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34

Drenched in sweat, Lucy Dockery listened.

The trailer door burst open and a familiar figure entered. Heart pounding, Lucy froze in the doorway of the bedroom, holding Elijah to her. Her heart skipped a beat and she felt a hollow burn of acid churning in her gut. It wasn’t the woman.

“Wail, hail,” Scaly-hands called, smiling at her across the twenty feet that separated them. “You’re up and about, I see. I reckon Dixie ain’t back yet.” He took off his wet cotton duster and tossed it over the cold potbelly stove. His eyes were locked on her, his tongue darting in and out from the crack between rows of yellow teeth. He rubbed his hands together as he appraised her.

“You are a perty sight in that nightgown. A perty sight indeed.”

Lucy stood frozen, studying the man whose greedy eyes were broadcasting that his ugly mind was cobbling together something horrible. This hideous monster, driven by a lust that smoldered in a vile and focused anger, wanted her. If she’d found a weapon, now would be when to use it, but the only thing between him and her was Elijah, who clung to his mother like a terrified monkey.

“She’s coming back,” Lucy told him. As frightening as the thought of the big woman was, Lucy prayed that she would come. If Dixie couldn’t prevent him from doing what he wanted to do to her, probably no one could. He hadn’t hurt her before and she believed that was only because Dixie had been in the trailer.

“Why don’t you shuck off those panties?” he said, moving closer.

“Please,” Lucy said weakly. “Not in front of my baby.” She felt a wave of self-revulsion for using Elijah as a shield, and she wished she could somehow kill the man. She could kill him.

“Why not? Ain’t like he’ll remember it. People doing what nature wants them to ain’t bad for kids. Hell, I grew up seeing people doing the dirty deed.” His smile turned her blood to ice.

“Please?” she begged, trembling. “Please don’t do this.”

“Come out here,” he ordered. “Less you want me to come in there where it’s nice and dark.” He stared down at her legs as she came into the kitchen. She saw that he liked the fact that she was afraid. She also saw something that looked like splattered blood on his shirt and on his hands and neck.

Reaching out suddenly, he peeled Elijah off Lucy, held the screaming child up in the air by his arm, opened the bathroom door, and plopped the child down on the floor beside the toilet. Elijah howled. Scaly-hands closed the door as the baby tried to stand.

Lucy sprang at the man’s powerful shoulders and reached around to scratch out his eyes. He elbowed Lucy in the jaw, sending her sprawling, her head bouncing against the refrigerator door.

As he approached, Lucy scuttled back against the bedroom doorjamb.

“You rich gals all like it rough,” he said. “You get off on big old boys treating you like two-dollar whores. You need what Buck’s got, honey. And Buck’s got a whole lot of what you need.”

As he talked he unbuckled his belt. As he came toward her he pulled it free and wrapped it once around his fist so it would stay in place while he used it on her.

I can take it,
Lucy thought.
I can take whatever he can do, and I will get on the other side of this, for Elijah’s sake.

A six-letter word for being scared witless.

T-E-R-R-O-R

She closed her eyes, drew herself into a ball, and clenched her teeth, waiting.

35

Some neighborhoods lend themselves to surveillance. Click Smoot’s wasn’t one of them. On Click’s block, a sidewalk ran only on his side of the street, while the front lawns on the other side sloped up to the home sites from the naked curb.

Click lived at the tail end of a narrow street in a sleepy Charlotte neighborhood, so there was no through traffic to speak of. Here, except when someone had visitors, cars were parked in the garages or driveways. The houses had been built in the 1960s on land that was probably inexpensive. The homes took up no more than a quarter of their well-kept lots, and most of the homes contained young, upwardly mobile couples—with or without children—or older people who had lived there a long time. Winter had seen a thousand neighborhoods like it and knew that the residents might not be on first-name terms, but they would be aware of each other to the point where two strangers sitting in the only parked car on the street were going to be noticed. He also knew that when somebody here called the cops, they came.

If the cops showed up, Winter and Alexa were upright citizens, and there was no law against legitimate citizens sitting in a car talking, or contemplating real estate, or checking the amount of traffic the street saw, or waiting for the Rapture. There was no curfew for white-bread people in white-bread suburban neighborhoods. The problem was that Click would be as likely to notice them here as anyone else. And if the cops pulled up and asked questions, Alexa might end up showing her badge, and the cops might be friendly enough with Click’s family to warn him. They couldn’t take that chance.

The house two up and across the street from Click’s had a steep driveway and a lot of toys in the yard. A Plymouth minivan and a Volvo sedan were shoulder to shoulder at the top of the incline. That driveway seemed the most advantageous spot from which to watch the front of Click’s house.

Winter parked behind the Volvo, the vehicle nearest to the wall of shrubbery, and Alexa parked beside him. They walked to the door and he rang the bell. A tall man in his early thirties opened the door and, when he saw that the people standing on his porch were strangers, dialed down his smile. Somewhere behind him small children were making dinnertime-is-over racket.

“Yes?” he asked.

Alexa held up her badge and his smile vanished behind a cloud of confusion.

“I’m FBI Special Agent Alexa Keen.”

“What’s the trouble?” he asked.

“No trouble,” she said.

“It isn’t every day the FBI shows up at my door.” His smile was making an effort to come back.

“We’d like to park in your driveway, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Alexa answered. “But it doesn’t involve you, Mr. . . .?”

“Latham. Charles Latham.”

A blond-haired woman wearing gray sweats appeared at the throat of the hallway. A small child came from the same direction to stand beside her, one hand gripping her mother’s pant leg.

“Charles?” the blond woman said, raising an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“It’s the FBI, Patty,” he told her, then turned back to Alexa and Charles. “Please come in,” he said. “You’re getting wet.”

Alexa stepped inside, and Winter followed her.

The woman approached them, the child shadowing her. She crossed her arms. “What can we do for you?”

“Ma’am,” Alexa said. “We were just asking for permission to park two vehicles in your driveway for a little while.”

“Our driveway? What for?”

“What’s a while?” Charles said.

Alexa shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“And they can’t tell us why,” Charles told his wife.

“I’m sorry,” Alexa said. “I would if I could. Really.”

“I think we should tell them,” Winter said.

Alexa turned her eyes on Winter and cocked her head. After a few seconds, she nodded her approval.

“We’re part of a strike force,” Winter told the Lathams. “We’re staking out a house a few blocks away, and we have about a dozen vehicles that have to stay out of sight until it’s time to converge, when we get the order. We don’t know how long that will take, because we don’t control what the subjects do or when they do it. We’ll be long gone before you wake up in the morning.” Winter turned on his warmest smile.

Patty Latham said, “I don’t have a problem with it. Charles?”

“Fine by me,” he said. “We can sleep soundly knowing we have the FBI watching over us.”

“I’ll make you two a thermos of coffee,” Patty offered. “When you go, just leave the container on the side porch. There’s a half bath just inside the side door. I’ll leave it unlocked in case you need it. Just turn the lock before you leave.”

“That would be greatly appreciated,” Alexa said.

“The least we can do,” Charles Latham said.

“And I expect a few ham sandwiches wouldn’t hurt,” Patty said, lifting the towheaded child up onto her hip.

“I can’t see where it would hurt a thing,” Winter agreed.

Raindrops ran down the windows of Alexa’s sedan, creating diffuse golden halos around the streetlights. Winter sat in the front seat with his back against the door, so he could watch the front of Click’s house through the side window. Alexa, in the back seat, exactly mirrored his posture. Winter checked his watch. It was nine o’clock.

“So, how’s having a new baby?” Alexa asked.

“Sort of like déjà vu all over again. Only I’m older by fourteen years. I guess I’m paying closer attention this time. Or maybe it just seems like I am.”

“I like Sean,” Alexa said. “I should have known I would. She is totally different than Eleanor, except that she loves your rotten hide as much.”

“You’ll get to know her better, and you’ll like her even more.”

“I thought that, after Eleanor, I would hate whoever you ended up with. Truthfully, I was prepared to dislike Sean. I should have known that anybody you picked out would be a very special person. I can see in her eyes that she worships you . . . just like Eleanor did. What is it about you, Massey? Nobody gets two perfect matches. You know what it is, don’t you?”

“No,” he said. “Tell me.”

“If you get two perfect mates, then somebody out there doesn’t get their one. I was furious at you for marrying my roommate. Do you know how hard it was to find another one who was neat, entertaining, and responsible?” Alexa sniffed. “I brought Eleanor home to see the Delta, and she falls in love with you, my other best friend. I never had another roommate who wasn’t a nightmare.”

“I did apologize, and you said you forgave me.”

“I miss Eleanor,” she said, softly. “A day never goes by that I don’t see or hear something that triggers a memory of her.”

“Me too,” he said truthfully.

“I guess you think you loved her more than I did.”

He didn’t answer for a few long seconds. “I loved her as much as it is possible for me to love anyone.”

“And you love Sean that way?”

“It’s not the same and it is exactly the same. Love isn’t like some pie chart with a certain number of slices, Lex. There are degrees, but not that you can measure. I don’t love Sean any more or any less than I loved Eleanor.”

“Loved?”

“Love. I’m still in love with Eleanor.”

“She’s dead, Winter. Can you love a dead person the same as you can a live one? Isn’t it just the memories you love now? Isn’t that a different love? Sean can hold you, kiss you, laugh and cry with you. Do you feel guilty because Sean has taken Eleanor’s place in your life?”

“Lex, can we talk about something else?” Winter felt uncomfortable talking about Eleanor and Sean. Alexa was prying into his heart, and if it had been anyone else he would have been angry at the intrusion. But he knew how much Alexa had loved Eleanor, and that gave her a backstage pass.

“We used to talk about everything and anything, Winter. Have you forgotten?”

“That was a very long time ago.” He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. The silence that followed was bottomless and he couldn’t make himself fill it by trying to take it back, or make it right.

36

Winter Massey closed his eyes and listened to the rain drumming on the sedan’s hood.

It had been a very long time, but Winter remembered easily.

When he was asked to work on the yearbook staff his senior year, he had brought Alexa on board with him. He took her to the prom, and she was the most beautiful girl there. After graduation, while they were sitting on the eighteenth green of the local golf course drinking warm wine out of a screw-top bottle, he had kissed her. Her reaction had been instant and passionate. But a sneezing fit had ended the kiss and the mood passed, and she’d pulled back from him, joking about how close to losing their friendship they had come. A little hurt and confused, Winter had told her that he loved her and wanted her, and she had shaken her head.

“I love you, Winter,” she’d said. “I love you way more than that. We’ll always be able to trust each other. I know what you have done for me, and I will always love you for it. You showed me who I really was.”

“But we could have it all,” he had said. “Lex, we could be stars.”

She’d shaken her head slowly.

“No, Massey, it isn’t all right. I wish it could be.”

After that, it was never the same. She was accepted to Berkeley and left that summer to get an early start. Their good-bye had been painful for Winter. He wasn’t as sorry he had tried to change the ground rules as he was that he had ever made her the promise he had the day she’d come to his house for her notebook.

They had remained friends, but the closeness they had shared as teenagers was never there again.

He had thought back on their adolescent relationship thousands of times. He had been in love. Alexa hadn’t. Then he’d fallen in love with Eleanor and the direction of his life was set in stone.

He had thought about it from every angle he could look at it from.

It always came out the same way.

He and Alexa were just never meant to be.

And since the moment he’d first met Eleanor, Winter had been relieved his life had gone the way it had. Of course, he desperately regretted that Eleanor had died and that Rush had been blinded. But he didn’t regret meeting and falling in love with Sean and having Olivia. He had gone on with his life, and it had flowed from one thing to the next. . . .

“Massey,” Alexa said, breaking the spell. “You asleep?”

“Resting my eyes.”

“Sean was married before?”

“Widowed.”

“What happened to him?”

“Gunshot wound.”

“Self-inflicted?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Once upon a time, he would have told her the whole story, that Sean’s first husband was a professional killer, and that he had met Sean on a witness security detail—an operation to protect Dylan Devlin so he could testify against the head of the Louisiana Mafia. Luckily, Alexa let it drop. Nobody was more curious about things than Alexa, and Winter was sure this subject would come up again later. Alexa had always interrogated people, which was why being an FBI agent had come so easy for her. If she wanted to know something, she’d ask the same question over and over in differing forms and from different angles until she had the truth. It was a natural talent born out of necessity. When you are a child that nobody wants, you learn to spot lies and you learn to hate liars. You want to know when you are about to be moved from one home to another. You learn about hidden agendas and ulterior motives, and you lose the ability to trust and accept things at face value. And, if you are trying to make sure your baby sister—the only person you have a real bond with—remains with you, it’s crucial to figure out the truth of things and plan ahead. You learn to manipulate the things in your world you can change to your advantage.

“I have a question,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“What kind of name is Ferny Ernest?” Alexa asked, bringing Winter back from his past. “What was his mama thinking?”

He shrugged. “No idea.”

She giggled. “I guess she could have picked Beanie Weenie, or Herkel Jerkel.”

Winter laughed. “We need to find Peanut or Click’s siblings,” he said. “They’re likely to be involved with the Dockerys. I think Click Smoot is a dry hole.”

Winter had been watching the flickering TV-generated light in two of the windows in Click’s house. Now he lifted the binoculars he had brought from his truck and focused them on one of the windows. “Click’s not moving around.”

A BMW passed slowly by the Lathams’ driveway, headlights out. It drew up at the curb outside Click’s house.

“Click’s got company,” Winter said, sitting straighter and watching the sedan.

There were two people in the car, and after a few seconds, the doors opened without the interior light coming on. Two figures stepped out and quietly closed their doors.

Winter focused on the men as they approached the first illuminated window and peered in from behind the bushes.

“Who is it?” Alexa whispered.

“The Russian, Sarnov, and Max Randall.” Winter recognized them from pictures Clayton had shown them. “What the hell is this?” he asked. “They’re not involved in the grab. So why are they at a Smoot house?”

“This is good,” Alexa said. “Players gathering in the middle of the night. It sure doesn’t look like the hole is as dry as you thought.”

“Maybe this meeting isn’t in Click’s best interest,” Winter said. “Based on the fact that they’re lurking in the bushes, I don’t think he’s expecting them. What do you want to do?”

“Wait,” she said.

“Wait? What if they came to hurt him?”

“They’re professionals. If that’s the case, I doubt they will require any assistance from us. We should give them a wide berth. Remember Clayton’s admonition. An ‘Able’ admonition is not anything to ignore.”

Able had also said Sarnov and Randall weren’t directly involved in the kidnapping. “They’ve gone around the back. I’ll give them time to get inside, then I’ll go see if I can find out what they’re up to.”

“I don’t know—” she said. “Okay. Just don’t shoot anybody.”

“If they’re going to kill Click, should I just watch them do it?”

“Yes. I don’t know. Play it by ear. But remember what’s at stake. This isn’t about Click and Sarnov. It’s probably a side deal.”

“Obviously they are involved. Maybe the great oracle is wrong about that.”

“Clayton isn’t often wrong, Massey.”

“Often isn’t always, Lex. Ring him up while I’m gone.” Winter reached for the door handle.

“Wait for me,” she whispered.

“Call Clayton. Stay with the car. If I need help, you’ll know it.”

Winter pulled up the hood of his rain jacket and started for the house. He tried to clear his mind of the worry that had invaded it.

The Alexa Keen he knew had never seemed unsure of herself before.