Colder Than Ice

The round cheeks of youth had been replaced by sharper angles, but there was no question she was the same person.

He stumbled into the house, barely seeing where he was going, so many questions were whirling through his mind.

“Well, there you are. My goodness, I almost lost it out there. I have to tell you, son, I’m not used to telling lies.”

“You, uh…you did fine, Maude.”

“Well, it’s well worth it, if it’s to help protect Beth from whatever shadows she’s been running from. Like I always say, ‘You have to crush some tomatoes to get any sauce.’ This won’t wash for long, though. There are folks in this town have known me far longer than Beth has. Oh, I can put ’em off for a while. Sam and I were old enough when we bought this place that any kids we might have had would have been grown. Most folks don’t know we never had any. All but Frankie, anyway. She won’t be so easily—what is it, Joshua? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I…” He gave his head a shake and forced himself to pay attention to the woman. “It was a long drive. I guess I’m tired out.”

“Well, then, go on up to your room. I’ve put you in the blue room, and your boy in the one beside you. Go left at the top of the stairs. It’s the second door on the right.”

“Thanks.”

He took her advice and sought out the privacy of his bedroom. And the first thing he did was to make a phone call to Arthur Stanton, his longtime mentor, former superior officer, and the man who’d hired him for this job. Arthur was out. His machine told Josh to leave a message.

Josh held the phone to his ear, staring out the bedroom window. Down there on the scraggly lawn, a ghost was talking to his son. A woman who was supposed to be dead. He should know, he thought. He’d killed her himself.

“Arthur, it’s Joshua. Call me back and tell me what the hell is going on. Is this woman—is she—Jesus, Art, what are you doing to me here?”

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Not even when the image of the girl she had been when he’d seen her last overlaid the scene below in his mind. He saw her as she had been: pale, far too thin, barely seventeen. Wires taped to her temples and forehead, and running from underneath her clothes. Tubes in her wrists and mouth. White sheets, white hospital gown, white skin. The damned incessant beeping of the heart monitor that sounded sluggish and slow.

A lot of kids had been caught in the cross fire when federal agents raided the Young Believers’ Compound eighteen years ago. But most of the bodies burned in the holocaust that followed.

Hers hadn’t.

Josh had been an ATF agent then, overzealous and eager to be a hero. And maybe a little too quick to fire back at the muzzle flashes coming from the compound. Ballistics matched the bullet that took her out with Joshua’s own rifle. When Josh had gone to the hospital to see her, they’d told him she wouldn’t live out the week.

She’d been haunting him ever since.

It couldn’t be her. It couldn’t be. Not like this, strong, older…alive, running now down the tree-lined lane, her strides powerful and confident. It couldn’t be her.

There was a knock on his door. “Dad?”

He shook himself, opened it. Bryan stood there with a large red-white-and-blue envelope in his hands. “Mailman was just here. Left this for you. It came express, so I figured it was important.”

He took it, eyed the return address.

“It’s from that guy who hired you—Arthur Stanton.”

The man who was like a father to him. The man he trusted, had always trusted, even after the raid.

“He was your boss when you were in the ATF, you said.”

Josh nodded. He’d been fired, because the nation needed a scapegoat. Not that he hadn’t been guilty—just no guiltier than every other man on the strike team that day. Art had been too well respected to be fired; he’d been moved, instead. Lost his command, gotten stuck behind a desk pushing papers for the rest of his career. Put to work for the Federal Witness Protection Program. If she was who Josh thought she was, she must have been one of Arthur’s first cases.

Jesus.

“So what was really going on down there?” Bryan asked.

Josh tried to focus on his son. “What do you mean?”

“With that woman. First you looked at her like you were seeing a ghost, and then you tried to cover—lamely.”

Josh pursed his lips. “I wasn’t trying to cover. She really does remind me of someone.”

“Yeah, so much you nearly lost your lunch.”

He averted his eyes.

“I mean it, Dad. I thought you were going to blow it out there. I mean, you’re the one who’s supposed to know what you’re doing here, the one who spent three straight days lecturing me on not blowing our cover. So I figure this is something major.”

He forced himself to meet his son’s gaze. “You might be right.”

“Then you know Beth Slocum from somewhere?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“But you think you might?”

He didn’t say anything, his gaze dragged as if by force to the envelope again.

“Right,” Bryan said. “It’s none of my damn business, anyway. You should have just said so. I’m going out.”

The tone jerked Josh back to the present. “Going out where?”

“Hell, Dad, I don’t know. I’m not sure what my options are around here, so I can hardly answer that one. Around, I guess. I’m taking the pickup.”

“Just be careful. And call if you’re going to be late.”

Bryan didn’t answer, just headed out of the bedroom. He didn’t quite slam the door, but he didn’t shut it any too gently, either.

Josh sighed, wishing to hell he knew how to be a decent father to his son. He probably shouldn’t have let him go, but hell, the boy was almost eighteen. It wasn’t like he needed baby-sitting.

He didn’t know what to do. He knew his son was in pain and acting out in anger, but he didn’t have the first clue what to do about it. And frankly, given the shock he’d just suffered, he was in no state to figure out the answer today.

He sat down on his bed and tore open the envelope. It contained a complete dossier on Elizabeth Marcum, aka Beth Slocum, beginning when she’d awakened from a coma eighteen years ago. When he read the hell she’d been through because of his bullet, he wondered if it might have been better if he had killed her after all.

She’d awakened with no memory, no life, facing years of rehabilitation and physical therapy. She’d lost all of it…because of him.

He was sure of only one thing: he owed her. And this assignment hadn’t come out of the blue. Arthur had chosen him deliberately, knowing he would protect Beth Slocum better than anyone else ever could, because of that debt.

Bryan thought he probably shouldn’t hate his father for keeping secrets from him when secrets were a part of his job. He did hate it, though. He hated just about everything his old man did these days. Every word out of his mouth seemed unreasonably irritating and made Bryan want to snap back, even when it wasn’t altogether warranted.

Bryan wasn’t stupid. It made sense to resent his father for not giving a damn about his mother’s death. Josh hadn’t shed a single tear. And it made sense to hate him for dragging Bryan out of his school, away from his friends, his home, and making him live in an apartment the size of a closet in Manhattan.

He thought maybe Joshua was starting to get that. He thought maybe that was why, when his dad’s former boss from his days in the ATF, days before Bryan was even born, contacted him about this job, he’d accepted so fast. He knew Bryan detested the city. He probably thought this middle-of-nowhere town in Vermont would be better for him.

But Bryan didn’t want to be here, either. He just wanted to go home.

He drove the pickup, which he secretly loved, into the tiny town of Blackberry, which was all of two miles from the old woman’s run-down house. He spent the entire drive trying to locate an alternative or punk station on the radio, with no luck at all. Nothing out here but easy listening, country and talk radio.

God, he was going to die of boredom inside a week. He pulled off when he found a park, walked the entire thing, and found a fountain, a basketball court, a hot-dog stand. He bought a dog and continued on. The town was packed, way more people than could possibly live in a place this small. Must be the tourists his dad had told him were liable to be around. God, there were a lot of them, walking around with cameras, or driving with their heads sticking out the windows, pointing at the trees.

It was pretty here. He had to give it that.

Just at the edge of town there was a library, and he spent a couple of hours there, using their Internet connection and playing video games.

He’d killed the rest of the morning and was working on the afternoon when he pulled into the blacktop square beyond the ornate little sign that read Blackberry Public Parking. It was smack in the middle of a strip of road that was lined on either side with businesses. They all had awnings, and all the awnings were color coordinated—green or white, or green-and-white stripes. The stores—shops, really—had old-fashioned lettering on the windows, and they all looked like something out of one of the Norman Rockwell prints his mother used to have hanging all over their house. If not for the tourists, Bryan would have felt as if he’d walked right into one of them. The barbershop had an actual barber pole.

He pocketed his keys and took to the sidewalk. It was clean, unbroken, no weeds springing up in between the blocks. Oak trees grew from circular holes in the concrete, with red mulch covering their bases. Almost every building had a flag on display—not all of them American flags, though. Some were Canadian, some Italian, and some bore peace signs or rainbows.

He scanned the shop windows. Drugstore, grocery, ice cream “shoppe,” hardware, electronics…“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said.

He went through the swinging doors of the tiny electronics store, nodded hello to the woman behind the counter and started perusing the shelves. There was only one other customer in the place, an absentminded professor type in a baggy suit.

The woman behind the counter said, “Can I help you find something, young man?”

“Yeah, I’m looking for a set of headphones for my MP3 player.” He pulled the tiny device out of his pocket as he spoke and held it up, but as he did, the other customer placed his purchases—a video camera and several tapes—on the counter.

“They’re right over there, son,” she said, pointing at a pegboard right beside the counter, where about twenty different sets of headphones hung.

Bryan went over and began looking for one that would fit his player.

He noticed the guy at the counter taking his purchases and turning to go. A twenty lay on the floor at his feet. As the man walked toward the door, Bryan hurried to grab it. “Excuse me, mister, I think you dropped this.”

The man turned as if surprised, saw Bryan holding out the twenty and smiled. He had thick, unevenly cut black hair that looked as if he’d combed it with an egg beater, thick-lensed glasses with black plastic frames, and the kind of pointy beard you’d expect to see on the villain in an old movie.

His smile was warm, though. He quickly pulled out his wallet and checked his cash. “You’re right, I did drop it. Thank you, young man. That was very thoughtful of you.”

“No prob.”

The guy took the twenty, tucked it into his wallet and tugged out a five. “Here, for your honesty.”

“No, really. It’s okay,” Bryan said, holding up a hand.

“You’re sure?”

He nodded. “My mother was always telling me if you can’t be honest for the sake of honesty, you’re not really being honest at all.”

The man tipped his head to one side. “Your mother sounds like a very wise woman.”

“She was,” Bryan said. He turned back to the rack of headphones beside the counter.

The stranger cleared his throat, and Bryan turned again, surprised to see him still there. “I don’t mean to pry, but, uh…do you go to school around here?”

Bryan shook his head. “I’m taking a semester off, but I have a private tutor so I won’t fall behind.”

“Ah. A private tutor, is it? That’s very wise. One of the teachers, I assume?”

“No, she’s not teaching right—” He bit back the rest of the sentence, as his father’s coaching and warnings came whispering through his brain. He was talking about Beth Slocum, the woman they were here to protect. A woman in hiding. “I mean, I don’t really know what else she might do. I’m brand-new in town.”

“I only ask because I’m a teacher myself.” The man dug a card from his pocket and handed it to Bryan.

“You teach here in Blackberry?” Bryan asked.

“Well, it’s not official yet, but I expect to be hired any day now. What subjects are you taking with this tutor? Maybe I can offer to cover the ones she doesn’t?”

“No, thanks,” Bryan said, deciding to err on the side of caution. “I don’t want to take on too much at once. But, uh, I’ll keep you in mind if I need another tutor.”

“You do that. And thank you again for your honesty. Your mother would be proud.”

Bryan had to swallow past the lump in his throat as he watched the man go. Then he looked at the card. Oliver Abercrombie. There was a telephone number, but no address. What an odd man.

Mordecai got into his car—a car far below his standards, but one that would stand out far less than his former one would have done. It was a nondescript brown sedan, five years old and nothing fancy. Nothing noticeable or memorable. He was dying to get back to searching for Lizzie.

No, not yet. You have to stay.

You have to watch the boy. We sent you into that shop for a reason, Mordecai. When will you learn to trust us?

“But Lizzie—”

She’s not going anywhere, Mordecai. And finding the heir to your powers and your gifts is just as important as finding Lizzie.

He blinked. “The boy is the heir?”

He could be. Only you can decide that, Mordecai, and that is the primary mission right now.

Maybe it should be, he thought. It wasn’t, though. To him, nothing was more important than finding Lizzie, reclaiming her, purifying and redeeming her. He supposed that was yet another symptom of his flawed human form. It was selfish. The will of Spirit must always come first.

That’s right, Mordecai. You’re a tool. A messenger. A servant. So stay and watch the boy.

He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. Forgive me my sins. I surrender all, Father. Not my will, but thine, be done. I’m sorry. Forgive me.” His throat felt tight, and his eyes hot and damp.

Here he comes!

Mordecai looked up, brushing the moisture from his eyes so he could see as the boy came out of the shop. He went into a couple of others but didn’t stay long anywhere, and finally, with a few bags in his hands, headed to a white pickup truck in the town parking lot. He started it up. Mordecai started his own vehicle, as well, and followed the boy home.

He lived, apparently, in a Victorian house two miles past Blackberry. The style of the place was similar to the one Mordecai was renting in Bonnie Brook, six miles in the other direction, except that it wasn’t as well kept. It showed signs of neglect, needed paint, and the lawn was a weed patch.

Mordecai did everything he could to ensure he wouldn’t lose track of the boy. He pulled over and memorized the address, the directions, the license plate number of the pickup truck. It was nearly noon. He whispered, “Can I go and search for Lizzie now?”

No.

He swallowed, lowering his head. “The school might have phoned for me. God knows Nancy Stillwater has to be quite ill by now.”

You have your cell phone.

“They may have left a message on the machine. If I don’t return the call, they’ll hire someone else.”

Your lack of faith will be punished, Mordecai!

Pain—splitting, racking, blinding pain—blazed through his skull. Mordecai slammed his palms to either side of his head, squeezed his eyes shut tight and grated his teeth. Pressure built inside his head as if it were being inflated, until finally it felt as if it would surely burst.

And then it was gone.

He lay limp against the seat of the car, panting, trembling, his cheeks damp with tears. “All right. All right. I’ll stay.”’

Use the cell to check your messages, and keep your eyes on the boy.

“Yes, yes. I’ll obey.”

Chapter Three

Friday

“No, Bryan, you cannot stay home. I let you slide in the city, but that’s over. You’re going to school. You’re going to register, and you’re going to take classes. This is your senior year. It’s important.”

Beth couldn’t help but hear Joshua’s raised voice as she stepped up onto the porch to join Maude for their morning tea. The front door was open. The screen door was closed, but sound traveled right through that. Maude looked up, shaking her head sadly. She was in the middle of her morning injection—one before every meal was the routine—and she pulled the hypodermic from her arm and set it on the tray table.

“Important to you, maybe,” Bryan said. He wasn’t shouting, but he wasn’t quiet, either.

“No, Bry, it’s important to you. To your future. I told you before we left Manhattan, you’d have to register at the high school here.”

“And I told you to forget about it.”

“If you keep letting school slide, Bryan, you’ll never get into a good college.”

“I don’t give a damn about college.”

“Since when?”

“Just leave me alone, okay?”

Beth went slowly to her chair as Maude poured their tea. “Doesn’t sound like they’re doing too well, Maude.”

“They aren’t. But it will get better.”

“Maybe we should, uh, close the door. Give ’em a little privacy?” Beth suggested, with a nod toward the still-open front door.

“Well now, if I close the door, how are we gonna know how to help those two?”

“What do you mean, ‘we’?”

Maude just shushed her as the voices rose again.

“Bryan, you had a ninety-eight average your junior year. You were talking about applying to Ivy League schools, for God’s sake. What happened to that?”

“Gee, I don’t know, Dad. I can’t imagine what could have happened between then and now, can you?”

Beth winced. “Ouch. That was a bull’s-eye.”

For a moment, Josh didn’t reply. Probably reeling from the blow his son had just landed. Then, his tone gentler than before, he said, “All right, I know what happened. Your mom died. And that’s the most horrible thing that could ever happen to a kid. But, Bryan, you can’t die with her. She wouldn’t want that, and you know it. If she were here right now, she’d be telling you to knock it the hell off. You have to find a way to pick up the pieces and move on with your life.”

“Like you have, you mean?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

No reply.

“Bry, don’t think for one minute that I didn’t care about your mother. I loved her once. We created a son together.”

“You wouldn’t know it to look at you, though. Her dying hasn’t made one ripple in your life, has it, Dad?”

There was a loud bang, the slamming of a door, and it made Beth jerk in reaction. Moments later, footsteps came down the stairs. Through the open door, Beth saw Joshua stop at the bottom of the stairway, push a hand through his hair and close his eyes briefly. He looked haggard. She felt sorry for him. Not as much as she did for his son, though.

“Good morning, Josh,” Maude called.

Josh looked their way, his glance sliding from Maude to land on Beth. Sighing, he came out to join them on the porch.

“I’m sorry about all that,” he said. “Not a very pleasant way to start the day for you.”

“For you, either,” Maude said.

“Or for Bryan,” Beth said. Josh shot her a look, his lips thin.

“Join us for a cup of tea, Joshua. One of my homemade medicinals. Just the right blend to sooth your nerves.” Maude was pouring before she finished speaking, and Beth noticed for the first time that she had set three cups on the tray table, where there were usually only two. And there was a white plastic lawn chair against the wall.

Josh sank into it and accepted the cup Maude handed him. “If I can’t even get the kid to go to school…” He sighed, sipping the tea, not finishing the thought. “This is good, Maude. How did you know I’d need my nerves soothed this morning?”

“Made it for Beth—chamomile and honey. I thought she seemed a little edgy yesterday.”

“I was not edgy.”

Maude shrugged. “You’re always edgy when there’s a male of the species within twenty feet of you, girl.” She winked at Josh. “Thinks you’re all up to no good, I guess.”

“Most of us are.” He smiled a little, his eyes actually teasing her as he took another sip of his tea. “This is really hitting the spot.”

“Maude has a tea and a platitude for just about every imaginable occasion,” Beth said. “But I imagine you already knew that.”

“You’d be surprised how little I know about her,” he said.

“No, I wouldn’t.” She dropped the statement, then let it hang there while he tried to figure out what it meant. Bryan’s footsteps came tromping down the stairs, across the floor and into the kitchen. Joshua sighed, his eyes clouding with real worry, and Beth took pity. “I do some private tutoring, you know.”

“Do you?” He looked her in the eyes, and she got the feeling he had already known that. Probably Maude had filled him in. “If that’s an offer, Beth, I accept. Assuming I can convince Bryan to go along with it.”

“He seemed willing enough yesterday, when I spoke to him about it.”

His brows bent together. “He talked to you about tutoring him?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Agreed to start at noon today.”

“Well, why the hell didn’t he just say so, instead of arguing with me?”

Beth tipped her head to one side. “Maybe because you didn’t ask.”

His face darkened. “So this is all my fault?”

“Not all, Joshua. But of the two of you, he’s the one who just lost his mother. And you’re the adult. The only one in the world who can swoop in and pick up the pieces of his broken life for him.”

“Don’t you think that’s what I’ve been trying to do?”

He stopped himself there, literally seemed to bite off the rest of his tirade before it could spill out, held up a hand, closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s stress, and I’ve got no business taking it out on you. Are you all right?”

He was searching her face now, his expression remorseful and almost…tender. As if he thought she were so fragile an angry word or two from him could reduce her to tears. “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know.” He dragged his gaze away from hers. “Listen, if you have suggestions, advice, I’d be more than happy to hear it.”

“I don’t know a damn thing about being a parent.” She looked away, thinking of Dawny, the hole in her heart yawning wider. “But I know a little about teenagers. I taught in a public school for seven years.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

She frowned at him. “Funny, I had the feeling you did.”

“No. I don’t think Maude mentioned it. What did you teach?”

“English Eleven and Twelve, mostly. I offered to tutor Bryan in English Twelve, so he would only have History and Spanish to catch up on. He’ll be fine, if he does the work.”

Josh settled back into his chair, seeming to relax a little. “So you think I should let him take the semester off, so long as he sticks with the tutoring?”

“I think you should consider agreeing to that, yes.” She sipped her tea. “But don’t count on it lasting. Once he meets some of the local kids, makes a few friends and has time to get bored out of his mind, he’s going to decide to go back to school. If you let me tutor him until then, he won’t be behind when he does.”

He nodded slowly. “For someone who doesn’t know much about parenting, you’re pretty good.” She shrugged, and he went on. “Seriously, you’re light-years ahead of me. Okay. Let’s do it—the tutoring thing, I mean.”