Just Like a Man (15 page)

"Ready for your spelling test?"

"Ready for your math test?"

"Yes."

"Got your book report?"

"Yes."

"How about—"

"Yes, my science reading is done. And I have my lunch, too. I have everything I need, Dad. Everything."

Even though Michael knew that wasn't quite true, he smiled at his son over his shoulder, from his position in the driver's seat. "All right," he said, relenting. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to be sure. I know I've been working a lot lately, and I haven't been around as much as I should, and I just want to be sure…"

Of what? he asked himself. That Alex was okay? That life was everything it was supposed to be? That the universe was operating exactly as nature dictated it should? That good always won out over bad, no matter what? Would he ever be sure of any of those things? Could anyone be?

He sighed inwardly and reached across the back of the seat to give Alex's shoulder a squeeze as his son freed his seat belt and turned to open the back door. "I love you, kid." he said. Then, because he couldn't think of any other way to say the million, billion things ricocheting through his head where his son and his son's welfare were concerned, he added, "Have a good day."

Alex smiled back at him. "I will, Dad. I love you, too."

And then he was out of the car, out of Michael's sphere of influence and protection, on his way toward the front door of his school. Michael supposed he would never quite get used to that—turning his son over to the care of others, having faith that no harm would come to him while they were apart during the course of the day. One thing Michael had learned immediately after becoming a parent was that he would know fear for the rest of his life. It was something that had never been a problem for him before Alex's birth. Even with Tatiana, he hadn't feared for her. He'd always known she could take care of herself, that she was smart and capable enough not to get into trouble. Well, not too much trouble. Nothing she couldn't handle. But Alex… He'd been so small, so fragile, so totally helpless. And even though he wasn't helpless anymore—or even fragile or small—Michael would always be frightened for him. Always.

He watched as his son strode to the front door of the school, not once looking back at Michael. He envied his son that ability. Nine was such a weird age. There were days when Alex seemed not to even know he had a father, so self-aware was he, so self-reliant in everything from making his own breakfast, to doing his homework without having to be told, to brushing his teeth and putting himself to bed with a good book. But there were other days when Michael had to nag him about everything, or nothing would have gotten done. And there were still nights, too, when Alex woke up with nightmares, when he'd run into Michael's room and crawl into bed with him, and ask his father to tell him a story, the way he had when Alex was a preschooler.

When the parent behind him in the carpool line honked to get him moving, Michael finally had to throw the car into gear. He glanced irritably into his rearview mirror as he shifted into first. It was Roberta Harrigan—Bertie Harrigan, to her friends—whose son was in Alex's class. After she'd cornered him at the fourth-grade potluck and he'd had to listen to her ramble on for nearly an hour about her new house in Naples—Italy, not Florida—he'd come to think of her as
Wordy
Harrigan instead.

As he pulled out of Emerson's parking lot and into the flow of traffic headed toward downtown, he thought again about Alex, about how he seemed to be breaking away from and clinging hard to Michael at the same time. Michael supposed he understood. He'd done the same thing himself a time or two in life. When he left home to go to college. When he left college to join OPUS. When he left OPUS to start life anew.

When he met Hannah Frost.

Ever since that first day in her office, he'd been drawn to her. Big time. He didn't understand the whys or wherefores of that, only that there was something in her that tugged at something in him, as if she had a string wrapped around her finger that she began winding tight whenever he came near her. Yet he had to keep his distance from her. Of course, he hadn't kept his distance Monday night, had he? Idiot. Then again, allowing himself to get close, even for that short time, had been enormously helpful. Helpful, and also confusing. Because now he was really wondering who she was.

The Hannah Frost in the OPUS files had no known family beyond her parents, from whom she was estranged. Her mother and father had split when she wasn't even two, and she'd been raised by her father alone. There was no Nana Frost, her father's mother having died before Hannah was even born. And there was no Great-Aunt Esmeralda, either. And since she'd switched schools with the frequency most kids traded bubble gum cards back then, he found it hard to believe she'd maintained contact with anyone named Patsy, either. Just to be sure, he'd had OPUS run a check on the roster of the school she had attended as a first-grader. And there hadn't been a single Patsy listed there.

Because that was the thing about OPUS. They knew everything about everybody. So Michael had been able to learn more about Hannah with a few clicks of the mouse than she would ever volunteer on her own. Hell, he probably knew more about her than she would
want
him to know. For instance, he knew that she had been born in Florida, and that her father had dragged her all through the South while doing his part to cheat good, decent citizens out of their hard-earned cash through a variety of cons and swindles. Billy Frost had been arrested twice, but had been released both times long enough to disappear before his cases came to trial. Mostly he had slithered from town to town with a few ill-gotten gains before anyone knew what had hit them.

Michael supposed Hannah, even as a girl, must have known what was going on. She was a smart woman. She would have been a smart kid. He wondered how she'd felt about her father's way of life, whether she'd been forced to help in the cons or if she'd tried to steer as clear of them as she could. Not for a moment did Michael fault her for any of her father's behavior. On the contrary, when he pictured someone putting Alex through that, he wanted to hit something. Hard. She had evidently taken care of herself, though, because as an adult, she had made a good life, in spite of her beginnings. She'd probably be horrified to learn that Michael knew as much about her past as he did. If she'd made up a family and friends and a fictitious history for herself, she obviously wanted to keep all that hidden—not that he blamed her for that, either. She might even be as horrified to find out Michael knew the truth about her past as she would be if she found out he was spying on her present.

Really spying on her. Because Hannah might not know where her mother was living now, but Michael did. Audrey Simmons Frost had remarried a few years after divorcing Hannah's father—and then remarried again after divorcing husband number two, and then again after divorcing husband number three, and then again after number four, making her Audrey Simmons Frost Hemple Donnelly Madigan Durant—and she was now divorced again and working as a cocktail waitress at Fort Benning in Arkansas.

Michael knew, too, where Hannah had gone to school growing up—all ten of them—where she'd gone to college, that she'd worked three jobs to pay her tuition, that she'd graduated with two degrees in education, and that she'd lived in Chicago before coming to Indianapolis, in a small apartment a few blocks from Michigan Avenue, over a Greek restaurant. She'd done her laundry at the Spin Dry Launderette across the street, had kept both a checking and savings account at Citibank, and had often gotten carry-out curry at Vijay's.

He knew how much she had made at every job she'd ever had, how much she earned at this one—not nearly enough, as far as he was concerned—how much she had saved, how much she had invested, how much she spent in any given month, and what she bought when she spent it. She was financially responsible to a fault, really. There were few frivolous expenses, and those had been modest, even by Michael's frugal standards. He wondered what she was saving up for, since she had no children's futures to see to, and a more than decent retirement package from Emerson. He knew where she shopped—but she didn't shop much—and how she spent her free time—mostly at home. He knew what she bought at the grocery store—right down to the birthday cake Monday afternoon—and he knew what she rented at Blockbuster—old and new romantic comedies and classic melodramas. Oh, yeah. OPUS was really good at knowing what people did. So thanks to OPUS, Michael knew everything there was to know about Hannah Frost.

Except for why she had made up all those friends and relatives she didn't really have. And except for who had bought her those presents, if not those people she had claimed.

He could hazard a guess. But he'd rather not. Mostly, he supposed, because he didn't want to think about her being a lonely woman who had to make up people to keep her company and buy herself presents to ease the melancholy of not receiving them otherwise. And that was probably because thinking about that was hitting a little too close to home.

Not that Michael made up people to keep him company. He had Alex, after all. But he was lonely sometimes, even with Alex. Lonely for things he couldn't even identify. He only knew there was something missing from his life. He would have sworn it
wasn't
the presence of a woman. He'd had women since his divorce from Tatiana, sometimes even women he cared about. But none had filled that empty place inside him. Hell, truth be told, Tatiana hadn't filled that, either. No one had. So maybe, in that sense, at least, he could understand Hannah's desire to have someone close. He only hoped her imaginary loved ones filled the bill for her. Because he'd never found anything to fill the bill—or the emptiness—for him.

By the time Michael pulled into the self-storage lot where he kept the van, he had shoved all his troubling thoughts about Hannah aside and was operating efficiently on automatic pilot. It was an old defense mechanism he'd developed to keep himself sane while working on cases that had run the gamut of boring-as-hell busts to man-we-barely-escaped-with-our-skivvies matters of national security. One thing about working for OPUS—you never knew what the job would bring.

But he was reasonably sure he was wasting his time with this job, at least when it came to keeping Hannah under surveillance at her home. For the past three nights, she'd been home alone, and the most exciting thing Michael had heard was the bathtub spigot kicking on. She liked long baths by candlelight—if the flickering illumination behind her frosted bathroom window was any indication—and with classical music, because that was all he'd heard between intermittent splashes of water and the occasional sigh of contentment.

And always, always, he'd sat in the van, picturing Hannah in that bathtub, surrounded by candles and the faint strains of a piano concerto', her skin slick and shiny with water as the light danced across her flesh, her body as warm and fragrant as the steam rising from the water, her hair piled high atop her head, a few errant tresses falling damply over her shoulders, clinging to her wet nape, her wet breasts. And then he'd been able to picture himself in that scene, half naked himself, leaning over the tub as he sluiced soapy water over her back, the candlelight gilding every poetic ripple of her skin. And then, in that vision, he'd move his hand forward, over her damp shoulder, across her chest, and lower still, curving under one heavy breast, lifting it, caressing it, and—

And then he'd started reciting every baseball statistic he knew, starting with the roster for the 1976 World Series and ending with the Marlins-Cubs lineup the night before.

So, since he was obviously spinning his wheels when it came to watching Hannah's house—not to mention feeling things he'd just as soon not be feeling, at least not when he was sitting all alone in a van, eavesdropping on someone in the bathtub—last night he had broken into the school to place wiretaps and a camera in Hannah's office, and, it went without saying, bug her phone.

As far as he could tell, Adrian hadn't contacted Hannah at home since the potluck a week ago. But then, he hadn't sur-veilled her over the weekend, and Adrian could be contacting her at school, the way guys like Adrian—guys who weren't out surveilling in a van and then stupidly approaching the surveillee's front door after hearing the birthday song sung—would do. With any luck at all, Michael would find that out today.

And with even more luck, he wouldn't be picturing Hannah naked when he did.

Hannah looked forward to Fridays with the same enthusiasm she had as a child. Every Friday, every single Friday, as she drove home from work, she thought happily to herself,
There's no school tomorrow!

Alas, on this particular Friday, that precious declaration was still hours away. Because the morning had barely started, and already she was fielding a half dozen problems. Mrs. Terry, the sixth-grade social studies teacher, was missing—again. One of the second-graders had been found locked in a seventh-grader's locker. A toilet was backed up in the teacher's lounge. And there had been a small fire in the Senior Foods class when Heather Kimmelman tried to light her spinach souffle, thinking
souffle
was French not for "puffed" but for "ignited." So now she would be receiving a C in both Senior Foods
and
French, and she was none too pleased about that. Mr. and Mrs. Kimmelman were even less pleased. And the Carmel, Indiana, fire department was most displeased of all.

And then there was Adrian, whom Hannah had done her best to put off, but who was not going to be put off any longer. Not over the phone, at any rate, because he continued to call her at school. And now he'd done the meanest thing she could imagine him doing, a heinous, hateful thing that had been completely uncalled for. He'd invited her to a dazzling gala affair, a black-tie fund-raiser at an elegant five-star hotel downtown that would feature fine dining, classical music, and every celebrity Indianapolis boasted.

The fiend.

There was no way Hannah could turn down his invitation. Not when she would have the opportunity to solicit so many moneyed bastions of the community for financial sponsorship of her school. In spite of its exorbitant tuition, the Emerson Academy never had enough money to operate as well as it
should.
As well as it
could.
So even with the tuition, there was always some kind of fund-raising going on, and Hannah was always looking for people who might be interested in sponsoring or underwriting one aspect of the school or another. Obviously Adrian knew that. And he knew her well enough to be confident she wouldn't turn down such a chance to rub elbows—and pry open the pockets—of so many of the city's wealthy elite. He was confident she wouldn't turn
him
down.