Jeffery Deaver - Ice Cold

“And if it turns out to be something worse?”

Gunn was a womanizer and had always been a womanizer. It didn’t seem possible that it might be something worse. Besides, in this battle, Isabelle was my main target. Whatever happened to Gunn as a result would be collateral damage, but it wouldn’t be undeserved.

“Then he gets what’s coming to him,” I said. “My husband didn’t put on a uniform and go to war so his son could grow up to be a traitor to his country.”

“What about Lloyd?” Alf asked. “Does he know anything about this?”

I was surprised that Alf remembered my husband’s name, but I don’t suppose I should have been. After all, Alf is the consummate politician. For politicians, knowing people’s names means money.

“No,” I said. “There’s no reason for him to, or for anyone else to know about it, either.”

I was thinking of Alf’s very pretty wife, whose surgically maintained good looks kept thirty years or so off her face. Alf must have been operating on the same wavelength. Up to that moment, he must have been worried that I had turned up at this late date intent on making trouble for him over our long-ago indiscretion. My last words caused a visible look of relief washed across his face.

“So we understand one another?” he asked.

“Completely,” I said, gathering my things and standing up. “It’s good to see you again, Alf, but I don’t expect we’ll stay in touch. Once I know who the woman is, we’re done.”

Was it blackmail? More or less. I made my way back to where I’d parked the car, thinking about how Alf was one of the most powerful men in the country and how I was now the power behind the throne. It was oddly exhilarating. On the long drive back to Altoona, I wondered how long it would take for me to hear from Alf again. I never did.

In fact, I hardly gave the matter another thought. For one thing, two weeks later, Lloyd landed in the hospital for triple bypass surgery. The surgery was followed by postsurgical complications that kept him in intensive care for the better part of three weeks and hospitalized for another two weeks after. He was released to a rehab facility for a month after that before he finally came home.

In all that time, Gunn drove up exactly twice to visit. Alyse came along. Thankfully, Isabelle and Jimmy stayed home. The first time he came, Lloyd was still so out of it, I doubt he knew they were there at all. The second time, he was in rehab. After Gunn left, Lloyd wanted to know if he’d asked for money.

“Nope,” I said. “And I wouldn’t have given it to him if he had.”

Lloyd gave me a wan smile. “That’s my girl,” he said, then he added, “So they must be doing better.”

While Lloyd was in the hospital and rehab, it took all my energy to keep the house running, the bills paid, and get back and forth to visit him each day. I thought my life would get easier once he was home, but it didn’t. After someone has been a patient for that long, after he’s been used to having nurses at his beck and call at all hours of the day and night, it was a big shock to both our systems to have him come home with only me to take care of him. Neighbors pitched in and so did people from church. That was the time I could have used Gunn to show up and help out—to rake leaves and put up storm windows or even answer the damned telephone, but true to form, he didn’t, and I was too busy to worry about what my useless son was or wasn’t doing.

What I remember most about that winter was the snow. It came in early November and it never went away. If it hadn’t been for the guy next door who used a snowblower to keep my driveway clean, I have no idea how we would have made it out to doctors’ appointments or to buy groceries.

By the time we were approaching the end of March, I was more than tired of snow and tired of being locked up in the house with an often disagreeable and impatient patient. With another snowstorm predicted, I had made a quick trip out for groceries. I was in the kitchen putting them away, while Lloyd snoozed in front of Walter Cronkite and the CBS Evening News . When the phone rang, I answered it in the kitchen.

“Grandma,” Alyse said breathlessly. “It’s true.”

“What’s true?”

“Dad’s a spy. The FBI was just here. They arrested him, put him in handcuffs, and took him away.”

I didn’t have to pretend to be surprised. I was surprised. I had a hard time catching my breath. I staggered over to the table and dropped heavily onto one of the kitchen chairs.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Is it possible there’s some mistake?”

“There’s no mistake,” Alyse said quietly. In the background, I could hear Jimmy wailing as though his heart was broken.

“Where’s Isabelle?” I asked.

Between us Alyse and I never referred to Isabelle as Alyse’s mother because she wasn’t.

“She went out,” Alyse replied. “She said she was going to talk to a lawyer.”

“Have her call me when she gets back,” I said. “I need to go talk to your grandfather.”

As I walked into the living room, I realized what I had done. I had been aiming for Isabelle, but the person I had hit—the one who deserved it least—was my husband, Lloyd. I walked over to the TV set and switched it off.

“Wait,” Lloyd said. “It’s just a commercial. The news isn’t over yet.”

“It’s over for now,” I said, and then I told him.

Lloyd heard me out, listening stone-faced as I repeated what Alyse had told me. When I finished, he wanted details I didn’t have.

“Spying for whom?” Lloyd demanded, his face contorted with grief. “And what kind of information could Gunn possibly have that would be of use to anyone?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no idea. But try not to get so upset, Lloyd. It’s bad for your heart.”

“Not knowing is bad for my heart. I want to talk to Isabelle, and I want to talk to her now. Where the hell is she?”

“According to Alyse she went out to talk to an attorney.”

Lloyd leaned back in his chair. I could see he was making an effort to get himself under control, and while he fought with his emotions—looking for his stiff upper lip—I battled my own, because I knew without a doubt—without a single doubt—that I was the one who had put this train in motion.

For the next half hour, we sat there in silent misery, waiting for the phone to ring. “If it’s Isabelle,” Lloyd said when it rang, “put her on speaker.”

It was, and I did.

“It’s Gunn,” she said breathlessly. “He’s been arrested by the FBI. I don’t know what it’s about. We have a friend who’s an attorney—a criminal defense attorney. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to see him. He says he’ll take the case, but he needs a $50,000 retainer.”

“No,” Lloyd said.

“What do you mean, ‘No’?” Isabelle wailed. “This is your son. Are you saying you won’t help him?”

“I’ve helped him before,” Lloyd said, “but not this time. This time he’s on his own, and so are you.”

“Hang up the phone, Isa,” Lloyd said, shortening Isadora to the pet name he hadn’t used in a very long time. “You’ve already talked to Alyse?”

I nodded.

“Then take it off the hook. If anyone else calls tonight, we don’t want to hear from them.”

I didn’t sleep that night. Neither did Lloyd. Maybe women are more realistic than men. I had understood my son’s shortcomings all his life. Lloyd had not, and now the idea that his son had betrayed his country had broken my husband’s heart. By the next morning the story was headline news on the local television stations and on the national networks as well. When Lloyd went into the bathroom to shower, I tried calling Alyse. Naturally, Isabelle was the one who answered.