Deadlock (27 page)

Crashed now in the plastic airport chair, he lolled his head back as far as it would go. He did not hate himself for misallocating time. What he felt was worse: a deep disappointment. Not only had his preoccupation deprived Macie and Logan of his time, surely making them wonder why he'd fought for custody at all, but it had directly resulted in Logan's kidnapping. And in the possibility that the harm to them would not be limited to a traumatic experience for his son.

Harm. Traumatic experience
. He was a writer, quick with a soft-pedaling euphemism and an editor's pen, even with his own thoughts. What he meant was that his insane obsession could result in the deaths of his children. As well as Laura and Dillon.

Even his lullaby ritual had become a sham. Tired from hunting Page, his mind not on his children, he had mumbled the songs and often ended early. His caress had gone from stroking their hair to touching their foreheads. What once might have taken ten minutes he had reduced to a thirty-second how-do-you-do.

His head came up. He blinked. Still no tears. He was more disgusted with himself than sad for his children.

Isn't that the problem?
he thought.
More you than them.

He thought of some names he had called people over the years, and applied them all to himself.

I'm working on it. I am.

Really? What are you doing?

He lowered his face to his palms. He had caused this. He had gone on a safari and wounded a lion
.
The beast had circled around to his camp and attacked his children. He had to make it right. Whatever it took. He would give Page what he wanted: every scrap of paper he had accumulated about the man, every note, digital file, phone number.

If it would get his son back, he'd lie prostrate on the floor of Page's office and beg, weep, promise anything. If he never heard Page's name again, he'd not miss a thing. Page had won. He'd struck at Hutch's heel and hit his heart.

He pulled out the mobile phone and dialed Page's number. The operator put him on hold. Page's assistant came on.

“This is Mrs.—”

“Tell him he won,” Hutch said. “Tell him John Hutchinson says he won. I give up. I'm done. Whatever he wants . . . just . . . whatever he wants. You got that?”

“Sir, I—”

“Did you hear me or not?”

“Yes, but—”

“And you tell him I want what's mine. That's the deal.” He recited the clerk's mobile phone number and listened to the woman repeat it. He hung up. He breathed in deeply, pushed it out.

Hutch looked at his watch. His plane left in two hours. He stood and stretched. He felt good. He'd taken a scalpel to his insides. He'd gouged and prodded. And it hurt like hell. But he considered it necessary, cathartic. He had attacked not the healthy tissue of his soul, but the cancer, the stuff that shouldn't be there.

A phrase kept repeating in his mind. It could have been a condemnation of his present state, but he saw it as a challenge. It made him believe he could be a better father. There was hope for him yet.

Work harder
, he thought.
Work harder.

FORTY

“There,” Dillon said.

“Looks like it,” Laura said, but she was hardly enthusiastic. They had given closer inspection to dozens of cars—felt like hundreds: stop, clamber out, look, climb in, go. If
go
was what you would call the slow, not-even-registering-on-the-speedometer pace Laura moved at, to make sure they took in every car on either side of each aisle.

Always, there had been something that disqualified the car as Hutch's: a broken window, an out-of-state plate, a
BAD AS I WANNA BE
bumper sticker. Macie had remembered that Logan had clipped his bicycle handlebars against the door, leaving a distinctive straw-sized scratch above the door handle. That had ruled out several candidates.

They had traversed a little more than half the aisles. Several people had given them long, suspicious looks. Laura was beginning to think they wouldn't find Hutch's car in that lot. But the prospect of continuing the search in the airport's many other garages and lots made her want to give up. If she monitored the passengers arriving in Terminal East, and Dillon did the same in Terminal West, the odds were in their favor that they'd spot him. But considering the stakes, she didn't want any odds; she wanted a sure thing. And that meant finding his car.

“Go look,” she told Dillon.

He hopped out, ran to the Honda that to Laura looked older than the one she'd remembered Hutch driving away in the day before.

A sedan with a flashing amber light on top stopped at the end of the aisle. The driver stepped out. He was dressed like a cop, but Laura didn't see a holster. Security guard. His skin was so dark, it blended in with the night. He pushed his hat back on his head, hiked up his pants, and started walking toward them.

“Uh-oh,” Macie said.

“No worries,” Laura assured her.

“No,” Dillon said. He was halfway back to the SUV when he spotted the guard. He froze.

“Come on, baby,” Laura said. “Get back in.”

The guard stepped up to her window. A hundred wrinkles furled his face. His eyebrows were bushy and mostly white.

“Evening,” she said.

“Morning,” he replied. “Can't help but notice you been cruising the aisles, checking out cars.”

“We're looking for my husband's car,” Laura said. “He left his briefcase in the backseat. He needs it for a morning meeting.”

“How you going to get it to him?”

“Fax. You know, the important stuff.”

The guard looked past her at Macie and Dillon. “You know it's past one in the morning?”

“Gotta do what you gotta do,” she said.

“You have a key? To your husband's car?”

“Yes, sir.”

“May I see it, please?”

“Oh, you mean on me? No, it's, uh, you know, in a little thing under the bumper.”

“What's the license plate number?”

“S . . . A . . .” She laughed. “I don't know. It's
his
car. Do you know yours?”

The driver thought for a moment. A big smile pushed up his cheeks. “It's got a number one and an
L
in it.” He slapped his hand on the sill. “All right, ma'am. Just let the lady in the checkout booth know when you find it. We'll record the license plate. Just in case there's a problem. And I'm going to get yours right now—and your driver's license.” He held out his hand.

She looked around her, into the footwells. She said, “This isn't looking good for me. I ran out of the house without my purse.” And that was true.

The security guard made a face. He peered around, thinking. Laura knew he was about to boot them out of the lot.

“My daddy's getting a new job,” Macie said.

“Zat so?” the guard said. The loose skin on his face seemed to move and flow on its own. It dipped into a frown before congregating in his cheeks to form a smile.

Macie bobbed her head up and down, showing all her teeth. The two on either side of her eyeteeth were missing, giving her a bit of rabbit DNA. “Then we can move out of Nana's house and get our
own
apartment.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Laura said. “That's family stuff.” To the guard she said, “I'm sorry.”

He was smiling at Macie. “It's okay, I understand. Like you said, you do what you gotta do.” He reached out his hand to Laura, startling her. “Name's Charlie.”

They shook.

“You need anything while you're looking, flag me down.”

“Thank you. I will.”

He walked to the front of the XTerra, pulled out a notepad, and jotted down the plate number. He waved, strolled to his car, and drove away.

Laura glared at Macie in disbelief. “Where did
that
come from?”

The girl shrugged. “Jenna Robinson, in my class. She got out of all kinds of homework when her dad lost his job.” She lowered her head. “I shouldn't have lied.”

Laura patted her leg. “I did it too, sweetheart. It's all right, this time.”

Macie grinned.

Fifteen minutes later, they rolled to the next aisle.

Dillon said, “There's one.” He hopped out without waiting for the SUV to stop.

Laura glanced at it. Easy to tell it was a Honda. It had been backed in, so the grille with its center logo faced the aisle. But no flip-flop resided on the dash, and it appeared copper-colored to her. Dillon's yelling startled her from a state of bored drowsiness. He was jumping up and down, pointing.

“There's a flip-flop in the front seat!” he said.

She put the XTerra in gear and climbed out. Up close, the brownish hue faded, and it was clearly silver. The scratch from Logan's bicycle was right where Macie said it would be. She held up her palm to Dillon, and he high-fived her.

Hutch's car hunkered about ten vehicles from the end of the row, farthest from the entrances and exit. On one side of the Honda, closer to the center, was a Corvette; a minivan occupied the space on the other side.

She pointed over the 'Vette's roof. “Let's find a spot over that way, so we can see it better.”

As they returned to the SUV, she scanned the area. A sign attached to a light pole showed a silhouette of a bighorn sheep and defined the section as S14. A shelter for customers waiting for a shuttle fronted the aisle a few spaces beyond the 'Vette. She could see another shelter way down near the other end. Most of the spaces were filled.

If we have to
, she thought, tired of the hurdles,
we'll
push
a car out of the space we need.

FORTY-ONE

“Don't park yet,” Dillon said. “Now that we know where Hutch's car is, can we get some food? I'm starving.” He held his stomach dramatically.

“Me too,” Macie said.

“It's been awhile since we ate,” Laura said. “And I could use a bathroom.”

Macie nodded.

“I'm all right,” Dillon said. He'd relieved himself earlier between the cars. “It's like being in a metal forest,” he'd said.

“There's a McD's way over there,” Macie said. “The sign's lit up, so I think it's open.”

Laura could see it. Not far, but the way things were going, Hutch would show up while they were gone. It was too far to send Dillon, and the traffic around here made her head spin. Between their stomachs and their bladders, they had to do something. She threw an arm over the seat back to see Dillon.

“What do you think about staying here while Macie and I make a food run?” she said.

“I can do that,” her son said, naturally.

The kid would babysit lions in their den if she asked him to. It wasn't that he was blindly obedient. His willingness to do whatever the world required of them was rooted in his trying to be the man of the house, now that his father was gone. He'd never spoken about it, but Laura knew.

“You'd have to hide among the cars, okay? Don't go near the Honda unless you see Hutch. And don't talk to anyone. Not even that security guard, got it?”

He gave her a thumbs-up and hopped out.

She rolled down her window. “It's nippy. Want your gloves?”

He skewed his mouth sideways. “Mom, we live in northern Canada.”

She nodded. “What do you want to eat?”

“What do they have?”

The closest Fiddler Falls came to a fast-food restaurant was the Elder Elk Diner. Lars and Barb Jergins flipped a mean caribou burger, with steak fries and a side of homemade soapberry ice cream—all in under ten minutes. The few times Tom or Laura had taken the boy to Wollaston or Saskatoon, they had dined at a friend's establishment, one of those mom-and-pop, old-fashioned places, not so different from the Elder Elk.

Macie said, “You've never eaten at McDonald's?”

Dillon shrugged.

“Whoa,” Macie said.

Laura didn't know if it was nobler to keep him pure or to treat him to something different. Finally she said, “Burgers.”

“Okay.”

She said, “Go hide, now.”

He moved away. Before she realized it, he had disappeared from view. She squinted, tilted her head, and even pulled forward slowly, but saw not a flick of hair or flash of eyes. He did that on their walks in the woods. She marveled that he could duplicate the trick here.

“Where'd he go?” Macie said.

“Only the Shadow knows,” Laura said in her spookiest voice. She took one last look, then pulled away.

When they returned, Laura found a trash can blocking a parking space. It was across the aisle from Hutch's, about a dozen spaces over. She slowed in front of it. Dillon materialized from nowhere, waved at her, and dragged the can to the shelter. Laura backed into the spot. The only way to get a clearer view of the Honda would be to sit in it. Knowing what Hutch was returning to—his son gone, killers after them—Laura thought the car appeared forlorn. The man who was coming to drive it would be sad and desperate. She wished their reunion could be happier.

As Dillon climbed into the backseat, he said, “A lady came and got her car. It looked like a good place.”

“Perfect,” Laura agreed.

“What's that smell?”

“Grease.” She handed him a box that had been printed to look like a haunted house.

He reached in, pulled out a fry, and examined it.

“Just eat it,” Macie said, watching him. She pushed five of her own fries into her mouth.

He did and nodded appreciatively.

The dashboard clock read 2:01. Grains of sand seemed to have slipped under Laura's eyelids. Each time she blinked, she found it harder to open her eyes. She took a bite of a double cheeseburger, felt as though she could barely chew it.

“I'm fading,” she said. She nudged Macie. “You should be too.”

Macie widened her eyes. “I'm okay.” She yawned.

“I had a nap,” Dillon said. “You guys sleep. I'll keep watch.”