“What’s good to eat around here?” called MacNeil from the living room. She heard him shift the volume lower on the television. Apparently, hunger overrode news and sports at this juncture.
Her laptop whirred smoothly as she logged in to her email. While she was waiting for them to download, Marina wandered back into the living room to answer his question. “Just about anything you might want. You name it. I’ve eaten everything from python to mopanē worms during my travels, so I’m not fussy at all.”
“Mopanē worms?”
“Cheap food in Zimbabwe. They look like large green and blue caterpillars and taste like wooden cardboard. I prefer them fried and served with peanut sauce.”
MacNeil’s expression spoke volumes. “I think I’d rather have something like steak or fish.”
Marina strode back into her office. Not that mopanē worms had been exactly high on her menu selection, but at least she’d tried them.
Her email box had 1300 messages; 1245 of which were spam. She rued the day she’d filled out surveys on a few websites a decade ago when spam was unheard of. Thus her email address had long been added to the spam launderers’ lists. Good grief … she was still getting advertisements for the Iraq Top-50 Deck! Not to mention suggestions regarding improving her sex life (increasing the size of her penis and strengthening her endurance) as well as suggesting that she could get Cialis for cheap.
No blind dates. No Top-50 cards. No need to improve her sex life … .
The rest of her messages were legitimate—from former students, colleagues, friends, and … Dad?
Marina’s fingers froze on the mouse, then she clicked rapidly, clumsily, in her haste to open the email. “Mina,” the message read, “Trust no one. Do not get involved. Stay away from this. Stay away from anyone who wants your help. Dad.”
She stared at the message. Then she clicked the screen closed, but not before she felt MacNeil behind her. Her reaction had been a split-second too late, apparently, for he said smoothly, “‘Mina’?”
“He’s the only one who calls me that.” She stood, pushing her chair back with enough force that it bumped into his legs. Probably even ran over his foot. Good. Served him right for peering over her shoulder.
“Or it’s from someone who wants you to believe it’s him.”
“That’s already occurred to me. Anyone could hack into his account, or even force him to write it. But then again, he could have written it himself. I don’t have any way of knowing. Except that not many people know he calls me ‘Mina’.” She stepped away, around MacNeil, out of the office, into the kitchen, walking as quickly as she could in the small space … to get away. She had to think.
“I know what you’re thinking,” came MacNeil’s smooth voice behind her. She’d already taken note in the less than a day since she’d met him that it was always like that: low, cool, unruffled, steady. Really annoying.
“I’m sure you do. You know pretty much everything about me, my life, and my family, don’t you?” More, it seemed, than she did. Marina pushed past him, stalking back toward the living room toward the front door.
She opened it. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not leaving with you—at least not right now. I want some time to myself to figure this out without you shadowing me and popping up behind me every two minutes. My house is secure—you’ve already checked that out—so why don’t you go get something to eat. Come back in a little while. A few hours. Tomorrow. Better yet, next week when I’m gone.”
To her astonishment, he complied. He walked past her, his blue eyes glinting with annoyance, but he did leave. And it sounded like he muttered something about why didn’t she hold onto the amethyst for awhile.
He’d be back … but at least she had a private moment to catch her breath.
Now that she’d received the email purportedly from Dad, though, Marina had to think about the situation more realistically. Was she putting him in danger by working with the CIA? Was he even in danger?
Or had someone else written the message to warn her off?
Of course, they could try and track the email; in fact, Gabe was probably already on his BlackBerry calling Langley to get that process started.
The fact remained, however, that she’d received an email date-stamped only 36 hours earlier, telling her not to work with anyone. So someone knew that his disappearance had been noted and that the CIA had come to Marina.
Thus there was something about Dad’s disappearance that was cause for concern to more than the CIA.
The knock on her front door deepened her annoyance. Back already. It figured.
Marina pulled the heavy door open and found herself looking up into a shadowed male face she did not recognize.
Instincts took over and she reacted blindly, whipping the door shut with a force that jolted the painting on the wall next to it. Her door was still locked, so when she closed it, it couldn’t be opened from the outside without a key. Thank God.
She started to turn, to run, then stopped. Her nerves were dancing, but the man at the door wasn’t threatening. He’d just knocked and she’d opened to someone she didn’t expect to see, and because of Gabe MacNeil, she’d reacted from her gut. Not a very auspicious action. Another skill she would have to hone.
Feeling sheepish, Marina returned to the front door and peeped out of the curtain sidelight.
-17-
Marina turned just as the gun butt smashed through the glass of the sidelight.
The stairs in front of her beckoned, and she pounded up them as she heard more sounds of breaking glass and dull thuds against the metal of the door. When the door below flew open and crashed into the wall, she felt the whole house shake.
Dashing on light feet into the bathroom, she shut the door quietly and locked it. Not that it would hold for long, but long enough for her to get out the window and down the tree outside. He wouldn’t expect her to go upstairs. He’d expect her to try and run outside.
The only problem was the window in her bathroom was very small.
Marina hesitated only a moment, gauging the situation, then, standing on the toilet, she yanked the sliding window open. The heavy metal frame made a loud, sucking, rolling sound she hoped couldn’t be heard below. In the midst of her adrenalin rush, heart pounding in her ears, Marina paused for a half-second to listen. She heard nothing: nothing from below, nothing from upstairs.
Then the unmistakable thudding of heavy, fast feet on the stairs.
Galvanized back into action, she rammed her elbow into the flimsy screen so that it caved, then pushed it all the way out. She was right behind it; up onto the toilet tank and then, just like in Close Knocks, shimmying her body through the slim opening just as she heard the deep thud at the door behind her.
She wriggled with frantic movements, not the careful measured ones she’d used in the cave. And this time, it was the metal ridges of the windowsill that bit into her abdomen and thighs instead of rock. She grasped for the rough branch of the tree, clawing with her fingernails to drag herself closer as she heard the door splinter.
Marina kicked off from the toilet, leaping through the opening and taking hold of the branch as she was airborne, swinging free from the window just as the door slammed open. Her legs dangled before they crashed into the trunk of the tree, sending shudders through her body.
Frantic inside, but moving with measured actions, she ducked around the tree, launching herself from one branch to another, so that the trunk was between her and the window, and she climbed to a higher level.
Could bullets go all the way through a 24-inch tree trunk?
She clutched the uneven bark, her legs spread in a triangle between two branches, her arms tucked around another large one at shoulder height. There was silence except for the breeze tickling through the maple leaves that sheltered her. The man couldn’t fit through the window, so he’d have to go downstairs if he wanted to catch her. Unless he planned to shoot her.
She could either double back through the house and hide somewhere inside, or climb down and try to run away. Or stay in the tree.
A door slammed below. He’d come out the back door. Any moment now, he’d fire up into the leaves.
Marina shifted to look behind her. A few feet above, the branches of another tree clashed with her tree’s. She could climb to the next one, and then maybe to another, and onto the roof of the Tibbetts’ house.
Something from below whistled past her and the bullet pinged into the flesh of the tree.
Marina moved. She scrambled up the branches until she could hoist herself to the other tree, then, arms and legs wrapped around the branch, she scooted down the sloping branch toward the trunk.
When she moved, she could see down to the ground and the figure below in her fenced-in back yard. There would be no help from the neighbors, thanks to the privacy fence she’d had installed for Boris.
The intruder looked up into the greenery that surrounded her, and although Marina was sure he couldn’t spy her, her heart kicked up a notch when he raised the gun. His aim was far off; still toward the other tree, but she didn’t waste any further time. She moved, and made her way carefully to another tree, this one on the other side of the fence, in the Tibbetts’ yard. One more shift … and she landed flat-footed on the sandpaper-rough shingles.
Deep breaths.
He couldn’t get to her now. And he couldn’t know where she was. Yet.
Marina clawed her way along the slanted roof, using her toes and flat-palmed hands to go up and over the peak, onto the other side. The Tibbetts had an attached garage, and Marina slid down onto its roof, then flattened herself. Peeping over the top of the garage angle, she looked out at the silent street. How could it be so quiet and empty on a Friday night?
She watched and waited to see if he would reappear somewhere below. Once she was sure she was safe and wouldn’t be overheard, she’d call MacNeil and tell him to get his ass back here. This was not part of the deal.
Marina remained on the Tibbetts’ garage roof for an hour before she felt safe enough to find another tree to use as a ladder. Nevertheless, when she dropped to the soft, sound-deafening grass, she slid along the side of the brick cottage, pressing back against the solid wall for support and protection.
