Son of the Morning Read online

  She still had the computer.

  Computer. Kristian.

  Oh, God. Kristian.

  She had to warn him. If Parrish had any inkling Kristian knew about the files, much less part of their content, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill the boy.

  Pay telephones, thank God, were far more plentiful and convenient than ATMs. She fished some change out of the bag, desperately clutching the coins in her wet palm as she crossed one corner and hurried up the block, then turned at another street, wanting to put plenty of distance between her and the two muggers before she stopped. God, the streets were so deserted, something she would never have imagined in a metro area the size of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Her footsteps echoed; her breathing sounded ragged and uneven, unnaturally loud. The rain dripped from eaves and awnings, and the buildings towered high and close over her, with the occasional lighted window indicating some poor office prisoner pulling an all-nighter. She was a world removed from them, all dry and warm in their steel and glass cocoons, while she hurried through the rain and tried to be invisible.

  Finally, panting, she stopped at a pay phone. It wasn’t in a booth, they seldom were now, just a phone with three small pieces of clear plastic forming shelters on each side and overhead. At least it had a shelf for her to rest the bag on, propping it in place with her body while she held the receiver between her head and shoulder and fumbled a quarter into the slot. She couldn’t remember Kristian’s number but her fingers did, dancing in the familiar pattern without direction from her brain.

  The first ring was still buzzing in her ear when it abruptly stopped and Kristian’s voice said, “Hello?” He sounded tense, unusually alert for this time of night—or rather, morning.

  “Kris.” The word was nothing more than a croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Kris, it’s Grace.”

  “Grace, my God! Cops are everywhere, and they said—” He stopped suddenly and lowered his voice, his whisper forceful and almost fierce. “Are you all right? Where are you?”

  All right? How could she be all right? Ford and Bryant were dead, and there was a great empty hole in her chest. She would never be all right again. She was, however, physically unharmed, and she knew that was what he was asking. From his question, she also knew that Parrish had indeed called the police; the quiet neighborhood must be in a turmoil.

  “I saw it happen,” she said, her throat so constricted that her voice sounded like a stranger’s, flat and empty. “They’re going to say I did it, but I didn’t, I swear. Parrish did. I saw him.”

  “Parrish? Parrish Sawyer, your boss? That Parrish? Are you sure? What happened?”

  She waited until the barrage of questions had halted. “I saw him,” she repeated. “Listen, have they questioned you yet?”

  “A little. They wanted to know what time you left here.”

  “Did you mention the documents I’m working on?”

  “No.” His voice was positive. “They asked why you were here, and I said you brought your modem over for me to repair. That’s it.”

  “Good. Whatever you do, don’t mention the documents. If anyone asks, just say you didn’t see any papers at all.”

  “Okay, but why?”

  “So Parrish won’t kill you, too.” Her teeth began to chatter. Oh, God, she was so cold, the light wind cutting through her wet clothes. “I’m not kidding. Promise me you won’t let anyone know you have any idea I was working on anything. I don’t know what’s in these papers, but he intends to get rid of everyone who knows of their existence.”

  There was silence on the line, then Kristian said in bewilderment, “You mean he doesn’t want us to know about that Knight Templar guy you were trying to track down? He lived seven centuries ago, if he existed at all! Who the hell cares?”

  “Parrish does.” She didn’t know why, but she intended to find out. “Parrish does,” she repeated, her voice trailing off.

  She listened to his breathing, the sound quick and shallow, amplified by the phone. “Okay, I’ll keep my mouth shut. I promise.” He paused. “Do you need any help? You can borrow my car—”

  She almost laughed. Despite everything, the sound bubbled up in her throat and hung there, unable to work its way past restricted muscles. Kristian’s mechanical monument to testosterone was a sure attention-getter, the one thing she most wanted to avoid. “No, thanks,” she managed to say. “What I need is money, but the ATM I just tried ran out of cash, and I was mugged as soon as I walked away from it anyway.”

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  He doubted that she was mugged? “What?” She was so tired she could barely move or think, but surely he couldn’t mean that.

  “I doubt it was out of money,” he said. Suddenly his voice sounded older, taking on the cool intensity that meant he was thinking of computers. “How much did you take out?”

  “Three hundred. Isn’t that the limit for each transaction? I remember the banker said something about three hundred dollars when we set up our account.”

  “Not three hundred per transaction,” Kristian patiently explained. “Three hundred per day. You could make as many transactions as you wanted, until the total reached three hundred for that twenty-four-hour period. Each bank sets its own limit, and the limit for your bank is three hundred.”

  His explanation fell on her like words of doom. Even if she found another ATM, she wouldn’t be able to get more money until this time tomorrow morning. She couldn’t wait that long. If the police could freeze her account, they would definitely have it done by then. And she needed to get out of Minneapolis, to find some safe hiding place where she could work on the documents and find out just why Parrish had killed Ford and Bryant. To do that, she had to have money; she had to have access to a phone, to resource material.

  “I’m sunk,” she said, her tone leaden.

  “No!” He almost yelled the word. More softly he repeated, “No. I can fix that. How much is your balance?”

  “I don’t know exactly. A couple of thousand.”

  “Find another ATM,” he instructed. “I’ll get into your bank’s computer, change the limit to… say, five thousand. Empty out your account, then I’ll change the limit back to the original amount. They’ll never know how it happened, I promise.”

  Hope bloomed inside her, a strange sensation after those past nightmare hours. All she had to do was find another ATM, something easier said than done when she was on foot.

  “Look in the phone directory,” he was saying. “Every branch of your bank will have an ATM. Pick the closest one and go there.”

  Of course. How simple. Normally she would have thought of that herself, and the fact that she hadn’t was a measure of her shock and exhaustion.

  “Okay.” Thank heavens, there was still a directory chained to the shelf. She opened the protective cover. Well, there was part of a directory, at least, and it contained the most important part, the Yellow Pages. She thumbed through them until she reached “Banks,” and located her own bank, which had sixteen of those so-called convenient locations.

  She estimated it would take her half an hour to get to the nearest one. “I’m going now,” she said. “I’ll be there in thirty to forty-five minutes, unless something happens.” She could be picked up by the police, or mugged again, or Parrish and his goons might be out cruising the city, looking for her. None of the things that could happen to her would be pleasant.

  “Call me,” Kristian said urgently. “I’ll get into the bank’s computer now, but call me and let me know if everything went okay.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  The thirty-minute walk took almost an hour. She was exhausted, and the laptop gained weight with each step she took. She had to hide every time a car went past, and once a patrol car sped through an intersection just ahead of her, lights whirring in eerie silence. The spurt of panic left her weak and shaking, her heart pounding.

  Her familiarity with the downtown area was limited to specific destinations. She had lived, gone to scho