CHAPTER 28

Sarah slumped on the worn leather chair in Marian’s library, her head in her hands. Too tired to cry, but more than enough anger to hurl every book on the shelves across the room. She didn’t do it, though. She loved books…and she loved Marian. Had loved her. Loved her clarity, her intelligence, her shy laugh. Loved the way she laughed when she poured tea, as though the two of them were children playing grown-up. Marian was gone now and so were her father’s journals. Sarah sat in the dark, the room lit only by moonlight. The loss of Marian was a stone in her heart…but the theft of the journals was even more devastating.

It had taken her a year to focus on Richard Warriq, a year of fruitless contacts with other China experts, engineers and seismologists and architects, men who had worked on the Three Rivers Gorge project, most of them retired now or, like Warriq, long dead. She had cultivated these sources or their survivors, cross-checked their information before discarding them and moving on to the next name on her list.

An owl hooted nearby and Sarah crossed to the library window, looked outside. Owls were a bad omen, but the security lights from the house next door revealed nothing. She paced the room, restless, the empty shelf on the bookcase mocking her.

Compiling the list of names had been relatively easy. She had run a computer model to track American Muslims who had worked on the dam, supposedly as part of a research paper to highlight scientific talent among the faithful. The Chinese had kept most of the work among their own citizens, but many of the engineering requirements were specialized, and the Chinese had been forced to use several American firms. Marian’s father had been a fractal engineer, a devout Muslim who had returned again and again to the project and who seemed to travel widely. Sarah had almost decided to move on to the next name until Marian mentioned that her father had made a pilgrimage to Mecca after finishing business in Asia, had gone to pray at the holy city less than a month before it was devastated by a dirty nuke. Marian had thought his timing a blessing, but Sarah saw a darker coincidence, convinced now that Warriq’s meticulously detailed journals were the key to unlocking the truth behind the Zionist attack.

Sarah stared at the empty bookcase, not knowing what to do. The Old One’s killers must have taken them after murdering Marian and Terry and Terry’s wife. No other books had been removed, just the journals. So the Old One knew. Which had to mean that Sarah’s theory was correct…didn’t it? That was something, wasn’t it? Sarah took no pleasure in being right. She wished that Rakkim had been at the Blue Moon club Wednesday night. She was sworn to secrecy, but Rakkim…their hearts were joined. She was ready to tell him the truth now.

The clock ticked away in the corner. Another couple of hours until midnight prayers, but she would be long gone by then. No reason to make the security guard suspicious. First though…she started up the stairs to Marian’s bedroom. The neighbors had told the cabdriver that she was found dead in the bathtub. Sarah wanted to see the spot where Marian had died, to pray for her there. Sarah owed her that much.

The stairs were dark, the rain beating against the windows as though someone were trying to get in. Her legs felt weak, and in spite of all her good intentions, her brave intentions, she slowed as she neared Marian’s bedroom. A stone the size of a fist was in her throat, and she had a sudden, overpowering fear that Marian’s body had not been removed, that unlike the bodies of the butchered servants, the police had kept Marian where they had found her, part of some complex forensic necessity. It was a ridiculous thought…but she could barely breathe as she stood outside the closed door to Marian’s room.

Her hand trembled as she opened the door, but she quickly stepped inside, leaving it ajar. Redbeard said that at the moment of greatest fear, the best solution was to go boldly and without hesitation. Sarah stood in the center of the bedroom, heart pounding, and knew it was good advice. If she had waited another moment with her hand on the knob, she would have turned around and raced down the stairs, her chador floating behind her.

She opened the curtains. The wind blew leaves against the glass, and she stepped back, frightened. Smiled at herself. God hates a scaredy-cat, that’s what she and Rakkim had told each other as children, egging the other on to mischief and disobedience. He was five years older than she was, an eternity at that age, but she had never felt the gap between them. If she did, she knew it would be breached soon enough.

Through the open bathroom door she could see the edge of the tub. Too many shadows. She walked into the bathroom, checked the tub. Nothing there. Just a bit of water in the drain, black water in the dim light. The towels were uneven on the racks. Small details that would have bothered Marian. Sarah walked over and straightened them. She didn’t have the courage to turn on the light. Back into the bedroom, her stomach doing flips. The dresser drawers were half pulled out, the tiny Chinese figurines on top knocked over. The police had been in a hurry…or someone else had. She shivered. Yes, it had been a bad idea to come up here.

She heard a tiny click as the front door closed downstairs. It might as well have been a thunderclap. She was frozen now, afraid any step might be heard downstairs. Listening, knowing she had heard something. The rain seemed to stop for a moment, and in that moment she heard footsteps across the hardwood floor of the entryway, a whisper of sound. She had parked on the street, but it wasn’t the security guard come to see what she was up to. There was no way he moved so lightly.

The rain was back, carried on gusts of wind. She slipped out of her chador, tossed aside her head scarf. Underneath the chador she wore the slacks and thin sweater of a modern. Just in case. Another of Redbeard’s lessons. Never let a description of you be accurate for too long. Reversible jackets. Hats and no hats. Sunglasses and no glasses. Umbrellas that shielded the face. When leaving her tiny apartment in Ballard, she had always left as a modern, then changed into a chador at the first opportunity. Changing back on the return. It had worked. Until the night the bounty hunters had come for her.

She moved in tandem with the steps from below, heart pounding. She crossed across a bar of moonlight, blinking now as she flattened herself beside the door.

Someone was coming upstairs.

Sarah looked around for something to use as a weapon. There. A heavy granite clock on the nightstand. She hefted it. Heavy enough to brain someone. She was barely breathing, all of her energy focused on listening, filtering away the outside sounds, the wind and rain, focusing on the sounds of the approaching steps. She could isolate the sound of a flute from a performance of the philharmonic, could pick out the individual violinists with her eyes closed. This was no different. That’s what she told herself.

Someone was outside the half-open door.

She pressed herself against the wall, tightened her grip on the clock. Better to attack him as he entered, or wait until he was inside, his back to her?

The door creaked open. “It’s me, Sarah.”

Rakkim! She threw herself into his arms, kissing him, sobbing, lost in the feel of him, the strength of him, the smell of his skin. She hung on to him, digging in, as though to reassure herself that he was really here, that it wasn’t a dream, some desperate trick her mind was playing on her. She felt him squeeze her back, lift her off her feet, and cover her face with kisses, and she knew…it was Rikki. She went with the sensation, eyes closed, the two of them swaying in each other’s arms…no idea how long they stayed there like that, alone in the big, dark house. It could have been seconds…minutes…hours, she didn’t know. She bit him, nipped at his neck, more playful than angry. “You scared me.”