The Maze Catherine Coulter Read Online Free

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Epilogue

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author'southward imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, concern establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

THE MAZE

A Jove Volume / published by arrangement with the writer

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1997 by Catherine Coulter

This book may not be reproduced in whole or function, by mimeograph or any other ways, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and ceremonious liability.

For information address:

The Berkley Publishing Group, a sectionalisation of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. Www site accost is http://www.penguinputnam.com

ISBN: 978-1-1011-9162-0

A Berkley BOOK®

Jove Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

Jove and the "J" blueprint are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

First edition (electronic): September 2001

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WHENEVER I hear writers brag about how their editors don't require any changes to their manuscripts, I'm honestly floored. It'southward an editor's job to be the reader's representative and thus make the manuscript better. And believe me, a manuscript can always be made improve.

I've got to be the luckiest writer e'er. I don't take just i editor, I have a three-person hack-and-maim team, and all three of them give me very timely feedback, all with an center to making my novels the best they can be. My ongoing thanks to Stacy Creamer, Leslie Gelbman, and Phyllis Grann.

I'd also like to thank my husband, Anton, for getting back into the editing saddle subsequently a x-yr hiatus. He'southward the Editor from Hell (in the good sense).

And finally, my continuing thanks to Karen Evans with the red Babylonian harlot hair. Without her incredible mental energy, enthusiasm, and support, I would soon find myself in a distressing country.

Life is good.

1

San Francisco, California

May 15

It WOULDN'T stop, ever.

She couldn't breathe. She was dying. She sat upright in her bed wheezing, trying to control the terror. She turned on the lamp beside her bed. There was goose egg there. No, only shadows that kept the corners night and frightening. But the door was closed. She always closed her bedroom door at nighttime and locked information technology, then tilted a chair confronting it so that its dorsum was snug against the doorknob. Only for good measure.

She stared at that door. It didn't motion. It didn't so much every bit rattle in its frame. The knob did not turn. No ane was on the other side trying to arrive.

No i this time.

She made herself look over toward the window. She'd wanted to put confined on all the windows when she moved in seven months before, but at the concluding minute she decided that if she did she would have fabricated herself a prisoner forever. Instead she'd switched to the 4th-floor apartment. At that place were 2 floors to a higher place her and no balconies. No one could come in through the window. And no 1 would think she was crazy because she lived on the fourth flooring. Information technology was a good move. In that location was no mode she could continue living at home, where Belinda had lived. Where Douglas had lived.

The images were in her heed, always faded, always blurred, but even so there and still menacing: bloody, only simply beyond her power to put them in focus. She was in a large dark space, huge, she couldn't encounter the start or the end of it. Simply there was a lite, a narrow focused light, and she heard a voice. And the screams. Loud, right at that place on her. And there was Belinda, always Belinda.

She was however choking on the fearfulness. She didn't desire to become up, merely she made herself. She had to go to the bathroom. Thank God the bathroom was off the bedroom. Thank God she didn't take to unlock the bedroom door, pull the chair back from beneath the knob, and open it onto the dark hallway.

She flipped the bathroom calorie-free on before she went into the room, then blinked rapidly at the harsh light. She saw movement from the corner of her eye. Her pharynx clogged with terror. She whirled around: It was only herself in the mirror.

She stared at her reflection. She didn't recognize the wild adult female before her. All she saw was fearfulness: the twitching eyes, the sheen of sweat on her forehead, her hair ratty, her sleep shirt clammy with perspiration.

She leaned shut to the mirror. She stared at the pathetic woman whose confront was nevertheless tense with fright. She realized in that moment that if she didn't make some serious changes the woman in the mirror would die.

To the adult female staring back at her, she said, "Seven months ago I was supposed to become study music at Berkeley. I was the all-time. I loved making music, all the way from Mozart to John Lennon. I wanted to win the Fletcher competition and go to Juilliard. But I didn't. Now I'chiliad agape of everything, including the dark."

She turned slowly away from the mirror and walked dorsum into her chamber. She walked to the window, turned the three locks that held it firmly in place, and pulled information technology up. It was difficult. The window hadn't been opened since she'd moved in.

She looked out into the night. There was a quarter moon. At that place were stars flooding the sky. The air was cool and fresh. She could see Alcatraz, Angel Island beyond it. She could see the few lights in Sausalito, just across the bay. The Trans-america building was brightly lit, a beacon in downtown San Francisco.

She turned away and walked to the sleeping accommodation door. She stood there a very long time. Finally she pulled the chair away and set it where it belonged, in the corner abreast a reading light. She unlocked the door. No more, she thought, staring at that door, no more.

She flung it open up. She stepped out into the hallway and stopped, every burgeoning whisper of courage in her freezing as she couldn't help but hear the sound of a creaking lath not more than twenty feet away. The sound came again. No, it wasn't a creak; it was a lighter sound. Information technology seemed to be coming from the minor antechamber by the front door. Who could be toying with her this fashion? Her own breath whooshed out. She was shaking, so frightened she could taste copper in her mouth. Copper? She'd bitten her lip, drawn blood.

How much longer could she live like this?

She dashed forward, turning on every lite every bit she went. At that place was the sound again, this fourth dimension like something lightly bumping against a piece of article of furniture—something that was a lot smaller than she was, something that was afraid of her. And then she saw it scurry into the kitchen. She flare-up out laughing, then slowly sank to the floor, her hands over her face as she sobbed.

2

7 Years Afterwards

FBI Academy

Quantico, Virginia

SHE WOULD become to the summit of that rope if it killed her. And it just might. She could really feel each private muscle in her arms pulling, stretching, feel the burnin

g hurting, the rippling cramps that were very shut to knotting upward on her. If that happened, she'd go sprawling to the mat beneath. Her brain already felt numb, but that was okay. Her brain wasn't climbing. It had only gotten her into this fix. And this was only the second circular. It seemed as if she'd been climbing this rope since she was born.

Just 2 more feet. She could do it. She heard MacDougal'southward steady, unhurried breathing beside her. From the corner of her eye she saw his huge fists comprehend that rope, methodically clamping downwards one fist over the other, not consuming that rope equally he usually did. No, he was keeping pace with her. He wasn't going to leave her. She owed him. This was an important examination. This one really mattered.

"I run across that pathetic look, Sherlock. You're whining fifty-fifty though you're not saying annihilation. Get those twerpy arms working, pull!"

She grabbed that rope simply three inches above her left paw and pulled with all her strength.

"Come on, Sherlock," MacDougal said, hanging beside her, grin at her, the bounder. "Don't wimp out on me at present. I've worked with you for 2 months. You're up to twelve-pound weights. All correct, so you tin only do ten reps on your biceps, but you can do 20-five on your triceps. Come on at present, do it, don't simply hang at that place like a girl."

Whine? She didn't take enough breath to whine. He was goading her, doing a good chore of it actually. She tried to get bellyaching. There wasn't a pissed bone in her trunk, just pain, deep and called-for. Viii more inches, no, more like nine inches. Information technology would have her two years to go those nine inches. She saw her right mitt pull gratuitous of the rope, grab the bar at the very height of the knotted rope that was surely too far for her to make in i haul, simply her right manus closed over that bar and she knew she'd either do it or she wouldn't.

"You lot can exercise it, Sherlock. Remember just final calendar week in Hogan's Aisle when that guy pissed y'all off? Tried to handcuff you and haul you off as a earnest? You lot nearly killed him. Yous wound up having to apologize to him. That took more strength than this. Think mean. Recollect expressionless-meat thoughts. Kill the rope. Pull!"

She didn't recollect of the guy in Hogan'southward Alley; no, she thought of that monster, focused on a face she'd never seen, focused on the soul-deep misery he'd heaped upon her for vii years. She wasn't even aware when she hauled herself up those last inches.

She hung there, breathing hard, clearing her mind of that horrible time. MacDougal was laughing abreast her, not even out of jiff. Merely he was all brute strength she'd told him many times; he'd been born in a gym, nether a pile of free weights.

She'd done it.

Mr. Petterson, their instructor, was standing below them. He was at least two stories below them; she would accept sworn to that. He yelled up, "Practiced going, yous ii. Come on down now. MacDougal, you could accept made it a little faster, like half the time you took. You think yous're on vacation?"

MacDougal shouted down to Petterson since she didn't have a breath in her lungs, "Nosotros're coming, sir!" He said to her, grinning so wide she could run across the gold filling in a molar, "You did good, Sherlock. You have gotten stronger. Thinking mean thoughts helped, too. Let'due south go down and allow two other mean dudes climb this sucker."

She needed no encouragement. She loved going downward. The hurting disappeared when her body knew information technology was almost over. She was down well-nigh as fast as MacDougal. Mr. Petterson waved a pencil at them, then scribbled something on his pad. He looked up and nodded. "That was information technology, Sherlock. You fabricated it inside the time limit. As for you lot, Mac, you were way too deadening, but the sheet says you lot laissez passer so you pass. Next!"

"Slice of cake," MacDougal said, as he handed her a towel to wipe off her face up. "Look at all that sweat on you."

If she'd had the energy, she would accept slugged him.

She was in Hogan'south Alley, the highest-crime-rate metropolis in the U.s.. She knew but about every inch of every building in this town, certainly amend than the actors who were paid eight dollars an hour to play bad guys, improve than many of the bureau employees who were witnesses and robbers alike. Hogan's Alley looked like a real town; it even had a mayor and a postmistress, but they didn't live here. Nobody really lived here or really worked here. It was the FBI'due south ain American town, rife with criminals to exist caught, situations to exist resolved, preferably without killing anyone. Instructors didn't similar innocent bystanders to exist shot.

Today she and 3 other trainees were going to catch a bank robber. She hoped. They were told to keep their optics open up, nil else. It was a parade day in Hogan'south Alley. A festive occasion, and that made it all the more dangerous. There was a crowd of people, drinking sodas and eating hot dogs. It wasn't going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. Chances were that the guy was going to be one of the people trying to alloy in with the crowd, trying to look as innocent as an everyday guy; she'd stake a claim on that. She would have given anything if they'd gotten merely a cursory glance at the robber, but they hadn't. It was a critical situation, lots of innocent civilians milling well-nigh and a bank robber who would probably run out of the bank, a bank robber who was probably very dangerous.

She saw Fizz Alport, an all-night waiter at a truck stop off I-95. He was whistling, looking as if he didn't take a intendance in the world. No, Fizz wasn't the bad guy today. She knew him also well. His confront flushed scarlet when he played the bad guy. She tried to memorize every face, and so she'd be able to spot the robber if he suddenly appeared. She slowly worked the crowd, calm and unhurried, the fashion she'd been trained.

She saw some visitors from the Hill, continuing on the sidelines, watching the agents' part-playing simulations. The trainees would take to be careful. It wouldn't look good for the Bureau if any of them killed a visiting congressman.

It began. She and Porter Forge, a southerner from Birmingham who spoke beautiful French without a hint of a drawl, saw a banking concern employee lurch out of the front doors, yelling at the superlative of his lungs, waving aimlessly at a human who had simply fled through a side door. They got no more than a cursory glimpse. They went afterward him. The perp dove into the crowd of people and disappeared. Considering there were civilians around, they kept their guns holstered. If whatever one of them hurt a civilian, there'd be hell to pay.

Three minutes later they'd lost him.

It was and then that she saw Dillon Savich, an FBI agent and reckoner genius who taught occasional classes hither at Quantico, standing adjacent to a human she'd never seen before. Both were wearing sunglasses and blue suits and blue-gray ties.

She'd know Savich anywhere. She wondered what he was doing here at this particular time. Had he just taught a class? She'd never heard about his being at Hogan'due south Alley. She stared difficult at him. Was it possible that he was the suspect the banking company employee had been waving at as he'd dashed into the crowd? Perhaps. She tried to place him in that brief instant of retention. Information technology was possible. Just matter was that he didn't await at all out of breath, and the bank robber had run out of the bank like a bat out of hell. Savich looked cool and disinterested.

Nah, it couldn't be Savich. Savich wouldn't bring together in the exercise, would he? Of a sudden, she saw a man some distance away from her slowly slip his hand into his jacket. Dear God, he was going for a gun. She yelled to Porter.

While the other trainees were distracted, Savich suddenly moved away from the human being he'd been talking to and ducked behind three civilians. Three other civilians who were shut to the other guy were yelling and shoving, trying to go out of the way.

What was going on here?

"Sherlock! Where'd he go?"

She began to smile even as other agents were pushing and shoving, trying desperately to sort out who was who. She never lost sight of Savich. She slipped into the crowd. Information technology took her nether a infinitesimal to come around him from behind.

There was a woman side by side to him. Information technology was very peradventure about to get a hostage situation. She saw Savich slowly attain out his paw toward the woman. She couldn't take the chance. She drew her gun, came correct up behind him, and whispered in his ear every bit she pressed the nose of the 9mm SIG pistol into the modest of his dorsum, �

��Freeze. FBI."

"Ms. Sherlock, I presume?"

She felt a moment of incertitude, then quashed it. She had the robber. He was simply trying to rattle her. "Listen to me, buddy, that's non part of the script. You're not supposed to know me. Now, get your easily behind your back or you're going to be in big trouble."

"I don't call back so," he said, and began to turn.

The woman next to them saw the gun, screamed, and yelled, "Oh my God, the robber'southward a woman! Here she is! She's going to kill a human. She'southward got a gun! Aid!"

"Become your hands behind your back!" But how was she going to get cuffs on him? The adult female was notwithstanding yelling. Other people were looking now, not knowing what to do. She didn't have much time.

"Do it or I'll shoot you."

He moved and so speedily she didn't have a chance. He knocked the pistol out of her hand with a chop of his right hand, numbing her entire arm, bulled his head into her stomach and sent her flying backward, wheezing for jiff, landing in a mass of petunias in the flower bed abreast the Hogan'south Aisle Post Office.

He was laughing. The bounder was laughing at her. She was sucking in air as hard and fast as she could. Her stomach was on fire. He stuck out his hand to pull her up.

"You're under arrest," she said and slipped a small Lady Colt .38 from her ankle holster. She gave him a big grinning. "Don't move or I guarantee you lot'll regret it. Subsequently I climbed that rope, I know I'chiliad capable of just nearly anything."

His laughter died. He looked at the gun, then at her, up on her elbows in the petunia bed. There were a half dozen men and women standing in that location watching, holding their breath. She yelled out, "Stay dorsum, all of you. This man'due south unsafe. He just robbed the bank. I didn't do it, he did. I'm FBI. Stay dorsum!"

"That Colt isn't Bureau issue."

"Shut upwardly. No, you so much as twitch and I'll shoot y'all."

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