The next thing I remember was being pulled up onto the rocks below the cliffs and helped up some stairs.  There was a car ride. We had to pullover so I could puke.  That’s when I noticed that Hope was in the back seat with me, softly moaning. Then there was another motel room, a cold shower, a few glasses of ice water forced down my throat, a hard bed, a pillow, and sleep.

I woke once more to painful light oozing through slatted window blinds and thirst.  This time, though, I wasn’t tied down.  I rolled over to see the large white letters FBI on the back of someone’s vest seated at the small table by the window.

“Where…?” I managed to croak.

“Relax, Mr. Sapphire, you’re safe now.”  A clean-shaven man in his late twenties turned to face me.  He was African American and looked every bit the FBI man.

“Hope?” I croaked as he motioned to the pitcher of ice water on the bed stand. I shakily grabbed the pitcher, then he came over and poured me a glass.

“Next door,” He replied.  “Safe.  Coffee?”

“I want to see her,” I said, then added, “Black. Lots of sugar,” and sat up to move, then bolted for the bathroom.  After a few minutes of puking and a few dry heaves, I splashed some water on my face and made my way unsteadily back to the cup of coffee the FBI man had left for me on the night table.  Seth was in the room now, standing near the door. “Gray,” I said, suddenly remembering, “my cat…”

“He’s at my place. My wife’s taking care of him,” replied Seth, a stern look on his face. “I thought I told you to lay low.”

“Yeah,” I answered.  “About that.  I didn’t.”

“You’re lucky,” replied Seth, dryly

“You had divers off the pier,” I offered flatly.

“Yeah.  I didn’t, then I did. Lucky for you I got a call from your friend the “good witch” and went to make sure you got home OK.”

I shivered for a moment, feeling the shock of the cold water, and the last forty-eight hours coming slowly to my aching consciousness.  I was lucky. At this, I handed my now empty cup to the FBI man who refilled it from the thermos.

“Thanks,” I nodded, as he crossed the dirty-green carpeted room to hand it to me.

“No problem,” he answered, pleasantly.  “Let me know when you’re hungry.”

I took a long sip, waited to see if I was going to puke again, then took another.  “That might be a while,” I replied.  Then, after another cautious sip, “Where are we?” I asked shifting my eyes from the lip of my styrofoam cup to Seth.

“Out east.  El Cajon Blvd.  By State.”

I knew instantly where we were.  The boulevard had a strip of motels on a derelict section long since abandoned after the freeway was built, not far from State, at the eastern edge of San Diego proper.

“I assume Wilkes and his goons were released?”

“That’s right,” answered the G-man. “That’s why we wanted you to lay low.”

“Yeah, about that – thanks.”

“You always were the most stubborn guy I’ve ever known,” gritted Seth through clenched teeth.  “You could be dead three different ways by now.”  The coffee went down and stayed down, starting to settle my jangled nerves a bit. When it was gone, I motioned to the G-man who took it and refilled it once more.  When that was mostly gone, and I was just thinking that I’d like to go over and see Hope, the door opened and she walked in, hair tied back, wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and a pair of Ray-Ban knock-offs.  I met her half way across the room and we hugged.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed softly, and uncharacteristically.  “I had to try.  I knew it could end like this.  It was wrong for me to involve you.”

Feeling the warmth of that beautiful black-haired woman in my arms, and her honesty, for the first time real honesty, and knowing it was wrong, I held her tight.  “I made my own choices,” I answered flatly.  “And it’s not over yet.”  We held the clasp for another moment, then she pulled away and sat on the corner of the double bed.  I went to sit next to her, but Seth pushed himself between us, and I ended up on the other side of him.

“It’s over for you two.  Listen, you nearly got yourselves killed messing in something you never should have.  Now you’re going to relax while Agent Morrow and I work it.  This is going to be your home for a while.  Get used to it.”

“I’m sorry,” sniffed Hope one more time.  “I’ll do what you want me…”

“The book!!” I jumped up, completely cutting off Hope,  “The album!!”  That psycho Wilkes’ photo album suddenly exploded in my head, but my jumping up was premature, and I ran for the bathroom to puke, but this time it was only a false alarm, and didn’t.  I returned to the room, in a minute, where Agent Morrow was taking notes in a small black notepad from Hope.  I switched back to ice water and Hope and I spilled all we could remember from our muddied minds.  By evening I had held down a soda and was ready to eat.  It wasn’t the dinner with Hope I had hoped for – sandwiches and fries and sodas, but I enjoyed the intimacy of it anyway.  We were chaperoned, but she was with me.  That was the first night.

Three days later, I was bored, and Seth wouldn’t tell me what was going on.  They got us clothes, magazines, and even a couple of candles for Hope, but someone complained to management about the incense. I did calisthenics out by the pool, and helped Hope with a spell for completion, but when it was over, I still felt helpless.   We were dead.  Seth reported to me, after some prodding, that Wilkes and his goons -- and whoever else was backing them -- had bought the idea that we’d washed up somewhere down the coast, and we were dead.  And he gave me no timetable for when we would be alive again.  Hope seemed open to my touch, and I enjoyed it, but on the fourth afternoon of holding hands and reading by the pool, I needed to move.  I needed a plan.

That night, Hope and I had Chinese, lit a big blue candle, which I’d pulled some strings with Seth to get, and watched an old Bogart flick on the classic movie network.   She leaned back in my arms on the bed in her room holding her second glass of wine, and I wished I could be happy, but I knew I wasn’t.  It was that book, Wilkes’ freaky photo album.  Pictures of everyone he’d offed, every “suicide.” Hope’s little Skye.  Her son.  And now me, and her. Or so he thought. Every time I started to relax, it came back to me, nagging me.  Hope and I were together, and maybe a bit of her namesake, too, for a change. Just what I’d dreamed of. We might be days in that shabby motel, or weeks. Or longer. But we would be together, with nothing to come between us. But it wasn’t enough.  It should’ve been, but it wasn’t.  Not anymore. I would have to get away from our babysitters.  I would need a way to get to O.B., ten miles away. And I would need to do it before they realized I was gone.  My chances of success were thin.  And even if I got there, what I could get done wasn’t clear.  But I had to try.  This was personal now. By the time the movie was over, Hope had fallen asleep in my arms.  I took the now empty wine glass that rested on her chest and put it on the night stand, then I gently slid out from under her and pulled the covers up.  The officers, our babysitters, came in three shifts.  A woman for Hope and a guy for me.  The woman who was there then, Angela was her name, an attractive Hispanic woman in her early thirties, had just come on an hour before and would be there until six a.m. She was sitting at the little round table by the window with her laptop, a small lamp lit in the otherwise dark room.

“Good night,” I said.

“Heading back?” she asked, nodding toward my room three doors down the deck.

“Yeah.  Calling it a night,” I responded and opened the door quietly, completely unescorted, sweatshirt in hand and walked out.  But I didn’t go right back to my room.  I needed to see if they’d miss me. Instead I took a seat by the pool out of the easy sightline from Hope’s or my window.  The yard was L-shaped and the pool was around the bend. I pulled my sweatshirt on and waited a good twenty minutes. When I went back to my room, my night guy, his name was Bill, looked up.

“Calling it a night?” he asked.

“Not yet.  I might watch TV for a bit more.  But Hope just passed out.”

“Sounds good.” He responded.  But what he didn’t want to know was where I’d been the last twenty minutes.  This might be my out.

Chapter 16 coming 1/1 (or so…)!!!