MIND FIELDS Read online

  Feeling a bit more at ease, Guy made his way to the kitchen, moving easily through the darkness in familiar surroundings. Inside the refrigerator, the insulin vial was in its usual spot. The sharps container, in which Sandi always disposed of her syringes, had been empty this morning. Guy had taken the old one away and replaced it with a new one himself. He picked it up and gave it a gentle shake. He smiled as he heard the rattling of the glass syringe against the sides of the container. Obviously, Sandi had given herself the usual Friday night shot of insulin and tossed her needle in the container.

  Guy crept up the stairs and slowly opened the door to the bedroom. He froze as the rusty old hinges creaked and Sandi stretched out an arm, lifting the blanket ever so slightly. Guy held his breath. She gently settled back under the covers, sound asleep, her thick brown hair strewn across the pillow. He smiled; his nerves began to ease.

  The familiar smell of home was comforting. He managed to slow his breathing to a near normal rate and slipped past Sandi into the bathroom, quietly shutting the door behind him. The thought of waking Sandi rekindled his anxiety. He’d done this dozens of times before, but it didn’t feel the same tonight. Standing over the sink, he turned on the cold water. A few quick splashes to the face helped to counter the effects of the whiskey.

  “Show time,” he said to the mirror. He left the door ajar to allow the light to spill out into the bedroom, providing just enough illumination to negotiate the room.

  Sandi hadn’t slept well that night. She kept drifting in and out of sleep, her mind racing with scenarios, each playing out in a different way. The light from the bathroom awakened her from her half-dream state. Her heart raced as she lay motionless in bed.

  “Sandi.” Guy shook her shoulder gently. “Time to get up, love,” he whispered in her ear.

  ‘Love’, my ass, she thought to herself. She turned over, stretching her arms and squinting as if awakened from a deep sleep into the brightness of the faintly lit room. “Hi, sweetheart. What time is it?” she said, forcing a smile.

  “Time to take a walk, dear. I need some help with the computer again.”

  Sandi wasn’t quite sure how to act. She tried to imagine how someone on Allohypnol would react. She had no idea. God, I hope he goes for this. Her heart raced a mile a minute, but she concealed it well. She sat up and slipped out from under the covers. It sickened her for Guy to see her nude body. She had never given it a second thought before, but this time was different. She had fought the urge to wear a nightgown to bed tonight, but if she had, Guy would certainly know that something was not right.

  As she reached for the nightgown that was draped over the metal bedpost, Guy admired the grace of her naked form silhouetted against the light breaking through the bathroom door. She shivered ever so slightly in the cool night air and Guy reached out to help her on with the robe.

  “No,” she brushed him away, “I’ve got it.” She was afraid that she may have given herself away and abruptly added, “Thanks, sweetie.” She carefully tucked the robe around her slim figure and positioned herself to Guy’s right, taking his hand in hers.

  “Right then,” he said, “let’s go.”

  He led her into the study. They walked hand in hand each wondering if the other knew what was racing through their mind, each trying to conceal the anxiety that drove them forward.

  This is the last time, Guy thought. No way they’re going to make me do this again. I’m getting the hell out of here tomorrow, with or without McKnight’s help.

  Sandi held her robe tightly to her body with her left hand. Even in the coolness of the night she could feel the sweat beading up on the nape of her neck.

  Guy flipped on the light switch and they entered the study. He sat down and booted up the computer as Sandi stood beside him trying hard to take slow deep breaths.

  “Here we go.” He stood and motioned to the chair. “Have a seat.”

  Sandi sat down in front of the keyboard. Although much of her work was done with voice recognition entry, a keyboard was still the preferred way to enter codes and passwords. “What now?”

  “Key in your Net access password and go to BNI.net.”

  Guy had given her the same instructions every Friday night for the past two years, but thanks to the Allohypnol she would forget her actions within minutes. She noticed that Guy seemed a bit anxious tonight. It was unnerving to have him standing over her.

  “Have a seat, Guy.” She pointed to the char next to the desk. “You know I don’t like to work with someone looking over my shoulder.”

  Guy turned his gaze from the monitor, teeth clenched, and glanced askew at Sandi. She was usually in a hypnotic state during these sessions. It was unusual for her to say anything without prodding. Guy ran his fingers along his belt buckle. Sandi bit back the lump in her throat as he hesitated briefly, and then pulled a second chair up beside her. He didn’t take his eyes off her face as he slipped past her and into the chair.

  Sandi accessed the Internet and went to the BNI.net site. She wanted to take this just far enough to see who it was that Guy was sending the messages to. She had to know if it was Paul.

  “Good,” Guy said as the BNI site came up on the screen. “Now go to the employee access area.”

  Sandi clicked on the icon labeled “employees only.” A message popped up: “enter ID and password.” She looked at Guy.

  “You really don’t remember, do you?” He laughed. “All right. The ID is “TOM” and the password is “Mindfields.” Guy was starting to let his guard down. Maybe, he thought, Trace was just being paranoid.

  Sandi typed in the entry. She had no idea who Tom was, but she was relieved that it was not Paul’s site that she was accessing. The site came up with three options: “enter text message,” “enter voice message” and “upload file”. Once again Sandi looked to Guy for instructions.

  “Excellent. Click on “upload file.”

  Once again, Sandi complied and a new message appeared: “choose files to send.”

  “Now unencrypt your office files, the ones with this week’s research and select them to send.”

  Sandi hesitated. She still hadn’t found out the name of Guy’s contact at BNI, but she knew that she could go no further. The faint ticking of the antique clock on the mantle was the only sound that Sandi could hear in the tense silence of the night; it seemed to grow louder with each passing second.

  “Type, Sandi,” he said sternly between gritted teeth, the anxiety quickly overtaking him once again.

  God, I don’t know if I can do this. She held her hands suspended over the keyboard. She glanced at the clock. It was nearly two AM.

  “Type,” he snapped. His hand cradled the silver buckle.

  “I don’t think so sweetie,” she smiled at him.

  Guy’s eyes opened wide. The clock chimed, a muffled electronic chime that Sandi normally didn’t even notice anymore, but this time it ripped into the tension of the night. Guy jumped up from his chair, clasping the open switchblade in his hand.

  “I said type in the God-damned address.”

  Sandi stood up slowly, backing away. “Now look, Guy. You don’t really want to do this.”

  He stood motionless, more scared by circumstances than enraged. As he had always feared, he wasn’t sure if he could use that knife when the moment of truth arrived, and now that moment had come. The fact that the object of his anger was Sandi, the woman with whom he had shared his bed for the past two years, did not make it any easier.

  Sandi edged back across the room, hand planted firmly in the right pocket of her robe, cradling the cold metal handle of the pistol that Richard Kincade had lent to her. She froze as her back hit the wall. She and Guy stared at each other, neither recognizing the stranger who now stood across the room. Tears welled up in Sandi’s eyes, but did not steal her confidence.

 
; Guy stepped tentatively forward, gripping the knife tightly in his right hand. “I need you to upload that data, Sandi.”

  “I won’t do it, Guy.”

  “You switched the insulin, didn’t you?” She didn’t need to answer. “How did you know?”

  She stood against the wall, staring incredulously as he came closer, the knife now up in the air.

  “Guy, don’t,” were the only words she could force through her lips.

  ___

  The rain pounded against the second story window of the Kincades’ Highlandtown rowhouse. Richie stood by the window staring out at the reflections of the streetlights on the rain-drenched road. He didn’t say a word, but Lara could feel his anxiety and lay half awake in bed.

  “Come to bed, Richie.”

  “I shouldn’t have left her alone.”

  “She’s a big girl. She told you to leave.”

  “Still…”

  He just stood there, holding the curtain back and staring into the night.

  “Call her.”

  Richie dropped the curtain. “Yeah.”

  He walked over to his side of the bed and sat. The phone on the nightstand was dimly lit, but he had no trouble seeing the numbers. Richie preferred manual phones to the voice activated kind. He punched in Sandi’s number and sat silently as the phone rang.

  “No answer?” Lara asked as she turned to face him.

  Richie shook his head as he put the phone down. “I’m going over there.”

  Lara rolled back over so that he wouldn’t see the worry in her eyes. There was no point in protesting. Even after all these years she could feel the fear each time he walked out the door to go to work. Times like this were even worse, but she wouldn’t let him know. He had more important things to worry about tonight and she wanted him focused.

  Richie dressed quickly, walked over to the bedside and gave her a kiss on the forehead. She opened her eyes. “Be careful.”

  “Always.” He smiled and walked out the door.

  ___

  The Chevy pick-up swerved out of the driveway and sped into the stormy night. The bent wiper blade on the driver’s side smacked against the hood of the truck with each beat. Guy struggled to see the road through the streaky window as the rain pounded against the windshield. He decided to keep to the back roads, afraid that the police would be out looking for him.

  “I can’t believe she didn’t take the damned drug. Stupid bitch.” He took another swig from the bottle of Jack Daniels, trying to soothe his frayed nerves.

  Between the alcohol and the rain, it was a challenge just to keep the truck on the road. Every muscle in his body was as taut as an anchor line in a hurricane. He hunched forward peering intently over the steering wheel and gripping it tightly with both hands. His neck and his clothes were soaked with perspiration in spite of the coolness of the night air.

  Acorn Creek Road wound through the countryside from southwest Baltimore toward Columbia, rejoining the main road just past the Acorn Creek Bridge about a mile from the entrance to BNI. He was sure that he would be safe once inside the confines of Anderson’s well-guarded estate.

  Lightning flashed across the sky, briefly illuminating the pitch-black countryside with each strike. He saw the turn onto the Acorn Creek Bridge about fifty yards up the road on the left. He hadn’t realized he was quite so close already.

  “Shit!” He hit the brakes and turned sharply onto the bridge. The seldom-traveled road was littered with leaves, now wet from the fall storm, and the old bridge was not yet equipped with the roadside sensors which the automobile safety chips used to keep cars from veering off the road. The truck’s safety computer chip was unable to detect the boundaries of the road as Guy made the sharp turn. The tires lost their grip as they hit the bed of wet leaves covering the bridge. Guy was helpless as his pick-up truck slid across the road and smashed through the rickety wooden side-rails, plunging twenty feet down into the shallows of Acorn Creek. The Chevy crumpled against the rounded boulders that bordered the riverbed and rolled into the rushing water. The river, swelled from the prolonged storm, quickly enveloped the truck. There was no one to notice the last bubbles of air rising to the surface as it sank.

  ___

  Richard Kincade drove up the Jones Falls Expressway through the pouring rain. Even in good weather, the serpentine highway through downtown Baltimore was not his favorite road, but at three in the morning the traffic wasn’t too bad. He soon found his way onto the winding country road north of the city that led to Sandi’s home. It was not hard to spot her house, the only one on the block with the lights on in the living room. Richie pulled into the driveway. Sandi’s car was still there.

  He stared out the window, struggling to see the house through the rain. There were lights on in two of the upstairs rooms. Once more he tried calling from his cell phone and once more there was no answer. Richie put the phone into his pocket and pulled his gray trench coat tightly around his body. He shut the car door and raised his collar up over his neck. The rain hadn’t let up a bit.

  There was no answer at the door. He turned the handle, but it was locked. The kitchen door proved to be less of an obstacle. It was dark inside and he gave himself a moment to adjust to the light.

  “Dr. Fletcher,” he called out. He was not surprised when no answer came.

  Richie hated carrying a weapon, but at times like this he was glad to have one. Pulling the semi-automatic handgun out of his holster, he inched cautiously across the floor to the living room door. There was an eerie silence disturbed only by the raindrops beating methodically against the windows. The living room was not immaculate; he could tell that Sandi was the type of person who liked to use her living room to unwind in, not as a showroom like so many others did, but at the moment it was unoccupied.

  Up the stairs, Richie could see a dim light coming from the bedroom door at one end of the hall and the more brightly lit study at the other end. “Doc?” he called out as he slowly ascended the steps. It was tough working without backup. He tried not to think of Hank.

  The door to the bedroom was ajar. Richie stood next to it with his back against the wall. He called out one more time, again answered only by silence. One last look down the hallway at the study door, and then he ducked into the bedroom, gun first. He stood crouched in the doorway surveying the room. The only light visible was coming from the bathroom.

  God, I hope she’s not taking a shower. This could be really embarrassing. His knees cracked as he struggled to his feet. “Shh,” he whispered to them. I’m getting too old for this nonsense. Walking towards the bathroom, he stopped periodically to glance back over his shoulder. That light from the study was unnerving. For a brief moment he was convinced that he did hear the shower, but soon realized it was just the rain slapping against the bathroom window. He took a deep breath and ducked in. Much to his relief, everything was in order. No naked woman taking a shower, no sign of violence.

  Only one more place up here to look, he thought as he turned back toward the hallway.

  Richie rechecked his weapon to make sure the safety was disengaged, wiped the sweat off his palm and slowly made his way back down the hall to the study. He could hear the faint whir of the computer’s hard drive as he got closer. The rain had started to let up and as he crouched by the door, listening intently; he could swear he could hear his own heart ticking. He took deep, slow breaths to calm himself and was somewhat relieved as he realized the ticking sound was actually coming from a clock inside the study.

  He readied his weapon and leaped in, steadying the pistol in both hands. His eyes darted toward the computer desk and then across the room to the floor by the window, drawn by the glare of light reflecting off Guy’s knife. He looked around again to make sure he didn’t have any unwanted company, and then walked over to the knife and bent down. The blood on the blade was
still sticky. It wasn’t until that moment that he noticed the sparse drops of blood camouflaged against the hardwood floor leading out the door and down the hall from where he had just come.

  Richie followed the trail of blood, which led down to the kitchen door, the same door that he had entered several moments ago. He hadn’t seen the trail of blood in the darkness of the house when he entered. Even now, it was hard to discern in the dimly lit kitchen.

  He quickly searched the rest of the house. It didn’t take long to convince himself it was vacant. He rechecked the computer in the study, but it provided little in the way of clues. Richie was tempted to take the knife, but thought the better of it. After all, he had been relieved of duty and technically he was presently in the process of breaking and entering. “Better leave this to the boys in blue,” he said, this time out loud. It was a comfort to hear his own voice. Creeping around in the dark was not his favorite pastime.

  Kincade went back to his car and called the station. “Hey, Jimmy. It’s Richie. Listen, I need you to put out an APB on a couple of people for me.”

  “What’s up, Richie?”

  “There’s a lady friend of mine who’s gone missing.”

  “A lady friend, huh?”

  “Not that kind of a lady friend, Jimmy. It’s a client of mine and I think she’s in trouble. The boyfriend’s gone too.”

  “Hmm, sounds pretty suspicious, Richie. A girl and her boyfriend out late together on a Friday night. Next thing you know, they might disappear for the whole weekend. Should I have the boys check all of the hotels in the Poconos to see if a guy and girl checked in to any of the rooms together last night?”