Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

“ You’re a coward ,” Morgan Herr’s voice echoed in her head. “ You’re a little, sniveling bitch, and who paid for your cowardice? Tell me, who paid? ”

Racked with sobs, she lay back down on the bed and, turning on her side, pulled the coverlet over her. Sometime later she was plunged into a sleep where, in dreams, she strode across the leafy campus of Langley Fields. Emma, whispering beside her, had the sun on her face, so her eyes, usually as transparent as lake water, were hidden in the glare. Then Alli passed into the cloud of shade thrown by a pear tree, and as she turned to Emma, she screamed and screamed, and could not stop screaming.

JACK PUSHED Annika off him, not roughly but firmly, so that there would be no question of his intent.

Part of him felt as if he should be thinking of Sharon, but Sharon was far away in every manner imaginable; she was lost to him in the way he’d been afraid he’d lost Emma. He realized now that from the moment he’d first met Sharon, from the instant of their first incandescent coupling, they were headed toward dissolution, like a body that sinks beneath the waves and, in a split instant, becomes nothing more than a reflection, a reminder of what was or, possibly, what might have been. But, in any event, it was losing its coherence, if it had any to begin with, as it plunged headlong into oblivion.

Emma had been their only chance to stay together, but, really, that was a false hope. For a moment he forced himself to imagine his life had Emma not died, and the inescapable conclusion was that as far as he and Sharon were concerned nothing would be different. From the moment Emma was born, they disagreed on everything concerning their daughter, a dangerously scattershot method of child-rearing, but they were both blinded by their immaturity. It was the wrong moment for them to become parents, and they didn’t handle it well, taking their fundamental differences into a more public arena.

The other part of him was both hard and on fire. Though he fought against it, his breath came in short, hot pants, as if he were nearing the end of a long, grueling race. He knew the thoughts of Sharon and dissolution were meant as a distraction from his current situation, but his mind refused to stay thrust back in time, returning again and again to the seductive stimuli his five senses brought in.

He drank in Annika’s scent, felt the warmth of her body, heard the soft soughing of her breath, like wind through the treetops. He could not help but savor the taste her lips had left on his, the first bite into a fresh peach.

He turned his head to see her lying on her right side, facing away from him. Her body was curled up slightly, lending her a more vulnerable appearance, as if she were already asleep, but he could tell by her breathing that she was still awake.

Her blouse, or what was left of it, had ridden up, revealing her bare back. The sight of the scars took his breath away. They must be from the eighteen months she had been incarcerated. The abuse she had suffered had been extreme, or one manifestation of it had been extreme. How extreme had Alli’s abuse been, how profound her terror and her suffering? How deeply was Morgan Herr embedded in her psyche? “ The terror dissolves like dreams when we wake up and go about our daily routine ,” she had said, which set him wondering. At the moment when Annika’s scars lay revealed to him, when it crossed his mind to touch them, to ask her how she had come by them, it occurred to him that there was something voyeuristic, even obscene about poking around in a person’s sordid past. That’s what people did these days, however, and the more sordid the deeper the urge to pry, to learn why, when logically the opposite should apply. But there was nothing logical about the reflex to stare at a car wreck, to watch, spellbound, as bodies were pulled from the wreckage, to think: How badly hurt are they? Are they alive or dead? Thank God I’m here, safe and sound, passing by this disaster, but, hang on, slow down, I want to see more, blood and all.

Without a clear understanding of what he was doing or the consequences that might ensue he reached out. As he curled his hand over her hip she emitted a sound that was neither a sigh nor a moan, but contained the essence of both. That sound acted like a trigger, releasing him from whatever safety mechanism that had short-circuited what he had been feeling ever since he’d crossed the threshold of the bedroom.

“Forget it,” she said in a voice partially muffled by the pillow or perhaps her arm. “I don’t want you now.”

Laughing softly he removed his hand and turned off the second lamp, enveloping them in twilight. And yet it seemed to him that he’d been plunged into darkness so absolute it was possible to lose his bearings, as if he were at sea beyond sight of all land. He wondered whether he should go or remain on the opposite side of the bed, trying to find a place comfortable for himself, at which point she turned around as lithely as a gymnast, folded her arms around him, and pressed her soft, half-open lips to his. He could feel her panting breath as his mouth closed over hers.

Their bodies moved in concert, in a back-and-forth rhythm not unlike the tide that rules the seas. They were like engines revving up, yearning to be released, longing for the fury that only a vehicle at speed and slightly out of control could generate, summoned like a genie or a djinn from shadows where no one looked.

Lost inside her he became unmoored from a sense of either place or time, dimly aware that in plummeting toward oblivion he sought an end to the dissolution of his life.

FIFTEEN

“LLOYD BERNS’S death was almost certainly the work of Benson and Thomson.” Dennis Paull, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, leaned forward tensely, seeking to keep his voice low. He was speaking of two prominent members of the previous administration, Miles Benson, the war vet and former director of the CIA, and Morgan Thomson, the former national security advisor, the last of the neocons who had managed to maintain his power, due mainly to his ties to companies manufacturing war materiel.

On one of those dank District days when winter and spring, for a short time evenly matched, fought one another to a standstill, five of the most powerful men in the capital, and therefore in America, clustered beside the newly turned grave of Senator Lloyd Berns, following the mournful pomp and circumstance of his funeral and burial among the fallen heroes of the country at Arlington National Cemetery.

Paull was huddled with President Carson; Vice President Arlen Crawford, the big, rangy, sun-scarred former Texas senator; Kinkaid Marshall, the new head of NSA; G. Robert Kroftt, director of Central Intelligence; Bill Rogers, the national security advisor; and General Atcheson Brandt, who had handled the delicate arrangements with Russian president Yukin for Carson’s historic U.S.-Russian security accord. This meeting had convened following the services, after Berns’s family—his wife, sister, two sons, daughter, various inlaws, and grandchildren—had stood stiffly, wept, and thrown handfuls of dirt on the coffin. Around the six men, at a discreet distance, was a constellation of Secret Service operatives, all staring outward across the sea of headstones, bouquets of flowers, mourners, miniature American flags, and the occasional eternal flame.

“You’ve given us no proof, Denny,” Marshall said, “but even if you had, what have they accomplished with Lloyd’s death?”

“I’ve already appointed Ben Hearth as the new whip,” President Carson said, “and he’s tougher with the opposition than Lloyd ever was. I’m not suggesting that Benson and Thomson aren’t still formidable enemies, but that particular motive’s a no-go.” He spread his hands. “What else do we have?” He briefly considered bringing up Jack’s mission, then almost at once dismissed the notion.