Chronic Fear (3 page)

While Silver would never question her motives, he also might be tempted to brag about the fine craft of drug manufacturing. Brilliance rarely kept its illumination cloaked.

But Silver’s loss meant she was alone. Despite her frantic research, and the measured doses of Halcyon she’d been slipping Mark, he was disintegrating, and she was afraid she’d lose him to Seethe forever.

But Mark wasn’t just the test pool, he was her husband. She had to keep reminding herself of that fact.

“It could be much worse,” she said. “I hate to think where we’d all be if Briggs had turned Burchfield loose with Seethe.”

“Why haven’t you been honest with me?” he asked. He still held the AR-15, although he’d lowered it to his hip. She couldn’t read his expression. When he was Seething, his lip or eyelid would tremble, but at the moment he seemed utterly calm.

And that was scarier than his blind rages.

“What are you talking about?”

“You must be doing something, or nobody would bother raiding your lab.”

“Mark, I told you I was done with that.”

“And you got rid of all the Seethe and Halcyon? Not holding any back?”

Why did he still blame her for sneaking some of the Halcyon pills from the Monkey House? She was sure the molecular compounds had beneficial uses. The chemicals themselves had done nothing wrong, because compounds didn’t possess morality. It was Briggs’s twisted use of them that was evil.

Mark had forced her to flush the pills down the toilet after he’d discovered them hidden in her jewelry box, but he didn’t know about the single pill she’d given to Silver for analysis.

“The doses you found were the last ones,” she said. “I promise.”

The lie had mutated for so long that it now felt like the truth, and she wondered if a similar evolution had justified Sebastian Briggs in his sick research. But Mark wouldn’t understand her work, and he would never accept her help voluntarily. Especially if that help came in the form of Halcyon.

But he also wouldn’t accept that he’d changed since the Monkey House. The Mark that had gone in had not come out.

And his only hope—
their
only hope—rested in Alexis’s race to synthesize a better form of Halcyon, one that wouldn’t wipe his mind of all he’d been.

But the race had been interrupted.

Somebody knew.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Roland opened his eyes and, for the hundredth time since his last drink three years ago, wondered why God didn’t grant exemptions for control freaks, the cowardly, and the foolish. At times he’d been all three, and he still wasn’t sure he understood the Serenity Prayer and which things he could actually change without fucking them up. All he knew was that he was grateful to be here and to be sober enough to struggle with it.

He was sitting in his rocker, laboring over a laptop, but the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountain evening stole his concentration. And his gaze kept roaming over to the painting Wendy was working on.

Well, it roamed over Wendy a lot, too.

She was wearing a thin cotton blouse, off-white and splotched with multi-colored stains, and Capri pants that accented her petite Asian shape. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she looked more like a teenager than a woman soon to enter middle age.

“That’s pretty cool, sweetie,” Roland Doyle said.

Wendy frowned and stepped back from the canvas, brush in hand. “Anything looks good in this light.”

Which was true. It was the kind of sunset that cast the world in perfect pink, the ultimate rose-colored glasses. Flaming clouds billowed over the forest in the west while the coming bruise of night claimed its turf to the east. The wet, loamy aroma of the forest added to the magical dusk, and a more fanciful person might have imagined faeries and sprites would come spilling out at any moment.

But Roland didn’t care for games of the mind. He’d played enough of them.

“Personally, I’d go in for some cadmium yellow,” Roland said. “It’s getting a little bleak.”

What he really meant was maybe she should try some new subject matter. For the past year, she’d been indulging in surreal and claustrophobic imagery, jagged and dark shapes full of menace. It was how she chose to deal with the Monkey House experience, but he hoped she would shut that door for good and paint over it with the thickest layer of black.

He had, as best he could.

But then he was the only one who seemed to remember much about it. For Wendy, it was bottled up and stored in a sick wine cellar of the soul, its fermented pulp turning to slow poison.

“I’ve never had much use for critics,” Wendy said, a slight resentment riding under the humor. “I’ve got something to say. I just don’t know what it is yet.”

Artists. God help ’em, because nobody else can
.

When you loved somebody, you had to put up with a few idiosyncrasies. And Wendy certainly had to endure her share. After all, she was married to a murderer.

“You’d better clean up,” Roland said. “It’s getting dark. Sleep on it and I’ll bet you feel better.”

She gave him a sly look with her almond-shaped onyx eyes. “I’d planned to sleep on
you
.”

“That can be arranged.”

He glanced at his laptop screen. He’d had to leave his job selling display advertising, but many of the same skills translated to the Internet. The only difference was he had to think smaller. Which was a relief, actually.

Wendy wiped her brush and dipped it in a jar of soapy water to soak. She was in an acrylics phase, which put her in a better mood. Watercolors were too delicate and oils tended to go to mud when she vented her frustration and painted too rapidly.

She crossed the porch and stood over him. “Husband. Did you ever think we’d get back together again?”

He took her hands, although they still had flecks and smears of paint on them. “I knew it all along. We were meant to be together.”

“That’s what men say just before they kill their spouses in a jealous rage.”

He studied her face. Was she joking? Was she starting to remember? “No, sweetie. That’s ‘If I can’t have you, nobody can.’”

She leaned forward and kissed him. “Okay, you’re the expert in obsession.”

He stroked her hip and ran his fingers behind her. “If you were married to this, you’d be obsessive, too.”

“Dinner, and then we can play OCD in bed.”

“Tell you what. Let me fire off this e-mail and I’ll be right in.”

“Sure. And two more e-mails arrive before you shut down, and then you get to deal with those. The ever-expanding inbox of client obligation.”

“I promise. Really.”

She swatted him playfully with her rag. “So much for moving to the mountains to get away from it all.”

He tracked Wendy’s alluring rear as she crossed the covered porch and entered the screen door. Even after twelve years, he still liked the way she moved.
My Tibetan tiger
, he liked to call her. The tiger was also her sign of the Chinese zodiac, while her Western zodiac sign was Cancer. Both had claws.

He was eager to polish off the last e-mail. As a freelance graphic designer, he’d found a niche in e-book design and intuitively grasped the differences in marketing on a computer instead of a bookshelf. He’d also taught himself formatting, and although he wasn’t sure where the technology was headed, he’d been able to carve out a sustainable small business. Which was fortunate, because he considered himself pretty unemployable now.

Roland sent the sample file and was just about to close down when a new e-mail popped in. He winced and didn’t allow himself to read the subject line.

You promised her.

But it’s only one more little broken promise. What does it really matter on the scorecard of a marriage?

The subject line said: “Every four hrs or else.”

“What the fuck?” He didn’t even realize he’d spoken aloud.

Spam. It had to be spam, a solicitation promising a Nigerian erection the size of a dictator’s bank account.

The sender was “[email protected].”

He knew he should log out immediately. Clicking could trigger a virus. Or exhume a past he’d nailed shut and painted black.

“Hon?” Wendy called from inside. He’d already used up the window of good grace, and as a committed mate, he didn’t like forcing kitchen chores on her.

Holding his breath, he opened the e-mail.

It said simply: “We have a job for you, David Underwood.”

“David Underwood” was the fake identity Briggs had foisted on Roland while tricking him back to Wendy and the Monkey House. It had turned out the real David was alive, although hopelessly traumatized, and Roland had burned the identification cards after their escape.

The e-mail looked contrived. Why would the CIA send out e-mails? He doubted they even used e-mail.

“Roland, these cucumbers don’t peel themselves,” Wendy said, with an edge of impatience.

“Just a sec.” He Googled the CIA site, wondering if the agency tracked the ISP of every citizen who browsed it. A quick scan revealed that NCS stood for “National Clandestine Service,” which engaged in a murky mission called “human intelligence.” Especially surreal was the description, “We are accountable to the U.S. president, Congress, and the American taxpayer.”

Yeah, sure you are. Except those three are on different sides in your little ideological war. And to think I helped fund your cheesy little website.

Hell, it’s getting so that cheating on taxes is the last pure act of patriotism.

But what would the CIA have to do with Seethe and Halcyon? The drugs were all stamped out. Mark and Alexis had made sure of that, despite Burchfield’s blubbering about “government property.” And Roland had personally put a bullet in Briggs’s hard drive, as well as his chest.

A browsing of the CIA site revealed no e-mail addresses. Any public contact had to issue through Cold War means like postal mail and telephone, aside from a handy form page where freedom-loving citizens could rat on their suspicious neighbors. Or just the neighbors they didn’t like.

“What are you looking at?”

It was Wendy. He’d been so engrossed that he hadn’t heard her come out on the porch. She stood behind him, and now he could smell her—paint, chamomile, and faint, sexy sweat.

Roland caught himself before he snapped the laptop closed. “Uh, researching for a client. She’s got a thriller thing going on, and I wanted to make sure this logo was right for her book cover.”

“Ro, your hand is shaking.”

He forced a chuckle. “Yeah. Blood sugar must be low. How about them cucumbers?”

He logged out of the program and shut down as Wendy nuzzled the back of his neck. She reached one arm around and slid it between his legs. “There’s the cool kind of cucumber, and then there’s the
other
kind.”

He stood abruptly, and the rocker knocked back against Wendy.

“Ow,” she said. “Boy, you sure know how to respond to fore-play.”

“Sorry, sweetie,” he said, squeezing the folded laptop as if it were a box of venomous snakes. “I’m a little wired right now.”

She knew that drill. His alcoholism had led to a painful separation, and if not for the divine intervention of the insane Dr. Briggs, they would likely still be apart. Of all the consequences stemming from the Monkey House, their reunion was the only positive outcome that Roland could see.

“Too much peace and serenity,” she said, glancing at her current work in progress sitting on the easel. “It can drive anybody nutty.”

“Let’s eat,” he said, taking her hand and giving her an apologetic kiss on the cheek. Before entering the cabin, he studied the woods.

Every four hours. We played that game already.

Now what?

Dominic Scagnelli had been watching her for days, but his favorite part was at sundown.

That was when Anita Molkesky took her long, luxuriant bubble baths, surrounded by candles. Since she’d given up porn stardom masquerading as “Anita Mann,” her cash flow had been a little tight, as evidenced by the financial records he’d cracked. She’d downgraded her cable package, pushed her two credit cards to the max, and traded her Corvette for a Jetta. She was overpaying for the little cottage, $1,200 a month, but it was located on the edge of a university town where the entire market was inflated.

Despite the hardships, Anita allowed herself two indulgences: an evening soak, and multiple classes of barbiturates, painkillers, and the occasional bottle of wine that corralled the dulling effects of the other drugs.

As Scagnelli looked through his binoculars, he wondered how much his boss was keeping from him. After stints in two national security agencies before becoming a “consultant,” he’d learned that you could count on getting half the truth. The trouble was they gave you the half that didn’t matter and withheld the half that would have helped you do your job.

And that’s what it was all about. Doing your job.

Some of his fellow agents had wasted their time banging against the Puzzle Palace in DC, trying to make sense of the decisions made by higher-ups. Scagnelli tried that his first couple of years, but then he figured out that nobody knew the whole story anywhere. Nobody knew the motives, nobody owned the agenda.

While some agents grabbed their crotches and saluted the flag, and others were sucked down the drain by the political intrigue, Scagnelli made peace with the idea that there was a job, somebody had to do that job, and he might as well be the one doing it.

He’d become a free agent because the proliferation of security agencies in the wake of 9/11 had created a lot of cracks. For the entrepreneurial types, the rampant intergovernmental mistrust had fueled opportunities. Some agents hated to serve as wingmen for politicians, but an election year was coming, and there were jobs to do. And he doubted if any of his fellow consultants were sitting in the bushes looking at a marvelous pair of boobs topped with sparkly white froth.

The book on Anita Molkesky was that she was an exhibitionist, fragile, and constantly on the verge of a psychotic breakdown. At least, that was half the story. Scagnelli had filled his idle hours between baths by speculating on the other half.

I wonder if porn actresses have agents like regular movie actresses do. If so, I’d say she got screwed as hard by them as she did by her costars.

He twisted the focus on the binoculars as she lifted herself from a leaning position and reached out of his field of vision. Not that he really cared what she was reaching for, because those amazing globes dangled like skinned papayas. They looked smaller now than they had in the dossier photos, and he wondered what kind of idiot in LA had taken them down a size. Probably some fetishist who thought normal-sized boobs were the next big thing.

Still, he could not complain a bit. What they lacked in volume was more than offset by their undulating sway and dark, swollen nipples. Some boobs were greater than the sum of their parts, radiating charisma in the same way that some normal-looking women somehow became beautiful when they were splashed across a movie screen.

Tits with charisma. Did Oprah ever do a show on that?

Despite the exhibitionist streak, Anita wasn’t going out of her way to flaunt it. Her curtains were open, sure, but the window was six feet above ground level. Scagnelli had found the only spot that afforded a clear view, and as he crouched in the suburban shrubbery, he glanced around to check the lights of the surrounding houses. It appeared everyone was safely occupied by their televisions or computers.

He was close enough to her to hear a mellow twang and gentle backbeat spill from the half-open window. She settled back amid the mounds of bubbles. She’d turned on some tunes, Fleetwood Mac, mood music for the mellowing druggie.

Speaking of which.

Scagnelli lowered the binoculars and pulled the mint tin from his pocket. One of the fringe benefits of being a free agent was he didn’t have to wait for a monthly paycheck. Compensation came in many forms, and a stack of unmarked bills was only one of them. His boss apparently had far-reaching connections, which wasn’t surprising given his background.

The surprising part was the moral ambiguity. Somebody with his boss’s reputation should be a prude who made sure every penny was reported to the Eternal Fucking Revenue Service and with no hanky-panky on the side.

Just went to show what Washington did to people. It was a place where you could only afford to show half the truth at any one time, but you also had to be able to change the truth at a moment’s notice.

Scagnelli’s fingers trembled only a little as he opened the tin. As a frontline observer of the War on Drugs, he’d come to see the “war” part as the public half of the story. The more important half of the story featured all the tidal forces of big industry, political expediency, and good old departmental pissing matches that fed the pipeline on the front end. The United States had the muscle to stamp out any drug supply in the world, but regulation was selective. The U.S. could easily cut the balls off the Taliban by whacking down all the opium poppies in Afghanistan, but billionaires were turning into trillionaires through the use of military force and cartoon diplomacy. And the trillionaires had purchased Congress decades ago.

But such thinking was for the idiots who gave a crap about democracy, freedom, and those other words that had people eating shit and smiling like it was cake. Scagnelli’s job was to keep his eyes on charismatic tits. And Scagnelli’s game was that he was always just doing his job and nothing more.

Anita was listlessly soaking as he slid a tablet into his mouth. Some nights, she lazily stroked herself, nothing serious, and he figured she was one of those frigid types who only put out for the cameras.

His cell vibrated inside his pocket. He’d silenced it for the surveillance mission, but being reachable was part of the job.

He pulled out the prepaid phone and, shielding it with one hand, flipped it open to check the text message.

He recognized the number. The message contained a single word:
Tonight.

The next text buzzed in right after that:
Then to Morgans
.

He closed the phone, gave a last wistful glance through the binoculars, and shrugged. A job was a job.

Scagnelli tucked his binoculars into his leather tool belt and slid his arms into an orange mesh safety vest. The time for subterfuge was over. Now he needed to be conspicuously ordinary. The white hardhat and clipboard were his tickets to the working class.

Scagnelli had spent the past couple of days monkeying with the telephone switch box around the corner, the central feed for numerous land lines in the area. Everybody had a cell phone these days, but people still needed wires for a number of important services. The phone company trucks had been visible around the neighborhood, although the technicians were probably scratching their heads over the random problems.

So Scagnelli would be just another soldier in the faceless army of service workers, meeting the needs of the customers they cared so much about.

Scagnelli emerged from the bushes and crossed the small lawn. He would be visible from the two houses across the street, but with the brim of the hardhat pulled low, no one would be able to make an ID. A car went past, doing well over the 35 mph speed limit, and Scagnelli didn’t even look. After all, he carried a clipboard and had a job to do.

He slipped on a leather work glove when he reached the small stone patio. The door was unlocked, so there was no need for the burglar tools hidden in pouches along his belt. He stepped inside, checking the neighborhood again before closing the door.

Thank you
, American Idol,
for keeping the sheep drowsy
.

The layout was as he’d mapped it during his down time. A kitchenette, a combined dining and living room with a breakfast nook, and a short hallway that split the bedroom and bath. Scagnelli glanced into the open bedroom as he passed. It was neat, tidy, and boring, with none of the mirrors on the ceiling or leather restraints on the bedposts one might have expected of a porn star. The most controversial object visible in the room was the folded-open paperback on the nightstand.

He’d give it a better search after he finished his job.

Unlike the front door, the bathroom door was locked for some weird reason, just the kind of harebrained shit a woman would do for a false sense of security. But it was a cheap privacy catch, and with the backbeat of Fleetwood Mac providing cover, he slipped a metal slim jim into the catch and bumped the door with his hip.

She didn’t notice him at first. She raised handfuls of bubbles above her head and let them fall. She was low in the water, submerged from the neck down. Scagnelli was relieved in a way, because he couldn’t afford to be distracted by her charisma.

“Evening, Miss Molkesky,” he said, over the vocal harmonies of Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks.

An odd expression crossed her face, a mixture of alarm and anticipation, as if she’d been expecting a special delivery of flowers instead.

Or maybe a boyfriend?

The report said she was not dating anyone, and although her on-screen activities suggested few boundaries, in her personal life Anita appeared reclusive to the point of celibacy. Scagnelli wondered how much that had to do with what happened a year ago. He wished he’d been wearing one of his sharp suits instead of this Johnny-Bob working getup. It never hurt to impress a pretty woman, even if she wasn’t your type.

“You’re late,” she said thickly.

Scagnelli glanced at the open door behind him as if she were talking to someone else.

“You work for them, don’t you?” she said.

“I work for myself.” If she screamed, someone might hear, but the music might disguise it, too

“That’s what they all say,” she said.

The CD player rested on the lid of the closed toilet, the cord snaking up beside the sink. He stepped forward and turned the music up a couple of notches, but not enough to disturb the neighbors. He was careful to use his gloved hand, although it limited his dexterity.

“Fleetwood Mac,” he said. “Crazy band. Probably sets the all-time record for different lineups.”

“Stevie Nicks drags me down,” Anita said. She was still submerged to her neck, and now her arms were beneath the water, too. The bubbles framed her pretty face, making her look angelic. The plastic surgeons had left that part alone.

“You shouldn’t put an electrical appliance so close to the bathtub,” he said. “If it fell in, you’d get electrocuted.”

That’s when he noticed the two razor blades laying flat and clean and silvery on the edge of the tub.

“And the window open this time of year,” he said. “You might catch your death of pneumonia.”

Scagnelli leaned over the toilet and slid the window closed with his gloved hand. The water sloshed, and some of it spilled onto the floor. When he turned back around, she was sitting up and there were those tits in all their charisma. Up close, they weren’t all that special.

Or maybe he was just emotionally distancing himself. In his former life, he’d seen agents get too personally involved in their work and make a mess of things. He had to remind himself he was just doing his job.

He pointed to the razor blades. “That would be real messy,” he said. “And probably hurt, too.”

“I read that if you make the bath real hot, you don’t feel a thing.”

She lifted one lovely calf from the water and wiggled her toes at him. The skin was slick and light brown, and clumps of white bubbles took a sensual rollercoaster ride down the curves.

He sat on the toilet lid and took her foot in his gloved hand, then stroked the instep with his naked hand, careful to use the backs of his fingers. The whiz kids in the forensics lab could do wonders with DNA evidence. Not that a manic-depressive porn star’s suicide would get much scrutiny.

“Can I ask you something?” he said, wondering if she was sizing him up the way she might a costar.

She stifled a giggle. That was good. She was probably halfway to an overdose already.

“What?”

“In those movies, when you’re…” He glanced away.

“When I’m what? I did a lot of things.” She sounded a little impatient now, as if he were breaking the mood.

“Like, when you’re doing it with those guys, how come you never kiss them?”

Now she
did
giggle, and it rolled up into a laugh, and Scagnelli felt like he had when the high school cheerleading captain shot him down for a date. Why did the pretty ones always turn out to be bitches?

Scagnelli let go of her leg and it surprised her. The limb slapped back into the water. A few drops darkened the legs of his trousers.

“Okay, if you’re going to play rough,” she said. “Here’s why you don’t kiss the guys. It’s too romantic. It’s too personal. When you fuck for money, you’re just doing a job.”

Scagnelli nodded thoughtfully. That was something he could understand. He was about to ask how come it was okay to kiss during the lesbian scenes, but she’d reminded him why he was here.

“Like I said on the phone, they couldn’t let you live, after what happened,” he said.

She nodded, her eyes moist, and she slid back down to her neckline, and Scagnelli didn’t even miss the view. “I’m tired,” she said. “I wish they’d killed us last time. That whole Monkey House thing messed with me. And that other guy, Kleingarten? Were you friends with him?”

Scagnelli had heard the rumors. Kleingarten was a free agent, too, but a low-level thug who was totally out of his league at the government level. The death certificate had him down for a heart attack, but he’d been tied up with Burchfield last year. Scagnelli wanted to make sure he himself didn’t become Burchfield’s latest heart-attack victim.