The mid-morning sun sparkled on the deep, clean
snow on either side of the dark, wet freeway, as the cab drove at an almost
reckless speed through the countryside.
The passengers sitting in the back were both well-wrapped against the
pervasive cold and were only now starting to remove their hats, scarves and
gloves.
The driver glanced at them in his mirror. He’d picked them up at the airport on a
flight from Boston Atlantic Airport: a young couple, a tall, well-built man and
a shorter, slimmer woman. Her accent was
local, but as far as he could tell, the man’s had an east coast twang. As the man removed his hat, he noticed that,
like the woman, he was fair-haired.
“You here for the holidays?” he asked in a
friendly, conversational tone.
“Sure,” the man replied, “at least for the next
day or so.”
“They don’t get many visitors at the Dude Ranch
over the winter,” the driver volunteered, “although I get plenty of fares out
there in the summer.”
“We’re not visitors,” the young woman
explained. “My mom owns it. We’re visiting family.”
“Ah, I thought you sounded local, ma’am.”
This seemed to bring the conversation to a
natural close and the young woman clutched at the man’s arm, pointing out what
could be seen of the landmarks along the way.
The driver turned into the wooden gate that bore
the legend ‘Hoffman Ranch’ and they bumped their way along the rough single
track road to where a group of buildings clustered around a large house.
“Sound the horn, please?” the woman asked, and
the driver obliged.
The door to the house opened and a well-dressed,
fair-haired woman waved excitedly from the porch.
“Mom!” the young woman exclaimed and rushed up
to the older woman, leading her inside and leaving her partner to pay the bill
and move the luggage from the cab to the house.
Amanda Wainwright greeted them both with excited
cries of welcome; eager to hug her daughter, she didn’t wait for Karen to
remove her coat.
“So glad you’re here, darling,” she exclaimed,
then turned to the quiet man who had now finished carrying in the luggage
inside and stood watching the women with great affection in his expression.
“Adam, come here,” she ordered, reaching out
towards him.
She found herself enveloped in his strong arms
and hugged until she was breathless.
“Thanks for inviting me over,” he said. “it’s
always good to be here, Amanda.”
Karen had removed her coat and stood smiling at
the two most important people in her life.
She was delighted they got on so well – her mother had not always
approved of the men in her life – but then she found it impossible to imagine
what either would find to dislike in the other.
Amanda disengaged herself and reached for her
daughter’s hand as Adam divested himself of
his coat.
“I have been preparing for this for weeks,” she
confessed, “so much so, that I was starting to imagine the day would never get
here or that the weather would delay you.
I have missed you – both.”
To her surprise she felt Adam’s arm go round her
and gather her and her daughter towards him.
“Group hug!” Karen cried cheerfully, and the
three of them hugged each other for a precious moment, then broke away,
laughing. “So good to be home, Mom.”
“I’ll take the cases up,” Adam said, and picked
up the three suitcases.
“Mind how you go,” Amanda called after him, as
she followed her daughter through to the kitchen, where Karen was poking in the
fridge. “You hungry? I have a casserole in the oven, it won’t be
too long.”
“I know, I can smell it. It’s making my mouth water.”
“You’ve lost weight,” her mother said
critically.
Karen laughed.
“Not much and it’s not from want of eating, believe me. We’ve been busy.”
“I know; I see the newscasts.”
Hearing the anxiety in her mother’s voice, Karen
turned and reached a hand towards her.
“Don’t worry, Mom. Spectrum isn’t
in the business of losing its officers.
We get every gadget there is to keep us safe.”
“And if one of those ‘gadgets’ fails?”
“Ain’t gonna happen,” Karen said and
smiled. “Now, how about some coffee and
a slice of the homecoming cake?”
“What homecoming cake?” Amanda asked archly.
Karen laughed.
“Oh Mom… you always have a
homecoming cake – it’s why I come home…”
“Cheeky minx…”
With a smile at her grinning daughter, Amanda
fetched a carefully crafted cake from the larder, pleased with the delighted
whoop the sight of it elicited.
“Pour some coffee, Sunny,” she said. “Will Adam want some?”
“Coffee?
He’s always up for a cup of coffee; he runs on it,” Karen replied,
taking three mugs from the cupboard.
“He’s taking a while… I hope he hasn’t decided to unpack straight
away. It’ll take him hours to line his
socks up in the right order.”
Amanda laughed.
“How do you two manage to get
along? You’re the untidiest woman I’ve
ever met.”
“And he’s the most tolerant man I’ve ever met,” Karen replied, blushing
slightly. “But neat socks isn’t normal –
whatever he says. I’ll go fetch him.”
She sprinted up the wooden stairs to her bedroom
under the eaves of the house.
Adam was sitting on the edge of the double bed,
the suitcases unopened on the floor.
She glanced at him quizzically. “You okay?
Mom’s got coffee and homecoming cake for us…”
He turned his blue eyes on her and she caught
her breath at the passion she saw in their translucent depths. In a moment he was at her side, his arms
around her and his lips pressing against hers.
She yielded to their pressure and raised her arms to link them around
his neck.
The embrace was passionate and it was only the
need to breathe that unlocked their lips.
“What was that for?” she whispered happily, as
she nestled in his arms.
“I love you,” he murmured. “I love you, I love this place – I even love
your mom…”
“Now that’s just kinky,” she said, with a
chuckle.
His fingers raised her chin so that he could
look into her beautiful mossy-green eyes and once more she was surprised at the
ardour in his gaze.
He drew her to the bed and sat down on it, so
that she stood beside him and he could rest his head on her breast. His hand began unbuttoning the casual shirt
she wore over her T-shirt and she felt her body stir in response to his obvious
desire, although she protested weakly:
“Mom’s waiting… downstairs…”
The sentence faded as he kissed her lips and
then left a trail of kisses down her chin and neck.
“Adam, we don’t have time..” she gasped, even as
she helped him remove her shirt and T-Shirt and started to undo his shirt
buttons.
“You know me,” he replied seductively, “I like
to make the most of every moment we have…”
Karen gave a
throaty chuckle and stopped protesting.
Amanda was sitting at the kitchen table reading
a magazine and she looked up as her guests, looking slightly sheepish, came
downstairs.
She
smiled. “Socks all tidy now?” she asked innocently.
Adam gave her and then Karen a bemused glance,
but her daughter rallied magnificently.
“All ship-shape,” Karen said, avoiding her
mother’s knowing glance.
“I made fresh coffee; it’s still warm,” Amanda
said lightly. “ You can bring the cake to the table, if you like, Karen. I think we probably all need a slice.”
Adam pulled out a seat and sat down at one end
of the table.
She turned to him. “Your mother asked me to get you to ring her
when you arrived,” she said. “She just
wants to know that you’re okay.”
“Sure; I’ll call her right now,” he said
quickly, reaching into a pocket for a cell phone.
Amanda could have found it in herself to pity his
all too obvious embarrassment, if she hadn’t found it amusing. “I think she means on the video-phone. She wants to see for herself that you’re
okay.”
“Oh.” He
put the phone away, but still couldn’t meet her gaze.
“Have your coffee and cake and then you can use
the phone in the study, if you like. We
won’t eavesdrop on her maternal concerns…”
He gave a snort of laughter and looked up
smiling.
Amanda was not immune to the powerfully
disarming Svenson smile and she patted his hand. “We mothers like to keep an eye on our kids
even when they’re all grown up; but the wisest of us know not to interfere
unless we’re invited to.”
He grasped her fingers and gave them a grateful
squeeze.
As the young couple sat and drank the coffee and
– Amanda was amused to see – devoured large slices of the walnut gateau, she
told her daughter the local news.
“You’ll never guess who I saw yesterday at the
store,” she concluded, before answering her own assertion, “Becky Becker.”
“Oh! How
is she?” Karen asked, swallowing her mouthful.
“Last I heard she was about to drop number three. Was it all okay?”
“Yeah; a little girl, called Kimberley.”
“Kimberley?
I guess she likes to be consistent: Kevin, Kirk and Kimberley. I don’t
supposed it would have anything to do with Kenny, would it?”
“I have no idea.
I imagine any woman called Becky who marries into a family called Becker
has to learn to be fairly thick-skinned about names pretty quickly.”
Karen laughed.
“I should give her a call,” she said, turning to explain to Adam. “Becky Schmidt was my best friend in High
School, before I went to Boston to prepare for the college exams. I was a bridesmaid at her wedding. I must admit, that did something to lessen
the bonds of friendship – she chose bridesmaid dresses that had so many frills
they looked like an explosion in a cotton candy factory and, what was worse,
they were in shiny, sickly-pink satin. I
looked like a human blancmange.”
“You looked very nice,” Amanda asserted, rolling
her eyes. “I’m sure I have a photo
somewhere…”
Karen gave Adam a grimace and shook her head.
“I guess no bride wants to be upstaged by her
bridesmaids,” he responded. “I remember
when my cousin got married the bridesmaids wore identical patterned chequered
dresses in a sort of brown, mustard yellow and cream, and all my mom could find
to say about them was that they’d make nice picnic-table cloths.”
Karen laughed, shaking her head at the fact that
he could remember even something so inconsequential as the design of bridesmaid
dresses he’d have only seen once. She replied,
“Your mom has an acid tongue when she puts her mind to it.”
He nodded and added, “But you’d look fantastic
in anything at all, Älskling.”
“Not this; believe me.” She shuddered. “But - I should still give Becks a call.”
“She’d love to hear from you and I told her you
were coming home to visit… with a friend,” Amanda said.
“Mom! What did you go and do that for?” Karen protested. “I’ll have to answer a thousand questions
now.”
“It slipped out,” Amanda said, with a
shrug. “Her mom was with her and asked
after you with that ‘isn’t-she-married-yet’ expression on her face. What was I supposed to do in the face of such
provocation?” she appealed to Adam, who shook his head, smirking, but refused
to answer.
Karen sighed and got to her feet. “You might have to shed your anonymity for
the sake of my mother’s standing in the community, Harvard; how’d’you
feel about that?”
“Hey, as long as it’s only Adam Svenson who gets
exposed and not Captain Blue of Spectrum, I can live with it – to save the
credibility of the two most wonderful women in Iowa.”
“He is definitely too good to be true,” Amanda
remarked cheerfully.
But Karen pursed her lips. “Only Iowa?” she demanded playfully.
“Sure,” he replied. “My mom and sister have Massachusetts sewn up
and I refuse to make any national comparisons on the grounds that it would
certainly get me into hot water with the residents of one or the other
State...”
“Too tricksy by half,”
Karen muttered, ruffling his hair as she walked past him towards the
phone.
When Karen came back, Amanda and Adam were
looking at a photo album. He looked up
and grinned at her.
“You were sure a cute kid,” he said.
“Mom!”
she protested.
Amanda shrugged.
“Hey, I know my mom’s shown you pictures of me,
so it’s only fair,” Adam reasoned. “No
secrets, right?”
“I guess so.”
Adam sensed that something was coming; it wasn’t
like Karen to give in so readily.
“You
wanna go out tonight?” she asked suddenly.
“Not really.
Are you saying I will be going
out tonight?”
Karen flopped into a chair, sighing
heavily. “Yeah. Becky’s having a New Year’s Eve gathering –
just for a few hours. She wants us to go
– she wants to meet you.”
“And you were so overcome with friendship you
couldn’t refuse,” Adam said, his eyebrows rising in disbelief.
“You said you didn’t mind exposure. I took you at your word. And it’ll only be for an hour or two – I told
Becky we were here to see Mom, after all.”
Amanda closed the album with a chuckle. “You realise you’re a trophy boyfriend?” she
remarked to Adam.
“I’m afraid I’ll be a big disappointment to
them.”
“You will not,” Karen said confidently. “You will charm the socks off them,
Harvard. Just like you always do.”
“Shall we eat now, before you go?” Amanda asked,
“Or shall I save the casserole for another day?”
“Well, I’m famished,” Adam confessed.
“We’ll eat.
Karen, get the table ready, please.”
“S.I.G., Mom.”
Amanda handed Karen the keys to the sturdy
yellow 4x4 that Adam had bought them a few years ago.
“Drive carefully; remember the roads will be
treacherous.”
“I do know what it’s like here, Mom,” her
daughter protested.
“I know; but you’ve been on Cloudbase so much
and been who knows where across the globe, so a gentle reminder does no
harm.” She handed Adam a bag. “I put some gifts in there for Becky and her
family. Mostly baking and a bottle of
wine. She can’t expect you to come armed
with shop-bought presents when you were only invited at the last minute, but I
expect it’ll be welcome enough.”
“If I tell her you cooked it, it certainly will
be,” Karen agreed, pulling on her gloves.
“If she thinks I had anything to do with it, it’ll get consigned to the
trash at the first opportunity.”
Karen tuned the car radio into the local music
station and sang along with the popular songs as she drove. The houses grew more frequent as they reached
the suburbs and soon the wide, straight streets were lined with modest
clapboard-style houses, all of them decorated with bright, multi-coloured
lights and seasonal garden decorations.
Karen turned off onto a side road and through the estate to a small
house at the end of a short road.
She stopped the car and turned off the
radio. “Here we are,” she said. “Ready for the fray?” He didn’t answer and she looked quizzically
at him. “Something up?”
Adam tilted his head quizzically and asked, “Why
are there three pink plastic flamingos on that lawn?”
Karen tutted in dismay. “Call yourself an educated man? What colour should a flamingo be? I dare say you’ve heard of the Lesser-spotted
Idiosyncratic Flamingo?”
“Nope, can’t say I have,” he replied, glancing
towards her.
She snorted with laughter. “It’s so-called because it likes to avoid
doing the obvious: it flies north from Florida just to winter on Iowan
lawns. I understand it’s an endangered
species now.”
He grinned at her. “Damn, I should’ve realised
that, shouldn’t I?”
“Uh-huh.
Oh, and by-the-way, feel free to
ask your hostess why there are flamingos on her lawn, ‘cause I sure as hell
don’t know.”
Chuckling, they got out of the car and walked up
the path, past the lawn with its ‘idiosyncratic’ decorations, and Karen rang
the doorbell.
The door was opened by a plump, dark-haired
woman with round glasses on a cheerful, if somewhat red, face.
“Kay!”
she squealed and threw her arms around the taller woman. “Great to see you, honey – come in, come in!”
Karen stepped inside to be greeted by a crowd of
eager well-wishers all speaking at once:
“Hi there!”
“Good to see you again!”
“Love the hair – it suits you!”
Adam stepped inside and closed the door behind
himself, he stood holding Amanda’s bag of goodies and affectionately watched
Karen work the crowd as only she knew how, until he was accosted by his hostess
and turned his attention to her.
Karen was in full flow. “Hi, how are you? Good to see you too! Thanks, it was a big
decision to cut it, but I don’t have any regrets…”
“You always had such wonderful hair, Kay; I
always envied you for it…”
“Thanks,” Karen said. “But you wouldn’t have been so envious if
you’d known the time it took to wash and dry..”
“I always said your hair was what made you the
prettiest girl in the school. I think
it’s a shame you’ve hacked it off.”
Karen froze at the sound of that voice and then
turned slowly to stare at the dark-haired man who had spoken. A faint blush seeped into her cheeks and she
drew a deep breath to steady herself.
“Wyatt Jackson.
Why, I haven’t seen you in years…” she said with a composure she did not
feel. “Last I heard you were working in
California at a computer firm.” A satisfyingly safe number of miles away from
here… she added to herself.
“And the last I heard, you were working
for some taxi service. Isn’t that a bit of a comedown for Cedar Rapids’ own
female Einstein? Your folks were always
saying you were doing so well in that government job you landed – and then, you
were reduced to working on air-taxis?
What went wrong, Kay?”
“Nothing went wrong, as you put it; I learned to
fly and decided that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I became a pilot for an executive jet
company,” Karen retorted. She felt angry
with herself for reacting so defensively to his jibe even as she replied, but
Wyatt had always had the knack of making her feel worthless. It seemed that he still did.
“Still don’t seem right,” he said casually,
coming towards her as he spoke. “I
always figured you were too feisty to take orders from anyone, Kay. It’s a
kinda disappointment to hear you were willing to take orders from fat and lazy
old businessmen. ”
“Not all of them were fat, very few of them were
lazy and many of them were our age, Wyatt.
Besides, time was when you expected me to take orders – or at least, your orders, as I recall.”
“Ah, but I was young and hadn’t learned to
appreciate an independent mind and spirit in a woman. Now, I am older and wiser…”
“Wiser?
Says who?” Karen challenged sharply.
By now Wyatt Jackson was at her side. He was a tall man, thin and wiry, with
attractive features. He was dressed in
the height of fashionable chic and his black hair was carefully styled in a
loose and tousled wave. His wide-set
eyes were a remarkably clear blue, but they held little warmth as he looked at
her. In her youth, Karen, along with
most of the other girls at the school, had failed to see beyond the superficial
charm of the handsome youth; Wyatt Jackson had been extremely popular and she
had been the envy of most of the girls she knew with Wyatt at her side.
Karen looked up at him and the years fell away;
she remembered how excited she’d been when he’d started asking her out, because
Wyatt was the coolest boy in town and the darling of the popular set. His father owned a car dealership and the
family were well-known and liked in the community – they still were, even
though their son had failed to fulfil the great future that had been predicted
for him by his doting parents.
Suddenly he dipped his head to kiss her and it was only at the last
moment that she realised he intended to kiss her lips, so she quickly turned
her head slightly and his lips brushed her cheek.
She laughed gaily and continued to turn, looking
over her shoulder to where Adam was
standing with Becky. He had delivered
the gifts and was chatting politely with his hostess, although Karen caught a
swift, appraising glance that darted her way and knew he was watching her. She
found the reassurance more comforting than she’d expected.
Becky noticed the slight frown that had appeared
between Adam’s fair brows and followed the direction of his gaze. Seeing who Karen was with, she hastened to
explain:
“Oh, Wyatt Jackson; I should have warned her he
was here. He and Kay were a couple for a
while at school, before she went to Boston to prepare for college exams. Mind you, everyone fancied Wyatt back then.”
“Adam, come and meet an old friend of mine, from
way back,” Karen called, stretching out her hand towards him in what Adam
recognised was a plea for his supporting presence.
Becky led the way over to where Wyatt stood, openly
assessing this unexpected and unknown rival as the man approached.
Karen grabbed Adam’s hand and squeezed it before
she turned back to Wyatt and said, “Wyatt, I’d like you to meet my fiancé,
Adam.”
“Fiancé?”
Becky exclaimed. “Your mom never mentioned
that! Listen up, folks, Kay and Adam are
engaged!”
There was a chorus of congratulations and a
smattering of applause from the assembly.
Adam put his arm around Karen’s shoulder and smiled a polite
acknowledgement of the acclaim, although his attention was fixed on Wyatt.
“Engaged?
You didn’t tell me that, Kay,” Wyatt said coolly.
“I’ve hardly had chance since I arrived,” she
responded.
Adam extended a hand and said, with devastating
politeness and a far more pronounced Bostonian accent than he was wont to
employ:
“Pleased to meet you, Mr Jackson.”
Wyatt looked at the extended hand and casually
accepted it. He was slightly
disconcerted by the firmness of Adam’s grasp and the indication of the
considerable strength that lay behind it.
“You too…Adam.”
“So when’s the wedding?” Becky interjected. “You gonna have it here?”
“We haven’t even set a date yet,” Karen said,
with an apologetic smile. “So there are no plans about the venue, Becky.”
“Does that even count as a formal engagement
then?” Wyatt remarked. “In my book, you
get engaged and next day you start planning the wedding.”
“Oh, of course it counts, Wyatt!” Becky
chided. “It’s a declaration of intent,
not part of a project management schedule.”
She rolled her eyes at Karen, laughing.
“Where’re you from, Adam?” Wyatt asked, ignoring
Becky.
“Boston.”
“Kay’s pa came from there,” Becky reminded
him. “Did you ever meet him, Adam?”
“Not in Boston, but, yes, I did meet him a
couple of times. I never knew him as
well as I would have liked. He seemed a
fine man.”
Karen squeezed his hand in gratitude and he
squeezed back. Unsure of why she was so uncertain in the presence
of this man, he was in no doubt that her confidence had taken a battering and
he was not prepared to let her down.
“He was such a nice man,” Becky confirmed, “and
Mrs Wainwright is a nice, kind woman – and a brilliant cook. You must thank her for the baking, Kay. I’m gonna save the cookies for the kids.”
“I will,” Karen assured her.
“Did you meet Kay there?” Wyatt acted as if no
one had spoken since Adam had answered his question.
“No,” Karen said quickly. “We met in Australia.” She glanced up into Adam’s face and smiled at
the memory, then went on to explain to Becky:
“He took me out into what they call ‘the outback’ one evening, to go
stargazing, and I knew then that ‘this
was the one’.” She laughed and
hugged Adam’s arm. “I barely noticed the stars, so I guess you could say it was
love at first sight, really.”
“Aww, how romantic!” Becky enthused.
Wyatt continued his interrogation. “You a pilot too, Adam?”
“I was
a test pilot and now I work for the World Government, just as Karen does.”
“They must pay well,” Wyatt remarked, assessing
Adam’s designer casuals with a knowledgeable eye.
“They pay a fair wage for the job.”
“It seems that public service pays too well if
every two-bit jet-taxi driver can afford clothes by Andre Verdain.”
“I have a Verdain dress,” Karen interjected,
sensing the growing antagonism between the men.
“They don’t cost so much in Europe, and being in the World Government
means you get to travel a lot. I have
some real nice things that cost far less than you’d imagine…”
“I’m not talking about scavengings from last
season’s reduced rail, Kay. You might be
happy enough to buy whatever’s left when they clear out the cupboards, but I
recognise that jacket from this year’s collection,” Wyatt said, without
glancing at her. “And I know how much
they cost, wherever you buy them from.”
This time he did glance at her.
“They’re well out of your league; even with your mom’s Dude Ranch doing
some business now, you haven’t got the disposable income.” Karen gasped angrily, but Wyatt’s gaze had
already returned to Adam. “You see, the
Jacksons are important people in this town - my family own the biggest car
dealership in Cedar Rapids and one of the biggest in Iowa –”
Goaded, Adam interrupted, “Really? I guess that makes you a classic example of a
big fish in a small pool.”
“Who’re you to be saying that?” Wyatt challenged
arrogantly.
“If it
wasn’t mentioned, my name is Svenson and my family owns a finance house – one
of the biggest in the world. I may only be small-fry, but I’m from a much bigger pond, Mr Jackson, which
means I can afford to dress as I wish, however much I’m earning.”
Wyatt was momentarily speechless and he flushed
angrily. “You don’t say?” he
retorted. “Well, that’s something.” He took a step back and glanced maliciously
at Karen. “Looks like you finally found
your sugar-daddy, Kay.”
He didn’t see the punch that connected with his
chin and lifted him off his feet, sending him tumbling to the floor amongst a
group of other party-goers. Several
men, including Kenny Becker, hurried over.
“Adam!” Karen exclaimed, pushing him away from
the stunned Wyatt.
Becky knelt beside the sprawling Wyatt, checking
he was okay. Then she glanced up at
Karen and Adam: she was horrified and obviously upset, while he met her gaze
with unabashed self-assurance.
“I’m sorry, Mrs Becker; but no man is going to
speak to Karen like that in my hearing with impunity,” he said icily.
“Hush-”
Karen urged.
Kenny Becker came between his wife and Adam and
said fiercely, “I don’t know you, mister; but you can’t come here and behave
like that. I think you’d better leave -
right now.”
Becky stood up and interrupted. “That won’t be necessary, Kenny. Wyatt’s just leaving. Aren’t you, Wyatt?” She looked down at Jackson, who was wiping
bloody spittle from his chin. “Right
after you apologise to Karen, of course.”
“Please, no,”
Karen said, blushing deeply. “We’ll go…
come on, Adam.”
Adam’s estimation of Becky Becker had already
risen significantly and it did so again when his hostess said, “You’re my
guests and even if you weren’t my friend, Karen, I’d agree with Adam. He’s quite right: no man should speak about
any lady like Wyatt did, with… impunity. Unless and until he apologises to you for his
remark, he’s not welcome in my house.”
“Becky?” her husband said, confused by what was
going on.
“Not now, Kenny.
You’d better help Wyatt to his feet and unless he has something to say,
fetch his coat. He’s leaving.”
Karen turned and buried her face against Adam’s
broad chest. His arm encircled her and
held her close, feeling her tremble as she fought her tears. He continued to face the crowd of curious
partygoers calmly, with no signs of
embarrassment.
Contrary to appearances, however, he was angry,
almost as much with himself as he was with Wyatt Jackson. He had long ago grown used to snide remarks
and jealousy about his family’s wealth and rarely chose to publicise his
family’s circumstances for that reason, but Wyatt’s needling had angered him,
especially when he’d suggested money was a factor in his relationship with
Karen - that was the one thing guaranteed to rouse his formidable Svenson
temper.
Kenny Becker helped his stricken guest to his
feet. Wyatt pushed him away and faced
Adam.
“You caught me off-guard this time, jerk, but next time, I’ll be ready for
you.”
“I won’t be losing any sleep over that, Mr
Jackson.”
“Come on, Wyatt,” Becker said. “You want something for that bruise before
you go?”
“I want nothing from you – any of you – you will
regret this, Kenny, you and your bitch of a wife.”
“Shut your dirty mouth, Wyatt! Becky was right – you’re leaving.”
Wyatt snarled defiance, snatched his jacket from
Becker’s hand and stumbled out of the main door into the snow.
There was a collective sigh as everyone let out
the pent-up breath they’d been unconsciously holding. People looked away and conversations started
up, whispered and furtive as they discussed the incident.
Adam relaxed slightly, sighing out the tension
that had kept him standing ramrod stiff in the face of so many startled gazes.
He hugged Karen and stroked her hair softly.
“She okay?” Becky asked.
“I think so,” he replied.
Karen pulled herself together, pausing to wipe
the moisture from her eyes before she turned to her friend and began to
apologise.
“Hey – you got nothing to apologise for,
Kay. Wyatt’s a jerk – always has been, I
guess, if we’d but known it. I’m sorry you had to meet him here like this.”
“What happened, Becky?” her husband asked. He
nodded a welcome at Karen and glanced warily at Adam, who introduced himself
and extended his hand to his host.
“Pleased to meet you,” Kenny Becker said doubtfully.
Becky glanced around the room, where things were
starting to pick up again and suggested they go into the playroom to talk. She sent Kenny for drinks and led the way
towards the basement of the house. The
playroom was stacked with toys and the walls were covered with childish
artwork. Becky swept toys off one of the
chairs and indicated that Karen should sit.
Adam stood beside her, his hand resting on the back of the chair.
As they settled down, Adam said,” Supposing
someone tells me what all that was about?”
Becky saw reluctance in her friend’s face and
began to explain to save her the task.
“Wyatt was telling the truth: his family are important around here, but
he’s a disappointment to them. He’s
their only son – they have three daughters who are all nice girls – and he was
the apple of his parents’ eyes. Nothing
was too good for Wyatt. He was always
good-looking and he can charm birds from trees if he’s a mind. But… well, I guess you know how it can
be? When you can have all you want, you
want everything?”
Adam nodded; he’d seen enough of that in his
time.
Becky continued, “We were all in the same year
at school. Kay was definitely the
brainiest amongst us, but she was also the prettiest-”
“Bullshit,” Karen retorted under her
breath. Adam smiled and gently laid his
hand on her shoulder.
Becky smiled.
“She was, Adam.” He nodded. “We were a pretty tight-knit group and Wyatt
preferred to lord it over the well-to-do kids, rather than hang around with the
likes of us. But when Kay won the prize
for student of the year he decided that she would look good on his arm.”
Kenny Becker had come back with beers which he
had handed round. He looked up from his
drink and chipped in, “Karen looked good on any man’s arm.”
“She still does,” Adam remarked.
Kenny laughed.
“I’ll drink to that.” He toasted Karen with his beer glass, as she
blushed most becomingly.
“Can it, you guys…”
They chuckled and Karen, mollified and
reassured, started to relax again.
“I was kinda flattered when Wyatt asked me out,”
she admitted. “He was a looker and youth
is more influenced by the obvious, I guess.
I hope I’m not as superficial now.”
“Meaning I’m ugly?” Adam teased. Karen shook her head, laughing up at him.
Becky gave a snort of laughter. “Yeah, right.
You carry right on believing that if it makes you feel better,
Adam.” She smiled at him.
“So, there you were on the arm of Wyatt Jackson
and all was right with your world,” he said.
“But I’m guessing it didn’t last for long, right?”
Karen shook her head. “Wyatt was used to having it all his own way;
compromise was a word he’d never heard.”
“I’ve heard that some people can be like that,”
Adam said evenly, noticing the faint blush that coloured his fiancée’s cheek.
“He started to try and rule our lives,” Becky
continued. “We had to go where he wanted
and when. If we didn’t he took his anger
out on Kay.”
Adam’s brows descended into a frown. “You mean
he hit her?”
“Nothing so crude,” Karen assured him
hastily. “Oh, he’d give me a snakebite
on the arm, or pinch and punch me – nowhere that showed – but he used plenty of
subtle ways to get at me… saying nasty things… rubbishing things I’d done
better than him or … the way I dressed.
Anything that made me feel bad.”
“There’s a streak of cruelness in him that’s
always made him unpredictable,” Becky said, with a rueful nod. “When Karen went to Boston, he was real mad
at her. A whispering campaign started up
against her – we knew it was him that started it, but we had no proof. And it was all untrue, but some people who
didn’t know her didn’t know that. It was
contemptible and cruel.”
“What a charming guy; I wish I’d hit him
harder,” Adam remarked coldly, placing a sympathetic hand on Karen’s
shoulder.
“When I got into Yale, it was a relief to get
away from him,” Karen said quietly. “He
sent me a really horrible letter… I shouldn’t have read it once I saw what it
was going to be like, but… well, I guess he still had something of a hold over
me.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Jeez, I should be old enough and wise
enough not to let him do this to me any more…”
Becky slipped to her knees beside her friend and
hugged Karen as she strove to stem the tears.
Adam was so angry he had to walk about to calm
his emotions. He turned to Kenny and
demanded, “Why was such a slime ball here to start with?”
“He wasn’t invited, he just came along – as
always,” Kenny said. “He’s not the kind
of guy you can keep away from events if he chooses to come.”
“His folks can’t be so all-fire damned important
that you have to let him into your home, knowing what a creep he is!”
“Wyatt can make things difficult and unpleasant
in a hundred small ways. Most folk just
try to ignore him – it makes for an easier life,” Kenny admitted. “Most of the time he doesn’t cause trouble
anyway.”
Still comforting her friend, Becky explained:
“He went and got a job with a computer company in California – he was gonna be
a big shot, or so he told us all. He was
away a couple or three years – we heard he’d got married and then… last fall he
came back to Cedar Rapids. No wife, no
job… Seems like he hadn’t changed much and she finally kicked him out. His dad gave him a job, of course, but I
don’t think he does much to earn his money.
His mom’s still convinced he’s a winner, and she bails him out when he
gets in debt or someone has to be placated.”
“What about the law?” Adam demanded.
“Oh, he never goes so far for it to be illegal,”
Kenny said. “Wyatt’s not stupid.” He gave Adam an acknowledging nod. “You gave him the beating we shoulda
delivered years ago.”
“He’s damn lucky I didn’t know all this before I
hit him.”
“My hero,” Karen said shakily from her
chair.
Adam went to her, crouching in front of the
chair, so that Becky had to move to one side.
“Älskling,
I’d do anything for you… you want that guy skinned alive, I’m your man.”
She smiled at him, reaching out to brush the
long fringe out of his eye. “No; he’s
not worth you bruising your knuckles on, Sky.”
“Then he’s not worth you getting upset about,”
he said, gently. “The guy’s a first
class jerk – you heard your old friends – they know. I hate to see you upset, Karen; please tell
me you’re okay?”
“Sure I am; I have you – what could be wrong?”
Becky patted her arm. “You hang on to him, Kay; he’s a good’un.”
“I know.”
“We’d better get back to the party,” Kenny said.
“Sure,” Becky said. “Come on up when you’re ready…”
They left the two lovers together.
Karen raised her hand and started to tidy her
hair. “I must look a sight,” she
complained looking about for a mirror.
“You look beautiful.” He helped her to her feet and folded in her
in his arms. “I love you,” he
whispered. “I love your strength and
your beauty; I love your spirit and your courage. I especially love the cute way your nose
wrinkles up when you laugh.. just like that,” he added, as she chuckled at him.
He kissed her and she responded with a
passionate kiss in return.
“Let’s go and party, sweetheart…” she whispered.
It was just after midnight when the party
started to break up. People collected
their coats, wished each other ‘Happy New
Year’ and walked out into the crisp night air. Most were local, so there were not many cars
outside and the Wainwrights’ yellow off-roader stood out clearly.
Karen insisted on driving and believing that it
was part of her effort to regain her self-confidence, Adam agreed. Neither of them had drunk any more alcohol
after the beers Kenny Becker had given them, which was lucky as there had been
more snow and the road was shiny with ice.
“Take care!” Becky called, as she waved them
goodbye before darting back inside.
Karen started the engine and set the heater to
full. “Brr…
sooner we get home the better.”
“Watch it, the roads are going to be
treacherous.”
“You sound like my mom, Harvard…” she protested,
as she turned the car and drove slowly down the road to the intersection. “Let’s have some music, shall we?”
Adam shrugged and settled back to watch the
scenery glide past as she drove and hummed along… his eyes started to feel
heavy, so he closed them for a moment and he felt himself dozing off as the car
warmed up.
He had no idea how long he slept, but Karen’s
urgent appeals for him to wake up finally took effect.
“What’s up?” he asked drowsily.
“I think we’re being followed,” she replied,
glancing into the rear-view mirror.
Adam sat up and turned to look between the
headrests out of the back window. It was
snowing again, but he could see headlights in the distance. Considering the road was straight with few
turn offs, it wasn’t necessarily someone trailing them.
“Maybe they’re just going our way?” he
suggested.
“They fell in behind us as I turned at the first
intersection. Okay, people have a right to go where they like, but I drove a
non-direct route and they followed.”
“You suspected them that soon?”
She shook her head. “I wanted to see round the places I used to
know – and you were already falling asleep.”
“Midnight is a great time for sight-seeing…” he
muttered.
“I knew where to get onto the highway; it just
gave me the chance to look round.”
“How far are we now from the ranch?”
“About half way.”
“Maybe they’re going to the airport?”
“Then they’ve missed the turn-off.”
“Can you double-back and get to the airport?”
“Why?”
“Then we’ll know for certain they’re following
us.”
“We could just speed up and lose them.”
“Too dangerous, given the conditions and anyway,
if they are following us, I don’t want to lead them to the Ranch and your
mother. At the airport there will be
other people, more cars and security staff.
We stand a chance of losing them there.”
Karen nodded.
“Good point. Okay; there’s a
stretch up here where I can make a U-turn.
Have you got your gun?”
“I was going to a suburban Christmas party…why
would I take my gun?” he protested.
Karen gave him an exasperated glance. He smiled and drew his blue-coded
Spectrum-issue pistol from his jacket pocket.
“Just in case they open fire as we drive past
them…” she explained.
“Sure,” he agreed
“Here goes; hold tight,” she said and speeded up
slightly to swing the car into a 180 degree turn across the central
reserve. As she turned the wheel and the
car started to turn, she hit the brakes, but the car didn’t slow. She took her
foot off the accelerator as the car slid in a spin and Adam grabbed the wheel,
pulling it round into the skid.
“Accelerate!” he ordered, sharply.
Flustered, Karen pressed her foot on the
accelerator, but as the car jinked over the uneven ground her foot slipped and
the car spun round out of control.
“Adam!” she screamed, as the car left the road
and careered down the embankment. They
were thrown forward as the car hit a snowdrift and stopped.
Adam came to slowly; his head was aching and he
realised there was a taste of blood in his mouth. He struggled to focus and remembering what
had happened, immediately looked for Karen.
The driver seat was empty and the door open, but there was no sign of
her. He fumbled with the seat belt,
blinking the sting of sweat and blood from his eyes, and forced the car door
open.
His legs gave way as he tried to stand and he
slipped into the muddy snow. Panting
heavily, he tried to focus and then vomited - spitting out saliva and
blood. After resting a moment he got to
his feet and as he did so there was a blinding flash of light from other
headlights. He raised his hand to
shield his eyes and tried to see who or what was there.
A figure approached through the light and he
finally recognised it as Wyatt Jackson.
So
Karen was right and we were being followed…
“Where’s Karen?” he demanded aloud. “Is she all right?”
“She’s in my car… she’s shook up, but she’s
conscious – which is more than you’re gonna be, Svenson.”
Jackson moved swiftly and brought something hard
down on Adam’s head before he had time to defend himself. He fell to the ground again and Jackson gave
several vicious kicks around his head and torso. Adam strove to defend himself, but his mind
was clouding over and even the distant sound of Karen’s voice screaming his
name wasn’t enough to keep him alert. As
a final kick drove the remaining breath from his body, he lost consciousness
and lay still in the snow.
Amanda Wainwright woke at her usual hour on New
Year’s Day and pulled the counterpane closer around her. The room was warm, so the heating had already
come on and there was a sliver of bright white light coming from under the
blind. She decided that she ought to get
up and make fresh coffee and some breakfast, as well as start the oven for the
celebration dinner. She hadn’t heard
Karen and Adam come in last night, and assumed they had been extra-considerate
and quiet and that they deserved a lie in after their late night.
She showered and dressed before going down to
start the coffee machine and prepare the turkey for lunch. It was clear that there had been a heavy fall
of snow overnight and the tyre marks from the returning car had been
obliterated. She poured herself a coffee
and sat with a piece of toast to read her latest book.
By 10:30 she was thinking it was time the pair
got up – whatever they were doing… and so she put two coffees and some cookies
on a tray and took it up to Karen’s room.
There was no sound from within and she knocked tentatively on the door.
“Happy New Year, sleepyheads! I have coffee and cookies…”
She opened the door. The bed had not been slept in.
Damn… I
guess the snow meant they stayed over with Becky or her folks. They might’ve phoned… that’s just
thoughtlessness. I’d better check if
they are coming back today.
She let the door swing shut and took the tray
back downstairs. She rang Karen’s cell
phone, but got her voicemail. “Karen, it’s Mom.
Where are you? Do you plan to
come back home today? I only ask because
I was going to cook dinner and there’s no point if you’ve decided to stay at
Becky’s. Call me.”
After 30 minutes without a reply, Amanda called
Adam’s number. The message she left on
his voicemail was brief and to the point:
“Call me, please. I need to know
what your plans for today are.”
After another half an hour, she searched out Becky’s
number and called direct.
“Oh hi,
Mrs Wainwright – Happy New Year. Thanks
so much for the cookies. The kids adore
them.”
“Thanks, Becky.
Could I speak to Karen, please?”
“Karen? She’s not here, Mrs Wainwright. She and Adam left around midnight to drive
home.”
“They left?”
“Yes…
they were fine. Haven’t they come home?
Oh my - you don’t think there could have been an accident, do you?”
“I don’t know.
I’ll check up. Have you seen if
there were any accidents on the roads last night? I haven’t checked the news…”
“No, they
didn’t mention any. What will you do?”
“I’ll call the traffic police and the hospital.”
“Let me
know, Mrs Wainwright…”
“Sure will, Hon.
Bye for now, Becky.”
Amanda’s blood ran cold as she imagined all
sorts of terrible reasons why her daughter and her boyfriend had not come
home. Memories of the dreadful time when
Sam had been killed in a pile-up and the nightmare hours waiting to know if he
was amongst the several casualties filled her mind and she found she was crying
before she had even had a chance to find the phone number she needed.
“There’s a call come through on the Personnel
Emergency Line, Colonel,” Lieutenant Green informed his commanding officer
dispassionately.
“Can’t you contact the duty officer, Lieutenant?”
White replied, barely looking up from his case file.
“I could, sir; but it is from Cedar Rapids, USA
– a Mrs Wainwright, sir. Given that
Symphony Angel and Captain Blue are there, I wondered…”
To his credit, White’s expression barely
changed. “Put her through, Lieutenant.”
“S.I.G., sir.”
There was a muted click and the call was
transferred.
“Hello, Amanda.”
“Charles!
I wasn’t expecting you, but I’m glad it is you. Charles, Karen and Adam have vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“Yes; they went to a party last night – they
left around midnight and they haven’t come home! I’ve checked the hospitals and they’ve no
record of admissions for a man or woman answering their descriptions, nothing
for a Wainwright or a Svenson and no record of a car crash involving a yellow
off-roader. They’ve vanished!”
“Have you checked with the police?”
“Not yet.
I didn’t know if I should.
Spectrum officers and their security… I’m confused.” She sounded close
to tears.
“All right, Amanda. Wait a moment.” White turned to Lieutenant Green. “Lieutenant, please check the state police
databases for Iowa in respect of a road accident for a yellow off-roader, any
arrests of a woman named Wainwright or a man named Svenson, last night.”
“Yes, sir,” Green said, concealing his surprise with
considerable dexterity. He pushed a few buttons and consulted the resulting
response from the Generation 7 computers.
“Negative, sir; there’s nothing recorded.”
“S.I.G., Lieutenant. Get Captain Scarlet up here, at once.” As his executive officer acknowledged the
order and began to implement it, White returned to his off-base caller. “There’s nothing recorded, Amanda. I will start an immediate search. Captain Scarlet will be with you as soon as
possible.”
“Oh, Charles; thank you!”
“Don’t worry, my dear. We’ll find them.”
Captain Scarlet’s jet touched down at East Iowa
Airport a few hours later. The daylight
was starting to fade and the airport was quiet with very few people moving
around the departure and arrivals halls.
He already knew that Blue and Symphony hadn’t caught a plane out of the
place and Green had checked the flight manifest of every plane that had left
the airport over the relevant time and none of them gave any suggestion that
they might be involved in nefarious activities.
He accepted the SSC from one of the Des Moines
base ground-staff and set out for the Hoffman Ranch. Along the way he kept his eyes peeled for
any sign of the yellow 4x4, or even tracks leading off road, but without much
success – there was nothing to suggest anything had happened on this part of
the route.
Mrs Wainwright was waiting for him: her eyes
were red and she was looking pale.
Scarlet advanced towards her and found himself
enveloped in a hug.
“Paul, I am so glad to see you,” Amanda
exclaimed. “Is there any news?”
He disengaged himself gently and shook his
head. “Not yet; but the colonel has
instructed our base in Des Moines to monitor police activity and the hospitals,
in case anything comes up that might give us a clue. And please remember:
wherever they are, they’re together. You
must be reassured by that.”
“Oh, I am, I suppose. But where are they? I can’t believe Karen wouldn’t call me – on
New Year’s Day – if something hadn’t happened. If nothing else, Adam would make
her… if he could.”
“There are numerous reasons why they might not
be able to call,” Scarlet assured her, although he hoped he wouldn’t be called
on to list them. “Look, Amanda, I need
you to tell me where they went – this party they went to – where was it and
what route would they have taken to get there and back?”
“You’re going to drive the route?”
He nodded.
“To start with. I shall have to
question the people at the party – well, some of them, anyway. You say they were said to have left the party
around midnight?”
She nodded and made a visible effort to tell him
what she knew clearly. “I spoke to Becky Becker – Karen’s old
school-friend. She saw them go; she said
they were fine. It was about
midnight. At their very slowest they
should’ve been here well before daybreak.
It has snowed overnight – quite heavily – so they might’ve been driving
slowly.”
“I’ll get Cloudbase to check the weather reports
– find out when it snowed. It might play
a part in what’s happened. Now, if you
can give me the address?”
Amanda scribbled it down on a piece of paper.
“Great.
I’ll be in touch.” Scarlet put
his hands on her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Chin up, Mrs Dubya. I’ll find them… and you’ll have the chance to
tell them both off for scaring us so.”
She smiled and went to wave him off as he turned
the SSC and drove slowly back towards the road.
Scarlet programmed the address into the satnav
and turned towards Cedar Rapids. He
wished he could feel as confident as he’d tried to sound. Even if Karen might’ve forgotten to notify
her mother where she was and what she was doing, he found it impossible to
believe that Adam would’ve been the same.
Along with the weather reports, he asked Green to check incoming calls
to the Svenson household and their personal phones and see if any calls had
been made to them by Captain Blue.
Wishing his family ‘happy New Year’ was a ritual Blue never missed.
Scarlet was concentrating on his driving, barely
checking the surroundings, when he noticed, exaggerated by the sweep of the SSC
headlights, what looked like a wheel rut running across the central reservation
and swerving onto his side of the carriageway.
Although the snow was deep on the sides of the road, on the reservation
was just a muddy slush where the passing
cars had thrown up muck and the ruts would not be noticeable from the other
side of the carriageway – although he must’ve passed them on his way to the
ranch. The marks were unusual and given
that anything unusual was a possible clue, Scarlet had a hunch that it might
merit further investigation. Never one
to ignore his hunches, he slowed and pulled over to the side of the road.
He examined the ruts by torchlight and with a
clear mind, anxious not to jump to conclusions.
The wheels were large and the tyres new, from the impression they’d
left. The vehicle had swerved onto the
reservation and then, skidded – or so it seemed. Picking up traction, it had crossed the
carriageway and…
Scarlet crossed over and began a detailed
investigation of the verge. There was a
depression in the snow and he cleared it with his boot – revealing, to his
satisfaction, further tyre marks.
“So, you came over here and… went… down the
bank…” He slid down the embankment to the low, flat land beyond . The wind had whipped a snow bank against the
lee of the embankment, and he went to investigate. He put his hand on to the snow and felt
something hard. He brushed the snow away
and saw a glint of buttercup yellow.
“Jeez!”
Frantic with worry, he began sweeping the snow
away to slowly reveal the Wainwrights’ yellow
car. Looking back towards the road he
could not see his own car and realised that unless someone had been looking
carefully they wouldn’t have noticed the off-roader as they’d driven past –
especially not with the added poor visibility created by the snow storm. He continued digging the car out of the snow
until he could grasp the driver side handle and force it open. The seal had frozen shut in the cold and it
took all of his strength to yank it open.
The driver and front passenger seat was empty,
and Scarlet leant inside looking for clues to the whereabouts of the
occupants. As he glanced into the back
of the car he saw a shape huddled on the rear seat.
He backed out and wrenched the rear passenger
door open. It was a man, a tall man,
curled into a foetal position, his coat pulled over his head.
Scarlet leant in and gently lifted the corner of
the coat.
“Adam – oh no…” He placed a finger tip against
the cold skin and felt the slight flutter of a sluggish pulse. “How the hell
did you get into this mess?” he asked his unconscious field partner, as he
started to draw the inert body towards the door. He managed to manoeuvre Adam into a position
where he could hoist him over his shoulders in a fireman’s lift. Leaving the car, he staggered and slithered
up the embankment towards the road and the waiting SSC.
It was a nightmare journey; Adam was a dead weight and the slope was
slippery, so that more than once the few precious feet he’d managed to ascend
was lost as he slithered back. As he
reached the last few metres, Scarlet was virtually slithering up the bank on
his hands and knees, with his friend across his back and shoulders. Reaching the road, he collapsed for a moment
to regain his breath and then staggered to his feet. He lifted Adam and hurried to the SSC.
In the car boot there was a basic emergency kit,
which included a thermal blanket, so he wrapped that around his partner as he
strapped him onto the passenger seat. He
realised he had lost his radio cap in his ascent of the embankment and ran back
to find it, leaving Adam in the car with the heater switched on.
Back at the car, he contacted Cloudbase and
explained the situation to Colonel White.
“He’s
alive? You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir.
I definitely felt a pulse.”
“Good, then take him back to the Hoffman
Ranch. I will get Doctor Fawn to contact
you and we’ll send a medijet for Captain Blue.”
“S.I.G.,” Scarlet replied, as he gunned the
engine and started to gather speed. He
swung the car round across the central reservation and floored the accelerator
in a race to reach the ranch.
“You’re
sure there was no sign of Symphony Angel?” Colonel White asked, his concern
clearly apparent in his voice.
“She wasn’t in the car; I’m sure of that. Until Ad…Blue comes to we won’t know what’s
happened to her. I can’t imagine where she might be. Nevertheless, I suggest we get the crew from
Des Moines to come and scour the area, Colonel – the drift was quite long –
although I can’t imagine why she’d have left the car if Adam was in it.”
“Perhaps
he was injured and she went to fetch help?” Lieutenant Green’s voice
interjected. “She wandered off when her jet crashed in the desert once… remember?”
“Only too well,” Scarlet replied gruffly. He had been trying not to think of that incident. “If she started walking, I don’t know which
way she’d have gone – I saw no sign of her and she can’t have been picked up or
there’d be a record of it in the local hospitals.”
“Check
again, Lieutenant,” the colonel ordered.
“In the meantime I will brief Fawn
and you must contact him the moment you get back to the ranch, Scarlet.”
“S.I.G.,” Scarlet said, and closed the link to
concentrate on getting every atom of speed out of his vehicle.
Amanda Wainwright was expecting him and she
opened the door as the SSC drove up to the front porch. Scarlet carried Blue inside and was shown
into a small sitting room, where the fire was banked up and there were blankets
ready on the couch.
“Doctor Fawn said to try and get some warm water
inside him,” she explained, pointing to a gently steaming thermos jug. “And to get his wet clothes off him.” She gave a gentle smile. “I thought he’d prefer it if you did
that. I brought his pyjamas down… and
some shorts, socks and T-shirts.”
Scarlet nodded and watched her leave the room
before he turned his attention to his
companion. There was slightly more
colour in Blue’s face now, although that seemed to be bringing out some
spectacular bruising. Scarlet removed
his shoes and socks and rubbed the icy feet between his hands before putting on
a warm pair of socks.
“Don’t think I’m rubbing anything else,
Blue-boy,” he remarked, as he stripped the jeans, jacket, shirt and shorts
off. Dressing Blue was more difficult
that he’d expected, given that his friend remained unconscious, but he managed
it and wrapped the warm blankets around him.
Mrs Wainwright knocked on the door. “Is he decent?” she called.
Scarlet grinned.
“Come in, Mrs Dubya… he’s as snug as a bug in
a rug.”
She came in with some hot soup steaming in a
bowl.
“I haven’t managed to give him the water yet,”
Scarlet admitted. “It’s not easy dressing a dead weight… and what a
weight. You need to go on a diet, Svenson…”
She laughed sharply. “Last time I saw him ploughing lengths in the
pool there wasn’t an inch to spare on him…”
Scarlet grinned again. “Too true; it’s annoying.”
She laid the bowl carefully on the small table
and glanced at him. “There’s enough for
you as well,” she offered. “I guess you
got pretty cold and damp too.”
Ruefully, he looked at his filthy tunic, dark
with mud. “Yeah…”
“Here, you eat this and I’ll give Adam some of
the water and he can have soup later.”
Gratefully, he sat to eat the soup, while Amanda
perched beside Adam and carefully dribbled water between his lips from a teaspoon.
She waited some time before she explained, with
devastating calmness, “Charles has told me that you couldn’t see any sign of
Karen when you found the car. I can’t
imagine anything that would make her leave Adam, especially when he’s
hurt.” She turned to look at
Scarlet. “He is hurt, isn’t he? Just
look at these bruises. This isn’t just
hypothermia; he'd’ve walked away if he wasn’t hurt.”
“Doctor Fawn will check him over as soon as he
gets here.”
She nodded and glanced away. “Where is she, Paul?”
He sighed.
“I don’t know, Mrs Dubya; honestly, I don’t. The colonel has the troops from Des Moines
combing the area… but I’ve heard nothing yet.”
“You will tell me, won’t you? You won’t try to ‘protect me’ from the
truth? I need to know, Paul!”
“And you will.
I promise.” He gave a gentle
smile to reassure her. “As soon as I
know Adam’s okay, I’m going to visit the Beckers and see if they can shed any
light on where they might’ve gone, who was at the party and what – if anything
– happened at the party itself.”
“I could call Becky,” Amanda volunteered.
Scarlet hesitated; he was more concerned to
check that the Beckers were not Mysteron agents and that was something that
couldn’t be done over the phone. “No,”
he said carefully. “I think I might be
better placed to discover anything that might give us a clue from a face to
face interview. Besides, I need you here
with Adam and then, in case Karen makes her way home.”
Amanda Wainwright raised one of her
elegantly-shaped eyebrows, completely unconvinced by his explanation. “That’s what you Spectrum agents always say:
‘stay out of it, Amanda’.”
“This Spectrum agent hasn’t said it before, I’m
sure. I can’t speak for any other
Spectrum agents,” Paul said, with a somewhat embarrassed smile.
The fact that she had called the colonel by his Christian name had not
escaped him; she was probably familiar with more of Spectrum’s elite squadron
of agents than any civilian on the planet.
“I’m sorry, Paul. I shouldn’t take it out on you; you’re only
doing your job, after all.”
“Slightly more than that, Amanda: I’m looking
out for my friends and trying to discover who – or what – did this to one of
them.”
She nodded and stood from her seat beside
Adam. “I’ll take that bowl and make us
some coffee, shall I? How long until
Doctor Fawn gets here?”
Scarlet glanced at his watch. “Another hour or so. Coffee would be nice –
thanks.”
She left the room and he wandered over to look
at Captain Blue. The American’s face was
a far more healthy colour, if you discounted the bruises. He could see a bump on Adam’s forehead where
the skin had broken and deduced that someone had hit him pretty hard with
something – possibly a pistol butt.
He reached down and laid the back of his hand
against the skin. It was room temperature,
which was comforting. He bit his lip and
asked aloud, “What the hell happened to you, Blue-boy, and where the bugger is
Karen?”
Blue gave no reply, but Scarlet thought he saw a
flicker of the eyes beneath the closed lids.
He knew Blue spent many of the hours while he was recovering from his
injuries sitting beside his bed, chatting to him, and sometimes – when he woke
up – he thought he could remember the subjects of the one-sided conversation, although like a dream
the memory soon faded. He knew there was
a school of thought that believed conversation was a help to regaining
consciousness, but he felt a little self-conscious trying to chat to a comatose
Captain Blue.
“Fawn’s on his way, then you’ll be shipped back
to Cloudbase for some of his unique TLC.
Lucky you, eh?”
Amanda Wainwright came back in carrying a small
tray with mugs of steaming coffee on it.
The aroma permeated the room.
“Thanks, Mrs Dubya,” Scarlet said, as she
brought the tray over to where he stood beside Blue.
She placed the tray beside the couch and offered
to pour cream into the mug; Scarlet was about to decline when he was distracted
by a noise from the couch, somewhere between a choke and a moan.
Blue opened his eyes for a second and closed
them again. He groaned.
Scarlet glanced at Amanda and smiled to see the
delighted relief on her face: she was very fond of her daughter’s fiancé and
had become close friends with Adam’s mother.
Now, she abandoned the coffee and knelt beside the couch.
“Adam,” she said gently. “It’s Amanda… you’re at the ranch, dear. Can you hear me?” He turned his head towards her voice,
frowning as he opened his eyes a little.
He couldn’t suppress a groan of pain.
“Careful, dear; where does it hurt?”
Scarlet leant over with the warm water. “I have no doubt you came back to the land of
the living for the coffee, but Doc Fawn said you can only have water for
now. Gently,”
he warned, as Blue gulped eagerly at the liquid and spluttered as it went down
the wrong way.
“How are you, dear?” Amanda asked.
He looked blearily at her and obviously still
slightly bewildered, grasped her hand, croaking, ‘Karen, Älskling!”
“No, dear,” Amanda whispered, clutching at his
hand, “it’s Amanda. Karen’s not here.”
He became agitated. “Where? Where’s she?”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d tell us,
Blue-boy,” Scarlet said calmly so as not to agitate him further. “I found you earlier in the car, buried in a
snow-drift. There was no sign of Karen.”
Blue’s expression was one of profound misery as
his memory started to come back to him.
“He took her,” he gasped eventually. “In his car.
He hit me…” He raised a hand towards his head and moaned at the
unexpected pain the movement caused.
“Yes, I can see that,” Scarlet remarked.
“Who did, darling? Who took Karen?” Amanda almost begged him for
the information.
Blue frowned in an effort to remember. “Wyatt,” he said, after some thought.
“Wyatt?” Scarlet repeated quizzically.
“Not Wyatt Jackson?” Amanda gasped, but Blue had
closed his eyes again and drifted into a deep sleep that verged on
unconsciousness.
“Who is he?”
Amanda got to her feet and looked with some
concern at Scarlet. “Someone Karen ought
never to have got involved with…”
Scarlet’s coffee grew cold as he listened with
growing concern while Amanda explained what she knew about her daughter’s
relationship with Wyatt Jackson.
“And you think he might have taken her?”
“That’s what Adam said,” Amanda reminded
him. “And I don’t know of any other
Wyatts.”
“Would he have been at this party then?”
“From what I know of him he goes where he likes,
but he’s rarely invited anywhere these days.
Certainly, the kids he grew up with all know him too well to trust him
much.”
“We need
to know what happened there more than ever.
Adam said this ‘Wyatt’ hit him, so maybe there was a fight at the
party? Or an argument? Although how he came to be buried in a snowdrift in the middle of nowhere is still a
mystery.”
“I’ll call Becky,” Amanda said decisively. “I said I’d let her know when I had news and
I didn’t call when you came back with Adam.”
“Don’t say too much, Amanda… on second thoughts,
don’t say anything. I think it best I go
and see them, like I intended to. I can
get this guy’s address and go and interview him – if nothing else.”
“You think he’s going to be sitting there
quietly waiting to be exposed if he’s got Karen?” she asked caustically. “We should tell the police.”
Scarlet shook his head. “Right now we only have the word of a man
who’s not exactly firing on all cylinders.
They’d probably not believe us.”
“But you’re Spectrum!
Of course they’d believe you.”
“And I’d have to explain what my interest is in
it all. No, it’s best to leave it to me
for now.”
“She’s my daughter – I want her found as soon as
possible – I don’t care about your secrets!”
Amanda stormed from the room, with Scarlet
hurrying after her desperate to prevent her giving any kind of warning –
however unintentionally – to his suspects, but she was not prepared to
compromise.
“I want Karen home – now! If that means the police, so be it,” she
snapped.
Scarlet struggled to keep his temper, thinking,
as he strove to calm her down, that it was all too obvious where Karen got her
volatility from. “Listen, please, Amanda. Why not check with the colonel? He might assign other Spectrum personnel to
finding her. Hmm? Worth a try, eh?”
“Charles is only going to say that I should do
what you tell me,” she argued, although he could tell that the idea of speaking
to her lover had some appeal.
“He’s not always of the same mind as me,”
Scarlet admitted. “He says I’m
pig-headed and I play my hunches too often.”
To his surprise, she nodded. “I know.” Then, seeing the astonishment on
his face she smiled and relented slightly, placing her hand on his arm. “He also says you’re the very best there is,
mind you.”
She lifted the phone and punched in the
number.
“Don’t say too much,” Scarlet pleaded.
Amanda nodded and listened to the purr of the
call-tone. It rang and rang. Finally a voicemail message cut in.
“Hi;
this is Kenny and Becky’s phone. We
can’t answer right now. Say your piece
and we’ll get back to you. Thanks.”
Scarlet gave a discreet sigh of relief.
Annoyed, Amanda muttered, “It’s late; I wonder
where they’ve gone?”
Paul shrugged and suggested. “If I go over I can wait till they come back,
or maybe ask the neighbours if they saw anything last night.”
“I
suppose so; but I still think you need to tell the police.”
“Let’s see if the colonel will give me
additional men from Des Moines first?”
Amanda was about to reply when their discussion
was interrupted by a crash from the study.
They raced back to discover Adam sprawled on the floor by the couch.
“What the hell are you doing?” Scarlet demanded,
helping his friend get up and sit on the couch.
“I’m gon’a find her,”
Adam mumbled.
“You’re going nowhere,” Scarlet retorted. “You
can barely stand, fercrissake!”
“Paul’s right, you need to rest,” Amanda said,
coming across to the couch and tilting Adam’s face to the light, noticing with
growing concern the darkening bruises and the way he screwed his eyes against
the brightness. “You also need
something to eat, if I’m any judge. I’ll
get you some soup – nice and warming and gentle on the digestion.”
Although Adam shook his head at this suggestion,
she left the room, determined to cosset him as best she could until the doctor
arrived. Adam looked up at Scarlet and
said, slowly, “That guy’s a psycho. I must find Karen.”
“So I’ve been told, but don’t fret, I’ll find
him. You stay here. Fawn’s on his way; he says you could have
broken ribs and who knows what internal injuries. He wouldn’t care if I went in your condition,
of course, but he’s not letting you go.”
Adam’s uncharacteristically crude response to
this reasoning made Scarlet grin. “He
makes me feel like that sometimes, but he’s right this time. You’re not fit to go chasing about.”
“And that’d stop you?” Adam snapped, and sighed
wearily. “You do what you like, Paul.
You take the SSC and play the bold rescuer.
I’m not going to waste what strength I have arguing.”
Scarlet gave him an appraising stare. “This is too easy… there’s a but coming, isn’t there?”
“No, no ‘but’; just the simple statement of
fact: if I have to crawl out of here, I am going to try and find her.”
“You ruddy idiot - you’ll kill yourself!”
“I don’t
care! I’m not staying here.”
Scarlet gave an exasperated shrug of his
hands. He knew Blue’s stubborn streak
too well to imagine he had any chance of talking him out of his decision. He watched his friend marshalling his
strength for another attempt to stand and prepare to leave. He knew Amanda wouldn’t be able to prevent
Blue from leaving, or more likely, in doing so they would both get hurt –
physically and emotionally.
Maybe, he thought, the best way I can keep him out of trouble is to take him with me? Fawn’ll go postal,
but that’s nothing new and it doesn’t last long. Adam, on the other hand, is genetically
predisposed to hold grudges for decades… do I want to work with a field partner
in a permanent sulk?
He came to a decision and said, “Okay, if you want to play the martyr, I can’t
stop you. But if I let you come with me
– if, mind you – you have to promise
to do exactly what I say and, if that is ‘sit and wait in the car’ – you sit
and you wait. Okay?”
“You can’t really mean to take Adam with you?”
Amanda gasped from the doorway. “He’s
injured.”
“He’s certainly mental - and as stubborn as a
mule, but that’s nothing unusual,” Scarlet grumbled.
Shaking her head, she put down the bowl of
soup. “Eat,” she ordered. Reluctantly, Blue spooned some of the soup
into his mouth and discovering it was tasty and warming, realised he was hungry
and had some more.
Satisfied, Amanda turned to Scarlet. “Why don’t you wait until Doctor Fawn gets
here,” she suggested. “He can examine
Adam and see if he’s fit to go with you.” The glance she gave the invalid made
it clear she didn’t expect that to happen.
“I don’t want him to go with me,” Scarlet
explained. “It’s him you need to
convince, Mrs Dubya.”
Under the censorious, yet affectionate, gaze of
Amanda Wainwright, Blue finished his soup.
“See, I’m fine,” he asserted, placing the bowl back on the table. “Let’s go.”
“If you can stand up, get dressed and walk out
of here, you can come,” Scarlet said. “But we’ll have to leave in about five
minutes – or Fawn will get here and sedate you.” He left the room.
Amanda stood staring at Adam as he looked around
for his clothes. Sighing, she stooped to
kiss his forehead before bringing him clean, dry and warm clothes. He gave her a look of profound
gratitude.
“Put them on over your pyjamas,” she
suggested. “Layers are the key to
keeping warm.” She watched him struggle
for a few moments and then helped him dress, fastening zips and buttons for
him.
“Thank you,” he said, as she settled his heavy
winter coat over his shoulder and pulled it closed over the bulk of his
clothes.
“Do as Paul says,” she urged. “I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to
either of you, and Karen would never forgive me if I’d let you walk out of here
to catch your death of cold.”
He gave a snort of laughter that quickly turned
to a grimace of pain. “I’m stronger
than I look and Paul needs someone to watch his back – whatever he thinks.”
“You’re certainly dumber than you look,” she
said affectionately. “But I don’t
suppose that bothers you much when you’re getting your own way, does it?”
He smiled.
The SSC sped along the highway in the direction
of Cedar Rapids, headlights blazing.
Inside, Scarlet gripped the wheel tightly and stared ahead. Beside him, Captain Blue sat unnaturally
upright and tense. Occasionally he would give an involuntary gasp as the car
juddered over a bump in the road.
“Next left,” Blue muttered, moments before the
onboard computer advised the same route.
As he swung the car across the road and onto a
side street, Scarlet realised that Blue’s memory was clearing as they
approached the venue for the party, which could prove useful if they needed to
retrace the steps the couple had made last night.
“We’re looking for the house with idiosyncratic
flamingos outside,” Blue said, making Scarlet wonder if he was delirious after
all.
Then he saw it: a snow-covered lawn with the
plastic flamingos. He sniggered. “Right, I see what you mean now.” He drove straight past and further along the
road before doubling back and going round a corner to park the SSC in the side
road that ran at right angles to the frontage of the house.
“You ought to stay in the car,” he said to Blue,
as his partner unclipped the seatbelt.
Blue nodded once and continued to prepare to
leave the vehicle.
“Sit and wait in the car,” Scarlet said
pointedly. Blue ignored him. “You promised,” Scarlet reminded him.
“I never said anything,” Blue replied. “I can’t
help it if you thought I’d agreed with you. You lead, I’ll back up.”
Shaking his head, Scarlet strode across the road
and round to the front of the Becker house.
He felt uneasy as he approached; the neighbouring properties were all
showing signs of life, with curtains or blinds drawn at the windows and the
muted babble of TV sets, but the Becker house was dark and silent. He glanced back at Blue, who was still by the
car, staring fixedly at the house.
Suddenly, Blue looked up and, seeing Scarlet
watching him, pointed to the ground at the back of the house. Scarlet sprinted round the side of the house
to investigate what Blue had seen. At
ground level there was a narrow window to the basement and, although it was
covered by a blind, there was a narrow chink of light just visible, more from
its reflection on the snow than at the window.
“Someone’s home,” Blue whispered. He had joined his partner on the pavement by
the open garden.
“What’s down there, do you know?”
“A kids’ play room and the laundry, I
think. We went there to talk… after…”
“Yes?”
“After… I’d hit Wyatt… for… for being rude to
Karen and Kenny Becker had thrown him
out.”
“So now
you remember… seems like you probably did rile this psycho enough for him to
attack you.”
“Seems likely,” Blue agreed. “But that’s nothing to what I will do to him
if he has harmed one hair of Karen’s head.”
“You and me both, brother.”
Blue smiled and followed Scarlet round to the
front of the house. “Shall we ring the
bell?” Scarlet asked flippantly, drawing out his pistol.
Blue shook his head and stepped up to the lock.
Moments later the door opened.
“It is a good job you’re an honest man,” Scarlet
remarked, as Blue pushed the door wide and stood back for him to enter. The American grinned.
Scarlet led the way, his excellent eyesight
adjusting to the darkness without any problem.
Since his Mysteronisation his senses had become even more acute; his
hearing was preternaturally sharp and he was straining to hear anything that
indicated who was in the basement.
He could hear Blue close behind him, his
breathing shallow and rapid. For his size, Blue could move very quietly and
Scarlet had no concerns that they’d be heard by anyone below them as they moved
towards the back of the house where Blue had indicated the stairs were.
At the end of the short hallway, they stopped
and Blue rested against the wall, his eyes closed while his partner
concentrated on what he could hear below.
He opened his eyes with a start when Scarlet nudged him awake. The Englishman held up two fingers and then
made a hand gesture that resembled jaws moving: two voices, Blue translated to himself; he couldn’t distinguish
anything beyond a low rumble, yet he was disappointed when Scarlet spread his
hands in indication that he had no idea who the voices belonged to.
Then Scarlet’s finger jabbed into his chest
before pointing to the floor. Stay here,
Blue translated and nodded. He was far
more tired than he had expected or would admit.
Scarlet pointed at himself and ‘walked’ his
fingers away towards the stairs. Blue
nodded. He placed an index finger along the side of his nose – their accepted
gesture for ‘be careful’. Scarlet grinned.
The stairs were wooden and narrow, but they had
a turn in them and when Scarlet stopped about half-way down to listen to the
desultory conversation it was clear that his presence was still unsuspected.
He edged forward, peering down into the basement
room where he expected to see who was in the house. He saw three young children huddled around
the figure of a woman crouched on the floor.
She was dark-haired, bespectacled and plump, matching the description
he’d been given of Becky Becker. One of
the children was little more than a baby and was asleep, her head on her
mother’s thigh. The older two, still
under 10, were boys and were standing at her shoulders, sleepy, yet too
wide-eyed with fear to relax.
Scarlet peered a little further round and saw
the body of a man stretched out on the floor.
He’d been beaten up and was either asleep or unconscious. Beside him crouched Symphony Angel, dressed
in a provocatively low-cut, halter-necked mini-dress and impractically high
stiletto-heeled boots. Her hair was piled on her head and intertwined with
black ribbon and she was wearing bright red lipstick and heavy eye-makeup.
She glanced occasionally at someone else in the
room, who was presumably walking about.
“You have to understand,” a man’s voice said
suddenly, “I have a reputation to maintain; the people I deal with don’t make
allowances for weakness and if they heard about what you did to me, and that I
hadn’t punished you for it, they would consider me weak. That ain’t gonna happen. You will all be made
to regret acting as you did and everyone will get to hear what happened to you
because you tried to go against me!”
“Oh, stop it, Wyatt,” Symphony snapped. “We’re not interested in your ego-trip. How long do you think you can hold us
here? There are people out there who
will want to know where we are.”
“Don’t bank on your dandified sugar-daddy riding
to your rescue, Kay. My guess is that
the snow and the cold will have done for him, long since.”
Symphony looked away, biting her lip. “If anything happens to Adam I will make it
my goal in life to see you rot in hell!”
Wyatt laughed.
“When will you realise that I hold all the cards, Kay? You are what you always were, an uncouth,
cheap tramp. You walked away from
your only chance at a decent life when you went off to the East Coast to sleep
your way into a respectable college.
Boy, they must’ve regretted accepting you when they realised what trash
you are! I bet you were relieved when you cornered that rich fool – you must’ve
thought you were on a gravy train for life and all you had to do was open your
legs…”
“Shut up!” Symphony snapped.
“No – you shut up! Even your dupe had more sense than to marry
you, I’ll give him that much.”
“Leave her alone!” Becky Becker shouted. “She
was always too good for you, Wyatt, and she still is.”
“Shut up,
you slut! Unless you want your no-good husband to get another beating?”
The little boys began to whimper with fear and
Scarlet saw Wyatt Jackson for the first time as he strode over to Becky. She wrapped her arms protectively around her
two boys and stared him down.
“Shut those little bastards up before I do it
myself!”
Becky tried to calm her sons and reassure them
that there was nothing to fear. From his
vantage point on the staircase, even Scarlet wasn’t convinced she was
right.
Jackson was in full flood now, his voice rose as
he proclaimed: “No lousy woman’s gonna walk out on me – d’you
hear? They can go when I’ve finished
with them – and not before.”
“What about your wife, Wyatt? Didn’t she leave you?” Symphony asked, seeking to draw his attention
from her friend and the children.
“Oh sure, she tried; but there’s no decent man
gonna look at her again after what I had done to her face,” he gloated. “It made California a little too hot for me,
so I came back here – to the loving bosom of my family and my so-called friends
– and what do I hear? Snide comments and
put downs… well, no one’s gonna say that sort of thing about me after this.”
“God help us,” Becky moaned, “he’s crazy.”
“Can’t you see he’s deranged?” Symphony said to
a so far unsuspected third party in the room.
“Help us, let us go, before you get into deeper trouble.”
It was Wyatt who responded, “Now that’s what I
meant when I always said you were unlucky, Kay.
Casca loves his work and he’d as soon split you from ear to ear as walk
away from these situations. But, it just
might be that your luck’s about to change, Kay, ‘cause I’m gonna give you a
second chance.”
“To do what?” Symphony asked.
“To make good.
We’ll give Cedar Rapids the wedding it deserves. We’ll have the biggest event in the town’s
history! You shall have everything money
can buy and I’ll keep you by me, so you won’t want to stray again.”
“Wedding? You must be mad, Wyatt. If the earth was devoid of every living thing
but you and me, I’d still put a continent between us. Besides, if I’m such a tramp, why would you
want to marry me, huh?”
“We belong together, you and me,” Wyatt stated,
walking over and grabbing Karen by the chin to tilt her face towards his. “I understand you, Kay, I know what makes you
tick and I can satisfy you more than that dandified rich boy ever could.”
“You’re not fit to wipe his boots!” she spat at
him, and he raised his hand to slap her face.
The force of the blow sent her sprawling onto the floor.
“Filthy bastard!” Becky shrieked. “Filthy,
cowardly bastard – beating up on a woman!”
“Shut your mouth, you harpy!” Wyatt must’ve
gestured to the unseen Casca as Scarlet saw a large, much-tattooed man lumber
into view. He approached Becky and her
boys, who started crying and clinging to her in fear.
Scarlet had seen more then enough. He moved from his hiding place and shouted:
“Nobody move!”
Casca lunged for Becky, who screamed in anger
and with a strength born of fear, punched his face with both hands. Snarling, he grabbed her and held her before
him as a shield against Scarlet’s gun.
On the other side of the room, Wyatt had grabbed Symphony, who was
putting up a much better fight than Becky.
She moved to grab him and threw him to the ground, holding onto his hand
and twisting his arm as she placed one stiletto-heeled foot on his rib cage. Wyatt had the sense to lie still.
She glanced up at Scarlet and gave a wry
smile. “Good to see you,” she said.
“Where’s Adam?”
“Safe.”
She heaved a deep sigh. “Thank God.”
Scarlet’s stare had not left Casca while this
took place. Becky’s daughter, woken by
the noise and her mother’s movement was crying on the floor and the two boys
stood beside their sister, holding hands; the youngest was also crying now and
the elder looked close to tears.
“Come on, kids,” Scarlet called. “Come back upstairs…”
The oldest looked towards his mother for
instructions and Becky gave an encouraging nod, that earned her a slap from her
captor.
“Dem kids ain’t goin’ nowhere,” the big man
rumbled. “Me and Wyatt’s getting outa
here an’ you ain’t gonna stop us, mister.”
“Wyatt’s going nowhere,” Symphony
interjected. “He’s got an appointment
with the local cops and probably with a jail cell.”
Casca considered this for a moment and then
said, “Okay, but I am getting outa here.
Dis woman’s comin wi’ me.”
The children set up a nerve-grating wail at this
news.
“No,” Symphony said, “let her go.”
“You got a hankering to take her place, lady?”
She didn’t hesitate, but replied, “Sure, I’ll go
with you, if you let her and the kids go.
And I give you my word that this officer won’t make an attempt to stop
us or follow us for…” she paused, “thirty minutes.”
Casca gave it some thought. Then he chuckled. “You’se certainly
sexier than dis woman.”
“Did Wyatt tell you what a rich man my fiancé
is?” she asked Casca. “He’ll pay good
money to get me back.”
“Mebbe you won’t wanna go back, eh?” Casca laughed. “Mebbe Wyatt was
right about you likin’ it rough?”
“I like a man who knows how to handle me, that’s
for sure,” she said, with a suggestive smile.
“Now, let Becky go to her kids and I’ll take her place.”
“Come here first,” Casca said, after a moment’s
reflection.
“Keep this slimeball covered, Captain,” Symphony
said, referring to Wyatt who was still sprawled on the floor.
“You sure you want to do this?” Scarlet asked.
Symphony nodded.
“It’s my fault the Beckers got involved in all this, I don’t want anyone
to suffer for my sake.”
“Kay, don’t be so silly!” Becky cried.
Symphony dropped Wyatt’s arm and walked across
the basement. For a moment she hugged her friend. “Look after Kenny and the kids,” she said,
adding quietly, “Keep them down here out
of the way and don’t come up until it is safe.”
Becky nodded and hugged her.
“Come on,” Casca said, grabbing Symphony’s arm
and twisting it behind her back. “An’ no
tricks.” He glanced at Scarlet. “Make one move and I’ll break her pretty neck.”
Scarlet came down the stairs and walked to where
Wyatt was starting to move. He pointed
the gun down at him, and glanced at Casca.
“No tricks,” he agreed. “You have thirty minutes before I call the
police, the state guard and the World Army Airforce.”
“Funny guy,” Casca rumbled, pushing Symphony
towards the stairs.
As she started to climb and disappeared around
the corner, Becky called out to Scarlet, “Are you going to let him get
away? You have to save her!”
Scarlet raised his head from scrutinising the
man at his feet, to glance at her in an effort
to reassure her that there was no need for her to be concerned, and in
the split second that he looked away, Wyatt produced a small pistol from his
jacket pocket and shot upwards. The
bullet entered beneath Scarlet’s chin with such force that it jerked his head
backwards and went on upwards, shattering his palate before lodging in his
brain; but Scarlet was dead before it stopped moving. Becky’s yell of warning
was still ringing out as his body fell like a toppled tree to lie across Wyatt,
blood gushing from the terrible wound.
Yelling with disgust and shock, Wyatt struggled
to push the body off him and roll clear.
Sobbing with shock and fear, Becky gathered her
terrified children to her as Wyatt, splattered with Scarlet’s blood, got to his
feet. The noise – especially the gunshot
- had been enough to make Casca turn back to see what was happening.
“Hey, Wyatt, c’m on,
man, let’s get out of here,” he called, beckoning with his free hand.
“I’ll get you,” Wyatt threatened Becky, as he
slithered on the blood-wet floor and started for the staircase. “You ain’t seen
the last of me.”
When Doctor Fawn arrived at the Hoffman Ranch he
was furious to discover that Captain Scarlet had allowed Captain Blue to go
with him to Cedar Rapids. He called
Cloudbase and vented his anger to the colonel.
“I
agree, Doctor, it is a most reprehensible decision, however, I don’t see what
you expect me to do about it?”
White said, as soon as he could get a word in edgeways.
“Scarlet apparently assumes everyone has the
same degree of immunity as he does these days,” Fawn fulminated, “and one of
these days someone is going to get killed because of it.”
“Let us
hope today isn’t that day,” White replied sharply. “What
will you do now?”
“Mrs Wainwright has provided me with the address
where she thinks they’ve gone in the search for Symphony, so I shall go there
and if any of them are there, I shall
ship them back to Cloudbase.”
“Good idea,”
White agreed. “Except that it might be an idea to find all of them before you send
them back – unless there is a medical emergency which dictates otherwise, of
course.”
“S.I.G., Colonel,” Fawn replied and concluded,
“and then you can read them the riot
act.”
“I’m
looking forward to it already,”
the colonel remarked dryly.
Symphony heard the shot in the basement and felt
Casca turn back to investigate; despite her curiosity she kept on walking up
the stairs, hoping to find something to give her an edge over her captor. As
she came into the living room, she considered making a dash for the door, but
her footwear meant that was impractical.
From the corner of her eye she saw a slight movement in a dark corner
and turned.
A figure moved just far enough for the light
from the window to illuminate him.
“Adam-” she breathed, and was about to run to
him when he held up a hand and stopped her, pointing towards the staircase where
she could hear Becky screaming. He put a
long finger to his lips and faded back into the darkness.
Composing her face into an expression of
resignation, Symphony stood and waited for the two men to catch her up.
“Wyatt? You managed to get away from the
Captain? What’s happened to Becky?” she
asked, alarmed at seeing him covered in blood.
Wyatt grabbed her arm and shook her. “She’s lucky to be alive, but your little
policeman friend is history, Kay. That
should teach you not to mess with me.”
“Hey, I kept to my bargain, didn’t I,
Casca? I’m still here.”
“Yeh, she din’t do nuthin’. C’m on Wyatt, we
have ta get outa here. The shot’s gonna bring the cops.”
“Yeah, you go and get the car. We’ll head for Chicago – nobody knows us
there.”
“They’ll find you, wherever you go,” Symphony
warned him. “That man wasn’t the police
– although they’ll be after you like hounds on a scent – he was a Spectrum
officer. I told you I’ve been working
for the World Government and it is Spectrum that provides our security. Crossing the state line won’t save you,
Wyatt, they’ll hunt you down; you might as well give in now and face the
consequences.”
“Give in?
Give in?” he yelled at her. “I don’t ‘give in’ to anybody. Apart from that bitch and her brats, there’re
no witnesses… if I shoot them, there will be no witnesses at all!”
“You can’t do that!” Symphony yelled, yanking on
his arm as he turned back to the basement stairs.
“Try and stop me.” Wyatt shoved her so hard that she fell back
over the arm of a chair and he broke away.
“No one can stop me,” he snarled.
“I can.”
Blue stepped from the shadow, his Spectrum gun trained on Wyatt. “Stand still, or I will fire.”
“You? So,
you didn’t die back in that snowdrift? I
knew I should’ve shot you then.”
Wyatt went to raise the gun he was holding and
Blue, without a moment’s hesitation, fired.
The bullet went dead centre of his forehead and Wyatt fell to the
ground.
Casca came back in, saw his partner and the man
who had shot him, and dived for Symphony.
He dragged her to her feet, using her as a shield.
“I’m leaving,” he said. “An’ she’s comin’
with me.”
“No, she isn’t,” Blue said with conviction, and
before Casca could react he fired another bullet: another deadly accurate shot
to the big man’s forehead.
Symphony let out the breath she’d been holding
and opened her eyes. Reaching out for
her fiancé, she stepped over Casca’s body and stumbled. Adam hurried to catch her in his outstretched
arms. She started to sob in relief and
shock as he held her tight. Wishing he
could do the same, Adam took a moment to gather his strength, but there was no
time for self-indulgence, the police would be on their way.
“Scarlet?” he asked Symphony, too tired to be
any less cryptic.
She sniffed and pulled herself together. “He must be down there with Becky. Oh, my God, Adam – Becky and the kids!”
She broke away and ran as fast as her footwear
would allow back towards the stairs.
Although he was verging on collapse, he followed her.
Together with the near-hysterical Becky, they
managed to get the children out of that reeking basement and up into the
kitchen-dining area – avoiding the corpses in the lounge - and Karen started to
make them all hot drinks.
Blue went back to the basement alone. He was too weak to lift Kenny Becker from the
floor, but he ascertained that the civilian was still alive, although
unconscious after a severe beating. He
knelt beside Scarlet’s corpse and felt an overwhelming sorrow.
“Hang in there, Paul,” he muttered, as he placed
a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I’ll
get help, buddy.”
He
dragged himself back upstairs. “I’ll go
to the SSC and call for medical backup. Fawn was coming,” he told
Symphony. “He’s probably at the ranch by
now.”
“Good.
We’ll still need a civilian ambulance for Kenny.”
Adam nodded and turned to address Becky, “He’s okay, Mrs Becker; he’ll need some
hospitalisation, but he’ll pull through.”
Mute with shock, all Becky could do was nod and
stare at him with terrified eyes.
Impulsively, Blue knelt before her and said reassuringly, “You did everything right, you protected your
children. Don’t worry, it’ll be okay.”
In the distance there was a wail of approaching
sirens and overhead a helijet appeared, rotor blades whipping up the show and
causing the idiosyncratic flamingos to fall over in the downdraft.
Doctor Fawn ran into the house with his
emergency bag in his hand, to be met by Captain Blue who was holding onto the
back of an armchair. He looked around at
the bodies on the floor and then at Blue.
“What’s happened?”
“Scarlet’s in the basement,” Blue said his voice
heavy with exhaustion. “There’s
civilians too – some kids…” He tried to point to towards the kitchen and
swayed. Fawn stepped forward and helped
him to sit down.
“Reprehensible,” the doctor muttered. “You never
said a truer word, Colonel…” and instructing the paramedics to deal with the
people upstairs, he hurried down to the basement to see what needed doing and
what he could do.
On reaching Cloudbase, Captain Blue was found to
have two cracked ribs and was given a stern lecture by Doctor Fawn about the
foolishness of rushing off at the risk of making his condition worse. Colonel
White added his disapproval of the irresponsible way his officer had behaved
and concluded his address by ordering Blue to spend two weeks with his family
in Boston to recover, while Symphony was despatched back to Cedar Rapids to
spend the rest of her booked leave with her mother, returning to Cloudbase a
few days after her birthday.
Captain Scarlet spent a couple of weeks in Sick Bay and during that time Doctor Fawn
refused to allow even the usual visitors.
The bullet had caused terrible injuries to Scarlet’s face and – to
Fawn’s concern – it was still lodged in his patient’s brain.
Although Scarlet’s Mysteron-endowed
retrometabolic ability would restore him, even from these terrible wounds, it
would not remove the bullet that had caused it. Fawn had no way of knowing if leaving the
bullet in situ would cause problems in the future, or whether Scarlet’s
Mysteronised body would simply ignore it.
For his own peace of mind he had, in the past, always removed bullets
from his patient’s body, but he was not so confident about doing that with this
one, given where it was. He was also
more worried than he admitted about the pace of Scarlet’s recovery, which was
somewhat slower than usual.
Consequently, Fawn watched and waited until
Scarlet regained consciousness and then ran numerous tests on his sensory
systems and cognitive functions. He
consulted medical databases, spoke to neurological consultants across the globe
and finally held a long, private meeting with Colonel White, before he
discussed his conclusions with Captain Scarlet.
Scarlet heard the doctor out in silence, a frown
between his dark eyebrows. He was
propped up in bed with a bandage around his head and wired up to several
robotic nurses and monitoring equipment.
“My decision?” he asked, as Fawn came to a
close.
“Your decision,” Fawn confirmed. “I have given you all of the evidence I’ve gathered,
and my professional knowledge is at your disposal. We’ve always removed bullets and… err… sharp,
pointy things from your body before, but we still don’t know if it was
necessary. You’ve always recovered, and
you have now, just as we hoped, but I note with some concern that yesterday you
told Nurse Ingram you had ‘a headache’.”
“I’d been watching daytime TV,” Scarlet muttered
somewhat flippantly. “It’s
enough to give anyone a headache.”
“True, but you didn’t just turn the TV off, you
asked for medication,” Fawn reminded him.
“Did it help?”
“I went to sleep,” Scarlet told him. “I felt better afterwards.”
“A retrometabolic sleep?”
Scarlet shrugged. “I don’t know; it doesn’t seem any different
to me: I’m just asleep. You think the
bullet will affect me, if it stays there, don’t you, Doc?”
“I don’t know what the consequences might be in
the long term. Your case is unique,
Paul; that’s why, ultimately, you have to decide what action we take – if any.”
“Will it hurt if we do nothing?”
Fawn shrugged. “Does it hurt now?”
Scarlet sniffed and pursed his lips. “Not so that I notice. Will an operation
hurt?”
Fawn shifted slightly. “Anaesthetics don’t affect you the same as
they do everyone else. They don’t last
as long, for a start. I can’t promise
anything, except that I will do my utmost to make sure any discomfort is kept
to a minimum.”
“Fair enough…”
Scarlet murmured and stared thoughtfully into the distance.
Fawn waited patiently, ready and willing to give
any information or advice that his patient – and friend – might require. He had made his own decision on what would be
for the best, but he had taken care not to load his arguments. It felt harsh to make Scarlet take the final
decision, but, as he was the one who would have to live with it – possibly for
many lifetimes – Fawn was sure it was the right thing to do. He was about to say ‘you don’t have to make
your mind up immediately, take time to sleep on it, if you want’, when Scarlet stirred from his reverie and pulled
himself together.
He gave
Fawn a wry smile. “Let’s do it and get
it over with…”
Neither
Fawn or Scarlet ever went into details about how his full recovery was
accomplished, or what was done to ensure that the bullet would be of no further
danger to the invalid. It remained a
closed subject, even between Scarlet and Blue.
The day Blue
got back from Boston, Scarlet emerged from Sick Bay, looking as he always did and seemingly none the worse for his recent
experience. The colonel called the three officers to the Conference Room, for a
final debriefing.
Colonel White explained that the police had been
served with a security notice by Spectrum and that, therefore, there would be
no formal inquest or investigation of the incidents in Cedar Rapids.
“Of course, the Becker family have been re-homed
at Spectrum’s expense. They could not be
expected to live in the same house that they’d witnessed such appalling
incidents in. That building will be demolished.
Mr Becker, as I am sure Symphony can confirm, is recovering from his
injuries and will be back at his job in the next few weeks. Mrs Becker and the children have been given
counselling and I am told they are coping well.”
Symphony nodded.
“I went to see them before I came back on duty. They’re doing fine. Of course, I had to tell them that you were
dead, Captain Scarlet; they’d never believe anyone could’ve survived that
injury.”
“I feel as if I very nearly didn’t,” Scarlet
muttered. “Although part of that might
simply be due to extreme embarrassment.
I made an error a rookie would be ashamed of – I looked away from a
prisoner when I didn’t know he was safely unarmed and restrained. I guess I deserved it.”
“Hey, even the best of us slip up sometimes,”
Blue said, with a reassuringly friendly smile.
“It’s kind of comforting for us mere mortals to
know that even you are only human, Scarlet,” Symphony said. Realising what she’d said, and well aware of
her friend’s sensitivity to his alien-given special attributes, she gasped and
looked apologetically at the Englishman.
But, perversely enough, Scarlet looked rather pleased at her words.
“I am sure I speak for us all when I say that
we’re glad the error was not a ‘fatal’
one, Captain,” the colonel added.
“Although it was a close run thing,” Fawn
muttered. “I do not want to have to go through that again, Captain.”
“Neither do I,” Scarlet said quietly, and bit
his bottom lip.
There was an uncomfortable silence until Scarlet
asked, “Was there any sign of Mysteron involvement, Colonel?”
White shook his head. “As far as we know, neither Wyatt Jackson nor
the man known as ‘Casca’ were Mysteron
reconstructs. They were just… evil human
beings.”
Symphony sighed and sat back in her chair,
running her hand through her hair in unconscious imitation of Blue’s nervous
habit. “They were surely that, Colonel.
Wyatt would have killed Becky and her children if Blue hadn’t stopped them. He
might’ve killed Kenny Becker and me too because he didn’t want any witnesses to
what he did to Captain Scarlet. Blue
only did what was necessary to remove the threat.”
“I am glad to hear it,” the colonel said. “The Beckers have explained that there was a
brawl between Captain Blue and Mr Jackson earlier in the evening; something the
Cedar Rapids police force were interested to hear, especially as Mr and Mrs Jackson were
pressing for a full investigation into the ‘murder’ of their son.”
“Surely Becky told them Wyatt and Casca were
threatening everyone? Before Scarlet
arrived they had already beaten Kenny up because he tried to defend his wife
and kids,” she explained.
“What I want to know is what happened after you
crashed on the way to the ranch?” Scarlet asked.
“We were being followed when we left the
Beckers’ house,” she explained. “Adam –
Captain Blue – had dozed off, but I could see the same car was behind us and it
was suspicious. I woke him up and we
decided to make sure they were tailing us by doing a U-turn and heading back to
the airport, where we stood a better chance of losing them. The weather was
deteriorating and I lost control of the vehicle.”
“The road was covered in black ice, sir,” Blue
confirmed. “The car went down the
embankment on the other side of the road. I think I passed out for a while.”
“Is that where you sustained the cracked ribs?”
Fawn asked.
Blue looked at Symphony. “Not exactly; that is,
I can’t be sure.”
“Wyatt was following us,” she explained. “He
came down the bank after us in his car and dragged me out of the
off-roader. Blue was unconscious, and I
was stunned, a little. He dragged me back
to his car where he left me with Casca to make sure I stayed there. He went back to the car just as Adam was
coming to and getting out. He attacked
him, sir, knocked him to the ground and started kicking him.” She looked apologetically at her fiancé. “I couldn’t stop him…”
“Hmm,” White said. “Then what happened?”
“Wyatt said he decided not to shoot Adam because
it would make it too suspicious, so they – Casca and Wyatt – rolled the car
into a snow bank and threw Adam by the side of it. He said he wanted it to look like the car had
crashed and Blue had been injured and got out but been unable to save
himself. He intended him to die of
exposure – a perfect execution, he called it. I guess you must’ve come to long
enough to get back in the car?” she asked Blue, who shrugged.
“I don’t remember if I did or not, but it seems
the most plausible explanation,” he agreed.
“And what did they want with you, Symphony?”
White asked gently.
“Wyatt was an old boyfriend of mine – one my mom
had told me to avoid like the plague, only I didn’t listen. He was mad at me when I went east to study
and he said he was going to give me a chance to make it up to him.” She rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t take a genius to work out exactly
how I was supposed to do that, sir. He
drove back to his place and there was a room all kitted out with… well… kinky
stuff and he made me change into that stupid outfit. I was trying to play along and make an opportunity
to get help for Adam.”
“Of course you were,” Scarlet said, with a reassuring
smile and then added mischievously, “And I didn’t see anything wrong with the
outfit, I assumed you’d worn it to the party…”
She gave him an exasperated glance. “That was the least kinky thing I could find,
but you don’t imagine I’d have something like that in my wardrobe from choice, do you?”
“More’s the pity,”
Blue muttered under his breath. Scarlet
sniggered as Symphony glared at him.
“Quite – let’s concentrate on what happened at
the Becker house, shall we?” the colonel said stiffly. “Why did you go back there?”
“Wyatt wanted revenge on Kenny for throwing him
out of the party. With Casca beside him,
and now the Beckers would be alone at the house, he
knew he was strong enough to get it. I
was taken along to prove to Becky that I’d seen the ‘error of my ways’ and show
that Wyatt was in charge. She didn’t
believe it, of course. She knows me
better than that.”
“Were you assaulted by either man, Symphony?”
White asked carefully.
Symphony blushed. “No, sir, although it was only a matter of time. Wyatt made that perfectly clear.”
“Well, that is something to be thankful for,”
the colonel said. Amanda Wainwright had
told him that she wasn’t sure what had happened while her daughter had been
held captive, but he felt confident that under the circumstances, and given her
wish to prove that Wyatt Jackson had no redeeming features and Blue had been
doing mankind a favour by removing him from the population, Symphony would have
told the truth. He would reassure her
mother later.
“When Scarlet arrived, I felt sure he wouldn’t
have come alone,” she continued, eager to change the subject, “although, I
didn’t guess it would be Captain Blue who was with him.”
“It shouldn’t have been,” Fawn retorted. “Next
time I will make it a medical order for you to stay put,” he warned Blue with a
wry smile.
“But it was a good thing Blue was there,”
Scarlet reasoned. “They didn’t expect
him and he was able to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion. And you’ve got to consider that if I had been
accompanied by a terrestrial agent, they might have found out about my
retrometabolism.”
The colonel nodded and drew his papers
together. “Well, I think we can draw
this to a conclusion. There was no
Mysteron activity and no breach of security.
The Beckers are unharmed – physically – and with careful help they’ll
deal with the psychological scars.
However, we’ve been lucky this time and next time we may not. I shall review the regulations regarding home
visits and contact with previously known associates.”
“With respect, sir, I don’t think Wyatt can be
classed as the usual ‘previously known associate’,” Symphony said. “He was a psycho; sooner or later he’d have
come to a sticky end.”
White agreed.
“The police are finding that Mr Jackson had his fingers in some very
mucky pies. His associate likewise. However, Spectrum must preserve its security,
whatever the cost. It behoves us all to bear that in mind at all times.”
“Yes, sir,” three voices chorused.
“And to remember that obedience to a given order
is not an optional extra,” the colonel concluded, glancing at Blue and Scarlet.
“Yes sir,” the three voices chorused again.
“Hmmph,” White said dryly, as he studied the three faces all
radiating innocence and good intentions. “Well, just see to it that you do.”
Epilogue
In an exclusive private cemetery in Cedar
Rapids, Mrs June Jackson laid a fresh wreath of flowers on her son’s elaborate
grave, and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.
She steadfastly refused to believe the scurrilous stories that were
emerging about her beloved Wyatt and mourned him with a sincere and profound
grief. She missed him so much that she
even prayed for his spirit to come back from the Heaven it was most certainly
occupying, to haunt her.
As she was adjusting the heavy black veil she
wore on every visit to his graveside, she noticed a tall, dark-haired man
watching her intently from a few rows away among the graves. She immediately classed him as one of those
annoying reporters who had been dogging her footsteps since Wyatt had been
murdered by those despicable thugs from out of town, and sniffed with
annoyance.
She marched out of the cemetery with her head
held high, ignoring everyone else she passed by.
Which was a shame.
Captain Black turned to the latest Mysteron
recruit who had appeared at his side and gave a bleak nod of his head. “YOU KNOW WHAT YOU MUST DO.”
The replica of Wyatt Jackson nodded in
return. “The Mysterons’ order will be
carried out,” he said with unmistakable enthusiasm in his voice.
The End
Author’s notes
I’d thought about how and when
Symphony would introduce her fiancé to her hometown friends for some time, so I
don’t really know what triggered this story off. Perhaps it was the Internet website of
Christmas decorations that showed a picture of 3 pink, plastic flamingos on a
snow-covered lawn in Iowa that started the ball rolling… it certainly made an
impression on my imagination.
Wyatt Jackson may well resurface
in a later story, although that was not my original intention when I started
writing this.
My thanks go to Chris Bishop, who
created the character of Amanda Wainwright and laid the foundations for her
relationship with Colonel White. I like
Amanda and I like the dynamics the relationships between the commanding
officer, one of his senior field officers, his fiancée and her mother,
present. Thanks also to Chris for the
web presentation – she never fails to astound me with her skill and
artistry.
Thanks also to my Beta Reader:
Hazel Köhler, who devoted her spare time (of which
there isn’t much) to checking this over, helping me to focus the story on what
passes for the plot line and putting commas where commas ought to be. She is a Star!
Captain Scarlet and The
Mysterons™, belongs to Carlton Media, I think; the concept was another brilliant
one from the team of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, and the main thanks goes to
them and their production team.
I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Marion Woods
21 January 2012.