Sunfail (13 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

IT FELT LIKE A LIFETIME SINCE HE’D BEEN ON THE CAMPUS.

In truth it had been barely even a year since Harry dragged him to that party. A lot could happen in twelve months.
Like the end of the world
, he thought, not appreciating his own gallows humor.

Columbia always made Jake think of a medieval fortress with its tall stone buildings ringed all around the central square. An optical illusion gave the impression of a continuous wall guarding the rarified academy within.

Jake hefted the bike up onto his shoulder and started across the sidewalk and then between the two front-most buildings, following the walk onto the wide grassy expanse of the South Field beyond. The campus was much as he remembered it, students wandering around, kids huddled on the lawn despite the cold, still interested in being cool.
Where’s the panic? Where’s the confusion? Why’s everyone so calm?
Why, in other words, was it all so . . . normal?

He glanced over his shoulder without even thinking about it, looking back there for proof of everything he’d been experiencing so far that day. Beyond the same gap he’d just walked through Jake saw a pair of parked cars, and past them a stalled taxi bumper to bumper with a tiny Smart car. There was no one on the street. In a few days it would be buried under a foot of snow. He didn’t want to think about what that would mean for the already damaged city.

In front of him life carried on as if nothing had happened; behind him it was a different world. He had to shake his head; it was the living proof that the academics had their heads up their asses in their ivory towers.

He crossed the green, and then cut across campus in front of Low Library. How would these pampered few react when the first food trucks failed to show up? How would they cope when the temperature inevitably dropped and none of the electric ignitions worked on the furnaces? It would be a rude awakening.

Jake followed a path that ran alongside the grand University Hall toward the back of the campus. On the other side of it the real world waited impatiently to intrude upon this idyllic academic solitude. He ignored it in favor of a hideous redbrick building, all sharp angles and odd cutouts that didn’t match the stately edifices around it. It appeared to have been constructed using Lego. Seeley W. Mudd Building, home of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Jake headed for the front door.

There was a bike rack right outside it, under the shadow of the exterior stairs leading up to the second floor. He inevitably dropped the messenger bike there. He didn’t have a lock; if someone stole it, he’d just have to snatch another one. Not exactly the circle of life, but there was definitely a life lesson in there somewhere.

The Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics department was on the second floor. He heard a strangely familiar noise: the chime of an elevator door opening. It was the last thing he’d expected to hear. On the far side of the lobby he saw the silver doors open. There was only one guy inside. His brain was still trying to process why the elevator was working as the doors slid shut, leaving him staring at them.

The lights were on. He hadn’t noticed them at first because they were such a natural part of his surroundings. The elevator working, the lights on? It was like he’d stepped into some bizarro
Twilight Zone
world where everything was
normal
.

He took the stairs.

“Can I help you?” a woman asked as he stepped into room 200, the department office. There were a handful of desks arranged along the side wall, a big table facing a row of mailboxes along the nearest wall, and twin photocopiers, ancient relics of the nineties, taking up most of the back wall. The woman, apparently one of the departmental secretaries, didn’t break from sorting the mail into the slots.

“I hope so,” Jake replied, putting on his friendliest you-really-do-want-to-help-me face. “I’m looking for Harry—” He caught himself. “Sorry, Dr. Kane. Do you know if he’s teaching right now or in his office?” If he remembered correctly, Harry’s office had been up on the eighth floor.

“I’m sorry,
Professor
Kane isn’t here right now.”

“Any idea when he’ll be back?”

This time she did look at him, half with annoyance, half something else—frustration? Confusion? Concern? “He was supposed to be back already—winter break will be over in a few days. But,” she glanced out the window, “the airports are shut.”

“The airports?”

“He went home for a few days,” the secretary said. She stopped what she was doing long enough to look Jake up and down, his clothing and skin dirty and sweaty from the ride. “I don’t mean to be rude, but who did you say you were?”

“I didn’t. Jake Carter. I’m an old friend of Harry’s.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you, Mr. Carter. Given what’s happening out there we just don’t know when he’ll be back.” She turned her back on Jake.

He was about to walk out, defeated, when he remembered there was someone else he knew on campus. Even if he wasn’t 100 percent on her details, he knew her name. He leaned over the desk, grabbing the faculty catalog from the counter, and left before the secretary realized what he’d done.

It only took a couple of minutes skimming the mug shots in the catalog to find Finn Walsh’s picture, her department, building, office, and extension. Hopefully she’d have Harry’s number, but whether she’d be any more forthcoming with it than the secretary, given the way they’d left things, was open for debate. He’d have to rely on his good old Carter boy charm. Grinning to himself, he realized just how screwed he was.

Jake headed back down to the lobby and out, taking a side door that opened to a small quad. He checked his reflection in the glass doors of the next building as he pushed them open. The best he could say was he looked like shit, and that was being generous.

He took the elevator up to six. The Art History and Archaeology department’s office was a dead ringer for the Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics one; even the secretary behind the desk could have been the same. Maybe they cloned them, Jake thought as he walked past the open door. He didn’t need directions. All the doors were numbered. 612. He found it easily enough.

He knocked twice on the closed door and saw a shadow move into view through the frosted glass. The door opened.

“Yes?” Finn Walsh said, before she recognized her visitor.

She was prettier than he remembered, with that whole sexy-librarian thing going on. She was pale from all those hours in the classroom, dark blond hair mussed with strands coming loose from a ponytail. He saw the dark circles under her eyes. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, which made the contrast starker. She looked like she’d lost weight, but he wasn’t about to say so. It was her eyes, though, blue-gray, with flecks like ice in the irises, that hinted at who she could have been in another life: the sultry Italian model masquerading as a washed-out academic.

“Hey,” he said, resisting the temptation to add,
Remember me?

It was obvious from her reaction that now she did. Those flecks of ice turned glacial. She lifted one hand to the doorframe, blocking the entrance with her body.

Jake wasn’t exactly skilled in the ways of women and body language, but even he could tell she wasn’t pleased to see him. “What’re you doing here?”

So much for pleasantries. “Sorry, look, I know it wasn’t . . . great.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“I wouldn’t have come here, but I need to get in touch with Harry.”

“Ah, your pimp.”

Jake made a face. “He’s been called many things, but that’s probably a first,” Jake said, doing his best to make light of it. “I need to get in touch with him.”

“And you thought,
Oh
,
I know, I’ll go talk to that woman I boned and bailed on.
What on earth made you think that was a good idea?”

“Desperate times,” he said, gaze drifting over her shoulder. Did she have a clue what was happening outside? “Anyway, as much as I dig a good old-fashioned reunion, do you have his home number?”

She frowned, clearly thinking. “Home? He’s not home . . . Oh, you mean back in Scotland? He should be back by now. He was only supposed to be gone for a week.”

“The airports are closed.”

“Really? Why? What’s going on?”

That made him laugh. Short, sharp. “Haven’t you been outside?” He gestured past her, toward her office window.

“Of course I have. I’m not an idiot. Why do you think I’m holed up in here?” Jake now caught sight of a cot pushed up in one corner of the office behind her. Given the fact the building had power, it was probably the best place in the city to crash. He approved.

She turned away from him, heading for her computer. Since she hadn’t closed the door behind her, Jake followed her.

She hunched over the desk, opened her e-mail, and tapped in the first couple of letters of Harry’s name. She typed something else in, then scrolled again until she found what she was looking for. “Here you go,” she said, waving Jake toward the screen. It was an auto-response where he’d left his contact number for the week he’d be out of the country. She gestured at the phone on the corner of the desk. “We’ve got a really good long-distance plan.” She actually smiled a little when she said that. Was the glacier thawing?

There was something odd about being in the same room as someone you’d slept with, and the oddness multiplied a thousandfold when they almost certainly hated your guts for sneaking out instead of cuddling up and whispering the right sweet nothings. He could have offered a thousand excuses, but the truth of the matter was they were both adults, and if it hadn’t been him sneaking out it would have been her. That was just the way of the world. Still, he was happy for her to play the injured party if that was what she needed.

Jake nodded. “Thanks.” He dialed in the number. There were a few quick clicks and then the line went dead. He hung up and tried again. Same response: the call hit the international pipe and died. “No joy. Maybe I’m doing something wrong?”

She took the phone from him and duplicated the process. Her frown deepened. “Maybe his line’s down?”

“Then we’d be getting a canned response, one of those
We’re sorry, but the number you have dialed is not in service
things. This just isn’t going through. It’s hitting a block somewhere along the line.” If it had been cell phones rather than landlines, he’d have guessed that a tower was down somewhere. With landlines the signals ran through the transatlantic trunk lines. They had a dial tone, so they were hooked in at this end.

“Maybe one of the trunk lines is down?”

Could an EMP do that?
He thought about it. How could something like that even happen? Those things were buried deep down in the ocean, and they were completely shielded. An EMP wouldn’t even scratch the surface.
But even a trunk line went through relay stations, which
could
be interfered with.

He was finally starting to think clearly: if these guys could resurrect the stock exchange computers they could certainly manipulate a relay station, effectively isolating a city or a country or even a continent, if that’s what they needed to happen.

The penny dropped. Jake knew where the relay station was on this end: back down near the South Street Seaport, not far from Wall Street and the stock exchange.

He was already heading toward the door when Finn said, “At least say thank you before you ditch me again. Way to make a girl feel special.”

“Thank you. Seriously, thank you. I’ll explain later,” he said without turning around. “I need to be somewhere. I’ll be back.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

FUCK JAKE CARTER. JUST . . . FUCK HIM.

She couldn’t believe he could turn up on her doorstep expecting her to help him. The arrogant son of a bitch. Finn paced around her cramped office. She wanted to break something. Preferably his face, but he’d disappeared again. She’d barely even thought about him for the best part of a year. It wasn’t like she was some desperate schoolgirl who drew his name in a heart on her notebook, or that he was the only notch she’d carved on the bedpost, but there was something about the guy that just got under her skin.

It wasn’t like he was so fucking gorgeous or anything. He wasn’t all rugged lines with a six-pack of muscles.

So why had his appearance completely thrown her off her game?

She couldn’t concentrate on finishing off cataloging the images and annotating all the symbols she’d found within them. Instead, she kept thinking about what it had felt like when he was inside her, and how, given the chance to make the same mistake twice, even now, she’d happily do it again.

She’d always had a thing for tall, dark, and damaged. She wasn’t that struck on golden skin or the whole narcissistic metrosexual look that had overtaken the campus. There was something odd about dating guys who were prettier than her, and used more product than she did. She liked a bit of intelligence. She liked a bit of charm. A dangerous grin. Something that stood out from the preppy boys who haunted the campus. He definitely did that, even if it was all a bit too much GI Joe for the usual boyfriend material.

She wasn’t surprised she’d taken him home—and it had been all her doing. It had been a combination of circumstances and the fact that she’d spent a long day fending off Tom Campbell’s handsy advances, which only grew worse as the drink flowed. Jake had been her knight in not-so-shining armor for a couple of hours. He’d been interesting, engaging, attentive with her, and most importantly not connected to the university in any way, shape, or form—all rarities in her limited social circle. Which was why she’d given in to temptation. And that was fine, two grown-ups enjoying each other’s bodies. There was no crime in it.

So what if he’d skipped out before dawn, without waking her, no note, no goodbye kiss on the forehead while she dozed, nothing remotely intimate? Some people weren’t good with that, putting up walls as quickly as they pulled up their pants. He was one of them. Hardly surprising, given the life he’d led out in Afghanistan, fighting just to stay alive. It still left her feeling dirty, though, no matter how understandable it was.