2 Landscape in Scarlet (14 page)

Only he wasn’t.
She’d stake her life on it.
He was the ligature that would try to pull her past and future back together
—
and her wishes would be less important to him tha
n
his selection of fast
food that he’d eat on the way home.

Part of her brain was making cognitive arguments against impulsive action but anger, so rarely in charge, was not listening to logic
al
updat
es. She didn’t like that her sel
f-made witness protection program was being invaded
and alarm bells were ringing
.

She wasn’t frightened of the
gray suit
. Not exactly. But he
was a facsimile of the men who
came from her old life and was an unwelcome harbinger of a future one
that
she didn’t want.
A future that brought
on
panic when contemplated.

Juliet ripped her feet free of the mountain misery that clutched them and clawed her way over a boulder.
Thank goodness she was wearing athletic shoes and not riding boots.

She should have known! Should have guessed that
,
after Jerome Pinter’s call the week before asking how she was enjoying retirement
,
there would be follow
-
up. There always was. Sound even a little bit interested and encouraging and they sent someone. Sound very uninterested and discouraging, which she had, they still sent someone. Because
“
no
”
wasn’t part of the NSA’s working vocabulary, and the agency was accustomed to exploring the outer
limits of what was legal and ethical.

And she knew what sneaky Jerome was thinking. Retirement was for people over sixty-five. Everyone else
—
of value
—
was supposed to lash themselves to the wheel of the ship of state and sail on, regardless of personal needs or desires. Their lives were not their own
once they signed on
. Body and soul, you belonged to the agency. Her boss’s last act had been signing the papers that let her go, with a full pardon and her own soul, out the door at fifty
and with her pension in place to draw on when she was sixty-five
.

Jerome was trying to bring her back. He
was not compassionate and
didn’t understand that she had had to leave. That she would
probably
have swallowed a gun if she had stayed.

Besides
,
the intrusion couldn’t come at a worse time
.
She had never been good at dividing her attention and she had a killer to catch.

Jerry Hill was on his patio as she scrambled out of the bushes. He was a little startled to see his neighbor with a smudged face and sticks in her hair, but he only nodded when Juliet hissed
,
“You haven’t seen me!”

“I haven’t?”
He followed half-heartedly as she went to Esteban’s cottage and fetched the key from out of the bone birdhouse by the door.
Juliet didn’t like sticking her fingers inside because, she told herself, there could be spiders. But truly she didn’t like it because it was bones and touching the remains of dead animals was off-putting.

Esteban knew this and figured his key was safe.

“I have an unwanted visitor,” Juliet explained. Then, inspired, she added
,
“It’s my ex.
Sometimes he’s violent.
It would be better to avoid him. If he doesn’t leave I’ll call the sheriff.
”

Jerry’s eyes were big but he nodded again
at this lie
. Juliet slipped inside, relocked the door
,
and went to the desk where Esteban kept his binoculars.

It took ten minutes, but the man in the bad suit with graying blond hair finally made it up the trail. Marley was following him
, curious about the stranger who had come to his house and maybe amused by the way he kept plucking stickers from his pants
.

Jerry had disappeared inside his bungalow and Juliet was betting he wouldn’t answer the door. She wouldn’t be answering any doors either.

The jangle of the old crank phone was loud and made her jump. Everyone knew Esteban was away, so the only one who would be calling on the internal system was someone who had seen the man and guessed that she might be hiding there to avoid him.
Someone who knew that her cell could be monitored.
Raphael.

“Hello.”

“You made it to sanctuary.”

“Yes. Did he introduce himself
to you
?”

“Peter Davis, an old friend from back east.
No badges were offered.
”

“Uh
-
hu
h
. Look, he’s here now. I’ve got to go.”

“I’ll call when he leaves
the
parking
lot
,” Raphael said. “If it’s early enough we can have lunch
and vilify your former employers
.”

“From your lips….” Juliet hung up the phone and stepped out of view of any of the windows. Fortunately Esteban made a habit in sitting in places that were out of the line of sight
and using blackout drapes on the largest ones
in the studio
, so she was not uncomfortable
in her borrowed chair tucked in the corner of the darkened room
.

The knock on the door made her flinch, but she waited quietly
for the man to give up and go away
. It was too much to hope that he would
depart
forever, but she wasn’t mentally braced to speak to him right then. And the thought of explaining her presence in Esteban’s bungalow, when she knew it would go into a report,
made her angry.

The visit also forced her to acknowledge that she wasn’t completely at ease in her new life. A part of her was still looking back, waiting for the past to tap her on the shoulder.
She meant to recite her yoga mantra but found herself muttering a poem her father had taught her.

The other day upon the stair

I met a man who wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there again today,

O, how I wish he’d go away.

Except the last line kept coming out as
“
He must be in the NSA
.
”

Abandoning recitation, s
he used invective
instead. B
ut softly.
She didn’t much like having those words coming from her mouth, admitting that they had been inside, at her disposal for just such a moment.

Even after the noise of someone circling the bungalow had ceased, she didn’t get up to look out of a window.
Didn’t move when Marley scratched at the door.
Patience, that’s what was needed.

And it was rewarded some minutes later by the ringing of the compound
’
s internal phone.

“Give me some good news.”

“He’s gone,” Raphael said. “Bring the tuna and Marley, if he wants to come. I have the scotch
and peanut butter cookies
.”

“See you in five.”

Juliet hung up and opened the door for her annoyed cat.

*  *  *

“Any thoughts on why they are looking you up now?”
Raphael asked,
p
icking up a triangle of sandwich. Since it was a celebration
—
the avoidance of Juliet’s Nemesis
—
she had cut the sandwiches on the diagonal
and added sweet pickles
.

“No.
It isn’t like our parting was such sweet sorrow. Most people were glad to see me go. Still,
I got a phone call last week from the weasel who wanted my boss’s old job.
The guy is a real player.
I should have known he’d send someone out when I didn’t jump at the chance to catch up on old times.”
She frowned. “In fact, I bet he’s trying to take the job away from my boss’s replacement. I wonder if I should call
.
… No. Not getting involved.
They can have this fight without me.
”

Juliet shook her head and leaned down to scratch Marley who was enjoying his tuna without bread or a side of scotch.

“We’ve never spoken much about your actual job, but is it safe to say that you had some unique gifts that might make your shoes
—
or office function
—
hard to fill?”

“Yes.” Juliet weighed her answers and final
ly
settled on the simple one. “I’m very intuitive. Very good at seeing patterns and breaks in patterns and predicting future patterns. Mostly what I did was look at information, sometimes in the media, sometimes classified communications between agencies or other foreign entities
,
and found the
… misinformation. Or disinformation. Then I figured out who was lying and why.”

“You were a human lie detector.”

“Except I didn’t work much with humans. Just their words.”

“And what will you do if this man is persistent?”

“It depends. I can call some friends
—
I had a couple
—
and see if they can call the dog off. He is probably wanting to solve some case for the sake of personal glory. I mean, if it were something straightforward he would just ask for help
through the usual channels
.
If it were a known case,
the guy who took over for my boss would have asked
me to look at it
.”

“Option number two?”

“I can
always
hit him over the head and bury his body in the woods.”

Raphael looked amused.

“Would that be wise? Bodies almost always get found eventually.”

“Not if I hide them,” she muttered. “I bet I’d be a crackerjack killer.”

“Doubtless. Do you want me to ask around about this guy?”

“Not yet. I’m going to see if he
has
called in on Garret. I’m betting he hasn’t.”

“I wouldn’
t touch that bet,
”
Raphael said.

“It’s so nice that you’re not stupid.”

They smiled
at each other
and finished their sandwiches in silence.

*  *  *

Juliet knew she was taking a risk by going into town, but she was running low on tuna and
she had
a hungry cat to feed. There was also the urge to talk to Garret about the case and to tip him off about the stranger in town, if
the sheriff
wasn’t already aware that they had a spy in their midst.

Though she expected the stranger to make some move once she was in town, it annoyed her to find him lying in wait behind a stand of privet
about a dozen yards from the compound
. He had been there for a while. The hood was decorated with needles and leaves. She didn’t recognize the make of car but it looked boxy and heavy. She could see his face in the mirror
as he pulled in behind her
and it was smug.

The smile made Juliet see red. His car being heavy didn’t matter much on the dirt and gravel road, not the way it would on a freeway. She had the better vehicle for off-roading. The Subaru had all-wheel drive, was maneuverable
,
and knew its way around the mountains. It could practically drive itself.

The slashe
s
of sunlight between the trees would be blinding, and though he might know the road he’d driven in on, he didn’t know the smaller side paths and informal driveways where people would four-wheel drive in to visit their vacation shacks on weekends and holidays.

The air in the canyon was disturbed by her passing, shaking the few remaining leaves from the colonnade of oaks that gave the town its name. There was no speed limit posted, but Juliet was sure that she was exceeding safe speeds. That meant her follower would have to exceed them too or give up.

As expected
,
the gray man decided to play though a quick check in the mirror showed Juliet that his smile was gone. In fact, he looked a bit dismayed. He’d probably been told to look for a ret
i
red nerd and was expecting gray hair, a nervous disposition that was easily overawed
,
and perhaps a bag of knitting
she hung off her cane
.
He had expected to be able to lean on her and have her cave immediately.