“I probably should,” I agreed. “I’m not sure what happened next, whether the blind men were told what they really felt and if they got mad because they had it all wrong. Maybe it’s better for everybody involved to call an elephant a tree and leave it at that.”
“Give me the box, Alfred.” She was leaning over the table, her left hand extended toward me, her right gripping the butt of the semiautomatic.
I’m in love with someone I shouldn’t be in love with. It’s wrong and I know it’s wrong and still I can’t help myself.
“Nueve let me run off into the woods even though he had no way to find me. I had the only box on the mountain. Then he let me fly off the mountain with both boxes, free to go wherever I wanted and he’d have no way to track me, at least until he could get another box and that would take time, time he really
couldn’t afford because anything could happen, right? There’d be a huge gap where he wouldn’t know where I was and he’d have no way of protecting the Company’s investment. That’s what I am—the investment—and that’s his job: protecting it. So why did he let me go?”
“Why?” Ashley echoed.
“The answer is the elephant, Ashley. The answer is he didn’t let me go. I never escaped from the Company, except once, when I gave you the slip on the plane.”
“That’s crazy,” she said. “Alfred, you’re . . . you’re being paranoid. That’s understandable, but I told you—”
“Right. I own you. I’m your assignment.”
“No, not like that. Not that way.” She shook her golden hair and it swirled around her tanned face, which didn’t look so tan right then.
“Who assigned you to me, Ashley? Was it Director Smith or the Operative Nine?”
I pressed the red button. Her whole body went rigid as the display sprang to life: 30 . . . 29 . . . 28 . . . 27 . . .
“See, I’m pretty confident I know,” I said. “So confident I’m willing to bet my life on it.”
She lunged across the table at me. I sprang from the chair and it thumped onto the germy carpet.
19 . . . 18 . . . 17 . . . 16 . . .
“Who is it, Ashley? Me or Nueve? Who really owns you?”
I tossed the box at her. She dropped the gun and caught it in both hands. Her shoulders shook as her thin fingers danced over the keypad.
The red light went black.
I picked up the fallen chair and sat down. She slumped into hers in front of the door, the gun lying forgotten at her feet as she cradled the box like a newborn baby in against her chest.
“Now tell me some bull crap about that being a lucky guess,” I said. “In love with someone you shouldn’t be. I guess so. Guessed wrong the first time, guessed right this time.”
“It isn’t what you think,” she whispered. She wouldn’t look at me.
“You don’t have to explain anything, Ashley.”
I got up, went into the bathroom, and came back out with a few sheets of toilet paper, which I tried to hand to her. She said, “I won’t wipe my face with toilet paper, Alfred.”
I pushed the paper into my pocket. “Okay.”
“I really do want to protect you,” she said. “And I really do—I really do have feelings for you. That’s the reason, Alfred. The only reason I agreed to any of this.”
“Where is Nueve?” I asked.
“I have no idea—” she started. Then she stopped herself and said, “On his way.”
“How soon?”
“An hour, maybe two—”
“I want a head start.”