Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

“ Don't you pick up your messages anymore, Coran?”

“ What messages? Wait a minute, Paul. You send me a wire the other night?”

“ No, just phone calls, several.”

“ I've been away from the hotel, sorry, and some weird things've been going on here, and last night I got in so late I didn't stop by the desk, so-”

“ Jess, are you sitting down?”

“ No, why?”

“ Sit.”

He said it with such command she obeyed automatically. “What is it, Paul. You're scaring me.”

“ It's Matt Matisak.”

“ What about the bastard?”

“ He… he's no longer in custody, Jess.”

“ What? What? Are you… is this some sort of sick joke, Paul?”

“ Wish it were, Jess… wish it were…”

“ But if he's not in custody, what happened? Did I miss something? Don't give me any shit about his lawyer finding some overlooked loophole or I'll-”

“ He escaped Arnold's asylum.”

“ A maximum-security prison and he escapes?”

“ He escaped from a hospital ward in another part of the prison.”

“ Hospital ward?”

“ He hurt himself… all part of his plot, we figure.”

“ Christ, Paul, he… the bastard… he sent me a wire! He's coming after me.”

“ He's extremely dangerous, Jess. He proved that two days ago.”

“ Was anyone… hurt?”

Parry was hanging on her every word.

“ Arnold was killed, and a guard, and a nurse.”

“ How?”

“ Scalpel to the throat… except for Arnold whom he took his time with.”

“ He stopped to drink the blood, didn't he?”

“ He did.”

“ Anything else you want to tell me?”

“ He left a message on a wall, a message in Arnold's blood.”

“ For me.”

“ For you.”

“ What… what'd it say, damn you?”

“ The real thing is good, but Coran is king… I want her blood.”

“ That bastard's free and he's after my blood, Paul. What the hell am I supposed to do? You got any idea what I'm supposed to do?”

“ You can't stay there, that's for sure.”

“ I'm going to be looking over my shoulder no matter where I am.”

“ Get back home, Jess. We can work out a strategy from here. If he thinks you're in Hawaii, he'll go there.”

“ Get back home for how long, Paul?”

“ It'll buy us time… time to work out some strategy, Jess.”

“ For how long?”

“ I don't know, Jess. Until we apprehend the bastard again.”

“ Start in Norman, Oklahoma.”

“ Oklahoma?”

“ He sent the wire from there.”

“ Christ, he's halfway across the continent.”

“ He's shrewd and deadly. He'll be killing as he goes. Set up a command post in Oklahoma. I'll… I'll join you there.”

“ Are you sure?”

“ Yes, damnit, I'm sure.”

Jim interrupted. “He could be counting on that if he's as treacherous as you say.”

“ What?”

“ That you'll come to him.”

“ Right, well, then he'll be right.” Zanek asked, “Who are you talking to?”

“ Jim Parry.” She imagined Zanek was checking his watch about now and figuring Hawaii time.

“ Ahh, oh, yeah,” he sputtered. “Sounds like he agrees with me, Jess, that it'd be best for you to return to D.C.”

“ Where I can sit on my thumbs? Wait and wonder and fear my own shadow? No, thanks.”

“ Let us take care of Matisak, Jess.”

“ I let you guys take care of him already, remember?”

“ All right, Jess. I'll meet you in Oklahoma, but not anywhere near the bureau offices. He'll be watching the offices, if he imagines you'll come.”

“ Or he'll be on a flight for here,” she countered.

“ What's it to be, Jess?”

“ Oklahoma for me, and Parry's people will watch the terminals here.”

Parry stared across at her, seeing the determination in her eyes. She hung up after telling Zanek that she would wire him in Norman with her flight numbers.

“ I'm going with you to the mainland, to Oklahoma,” he now said.

“ The hell you are. You have a bureau to run here. You're… you're the goddamn linchpin here in the islands, Jim, respected by both sides. With your expertise and knowledge of the Kowona affair… well, you're just needed here; otherwise anything could happen to this powder keg you call paradise.”

“ To hell with all that.”

“ To hell with it? No way you're going to turn your back on what you have here, Jim; what you've accomplished and built. Hell, even Kaniola has renewed respect for you and the bureau since-”

“ Don't B.S. me, Jess.”

“ He said as much.”

“ I can't let you fly off after this madman alone, Jess.”

“ Alone? Don't be ridiculous. The entire bureau's on alert. I'll have an army of willing bodyguards and Paul Zanek'll be at the lead.”

“ That's supposed to put me at ease?”

“ Come on. What we have found here together… no one'll ever replace, Jim. And maybe, when this is all over, I'll… I'll come back…”

“ And maybe you won't.”

“ Don't, Jim… don't make this choice any harder than it already is, please.” In fact, in her mind, there was no choice. He sensed this.

Their coffee had gone cold and the Hawaiian sky at the windows had become overcast for the first time since she'd come to Oahu.

She dialed for the airlines. He dressed. They went around one another like a pair of zombies as she packed. “Everything's changed now,” she finally said.

“ Everything?”

“ Circumstances, but not how I feel about you… just circumstances. I don't want to go. I have to go.”

“ Why, Jess? Why can't you just stay?” We're not kids, Jim. That would mean giving up my career. Besides, he knows I'm here. I'm… I feel vulnerable. I have to take the offensive.”

“ And if it's a trap, to lure you there?”

“ I've walked into traps before, once with you, remember?”

He was hurt, his insides turning over.

“ Will you take me to the airport?”

“ If you're sure. Okay.”

“ Funny this should happen now,” she said.

“ Funny?”

“ I finally discard that damned cane, declare myself free of Matisak and the scars he inflicted on me. My nights were no longer haunted by him, and now this.”

The flight out of Hawaii was long, tedious torture, the States half a hemisphere away, and it gave her too much time to wonder what might have been, too much idle questioning of her decisions until she was second-guessing herself. She thought of Jim Parry and how much he meant to her, about how dear he was, about what she was giving up.

Maybe Jim was right. Maybe she should chuck it all, turn around and return to his arms and the paradise-or near- paradise-she'd discovered there in the lush islands of the Ohana.

But if she remained it would be like a homing beacon for the evil of Matisak to invade there. If she returned to Hawaii, Matisak would be forced to find her there, and she'd be jeopardizing people there, even Jim. Matisak wanted to poison her life in every conceivable way, and how better to poison it than to destroy whatever and whomever she loved. She must never give Matisak that kind of power, the power of knowledge over her, of information that could harm her.

She feared even corresponding or talking with Jim on the phone now, for Matisak's evil genius would leam of her lover, and he would plot some awful nightmare for Jim Parry, a night of torture and death in which the psycho would slowly drain Jim Parry of his blood. This tort 9 killer, this vampire, was cunning and cruel.

She wasn't crazy or paranoid to feel this way toward Matisak. Over the years of his incarceration she'd had to make many visits to him, interrogating him, and he in turn had made numerous death threats, both direct and indirect, careful always to do so whenever her recorder ran out of tape. Still, she had fooled him once into threatening her by carrying a second, concealed tape on her person. It was useless as evidence to take to his parole board, which would be sitting in a matter of four years from now, as she'd smuggled it in and he was being taped without his knowledge, but it gave credence to her claim, and it had opened Paul Zanek's eyes to the monster.