Lisa Starling leaned her head against the concrete wall and sighed. She was tired. It had been a hell of a long night, and she didn't know when this would be over and she could get some sleep. The room was tiny, only a scarred table and a few chairs in the room. She was alone, for the time being. The grilling was finally over while the people holding her had done a few more tests and checked on a few things.
When backup had finally arrived at Don Quincy's home, she'd expected them to be nervous. She had put down the gun when they told her to. She had identified herself, shown her ID, and given her FBI ID number. None of it had been worth anything. She hadn't expected to be handcuffed and brought to the Alexandria Detention Center, but here she was. They hadn't brought her up to the cellblock yet. That was a good sign, she supposed. They had photographed her and taken her fingerprints. It seemed so bizarre, but it was real: they needed to prove that she was, in fact, Agent Lisa Starling of the FBI.
Word of Susana's deeds had trickled back to here, as FBI agents had grilled her on what she had done. How strange, to be the suspect. Did they really think that Lisa Starling – Lisa Starling, whose worst crime before joining the FBI had been doing fifty in a thirty-five zone – had murdered four of her fellow agents in cold blood? Did her prior service to the FBI mean nothing? Were they going to formally arrest her for murder?
The worst part was easily the waiting. They had to be interrogating Laura Miehns, and she would corroborate Lisa's alibi. They had to know – somehow – that Susana had committed this crime and not Lisa. But still, visions of being jailed and tried for Susana's crimes danced through her head. She could picture the district attorney even now: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Lisa Starling has claimed that her cousin committed these crimes. I ask you to look at the evidence. The attacker used Lisa Starling's name and ID number. The attacker displayed valid FBI credentials according to all the officers who saw it. Valid FBI credentials, ladies and gentlemen, issued in the name of Lisa Starling. I ask you, can you really believe her story that she was watching "Sleepless in Seattle" and boozing it up with a bottle of cheap California wine?
Her ID. That didn't make any damn sense. She had her ID. Susana never had the chance to get her hands on it. ID's had been found for all the previous Black Wednesday murders, so that wasn't it either. Lisa took out the flat black leather case and stared at it.
How the hell did you manage this, Susana? she thought. Then she had it. Susana had taken her clothes off back at Graham's. But then how had she gotten it back to her? The first time she could remember seeing it from Graham's was in the hospital. Had Susana gotten to her in the hospital? No, she couldn't have. There had been a guard on her door. Had Susana snuck into the room while she was in the lounge waiting for Graham? The thought sent chills down her spine. But Susana hadn't killed her. Performed involuntary plastic surgery on her, yes. Humiliated her and held her hostage, yes. But Susana had continued to scruple at killing her cousin.
The door opened and two male FBI agents entered. They looked at her calmly, but not sympathetically. Laura Miehns and Kelly McNeely were with them. One of them identified himself and his comrade and Lisa promptly forgot their names.
"Special Agent Starling," he said. Lisa noted the restoration of her title and hoped it was a good sign. "Just thought you might want to know. We did find a gun in the yard. Ballistics tests just came back on it. "
"And?" Lisa asked, more irritably than she intended.
"The gun in the yard matches up positively to the one taken from Lieutenant Kelly McNeely," he said. "Serial number matches, and the ballistics match. No doubt about it. Susana Alvarez Lecter dropped that gun in that yard." Lt. McNeely looked slightly chagrined to hear of the discovery of her weapon.
Lisa let out a long sigh of relief. "So can I go home now?"
The agent shook his head. Laura Miehns answered, as if it was bad news.
"No, not for a while," she said. "As of now, all Behavioral Science personnel are being transported to Quantico, where we have protective custody arrangements set up."
Protective custody. A pretty euphemism for "We can't catch who's doing it, so we're going to lock you up so they can't get you." And just a shred too late at this point. Eight out of twelve profilers were dead. If Susana had meant to strike a blow against Behavioral Sciences, she had succeeded. All that expertise, the product of God knew how many years of profiling experience, all gone. It would take years to put back together what Susana had set asunder.
"So I'm being locked up," Lisa said bitterly.
Laura shook her head. "Don't get whiny on me, Starling. It's for your own protection. There's a dangerous killer out there. Be glad they're not charging you with murder and sticking you here."
Hearing the nightmare she had envisioned so many times over the past few hours put into words washed a wave of fear over her.
"They can't do that," Lisa said vehemently. "They just found Susana's gun."
Laura shrugged. "They could charge you and then drop the charges once this is over. Look, you're going to Quantico and you're going to stay there. We can keep you safe there. The Marines are on board, nobody gets in who isn't supposed to be there. You'll be safe and it'll be more comfortable than here."
Realizing that she was helpless to change the situation, Lisa sighed. "All right," she said finally.
Lt. McNeely stepped forward and offered Lisa a cardboard box. Lisa looked curiously at it.
"Susana's things," McNeely explained. "You're the only one I can find for a next of kin."
Lisa glanced down into the sad little box of what her cousin had been allowed to possess while in jail. It wasn't much. Legal papers, five tattered paperback books, a small electronic typewriter, two felt-tip pens, a few fashion magazines with the staples removed, some candy from the commissary, and the radio Lisa had given her. For just a moment, Lisa could sympathize with her cousin's desire to escape from prison. Must have been pretty rough, going from all that ritz and glitz to only being allowed to have a boxful of stuff.
She took the box and nodded. Laura Miehns rose and took Lisa from the small room. Occasional cries and noises could be heard from the cellblocks not far away. Lisa paid it little heed, concentrating on the past. Even as she got into the big unmarked Crown Victoria parked in the visitors parking lot, her mind was focused on the deck, when she had stared Susana Alvarez Lecter down. Susana's life in her hands, at her whim. As they drove, even as they pulled into the FBI facility at Quantico, already surrounded by FBI and Marines, one thought echoed through Lisa Starling's mind.
I should have shot. I should have shot.
…
Dawn was breaking, the first streaks of sunlight crossing the sky. Susana Alvarez Lecter was exhausted. She had spent most of the night keeping an eye on Luke. He was stable, but he would be down for a while. Lisa's bullet had hit him in the back and plowed forward to his intestines. Fortunately, pulling bullets out of people was something Susana was experienced with. She had done the work in the hotel room, and the bloody sheets were piled up now in the corner.
It wasn't the best conditions to work under, but Susana had dealt with it as best she could. She had painkillers and sedatives so that he wasn't suffering and antibiotics to deal with infection. For the time being, he wasn't going to be killing anyone else, FBI or not. And Susana was extremely loath to try and go after the remaining profilers herself. After three successful attacks on Behavioral Sciences, even the FBI would be bright enough to take the rest and put them under lock and key at Quantico. Or maybe some military base in Nevada or Utah. Anywhere they could protect them from Susana's wrath.
Luke was going to need more medical care than she was able to render in a hotel room. That was clear enough. He'd need some additional surgery in the future. She'd gotten the bullet out and stopped the bleeding. He was stable, and for now that was the best she could do.
But Susana's supreme self-confidence did not translate to foolhardiness. The forged ID had worked for the guards at the homes of the profilers, but it wouldn't work twice. The profilers who were left would be held at Quantico, not in their homes. Not even the FBI could fail to learn a lesson so painfully taught. There was no way Susana, a fugitive from federal justice, was knowingly setting foot on a heavily armed Marine base. Her ally was wounded and her enemy was finally realizing just how much damage she could do and drawing itself in to the appropriate defensive position.
Up until now, Susana had won handily at every turn. Her escape from Alexandria had been helped along by a large measure of dumb luck, but she had been trying to formulate a plan even then. But her escape had gone without a hitch, as had her flight, her return, and the strikes against Behavioral Sciences. It would have been nice to go twelve for twelve, but facts were facts. Her only ally was wounded. The FBI would probably have his name, if they didn't already. And finally, the FBI was preparing to treat her as a real enemy, capable of inflicting great harm on them. The rules of the game were changing, and not in her favor. If she stayed, she would end up captured – losing, in other words. And Susana knew perfectly well that if you can't win the game, you can either lose, or you can change the rules.
So Susana was willing to get out now. She'd done what she set out to do – cripple Behavioral Sciences so that they could not track her. Her darker nature had suggested killing Luke herself, but part of her rebelled at that. Luke had helped her when she was weak. She would return the favor for him. At the least, she wouldn't owe him anything. She wasn't sure what to do next with him – he wanted marriage, that was clear enough. Susana was not sure on that. She liked him, but that didn't mean she wanted to spend her life with him. But that could be decided when Luke was free, up and running, and able to take care of himself.
She was annoyed with herself for having lost the gun, even though circumstances had changed enough that it did not matter. She would have made the same moves even if she had it still. But it was OK, ultimately; guns were easy to get. Especially for a woman who knew a great deal about killing police officers. And Lisa shooting Luke, now there was a surprise. Perhaps there was more of the killer in her than Susana had thought. She'd actually thought for a moment that Lisa might shoot her too. She had looked angry enough. But after a moment, Lisa's hand had dropped, and Susana had fled back to the car, Luke's weight heavy across her shoulders.
She glanced over at him, spread across the seat of the limousine. She believed that he would be able to walk for the short distance he would have to once they arrived at their destination. She had made plans to accommodate his infirmity. Too bad he was only semi-conscious, she thought. He would have appreciated this. It would have been a treat for him.
She leaned back against the leather seat and thought of her prior escape from custody, when her mother had broken her out of Wheeling Hospital all those years ago. Remembering her mother was bittersweet, but she had to smile. Now here she was, adopting her mother's role.
She forced herself to pay attention to the letter she was writing. Her Cross pen scratched across the fine vellum she had chosen. As the miles slipped away in the leather-scented grandeur of the limousine, she finally finished it and folded it into an envelope. She took a small stick of wax and a cigarette lighter from her purse. She watched the red wax drip like blood onto the envelope, and carefully stamped a metal seal into the hot, viscous substance. On a whim, she dropped another dime-sized drop just below the seal and pressed her finger carefully into it. She was determined to make this as easy as possible for them. Then she put it into another envelope, addressed to the remailing service, and sealed that.
The privacy divider was up, separating the driver from them. She pressed a button and lowered it. The driver betrayed not the slightest surprise at seeing her face appear. That was good. She preferred professionalism in her servants.
"Can you stop at a mailbox, please?" she asked the driver.
"Certainly, ma'am," he said in a Hispanic accent.
"Antes de que llegamos," she said. The driver grinned. For a moment, Susana wondered about that tactic: hiding in the Hispanic areas of town. She wondered if it would have worked or not. It didn't matter anymore.
There was a mailbox on the corner and the driver politely pulled over for her. To open the door and drop the letter into the maw of the blue box took only a moment. Their final destination lay ahead. The section of the airport devoted to small jets was busier than she would have expected, but this was Washington, DC. Many people needed to charter jets at a moment's notice. On the other hand, it gave her some needed protective cover.
The limousine was able to pull in and let them off right near the plane. Susana was pleased. This was clearly the only way to travel. She had no gun – she'd dropped it at Quincy's, once Lisa had shot Luke. Would've made a nice trophy. Well, she had McNeely's baton, uniform, and spray, packed away in her suitcase next to the clothes she had bought in Toronto.
She helped Luke from the limousine. He was in a soupy state of semiconsciousness, staggering as he walked. She'd given him enough morphine so that he wasn't in pain, which was good. Getting him up the stairs was difficult, but not that hard.
"Dr. Alvardo," the pilot greeted her. "Welcome. They'll just stow your luggage and I'll notify the tower. We should be airborne in about ten minutes."
"Thank you," she said, and looked around the jet. It was quite sumptuous. In place of the midget-sized seats that commercial aircraft offered their passengers, there were two couches scattered about the cabin. The back part of the cabin had been finished off into a bedroom, and it was here that Susana steered her wounded accomplice. The bed was a full-size, big enough for him to be comfortable. She got him on the bed and set up his IV stand again, tying it to the bedpost so that it wouldn't roll away when the plane took off. Another shot of morphine and pentothal ensured that he would sleep until the plane was in the air.
It hadn't been easy to charter a plane on such short notice, but Susana had the advantage of being extremely rich, and like most rich people she was able to find those who would cater to her wants for a price. The pilot had been most agreeable, even to the point of agreeing to divert to a different airport when she told him to. The flight manifest stated that it was heading to El Paso, Texas. In fact, both she and the pilot knew that the plane would overshoot that mark and land in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where the FBI did not have jurisdiction. From there, they would hop down the continent to Buenos Aires. After that, Susana didn't care a bit what the pilot did – he was being amply compensated for his trouble.
She accepted a cup of coffee from the stewardess and asked if she had time to make a quick cell-phone call. The stewardess assured her that it would be fine: the captain was contacting the tower. It would be a risk, but an acceptable one: by the time the FBI was able to definitively tie down the cell phone location, she would be several states away.
She dialed a number from memory. The phone rang several times. Susana wondered if it was possibly too early, or if perhaps Lisa had her own cell phone off.
Then, finally, a voice fuzzy with sleep answered. "Mmmf…Starling."
"Cousin Lisa," Susana said. "How are you? I was wondering if perhaps I'd done my job too well, and that you were in jail awaiting trial. Which is a miserable experience, I can tell you."
"Susana?" The sleep was brushed quickly from Lisa Starling's voice. "Susana, I don't know what the hell you're thinking, but we'll get you for this. I swear to God."
Susana chuckled. Lisa could be so fixated sometimes.
"I doubt that," Susana said calmly. "I do want to offer you congratulations, though. You've saved the rest of the profilers. You are indeed a worthy adversary."
"We're all in protective custody, Susana," Lisa returned. "You couldn't get us even if you wanted to. But thank you. I appreciate that."
"I don't need to, actually," Susana said. "You know as well as I do that your department is crippled. It'll be years before you're able to track me: you'll be too busy breaking in replacements. But you should have realized that when you set this in motion. You and the rest of your gang." Her tone changed, becoming bitter. "Frankly, you should be ashamed to call yourself law enforcement. You know, Lisa, I could have expected this from the rest of the FBI. But I thought you had some principles."
"Huh?" Lisa sounded puzzled and tired. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"You'll see," Susana said. "Sleep well, Lisa, I apologize for disturbing your sleep. Goodbye."
Susana pressed END and put the phone back in her purse. The coffee was good, but not enough to overcome her exhaustion. She'd stayed up all night with Luke, monitoring him for signs of internal bleeding. The plane taxied to the runway and waited for perhaps twenty minutes. Susana looked out the window and fidgeted. What if she'd underestimated the FBI? What if they got the call traced down? She had only the Harpy, which would not be adequate to take down a task force.
Then again, she admitted, they hadn't been able to protect two-thirds of their Behavioral Science unit from her. But still, she was unpleasantly nervous. The captain buzzed back to tell her they were approved for takeoff. Then finally, the small jet leaped gracefully into the sky, curving away from Washington, DC and northern Virginia. Susana eyed it carefully, this place where she had lived peacefully and anonymously for three years, where she had been arrested and incarcerated, where she had found someone of her own, and where she had worked a guerilla campaign against the FBI's Behavioral Sciences unit. High in the air, she looked for and found Quantico, the Marine base in which the FBI Academy and Behavioral Sciences stood. She stared at the buildings. From up here, they looked like a child's plaything. She wondered which one Lisa was in.
She went back and checked on Luke. He was still out cold. That was for the best. Susana was exhausted herself, and the bed looked inviting. Luke was bizarrely conservative about doing anything before marriage – that was an annoying part of his religious dogma – but presumably he wouldn't care if she just laid down next to him. Besides, he wouldn't wake up until they were out of the country.
She asked the stewardess to please wake her up once they had reached Texas. Then she lay down on the bed next to him, two exhausted killers curled up against each other like small children. The jet's engines provided a comforting rumble. Susana Alvarez Lecter fell asleep as the plane passed over Virginia.
…
Lisa Starling was tired, but could not go back to sleep. She glanced around the small, dark room she had been given. She believed it had been an office shortly before. The cot they had brought in for her was small and uncomfortable. The bed that her cousin was sleeping on at 30,000 feet would have been much more to her liking. She called down to the people at Communications and told them she had received a phone call from Susana and to please run a trace and see what they could find.
Susana's last words to her rang in her ears. Was it simply an attempt to mock? Lisa didn't think so. Never before had Susana ever disparaged Lisa's own principles. It wasn't her style. She'd always known that it was Lisa's job to track her down and bring her to justice. And where was this coming from? Was that what had triggered Black Wednesday? Had Susana killed so many because she thought she was being treated unfairly? Could it be that ridiculously simple?
Lisa accepted the fact that she would not get back to sleep and asked the Marine in the hallway if she could head down to the mess and get something to eat. This was allowed, so she went up the stairs to the mess and got herself a bowl of cereal, some coffee, and some juice. It helped her think.
Susana wasn't delusional, she could discard that off the bat. Although it was possible that the strict security they'd kept her under had had some effect on her mind – any prisoner confined under heavy security like that began to experience some psychotic decompensation. But Lisa thought that would've had little effect on her mind – it had only been two months, and Susana had been able to plan an escape even with the pain and discomfort of appendicitis. She wasn't crazy.
What the hell did she mean? Had the FBI done something they shouldn't have? Lisa could see that more easily than she would admit. The FBI despised Susana Alvarez Lecter: maybe someone, somewhere had done something they shouldn't have. But Susana had expressed disapproval of her, personally. And what the hell had Lisa done? It wasn't that she had caught Susana: Susana understood that as part of the game. Or at least she had in the past. Or was Susana referring to the fact that she was facing the death penalty? No, that wasn't it. That had gotten through to Susana – there was no doubt that would scare anyone – but Susana knew that Lisa had nothing to do with that end of things. That was the US District Attorney's call, not the FBI's. She hadn't done anything legal that she shouldn't have: Susana's attorneys had never contacted her. She racked her brain in the almost empty-cafeteria, but for the life of her she could not remember anything she'd done that would be unethical or illegal.
Lisa sat in the cold plastic chair and held the Styrofoam cup of tasteless coffee to her lips. There was a vague sense of misgiving forming in the back of her mind. She believed Susana when she said she was leaving. There would be no more killings. No, something else was up here. Susana thought the FBI and herself guilty of some sort of dishonesty, or some ethical lapse. The disturbing thing was that Lisa Starling couldn't shake the feeling that somehow, her cousin was right.