Chapter 47

A lot happened in the weeks and months following.

From a personal standpoint, the biggest news—somewhat to my amazement—was that I still had my job. I finally got around to e-mailing my boss Thursday night that my "personal emergency" was finished and I was ready to return to work Monday morning. Given that I hadn't contacted him at all since my original e-mail, I was half-expecting to be told not to bother. He had given me a one-week time limit, after all, and I'd unilaterally doubled it without saying a word. Instead, though, I got only a terse reply saying he'd expect me.

Even more amazing, my return the following Monday was accepted without question or comment. I'd considered all weekend what to say to him and my co-workers. McDonough hadn't laid any restrictions on me at all about what I could talk about; I was free to tell the whole cotton-picking story if I wanted. He did allow, though, that it might not be my wisest course.

After debating it with myself, I found I agreed. Over the weekend more than a few commentators had surfaced bemoaning that Golden's career had been cut so "tragically short" over the "unfounded and unproven"—much emphasis on the latter—allegations of unspecified wrongdoing, and his "unwarranted" suicide while suffering the repercussions of an "attack" experienced in his own Capitol Hill office. Putting myself up against that kind of publicity juggernaut and openly identifying myself as the attacker, after McDonough had very carefully kept my name completely out of it, didn't seem like something I cared to do.

So I kept my own counsel. To the few who asked directly, I simply said I'd been away on a private matter that I wasn't at liberty to discuss. In the office it was something of a nine-day wonder; within a couple of weeks the whole episode was forgotten, and everything was back to business as usual.

I even kept the truth from Fred, who knew more than anyone else. I thanked him effusively for his help, of course, but just told him that my pursuers had been deflected and weren't likely to be back. He seemed pleased that things had worked out for me, but our relationship quickly settled back into pretty much what it had been before. I suppose at that age one's attention span for the woes of others tends to flag a bit.

Another bit of good news came in the headlines about a week after I'd got back, in the form of a report of a "major child-trafficking ring" having been "broken up" in Mexico. A number of unnamed kids were quietly restored to their families in the U.S. without much information being offered about what the poor kids had endured during their enforced absences.

I knew Susan would be pleased about that one; it had been her empathy for the missing girls that had started this whole thing in motion months before. Apparently Golden's death had loosened some tongues among the others who'd been swept up by the authorities, leading ultimately to finding the children. I know Quiller hadn't fought the system; a lightly reported item a couple of months later said he'd agreed to plead guilty to a number of drug charges and been sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment.

Fifteen years seemed a pretty small penalty for all the shit he'd perpetrated at his boss' behest. It was only small miscalculations that had left both Susan and myself even alive after his ministrations; he'd done his dead-level best to kill us both, me twice over. I fervently wished him a miserable time in prison.

But the real biggie that continued to haunt me was Susan. What happened on that front was ... nothing. Nothing at all. No contact from her, no word about her, a complete zero.

I'd come home with a lot of hope. OK, she was still recovering from Quiller running her down, I figured, these things take time to come back from. She'd been a pretty sick girl when I'd seen her that day in the hospital, they'd held her in that damn "induced coma" for three full weeks, she'd just finally woke up, of course it would be a while for her to recuperate. Thanksgiving ought to do it, I hoped. Well, OK, maybe Thanksgiving was too quick, Christmas for sure.

But we were past Thanksgiving, past Christmas and well into the new year, and still not a peep. About mid-January I got serious about pushing it. I put in calls to McDonough, to Brodine, to anybody else I could think of who might know something, anything.

McDonough called back promptly enough, but only to tell me that his hands were still as tied as ever. What he knew was pretty much nil. Once again, so far as he was aware she was still under the jurisdiction of WITSEC, and he had no influence over or information about its workings. His office, of course, had no further interest in "Ariel" in connection with any ongoing proceedings, and there wasn't any way he could offer me any further information. He was "truly sorry" and all that, and was as apologetic as all get-out for my problem, but...

It took three messages, each more urgent than the last, before Brodine would even return my calls. He barely remembered me, and was no more disposed to be helpful than he'd been before. After I pressed him hard and dropped McDonough's name with bogus authority, he finally told me that she'd "left the program" and he had no further information. He flatly refused to say where they'd moved her before that, what name she'd gone under, anything. I tried pursuing it up the chain of command there but hit the same blank wall.

By that point I was fairly sure what had happened. The gloomy notion I'd had that day when we'd still been at the hotel in town had proved dismayingly accurate; when she'd come back to her body she hadn't brought the memory of her time with me along. Her internal hard drive was, as I'd feared, unaffected by the out-of-body experiences she'd had; to her it was as though everything was still the same as it had been when she'd walked away from my apartment that night.