Extreme Measures by Michael Palmer Read Free Book Online

emotionally drained, and physically flabby. It took just ten days of vacation there for her to decide not to return for her fifth year of teaching special education at Montgomery High School. Now, at thirty, she was in the best shape of her life—tanned and solid. Her psyche, too, had responded to the peaceful magic of the Caribbean. And in part at Scott’s urging, she had sent off a couple of inquiry letters to graduate schools in the States.
    But now, all her plans were on hold. After years of nearly weekly postcards and at least once-a-month calls from her brother, more than six weeks had passed without a word from him. She had waited to act, perhaps longer than she should have; she reasoned that his globe-hopping job, setting up communications networks for a company in Virginia, could well have sent him to some inaccessible place. But now that April 3 had come and gone, and Delta had assured her that Scott had not canceled his longstanding reservation for arriving in the Caribbean on that date, there was no way she could remain passive.
    Her isolation on Little Cayman had been self-imposed. But a byproduct of that exile, of her commitment to learning who Laura Enders was before allowing herself to choose another career or to fall in love again, was that Scott was all she had.
    He was twenty-two and she fourteen, when a kid, high on pills and beer, had jumped a median strip and snuffed out the lives of their parents. Until that day, she and her brother had never formed any real bond or friendship. Nevertheless, Scott had refused the offer of distant cousins to have her move to Kansas City and had instead taken a hardship discharge from the Special Forces and returned home. The next eight years of his life, including Laura’s four years at the university, had been focused on her.
    An accident … a prolonged vacation in some out-of-the-way spot … a romance … a screw-up in themails … For perhaps the hundredth time Laura ticked through possible explanations for Scott’s failure to contact her. None of them eased her foreboding.
    It had been more than five months since his last vacation on Little Cayman, and it was on the final afternoon of that visit that they had made arrangements for his April 3 return. Then they had taken the club’s small skiff and motored around Southwest Point to dive the sheer coral wall at Bloody Bay. The images from that day were still as clear in Laura’s mind as the water in which they dived. It was a double-tank, decompression dive to 120 feet. The day was sparkling and warm, the visibility 200 feet or more. A pair of enormous eagle rays had glided by, near enough to be stroked. Soon after, a dozen or more curious dolphins knifed past and then returned again and again, tumbling and spinning through the crystal sea. It was as close to a perfect dive as Laura ever expected to have.
    The next morning Scott had flown back home to D.C. And soon after, his usual weekly postcards began arriving—this time from Boston.
    “… Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign in preparation for our landing at Dulles International Airport. Please be sure that all carry-on baggage is securely stowed beneath your seat or in an overhead compartment, that your tray tables are locked, and that your seat-backs are in their full upright position.…”
    The businessman who had spent the first half hour of the flight trying to impress Laura with his attainments smiled over at her from the aisle seat and winked. Laura managed a thin smile and nod in return. During three years of working at a resort, she had been forced to hone her skills at being open and friendly to men without encouraging them in the least. But this day she was far too worried to be cordial.
    Despite their frequent contact, she realized now that Scott had shared surprisingly little of his life with her. He knew movies and music, played chess wellenough to beat her without paying much attention, and