Lucidity

Chapter 16 - Friends of Friends

“You will release my son, immediately!” came the shrill tones of a woman’s voice from outside his door.

He closed his eyes once more. Not Grace. His mother.

Fourteen years she’d ignored him. Who knew gaining her attention was as simple as drowning his father?

Not that Renee Redding or anyone else living knew that Lukas had been with his father in the pool that sultry July day. They all thought Earl had drunk too much, flipped his floating lounge chair and drowned on his own. No one had been upset enough to challenge the obvious verdict of accidental death.

Especially not Lukas. After his father died, his mother moved her base of operations home, stayed with him most of the time, even sometimes came to him at night when he cried out with the night terrors that had plagued him all his life.

Curled up beside her, her arms wrapped around him, he’d inhale her scent of Chanel Number Five and Plumeria moisturizer and he would drift off to sleep. Like a baby.

“I said, remove those restraints. Now!”

“Mrs. Redding.” Another woman’s voice. Dr. Eve—the one person who actually listened to Lukas and cared about what he said, what he felt. “Your son tried to attack me last night with no provocation. I can’t—”

“You can and you will. I will not have you treating my son this way.”

Lukas inhaled. The odors of Cuban cigars, men’s aftershave, single malt Scotch, and sex all mixed with his mother’s scent. Ahh. She’d been with the Senator, the Chairman of the Finance Reform Committee.

Since she’d temporarily lost Lukas’s computer analytic services four years ago, she’d returned to more traditional forms of coercion and information seeking, but with nowhere near the success rate he had given her.

Must have hopped the first shuttle from DC when she heard, not even bothered to stop at her Georgetown apartment to change. After all, a mother’s love for her son’s welfare took priority over politics.

Especially when that son had discovered the weakness in the Senator’s campaign strategy and had the secret locked away in his brain. A brain that was rather blurry right now.

“Have you found this Moran woman yet?” his mother continued.

Eve’s sharp intake of breath whistled through the air. Lukas held still, his eyes closed, his breathing regular as if he were in a deep sleep. “Not here. He doesn’t know.”

“Just untie him and we’ll talk.”

Soft hands, the scent of jasmine, the rustle of silk approached. The click of a key, the ratcheting of the leather restraints being undone, the sheepskin beneath them carefully peeled away from his wrists and ankles.

Eve had given in to his mother’s demands, freed him. But he smelled her fear, felt the slight tremor in her exquisitely manicured fingers. Why was she so frightened of him? There had to be a reason, but his foggy brain wouldn’t focus.

Then he remembered. He sat bolt upright, his vision blurring with black spots, his head spinning. Eve jumped back, the color draining from her face.

“Where is she?” he demanded, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Where’s Grace? Why are you hiding her from me?”

His mother put her hands on her hips, marring the lines of her Donna Karan power-crimson wool suit. Her lips tightened into thin lines of disappointment. Lukas swallowed hard, his mouth felt like cotton after the drugs, and looked at the floor.

“Why?” he repeated in a softer voice.

“I’m not hiding her from you, Lukas,” Eve said.