If the young lady was half as seductive in person as she was in her emails, it was no wonder the professor had succumbed to her charms. Barnes figured they probably only slept together a few times, because Jacob quickly cut it off. She apparently didn’t take it well, and her pleadings grew increasingly desperate. Her last email threatened suicide. A quick check of the university-hospital records that same day revealed she was admitted for observation. She did not return to school the following semester. Like so many other gems he had in his possession, Barnes pocketed this one for safekeeping. If necessary, it could be used to keep Jacob Hendrix in line, or to get him out of the picture entirely.
If that didn’t work, there were always more drastic measures Barnes was prepared to take.
CHAPTER 18
Shu Han Ju Chinese Restaurant, Greenwich Village, New York City, May 22, 8:22 p.m.
Shu Han Ju was the kind of little-known Chinese restaurant that makes New York the city it is. The eatery was small, the seating was cramped, and the windows hadn’t been cleaned in years. The cantankerous proprietor, who was in his sixties and bore a constant scowl, almost seemed to have gone out of his way to make the place look dingy. The unkempt plainness kept the tourists away, and that was just fine, because tourists kept away the locals, and those were the patrons he wanted. Repeat business. Like the handsome young university professor who was one of his best customers.
Jacob Hendrix loved Chinese food, and this restaurant in particular, which was only three blocks from his apartment. It was also surprisingly reasonable. This confluence of factors explained why he’d eaten there 137 times over the last three years.
That, and Jacob didn’t know how to cook.
Skylar could take it or leave it. Chinese food just didn’t do it for her. No shrimp fried rice or boiled dumplings or lemon chicken would ever come close to well-chosen tuna sashimi or a great bone-in rib eye, but it made Jacob happy, so she was fine with eating here more than she cared to. Because she had to eat somewhere.
Skylar couldn’t cook, either.
Both had brought work-related reading with them, but Jacob quickly grew bored with his student scripts and put them down. He watched her closely across the table as she read through a thick file on one of her patients and jotted down notes.
“Stop staring.” She didn’t look up.
“Stop working.”
“You should have invited somebody else to dinner if it bothers you.”
“Eat with somebody else if you don’t want to be stared at.”
She kept right on putting down her thoughts. “I thought you had reading?”
“I do.” He savored the last bite of his crispy coconut shrimp.
She kept writing, so he kept staring. Until she finally put down her pen. “Okay, what?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. What?”
He paused, clearing his throat, trying to find just the right way to say what he had to say.
And then it hit her. The only time Jacob fumbled around like this was when he started thinking about the future. Their future. “On second thought, don’t.”
“God, you can be frustrating.”
“You want to talk about the future, and I don’t.”
He hated that she always knew what was on his mind. “We have to talk about it sometime.”
“Not right now, we don’t.”
“When?”
She closed her composition book and clasped her hands on top of it. “How about after I settle in to my new job? Would that be all right?”
His timing was admittedly terrible. “Fine. Whatever.”
She studied him incredulously. “What’s the sudden rush?”
“It isn’t sudden, and you know it.” He shook his head, mostly mad at himself. He returned to his reading as she returned to hers. They barely spoke the rest of the meal.
Skylar took a long, hot shower as soon as they got back to the apartment. Jacob turned again to his laptop, where he was on number nine of the twenty-two student scripts he had to get through. He glanced at Skylar’s composition book, which she had plopped onto her pillow before getting in the shower. He looked over toward the bathroom. He turned back to the composition book and considered what he was about to do. Invading her privacy would be wrong. He expected her to respect his boundaries. He should respect hers. If she caught him, it would seriously damage or possibly even end their relationship.
Jacob glanced again toward the bathroom, then quickly opened the composition book. He read as fast as he could. The patient’s name was Edward Parks. He had been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at the age of four. Jacob was moderately familiar with the disorder from their earlier conversations, but had never heard of acoustic archeology.
The more he read, the more his eyes widened with amazement. He actually mouthed the words echo box the first time he read them. This truly was astonishing stuff. No wonder she was so eager to learn more. He was, too.
That’s when he realized the water had turned off. He quickly tossed Skylar’s composition book onto her pillow and resumed reading a student’s work just as she came dripping wet out of the shower. She stood next to the bed, staring at him. “I’m sorry about dinner.”
“Me, too.” He admired her body because he couldn’t help himself, and because he knew she wanted him to.
“How much more reading do you have?”
He smiled slightly. “A ton.” It would take him all night.
She walked around the bed. “Not anymore.” She removed the laptop from his hands and climbed on top of him.
CHAPTER 19
Harmony House, Woodbury, New Jersey, May 22, 10:43 p.m.
The facility had a lights-out policy at nine thirty in the evening, and tonight was no exception. The lights in every patient’s room had already been off for over an hour. The night air was cold and still. The only sounds were the leaves crunching beneath the feet of the perimeter guard on his rounds, and those could barely be heard. You could see the man had training simply by the way he moved. His gait was rhythmic and determined. An intruder would be unfortunate to come upon him or his associates. The night security staff consisted of four personnel: one outside, one inside, one at the driveway gate, and one at the front entrance, who checked in with the other three at exactly twenty-minute intervals. “Baker, do you copy?”
The outside man answered quietly through his headset. “Baker clear, over.”
The front-desk guard tracked the locations of his two men on patrol with transmitters in their radios, which appeared on an electronic map of the facility. Surveillance cameras provided views of every inch of the grounds, both inside and out. “Copy that, Baker. Charlie, status?”
“Charlie’s clear, over.” He continued patrolling the hallways.
“Copy that, Charlie. Danger, do you copy?”
“Danger clear, over.” He continued watching the driveway-gate monitors.
“Copy that, Danger. Able out.” Able, Baker, Charlie, and Danger signified military, confirming the training evident in the gait of the outside man, Baker. Each was considerably overqualified for the job he now held. They had each taken the lives of no fewer than three people. One had killed eleven. These were men capable of becoming death machines, but only if the circumstances required it and they were ordered to do so.
Over the years, they had been required to make adjustments for Eddie. The boots initially provided to security personnel made a particular clicking sound on the linoleum floors, which disturbed Eddie’s sleep, even after the installation of the acoustic panels in his room, so he developed a composite rubber for new soles that made the boots practically silent. It turned out this new composite also lasted three times as long as the previous one, so Eddie’s composite soon became part of standard-issue US military footwear.
For someone who didn’t understand the concept of money, he was certainly doing a nice job making the government quite a bit of it.
It was exactly 10:47 p.m. when Eddie’s eyes opened. He sucked in a deep breath as if he’d been punched in the stomach. Or hit by a lightning bolt. And maybe this time, he had been. Maybe, finally, this was it. The answer. The fix. The conclusion to his equations, Eddie’s Theorems, which had eluded him for all these years. Could this really be it? Could it?