Shadowkiller (33 page)

“What . . . what are you talking about?”

Allison's thoughts are whirling. Twenty-five years ago, she was just a little girl. She didn't meet Carrie until ten, no, eleven years ago. Eleven years ago this month.

Carrie . . . No. Carrie's dead.

But she's not.

“You remember that night, don't you, Allison? You know . . . the night I came into your room. You were sleeping, but I woke you up, and I explained who I was. Don't you remember? Remember how I introduced myself to you? Remember my name?”

“What . . . what is it?” she asks in a whisper.

“You mean, what
was
it?” She laughs. “Go ahead. Ask me. Ask me what it
was
.”

Allison can't find her voice.

“ASK ME!”

She manages to choke out, “What is—what was your name?”

The answer isn't the one she's expecting.

The answer isn't Carrie.

It's . . .

“Winona.”

T
he ringing telephone startles Mack awake. He rolls over on the king-sized bed and fumbles for his BlackBerry on the nightstand. He notices the unfamiliar surroundings as he answers it, remembering that he's in a hotel suite in Lincoln and Allison is . . .

Out. Allison is out. Determined to stay awake until she got back, Mack had been lying, fully clothed, on the bed watching
SportsCenter
on ESPN, trying to catch the highlights on the Yankees game back home. He must have dozed off.

“Hello?”

The phone is still ringing; it's not his BlackBerry, it's the hotel room phone.

In the portable crib beside the bed, J.J. stirs. One of the girls calls, “Daddy?” from the sofa bed in the next room.

Mack snatches up the receiver. “
Hello?
”

“Hi . . . is this . . . I'm looking for Allison Taylor,” a female voice says. “I mean, Allison MacKenna.”

“This is her husband.”

“Oh! Hi! My name is Tammy Pratt, and I'm sorry to call so late, but I just got an e-mail from Allison about getting together while she's in Lincoln. Is she there?”

The words slam into Mack, knocking the wind out of him.

“Isn't . . . isn't she with you?”

“With me? No, I'm in Florida on vacation with my family. I can't believe I'm going to miss seeing—”

“Didn't you send Allison an e-mail telling her to meet you at your house tonight?”

“What? No!”

Stunned, Mack clutches the phone hard against his ear, heart racing.

If Tammy didn't send it . . . then who did?

And where the hell is Allison?

“D
addy, can you drive me over to Carly's house?” Lexi asks, appearing in the doorway of the master bedroom.

How is it, Randi wonders, that the whole family walked in the door less than five minutes ago, yet her daughter has already changed her clothes? Fifteen-year-old Lexi has traded a tasteful black dress for a tank top and a pair of short shorts that bare too much tanned skin, while Ben hasn't even finished loosening his tie and Randi, sitting on the edge of the bed, has only taken off one black dress shoe.

“You want him to drive you to Carly's right now when he just drove for three and a half hours?”

“I was asking Daddy, Mom. Not you.”

“I just drove for three and a half hours, Lex.” Ben opens the door to his walk-in closet.

“Most of it wasn't actual driving,” Lexi argues. “Most of it was sitting in traffic.”

“Believe me, that's worse.”

Randi couldn't agree more. She can think of only one thing more horrendous than the endless trip home from Long Island just now with Lexi and her ten-year-old brother, Josh, bickering in the backseat, and that would be the endless trip out there this morning for Great-Aunt Rhoda's funeral.

They had beach traffic and rush hour traffic all the way out, and Randi had been hoping to avoid it by heading home early. But after the service, the slow parade out to the cemetery, and the ceremonial tossing of dirt on the coffin, her cousin Mindy insisted that everyone come back to her house for, as she put it, “a little nosh.” That turned out to be a catered affair populated by every annoying relative in Randi's family tree, with the exception of Great-Aunt Rhoda, now sadly mourned by a roomful of people who couldn't stand her.

Oy. Randi sinks backward onto the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Daddy . . . come on. I really want to see my friends.”

“Lexi, stop begging.”

“Please, Daddy?”

“Why do you only call me Daddy when you want something?”

“Please, Dad?”

“That's still begging.”

Ben is softening, though. Randi can hear it in his voice.

“It's
polite
begging. You should be proud of me. All Mom's crazy old relatives told me that I have nice manners.”

“They also all told you that you look exactly like me,” Randi points out, “and you made a face every time.”

“I did not.”

“You sure did.”

The telephone rings before Lexi can reply—most likely with another
I did not
.

“That's Carly, wondering where I am.” She reaches for the receiver on the bedside table. “I'll tell her I'll be there in five minutes.”

“Lexi—”

“Mom, come on. Admit it. You guys don't want to hang out with me tonight any more than I want to hang out with you. We've all had too much togetherness.” She grabs the phone. “Hello?”

“Charming,” Randi mutters, shaking her head.

Ben grins at her. “I'll run her over to Carly's and then—”

“Phone's for you.” Lexi thrusts the receiver at Randi and heads for the door, her long black hair swaying behind her. “I'll call Carly from my cell.”

With a sigh, Randi lifts the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Weber? This is Rocco Manzillo—we met last fall. I was the detective who—”

“I remember.” She sits up quickly.

“I'm trying to reach the MacKennas. Do you know where they are?”

“They're . . . away.” She was about to tell him they're in Nebraska, but thought better of it. How does she know this is really Detective Manzillo? It might be some kind of crazy stalker. He wouldn't be the first to come after Allison and Mack.

“Can you put me in touch with them?”

“I can call them on their cell phones and tell them to—”

“I tried their cells. The numbers are disconnected.”

That's right. Both Allison and Mack changed them in the midst of all the media commotion last November. Randi has the new numbers, of course, along with contact information for Allison's brother, Brett. But she's not going to share that part with Detective Manzillo just yet.

“I'll get in touch with them for you,” she tells him. “What do you want me to say?”

He hesitates. “Tell them that they might be in danger, and they need to call me right away.”

“I
told you . . . I don't know the address of the house! Whoever sent it texted it to my wife's phone, and she took her phone with her when she left, and now she's not answering!” Mack runs a frustrated hand over his dark hair.

“I understand that, sir. I'm just trying to make sure I have all the details straight here. Why don't you just take a deep breath while I write this down . . .”

Mack doesn't want to take a deep breath. Locked in the bathroom of the suite, clutching his cell phone against his ear, he's just about had it with this conversation with a Nebraska cop whose patience, under any other scenario, would be exemplary. Right now, Mack wishes he could throw the guy up against a wall. Slow and steady don't always win the race. Not when your wife's life might be at stake.

Somehow, someone posing as Allison's old friend Tammy intercepted the e-mail she'd sent and lured her . . . God only knows where.

If only Mack hadn't been too caught up in his BlackBerry, when that text came through, to ask her exactly where she was going. If only he'd gone with her . . .

But of course, he couldn't have done that. Not with three sleeping children on his hands.

Forced to call the police instead of racing down there in person, he doesn't want the kids to overhear him freaking out, because then they'll freak out, and maybe—just maybe—there's no reason for panic.

Mack's phone beeps, indicating that another call is coming in.

“Officer, hang on!” he shouts, seeing that the call is coming from a private number. He puts the police on hold and answers with a breathless hello.

“Mr. MacKenna? This is Rocco Manzillo. Do you remember me?”

Of course he does. Detective Manzillo. Finally, someone who knows how to get something done.

Blindly willing to accept the call as providence, rather than pausing to wonder how the detective knew to call now, Mack blurts, “Allison's missing! Please—you have to help us.”

“Missing?” There's a pause on the other end of the line. “Okay, just tell me what happened . . .”

Mack does, in a rush, pacing the bathroom like a caged animal, trying to remember as many details as he can. Unlike the Nebraska cop holding on the other line, Detective Manzillo doesn't keep stopping him and making him back up.

He just listens until Mack runs out of story with a helpless “ . . . and then I called the cops.”

“So you have no idea who this woman might have been?” Manzillo asks. “The one who sent the e-mail and the text?”

“No. I just know that it wasn't Allison's friend Tammy, because she's in Florida. At least, that's what she says.”

Mack sinks down onto the edge of the tub in despair, not sure what—or whom—to believe.

The seat of his shorts is instantly dampened by water Allison splashed over the edge when she took her bath before going out. The bathroom still smells like her perfume, and the shorts and T-shirt she'd worn for the last couple of days are tossed in a corner.

She'd been wearing a pretty blue and white print skirt when she left, a navy sleeveless top, and sandals that were black or dark blue leather. He'd described the outfit to the Nebraska cop, who had asked.

Rocky Manzillo has not.

Why, Mack suddenly wonders, is he calling?
How
is he calling? This is a new number.

“How did you get this number?” he asks abruptly, thinking of Allison's phone, wondering if she might have tried to call Manzillo for help—

But that doesn't make sense, because if Allison needed help, she'd call Mack.

And if Allison, alone and desperate, needed help—that kind of help—that phone would be a lifeline she wouldn't let go.

No. I can't even think about it.

“I got the number from Randi Weber. I called her because I couldn't reach you at home. I don't know how to tell you this, Mr. MacKenna . . .”

“Tell me what?”

“You might want to sit down.”

“I am. I'm sitting.” Mack closes his eyes and he's back at his desk in New York on a sunny Tuesday morning in September, and the phone is ringing, and the world is burning.

Mack gulps, his blood running as cold as the sweat on his forehead. “Please don't tell me . . . she's not . . .”

“It's not about your wife,” Manzillo says quickly, adding cryptically, “not Allison, anyway.”

“What—”

“This is going to come as a shock. I wish I could tell you in person instead of over the phone, but—”

“What? What the hell is it?”

“Your wife—your first wife—is alive. Carrie. She's alive.”

D
riving through the night, heading north on the lonely highway toward South Dakota, Carrie casts another sideways glance at Allison.

Sound asleep in the passenger's seat, she hasn't stirred in a while now. Good. The fuel tank is running low, and as long as Allison is out cold, she can stop to fill it.

Carrie had been worried when Allison only took a few sips of the Pepsi, but the sedative she'd slipped into it is powerful stuff. Good thing she brought it along when she left the island. Illegal but readily available on Saint Antony, the powder is probably much harder to come by in the States.

Oh well. After this, Carrie won't have any use for it anymore. After this, she's going to turn over a new leaf. She'll hitchhike out to the Pacific Northwest, where summers are cool and cloudy.

Maybe that's what she should have done twelve years ago, instead of heading for New York, chasing after Allison.

But she couldn't even think straight back then. Her life was a mess. Her parents were dead, and she was all alone in the world, living in Minneapolis, earning a living by selling the only thing she had: her body.

What did it matter? It wasn't like she was a virgin, saving herself for marriage to some mythical Prince Charming. And it wasn't like she could get pregnant—though she didn't know that for sure at the time.

She suspected, of course. You didn't go through a self-induced late-term coat hanger abortion without butchering your reproductive organs.

Only years later, when she was married to Mack and trying to start a family, was the ugly truth confirmed by her obstetrician. The infection that had set in after she terminated the pregnancy had scarred her fallopian tubes, making it difficult—if not impossible—for her to conceive. Assuring her that her husband wouldn't have to know what had caused the infection, he referred Carrie to Dr. Hammond, an infertility specialist at the Riverview Clinic. Dr. Hammond told her there was hope, and for a while there, she clung to it, stubbornly . . . foolishly.

But she wasn't meant to be a mother.

Nor was she meant to be a wife, or . . .

Or a big sister.

But that's why you went to New York to find her, isn't it?

Because you got lonely, right? Because you realized that Allison was the last link to Daddy; the only other person in the world who has Daddy's blood running through her veins . . .