The Oracle Year(73)

She had apparently thought she was making some kind of point. Well, good fighter or not, she’d just lost.

“Coach,” he said, looking up, relief flooding through him. “I know the woman you want. I can tell you all about her. Either she’s the Oracle, or she knows him.”

“Well, good,” the Coach said, smiling, her eyes suddenly warm again. “I’m sure we’ll be able to track her down without any trouble. Good job, Dr. Staffman.”

She turned back to her men and gave them a significant look.

“Looks like the tech team’s done. Time for the field team.”





Chapter 29




Cathy Jenkins rinsed tiny, chamomile-smelling bubbles of soap off her hands. She shook the excess droplets of water into the sink and turned off the brass faucets.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror and frowned, placing her index finger on her cheek. She pulled down the skin under her eye, smoothing out the wrinkles. Tired. Or maybe just old.

Cathy fussed with her hair, thinking about lunch. Becky was down in the kitchen getting it ready. They would eat on the back deck while watching the seagulls dive. She smiled at herself in the mirror, looking old but feeling young.

Nothing from her twenty-plus years of contented marriage to Bill Jenkins, nothing from the quarter century before that, had ever shown a glimmer that she’d end up in love with a fiftysomething fellow widow. But then again, she’d never expected to be in love again at all after Bill died, so all things considered, Mrs. Shubman had turned out to be quite the wonderful little surprise.

Cathy opened the bathroom door and stepped into the upstairs hall. She looked critically at the slight patch of wear running down the center of the beige carpet as she walked toward the stairs leading down to the living room.

She was starting to think she might redo the rest of the house. Just do the whole damn thing. Why not? She had five million bucks. She could afford it, thank you, John Bianco. Or Will Dando. Whichever.

She started down the stairs.

“Becky,” she called from halfway down the stairs, “is lunch ready? I’ll set the table out back, if you don’t need any help in the kitch—”

Cathy stopped with one foot halfway to the next step, hovering in the air. Her hand tightened around the banister.

Six men, all in khaki pants and short-sleeved pastel dress shirts, stood looking up at her, waiting. Four of them carried long, black guns—shotguns, she guessed, and the remainder held pistols with elongated cylinders attached to the barrels that she recognized from movies as silencers. The shotguns were pointed directly at her, and the eyes of the men holding them were hard.

Turn. Run back upstairs. Lock a door. Find a phone.

Turn. Run back upstairs. Lock a door. Find a phone.

Cathy didn’t move. Slowly, she processed another piece of information that her eyes had been trying to feed her since she got her first view of her violated living room.

Becky was on the couch. Sitting next to her, in a pose that would almost have been companionable but for the gunmen in the room, was a woman. She was older, probably in her sixties, maybe well-kept seventies, and elegant. She wore a black suit with a blue scarf tied around her neck. She looked utterly ordinary, like a PR executive, perhaps.

Everything was ordinary. Except for the guns.

“Mrs. Jenkins,” the woman said pleasantly. “I’m the Coach. Will you come join us, please?”

Cathy’s foot landed heavily on the step below her, and she almost stumbled. She caught herself with a hand on the wall and felt a fingernail bend back.

Ignoring the pain, Cathy walked unsteadily down the remaining steps and into the living room. She passed two of the pastel and khaki gunmen, who moved to stand between her and the stairs. She could see Becky’s face much more clearly now—terror, nothing else. Her eyes flicked back and forth wildly between her captor, Cathy, and the gunmen.

I write code, for God’s sake! Cathy thought, desperate. What is this?

But she knew, of course.

“Sit down, just there,” the Coach said. She gestured to the other couch. “You, too, Mrs. Shubman.”

Becky looked at her, her face confused. The Coach smiled gently at her and gave her a slight push on the shoulder. Becky stood and stumbled around the glass-topped coffee table to the other couch. Cathy sat down next to her. Through the picture windows that looked out onto the beach, she could see sunbathers and people walking hand in hand, off in the distance.

As soon as Cathy sat down, she reached for Becky’s hand and met it as it grasped across the cushions for her own.

“Are you all right?” she whispered.

Becky nodded—but she didn’t talk, and Becky Shubman never stopped talking.

“I apologize for the intrusion, ladies,” the Coach said. “We’ll be out of here just as soon as possible. Before anything else, let me say the thing people in these situations always say. In this case, though, it’s the truth. I promise. We don’t want to hurt you.”

She interlaced her fingers, nails painted a shade of blue that nicely complemented her scarf. She raised her eyebrows and tapped her thumbs a few times, as if considering how to begin. Cathy watched her, and to her surprise, felt impatient.

“Please,” she said, “what do you want? Money?”

The Coach’s mouth quirked. Her eyes looked almost amused.