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“This is not funny, Devorah Rosten. You’re in cahoots with Elizabeth and Tom Dwight. I heard you on the phone talking about the ‘mission.’”

“The mission?” I thought for a few moments and remembered what I had said to Fitch. “Oh, that. I admit, at first I—”

Something hit the boat next to my cheek. I rolled my head to the left and saw a splatted dent in the gunwale about five inches from my face. Laura looked at the dent and then up to the cliffs. I looked too and, through the mist, could make out Tom Dwight taking aim at us with a rifle.

“Paddle!” I shouted at Laura. She dropped the garden tool and clumsily put her oar into the water and started paddling. But I realized I had to be the paddler since I actually had two working hands. Another bullet ripped across the top of my forearm, spurting some blood but not debilitating me. Fright muted the pain. I grabbed the oar, scooted onto the center seat, and started working the oar first left, then right. “We have to get into the mist where he can’t see us.”

I glanced back to find she had a wooden paddle and was mimicking my moves as well as she could one-handedly. I heard three more splat-thunks in the water. Dwight’s bullets. But we were buried in the mist. He couldn’t see us.

Laura quit paddling. “Why should I go anywhere with you?”

Thunk. Another bullet hit the boat.

“Quiet,” I whispered. “He can hear us.” The mist may have hidden us from Dwight’s view, but it also carried sound to the top of the cliffs. My arm was bleeding but not in huge volumes. It was beginning to hurt, though, a lot.

Laura discarded her unwieldy paddle and again threatened me with the hand hoe. In a seething whisper, she ordered, “Get us out of here. Now!”

I wasn’t too worried about the garden implement, but I agreed we needed to move. The mist was so thick that it would be easy to become lost. So I registered where the cliffs were, turned the boat in the opposite direction, and silently began to paddle. My forearm stung, sending shots of pain up to my bicep. The back of my neck tingled as I sensed the garden tool nearby and the hideous possibility of a bullet severing my spinal cord.

I paddled in silence for several minutes, hoping I wasn’t going in a circle and heading back into Tom Dwight’s shooting range. At one point, I felt sweat running down my nose and took a swipe at it with my soggy sleeve. I brought away blood. I had a cut from the clippers Laura had pitched at me. The blood must have been temporarily stanched by the icy water, but now it flowed freely.

“You wouldn’t happen to have something for my wounds, would you?” I turned around to show her my dramatic cut. She flinched, then pulled her fashionably roomy bag from behind her seat. She rummaged around in it and came up with a wadded bandana that had probably been in there for months.

“Here, I’ve barely used it,” she said as she handed it to me.

“Barely was not what I was hoping for, but I’ll take it.” I rested the oar and stretched out the crusty bandana so it would be long enough to tie around my head. I would have to ignore my arm injury for now. It wasn’t bleeding much. I knotted the disreputable bandana to my head to soak up the blood. “Will you let me explain, Laura?”

“Keep your mouth shut, Dev. You said he could hear us, remember?” she said through clenched teeth and scraped the claws of the gleaming garden tool in my direction.

“We’re far enough away for me to speak softly. I’m sure of it.”

“Where are you taking us? To Jerry Greenfield’s church so we can enter into their kingdom of heaven?” For me, her anger magnified her beauty.

“Look, we are on the same side. Completely. I’m not sure where I’m taking us, except away from Dwight’s gun. I think if I can get us across the bay, we can get some help. We need to get to town, to the press.” I was speaking in a squeaky whisper.

“That’s what I’ve wanted to do all along. Why the change of heart? Did Elizabeth give you different marching orders?” She was really hurt at the thought of my being in the Stratton camp.

“Listen to me. I’m going to tell you the whole story, the absolute truth. When I’m done, you decide whether to trust me or not.”

“Okay, tell me. But remember, this thing can remove an eyeball.” She waved the tool at me. “And keep paddling.”

I paddled, ignoring the pain in my arm, and told her the whole story, about my trips to the Theater and the High Priestess, the Magician, and Pento. I explained to her about my role as a meddler against the Malignity. I told her how Elizabeth Stratton handed me $125,000 with the promise of more if I derailed Laura.

“And now you, Laura. You have to tell me all of it. I’m not the only one who was holding back information. Hushing up your relationship with Stratton isn’t worth a quarter of a million dollars.”

Laura finally lowered the garden tool. She stared into the water. “I went with her. She said she needed me. We weren’t even together anymore. We’d been apart for a year. She was a senator.” She was speaking more to the water than to me.

“Stratton?” Laura nodded. “Where did you go with her?”

“To Colorado. To the clinic. She was pregnant. She aborted Jerry Greenfield’s child.”

The puzzle was complete. Senator Elizabeth Stratton, supposedly God’s own candidate, had a secret so explosive, it would end her presidential hopes and political apparatus. If her followers knew she’d had a clandestine abortion, they would reject her without looking back, without forgiveness. The fact that it was Jerry Greenfield’s child, an heir to the throne of the righteous, would make the firestorm even worse. Greenfield would be implicated. No matter what the Malignity had planned for Stratton, her choices were out of its control.

“No wonder they want you dead,” I said. “Laura, do you have proof that this abortion happened?”

She nodded. “It’s in the last few pages of the scrapbook, the pages I didn’t show you.” She looked world-weary and defeated.

“Describe what’s there. What evidence do you have?”

“There’s a clinic confidentiality agreement, signed by me. I also pasted in a plastic hospital bracelet from the clinic. It has ‘E. Wilford’ on it. That’s Elizabeth’s mother’s maiden name.”

“That’s hardly enough to make a case. What else is there, Laura?”

She sighed. “Before we left the clinic, Elizabeth was pretty out of it, shaken and in pain, I guess. Since I was there as her escort, the nurse gave me two bottles of pills for Elizabeth to take for pain or excessive bleeding. If you remember, eight years ago, Elizabeth was already famous as the senator for the religious right.”

“Oh, I remember. I even saw her one day when I did a reading for a client. She came to the hotel where the client and I met. Even then, she and Greenfield were repulsive.”

“Please understand. Elizabeth wasn’t always like that. She was good to me, until she wasn’t.” Laura was now hugging herself, shivering as if she’d just emerged from the icy water.

“Tell me about the rest of the evidence, Laura. You said you were given some pills?”

“Yes, two bottles of pills, unlabeled except for the drug name. But they also gave me two prescriptions to fill, in case Elizabeth needed more while she recuperated in a Denver hotel. I put the prescriptions in my purse and, frankly, forgot about them. Being around Elizabeth in such a strained situation, well, I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

“Did you have the prescriptions filled?”

She shook her head. “Elizabeth bounced back quickly. She took a few pills from the bottles but didn’t even need all of them. She never mentioned the prescriptions. They stayed in my purse. When I finally got back to Seattle, it was a few days before I found them.”

“And they were written for Elizabeth Wilford? Using her mother’s maiden name again?”

“No. For whatever reason, maybe for the use we have for them now, the doctor made the prescriptions out on his prescription pad. The prescriptions had the clinic heading plus the doctor’s name. More importantly, they were made out to Elizabeth Stratton. The doctor had written Elizabeth’s real name.” Laura drew her knees up to her face and rested her forehead on them.

“The bombed abortion clinic,” I said.

Laura looked at me in alarm. “What do you mean?”

“Yesterday, in Colorado, an exclusive abortion clinic was bombed. Four people died. However, the doctor and one nurse survived.”

“We have to get to them. They’re in danger.” Laura started scrabbling for a paddle.

I grabbed the paddle. “Wait. It’s okay. I have one of my associates lining up security for them. She’s more than competent. I’m sure the doctor and nurse are safe. Actually, they’re probably safer than we are right now.” I looked around, but the mist still hid our whereabouts.

“I should have exposed her earlier. It’s my fault people are dead. My fault.” Laura’s despair was excruciating to watch, but I could understand her feelings. I also knew she was wrong.

“Laura, honey, listen to me. These are the type of people who will stop at nothing. They’ve already saturated our country with enough righteous lies and propaganda to polarize people who used to be friendly toward each other. They want power at any cost. Do you really think wasting a few innocent lives is beyond them? If it weren’t the security guards at Smith Tower or the abortion clinic, it would be something or someone else. We have to stop them, or there’ll be more killing while they accumulate and consolidate power. I think our only chance is to go public with your evidence.”

“Why Elizabeth? Why couldn’t I see what she was?”

“Oh, you knew her well, better than anybody. I have a theory. I think Stratton went wrong on them somehow. They groomed her, but they didn’t factor in her attraction to women. The night Stratton hired me, she made me promise that you wouldn’t be hurt. I believe, in her warped way, she still loves you. I also think Tom Dwight is operating beyond her and Greenfield’s control. He’s their wild card unleashed, just like I’m a wild card unleashed.”

I stopped paddling and turned around to face her. “The one thing the Malignity can’t battle or understand is love, the most indestructible power of all. Elizabeth was groomed for authority, but they forgot to immunize her against her love for women. It is her so-called weakness that will, in the end, bring her down. Had she not hired me to gently meddle with you, Tom Dwight would have destroyed your scrapbook and your life days ago.” I waited for Laura to grasp what I was trying to say to her.

She looked steadily at me, measuring the validity of my words. “How did your meddling, or whatever you call it, save me?”

“They thought I was on their side. I was a meddler, conscripted by Stratton, to distract you. They had no idea I’d already been in contact with the High Priestess and Pento. A result of my wild card status, I guess. If anything, the Malignity thought I would march you right into Dwight’s gnarly arms, even if Stratton wouldn’t fully agree to that.”

“I’m still not getting it, Dev.”

“Every time the High Priestess tossed me from her throne room into the Theater, I would have an experience that included you. That’s where I became enamored with you. That’s why I got you out of that hospital room before Dwight got to you. I can’t resist you. They didn’t factor it in. The Malignity and its puppets do not understand love. They didn’t think I’d try to save you or that I’d fall in love with you.”

Before she could respond to my risky declaration, her attention was caught by something behind me. I turned just before the boat rammed into a pontoon. The pontoon was attached to a seaplane.

*

All we had were the dubious contents of Laura’s bag, which contained, besides essential womanly things, my cell phone that she stole from my bedroom, her forbidden credit card and checkbook, and the garden tool. However, the owner of the airplane managed a labyrinthine telephone exchange to assure himself that Laura’s check would cover the outrageous sum of $2,000 for the thirty-five minute flight to Seattle. He also managed to produce a bandage for my arm.

“You ladies need to understand something here. It’s foggy out there. It’s Thursday, my day off, and I promised my better half I’d fly her to Anacortes to have lunch. So my flyin’ you to Seattle takes a big bite out of my day. See? Besides, looks to me like you’re in a hurry.” His belly jiggled loosely over his cowboy belt, and his stained Seahawks ball cap was slightly askew. I hoped we wouldn’t have to meet his “better half.”

“We need to leave immediately. Can we do that, Mr., uh, Mr.?” Laura was handling the negotiations because she looked less disheveled after our adventure in the bay.

“Haney. Bill Haney. My plane’s called Jenny, after my daughter. She lives in Bellingham, teaches at the high school there, has two kids, both bright as—”

“Do you have to make any preparations, Mr. Haney? We really do need to leave.” Laura wasn’t going to let him ramble on. She was an attorney even in dire emergencies.

“Ah, call me Bill, honey. All the lovely ladies call me Bill. Hell, we’re almost all prepped to fly anyway since I was supposed to fly to Anacortes. You pretty things just wait by the plane while I get my gear and give the wife a quick one.” He snickered and walked into his house, from which billowed odors of fried bacon and burnt toast.

When he was out of hearing, Laura and I made our plan for when we landed on Lake Union in Seattle. It was simple. We would head to my bank via cab, retrieve the scrapbook and recorder, and then call press acquaintances Laura had at the
Seattle Herald
and Channel 10.

We should have viewed the flight in Bill Haney’s seaplane as foreshadowing the folly of our plans. Haney decided we were on a joyride instead of a business trip, so he made it as nauseating as possible in a flying apparatus with huge pontoons swinging off the bottom. He looped, cut the engine, and plunged altitude enough times that Laura and I were grateful our stomachs were empty. Laura sported a green tinge in her cheeks. Haney was gleeful and unrepentant.

By the time we passed over the Ballard and Fremont neighborhoods and spied the rusted tangle of Gasworks Park, we would have paid Bill Haney another $2,000 just to let us out of his flying carnival ride. The spraying touchdown on Lake Union reminded me of a debauched Disney waterslide. Passengers on surrounding leisure boats glared at our inappropriate arrival. I never thought I’d be so thrilled to see the Space Needle rising above Seattle’s uptown in all its 1960s splendor.