Nighttime Is My Time

55

From the front window of his office, his face drawn with concern, Craig Michaelson watched Jean Sheridan as she rushed to her car. She's on the level, he thought. This isn't about a woman obsessed to find her child and fabricating a wild story. Should I warn Charles and Gano? If anything happened to Meredith, it would destroy them both.

He would not, could not, reveal Jean Sheridan's identity to them, but he could at least make Charles aware of the threats to his adopted daughter. It should be his decision as to what he might tell Meredith or how he might try to protect her. If the story about the hairbrush was true, maybe Meredith would remember where she was when she mislaid it or lost it. It might be one way to try to trace the sender of the faxes.

Jean Sheridan had said that if anything happened to her daughter, something I could have prevented, she wouldn't be responsible for what she would do to me, he recalled. Charles and Gano would feel exactly the same way.

His decision made, Craig Michaelson went to his desk and picked up the phone. He did not need to look up the number. Crazy coincidence, he thought as he dialed. Jean Sheridan doesn't live far from Charles and Gano. She's in Alexandria. They're in Chevy Chase.

The phone was picked up on the first ring. "General Buckley's office," a crisp voice said.

"This is Craig Michaelson, a close friend of General Buckley. I need to speak to him on a matter of great importance. Is he there?"

"I'm sorry, sir. The General is abroad on official business. Can someone else help you?"

"No, I'm afraid not. Will you be hearing from the General?"

"Yes, sir. The office is in touch with him regularly."

"Then tell him it is most urgent that he call me as soon as possible." Craig spelled his name and gave the number of his cell phone as well as his office number. He hesitated, then decided not to say that it concerned Meredith. Charles would respond to an urgent message as soon as he received it-he was confident of that.

And, anyhow, Craig Michaelson thought as he replaced the receiver, Meredith is safer at West Point than she would be almost anyplace else.

Then the unwelcome thought came to him that even being at West Point had not been enough to prevent the death of Meredith's natural father, Cadet Carroll Reed Thornton, Jr.