The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(17)
“All right you two, breakfast is served.” Alex carried a platter of cinnamon rolls topped with melting frosting to the dining room table. CJ dropped the droid and nearly beat her there.
“They’re hot. Don’t burn your mouth.” She placed one of the rolls on a plate and handed it to him, along with a napkin. CJ began to peel the bun, which released wafts of steam. She served Charlie a roll, but he set it aside.
Alex sat in the adjacent leather chair and looked down at Max. “She loves that bone, doesn’t she?”
Jenkins nodded to CJ. “Almost as much as he loves your cinnamon rolls. Next year I think we should forget the presents and just make him a week’s supply.”
“Do you think we overdid it?”
Jenkins had no idea of the final tally. “Probably, but this is his last Christmas as an only child. You feeling okay?” Jenkins asked. “You look tired.”
“I am tired.” She’d been complaining of fatigue since his return. She was twenty-eight weeks pregnant now, and the doctor wanted her to go as long as possible before he would schedule her for a C-section. “That was a nice Christmas gift from Randy,” she said. “That should help, shouldn’t it?”
“Definitely made my contractors and our vendors happy,” Jenkins said. He had told Alex the $50,000 payment had come from LSR&C. It had actually come from Carl Emerson. Jenkins had paid his security contractors and many of the company’s vendor invoices. It didn’t bring CJ Security current, but they were closer than they had been.
“Randy said he’ll do his best to bring us current by the end of the year,” Jenkins said. “Personally, I’m worried LSR&C is growing too fast. I told Randy I didn’t really see the point of the office in Moscow, or in Dubai for that matter. Randy didn’t say it, but I think he agrees with me. He said the offices were Mitch’s idea, that he wants to take advantage of emerging markets.” Jenkins referred to Mitchell Goldstone, LSR&C’s chief operating officer. “What time do we need to be at David’s?”
Since neither Jenkins nor Alex had immediate family, they spent most holidays with David Sloane, who had lost his wife, Tina, to a murder.
“David said anytime,” Alex said. “It’ll be nice to see Jake again. I’m happy he’s back. Nobody should have to wake up alone on Christmas morning.”
Jake, Tina’s son, had been living in California with his biological father, but he had moved back to Seattle to attend law school and once again lived with Sloane at Three Tree Point on the shores of Puget Sound.
Jenkins stood. “I’m going to get the paper and another cup of coffee. You want anything?”
“I’m good,” she said.
Jenkins filled his coffee cup in the kitchen, then walked out the back door. The temperature felt cold enough for it to snow, if they got any precipitation. The meteorologist had indicated that was not likely. Jenkins picked up the paper and slid it from the plastic sheath. The front page included a picture of a homeless shelter beneath the headline Happy Holidays. Articles below the fold included the president’s Christmas dinner at the White House, and another on the continuing battle to increase national park fees.
Jenkins took the paper into the kitchen and stood at the counter, flipping through the pages and glancing at articles. On an inside page, in a section reporting on world news, a small headline caught his attention.
Russian Laser Pioneer Found Dead
Beneath the fold was a picture of a dark-haired man wearing glasses. Nikolay Chekovsky.
Jenkins felt the familiar rush of anxiety as he read the article. Chekovsky had been found hanging in his Moscow apartment, and his wife was pushing the police to investigate the death as a homicide.
Chekovsky, considered one of the leading laser scientists in the world, had been an outspoken critic of the use of lasers in military applications, which placed him at odds with members of the Kremlin.
Jenkins felt heat spreading throughout his limbs, and the now familiar ache in his joints. His right hand shook enough to rattle the newspaper. He set it down and rushed through the kitchen into his den, found the bottle of propranolol in the bottom drawer of his desk, and dry swallowed one of the green tablets.
9
Early evening, the day after Christmas, Jenkins walked Waterfront Park in downtown Seattle. The weather remained cold and blustery, with wind gust warnings for those traveling home from the holidays. Emerson stood at the railing at the end of the pier looking west, across Elliott Bay’s blackened waters. He wore a long tweed coat and black gloves. His hair fluttered in the wind, but otherwise he seemed impervious to the stiff breeze blowing whitecaps across the bay. To Jenkins’s left, the Seattle Great Wheel, festively lit in Seahawks blue and green, rotated high above the water. Farther south, the roof of the football stadium glowed purple. Faint notes, Christmas music, carried on the gusting wind, which also brought the briny smell of Puget Sound.
Jenkins pulled up the collar on his black leather car coat against the cold and thrust his hands deep into its pockets as he approached Emerson. Though he wore a black knit ski cap, he could feel the cold on his earlobes.
“Who was Nikolay Chekovsky?” he said.
Emerson never acknowledged the question, or seemingly even heard it. He stared blankly at a decorated ferryboat churning toward the pier.