Reprisal

North Carolina

Lisl locked the car with Ev sleeping peacefully inside and walked into the truck stop. A couple of times during the last half hour he'd stirred and she'd thought he was going to come around, but he never actually opened his eyes. She hoped he woke up soon so she could get him back to his apartment and get some sleep herself.

She was beat. Almost dawn now and she was verging on twenty-four hours with no sleep. As an undergrad she'd had no trouble pulling all-nighters at exam time, but that had been over a decade ago. She'd become accustomed to her sleep these days.

If nothing else, the endless drive had given her plenty of time to think. Her thoughts had turned inward and she hadn't liked what she'd found. How had she become so warped? How had she allowed Rafe to twist her up into someone who could pour alcohol into an alcoholic's orange juice? She hated Rafe for doing that to her. And simultaneously she felt her insides heat with desire at the thought of him.

God, she was a mess. She was going to need help to straighten herself out after this.

But first she had to get Ev straight.

She shivered in the dawn breeze and her hand shook as she reached for the door to the coffee shop. This must have been her eighth stop since leaving the Pantry in Pendleton, and she'd bought coffee at every one. Too little sleep and too much caffeine.

Tired and wired. She smiled at the phrase. Not bad. She'd have to remember that.

She wondered how many miles she'd put on her car tonight. She'd swung by Will's house first. The lights were on, the door was unlocked, but he wasn't there. So she'd taken 40 north to the interstate and had cruised 95 ever since. Traffic had been light. She'd set the cruise control on fifty-five and settled into the right lane. But the truck traffic was picking up now. Maybe it was time to head back toward Pendleton.

Inside the coffee shop the counter was crowded with truckers having breakfast. She guessed most of them had spent the night in the cabs of those big eighteen-wheelers lined up in the parking lot, but some looked like they'd just come off the road. She'd gained new respect tonight for long-haul drivers.

She was aware of appraising stares from many and even heard a few whistles. She glanced at herself in one of the mirrored walls and saw a pale, haggard-looking woman with circles under her eyes and wind-tangled hair.

They've got to be kidding!

Maybe driving all night not only made truckers tired, but desperate and nearsighted as well.

She poured herself a coffee from the take-out pot, added two sugars, and grabbed a wrapped donut. Another whistle followed her out the door after she'd paid.

Halfway to her car, she froze in the middle of the parking lot. The passenger door was open. But she'd locked the car. She ran toward it. There was a puddle of vomit under the door. The car was empty. Ev was gone.

She set the coffee and donut on the trunk and stepped up on the bumper for a better look. Frantically, she scanned the parking lot but saw no one who looked like Ev. And then, all the way around behind her, she spotted a lone figure, thin, lost-looking, stumbling toward the highway.

She ran after him, shouting his name, and caught up to Ev near the edge of the roadway.

"Lisl?" he said, squinting at her in the dim light. He looked dazed, but he didn't seem drunk anymore. "What are you doing here?"

"I drove you here."

"You? But how? I don't remember. And where are we?"

She could barely hear him over the roar of a passing truck, but the confusion in his eyes said it all.

"I found you in a bar. You were…"

She saw his shoulders slump, his head drop until his chin touched his chest.

"I know. Drunk." With a moan that echoed from the deepest part of him, Ev dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, Lisl, I'm so ashamed." He began to sob.

The utter misery in the sound made Lisl feel as if someone were tearing her heart out of her chest. She sank down beside him and threw her arms around him.

"Don't, Ev. Please don't. It's not your fault."

He didn't seem to hear her. He lifted his head and stared out at the thickening traffic.

"I thought I had it licked. I had my life completely under control. I had a career, I was making progress, I was working on a paper, everything was going perfectly."

"Nothing's changed, Ev. You still have all that to go back to. You can forget about tonight and pick up things where you left off."

"No," he said, still not looking at her. "You don't understand. I'm an alcoholic. I'll always be an alcoholic. I thought I had it under control, smothered, locked away, but I can see now that I'll never really control it. It's like a ticking bomb that can go off at any time. If I can fall off the wagon like this after all these years, when everything's going so well for me, what's going to happen the first time something goes wrong? Don't you see, Lisl? I'm a slave to this thing! I thought I'd won but I didn't. I'm a loser! And I'll go on being a loser! I think I'd rather be dead!"

"No, Ev!" she said. His doomed, hopeless tone frightened her. "Don't talk like that! You didn't fall off the wagon, you were pushed. You didn't lose in a fair fight. You were ambushed."

Finally, he looked at her.

"What are you talking about?"

"Your orange juice. There was alcohol in it."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "That's impossible. I bought it at the A & P. There couldn't be…"

His voice trailed off as he stared at her. Lisl wanted to turn away but couldn't. She had to face this, and face it now.

"How do you know?" he said.

"I know…" The words clogged in her throat, but she squeezed her eyes shut and forced them out. "I know because I put it there."

There. She'd said it. The awful truth was out. Now she had to face the music. She opened her eyes and saw Ev staring at her, face slack, mouth agape.

"No, Lisl," he said in a hushed voice. "You wouldn't—couldn't—do that."

"I did, Ev. And I'm deeply ashamed. That's why I'm here with you now."

"No, Lisl. You have too much integrity to do something like that. Besides, you couldn't have known I was an alcoholic."

"I did, Ev." God, she wanted to run down the highway rather than speak these words. "I followed you to a meeting in the basement of St. James. I knew exactly what you were."

"But how? Why?"

"When I borrowed your keys last week, I… had copies made."

The shock in Ev's eyes was quickly fading to hurt.

"You made copies? After I trusted you with my keys? Lisl, I thought you were a friend!"

"Friend?" she said, suddenly overcome by a need to justify herself. "Friend? Do you call someone who has lunch with the department chairman and whines not to let a woman be tenured before him a friend?"

"Me? Lunch with Dr. Masterson? Where did you hear that? I've never had lunch with Masterson. I never have lunch with anyone."

And in that awful instant Lisl knew that Ev was telling the truth. Rafe had lied to her.

"Oh, God, no!" she moaned.

Why? Why would Rafe lie about Ev? Why had he been so intent on turning her against him? She fought an urge to explain to Ev about Rafe, to make him see that it wasn't her fault, that Rafe had made her do it. But he hadn't made her do anything. He'd lied to her, but that was beside the point. Even if his stories about Ev had been true, that didn't justify spiking Ev's orange juice. There was no justification for that. What was she going to say? The Devil made me do it? There was no one and nothing to hide behind.

She looked at Ev now and saw the profound hurt in his face. She'd have much preferred anger. Hatred, maniacal rage—she could deal with having angered someone. But not hurt. She felt like crawling away on her belly.

"Lord, what's wrong with me?" he said.

"But don't you see, Ev?" she said, desperately searching for a bright side to this. "You can't blame yourself for falling off the wagon. If you'd been left alone, if I hadn't planted that bomb in your refrigerator, if you'd been allowed a free choice, you wouldn't have started drinking again. Don't blame yourself. It's my fault, not yours."

"I almost wish it were my fault," Ev said in a worn, desolate tone.

"No. Don't say that."

He struggled to his feet and she rose with him. He began wandering around her in a jagged circle.

"It's true. I don't have many friends, Lisl. In fact, I don't have any. I was never good at making them when I was sober. That was one of the reasons I drank. But I thought we were friends, Lisl. Well, not really friends, but colleagues at least. I thought you had some respect for me, some consideration. I never dreamed you'd do something like this to me."

"Neither did I, Ev. Neither did I."

"What did I ever do to you to make you hate me so?"

"Oh, Ev, I don't hate you!"

"Lord, how stupid I was!" he said. His voice was rising. "What an idiot! I trusted you! I… liked you. What a fool! What a goddamned fool!"

"No, Ev! I'm the fool. And I am your friend. I'll help you get things right again."

"And what about my work? What about my paper for Palo Alto?"

"What about it?"

"It's gone. Wiped out! Even my backup files. Wiped out! That was no accident! If you had access to my refrigerator, you also had access to my codes. Lisl, how could you? You could have brushed me aside if you wanted to get to the top. You didn't have to crush me like some sort of insect!" He stopped moving and put a hand to his face. A muffled sob escaped. "How could I have been so wrong about you?"

Lisl stood straight, silent, stunned. Ev's paper—gone? Who could have—?

And then she knew. Rafe. He'd spotted Ev's access codes next to the terminal in his apartment. Rafe must have wiped them out. But what could he be thinking? What could be his purpose? Could he believe by any stretch of the imagination that he was helping her?

"Ev, I didn't touch your files."

But Ev wasn't listening. He was wandering away from her, stumbling across the brown grass toward the highway. His words were garbled by the roar of the traffic, but snatches drifted back to her.

"… thought I had it all under control… wrong… fool… actually thought I had something… had nothing… thought I

could rely on Lisl at least… didn't have to squash me… what's the use… can't take it anymore… can't start all over again…"

"Ev! Come back!"

At first she thought he was just trying to get away from her, and she couldn't say she blamed him. Even Lisl didn't feel like getting into a car with herself. He looked as if he was going to get on the shoulder and start thumbing for a ride.

But Ev didn't stop at the shoulder. He kept on walking straight out, into the right lane.

Oh, no! Oh, my God! What's he doing?

Lisl screamed his name, but if he heard her he didn't acknowledge it.

She began running after him. By sheer blind luck the right lane had been empty and he'd crossed it unscathed, but now he was stepping into the middle lane and there was a truck roaring through the half-light from the left. Lisl heard the horn, heard the agonized scream of the brakes blend with her own as the eighteen-wheel juggernaut bore down on Ev's frail figure. Lisl saw him turn toward the hurtling mass of chromed steel. And in the last instant before it thundered into him, he turned his face toward her. For a heartbeat his tortured, miserable eyes locked on hers, and then amid a spray of crimson he dissolved into the front grille of the truck.

Lisl could only stand on the shoulder and scream until her voice gave out and the emergency squad came and someone led her away.

Manhattan

Mr. Veilleur was up at first light, clanking around the kitchen. Bill hadn't realized how hungry he was until the odors began seeping through the apartment. Eggs over easy, bacon, rye toast, and the best coffee in recent memory. All served by Mr. Veilleur himself.

Veilleur didn't eat with them. Instead, he put together a breakfast tray and accompanied the nurse into his wife's bedroom. Bill waited impatiently for his return, looking at his watch, thinking about Lisl, wondering if she'd found Everett Sanders, and what she'd told the poor guy. Bill knew she was probably counting on him for help, but this was more important.

When Veilleur returned to the kitchen half an hour later, Bill cornered him at the sink.

"This person who can tell us what's going on—when can we see her?"

Veilleur glanced at the clock on the wall.

"I can call her in a few minutes. I don't want to risk it while her husband is home."

"Why not?"

"Because," Veilleur said with a wink, "Mrs. Treece and I have been meeting in secret."

Bill wandered back to where Renny was watching Good Morning, America and wondered why he couldn't get a straight answer from anyone.

A few minutes later Mr. Veilleur stuck his head in the room.