Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense (19 page)

“Why would he want me? To finish what he failed to do in the Mog?”

“I don’t know. But you’re connected to the murders through him. It’s what I sensed in you the first time I saw you in the church. He tried to kill you once, and he tried again last night.” She leaned back on the couch, her hair spilling over the top of the cushion, and gazed at nothing. “You’re personal to him, which is why I get an imprint from you.”

Jonas stood and walked to the kitchen, where he refilled his wine glass. “Do these ‘imprints’ tell you where he’s going next?”

He could hear the sigh from the other room. “No.”

Jonas walked back into the living room and dimmed the lights, thinking the glare too harsh for the moment, though he didn’t really know what the moment was. He stood behind the couch, holding his wine and soaking in what Anne had just said. With her head tilted back on the cushion, Jonas could see the outlines of her face, the simple arch of her nose, the smooth curve of her forehead that had yet to develop creases of worry and time.

“So what do we do now?” he asked.

She pushed her head back more, connecting her gaze with his.

“Nothing,” she said. “Not now. It’s too easy to over-think, and then we’ll make a mistake.”

“I don’t think we have enough information to avoid mistakes. I think—”

“Jonas?” she interrupted. “Yes, Anne?”

“Sometimes you talk too much.”

Jonas had at least a half-dozen responses, some of them funny, but he held back. She smiled as she watched him struggle.

He took a step toward the couch, and Jonas now stood directly over her. He thought about how little he knew about her, and yet the sense of comfort and familiarity was so strong that this was the first time he had even reflected upon it. It was rare for him to feel so at ease with a woman. Maybe rare wasn’t the right word.
Different
. He approached his relationships much the same way he approached everything in life: defensively. He would skim the surface of the water at high speed, enjoying the ride but always looking around for the direction to turn once something got in his way. Sometimes he would turn and leave it all behind, but usually the obstacle popped up too suddenly, too soon, and he would smash into it, disintegrating into a million bits of excuses and anger. In either case, it never ended well.

But Anne was different. He wasn’t even
in
a relationship with her, but he didn’t feel the need to look too far ahead with her. Perhaps it was because she could already do that, so he could settle back and let the other person do the navigating. Whatever the reason, Jonas was content to stop wondering and just let things happen.

“Now you’re
thinking
too much,” she said, looking up at him. The V of her dress tightened against the inside of her breasts as she arched back into the couch.

“I’m not allowed to talk or think?”

She smiled. “You’ve changed,” she said. “Changed? You barely know me.”

“Your accident on the Beltway. It changed you, didn’t it?” He felt his defense mechanisms screaming to be unleashed. “I don’t stop for stranded motorists anymore.”

She didn’t chide him for avoiding the subject, but she didn’t back down either. “You’re fascinated by him.”

“Sonman?” She nodded.

“Fascinated?” Jonas looked down at her, but looked away as he decided to tell her the truth. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m fascinated by someone who just doesn’t care. By someone who just does whatever the hell he wants to do. No moral boundaries. It’s in complete contrast to what I was raised to be.”

“Do his...his moral freedoms make you jealous?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“It’s just a question, Jonas. Do you wonder what it would feel like to do whatever you wanted to do, regardless of societal laws?”

He took a deep breath. “Doesn’t everyone wonder that at some point?”

“Maybe,” she said. “And maybe he’s out there, wondering what it would feel like to be normal.”

“I have no idea what he’s thinking.”

“I’m not trying to make him sympathetic, Jonas. I just think it’s okay to try to understand monsters, even as we work to destroy them.”

Jonas pictured himself sitting with his father, talking to him, letting himself be open and honest. Dropping his shield. He closed his eyes and began to speak.

“I
have
changed. The accident made me think of...of all the memories I told you about. Of what I saw. Of how I nearly died.” He felt himself disappearing deeper within his words. “It was the one moment when I experienced an evil that very few people get to see. And that moment, that
one moment
in that apartment in Mogadishu, I realized for the first time my life deviated from some kind of script.”

“Script?”

His eyes remained closed. “Everything I’ve ever done seems according to some kind of plan. Some kind of linear progression, a roadmap to achievement. Good childhood, good schools, military service, good career. I’ve always gone according to plan.” Jonas licked his lips. “But the horror that day, it was as if there was a break in the plan. A tear in my life, where something completely raw and evil and...

real...leaked in.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

Jonas paused for nearly a minute, knowing the truth but not wanting to say it. “I didn’t realize it until I started remembering it all again, but...I don’t know even how to say it. It
excites
me.”

Her tone didn’t change. “Excites you?”

“In a way, yeah. The thrill of being faced with such horror, and battling to overcome it. It
is
exciting, even as fucking horrible as it all is.”

“Are you unhappy with the way your life turned out?”

“Not at all. But...goddamnit, this is going to sound really arrogant, so I’m just going to say it. I feel like I’m meant for greater things than being a Senator’s Chief of Staff.”

She was silent for a moment. “Maybe you have a hero complex. You always want to save everyone. The problem is that most people don’t need saving, or at least don’t want to be saved. That kind of complex wreaks havoc on relationships.”

Well, shit, that would explain a lot, Jonas thought. “Is that it, Jonas?”

His eyes were still closed but he sensed she was closer. He felt her looking up at him from the couch.

“Do you want to save people?”

“It’s not so much that I want to save people,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Sometimes I feel like I’m
supposed
to save people.” He finally opened his eyes. “Does that make sense?”

“Do you think you’re supposed to be the one to stop

Sonman?”

He looked down at her, as she looked up at him. In that moment, in that light, and in that blink of unguarded honesty, she seemed perfect to him. “Maybe I do. Does that sound stupid?”

She smiled, genuine and inviting. “Yeah, you sound a little stupid.”

Jonas laughed, louder than he expected, but it felt good. Everything was new with Anne. Everything was fresh, pure.

“I’m okay with that,” he said.

“Good, because I’ve always had a thing for dumb jocks.”

“That I doubt. So what now?”

She reached back with her right hand and brushed her fingertips against his pants leg before moving up and grabbing the bottom of his tie.

She pulled on the tie.

Jonas leaned and hovered over her face, their lips inches apart, reversed from each other.

“You don’t have to be a mind-reader,” she said. He could smell the wine on her breath mixed with a trace of perfume that still sprinkled her long neck.

His lips just brushed hers at first. Back and forth, not for fear of committing, but for savoring that very first contact, the headiness of nascent intimacy. Her hand moved from his tie and then slipped behind the back of his head. She pulled him against her, and they finally kissed, fully, their mouths pressing, their tongues tracing outlines on each other’s lips.

Jonas set his wine glass on the floor as he broke from her. He kept his fingers on her shoulder and walked around the couch, wanting to share the space next to her.

“No,” she said, holding a hand up.

“What?”

Rather than answering, she rose and came to him instead. She clasped his hand and brought herself toward him. Standing, he could feel all of her through the thin fabric of her dress. She draped both arms behind his neck and his hands instinctively slipped around her waist. As she leaned in to kiss him, he pulled her closer, feeling the curves of her waist and fullness of her breasts. She tasted like summer, he thought, not even knowing what that was supposed to taste like. It was the taste of sun on your face.

“You’re thinking again,” she said, her words twisted by his lips.

He moved his head and kissed her neck, tracing the curve up from her shoulder with his tongue. “But I’m thinking good things.”

She tilted her head to give him more access, breathing out a long sigh as she did. “Then I suppose I’ll allow it.”

He continued exploring her skin with his lips, wanting more with every taste. After a moment, Anne put her hand on his shoulder and took a step back from him. Then she reached up and hooked her thumbs under the straps of her dress, pulling them over her shoulders. She unzipped the back of the dress and shimmied out of it, revealing to Jonas a tight-fitting black chemise underneath.

His urges told him to grab her and consume her, but his mind argued for allowing the vision of her to settle in just awhile longer. Several seconds passed as Jonas remained speechless in front of her.

“What’s the matter?” she teased. “Scared?”

“A little bit,” he said, drawing a laugh from her. “You always wear something like that under your dress?”

She took the first step, draping a hand over his shoulder. Her smile glowed in the soft light of the room, and her kinked hair bounced off her naked skin, almost floating.

“Let’s just say I get a sense about when I might need to.” His hand found the small of her back and his fingers pressed into her.

“I think I’m becoming a believer,” he said.

WASHINGTON D.C. APRIL 20

RUDIGER WALKS
into the church, hoping for solitude. He wants to leave Washington. Not much time. Wants to be away from those who might now know who he is, who might be looking for him. They talked to Mary by now. The shelter worker. Her description of him would be in the hands of every cop out there.

But he can’t leave. Not yet. He’s close to understanding. He can feel it. If he leaves now, his purpose will die.

The feeling is
strong
here.

The church is Catholic, which means nothing to Rudiger. It smells of books, he thinks, walking through the narthex and toward the nave. Old books, left to settle in collecting dust, unopened for years at a time. The church is vast but empty. Hole of solitude from the streets outside the heavy wooden doors.

He doesn’t know what to do. He thinks about sitting in a pew. Would the message come to him then? The answers he needs, would they transmit like some kind of holy radio wave from the statue of Christ that hangs above the altar? Or would they be written in a puzzle he could solve by rearranging the letters in his mind?

Vibrant colors. Red and green and blue. Light bursting through stained glass. Haze of dust.

Then he sees them to his right, three in a row. Confessional booths. Never been in one, he thinks.

He hears a cough, faint and brief, muffled behind more than just a hand. In one of the booths. It’s the first sign. First directional arrow.

Rudiger walks over, his footsteps soundless despite the vacuum of noise. He opens up the first door and peers through the wooden slats separating the chambers of the booth. He sees a silhouette.

Good.

Rudiger closes the door behind him and sits on the wooden bench. Cold and hard.

“Hello, my son.”

Rudiger feels uncertain. “Hello.”

“And how long has it been since your last confession?” The priest’s voice suggests a young man, certainly too young to address Rudiger as
my son
. The tone of it suggests eagerness. Perhaps someone new to the business. Someone thankful to help.

“Never been.”

A silence settles between the two men.

“Very well. Are you familiar with confession?”

“No.”

“It...it is a process by which you can heal your soul and regain the grace of God.”

Rudiger considers this. “I do believe I’ve never lost God’s grace.”

A pause. “Are you Catholic?”

“I don’t know what I am. Christian.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Christ commands me.”

A longer pause. “As He should, my son. He commands all true believers.”

Rudiger doesn’t believe this.

The silence becomes thick and the priest adds: “Are you unwell?”

“Unwell?”

The response is carefully measured. “Confession is...not to be taken lightly. It is important the penitent be of sound faith and...mind.”