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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CADE LAY PROPPED AGAINST the headboard and watched as Marie poured two coffees. She added some creamer and a sachet of sugar to his, left hers black, and brought them over. Rebecca was in the bathroom, and from the time that had passed, could conceivably have fallen asleep there. Cade took the cup that Marie offered. She sat down with her own at the foot of the bed and regarded him over the rim as she took a sip. He returned the look evenly for a moment, saw that she was simply being open, inviting things to take any turn from here, and let his face soften.

" `Mole Woman'! What ever made you remember that? I thought you'd be a million years past any sentimental stuff by now—whatever used to be there, anyway."

"They wanted something personal. You see, you never could get it into your head that I had a side like that. You only saw this cold intellectual . . . and you invented most of that yourself."

"Oh, come on."

"You still can't see it?"

Cade gestured at her. "Look at you, for Christ's sake."

"So there's a side that wants to do something about things I take seriously, too. The two aren't mutually exclusive. It's just as well some people do. . . . Besides, why just talk about me. What's this `red coal' thing I'm hearing about all of a sudden?" Her eyes flickered over him. "Trying to tell me something, Roland?"

Cade made an exaggerated show of sighing at the ceiling, missing the impish twist of her mouth. "Oh, we're not about to go off into some Freudian excursion are we? The guy I was talking to threw the question across a table, and that was what I came up with. It's not as if there's a huge list of alternatives."

"Oh, I don't know. You could have picked . . ." Marie thought for a few seconds. "Let's see, there's `red cola,' `real cod.' Then you've got `old acre' or `old care.' Does `earl doc' work?" She frowned. "Yes, it does, doesn't it?"

"Okay, okay." Cade cocked a complimentary eyebrow. "You're still as quick, I see." Marie showed an empty palm and made a face that said "if you say so." But she wasn't about to drop it. "So why did you come here?" she said.

Cade let his head fall back against the headboard. "Why is everyone around here trying to psychoanalyze me? Look, it wasn't me that wanted to come here. I just planned on coming as far as Atlanta to make sure she was collected okay. The rest was your people's idea. I didn't get a lot of say in it. They went through all this while you were out of the room. Why not ask them when you get back, eh?"

Marie stared at him for a moment or two longer, then nodded. She took another sip from her cup. "So is life still being kind to you?" she asked.

Now Cade felt on familiar ground. He answered automatically. "It is, because I let it." Despite the qualms that had assailed him earlier, he couldn't resist being provocative. "You know how I am. I mind my own business. If other people want to make problems for themselves, that's their right, I guess."

"Oh, how can you blame people for what's happening to them? Ordinary, decent people, I mean. They work hard, believe what they're told. They're being sold out."

Cade raised his chin. They were at it again, already. It seemed that the amnesty had been short-lived. "So who are you blaming, the Hyadeans? Well, some of them happen to be friends of mine, and they can be pretty ordinary and decent, too, believe it or not."

"But that's the whole point! It's not a simplistic `them' or `us' situation. The power on both sides is in collusion. It's like, oh . . . when the Romans used to provide palaces and protection to the local chiefs for keeping the natives in line and the taxes coming in. This whole regime that they've set up in Washington is getting to be just like one of those puppet—" The room's phone units sounded an incoming call. Cade picked up the handset from the bedside stand, pressed the "2" button to select audio only, and offered the phone to Marie. "Dictatorships you used to hear about," she completed as she took it. The latch of the bathroom door clicked barely audibly.

A look of alarm seized Marie's face suddenly. As Cade started to mouth a question, she touched "3" to activate the screen and speaker phone. Sounds poured forth of voices shouting indistinctly, some seeming to be barking commands, others yelling warnings; confused scuffling and banging; then a torrent of what could only be gunfire.

"What in hell—" Cade began, swinging his legs down off the bed.

Len's face filled the screen, twisted by fear and desperation. "Kes, get out! It's a bust! They're already coming in here! We've got—" Half his head erupted in an explosion of flesh and gore. He vanished to be replaced by a brief image of a black-hooded figure holding a gun in one hand and gesturing to somebody with the other, then disappearing off-screen.

"Jesus Christ!" Cade cried.

"State Security. Freeze right there!" Cade looked around at where the voice had come from. Rebecca had come out of the bathroom, clasping an automatic in a two-handed grip. He gaped, paralyzed. But she made the mistake of swinging the weapon from him to Marie and back again to cover both of them. As the muzzle moved away, Marie swept her arm up, throwing the contents of her coffee cup into Rebecca's face, then almost in the same movement bunched herself to go in low under it, crashing her shoulder into Rebecca's midriff with her full weight and momentum behind it. The action was instant, reflexive—before Cade had even tuned in to what was happening. The sound of an explosion followed by more shooting came from the phone's speaker.

The bullet went into the wall a foot away from Cade. Rebecca was hurled backward, going down and cracking her head on the drawer unit by the wall, which had the snack leftovers on top. Marie pulled Rebecca's head up by the hair, thudded it back against the floor, then used her knee to pin the arm holding the gun and twisted it from Rebecca's grasp. Rebecca made a V with the fingers of one hand and jabbed upward viciously, aiming at Marie's eyes, but Marie deflected it, then struck sideways at Rebecca's head with the gun, left then right, and then again—pure survival instinct reacting to lethal danger. Cade looked on, horrified, as blood welled from a gash on Rebecca's temple and ran down her face, mingling with the coffee that Marie had thrown. Marie stood up, breathing shakily. But Rebecca was still not out, nor was she finished. She sat up and lunged for the gun, but was too groggy to judge the distance. Marie shot her twice in the center of the forehead.

Cade was still too shocked to have moved. Marie killed the phone and stood looking uncertainly around the room, thinking to herself furiously. "Len must have carried something back. . . ." She went around to the other bed and picked up her coat, still lying where Len's had been, and began searching rapidly through the folds and pockets. Cade rose in a daze, looked disbelievingly at the body crumpled on the floor while he picked his way past it, and moved over to see what Marie was doing. She turned back the collar and held the coat up to reveal a black, rectangular object, about the size of a printed-circuit chip, attached underneath. She pulled it off, and making a sign for Cade not to say anything, went over to the closet beside the bathroom, where Cade had hung his jacket. A quick check found an identical device under one of the lapels. How or when Rebecca had put it there, he had no idea. Marie thrust the jacket at him to put on, handed him the automatic, and then as an afterthought went into the bathroom and added several extra ammunition clips that she found in Rebecca's toilet bag. As Cade pocketed them, Marie put her hand to her ear and made the motions of using a phone. Cade took his unit out and showed it to her questioningly. She shook her head and pointed at the bed. He tossed the phone down, and then after taking a last look back at the body, turned to follow Marie out the door.

Marie had keys to a spare car that had been left around the back of the block—a white Toyota. They got in, Marie driving, and left as quickly as was practical without drawing attention. As they turned at a traffic light to enter a ramp signed as leading to I-75 North, three military trucks painted in dark camouflage shades and moving fast passed them, heading the other way. Still numbed, Cade felt the unfamiliar bulge in his jacket pocket. Why had Marie given the gun to him? Obviously, because she was already carrying one, was the only answer to suggest itself.

 

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Framed