Текст книги "Missing You"

Автор книги: Harlan Coben

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Chapter 43

When Dana Phelps saw the flames, she hurried down the awful path she had taken too many times before.

Where, she wondered, would be the last place he would look for her?

Back with the boxes.

It was odd about what we consider luck, fate, timing. Her husband, Jason, had grown up in Pittsburgh and was an avid Steelers, Pirates, and Penguins fan. He loved cheering his teams, but he understood better than most how random the whole world was. If there had been full replay rules with HD cameras back in the seventies, many believed that we would see the ball hit the ground before Franco Harris made the catch on the Immaculate Reception. Did it? If so, would the Steelers have then lost that game and not won four straight Super Bowl titles?

Jason loved asking questions like this. He didn’t care about the big stuff—the work ethic, the schooling, the training. Life, he suspected, hinges too often on chance. We all want to convince ourselves that it is about hard work and education and perseverance, but the truth is, life is much more about the fickle and the random. We don’t want to admit it, but we are controlled by luck, by timing, by fate.

In her case, the luck, the timing, the fate had been blood on Bo’s paws.

Checking the dog for injuries had slowed Reynaldo down just a few seconds, but it was long enough. It was long enough for her to drop the phone and run into the kitchen and realize that he would quickly find her because of her bloody footprints.

So what did she do?

There was no time to consider a bunch of cute plans or alternatives. The idea was there and, if she did say so herself, near genius. She walked straight to the cellar door, opened it and tossed her socks down the stairs.

Then, fully barefoot, she managed to hop-sprint outside. She made it to the woods and ducked down to hide. A few seconds later, Julio appeared.

As soon as the fire started, as soon as the flames began to crawl up the sides of the wooden frame, Dana realized that they were covering their tracks. It was all coming to an end. So she ran down the path, remembering that when she had first arrived, when she was first forced to take off her yellow sundress, she had seen something that troubled her.

Other clothing.

The sun was setting fast. Darkness had already started to settle in when she reached the clearing. There was a small tent where Reynaldo hung out. She quickly looked inside. There was a sleeping bag and a flashlight. No phone. Nothing she could use as a weapon.

Of course, she still had the axe.

She took the flashlight although she didn’t dare turn it on yet. The clearing in front of her was flat. The box where she had been forced to live for . . . again, she had no idea how long . . . was camouflaged. Even she couldn’t remember exactly where it was. She walked over, bent down, and finally found the open padlock. Amazing. Without the padlock, she would have passed right over the door.

A crazy idea darted through her head—get into the box and hide there. Who in their right mind would look for her there? But then again, who in their right mind would ever, even if it meant helping themselves, voluntarily go underground again?

Not her.

This was all beside the point anyway. The house was burning.

Darkness had fallen now. She could barely see. She started to crawl across the grass, still not sure what she should do here. She had gone about ten yards when her hand hit something metallic.

Another padlock.

This one was locked.

It took Dana two blows with the axe to break the lock open. The door was heavier than she would have imagined. She needed all her strength to pull it up off the dirt.

She peered down into the dark hole. There was no sound, no movement.

Behind her the blaze was still burning. No choice now. She had to risk it.

Dana turned on the flashlight. She pointed it down to the box and gasped out loud.

The sobbing woman looked up at her. “Please don’t kill me.”

Dana nearly started to cry. “I’m here to save you, not hurt you. Can you get yourself out?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Dana crawled another ten yards and found yet another padlock. She broke that one open on the first try. The man inside was also weeping and too weak to climb out. She didn’t wait. She moved toward a third box and found the padlock. She broke it, opened the door and didn’t even bother checking inside. She moved to a fourth box.

She had just cracked that lock with her axe when she saw headlights by the farmhouse.

Someone had come up the drive.

 • • •

Clem opened the gates. Then he got back behind the wheel.

It wasn’t until they were halfway up the drive that Titus saw the flames.

He smiled. This was a good thing. If he couldn’t see the fire from the road, there was an excellent chance that nobody would notify the fire station. It gave him plenty of time to finish up and clear out.

Reynaldo was up ahead, dragging a body toward the flames.

“What the hell,” Clem said. “Isn’t that Rick?”

Titus calmly put the muzzle of the gun against the back of Clem’s head and fired one shot. Clem slumped forward on the wheel.

This had all begun with Titus and Reynaldo. That was how it would end too.

Brandon cried out in shock. Titus swung the gun back toward the kid’s chest. “Get out of the car.”

Brandon stumbled out. Reynaldo was there to greet him. Titus followed. For a few seconds, the three of them stood there together and watched the flames.

“Is his mother dead?” Titus asked.

“I think so.”

Brandon let out an agonizing, primitive cry. He lunged toward Reynaldo, hands raised. Reynaldo stopped him with a deep punch in the gut. Brandon fell to the ground, gasping for air.

Titus pointed the gun at the boy’s head. To Reynaldo he asked, “Why did you say ‘I think so’?”

“Because I think she was in the basement. Like I said.”

“But?”

Bo’s bark shattered the night air.

Titus grabbed a flashlight and moved it around until he located Bo standing on the right. The old dog was looking down the path to the boxes and barking like mad.

“Maybe,” Titus said, “you were wrong about her being in the basement.”

Reynaldo nodded.

Titus handed him the flashlight. “Start down the path. Have the gun ready. Shoot her as soon as she reveals herself.”

“She could be hiding,” Reynaldo said.

“Not for long she won’t be.”

Brandon yelled, “Mom! Don’t come this way! Run!”

Titus pushed the gun into Brandon’s mouth, silencing him. With as loud a voice as he could muster, he shouted, “Dana? I have your son.” He hesitated before adding, “Come out or he will suffer.”

There was silence.

He called out again. “Okay, Dana. Listen to this.”

Titus pulled the gun out of Brandon’s mouth. He aimed for the boy’s knee and pulled the trigger.

Brandon’s scream shattered the night.

 • • •

Kat stayed on the road, making sure not to slow down and give the SUV a bead on her. She was in constant phone contact with the FBI now. She gave them the locale and pulled off the road about a hundred yards up.

“Good work, Detective,” ADIC Keiser told her. “Our people should be there in fifteen or twenty minutes. I want to make sure we have enough men to take them all down.”

“They have Brandon, sir.”

“I know that.”

“I don’t think we should wait.”

“You can’t just barge in. They have hostages. You have to wait for our team, let them get a dialogue going. You know the drill.”

Kat didn’t like it. “With all due respect, sir, I’m not sure there’s time. I would like permission to go in on my own. I won’t engage unless absolutely necessary.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Detective.”

That wasn’t a no.

She hung up the phone before he could say more and put it on silent. Her gun was in its holster. She left the car where it was and started back. She would have to be careful. There could be security cameras at the gate, so she entered from the side and hopped the fence. It was dark now. The woods were thick. She used her iPhone—thank goodness the guy with the Ford Fusion had a built-in charger—as a dim flashlight.

Kat was walking slowly through the trees, when up ahead, she saw the flames.

 • • •

Dana managed to get another box open when she heard Brandon shout:

“Mom! Don’t come this way! Run!”

She froze at the sound of her son’s voice.

Then she heard Titus: “Dana? I have your son.”

Her whole body began to shake.

“Come out or he will suffer.”

Dana almost dropped the heavy door, but the first woman she’d helped was suddenly beside her. The woman took the door from Dana and let it drop to the ground. Someone inside the box groaned.

Dana started toward the path.

“Don’t,” the woman whispered to her.

Confused, dazed, Dana turned toward the voice. “What?”

“You can’t listen to him. He’s just playing games with you. You need to stay here.”

“I can’t.”

The woman put her hands on Dana’s cheeks and made her look her straight in the eye. “I’m Martha. What’s your name?”

“Dana.”

“Dana, listen to me. We need to get the rest of these boxes open.”

“Are you out of your mind? He has my son.”

“I know that. And once you show yourself, he’ll kill you both.”

Dana shook her head. “No, I can save him. I can make a trade—”

Titus’s voice cut through the night like a reaper scythe. “Okay, Dana, listen to this.”

The two women turned as the gunshot blasted through the still night air.

Dana’s son’s scream got lost in her own.

Before she could react more, before she could surrender and save her son, this woman—this Martha—tackled her to the ground.

“Get off me!”

Martha stayed on top of her. Her voice was remarkably calm. “No.”

Dana bucked and fought, but Martha held on with everything she had.

“He’ll kill you both,” Martha whispered in her ear. “You know that. For your boy’s sake, you can’t run out there.”

Dana started twisting and turning in panic. “Let me go!”

And then Titus’s voice again: “Okay, Dana. Now I’m going to shoot his other knee.”

 • • •

Kat was moving forward a few trees at a time, making sure per protocol that she stayed out of sight, when she heard the man threaten Brandon.

She needed to move faster.

A few second later, when Kat heard the gunshot and Brandon’s scream, she tossed all protocol to the wind. She veered from the woods onto the main drive where she could run at full speed. She would, of course, be easy pickings if anyone saw her, but that didn’t seem like such a big deal right now.

She had to save Brandon.

Her gun was in her right hand. Her breath echoed in her ears as though someone had pressed seashells against them.

Up ahead, she saw the SUV. A man holding a gun stood next to it. Brandon was on the ground, writhing in pain.

“Okay, Dana,” the man shouted. “Now I’m going to shoot his other knee.”

Kat was still too far away for a shot. She yelled, “Freeze!” without slowing down her sprint.

The man turned toward her. For a half second, no more, he looked perplexed. Kat kept running. The man swung the gun toward her. Kat dove to the side. But the guy still had her in his sights. He was about to pull the trigger when something made him stop.

Brandon had grabbed his leg.

Annoyed, the man pointed the gun toward Brandon.

Kat was ready now. She didn’t bother shouting out another warning.

She pulled the trigger and saw the man’s body fly backward.

 • • •

From a spot midway through the path, Reynaldo was able to hear the screams in stereo. From behind him, the sound came from the boy who’d just been shot. In front of him, he heard the more anguished cry of a mother who was paying the price for trying to escape.

Now he knew for certain where she was.

The boxes.

He wouldn’t let her escape again.

Reynaldo rushed down into the clearing that he had called home for these many months. It was dark, but he had the flashlight. He cast the beam to his right, then his left.

Dana Phelps was lying on the ground about twenty yards away. There was another woman—it looked like Number Eight—on top of her.

He didn’t ask why Number Eight was out of the box or how. He didn’t call out or give them any kind of warning. He simply raised his gun and took aim. He was about to squeeze the trigger, when he heard a guttural, primitive shout.

Someone jumped on his back.

Reynaldo stumbled, dropping the flashlight but holding on to the gun for dear life. He reached behind him, clawing for whoever was on his back. Someone else picked up the flashlight and struck him in the nose. Reynaldo howled in pain and fear. His eyes watered.

“Get off me!”

He reared back, trying desperately to buck the person off his back. It didn’t work. An arm snaked around his enormous neck and started to squeeze.

They were everywhere, swarming all over him.

One bit his leg. Reynaldo could feel the teeth digging into his flesh. He tried to shake his leg loose, but that just made him lose balance. He teetered before falling hard to the ground.

Someone jumped on his chest. Someone else grabbed his arm. It was as if they were demons coming out of the dark.

Or out of the box.

Panic engulfed him.

The gun. He still had the gun.

Reynaldo tried to raise his gun, tried to blast all these demons straight back to hell, but someone was still holding his arm down.

They wouldn’t stop attacking him.

There were four of them. Or five. He didn’t know. They were relentless, like zombies.

“No!”

He could make out their faces now. There was the bald man in Number Two. The fat guy in Number Seven. That man from Number Four had joined in too. Someone smashed him in the nose with the flashlight again. The blood started flowing down into his mouth. His eyes started rolling back.

With a desperate roar, Reynaldo started pulling the trigger on the gun. The bullets dug harmlessly into the ground, but the shock and suddenness made whoever was holding his arm loosen their grip.

One last chance.

Reynaldo used all his strength to pull free.

He swung his gun up in the air.

In the light of the moon, Reynaldo could see the silhouette of Dana Phelps rising above him. He started to take aim, but it was too late.

The axe was already on its way toward him.

Time slowed.

Somewhere in the distance, Reynaldo heard Bo bark.

And then there was no sound at all.

Chapter 44

The full accounting would take weeks, but here was what they learned in the first three days:

Thirty-one bodies had so far been dug up at the farm.

Twenty-two were men, nine were women.

The oldest was a seventy-six-year-old man. The youngest was a forty-three-year-old woman.

Most had died of gunshot wounds to the head. Many were malnourished. A few had severe injuries beyond the head wounds, including severed body parts.

The media came up with all kinds of terrible headlines. CLUB DEAD. THE DATE FROM HELL. DOA CUPID. WORST DATE EVER. None was funny. None reflected the pure, undiluted horror of that farm.

The case was no longer Kat’s. The FBI took it over. That was fine with her.

Seven people, including Dana Phelps, had been rescued. They were all treated at a local hospital and released within two days. The exception was Brandon Phelps. The bullet wound had shattered his kneecap. He would need surgery.

All of the perpetrators of this horror were dead, with one notable exception: The leader, Titus Monroe, had survived Kat’s bullet.

He was, however, in critical condition—in a medically induced coma and on a respirator. But he was still alive. Kat didn’t know how she felt about that. Maybe if Titus Monroe woke up, she would have a better idea.

 • • •

A few weeks later, Kat visited Dana and Brandon at their home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

As she pulled into the driveway, Brandon hobbled out on crutches to greet her. She got out of the car and hugged him, and for a moment or two, they just held on to each other. Dana Phelps smiled and waved from the front lawn. Yep, Kat thought, still stunning. A little thinner perhaps, her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, but now her beauty seemed to emanate more from resiliency and strength than privilege or good fortune.

Dana lifted a tennis ball into the air. She was playing fetch with her two dogs. One was a black Lab named Chloe.

The other was an old chocolate Lab named Bo.

Kat walked toward her. She remembered what Stacy had said about Kat being quick to judge. Stacy had been right. Intuition was one thing. Preconceived notions—about Dana, about Chaz, about Sugar, about anyone—were another.

“I’m surprised,” Kat said to her.

“Why’s that?”

“I would think the dog would bring bad memories.”

“Bo’s only mistake was loving the wrong person,” Dana said, tossing the ball across the green grass. There was a hint of a smile on her face. “Who can’t relate to that?”

Kat smiled too. “Good point.”

Bo sprinted toward the ball with all he had. He picked it up in his mouth and jogged toward Brandon. Leaning on one crutch, Brandon lowered himself and patted Bo’s head. Bo dropped the ball, wagged his tail, and barked for him to throw it again.

Dana shaded her eyes. “I’m glad you could come out, Kat.”

“Me too.”

The two women watched Brandon with the dogs.

“He’ll always have a limp,” Dana said. “That’s what the doctors told me.”

“I’m sorry.”

Dana shrugged. “He seems okay with it. Proud even.”

“He’s a hero,” Kat said. “If he hadn’t broken into that website, if he hadn’t somehow known you were in trouble . . .”

She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t have to.

“Kat?”

“Yes?”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

Dana turned to her. “I want to hear everything. The whole story.”

“Okay,” Kat said, “but I’m not sure it’s over yet.”

 • • •

When Kat arrived back home on 67th Street the day after they brought down the farm, Jeff was sitting on the stoop.

“How long have you been waiting here?” she asked him.

“Eighteen years,” he said.

Then Jeff begged her for forgiveness.

“Don’t,” she said.

“What?”

But how could she explain? As Sugar had said, she would have given or forgiven anything. She had him back. That was all that mattered.

“Just don’t, okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

It was as though some invisible giant had grabbed ahold of eighteen years ago in one hand, grabbed ahold of today in the other, pulled them together and then sutured them up. Sure, Kat still had questions. She wanted to know more, but at the same time, it no longer seemed to matter. Jeff began to fill her in bit by bit. Eighteen years ago, there was an issue at home, he explained, forcing him to go back to Cincinnati. He foolishly believed that Kat wouldn’t wait for him or it wouldn’t be fair to ask her to wait, some chivalrous nonsense. Still, he had hoped to come back to her and, yep, beg her forgiveness, but then he got into that fight at the bar. The drunk boyfriend whose nose he had broken was mobbed up. They wanted revenge, so he ran and got a new ID. Then he got Melinda’s mother pregnant and . . .

“Life got away from me, I guess.”

Kat could see that he wasn’t telling all, that he was shading the story for reasons still unknown. But she didn’t rush it. Oddly enough, the reality was better than she could have imagined. They had both learned much over the painful years, but perhaps the greatest lesson was also the simplest: Cherish and take care of what you value. Happiness is fragile. Appreciate every moment and do everything you can to protect it.

The rest of life, in a sense, is background noise.

They had both been hurt and heartbroken, but now it felt as though it had been meant to be, that you can’t reach this high without at one point being that low, that she and Jeff had to go their separate ways so that, surreal as it sounded, they could end up together in this better place.

“And here we are,” she said, kissing him tenderly.

Every kiss was like that now. Every kiss was like that tender one on the beach.

The rest of the world could wait. Kat would get her revenge on Cozone. She didn’t know how or when. But one day, she would knock on Cozone’s door and finish this for her father.

Just not right now.

Kat asked for a leave from the force. Stagger gave it to her. She needed to get out of the city. She rented a place in Montauk, near Jeff’s house. Jeff insisted that Kat stay with them, but that felt like too much too soon. Still, they spent every second together.

Jeff’s daughter, Melinda, had been wary at first, but once she saw Kat and Jeff together, all doubts fled. “You make him happy,” Melinda told Kat with tears in her eyes. “He deserves that.”

Even the old man, Jeff’s former father-in-law, welcomed her into the fold.

It felt right. It felt wonderful.

Stacy visited for a weekend. One night, when Jeff was barbecuing for them in the yard, both women holding wineglasses and watching the sun set, Stacy smiled and said, “I was right.”

“About?”

“The fairy tale.”

Kat nodded, remembering what her friend had said so long ago. “But even better.”

 • • •

A month later, Kat was lying on his bed, her body still humming from the pleasure, when the fairy tale came to an end.

She hugged the pillow postcoital and smiled. She could hear Jeff singing in the shower. The song had become the ultimate delight and the ultimate dreaded earworm, never leaving them:

“I ain’t missing you at all.”

Jeff couldn’t carry a tune if you tattooed it on him. God, Kat thought with a shake of her head. Such a beautiful man with such a horrible voice.

She was still feeling deliciously lazy when she heard her cell phone ring. She reached over and hit the green answer button and said, “Hello?”

“Kat, it’s Bobby Suggs.”

Suggs. The old family friend. The detective who had worked her father’s homicide.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey. You got a minute?”

“Sure.”

“You remember you asked me to look into those old fingerprints? The ones we found at the murder scene.”

Kat sat up. “Yes.”

“I gotta tell you. It was a pain in the ass. That’s why it took so long. The warehouse couldn’t find them. No one had the results anymore. I guess Stagger must have thrown them away. I had to run them again.”

“Did you find the fingerprints?” she asked.

“I got a name, yeah. I don’t know what it means, though.”

The shower had stopped running.

“What’s the name?” she asked.

And then he said it.

The phone slipped from Kat’s hand. It dropped onto the bed. She stared at it. Suggs kept talking. Kat could still hear him, but the words no longer reached her.

Still lost, she slowly turned toward the bathroom door. Jeff stood in the doorway. A towel was wrapped around his waist. Even now, even after this ultimate betrayal, she still couldn’t help but think he was beautiful.

Kat hung up the phone. “You heard?” she asked.

“Enough, yeah.”

She waited. Then she said, “Jeff?”

“I didn’t mean to kill him.”

Her eyes closed. The words landed like the most crushing blow. He just stood there and let her take the eight count.

“The club,” Kat said. “The night he died, he went to a club.”

“Right.”

“You were there?”

“No.”

She nodded, seeing it now. A club for cross-dressers. “Aqua?”

“Right.”

“Aqua saw him.”

“Yes.”

“So what happened, Jeff?”

“Your father went into that club with Sugar, I guess. They were, I don’t know. Aqua never told me any details. That’s the thing. He would have never said a word. But Aqua saw him.”

“And Dad saw Aqua too?”

Jeff nodded.

Dad knew Aqua from O’Malley’s. She could hear the disapproval in her father’s voice whenever he saw her with him.

“What happened, Jeff?”

“Your father lost it. He called Stagger. Told him that they had to find this guy.”

“Aqua?”

“Yes. Your father didn’t know we were roommates, did he?”

Kat had seen no reason to tell him.

“It was late. I don’t know. Two, three in the morning. I was downstairs in the laundry room. Your father broke in. I came back up. . . .”

“And what happened, Jeff?”

“Your father was just beating on him. Aqua’s face . . . he was a mess. His eyes were closed. Your dad was straddling his chest, just whaling on him. I shouted for him to stop. But he wouldn’t listen. He just kept . . .” Jeff shook his head. “I thought maybe Aqua was already dead.”

Kat remembered now that Aqua had been hospitalized after her father’s death. She’d figured he had been admitted for psychiatric help, but now she realized that he had been dealing with other problems as well. He would eventually recover from the physical injuries, but the truth was, Aqua’s mental health had never recovered. There had been psychotic episodes before. But after that night, after her father had beaten him . . .

It was why Aqua kept saying it was his fault. It was why he blamed himself for the breakup, why he wanted to return the debt and protect Jeff, even going so far as to attack Brandon.

“I jumped on top of him,” Jeff said. “We fought. He knocked me over. I was on the floor. He stood up and kicked me in the stomach. I grabbed his boot. He started to reach into his holster. Aqua regained consciousness and tackled him. I still him had by the boot.” Jeff looked off now, his eyes twisted in pain. “And then I remembered you telling me that he always kept a weapon there, a throw-down gun.”

Kat started shaking her head no.

“He was reaching into his holster again. I told him to stop. But he just wouldn’t listen. So I reached into his boot and grabbed his spare gun. . . .”

Kat just sat there.

“Stagger heard the shot. Your dad told him to be a lookout or something. He rushed in. He was panicked. His career, at the very least, was on the line. We would all go to jail, he said. No one would believe us.”

She found her voice. “So you covered it up.”

“Yes.”

“And then you just pretended that nothing happened.”

“I tried to.”

Despite it all, a smile came to her lips. “You’re not like my dad, are you, Jeff?”

“What do you mean?”

“He could live with the lies.” One tear slid down her face. “You couldn’t.”

Jeff said nothing.

“That was why you left me. You couldn’t tell me the truth. And you couldn’t face me with that lie for the rest of your life.”

He didn’t respond. She knew the rest now. Jeff had run away and started what he had called his self-destructive stage. He got into the fight at that bar. Once he was booked, once his fingerprints had finally gotten a hit, they showed up in the homicide file. Stagger had covered it up, but that might not last forever. Stagger had probably gone to Cincinnati then, explained to Jeff that he had to hide, that if anyone ever looked for him, he couldn’t be around.

“Did Stagger help you get the Ron Kochman identity?”

“Yes.”

“So you ended up living a lie anyway.”

“No, Kat,” he said. “It was just a different name.”

“But now you are, right?”

Jeff said nothing.

“These past weeks with me, you’ve been living with the lie. So what were you going to do, Jeff? Now that we’re back together, what was your plan?”

“I didn’t have one,” he said. “At first, I just wanted to be with you. I didn’t care about anything else. You know?”

She did know, but she didn’t want to hear it.

“But after a while,” he said, “I started to wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“Would it better to live a lie with you or a truth without you?”

She swallowed. “Did you ever come up with an answer?”

“No,” Jeff said. “But now I’ll never have to. The truth is out. The lies are gone.”

“Just like that?”

“No, Kat. Nothing with us is ever ‘just like that.’”

He moved toward the bed and sat next to her. He didn’t try to embrace her. He didn’t try to get too close. She didn’t move toward him either. They just sat there, staring at the wall, letting it all rush over them—the lies and secrets, the death and murder and blood, the years of heartbreak and loneliness. Finally, his hand moved toward hers. Her hand closed the gap, covered his. For a very long time, they both stayed like that, frozen, touching, almost afraid to breathe. And somewhere, maybe on a car radio driving by, maybe just in her head, Kat could hear someone singing, “I ain’t missing you at all.”