The Heaven Trilogy (21 page)

He did not respond. She was an intercessor. It made sense.

“Intercede without ceasing. Eight hours a day.”

“You spend eight hours a day praying for Kent?”

“Yes. And I will do so until it is over.”

“Until
what
is over, Helen?”

She looked at him directly. “Until this game is over.”

He studied her, looking for any sign of insincerity. He could see none. “So now it's a game? I'm not sure God plays games.”

She shrugged. “Choose your own words, then. I have been called to pray until it is over.”

Bill shook his head with disbelief. “This is unbelievable. I feel like we've been transported back to some Old Testament story.”

“You think? This is nothing. You should read Revelation. Things get really strange later.”

The sense of her words struck at him. He'd never thought of history in those terms. There had always been biblical history, the time of burning bushes and talking donkeys and tongues of fire. And there was the present—the time of normalcy. What if Helen's peculiar view behind the scenes was really just an unusual peek at the way things really were? And what if he was being allowed to peek into this extraordinary “normalcy” for a change?

They sat and talked for a long while after that. But Helen did not manage to shed any more light on his questions. He concluded it was because she herself knew little more. She was seeing through a glass dimly. But she was indeed seeing.

And if she was right, this drama of hers—this game—It was indeed all just beginning.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Week Seven

LACY CARTWRIGHT leaned back in the lounge chair on her balcony, drinking coffee, enjoying the cool morning breeze. It was ten o'clock. Having a day off midweek had its advantages, she thought, and one of them was the quiet, out here under a bright blue Boulder sky while everyone else worked. She glanced over her body, thankful for the warmth of sun on her skin. Just last week Jeff Duncan had called her petite. Heavens! She was thin, maybe, and not an inch over five-three, but petite? Her coworker at the bank had said it with a glint in his eye, and she had suspected then that the man had a crush on her. But it had been under two years since her husband's death. She was not ready to engage a man.

The breeze feathered her face, and she lifted a hand to sweep the blonde strands behind her ear. Her hair rested on her shoulders in lazy curls, framing hazel eyes that smiled. A thin sheen of suntan oil glistened on her pale belly between a white halter top and jean shorts. Some women seemed to relish baking in the sun—lived for it even. Goodness! A picture of a hot dog sizzling on a grill popped into her mind, and she let it hang there for a moment. Its red skin suddenly split, and the image fizzled.

Lacy turned her head and studied the distant clouds looming black toward the southeast. Denver had had its share of weather lately, and it appeared the area was in for a little more. Which was another reason she liked it up here in Boulder more than in the big city. In Denver, if you weren't dealing with weather, you were dealing with smog. Or at the very least, traffic, which was worse than either. She ought to know—she'd spent most of her life down there.

But not anymore. After John's death two years earlier she had upped and moved here. Started a new career as a teller and busied herself with the monumental task of ridding her chest of its ache. She'd done it all well, she thought. Now she could get on with the more substantive issues of starting over. Like lying out in the sun, waiting for the UV rays to split her skin like that hot dog. Goodness!

A high-pitched squeal jerked her mind from its reflections. She spun toward the sliding glass door and realized the awful sound was coming from her condo. As if a pig had gotten its snout caught in a door and was protesting. But of course there were no pigs in there, squealing or not. There was, however, a washing machine, and if she wasn't mistaken, the sound was actually coming from the laundry room, where she had started a load of whites fifteen minutes ago.

The sound suddenly jumped an octave and wailed like a siren. Lacy scrambled from the lounger and ran for the laundry room. It would be just her luck that old Mrs. Potters next door was jabbing at the oversized nine-one-one numbers on her trusty pink telephone at this very moment.

Lacy saw the soapy water before she reached the door, and her pulse spiked, midstride. Not that she'd never seen soapy water before—saw it all the time, but never bubbling under a door like some kind of monster foaming at its mouth. She felt the wet seep between her toes through the navy carpet a good five feet from the door. She let out a yelp and tiptoed to the door. This was not good.

The door swung in over an inch of gray water. The washing machine rocked madly, squealing, and Lacy dove for the control knob. Her palm smashed it in, which under normal conditions would have killed the thing right then. But evidently things were no longer normal in this room, because the boxy old machine just kept rocking and wailing.

The plug! She had to pull the plug. One of those big fat plugs behind the contraption. Water bubbled over the top of the washer and ran down to the floor in streams. Frantic now, Lacy flopped belly-down on the shaking appliance and dove for the back. The plug stuck stubbornly. She squirmed over the lid so that her feet dangled, all too aware of the water soaking her clothes. She put her full weight into the next tug. The plug came free, sending her flying backward, off the dying machine and to the floor like a fish spilled from a net.

She struggled from the floor, grateful for the ringing silence. In all the commotion her hair had attracted enough water to leave it dripping. She gazed about, and her stomach knotted at the sight. A pig stuck in the door might have been better.

Before John died this would all have been different. She would simply call the precinct and have him run by to take care of things. For her it would be a quick shower and then perhaps off to lunch.

But that was before. Before the cancer had ravaged his body and sent him to the grave exactly two months before he would have made sergeant. An image of her late husband all decked out in those navy blues and shiny brass buttons drifted through her mind. He was smiling, because he had always smiled. A good man. A perfect cop. The only man she could imagine herself with. Ever.

Lacy bent over her oak dinette table half an hour later, the phone book spread yellow before her, a paper towel protecting the phone from her blackened fingers. Her attempt at messing with gears under the machine had proved futile. A lazy voice filled her ear.

“Frank,” it drawled. Frank was chewing gum by the sounds of his rhythmic smacking. He'd obviously slept through the etiquette portion of his plumber-school training.

“Hi, Frank. This is Lacy Cartwright. I'm guessing you're a certified Goldtech technician, right?”

“Yes, ma'am. What can I do for you?”
Smack, smack.
She swallowed.

“Well, I have a problem out here, Frank. The water pump on my washing machine somehow got stuck open and flooded the floor. I need it repaired.”

“Stuck open, huh?” A hint of amusement rang in the man's voice. “And what model number are we talking about?”

“J-28,” she said, ready for the question.

“Well, you see? Now there's a problem, because J-28s don't get stuck open. J-28s use pumps operated on a normally closed solenoid, and if anything, they get stuck closed. You hear any sounds when this machine went belly up?”

“It squealed.”

“It squealed, huh? I'll bet it squealed.” He chuckled. “Yes, ma'am, they sure know how to squeal, them Monroe pumps.” The phone went silent. Lacy was wondering where they had found Frank. Seemed to know pumps, all right. But maybe his own pump was not reaching the wellhead.

When he did not offer any further comment, she spoke. “So what do I do?”

“Well, you need a new pump, Miss Cartwright.”

Another short silence. “Can you install a new pump for me?”

“Sure, I can. It's not a question of
can,
ma'am. I've been putting in new pumps for ten years.” An edge had come to his voice midsentence. She lifted her eyes and caught her reflection in the dining room mirror. Her blonde hair had dried in tangles.

“The problem is, we don't have any Monroe pumps in stock today. So you see, even if I wanted to come out there, which I couldn't do for three days anyway, I couldn't do it because I don't have anything to do it with.” He chuckled again.

Lacy blinked. She suddenly wasn't sure she even
wanted
Frank to fix her washing machine. “Is it hard?”

“Is what hard?”

“Do you think I could replace the pump?”

“Any idiot could replace that pump, Miss.”
Evidently.
“Three bolts and a few wires, and you're in and out before you know it. I could do it with a blindfold on. In fact, I
have
done it with a blindfold on.”
Good for you, Frankie.
“But, like I said, Honey. We have no pumps.”

“Where else can I get a pump?”

“Nowhere. At least nowhere in Boulder. You go to the manufacturer in Denver, they might sell you one.”

Denver? She gazed out the window to those ominous clouds in the southeast. It would be an hour there, another hour in traffic regardless of where it was, and an hour back. It would blow her day completely. She glanced at the clock. Eleven. On the other hand, her day was already blown. And she couldn't very well wait a week for Frankie to come out and walk around her condo with a blindfold on while he did his thing.

“Well, lady, I can't sit here all day.”

Lacy started. “I'm sorry. Yes, I think I'll try Monroe. Do you have the number?”

Thirty minutes later she was in the car, headed for the freeway, with the old J-28 pump in a box beside her. Frank had been right. Once she managed to tip the washer enough to prop it up with a footstool and slide under it, removing the little beast had not been so bad. She had even closed her eyes once while loosening a bolt, wondering what possessed a man to try such a thing.

Lacy pulled onto the freeway, struck by how easily the course of her day had changed. One minute lying in attempted bliss, the next diving into soapy gray water.

Goodness.

THE WEEK had flown past, skipping across the peaks of Kent's nerves like a windsurfer pushed by a gale-force wind. It was the wind of imagination, and it kept his eyes wide and burning. By the end of that first day Kent knew what he was going to do with a certainty that brought fire to his bones.

He was going to rob the bank blind.

Literally. He was going to take every penny he had coming. All twenty million of it. And the bank would remain as blind as a bat through it all. He sat there at his desk, exhilarated by the idea, his fingers frozen over the keyboard as his mind spun.

He tried in vain to concentrate on Cliff 's questions about why he'd chosen this routine or where he could find that link. And that was a problem, because now more than ever, fitting back into the bank as Joe Smooth Employee took on significance. The way he saw it, he already had some ground to make up; some kissing up to do. Walking around the bank with a big red sign reading “Here walks the man who screamed at Bentley over employee of the month parking” would not do. He would have to concentrate on being normal again. On fitting in with the other fools who actually believed they were somehow important in this nine-to-five funny farm. There was the small matter of his having lost a wife and son, but he would just have to bite his tongue on that one, wouldn't he? Just try not to bleed all over the place. He would have to rein in his mind, control his thoughts. For the sake of ROOSTER.

But his thoughts kept sliding off to other things.

Things like what he would do with twenty million dollars. Things like how he could hide twenty million dollars. Things like how he could
steal
twenty million dollars. The details flew by, dizzying in his analytical mind. A hundred sordid details—each one spawning another hundred, it seemed.

First, he would have to decide from where to take the money. Using ROOS-TER he could take it from almost anywhere. But, of course,
anywhere
would not do. It would have to come from a place where twenty million would not be quickly missed. No matter how untraceable the transaction itself might be, its net result would be nearly impossible to hide. Nearly.

Then he would have to decide where to put the money. He would never actually have the physical bills—the coin—but even a ledger balance of twenty million was enough to generate at least interest. And that kind of interest was not something he needed. If the money ever turned up missing, the FBI would be all over it like stink on sewer. He would have to find a way to lie at the bottom of that sewer.

He'd have to plan the actual execution of the theft very carefully, of course. Couldn't very well be caught downloading twenty million dollars. “What are those large balances on your screen, Kent?”

“Oh, nothing. Actually, that's my bonus from AFPS, if you must know. I'm just taking an early withdrawal.”

He would also have to find a way to exit his current life. Couldn't be a millionaire and work for Borst. Had no ring of justice to him. And this whole thing was really about justice. Not just with his job but with life in general. He had climbed the ladder like a good boy for twenty years only to be dropped back on his tail in the space of thirty days. Back down to Stupid Street where the concrete was hard and the nights cold. Well, now that he had taken the time to think things through, being forced to climb that ladder again, rung by rung, made as much sense as setting up post on the local corner, bearing a sign that read “Will work for beer.”

Not a chance. It took him thirty days to fall; if all went well it would take him no more than thirty to pop back on top.

The hardest part of this whole scheme might very well be the spending of the money. How could Kent Anthony, computer programmer, step into a life of wealth without raising eyebrows? He would have to divorce himself from his past somehow. Not a problem. His immediate past reeked of every imaginable offensive odor anyway. The notion of divorcing himself from that past brought a buzz to his lower spine. His past was tainted beyond redemption. He would put it as far behind him as possible. Wash it from his memory entirely. Begin a new life as a new man.