Double Cross

Chapter 47

KYLE CRAIG HAD JUST HEARD the latest good news from Washington, DC, when his mother slowly opened the twelve-foot-high front door of the vacation house near Snowmass outside Aspen. When she saw who it was, the old woman fainted like somebody had hit her “off” switch.

Kyle managed to catch dear old Mom before she struck the stonework floor, and he smiled to himself. It was good to be home again, wasn’t it?

Moments later, he was reviving the old woman in the cavernous kitchen of the twelve-thousand-square-foot house. “Are you okay? Miriam? Mother?”

“William?” she groaned when she looked up at the face staring down at her. “Is that William?”

“Now how could that possibly be?” Kyle asked, and he frowned deeply. “For once, just once, use the intelligence that you were given, that you must have been given. Your husband, my father-William-has been dead for a long time. I helped you bury the general in Alexandria. Don’t you remember the glorious day? Sunny skies, crisp cool breeze, smell of burning leaves in the air. Good Lord, you’re losing it, woman. People sent all those flowers-congratulating you on gaining your freedom from that hypocritical tyrant and bastard.”

Suddenly, Kyle clasped both hands to his face. “Oh, my God. My fault! This is all my fault, Mother. The mask! These prosthetic masks are so damn realistic. I look just like Father in this one, don’t I? Finally I’m living up to the old man’s image for me.”

His mother began to scream, and he let her go on for a bit. There was no one around to hear her raving, anyway. His father had never allowed her household help when he was alive, and she still didn’t have any staff. How typical was that? She had all the money in the world and nothing to spend it on.

He watched the pathetic old woman shake and twist her head back and forth. Ironically, her face was more masklike than his, a mask of one family’s tragedy.

“No, it’s just me. It’s Kyle. I’m out and about again. I wanted to see you, of course, to visit. But the other reason I came-I need some money, Mom. Won’t be here for more than a couple of minutes. You’ll have to give me the numbers for the overseas accounts, though.”

After Kyle had finished at the computer in his father’s old office, he felt like a new man. He was wealthy now, nearly four million transferred into his account in Zurich, but even more important, he finally felt free. That didn’t happen just because a man got out of prison. For some prisoners, the sense of freedom never came again, even if they did get to see the sun.

“But I’m free, free at last!” he shouted to the high rafters of the Colorado house. “And I have important things to do. I have so many promises to keep.”