I figured I’d get a couple of hours’ sleep while you were in the air.”

“Yeah,” Voss said. “Me, too. Slept on the plane.”

She and Turcotte had come directly from the airport. On the plane, knowing that al-Din was still in the wind, every minute had seemed like an eternity.

She handed Josh one of the coffees and moved past him into the room. He shut the door behind her and Voss crossed to the desk and slid into the chair. The bedspread had puddled on the floor at the foot of the bed and the sheets were in disarray.

“I wasn’t sure you’d be alone,” she said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Josh picked up a discarded T-shirt emblazoned with a stylishly faded Batman logo. She wondered if this ensemble was a grown-up version of superhero pajamas.

“I don’t know,” she said, sipping her coffee. “I thought maybe you’d be with Chang.”

“Really?”

Voss shrugged. “You’re not laughing. And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

“Of course I’ve thought about it. Nala’s impressive. Smart. Smokin’ hot. But no, I’m not having sex with her. Especially not today.”

Voss nodded, her smile vanishing. “No, I guess not.” She sipped her coffee. “So she’s ‘Nala’ now?”

Josh sighed and looked at the clock. “Yeah.”