First Daughter - Eric van Lustbader [67]
"Make sure you start thinking of him as Jack."
INSIDE THE polished mahogany cabin, the yacht's captain ignored the helicopter as its rotors started up. A moment later, it had lifted off with the woman passenger aboard. The captain didn't know her name, didn't care what it was. His job was simple and he was doing it now, transcribing onto the tiny keypad of his BlackBerry from scribbled notes he'd taken of the conversation Secretary Paull had just had with the visitor. Growing up with a deaf sister had made him proficient in lip-reading. Finished with the transcription, he pressed the SEND key, and the e-mail was instantaneously transmitted directly to wherever the president was at the moment, no doubt eagerly awaiting its arrival.
His job concluded for the time being, the captain set his Black-Berry down beside the pair of powerful binoculars through which he'd viewed the conversation in question. Then he got back to maneuvering the yacht through the wind-tossed afternoon. He'd never had an incident at sea aboard any of the yachts he'd captained, and he wasn't about to start now.
TWENTY - TWO
EVERY ACTION invites a reaction. No, no." Kray rocked slightly from one foot to the other. "Every action causes a reaction. The religious right's infiltration of the federal government finally has had its proper reaction: us, the enemy. The missionary secularists, the Army of Reason." He laughed. "It seems ironic, doesn't it, that without them there would be no us. They created us; every extreme gives rise to the opposite extreme."
He bent down, untied Alli's wrists. "Hold your arms over your head."
It was phrased as a suggestion rather than a command. Nevertheless, Alli complied, but after only a few seconds she was obliged to fold them in her lap.
"I . . . I can't," she said. "I don't have the strength."
"I have a cure for that."
Kneeling, Kray unbuckled her ankles and legs. With his arms around her waist, he helped her to her feet. She stood, wobbly as a toddler, her weight against him from her hip to her shoulder.
With his coaxing, she took one tentative step forward, then another, but her legs buckled and Kray had to hold her firmly lest she collapse onto the floor like an invalid.
"I think you might have to teach me to walk all over again," she said with an embarrassed laugh.
"You won't need me to do that, I promise." He took her out of the room that had been her home for several days. He helped her shower and dress, and she felt neither embarrassed nor ashamed. Why should she? After all, he had watched her defecate and urinate; possibly he'd watched her sleep. Could there be anything more intimate?
There was not an inch of her he didn't know. It had taken just over a week for him to become a part of her.
In the kitchen, he pulled out a chair for her. She sat with one arm on the table, where cartons of orange juice and milk, and several water tumblers stood in a precise cluster. He poured her a glass of orange juice with pulp, the kind she liked best.
He waited until she had drained the glass. "After lunch, we'll go for a walk around the house. You'll get your strength back in no time, you'll see," he said. "Now, what would you like to eat?"
"Eggs and bacon, please."
"I think I'll join you." Kray opened the refrigerator so that the door to the interior was outside of Alli's field of vision. The other girl sat folded, as if she were performing a contortionist's trick. He pulled out a carton of eggs and a stick of butter from the shelf on the door. A pound of thick-sliced bacon was on the lower shelf near the girl's stiff, blue feet. Her skin looked bad now; it was starting to slough off like snakeskin. Very soon now, Kray knew, he'd have to move her, either to the freezer in the basement—though that would necessitate cutting her up into sections—or somewhere else, a landfill or an empty lot, perhaps. But not yet. He was reluctant to let her go. She'd been so useful to him. He'd sedated her while he cut off her hand so as not to cause her pain. She didn't deserve that; she had a home here