Hillary by D.W. Buffa

Author:D.W. Buffa [Buffa, D.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Polis Books
Published: 2016-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Laura tried to make a joke of it, teasing him about flying off to Paris with Austin Pearce instead of her, when he called from the airport to tell her where he was going, but he did not laugh, and she knew that something serious had happened.

“What is it, Bobby?—Tell me.”

“Quentin Burdick—he’s been murdered.”

“Murdered, like the others, like the president, like…?”

“I found him on the steps to his building.” He did not add any of the details. He did not want to tell her, and she did not want to know. “It’s all connected somehow: what happened to Constable, what happened to Frank Morris…and now Quentin Burdick. I have to find out. Whatever is going on, someone has to stop it.”

She wanted to tell him that someone else could do it, she wanted to tell him to come home, tell him that she could not survive if anything happened to him, but she knew that if stayed home safe he would think himself a coward, and so she did not tell him anything except that she loved him and wished he did not have to go.

“Go home tomorrow,” he told her; “go home to Santa Barbara. I’ll fly out as soon as I get back.”

There was a long pause. There was something he did not want to tell her, something that she had already heard in his voice.

“You don’t think it’s safe here; you think that the same people who murdered Quentin Burdick might be coming after you! That’s why you don’t want me to stay, why you want me to leave.”

“Promise me—you’ll go tomorrow, first thing.”

“I’ll need to phone the airline, I’ll need—”

“It’s been taken care of. You’re on a ten o’clock flight. Now try to get some sleep. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Laura slept, but only for a few minutes at a time, and even then she might as well have been awake, the only difference whether what she feared the most darkened her imagination or came to her in dreams. Bobby slept, but only for the last two hours of the flight, and only then because he knew he needed it to get through what he knew was waiting for him in Paris. After five minutes with the American ambassador he began to wonder if any amount of rest would have helped him keep his eyes open. Andrew Malreaux was among the most profoundly dull-witted men he had ever met.

“France is a really interesting country,” remarked the ambassador as if he were sharing a fact that not many people knew or could be expected to know. “Interesting people, interesting buildings, interesting food—interesting language, too, once you get the hang of it.” He said this with a bright, confidential look, as of one who has, after some effort, achieved the competence required to make a considered judgment.

In response, Austin Pearce spoke to him in near perfect French. The ambassador squinted and nervously scratched his chin.

“I got some of that,” he said, confirming with a silent nod of his head that he had indeed understood at least a few of the words.

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