Erica Spindler - Cause for Alarm

Kate set aside her biscuit, too anxious to eat. "So how does that help us?"

"We need to prove Powers is a loose cannon, right?" Kate and Julianna nodded. "The book will give us the information we need. All we have to do is break the code. The travel records will help us."

At the two women's blank looks, he explained, "In theory, once we make one of the book's entries, we can use it to decipher the rest. Like an alternate alphabet. I already did a little checking. According to my P.I., David Snow traveled to Mexico on June fourth last year. He returned on the fifteenth. There's a coded entry in the book, dated June fourteenth."

"Then we have him," Kate said.

"Maybe. Maybe not. What if the dates are a code, too? Twisted in some way? Or what if Snow was in Mexico on legitimate business? We've got to do this right. I say we go a step further. We find a library and using these travel dates as a guide, we search the back issues of newspapers on microfilm looking for reportings of deaths of government officials or any other important or prominent person. Then we put the two together.

"It's a long shot." Luke looked from one woman to the other. "But it's the only one we've got. And in my book it beats the hell out of sitting around waiting for Powers to strike."

The three exchanged glances, then leaped into action, a sense of urgency pressing in on them. They had to move fast. Time, they knew, was one thing John Powers was not going to allow them.

They checked into the new motel-a dismal affair done in a medieval knights theme, as if medieval castles had been papered with red-black-and-silver foil, flocked wallpaper. The woman manning the front desk hadn't had a clue where the nearest public library was, let alone the main branch, but offered the motel's yellow pages.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, they learned, was located at 901 G Street N.W. in the old downtown business district. The library had both the Washington Post and the New York Times on microfilm.

The day was long, their search tedious. Exhausting and frustrating. As the hours slipped by, Kate became more convinced that they were on a wild-goose chase, more aware that with each minute they searched, John Powers got that much closer to them.

Their progress was slowed even more by Emma. Her crabby mood only worsened as the day progressed. Kate and Julianna took turns walking the halls with her. They bounced her, sang songs and read to her. Nothing worked. At times the infant was almost inconsolable.

When they finally called it quits around two that afternoon, Kate had a screaming headache. Her eyes and shoulders ached and for the first time since arriving at Luke's, she felt hopeless.

She wasn't alone in her feelings. Julianna was subdued and retreated into her own world the minute they reached the hotel; Luke on the other hand, paced. He was frustrated and uncommunicative, and the one time Kate had tried to talk to him, he had all but bitten her head off.

Kate watched him pace for a moment, then returned her gaze to Emma, worried. "What's the matter, sweetie?" She tickled her daughter's lips with the bottle's nipple. "Come on, you've hardly eaten anything all day."

To her great relief, Emma latched on to the nipple and began sucking. A moment later, however, she jerked away and started to cry, the sound high-pitched and hurting.

A thread of panic wound through Kate. Something wasn't right. This was more than Emma being a little fussy because of lack of sleep or her schedule being disrupted. Kate laid a hand on her forehead; it felt hot.

Luke stopped pacing. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know. I think she has a temperature." Kate bent and pressed her lips to her daughter's forehead. "She's definitely hot."

"Let me check." Luke came over and laid his hand on her forehead. "She does feel a little warm. But maybe she's just hungry? Or sleepy?"

"I tried to feed her, but she wouldn't take the bottle. I'm worried, Luke. She's never been sick before."

"You don't know that she's sick, Kate. It could be she's just…upset."

"Her pediatrician's in Mandeville, all my child care books, I-" She dragged in a shaky breath. "This whole thing's been too hard on her. I never should have subjected her to it."

"What would you have done instead?" he asked, impatiently. "Stayed put in Mandeville so she could be murdered in her crib?"

Tears flooded Kate's eyes at his blunt words, and she swung away from him, clutching Emma, struggling not to cry.

He put his arms around her and Emma from behind. He bent and laid his cheek against her hair. "I'm sorry, Kate. I shouldn't have said that. It was wrong."

"No." She shook her head. "It wasn't wrong, it was true. We're just going to die later rather than sooner."

He turned her in his arms so they faced one another. "Don't say that. We have-"

"Nothing, Luke. We have nothing. We're no better off now than we were in Houston."

"We knew from the beginning that it wasn't going to be easy. We need a little more time, that's all."

"And time's just what we don't have." A sob rose in her throat. "It's impossible, like looking for a needle in a haystack. And now Emma's sick. I can't keep dragging her from one place to another like this. It's not good for her."

"Look at me, Kate. We don't even know for sure that John has made the connection between you and me. And even if he has, almost no one knew we were headed to D.C."

"He has made the connection. Somehow, he'll find us." She broke away from his arms. Emma began to cry, and Kate held her to her chest, trembling. "I feel him, Luke. He's watching us now, this minute. Nipping at our heels, laughing at our feeble efforts. And now Emma… something's wrong with…"

"Calm down, Kate." Luke closed the distance she had put between them and cupped her face in his palms. "I'll call the front desk, they'll know where the nearest Ready Med is-"

"What then?" she asked, tears welling. "Change hotels? Run forever? You know as well as-"

"Stop it!" Julianna leaped to her feet. "I can't take it anymore!"

Kate and Luke swung toward her, surprised. Even Emma was momentarily startled into silence.

"Don't you see?" she implored them. "We've got to stick together. If we're going to beat him, we've got to stick together. We've got to stay positive-"

She stopped suddenly. She brought her hands to her mouth, her expression stunned. "Oh, my God. That's it. I know what we should do, how we can get John. I can't believe I didn't see it before."

She turned to them. "Senator Jacobson. Clark Russell. We've had the answer all along."

"Senator William Jacobson?" Kate asked, drawing her eyebrows together. "Didn't he die last year? Wasn't he murdered?"

Julianna nodded. "I read about it in the paper, but it never made sense to me. The newspaper account reported that he had been found dead in his Washington hotel room. But whenever he stayed in the city, he stayed with my mother."

"Your mother?" Luke murmured, frowning.

"She was his mistress."

"I see what Julianna's getting at," Kate said, turning to Luke. "John told Julianna that he'd killed her mother. If she and the senator were together that night-"

"He would have killed him, too." Luke nodded. "That would mean the true facts of the murder were concealed to protect the senator and his family. It could be. It happens all the time."

"Billy was married," Julianna said. "Mother mentioned his wife a bunch of times. She came from big money, I think."

"She did." Kate nodded. "I read something about that. She came from some important family. Really important, with political ties."

"You're right," Luke said, excitement edging into his voice. "You mentioned two names, Julianna. The other was-"

"Clark Russell. He was with the CIA. Investigative branch, I'm pretty sure. He and mother had been lovers, a long time ago. He's the one who told her what John did for a living. Until then, even though they had been together for years, she hadn't known the truth. When I didn't believe her, she called Clark. He showed me some classified photographs, ones of…of John's victims. I believed them then. And I ran."