Salem's Cipher Read online

  Salem nodded, grabbed her bag and the papers, and scurried away. Her relief was so great that she forgot about the ocean, at least for a moment.

  But then it came into sight.

  The ferry, perched on the bay, riding the lip of the sea’s dark angry mouth.

  Salem hadn’t been able to conquer her fear of water to save her own father.

  Her phobia was too big. She’d been fooling herself. She couldn’t do this.

  She turned to leave.

  She felt infinitesimal. Lilliputian. Worthless. Disappearing. There was no tomorrow. Only fear beating like an electric heart. She should have given the documents to Bel. Who was she kidding? She never even should have left Minneapolis. Everything she’d ever done was wrong. All of it. Even being born. She needed to—

  “Hey, you’re going the wrong direction.”

  Salem brushed at her face. Agent Lucan Stone stood next to her. She almost said his name, but then she remembered her disguise. He might not even recognize her.

  He didn’t smile. He took her by the elbow, turned her around, and began leading her up the gangplank.

  Her skin prickled. “I’m afraid of water.”

  “I don’t intend to swim. Do you?”

  She tried to twist away, but he slid his arm around her waist. She closed her eyes and didn’t open them again until they were in the center of the boat, surrounded by the busy chatter of the press and the few lucky civilians who were allowed at the speech. Was the ferry bobbing under her? She could pretend it wasn’t.

  Stone was staring at her. She blinked, hiding the side of her face with her hand.

  “I like the hair,” he said. “And thank you for the package.”

  Of course he recognized her. Her disguise was intended to fool anyone who’d seen her mug shot on the evening news, not someone who actually knew her. “What are you doing here?”

  He nodded in the direction of Alcatraz, which she thankfully could not see from the center of the ferry. “I’ve been reassigned to Hayes. Seems there’s a connection between the serial killer and her. Anything you want to tell me about?”

  Salem shook her head.

  “I didn’t think so. In a more specific answer to your question, I saw you go through security. You can’t enter a room without causing a fuss, can you?” Were his eyes twinkling? “I think I saw Ms. Odegaard as well. Or is she Mr. Odegaard now?”

  “We’re not going to hurt anyone.”

  “That’s true.”

  It was an odd reply. Her eyes flew to his face.

  He was staring at her, studying her. “How long have you been afraid of water?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. “My whole life.”

  He nodded, glancing over her shoulder. “You won’t be able to get to Hayes, not with the security on the island. You have something to give her?”

  Salem didn’t answer. The ferry was taking off from the pier, a lurch of movement tossing her into Stone. He held her, as solid as his namesake.

  “Give it to me,” he said. “I’ll see that she gets it.”

  “No!”

  He watched her. “You don’t trust me.”

  “Why would I?”

  “I gave you thirty-six hours when I could have brought you in.”

  She squeezed the strap of the messenger bag. “So did the Hermitage. You don’t think an organization that could set up a”—she glanced around at the active ears crowding the lower berth—“complex plan like the one for today couldn’t have gotten at Bel and me anytime they wanted? No, they waited, using us to retrieve what they couldn’t. You might not be working for them, but then again you might. We’ve done just fine without you, so if you don’t mind …”

  His expression was unreadable.

  She turned to go but there was nowhere to storm off to. Bel must be on this ferry somewhere, but to talk with her would blow her cover. Besides, water was out there. The best Salem could do was make her way to a nearby pole and grip it, the messenger bag pressed between her body and the metal. Fear flapped inside of her like a vulture, but she circled her hands around its neck.

  Stone didn’t bother her again. When the boat heaved to a stop at Alcatraz Island, he was nowhere to be seen. Salem waited until most of the reporters had cleared out before following them off the ferry. Technically, she was now on land, but land visibly ringed by water, five foot swells crashing against it. It was nearly noon, but you’d have to look at a watch to know because the fog was so dense that it softened sound. The air was chilled, soupy and buoyed by a coldness that emanated from the crumbling gray rocks below. Salem swallowed, tucked her head, and made for the recreation yard on the northwest side of the island. That’s where Hayes was scheduled to speak. The helicopter parked atop the main cellhouse suggested that she was already on site.

  It was a steep switchback climb to the crest of the island. The solid block of the cellhouse perched to Salem’s right. To her left was a craggy rock face slipping straight into the hungry sea.

  She kept a steady stream of people between her and the water.

  “Salem!”

  She turned toward the man’s voice. Recognition stopped her in her tracks, confusion overpowering the fear. It wasn’t Agent Stone.

  “Connor?”

  Her booty call lover’s face lit up, as broad and handsome as she remembered.

  97

  Alcatraz

  Salem’s unstable world rocked further to the right. The last time she’d seen Connor Sawyer was exactly one week ago when he’d scared her so badly that she’d peed her pants. He hadn’t crossed her mind since Bel had shared her opinion of him back at the Minneapolis airport.

  If we get through this, you and me, and we find out what happened to our moms, next time you see Connor, you flush him like the turd he is.

  Here the turd stood, stupidly, blondly handsome, embraced by fog, streams of reporters splitting around him as if he was a rock in a river. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Bel called me.” He stepped closer.

  The thickness of the mist carpeted her eyes and ears but heightened her other senses. “What?”

  “Bel said you’d be here, that I should come and save you from yourself. She promised she’d take care of everything.”

  Salem heard the words, understood each of their meanings individually, but couldn’t combine them to make a larger story. They were square thoughts trying to breach the circle of her mind. “Bel would never do that. She’d never betray me.”

  “She said you’d say that.” His voice sounded like he was smiling, but her disorientation had turned his head into a shadowy black thumbprint on top of his neck. “Come here, and I’ll tell you what else she said.”

  He grabbed her wrist, pulled her to his chest. A stranger would think they were hugging. He tipped his mouth to her ear, his lips brushing the tender curve of her lobe. “I liked your hair better long.”

  She felt the sharpest kiss in the palm of her hand.

  She swatted at it and glanced down.

  He held a glistening needle. “I’m sorry, Lemming. They paid me so much.”

  He began leading her toward the rocky edge, a rudimentary plastic fence the only barrier between Salem and the bottomless sea. She heard it roar and sing. The water had been hungry for her for years. She knew she should fight, but her brain was separating from its mooring in a way that made her care about nothing. Her bones seemed to be floating free.

  A man walking by stopped. “Is she all right?”

  “Seasick from the ferry.” Connor flashed his best law-school grin. “I’m getting her out of the sun. We’ll be fine! You don’t want to miss the speech.”

  The man walked away.

  Salem tried to open her mouth, to ask for help, but she was too spongy. Connor threw her arm over his neck and his hand arou
nd her waist, steering her away from the steepest part of the ledge, checking over his shoulder before ducking under a rope and stumbling down a steep embankment. They were out of sight of the crowds, on a tiny chunk of the island that hadn’t been used in decades, its paths crumbling.

  Connor reached a tilting utility shed and led her behind it, the building shielding them from the casual view of anyone who peered over the ledge. The shed also blocked the sun, turning the air ten degrees cooler here where it smelled of brine and damp. They stood on a table-sized lip that gave way to a steep, craggy pile of rocks and vines dropping sharply into the agitated sea.

  “I think I need that messenger bag,” Connor said, setting her on a rock abutting the utility shed. He tried to lift it over her head. “Let go of it.”

  She glanced down. She was indeed holding the bag with both hands. He tried to pry her fingers loose. He couldn’t.

  “Let it go. You don’t want to make a scene, do you?”

  Surprisingly, she found that she did. She loosed one hand from the strap, and with a remote, scientific accuracy, she grabbed Connor’s balls and twisted. He fell forward, and still she didn’t let go. When the effort of holding his testicles above his body became too much, she dropped him.

  She stood. Her legs were shaky, but she was going to get to the speech. She was going to hand the bag to Hayes before the poison rocketing through her veins reached her heart. Her only hope was that she’d pushed the needle away fast enough that she hadn’t received a full dose, that she’d bought herself enough life to complete her mission. She began float-walking back toward the main path, stumbling over the loose gravel, tripping on the vining plants. Behind her, Connor charged to his feet.

  He lunged at her and pushed her over the side, toward the angry sea.

  She screamed as she fell, reaching out for any purchase. Her hands found an ancient metal cord screwed into the slippery rock face above an eroding path no wider than Salem’s feet. She scrabbled for the cable, its rust and fray piercing the palm of her left hand. Warm blood coursed down her wrist, but she didn’t let go. She couldn’t. The ocean would have her.

  She squeezed past the pain and pulled herself up, arms quivering, until her feet found what was left of the rock path.

  Connor Sawyer’s head appeared above her, blocking the sun. She was just beyond his reach. His head disappeared and was replaced by his legs.

  He was dropping himself toward the ledge on which she stood.

  “Ready or not, here I come,” he grunted.

  98

  Alcatraz

  Jason was putting the final touches on the banquet table.

  “Melissa!”

  He glanced over his shoulder. The head of catering was staring at him. He pitched his voice high. “Yes?”

  “Make sure her chamomile tea is hot,” the woman said. “They said she’ll want it piping, and she needs it now, before she starts speaking.”

  Jason nodded. “You got it.”

  A screech of feedback outside the white catering tent indicated Hayes was just about to begin. Everything was happening exactly on schedule, following to the letter the plan that had been put into place one year earlier. Geppetto would have retrieved his gun from underneath the toilet bowl of the third stall men’s room, where it had been taped. The gun had never been fired, the bullets specially constructed so they carried no scent. The dogs that had swept the island would not have discovered it.

  Clancy Johnson would be in position.

  The killers were three deep: If one failed, the next would step up.

  Gina Hayes’s life was no longer hers.

  Jason was the first player up in the three-man killing team.

  He began to prepare Senator Hayes’s tea. With specially gloved hands, he dabbed the Polonium 210, a radioactive poison 250,000 times stronger than cyanide, into three of the teacups. It would be a gruesome death drawn out over several days as Hayes was poisoned from the inside out, her organs failing, skin splitting and weeping, her hair shedding in clumps, vomiting when she wasn’t shitting her brains out. The poison was a favorite of assassins as it was undetectable, easy to smuggle, untreatable, and didn’t begin working until well after the killer had left the scene.

  The ensuing chaos, particularly if Gina Hayes was elected president tomorrow, would turn the country, if not the world, upside down.

  Chaos was the ripest soil for the Hermitage’s seed.

  Finally, Jason would be good enough.

  99

  Alcatraz

  If Connor reached her, he would toss her into the sea. If she let go, she would fall into the water without his help. She had no choice but to climb parallel to the water away from Connor, following the metal cord, her life a sputtering flame poised over the churning ocean.

  She closed her eyes and put one hand over the other, her feet searching for purchase, moving as quickly as she could, which wasn’t fast at all. The trauma was comfortable, almost, in its familiarity.

  Water.

  Death.

  Shock unlocked shock.

  Salem was defenseless as the full memory finally, horrifically, washed over her.

  She is on shore, twelve years old and wearing her first bikini, so proud of its rainbow colors, of her flat belly, of the way the shadow of her hips curves on the movie screen of the dirty brown beach.

  Her dad has gone into the water. She hears a sound by the cabin. She goes to check. When she looks back at the water, her dad is gone, has been underwater far too long, but she’s too scared to save him, to even scream for help.

  “No!” She is startled by her own yell. It forces her eyes open. Connor is maybe five feet behind her. Another twenty feet in the other direction is a doorway cut into the high wall of the Alcatraz recreation yard, from back when there was a stone deck on the other side, before the sea had eaten the rock.

  Salem closes her eyes again. The drug Connor injected her with has turned her upside down, stealing her focus and her will. Her attention begins to narrow.

  No.

  Because it didn’t happen that way.

  Salem is on shore, twelve years old and wearing her first bikini, so proud of its rainbow colors, of her flat belly, of the way the shadow of her hips curves on the movie screen of the dirty brown beach.

  Her dad walks into the water. She hears something and puts down her book to walk to the cabin, thinking it might be Vida.

  There’s someone in the shadows.

  It’s the fat-fingered man, the one who had picked up the delivery three days earlier. He’s come back for Salem. Somehow, she’s led him on. That’s why he’s here, to see her in a swimsuit. She feels her blood drain from her.

  She is paralyzed by fear. She looks toward the lake. Her dad has disappeared. The water has eaten him. If she goes in, it’ll eat her too. She moans.

  The fat-fingered man reaches for her.

  She runs toward the lake. Nothing is more important to her than her dad.

  She hits an invisible wall, landing on her back. She feels heat slide down her cheek. She can’t move.

  When she opens her eyes again, the sun has shifted. Her cheek is throbbing. It’ll take five stitches to close that wound. Police guess she fainted and split her face when she hit the ground.

  She hadn’t. Someone had sliced her.

  She hadn’t just watched her dad die.

  She’d tried to save him.

  She had backfilled the details of her father’s death because of shock and shame; shame because she’d believed she was the reason the fat-fingered man had come to the lake, because she’d fainted rather than save her dad, because she’d laid on her back while he died.

  But that wasn’t how it happened.

  The realization dropped chains from her neck.

  Her eyes shot open again. She tasted saltwater on her lips. Connor had closed
the distance between them. He was reaching for her, his hand scant inches from hers. Slippery blood ran down her wrists from her death grip on the fraying threads of the wire, but she was faring better than Connor, who kept slipping off the slick rock. Salem’s size and her lower center of gravity were an advantage, but barely. She knew she had to move, but whatever Connor had injected her with was turning her legs to mush.

  The hungry ocean foamed below, a wet black tongue licking salaciously at sharp sandstone teeth.

  Connor gripped her wrist.

  His hand was cold. Their eyes met.

  She could read his intentions as clearly as if he’d shouted them.

  He planned to fling her into the ocean.

  Salem tightened the grip of her other hand around the frayed cable.

  The pain of metal gouging her flesh pierced the poisoned fog clouding her brain and galvanized her to action.

  In a move she’d learned in Krav Maga, she twisted her hand under his, slamming the knife edge of her hand into the weak part of his grip. She’d seen Bel perform it successfully on Ernest, twice.

  It worked. Her hand was free.

  Connor’s eyes widened, and they stayed wide because she didn’t stop there. She flung out her leg and kicked him with everything she had, her strong, thick thigh powering the heel of her foot as it slammed into his stomach. He grabbed for the cable as he stumbled backward, but his grasping fingers missed and he tumbled over the ledge.

  She didn’t watch him fall, but she heard the wet thud before the ocean swallowed his screams and his body.

  There wasn’t time to feel or to catch her breath. She had to keep moving even though the effort expended to save herself from Connor was enough to send her to her knees.

  The doorway through the stone was just ahead. She was near enough to see the catering table on the other side of the doorless frame, its top covered by a smooth white tablecloth, everything so normal and just out of reach.

  If she could beg one final request from her body, one last hurrah before her system shut down, she could propel herself through that doorway.