Darkness Falls (35 page)

"Erin? You alright?"

"You look good," Erin said, managing to shake off his surprise but sounding stupid anyway. It was a true statement, though. Beamon's hair had continued to thin, but his eyes were clear and his tan skin hung tighter to his cheekbones than last time they'd seen each other.

Erin had received an invitation to Beamon's wedding a while back, though there was no way he could get away to attend. Instead, he'd commissioned a local D. C. artist to sculpt an enormous fountain with cherubs peeing into a pool. Not cheap, but what did you give a man who had everything?

"Marriage seems to agree with you."

"I can't complain. Thanks for the fountain, by the way. Gives my backyard a little class."

They both fell silent, just standing there, looking at each other. There was little doubt this visit was about Jenna, but Erin wasn't sure he wanted to hear what Beamon had to say. What if something had happened to her? What if they'd decided that after what she'd done, she was never going to see the light of day again? What if Beamon had been lying to him and they'd put her somewhere like the place they'd sent him? What if
---

"Do you have any coffee?" Beamon said finally.

"Yeah, sure. There's a pot in my office."

Beamon looked around admiringly as he followed. "Quite a spread you have here. They tell me you run a whole city."

"It's more of a town," Erin said, still finding it impossible to bring up Jenna as his stomach slowly tied itself in knots. "You know, just the employees. And there's a town council that handles most of the details."

His secretary glanced up from her computer as they walked in and tapped a calendar on her desk. "You've got a congressional oversight teleconference in two hours, Erin. Do you have all your budget numbers together?"

He shook his head absently and reached for the knob to his office door. He couldn't avoid the conversation forever. "So why are you here, Mark. Where is --"

Jenna pushed herself off his couch as he entered, an uncomfortable smile spreading across her face. "You wouldn't know where a biologist could get a job around here, would you?"

Her eyes were a little glassy as she crossed the office and threw her arms around him.

For a moment he couldn't speak, suddenly realizing that he'd never really believed he'd ever touch her again.

"Are you . . . are you okay? Where have you been?"

"Prison," she said.

He stared furiously at Beamon, who had passed by them and sat down behind the desk that dominated the room.

"Oh, don't look at me like that. Get her to tell you about it."

"It wasn't that bad."

"Not that bad?" Beamon said. "It had goddamned tennis courts."

"It did," she admitted, taking Erin's hand and leading him to the sofa. "Mark came and visited me every couple of weeks."

"Does this mean you're out? You're free?"

He looked over at Beamon. "Is that what this means?"

He grinned as he opened the desk's drawers and examined their contents. "It turns out that the government's thirst for blood was satisfied by the gruesome deaths of Teague and his German friends -- particularly the fact that Teague drowned in his own creation. Even a congressman isn't too dense to see the poetry in that."

"Do you know for a fact he drowned?"

"No, but it makes a great story," Beamon and Jenna said in unison and then both laughed.

"There's also a general feeling that you need to be kept happy," Beamon continued. "And then, of course, Jenna can be a lot more valuable here than working on her net game in prison."

"Here?" Erin said, still unable to fully process what he was being told. "You're going to stay here?" He'd never even dared to consider that. His best-case scenario had been to walk off the job and negotiate a comfortable spot for Jenna on some desert island in return for toiling his life away in New Mexico. This seemed too good to be true.

Beamon crossed the room and Jenna stood to give him a grateful hug. He shook
Erin's hand and headed for the door, but stopped before he reached it.

"Don't ever do anything like this again, okay?"