No One Lives Twice (A Lexi Carmichael Mystery) (4 page)

He leaned down close to my face. “I know you work for the NSA,” he said, his voice low and threatening. “This has nothing to do with them. I have friends in high places that work there, too. If I hear that you’ve reported my visit here to anyone in your office or to the police, I’ll find you and kill you no matter where you are. You will not be able to hide from me. Do you understand?”

His matter-of-fact tone chilled me to the bone. I totally,
absolutely
believed him.

“I understand,” I said. “My lips are sealed.”

He tucked the gun away beneath his jacket and I breathed a little easier. “This is no joke. The minute those papers arrive, you call me no matter what time of the day or night.”

With that, he walked to the door and let himself out. I hyperventilated for a few minutes sitting there in the dark before I was able to determine what I should do next. Finally, I gathered enough courage to stand and turn on the lamp next to the couch. Light flooded the room and I blinked, realizing that my electricity was fine and that the intruder had either smashed or removed the bulb in the entranceway.

I blinked again and my vision cleared.

I wished I had stayed in the dark.

My apartment had been completely trashed. Books had been dumped from my bookshelf, pictures removed from the walls, magazines and papers scattered across the carpet. A quick cursory glance seemed to indicate that nothing had been stolen—just rifled through.

Dazed, I wandered into the kitchen and bedroom, finding a similar disaster there. Thank God my most precious possession, my sleek new laptop, had not been stolen. It was turned on, however, and someone had apparently tried to peek into my hard drive. He must not have been much of a geek because it looked like my password had stopped him cold.

It’s not that I have any matters of national security to hide on my computer or anything. At the NSA we’re not allowed to bring our work home. I do have all my financial information there, although anyone clever enough to hack in would get a good laugh at my checking account balance. Just the same, I logged on, whizzed about my hard drive and checked my email. Other than the usual spam, there was nothing exciting, including no email from Basia telling me what the hell was going on.

Anger rising, I stalked into the bathroom. Even it had been ransacked. Tampons, make-up and rolls of toilet paper had been scattered about.

“Well, crap,” I said, sitting dejectedly on the toilet lid. This had been one hell of a day. I’d been set up on a date with a politician in the making, accosted twice by men bearing guns, and my apartment had been trashed. It totally bit the big one.

After a minute of wallowing in alternating anger and self-pity, I stood and went to the phone in the kitchen. I dialed Basia’s number, but her answering machine picked up right away.

“It’s Lexi. Call me immediately,” I ordered and then hung up. Then I dialed her cell number, but got her voice mail there, too. I left the same desperate message and hung up.

Returning to my bedroom, I searched for about ten minutes before I found my address book underneath a pile of underwear on my bedroom floor. I thumbed through it until I found Basia’s parents’ number in Chicago. My bedroom phone had been thoughtfully stuffed in one of my black flats. So after I extracted it, I sat on the bed amid a bunch of clothes and dialed the number.

A woman answered the phone. “Hallo?”

I immediately recognized Basia’s mother’s voice. The Kowalskis were from Poland and had emigrated to America about twenty-five years earlier. They were the sweetest, most down-to-earth people I’d ever met. But for some unfathomable reason, even though the Kowalskis had learned English in America, they spoke all fancy, just like the Brits.

“Hello, Mrs. Kowalski?” I said. “It’s Lexi Carmichael. I’m sorry to bother you.”

“Lexi, dear, how nice to hear from you. You’re not bothering me. How can I help you?”

“It’s nothing really. I was just wondering if you had heard from Basia lately.”

Mrs. Kowalski must have been doing the dishes because I could hear her shut the water off in the background. “Basia? Well, let’s see, I spoke with her a few days ago. Is something wrong?”

“Oh, no,” I hurriedly reassured her. “I just need to reach her right away and she’s not answering her phone or cell. I thought maybe she had mentioned to you that she had planned on going on an extended trip or something.”

“Not to my knowledge. She might just be out with other friends. Unfortunately, Basia never keeps me abreast of her social life. I thought that was your department.”

It was, but apparently I wasn’t doing a bang-up job of keeping on top of it. “Oh, well, I’m just trying to get in touch with her about something, ah, possibly related to work. Did she happen to mention anything new she was working on?”

“Now that you mention it, she did say she had started a new project. Some new translations had apparently come her way. She did say it was in Polish for which she was glad since it could be done relatively quickly.”

“Did she happen to say who the work came from?”

“No, dear, she didn’t. I was more surprised that she’d recently started karate lessons.”

My mouth fell open. “Karate?” I repeated, completely dumbfounded. Basia doing karate was about as feasible as the pope turning Protestant. She
hated
exercise and would drive her car to the 7-Eleven to avoid having to walk across the street. If the escalator was out of service at the mall, she refused to shop there. Something weird was definitely going on here.

“Karate. Well, that’s news to me, too,” I said in the understatement of the year. Had I dropped off the face of the earth? Why hadn’t she informed me, her best friend, of all these shocking new developments?

“Did she say where she was taking these karate lessons?” I asked.

“No, she didn’t. Should I be worried?”

“No, not at all,” I said hastily. “But if she happens to give you a call, will you tell her I’m trying to reach her?”

“Of course, dear,” Mrs. Kowalski said, and I could hear a hint of worry creep into her voice. I hoped I hadn’t spooked her, but mothers had that second sense thing going, and I had a feeling I’d been nabbed.

“Well, thanks, Mrs. K. I gotta go,” I said as cheerfully as I could fake and hung up.

I stood and returned to my front door. I opened it and examined the jamb, but I couldn’t see any marks where Mr. Middle Eastern Guy must have broken in. Not even a scratch. He must be one heck of a burglar.

I checked all the windows, but they were closed and latched from the inside. The balcony sliding glass door still had the piece of wood wedged into it that served as an extra lock. Honestly I didn’t think he had come in either via the windows or the balcony. But that meant he had easily picked both my lock and deadbolt. Sheesh. Wasn’t anyone safe these days?

I really,
really
wanted to call the police. I’d been accosted by armed thugs twice in one day, which ranked high on my list of reasons to call the authorities. But if Mr. Middle Eastern Guy and Beefy were still watching me, they’d see the police car arrive. I remembered their threats and changed my mind. I needed to talk to Basia first. Besides, nothing had been stolen, and as far as I could tell, nothing major had been broken. The place was just an unholy mess.

Sighing, I fastened the safety chain on the front door, wedging a chair beneath the doorknob for extra security. As soon as I got off work tomorrow, I was going to buy some mace and have an alarm system installed. No more surprise visitors. No more guns pointed at me. No more playing the victim.

I retrieved the loaf of Sasha’s bread from the entranceway floor, brushed it off and carried it into the kitchen. I nuked a couple pieces in the microwave and slathered them with butter and jam. I’m really into comfort food and this seemed the appropriate time to indulge.

After I’d finished stuffing my face, I felt better. I found a pen and piece of paper and jotted down the phone number Mr. Middle Eastern Guy had scrawled on my arm. Then I pulled down all the shades on the windows when there was a loud knock on my door.

My heart jumped to my throat and stayed there. I grabbed a heavy, ugly vase that my mother had given me for Christmas and cautiously approached the door. Without speaking, I peered out the peephole and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it was my neighbor Jan Walton.

Jan was a cute, single mom with a seven-year-old, high-functioning autistic son named Jamie. The boy was the most handsome kid I’d ever seen, with thick, dark hair, sky-blue eyes and a dazzling white smile. He was super smart, but often had odd fixations. He’d once named every single part of my vacuum cleaner. In return, I’d listed the entire mathematical equation for the Mandelbrot Set. We’d been buddies ever since.

I quickly removed the chair from beneath the doorknob, unfastened the chain and unlocked the door.

“Hey, Jan,” I exclaimed, sticking my head out. I didn’t open the door all the way in case she saw the mess inside and asked questions to which I didn’t yet have answers.

Jan looked puzzled that I hadn’t invited her in. I
always
invited her in.

“Why is it so dark in your entranceway?” she asked.

“Oh, that,” I said. “The light burned out, I guess. I’ll have to replace the bulb.”

A look of surprise crossed her face. “Hey, you don’t have a guy in there, do you?”

Sometimes it astonished me how invested everyone, except me, was in my love life. Maybe turning twenty-five was some kind of blazing social milestone that meant if you didn’t have a significant other, you’d better find one. In my case, dating meant change and I
hated
change. Change was different. Change was scary.

“No. Unfortunately, there is no guy in here, hot or otherwise,” I said.

“Well, I came by earlier, but you weren’t home.”

“I was at my parents’ for dinner.”

“On a Tuesday? Special occasion?”

“Just my mom trying to set me up. Again.”

Jan laughed. “How awful. You poor thing.”

I laughed, too, but it was forced and I still didn’t invite her in. Apparently sensing I wasn’t in the mood for company, she held up a large FedEx mailer.

“Anyway, this came for you tonight. Since you weren’t home, Jack dropped it off at my place. I forged your signature, and Jack said it was okay as long as we don’t tell anyone. He didn’t see the harm in it, seeing how we’re good friends and all.”

Jack was our FedEx guy. Jan was on a first-name basis with him because she insisted her ex-husband send his alimony check that way. Jack had become quite friendly and Jan often invited him in for coffee.

My hand trembled as I reached out to take the mailer from her. I didn’t need to look at the return address because I already knew what it would say. But I had a morbid need to see, so I glanced down at the sender’s address.

Not surprisingly it read “Basia Kowalski.”

I nearly peed in my pants right there on the spot, but instead smiled and thanked Jan, hastily closing the door. She probably thought I’d gone round the bend. Maybe I had.

I turned the deadbolt, fastened the chain and wedged the chair underneath the doorknob again. Then I stood with my back pressed against the wall, trying not to hyperventilate.

Why had I ever agreed to dinner at my parents’? If I had come straight home from work like I was supposed to, Jack would have given the mailer to me, and Beefy or Mr. Middle Eastern Guy could have stolen the papers from me, perhaps even before I got a look at them. Then I would have been happily clueless about this whole mess. But no, my mother had to pick this day—out of three-hundred and sixty-five choices—to try and set me up with a Senate-bound, preppy CPA.

Taking a deep breath, I darted into the kitchen. I sat at the table, pushing aside the silverware that had been dumped from a drawer. I gingerly set the mailer on the table.

I sliced open the top with a knife and shook the package a bit. Some papers slid out onto the table. I picked up the top sheet. It was a note hurriedly scrawled in Basia’s messy handwriting.

That was it—a strange cryptic message from my best friend. I flipped through the papers, but found no further explanation of what these papers were or why two people had already accosted me at gunpoint for them.

Shaking my head, I set the note aside and picked up one of the papers. It looked like a bunch of legal documents in a foreign language I didn’t recognize. I thumbed through the rest and counted seven neatly typed pages. I could see letters with a bunch of funny accents and wiggly lines both above and beneath the letters. I recognized the Roman alphabet in play here, so the language wasn’t Arabic or Russian. That narrowed it down to a few dozen.

I glanced over the papers again more carefully and managed to pick out an address. The city read Warszawa. That meant Poland. No surprise here. Polish was Basia’s first language and she did a lot of translation work in the language. But why had she sent them to me for safekeeping? And why were two armed men desperate to get their hands on them?

“What’s this all about, Basia?” I murmured aloud.

There had to be a clue somewhere. Determined, I studied the papers again, this time more closely, line by line. Not that I knew what I was looking for, but I had a hunch.

Then I saw it. At the bottom of page three, someone had penciled in something so lightly, I almost missed it.

I squinted and held the paper up to the light. It looked like a phone number.

(138) 518-1514

I didn’t recognize the area code. However, it definitely looked like Basia’s handwriting, and I was sure it was important.

I snatched a piece of paper from a kitchen drawer and scrawled down the number even though I had already committed it to memory. Then I located the phone book amid the mess in my kitchen and searched through the listed area codes. There was no such U.S. area code as 138.

It could be a foreign number, but it was missing the critical country and city code. Besides, despite the layout, it just didn’t feel like a phone number to me. I tapped the pencil against the table, studying the number. My mind searched through several possibilities before I realized I was breaking a code. It took me less than a minute. Each number represented the position of the letter in the alphabet and when I was finished I had written down one word on the paper:
Acheron.

I had no idea what the hell that meant, so just to be on the safe side, I tried several other, more complex, codes. But nothing else made sense and the amateur code felt right to me because I was pretty sure it came from Basia. While she was a whiz with languages, writing code was definitely not her forte.

I looked carefully through the rest of the papers once again in case I missed something, but saw nothing else of interest. Of course, I couldn’t read the other pages, so I could have been missing something incredibly vital. I was about to put the documents away, when I looked again at the page with the bogus phone number at the bottom. Without even knowing why I did it, I grabbed the pencil and erased the number. Call it instinct, call it long-distance telepathy between best friends, but I was sure that the number, whatever it meant, was for my eyes only.

I gathered the papers and put them back in the mailer. For a minute, I sat at the table, my chin in my hands, thinking what to do next. The phone number Mr. Middle Eastern Guy had scrawled on my arm seemed to blink under the florescent glow of the kitchen light. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out Beefy’s card. The number scowled back at me as if it were the Beefster himself. I compared the numbers and saw they were different. I frowned, disappointed. I guess a part of me had hoped they were working together. Then I could consider them one big threat instead of two separate ones.

I exhaled a deep breath. No way would I call either one of them until I had a better idea of what these papers contained. Basia had apparently been desperate enough to mail them to me and then disappear. She might be in trouble and these papers could be the only way to save her.

Resolutely I stood and went back to my bedroom. I switched my slacks for jeans and the purple blouse for a dark blue T-shirt. I pulled my long hair back into a ponytail, put on socks and tennis shoes and then rummaged around until I found my black tote bag. I shoved in the FedEx mailer, my wallet and keys and then added my address book just in case, jotting down Mr. Middle Eastern Guy’s phone number there, as well. Then I took the paper with the phone number Basia had written on the papers and stuffed it in the back pocket of my jeans. I’d figure that out later.

For about fifteen minutes, I walked around my apartment turning lights on and off and pretending that I was getting ready for bed just in case I was being watched. Just after midnight I turned off the light in my bedroom. I slinked out the front door, locked the door and the deadbolt—not that it was keeping anyone out lately—and dashed down the side stairs of the complex. Not too many people knew about this exit and I hoped if I were being watched, my observers wouldn’t expect me to come out there. Tonight I was afraid to use my car, so I slipped outside into the sticky summer air and headed out on foot to another apartment complex about two miles away. I cut through fields and backyards, checking continually to see if I were being followed.

Twenty minutes later I reached the Oakton Woods apartment complex and rang the buzzer for apartment 6D. It took about three minutes of frantic buzzing before I heard a sleepy voice through the intercom.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“It’s me, Lexi Carmichael,” I whispered, even though there was no one about. “It’s urgent. Can I come up, please?”

A long silence. “Lexi? It’s after midnight.”

“Please, Paul. It’s important.”

There was a moment of hesitation before the buzzer sounded. Quickly I yanked the door open and slipped inside. I climbed all six flights and found Paul Wilks standing in the doorway in a rumpled T-shirt and shorts. He was forty-two years old with blond hair and a pretty good body. He was also divorced with three kids.

Paul was a linguist at the NSA and we’d been teamed together once on a project that we’d successfully completed. He’d gotten his job at the height of the Cold War when all the agencies were in the market for Slavic linguists. He was a decent guy, but slightly annoying. He’d asked me out once and I’d gone, but I hadn’t felt any chemistry. Too much of an age gap, I guess. But apparently he’d felt something because it had been awkward between us for about two months while I politely turned down his requests for more dates. Then he had asked out Carla Romanov and things had gone back to normal.

Frankly I didn’t care about any of that now and hoped he didn’t either. Paul spoke fluent Polish and I desperately needed for him to translate the papers for me.

“Nice of you to visit,” he commented, closing the door behind me. “Perhaps you could call ahead next time.”

“Sorry,” I said, shrugging my bag off my shoulders. “I know this isn’t the most convenient time, but I have a bit of an emergency.”

“Work related?”

“No, it’s personal.”

He ran his fingers through his hair and sat down on the couch. “What’s up?”

“I’ve got these documents I need you to look at,” I said, pulling out the FedEx mailer. I shook out the papers and handed them to him.

He leaned over and flicked on the lamp next to the couch. He took the papers and held them under the light. “Are you sure this can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“I’m sure,” I said, deciding it wasn’t a good idea to bring him up to speed on the psychos with guns. He already thought I was nuts as it was.

Sighing, he leaned back on the couch and started to read. After reading the first page and setting it aside, he started the second. I couldn’t stand the anticipation so I interrupted him.

“Well?” I asked. “What does it say?”

He shrugged. “It looks like a contract of some kind.”

“A contract? What kind of contract?”

“It appears to be a contract providing for living arrangements. It outlines the conditions for a one-year lease on an apartment in Warsaw, a daily living stipend and car.” He set the second page aside and kept reading. “Pretty generous actually for this part of the world.”

“That’s it?” I said in disbelief. “Who’s the recipient?”

Paul flipped through the rest of the papers, scanning the documents. “It doesn’t say. It looks like this is just the generic form. There are no names mentioned, just ‘client’ and ‘recipient’.”

I stood behind the couch and looked over his shoulder. “Are you sure? No names anywhere?”

He lifted a pale eyebrow at me and then resumed reading. I paced back and forth behind the couch. Why in the world had Basia sent me this strange document? What in the hell was so threatening about a contract without any names?

Paul finally set the papers aside and stood. “Sorry, but I don’t see anything else exciting. But it is strange that the everyday details of the ‘recipient’s’ life are very clearly spelled out. He or she has to agree to live in the apartment for a minimum of one year, be available for unannounced visits from so-called ‘client,’ go to specifically named doctors and medical institutions, withdraw money from one specific bank account and not to travel outside of Poland for the duration of the year.”

“It sounds like an agreement between a man and his mistress,” I mused aloud. “But why have a contract in the first place? Is this a new kind of guy thing?”

“You’re asking me?”

“You’re a guy, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but since when do I have mistresses lined up?”

“I don’t know. I thought guys stayed current on this kind of thing.”

He rolled his eyes and then spread the documents on the coffee table. “Lexi, there is one other thing of possible interest. I think I recognize the name of the company named here.” He ran his fingertip beneath two words in Polish on page two.

“There’s a company name?” I asked. “What is it?”

“I’m not one hundred percent sure of the translation. Let me check it out tomorrow and I’ll get back to you. May I ask where you got these?”

“Ah…from a friend,” I said, remembering what Mr. Middle Eastern Guy had said about letting anyone at the NSA know about the papers. “Look, Paul, I need you to be especially discreet when you do your check tomorrow.”

He looked up at me in surprise. “Why?”

“I can’t go into it right now. But it’s important. Discretion is imperative.”

He sighed. “What have you gotten into this time, Lexi?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel. “I owe you big, Paul.”

He stood and walked over to a nearby desk, pulling out a pad of paper. “Yes, you do. And I fully intend to collect. Dinner and dancing.”

“What?” I squeaked, taking a step back. “Oh God, you don’t want to see me dance. I’m telling you, it’s not a pretty sight.”

He smiled. “Remember, you owe me
big.
Big requires dancing for an equitable payoff. Besides, seeing how you woke me from a good dream, I think I’ve earned the right to see your fancy footwork. This Friday.”

“This Friday?” I almost screeched. “That’s blackmail.”

“Take it or leave it,” he said calmly.

I fumed for a moment while he leaned back on the couch and crossed his arms against his chest. “Well?” he asked.

I was desperate. “I thought you were going out with Carla Romanov.”

He lifted his hands. “I haven’t seen Carla for a couple of weeks. It didn’t work out. We didn’t have much in common.”

“And we do?”

He leaned forward. “Look, I’ll be straight with you. I’m hungry for female companionship. It’s hard for me to get a date. I know it’s hard for you, too, so think of it as me doing you a favor. Don’t take it personally.”

In some perverse way he was right, but on the other hand, he had insulted me. It didn’t really matter which because I needed his help, so I was stuck.

“All right, dinner and one dance. No disco stuff.”

“At least four dances, whatever music I want, and a minimum of one slow one.”

“Two dances and one of them can be slow,” I countered. “The music is up to you. That’s my final offer.”

“Deal,” he said and then carefully copied the phrase down. “I’ll stop by your cubicle tomorrow with the exact translation of the company name.”

I thought for a moment, making an executive decision. “Actually, I’m not going to be in tomorrow. I’ve got a…ah, doctor’s appointment. Can I call you instead?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I guess.”

“Thanks. And, Paul, one more thing. Can I get you to give me a lift somewhere?”

“A lift? Right now? What’s wrong with your car?”