Stirred (50 page)

His eyes were glazed, manic, like someone on speed. I thought about making a try for the gun, but his finger was tight on the trigger.

“So I studied other killers,” Andrew continued. “Studied their methods. Tried them on for size to see if they fit. I spent many long, intimate hours with Luther, picking his brain, coaxing out his secrets. In order to drain his bank accounts—his family was quite rich—I had to impersonate him. And I found that I liked it. Stepping into his cowboy boots and black jeans, putting on the wig and the contacts, sucking those god-awful Lemonheads he likes so much. I realized the best way to be me was to be him. So we switched places. Let him be Andrew Z. Thomas, and then I could be Luther Kite.”

This guy wasn’t just broken. He was wrecked beyond repair.

“Look, Andrew,” I said, “we need to—”

The shot was so sudden I didn’t know where it came from. A bright muzzle flash, the smell of gunpowder.

It was followed by another, and another.

Andrew crumpled on the floor, both knees blown out, his gun arm disabled, his curved knife skittering under the bed, Lucy standing over him, aiming a 9mm at his stomach.

“You used to be my hero,” she said. “I once drove six hundred miles to see the famous mystery writer Andrew Z. Thomas. Just to get an autograph. I used to be beautiful.
And you turned me into a freak
.”

Andrew groaned on the floor, struggling to reach his gun.

“This is for Donaldson,” she said, shooting him between the legs.

“Lucy!” I yelled, taking a step forward. “Stop it!”

“Back it up, lady.” She pointed her gun in my face while Andrew groaned and writhed on the floor. “I’ll deal with you in a second.”

I held out my hands. “He’ll rot in prison. You don’t have to do this.”

“Actually, I do.”

Where was that goddamn cop? “Please, Lucy. He took my baby.”

“Sucks to be you.”

“Lucy!”

The gun went back to Andrew. “Should have finished me off when you had the chance,” Lucy said.

“See…you…in hell,” Andrew croaked.

“Hell doesn’t exist, you dumb ass.”

She shot him in the head as he cowered beneath her.

“No!” I rushed forward.

Before I got to her, Lucy turned the gun on me again. “And now, for the encore.”

“Don’t,” Luther rasped, trying to sit up in bed. “She saved me, Lucy. Let this one go.”

“I’ve heard about her. Supposed to be a real badass. Why take a chance? You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Lucy bent down, tugged the pair of handcuffs off of Andrew’s utility belt, and then forced me at gunpoint toward the open door leading into the bathroom.

“Get in the shower, Jack.”

I stepped inside, and she tossed me the cuffs. If she’d killed me at that moment, I wouldn’t have cared. When Andrew died, so did my hopes of finding my daughter.

“You know what to do,” she told me.

“Lucy—”

“Bitch, I am running out of patience.”

I snapped a bracelet onto one wrist and clamped another to the shower handrail.

Then Lucy disappeared back into the room. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but it sounded like Luther was struggling up and out of bed. I heard her say, “They’re going to be here any minute.”

“Hold on. Push me to the bathroom.”

Lucy appeared in the doorway, Luther in a wheelchair. He stared up at me, his eyes black as night.

“Andrew lost his humanity,” he said. “But not completely. That’s why he failed. He left too many survivors. Survivors have a way of coming back and biting you in the ass.”

“Do you know where my baby is, Luther? Please.”

He paused, said, “Andrew always regretted what he did to Violet. To Violet and her son. That’s how a lot of us go astray. We all break things. But sometimes…” His tongue shot out, licking his thin, pale lips. “Sometimes we try to fix the things we broke.”

My last glimpse of them was Lucy pushing him away.

Then the door opened and shut, followed by shouts and another gunshot, causing my heart to skip a beat.

Phin’s guard?

Had he gotten Lucy?

Had she gotten him?

Or…God forbid…one of my boys?

I didn’t call out. There was no point. The shots had been heard by everyone in the adjacent floors, and word would be spreading fast around the hospital.

Less than a minute later, Harry and Herb were in the bathroom, both holding guns.

“Phin?” I asked.

“Safe,” said Herb. “You got a dead cop outside the door. Place is going crazy. What the hell happened?”

“Find a handcuff key.” I held up my arm, frantic to be freed. “We need to get out of here, Herb. I think I know where my baby is.”

• • •

After hearing Andrew’s story, it made perfect sense.

There was a risk to not calling the authorities first. A risk that weighed heavily on me during the long car ride. I didn’t want the SWAT team storming in, guns blazing. I’d seen that end badly before.

I just had to keep telling myself that my baby was safe, and that I’d get her back unharmed.

The boys had insisted on coming with me, even though they were in bad shape. The hospital made us all sign release forms saying we left against doctors’ orders. Phin was especially fragile, but keeping him away from going after his daughter was like holding back a flood with a single sandbag.

The drive was made both bearable and unbearable by Harry and Herb singing old Neil Diamond songs, egged on by their newfound bromance and some heavy-duty narcotic painkillers.

It was cute at first, but after the fifth rendition of “Song Sung Blue,” which neither of them knew completely, I was grinding my teeth hard enough to crush granite.

When we finally got to Peoria, I checked to make sure the cylinder of my Colt was full, even though I hoped I wouldn’t need it.

“Harry, Herb, the back. Take one of the universal keys. Phin, you should wait here.”

“Like hell.”

“You just had major surgery.”

He rolled his eyes like that was no big thing and then grabbed the other key.

The four of us extricated ourselves from my Juke and converged on the residence of Violet King.

It had to be her.

Andrew had been sending her his royalty checks.

Andrew had felt responsible for the loss of her baby.

Andrew must have had help to get out of those zip ties, and although the Detroit PD still hadn’t decrypted any of the footage he recorded, I knew in my gut who’d helped him.

The Sam Adams Cherry Wheat bottle had been the clincher.

And my hunch proved correct when I got up to the front door and heard the wonderful, musical sound of a baby crying.

Phin had stitches, and I wasn’t faring much better, so we brought along two universal keys—a paint can filled with concrete. One swing at the latch and the door burst inward.

We rushed in.

Violet was on her couch, my daughter cradled in her arms. She stared up at us, surprised.

The surprise quickly melted into sadness.

“Andy didn’t kill you all at the hospital,” she said.

“No. He didn’t.” Neither Phin nor I had drawn our weapons. “You’re the one that helped him escape.”

Violet nodded, her eyes welling up. “After what he did to me, he owed me. Is he dead?”

“Yeah.”

Another nod. “Was it those two? Lucy and Donaldson?”

“You sent them?”

I heard the sound of the back door breaking in.

“I told them they could kill Andy, but only after I got the baby.” Violet glanced down to look at the child in her arms. “She’s beautiful.”

“I know.”

Phin stepped forward, reached out his hands. Violet hesitated.

“She’s not yours,” I said. “She’s ours. Please don’t make this messy.”

After a tender finger stroke across the cheek, she handed the baby over, and Phin snuggled her up in the crook of his arm.

“Hi, there,” he said. “I’m your dad.”

“Got her!” I yelled. Herb and Harry stampeded in a moment later.

We all watched Phin hold her, everyone quiet for almost a minute, no sounds but our breathing and the crying of my little girl.

The crying eventually gave way to cooing.

“There are diapers upstairs,” Violet said. “Bottles in the fridge. I didn’t hurt her.”

“I know,” I told her.

“I’d never hurt her.”

“I know.”

Herb called the police.

I walked over to Phin, and he put his free arm around me. We both stared at our child.

I couldn’t explain it, but somehow, I felt whole.

“We still haven’t named her,” Phin said.

“I’ve been thinking about that. Your last name, Troutt, really sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

“And Daniels is from my ex-husband. So I think we should pick a whole new name for her.”

“What have you got in mind?” he asked.

I looked beyond the baby, to Violet’s table, still stacked with empty beer bottles.

It had been her Cherry Wheat bottle, back in Michigan, that I’d hit Andy with. That had saved my life back in the Violence room.

It had saved all of our lives.

“Let’s call her Samantha,” I said.

“Samantha?”

“Samantha Adams.”

Phin held me tighter. “I think it’s perfect.”

“Sam Adams?” Harry said. “Hell, yeah!”

“Nice,” Herb said.

We held Sam until the cops arrived and arrested Violet.

Then we held her all the way back home.

“The Guide and I into that hidden road
Now entered, to return to the bright world;
And without care of having any rest
We mounted up, he first and I the second,
Till I beheld through a round aperture
Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;
Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.”

D
ANTE
A
LIGHIERI
,
The Divine Comedy

I
signed for the next-day FedEx package and eagerly opened it while still standing at my front door. There was a note next to the baggie.

Nice rock. I had it professionally cleaned.
Will FedEx your dog back tomorrow. —Duffy

I took the engagement ring out of the bag and stared at it. The midafternoon sunlight caught the facets on the diamond and made it sparkle like a disco ball.

“Who was at the door?”

I turned, saw that Phin had come up behind me.

“I’ll tell you later. Right now, I need you to drive me someplace.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Where?”

“City Hall. If we get the marriage license today, we can be married by tomorrow.”

Phin’s face lit up. “I’ll go put Samantha in her carrier.”

“Wait. First, I need you to put this on me.” I held up the ring and my left hand. “Please.”

Phin came over. He touched me so gently I got a lump in my throat.

“Jacqueline Daniels, will you make me the happiest person on the planet?”

“No,” I said.

“No?” His features went from soft to confused.

“I’ll marry you, Phineas Troutt. But it won’t make you the happiest person on the planet.” I smiled, my eyes getting misty. “You’ll have to settle for second happiest.”

Then he slipped the ring on my finger and kissed me, and in that single, magical moment, I became the woman I had always wanted to be.

In the past, my job had defined me.

Then my relationships had defined me.

But now I was ready to define myself.

I was ready to like myself.

I was ready to be happy.

Phin hustled off to get our daughter. His kiss lingered, making me smile. I stared at myself in the hallway mirror and almost didn’t recognize my reflection. That woman was so relaxed. So content. So sure of herself.

That woman was me.

Andrew Z. Thomas had wanted to break me. He’d tried his best.

But I wasn’t broken.

For the first time in my forty-eight years, I was fixed.