Reflex Read Free

rang several times before switching to the voice mail system. "Brian Cox here. Leave a message. I'll get back to you."
    The voice took her back ten years, to her only meeting with the man, a judge-supervised interview when the NSA first discovered Davy. Not long after that, she'd spent several days illegally detained in an NSA safe house. She shuddered and almost forgot to speak at the tone.
    "This is Millie Harrison-Rice, Davy's wife. Please call me." She left the condo's number and the clinic's, then pushed the handset cradle switch down, cutting the connection.
    Shit! What had Davy gotten into?
    She tore off the clothes she was wearing and took a quick shower. She ran the water hot, hoping it would thaw the frozen place in her chest, a knot of suppressed grief, fear, and anger. I'll let it out soon. When I don't have to function.
    She put on therapist clothes, comfortable but slightly formal, a combination she'd found gave her the right mixture of accessibility and authority with her clients. Jeans, a nice blouse, a silk jacket, and flats. She put her palm against the window. It was cold enough that she started to grab her overcoat, but, at the last minute, she pulled on Davy's worn leather jacket, a bit large on her, but comforting, his smell mixed pleasantly with the leather.
    There was a bulge in the inside pocket and she checked it. It was an envelope with fifty twenty-dollar bills. One thousand dollars. They were new twenties, oversized Andrew Jacksons, so it wasn't his older stash, the used bills he'd stolen ten years before, from the Chemical Bank of New York.
    She shook her head. Spy money. A small portion of a payment from one of his "errands" for Brian Cox. Non-lethal, zero-exposure transportation—an agent inserted into Beijing, a remote electronic radio monitor left in Serbia, a dissident pulled out of Baghdad. More rarely, hostages rescued, but he kept those to a minimum, for her sake. He'd done a few jobs a month—more recently during the mess in pre-occupation Iraq. The original plan had been to pay back the million he'd stolen while still a teen, but he'd kept on going, even after it had been returned with interest. He hadn't returned it to the bank, though. He'd donated the money anonymously to dozens of shelters and drug treatment centers across the country.
    He still donated heavily, now, but there was also a closet back in the cliff house with over three million dollars in it.
    "What else am I going to do?" he'd said. "Garden?"
    She put the money back in the jacket. She might need it to find him.
    Her office was only a quarter-mile away, a five-minute walk, but she tried to visualize it, tried to will herself there.
    It didn't work.
    Dammit. Did I imagine the whole thing? Was I at the condo the whole time?
    The climbing rope with ring, bolt, and concrete was still in the corner of the living room, where she'd piled them.
    She walked to the office, kicking through drifts of fallen leaves, unable to enjoy the colors of the changing trees. She wanted to find him, to do something. But she had no idea where he was, where to look. Davy would come to her, when he could.
    She didn't know if she was strong enough.
    Waiting is the hardest role.
     

TWO
"That's not his blood."
     
    Davy jumped to an alley running behind Nineteenth Street Northwest, just east of George Washington University. It was cool and the pavement was wet from recent rain, but it wasn't quite as cold as New York had been and, for once, the alley didn't smell of urine. Water dripped from fire escapes and telephone wires and he hunched his neck into his jacket as he turned toward the lighted street.
    Just short of the sidewalk, where the alley widened behind a store, a refrigerator carton lay tucked against the wall, waterproofed by a layer of split plastic garbage bags. The ragged blanket that served as a door curtain was half-open and Davy saw two sets of eyes reflecting the mercury streetlamp. Children's eyes.
    He paused. Did they see me