Snakes and Ladders Read online

  “That’s what I think, too,” said Lizzy. “But what about you?”

  “Now that I know what Millard looks like,” said Philip, “I can keep an eye out for him. But he knows you and Owen have left Sedona, even if he doesn’t know exactly where you’re headed. I can’t imagine he’s going to waste time hanging out here. Mortensen will probably call him back to Pennsylvania.”

  Owen sighed. “The part about resting up in Phoenix sounds good,” he said. “We can take the part about heading back to Pennsylvania under consideration once we get settled.”

  “Don’t spend too long figuring,” said Philip. “I don’t think a flat tire is going to be too much of a deterrent to your friend George.”

  38

  When Lizzy and Owen arrived in Phoenix, they checked into a chain hotel next to a shopping center filled with chain stores—a configuration that, as far as Lizzy could see, was repeated with little variation throughout the suburbs encircling the city.

  She had felt pretty good when they left the hospital, but by the time they got to their hotel rooms, her leg was throbbing in time to her heartbeat, and the meds that Dr. Prowse had prescribed barely took the edge off the pain. She snapped at Owen when he hovered about, trying to think of ways to make her more comfortable, and only narrowly avoided descending into whininess when he wasn’t there to bring her a glass of water or adjust the pillows on which she rested her leg.

  A heat wave arrived just as they did, and the rattling air conditioner couldn’t keep up with the soaring temperatures. She spent the day flipping through channels on the television or starting and rejecting books on her phone, trying unsuccessfully to distract herself from the pain in her leg. She was still awake at midnight, both comforted and irritated by the sounds of Uncle Owen’s snores from the next room, when another sound spiked her heart rate—the rattle of the handle of the door leading to the hallway.

  She sat up.

  The handle rattled again.

  “Uncle Owen?” she whispered as loudly as she thought she could without having whoever was at the door hear her. The snoring continued unabated.

  She swung her legs off the bed, triggering a jolt of pain from her ankle.

  The handle rattled again, this time more forcefully, and she heard some indistinct muttering from the other side of the door.

  She sat still, straining her ears.

  “Damn card key …” she heard. “Those morons at the desk …” There was a long silence, then, “Oh. Damn,” and the sound of footsteps retreating down the hallway.

  She limped to the door and peered through the peephole. The hallway was deserted.

  Just as she got back to the bed, she heard unsteady steps in the room above her, the flush of a toilet, more steps, and then silence.

  She adjusted the stack of pillows she was using to prop up her leg and lay back down, waiting for her heartbeat to slow. Nerves and the ache in her leg kept her awake for the remainder of the night, without even the relief of being able to toss and turn.

  For breakfast, Owen brought her fruit, yogurt, and granola from the buffet in the hotel lobby. For lunch, he ventured out for provisions and returned with cheesesteaks.

  “It will be a little taste of home,” he said, unrolling them from their paper wrappings. He laid them out on paper plates and handed one to Lizzy. “Wiz wit!”

  She picked it up reluctantly and took a bite. “That’s disgusting,” she said, and dropped it back onto the plate.

  Owen had taken a bite of his as well. “Yeah, that’s not good.” He put it aside.

  Much to her shame, Lizzy felt her throat tighten with impending tears. “I’m sick of this,” she said. “I’m sick of living in crappy hotels where it’s impossible to get a good night’s sleep. I’m sick of not being able to do anything except lie here. And I’m sick of not being home.” She kept her eyes steadfastly on her clenched hands, knowing that if she looked at Owen, the dam would burst.

  “Oh, Pumpkin, I know. Is there anything I can do—”

  “No,” she interrupted him ungraciously.

  He sighed. “It’s too bad the yoga practice isn’t helping.”

  There was a long silence, then Lizzy said in a voice that had lost the quaver of her earlier pronouncements, “I didn’t think of that.”

  “Pardon me?”

  She looked up, her expression a mixture of relief and embarrassment. “I didn’t think about using the yoga.”

  Owen hopped up. “Tell you what—why don’t you have a yoga whatever-it’s-called and I’m going to go out again and see if I can find something decent to eat.”

  “Okay.”

  “Any requests?”

  “Anything that isn’t fake food from home.”

  “No scrapple?” he asked.

  She smiled. “No, no scrapple.”

  Owen returned an hour later with Mexican to find Lizzy sleeping peacefully.

  39

  “You did what?”

  Millard faced Louise Mortensen across her desk. He had rarely seen her furious, and when he had seen her furious in public, he had only been able to tell by a tightening of her lips and a whitening of her knuckles. But she evidently had no compunction about demonstrating her unhappiness more overtly in private.

  “You wanted me to make it look like an accident.”

  “I wanted you to kill her!”

  “I put two rattlers in her path—”

  Louise cut him off with a slash of her hand and bent over the laptop on her desk. She hammered on the keyboard for a moment, then read from it: “‘You are nine times more likely to die from being struck by lightning than to die of venomous snakebite.’”

  “I put her out of commission.”

  “You didn’t put her out of commission, you pissed her off! No, it’s worse than that—you created a situation where it’s easier for her to make the decision to go to the authorities.”

  “But if she goes to the authorities—“

  “If she goes to the authorities,” Louise interrupted, walking around the desk to where Millard stood, “she gets put in some posh research facility, which is better at least than having venomous—but not deadly—snakes thrown in her path.”

  Millard didn’t need Mortensen telling him that he had screwed up. When he had finally gotten the spare tire on the car and, pushing it well past its recommended maximum speed of fifty miles per hour, caught up with the dot that was supposed to be McNally’s SUV at a rest area, it had proven to be an eighteen-wheeler driven by a man even larger than McNally, and not nearly as benign looking. A sign on the back of the truck invited other motorists to Tell me how I’m doing!!

  Millard’s blood pressure rising, he had driven back to Sedona. The tracker he had put on Castillo’s vehicle was evidently still in place—the truck was in the driveway of the casita, although Castillo’s office appeared to be closed—but he wasn’t going to assume that Castillo wasn’t aware of it. He was none too pleased with his own performance—he didn’t need Mortensen rubbing salt in the wound.

  “What would you have liked me to do?” he said, his own voice rising.

  “I would have liked for you to kill her and her obese godfather, and get us the hell out of this situation!”

  Millard took a step toward Louise, but at that moment there was a knock on the door and, without waiting for an answer, Mitchell opened the door and stepped into the room. He stood in the doorway for a moment, his gaze flicking between Louise and Millard.

  “Louise, are you all right?” he asked.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, redirecting her ire from Millard to Mitchell.

  “I heard you arguing. I thought I could be of help.”

  “No, Mitchell, I have it under control. Please go to your—” Louise clamped her lips together. “Please excuse us. George and I need to discuss this privately.”

  Mitchell took another step into the room. “I’m part of this. I should be part of this discussion as well.”

  Louise opened then shut
her mouth. She took a deep breath and pulled herself straighter, if that were possible. “Fine. Please close the door so Juana doesn’t decide to join us as well.” She circled to her desk chair and sat, then turned to Millard. “So. She was bitten by a rattlesnake.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get the snakes?”

  “From an old man.”

  “What old man?”

  “An old man who sold snakes.”

  “So there’s some snake-selling old man in Arizona who can tie you to the purchase of venomous snakes.”

  Millard was silent.

  “George?”

  “He can’t tie me to anything.”

  “And how is that possible?”

  Millard glanced at Mitchell. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how did that happen?”

  “Fell and hit his head, maybe tripped on his way to check on the AC, which had just shorted out. Unfortunately a couple of monitor lizards got out of their cage, and—”

  She held up her hand. “I don’t want to know.”

  “There’s nothing to tie me to it,” said Millard. “And nothing to tie his death to Ballard getting bitten.”

  “Rattlesnakes disappear from a dead man’s possession and next thing you know, some hiker from Philadelphia has been bitten.”

  “There’s nothing to tie them together,” said Millard, enunciating each word with fuming precision.

  Louise glanced at Mitchell, then back to Millard. She folded her hands on the polished surface of the desk.

  “I want Ballard dead,” she said. “I want McNally dead. And I don’t want any collateral damage.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  She shot to her feet, sending her wheeled desk chair careening back into the wall. “Do you? Because that’s what I said I wanted when I sent you out to Arizona the first time. And that’s not what I got.”

  “You didn’t say ‘no collateral damage,’” said Millard.

  “What the hell—?”

  Millard took a step toward the desk, but suddenly Mitchell was between them.

  “Leave her alone!” said Mitchell, his voice pitched high with emotion.

  Millard drew his arm back to backhand Mitchell, when he felt a twinge of pain behind his forehead. He stepped back, his hand going to his temple. “Goddamn you—”

  “Stop it!” snapped Louise. “Both of you—stop it!”

  A fraught silence descended on the room, the only sound the breathing of the three people in it.

  Finally, Louise said, “George, are you all right?”

  Millard glowered at Mitchell. “Yeah.”

  Louise turned to Mitchell. “Mitchell, please go away. You’re making the situation worse.”

  Mitchell, face white with anger, appeared ready to respond. Then he nodded tightly and, without looking at Millard, stalked out of the room, banging the door closed behind him.

  Louise turned to Millard. “Are you all right?”

  Millard nodded. The pain was already starting to fade. “Just a kid chucking stones,” he said. “Good thing he wasn’t on the drug you gave him for the homeless guy and Brashear. You?”

  “I’m not the one who was making him angry.”

  “I don’t like pussyfooting around that freak.”

  “Don’t call him a freak. And you’d do well to resign yourself to some pussyfooting when you interact with him.” She considered him for a moment. “We could check you at the lab tomorrow.”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  Louise looked at him, expressionless, for another moment, then gave a short nod. She walked slowly to the window and looked out over the bucolic landscape, which was slipping into dusk. Across the small valley that separated Mortensen’s property from the neighbors, Millard could see a woman in English riding gear taking a horse over jumps. A half minute ticked by. A minute.

  Finally, Louise spoke, monotone. “I want them both dead.”

  “Okay.”

  “No other casualties.”

  “How about Castillo?”

  “No. Let’s not make this any more complicated than it already is.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m holding your payment until Ballard and McNally are out of the picture.”

  Millard hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Okay.”

  “Go back to Arizona and take care of it.”

  Millard put his hands in his pockets and nodded toward the door to the hallway. “What about him?”

  Louise turned from the window and returned to her desk. She wheeled the chair back to the desk and sat down. “What about him?”

  Millard held up a finger, crossed to the door, opened it, and stepped into the hallway. He looked up and down, then stepped back into the room, closing the door behind him. “Just don’t want any eavesdroppers,” he said. “Are you going to keep pussyfooting around him?”

  “He’s a young man who is only now fully coming into his powers. He’s bound to be confused. We owe it to him—and to ourselves—to treat him with consideration.” She swiveled in her chair to look out the window again. “He’s exactly what Gerard and I were trying to create: a telepath. His ability to have an actual physical effect on the brains of other people was an unexpected side effect, but one that we can obviously use to advance our goals. I thought Ballard was the best we had been able to achieve, but I was wrong. Mitchell is the ultimate manifestation of what we wanted to create.”

  “He’s going to start thinking he’s running the show.”

  “I disagree. As long as we treat him fairly, and our goals align with his, I believe he’ll be willing to support our plan.”

  “And exactly what is our plan? Long-term.”

  Louise sighed. “Let’s take care of Ballard and McNally and then regroup.”

  “We had higher goals when we started out than just getting rid of a lab rat gone rogue and her keeper.”

  Louise narrowed her eyes. “George, may I remind you that this is not about your goals. The goals that I am continuing to pursue are the goals that Gerard and I formed many years ago. You’ve been extremely helpful in our pursuit of those goals, but as far as I can tell, your goal is to get paid. Handsomely paid, I might add.”

  The blood drained from Millard’s face.

  Louise stood. “I’ve been satisfied with your services up until now, but I am not happy with how this Ballard situation has played out.”

  He nodded again, his mouth a tight line.

  She waved her hand in dismissal.

  Millard walked stiffly to the door, then turned back to her. “The Ballard girl—she’s maturing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I made her pretty mad on the trail, after she had been bitten, and got away with no ill effects. That suggests a level of control.”

  “Or perhaps she’s lost the power,” said Louise.

  “Maybe. But the way she calmed herself when she had been bitten—almost like she was putting herself into a trance. She’s learning. Maybe from Castillo.”

  Louise fixed him with a hard gaze. “No collateral damage unless it’s absolutely necessary. Is that clear?”

  He paused for a beat, thinking back to the humiliation of the flattened tire in the hospital parking lot and the swapped tracker. “Yeah,” he said grudgingly. “It’s clear.”

  “And don’t take too long with Ballard and McNally. I’ve run out of patience.”

  Millard nodded, not bothering to answer, and closed the door behind him.

  40

  Mitchell stood in the hallway after being sent out by Louise, his cheeks still flushed with anger at Millard. If Millard had laid a hand on Louise—

  But he recognized that even with the full power of his anger behind the crush, the effect on Millard without the benefit of the steroid drug had been insignificant—greater and quicker than with Mitchell’s late boss, Brett Ludlow, but nowhere near what he knew Elizabeth Ballard could do. And he hadn’t b
een able to read Louise or Millard’s thoughts—Louise’s because they were masked by the usual opacity, Millard’s because he always had his mental defenses up around him. Mitchell had been powerless.

  He stood in the hallway, hearing the uneven buzz of conversation beyond the door but unable to pick out any words.

  He did a quick calculation of what room would be directly above Louise’s study. His bedroom was over the kitchen, and through the air vent in the floor he could sometimes hear the faint sound of Juana singing as she cooked dinner. Perhaps there was a similar dynamic in play over Louise’s study.

  He jogged up the steps and went to the room he estimated to be in the right location. It was the bedroom in which, he had learned, Louise and Gerard Bonnay had kept Elizabeth Ballard—a pretty room with cheerful yellow walls and bleached hardwood floors. The air vent was near the bed, and he bent over it. He could hear voices, but they were too low to distinguish words. He lay on the floor, pressed his ear to the vent, and heard Louise’s voice.

  “He’s a young man who is only now fully coming into his powers. He’s bound to be confused. We owe it to him—and to ourselves—to treat him with consideration.”

  His smile broadened as he listened to Louise praise him, then berate Millard: “I’ve been satisfied with your services up until now, but I am not happy with how this Ballard situation has played out.”

  It was clear that she was dismissing Millard. Mitchell pushed himself off the floor and went to the hallway. He turned toward his room, then changed direction. He was damned if he was going to run away from the hired help.

  He ran lightly down the upstairs hallway, and took the back stairs, which came out near the kitchen. When Millard stepped into the kitchen, Mitchell was taking a beer out of the refrigerator.

  Millard pulled up when he saw Mitchell.

  Mitchell raised the bottle to Millard. “Beer?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  Mitchell got the opener out of one of the drawers and popped the top off the bottle. “Sorry about before,” he said, nodding in the direction of Louise’s study.