Brooklyn Knight (15 page)

Tell her!
a voice from the back of his mind shouted.
For Christ’s sake, just tell her—

Reaching into his pant pocket, the professor pulled forth the Disc of the Winds. Handing it to Bridget, he said;

“Yes—that’s exactly what each one of them did … with one of these.”

“Professor Knight,” the security guard at the front desk hissed, waving the director frantically over to his station. A rail-thin young black man of average height, he continued in his conspiratorial tone, saying, “If you think alla this is bad,” his hand indicating the score of forensic types working in the lobby, as well as the mob of various media types being held outside the museum, “I got some more bad news for you.”

“Do tell… .”

“Upstairs,” answered the man, shifting his eyebrows upward, “there’s a buncha cops and like worse than that waiting for you in your office—they didn’t none of ’em look like the happiest of dudes, neither. Maybe you might want to be thinking about turning around—sliding back out the door.” Turning his head pointedly away from the professor, he added;

“I can tell ’em straight—I haven’t seen you.”

Putting his hand to his forehead, Knight gave the
guard a short salute. “It’s all right, Dix,” he told the younger man, somewhat amused by the fact that he knew his casualness about the matter was in no way what the guard had expected. Feeling he owed Dix an explanation, he added, “Don’t sweat it overly, my friend. I had anticipated as much. Although,” he added as an afterthought, “it will probably be a bit disconcerting to my new assistant. Please keep an eye out for her; take care of her for me.”

Dix promised to do so, asking the professor for a description. As the guard’s eyes went slightly wide and his mouth began to reveal a gleaming grin, Knight added, “I’d also appreciate it if you didn’t start in with one of your patented pickup attacks. She’s a nice girl, one I’d like to get a full summer’s work out of before someone like you crushes all the sweetness out of her.”

The guard made a feeble show of protesting such a description, then suddenly laughed, confessing he could not keep a straight face. After adding that he would be on his best behavior, he then said, “Must be something to do with what all went down here last night, huh?”

“That would be my guess,” Knight responded. Then, lifting his eyebrows playfully, the professor put his hand to his mouth to disguise his words, adding in a mock sinister whisper, “If not, then I suppose they finally found out about my cocaine-smuggling operation. I have it sent up from Colombia hidden in statues for the museum, you know. And here I thought I was being so clever.”

Dix’s eyes went wide for a split second at such an admission. Then, when he realized Knight was merely having sport with him, the guard pointed an index finger at the professor, chuckling out loud as he said;

“You one crazy white man.”

“That is what they keep telling me.”

As the guard wished Knight “good luck,” the professor accepted the sentiment both graciously and honestly, then walked off toward
the elevator bank which would take him to his office, his mouth curling into his familiar one-sided smile. His hand pressing the button to summon his ride, Knight let his mind slip back to the question of his new assistant.

Despite the fact that the redhead had been at least seemingly quite open about her past when they had chatted the day before, Knight knew how clever people could be about hiding those aspects of themselves they did not want known to the world. She had suddenly learned a great deal about him—far more than most ever learned.

What
, he wondered,
if she’s not all she seems?

Although he hardly thought it possible, there was nothing to say that the young woman was some innocent babe in the woods. She had done her undergraduate work in two different, major cities, after all. There was no avoiding such things. If she had never smoked a single joint, never once gotten falling-down drunk, never snorted a powder or popped a pill, et cetera, she would be a rare young American, indeed.

I suppose you think she’s still a virgin, too.

Knight found no quick answer coming into his brain to answer the snide thought, one that made him feel a trifle embarrassed. Who was he, he asked himself, to be wondering about such things? After all, the professor reminded the leering side of his brain, there were such people to be found in every corner of the world. Even in the United States they numbered in the tens of millions. After so many years in a place like New York City, however, Knight had to admit that perhaps he had become more than a trifle jaded.

Waiting for the elevator, the professor found himself hoping that Bridget might be one of those non–New Yorkers. He had gotten something of that sense from her. The professor felt he was fairly good at spotting those who were hiding something, especially those hiding things from themselves.

Bridget had displayed none of the signals he was used to finding in such people. And, of course, part of his reasoning behind picking her up at the airport, for entertaining her all day and then bringing her to the museum at night, was to test her. Not once did his new assistant show anything but eager interest. If she was addicted to anything, if she was any kind of indolent slacker, she had a will of tempered steel when it came to not revealing it. No, as best Knight could tell, she was simply a sweet young woman, intelligent and observant, and eager to learn everything there was to know about working in a museum.

Which was why he had left her in his home.

She needed more rest, the chance to take a shower, get in touch with her family for longer than a cell phone call from a police station could have afforded her, and basically, as he believed the young folks still said, “get her head on straight.” The professor had known the police would be waiting for him—as well as the rest of the board. If there was anything young Bridget did not need, he felt, it was more intrusive questioning.

Oh, they would get around to her again—Knight knew that. Such was simply unavoidable. But, if he was to tackle them first, to give them their chance with him, to turn him inside out with their never-ending barrage of uselessness, he felt he could most likely give them enough answers so that when her turn came they might not be all that brutally relentless in their browbeating.

And, with that thought, the elevator’s muted arrival bell chimed, letting the professor know he could finally proceed to his waiting interrogation. Watching the doors begin to slide open, he thought;

Well, here we go. I left Bridget at home so she could regain her composure, and so that I could take a try at defusing the barking dogs before they start in yapping at her. After all, I believe she will certainly try not to reveal what she saw last night, but oh, those two words, “try” and “succeed.” How different they are.

And with that unsettling notion rolling through his brain, Knight stepped into the elevator. As he did, of course, the pessimistic side of his personality offered;

Now, if she sticks to sleeping and showering and using the phone, and doesn’t start rummaging around where she shouldn’t, well, everything will just be perfect.

With a sigh, the professor watched the doors slide shut once more. “ ‘If’ and ‘perfect,’ ” he mused.
Two more words that did not always work so well together.
That thought in mind, Knight allowed himself a second sigh.

It was simply going to be one of those days.

Bridget did not, as Knight momentarily had feared, start rummaging around where she should not. She was, of course, human, and such thoughts did cross her mind.

As she was soaping away the grime of the preceding twenty-four hours in the shower, the idea of roaming through the various floors and rooms of the professor’s home, searching for secret doors and hidden chambers and the such, did nag at her, teasing her toward the inappropriate, but she firmly rejected doing so in the end. She did not make her decision out of any sense of fear over being caught. Nor did she resist the temptation because of any overwhelming sense of priority. Rather, she chose to follow a warning the back of her mind passed on to her.

I think, all in all
, it told her,
that we’d better leave such ideas alone for now. I mean, if he’s got his hands on things that will allow people to fly, God knows what else is around here.

Giving herself the example of the toddler who decides they want to play with the stove, the redhead decided that “better-safe-than-sorry” would be her best possible anthem for the day. So deciding, Bridget finished her shower, then dressed in the room Knight had provided for her. As she did so, smoothing the wrinkles from the set of clothes she had packed to be her first-day-on-the-job outfit, she wondered for a moment why the professor had not shown her to that room the night before.

Yes, of course, she had fallen asleep on the couch, but why didn’t he wake her up? Again, she had been the one to mention wanting to sleep on his couch, but still, her mind pouted, he could have offered the room. Or, did he want her on a different floor from him, did he not want her to have a lock to put between them, did he—

Staring at herself in the mirror, Bridget was just finishing buttoning her blouse when she let escape a throaty growl of frustration.

Disappointment mixing with anger, both aimed at her own paranoia, Bridget tried to shove the thoughts from her mind. Yes, she admitted, she had known more than her share of creeps and losers. Drooling high school and college boys, inappropriate teachers and professors, friends of her family, even an uncle—one sorely beaten by her father when he heard her shouts of protest—so many others.

But, she reminded herself sternly, she had known good, kind, decent men as well. And, she was certain, Professor Piers Knight simply had to be one of them. Everything about him said so. She had never felt so comfortable with any man so quickly, with any
one
—had never been put so at ease by someone she had just met in all her life. And yet, despite every warm and kind thing she could think to say about Knight, still the professor left her with a sense that he was continuing to hide things from her.

“Like what?”

Oh, she told herself, she was not making sense and she knew it.
But
, she asked herself,
just what did make sense anymore?

Only a day and a half previous, things had made complete and reasonable sense in her world. For one thing, if nothing else, a day and a half previous, no one she knew could levitate. No, to the best of her knowledge, they all stayed on the ground. Where they belonged. Gravity had still prevailed.

“But not anymore.”

The confused young woman whispered the words as she continued looking at herself in the mirror attached to the back of the room’s dresser. The image disturbed her, seeing her reflection only confirming the distressing news. Instead of turning away from the sight, however, she continued to stare at herself. Still only in her underwear, clutching at her half-buttoned blouse. She took note of her posture, pulled in and shrunken. She saw her hands, trembling, the edges of the cream white blouse vibrating in her fingers. And then, finally, she dared to look directly into her own eyes—unblinking.

As she expected, she found nothing but fear.

Bridget Elkins had left home only a day and a half earlier, ready to embark upon the adventure of her lifetime. The memory almost made her chuckle—worked at loosening the tears scratching about the borders of her eyes. How ludicrous, her thirty-six-hour-old idea of adventure. Moving to New York City, spending the summer working in a world-famous museum. Learning filing procedures, memorizing bits of information about exhibits and the building’s architecture so she might lead tours, making certain the free brochure holders were filled—

Adventure …

The repealing of the law of gravity, though
, Bridget thought, finally turning away from the mirror, closing her eyes,
you’ve got to admit, now that’s something that happens in an adventure.

Feeling her knees going soft, the muscles and ligaments of them twitching, failing her, Bridget folded her legs under herself and sat on the floor—consciously doing so before she simply collapsed instead. As she leaned against the bed next to her, her mind overflowed with images from her past day and a half. Her parents at the diner, making jokes, inserting little reminders about safety and watchfulness when in the big city, more warnings at the airport, last moments of opportunity slipping from their hands, realization finally dawning on them that their little girl was all grown up—

She remembered the confidence she had felt, boarding the plane. There was no sense of escape, no desperate hurrah over the throwing off of some imagined chains. Bridget liked her home, her family, her life, felt in no way put-upon or held down. It was a good, comfortable life.

But it was not enough for her.

Life in Montana was simply too easy, and she was ready for more—had known as she waved good-bye to her parents that she was going to be all right. That nothing was going to stop her from “making it on her own.” And why not? After all, things had always come easily for the long-legged beauty.

“Yeah,” she said aloud, daring to peek at the mirror once more. From her position on the floor, she could only see the top half of her head, nose up and no more. Staring into her eyes, knowing herself well enough to realize what she was seeing there, she finished;

“And see, look how easy it’s going to be to make it all the way to crazy.”

And then, finally, Bridget Elkins broke down and gave in to the tears she had been desperately holding back since she had watched four men get blown apart, been interrogated by the police, run from a burning building, and basically discovered that she could
rely on absolutely nothing she had ever believed throughout her entire life.