“I met her two days ago,” he said. “But yes. She was my friend.”
There was a silence between the two of them that was not unfamiliar, but neither was it uncomfortable. Then Beck said the words both of them had been thinking.
“We’ll find Katie,” he said. “I promise you.”
“You’ve heard about this VIX thing.” It was not a question.
Beck nodded.
He had listened to the President’s speech from the hallway outside the motel manager’s office, while the technicians were still preparing to move April’s body. The chief executive had not tried to moderate the facts of the Hobson’s choice, nor attempted to sugarcoat the probable results: one in every twenty Americans would likely die if VIX was used,
compared to at least eight in ten if it was not. He was, the President said, in consultation with other world leaders to discuss the international repercussions involved. But, he insisted, the decision would be his and his alone—and he would make it soon. Possibly, it had been rumored, within the next six hours.
The message chilled Beck. There was nothing to say: it would either work or it would not. Either way, it sounded like less a plan than a desperate gamble—one that was guaranteed to cost millions of human lives. It redefined “acceptable losses” in a horrifying manner. VIX would intentionally create a lethal pandemic in its own right, “acceptable” only relative to the horror it was meant to combat. By any other definition, in any other circumstances, it would constitute mass murder on an unprecedented scale.
“And those are the people you’ve chosen to return to,” Deborah said, and her voice was bitter.
Beck felt his anger rise.
“It’s not that simple,” he began.
Her voice was mocking. “It never is, Beck. It never was.”
He felt trapped, cornered—and furious, struck back.
“Let’s talk about you, shall we? You look well—or is it ‘you look good’?” Beck leaned back, and pretended to ponder. “Doesn’t matter. You’ve always looked great, as I remember. Of course, I haven’t seen you in more than twelve months. Not since the divorce hearing.” Beck drew in a breath. “For a year, we’ve only communicated through lawyers. Suddenly, here you are, in my room. I have to wonder why.”
She was flushed, and silent for a moment.
“I want to apologize,” Deborah said suddenly.
“For what?”
“When I discovered that Katie was missing, my first reaction was to blame you. I had convinced myself that you were somehow at fault—that the whole damn escapade was something the two of you had planned.”
Beck frowned, puzzled. “Why would we do that?”
“To spite me,” she answered. “To keep me outside, both of you.”
“I would never—”
“I know, Beck. I know. But I don’t understand why she did this. Katie and I . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“What?” Beck pressed.
“We’re all either of us have. And I think she hates that fact.”
“She has me, Deborah. She has both of us.”
“You think so, Beck. But both your daughter and I know it is not true. Especially . . . afterward. When they brought you back.”
He felt it: the choking feeling he had whenever the horrific memories rose inside him.
She looked up at him, and a sudden defiance was in her voice. “But it was only a matter of degree, Beck. Nothing was really new about it. For years, I watched you pull everything inside. Everything but me. Me, you pushed away.
“Before Katie was born, I thought it was another woman. I wish it had been. Even that I could have understood. But do you understand what it was like for me to play second chair to . . . to a
damn job
? I raised Katie alone, Beck.
“When you disappeared over there, I was frantic. But I had a daughter whose father was suddenly missing. I had to be strong, even when no one would tell me anything. We didn’t know if you were still alive. Then, when you came back more dead than alive, I tried to stand by you—I did. But you still wouldn’t bring me inside.”
“Deborah, there had to be areas I couldn’t discuss, secrets that—”
“It was always
your
secret, Beck. They were all your secrets. Well, congratulations. Your secrets destroyed everything. They destroyed us.”
“When I came home, I—”
“You never came home, Beck.”
Deborah’s voice broke. She bent her head and dissolved in a paroxysm of wrenching sobs.
It’s true,
Beck thought, and the shame and horror again washed through him.
Whatever love we had for each other had not, could not have, survived that collapse.
He had no excuses, and understood that she needed none of her own.
When she looked up, she had stopped crying. But the marks of her tears still glistened on her face.
“I wanted to come here tonight,” Deborah said, “to tell you that. And to be with you.”
She rose from the sofa, and stood over Beck.
“This virus—don’t lie, Beck. There’s not much hope, is there? For Katie, or for any of us.”
His silence was her answer.
“We were in love once,” she whispered. “We were a family. Remember?”
His voice was hoarse. “Deborah,” he said.
“I need to know,” she said. “If there’s anything left for us.
Of
us.”
Her hands dropped to her waist. In a moment, the shorts fell to the floor. Her body was as he remembered: fine and delicate as a girl, but unmistakably a woman.
With her thumbs, she eased the remaining scrap of fabric past her hips, down her legs. When they reached her ankles, she stepped lightly out of them. The movement revealed her inner thigh, and more. The shadows and textures of her directed Beck’s gaze to her secret places, full and moist. He could feel the heat rise within him, and he swallowed with a throat suddenly dry.
The cloth of Deborah’s shirt had pulled tight against her chest, vividly outlining her excitement. Her hands worked at the tiny buttons, impatient in her own need. Before Beck could speak, the blouse came away. Her breasts were small, rising and falling with each breath, and tipped with nipples that were hard and erect.
Now she was nude. Deborah looked at Beck as if it was his turn to act.
“For what we had,” she said, “for what we lost.”
And he reached for her.
Deborah stepped close to his chair. They kissed deeply, and Beck felt her hand move to the hardness that strained against his pants. Soon she drew his right hand to her left breast, holding him hard against her. His other hand stroked and explored, pleasuring her in slow circles timed to their shared, rising excitement. Finally she rose and worked at his belt buckle. Soon she had pushed aside all that stood between their two bodies.
Her scent, her feel, her taste overwhelmed Beck’s every sense. Deborah pressed him back and moved over him, her feet planted on either side of the chair. She reached between their bodies, grasping, guiding his hardness into a place of heat and tightness. Beck’s body trembled as he slipped deep inside.
She rocked her hips, stroking, teasing. He leaned back in the chair, his thighs straining to match her rhythm.
She rose and fell, the fine muscles of her body rippling with the force of her effort as Beck moved in and out of her. His hands moved along her spine—stroking lightly here, grasping hard there. When they kissed, their tongues fenced in quick, darting thrusts and parries.
Near the end, he pulled back to look at Deborah’s face. Her eyes were closed tightly, her head twisting convulsively from side to side. The sounds she made were soft and wordless and increasingly urgent. It was a prayer of need and wonder, chanted just under her breath. Her hips churned against him in a dance as old as human longing.
“Oh. Oh . . .” Suddenly she tensed, her face twisted in a rictus that could have been pain or pleasure. She gripped Beck inside her like a hot, silky fist, and he could feel the intensity build throughout her body. For a long moment, she was lost in the sensations, her body almost vibrating. Then her orgasm rippled and swelled and burst upon them both.
She stared sightlessly into Beck’s eyes as she came, a strained keening rising from deep in her throat. Her entire body shuddered as if possessed, and that drew him too over the precipice. Beck groaned loudly as he felt his own climax flood into her. He pulled her close, pulsing in wave after white-hot wave.
“Yes.” Deborah’s voice was breathy and wild, and another massive explosion convulsed her. Then, as if sliding down a long, dark incline, she fell against Beck’s chest, spent. The mad hammering of her heart matched the pounding of his own. They clung to each other like that for several minutes, as their breathing slowly eased. Soon, she shifted slightly on Beck’s lap and he felt himself slip out of her.
Only then did he feel the chill of the air on his flesh. Deborah’s weight, slight as it was, grew oppressive against his thighs. Beck became aware of a sweaty itch wherever her flesh touched his; for the first time since Deborah had entered his room, he felt the dull ache of his wound pulsing in his leg. Outside, a distant siren faded into the anonymous sounds of the night. He fought a sudden desire to look at his wristwatch.
In the postcoital coldness, Beck held the woman he had once loved, and who had once loved him. He felt a clarity of mind that had eluded him since all this began. During that time, he had been waiting, though for what he did not know.
With a sense of profound loss, he realized what he had understood all along. Something was missing in him, in his character—perhaps it had been torn from him in Russia, by the torturer’s art. Perhaps, he thought with something akin to horror, it had never been in him at all.
He could not bear to be alone, but he could not bear to be with anyone else. He wondered, not for the first time, if he had gone mad.
Deborah felt the difference in him. She rose and moved away, but not before kissing Beck’s ear softly. Or perhaps sadly.
“Sex was never the problem we had, was it?” she asked,
and there was regret in her voice. “We were always good together that way.”
They dressed with their backs to each other.
She was halfway out the door when Beck spoke.
“Deborah,” he said, “thank you for coming here tonight.”
She stopped and looked at him as if seeing him for the last time.
“If I hadn’t, it never would have happened,” Deborah said. “You realize that, don’t you? No matter how much you may have wanted it. You’ve diminished yourself, Beck; you’ve become almost completely passive.”
“That’s not true—” he began.
“You’ve turned into a spectator to your own life,” she said with a flat finality. “Why are you so compelled to . . . to
accept
whatever happens, Beck? I can understand that you killed off your intellect—perhaps it deserved to die, after the way you had used it for all those years. But when did you lose your soul?”
His face roiled and clouded; as Deborah had always been able to do, she read Beck’s thoughts as if he had voiced them.
“It’s not what they did to you in Russia, Beck. It’s what you allowed to happen afterward. You’ve given up, on yourself and everything else. I don’t think you even know who you are anymore. For God’s sake, Beck—come back to life, or it will kill you.”
Abruptly, she turned away and opened the door.
“I want you to know”—he swallowed, recognizing the inadequacy of the words—“that I’m very, very sorry.”
“For what, Beck?” Deborah said, not unkindly. “Do you even know?”
When the door closed, he stared at it for a long time.
Montgomery, Alabama
July 23
He sat in the darkened suite, in the chair where he and Deborah had spent their lonesome passion. Only when the knock came, for the second time that night, did Beck Casey realize that he had been expecting it.
“It’s not locked, Alexi.”
The door swung open, and filled with a dark, bearlike figure.
“Do I interrupt anything, my friend?” In the doorway, Alexi Malenkov’s face was split by a wide grin; he managed to look both lewd and gregarious at the same time. “I certainly hope so.”
He lifted his hand, and Beck heard the tinkle of glass against metal.
“I heard movement in the hallway, Beck. Being paranoid, both by nature and by profession, of course I looked. You have reconciled with Deborah? I have come to celebrate with the two of you!”
“She left. Keep your voice down, Alexi.”
Alexi nodded, suddenly crestfallen.
“Of course. I perhaps misinterpreted. This business with
Katie must be a terrible strain on her—on you both. Have you any word?”
“No. Deborah intends to go inside the Quarantine Region and look for her.” He looked steadily and calmly at the Russian. “Frankly, I haven’t been able to figure out what I should do. Not even when my daughter’s life is an issue. Isn’t that odd, Alexi?”
Alexi entered, closing the door behind him. Beck watched him cross the small room and set a bottle on the dining table. The Russian reached into the pocket of the linen jacket he wore and produced stemmed champagne flutes. There were only two of them, Beck noticed.
“We can, perhaps, ask Deborah to join us later,” Alexi said. “Her room, I believe, is only down the hall a little way. Perhaps we can formulate a plan together.” He shook his head. “What a day we have had, my friend.”
“Why are you here, Alexi?”
“I could not sleep, so I thought to join you. Such sadness, this filthy thing to have been done to your Ms. O’Connor.”
“No. I mean, why are you
here.
In Alabama.”
Alexi raised his eyebrows. “As I told you. To assist you, to stop this assassin Ilya.”
Beck nodded thoughtfully.
“You want to open that champagne, Alexi? I think you’re right—we should have a drink together.”
Alexi grinned, and turned to the task. There was the metallic rustle of foil being peeled back, and a soft grunt of exertion. Then the pop of a cork, followed by the hiss of carbonation pouring into crystal.
He handed one of the flutes to Beck, and raised his own in salute.
“To luck, Beck. Your Katie will be found, and she will be well.”
“Not to luck, Alexi. I don’t think luck has been involved with any of this.”