The Heart Heist (34 page)

"All right. I'll go first." But her teeth clamped together and she couldn't get a word out.

"I take it it didn't go well," Matt guessed, helping her out.

"That," Kerrin agreed, "would be correct."

"Wasn't he glad to see you?"

Kerrin hesitated on her immediate, negative, answer. Gary had been glad to see her, at first. It was when she'd brought up possible positive actions they could take that he'd gone sour. "I think I upset his stride," she said. "He'd rather forget he ever lived in Freedom. Maybe that makes it easier for him to bear the confinement."

Matt looked at her with those too-old eyes of his. "He told you not to come again."

Kerrin nodded. "Said he wouldn't even come out to meet me if I did."

"I hate him," Matt blithely noted, looking out the opposite window. "He warned me I would, and he was right."

Kerrin glanced over her shoulder and changed lanes. "Hating Gary isn't going to accomplish anything. You have no idea how...horrible it is in there. And he has to put up with it for another ten years." Tears threatened to come to the fore again. Kerrin's feelings had been mauled in the visitors' room, but that wasn't why she wanted to cry. She wanted to cry at the despair she'd seen in Gary's eyes. He'd promised her a mustard seed of faith, but he'd given up even that. There was nothing left and, frankly, she was deeply concerned. A man couldn't live without any hope at all. "I'm afraid," she murmured. "I'm really afraid for him." She shot Matt a dirty look. "And I'm also afraid about you, mister. Why did you want to see the neurologist?"

"Oh, that." Matt played with the lock on her car door. "That turned out to be nothing."

"Nothing?" Kerrin didn't believe this for one minute, and furthermore, it wasn't fair of Matt to clam up now that she'd bared her soul.

As though Matt sensed his answer wasn't going to fly, he offered a smidgen more. "I'd been having these...pains. Dr. Flanigan told me they were nothing to worry about."

His tone told Kerrin this was all she was going to hear about it. She glanced over at her brother. "Nothing to worry about -- Word of honor?"

He gave a sad half smile out the window. "Word of honor."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Gary found the package of white powder under the blanket on his bed. That was Eldridge's idea. Gary hadn't come out and said he'd buy it, but Eldridge had known the truth behind his reticence. The package was a mark of good faith. If Gary actually wanted to use the stuff, he'd need a syringe -- and that would cost him the agreed-upon price.

"For you," Eldridge had murmured over the mess hall table, "one hundred dollars." His demon eyes had then made a speculative run down Gary's overalls. "Or one night in bed with me."

Gary hadn't skipped a beat in shoveling the chipped beef into his mouth. "I'll get you the C note."

Eldridge's eyes had still been laughing as they'd left the mess hall.

Now Gary sat on his bed, his imagination making the small lump of the package a giant bulge under his thigh. He'd always been a master of escape and this was the most tricky escape of all, the final one. Relief seeped through him. He could skip out any time. Any time this pain got too bad, any time he knew he couldn't make it another day, knowing how many goddam days he had left.

He was dead already, Gary rationalized, dead to everything he cared about. Getting Eldridge the hundred bucks would only be a formality.

Dressed in green jeans and a blue T shirt, Johnson appeared at his door. Johnson was the size of a refrigerator, and the least favorite of a battalion of unlikable screws. He opened Gary's cell door.

"Hey," Gary growled, jumping up. "What gives?" He hadn't wanted to jump off that package, but to stay seated would have been a dead giveaway.

Johnson went straight for his bed. Meanwhile another screw appeared at the door, this one just as big as Johnson, and almost as mean. Johnson pulled aside the blanket and exposed the package of white powder.

"Well, well, well," Johnson crooned, "what have we got here?" He picked it up, opened it, and sniffed the contents. The other screw blocked the exit from the tiny cell, as if there were anywhere for Gary to run. "Didn't know you were a user, Sullivan."

Gary wasn't sure of anything but that this was a set-up, neat and clean as could be. His heart pounded in his chest as he waited to see what end result the two guards had in mind. In the meantime he knew it wouldn't do to say a word.

"You know it's a violation of prison rules to possess a controlled substance," Johnson informed him. "That's time in isolation."

Gary's beating heart went cold. So far, he'd managed to avoid that hell-hole of prison legend.

"He's not a user," the other guard reminded Johnson. "Could be he had another reason for buying it. Could be he ought to go on suicide watch."

The coldness inside Gary's heart moved down about a hundred degrees.

Johnson dangled the plastic bag and cocked a cruel grin at Gary. "So, which will it be, Sullivan: isolation or suicide watch?"

They were making it easy for him. "Isolation," Gary said.

~~~

The argument going on in Matt's bedroom could be heard in the hall, even through the thick redwood door. The door abruptly opened just as Kerrin tried to pass by.

"Oh, Ms. Horton," Elaine exclaimed, flushing.

"Tell her to come in," Matt called from his position leaning against the headboard of the bed. "We could use an arbitrator."

"I'm not getting involved in any boy-girl stuff." Kerrin tried to back away.

Elaine flushed deeper and glanced back at Matt, who grinned.

"That's not what this is about," Matt promised. He was holding a legal-size pad of yellow paper with notes scribbled on it. Kerrin recognized Matt's cramped scrawl along with Elaine's precise penmanship.

"This is a purely intellectual dispute," Matt assured Kerrin, then asked Elaine, "Will you concede Kerrin'd make a fair judge?"

Elaine shrugged. "Sure, okay, we'll let Kerrin decide." The girl seemed a good deal happier now that she'd moved into Gary's house. Somehow, the town had started calling the place 'Gary's house,' finally retiring the 'Wilson' appellation.

"Come on in, then," Matt directed his sister. "And close the door."

While Matt occupied a pasha position at the head of his bed, Elaine plopped herself at the foot, sitting cross-legged with her elbows on her knees. Kerrin scooted up next to Matt. She directed her gaze toward the notes in his hand, but more out of politeness than interest. Her mind was still on the phone call she'd just finished.

Matt took on a male, lecturing tone. "As you know, the FBI announced they caught the Holiday Bomber near the end of August."

The FBI
. A distant bell rang inside Kerrin's head.
And who had they caught
? "The Holiday Bomber," she repeated, still only half with the two teenagers. "Don't tell me you're still obsessed with that subject?"

Elaine gave Kerrin a woman-to-woman look. "I've told him and told him. They caught the guy -- and what's more he's confessed."

He's confessed, Gary
. Someone had said that. Marty. A chill went through Kerrin, which she struggled to hide. After repeatedly attempting to reach Gary's parole officer, she'd finally found someone at home, Marty's sister. Marty wasn't going to be helping any of his parolees for a while, Marty's sister had informed Kerrin. Following a brutal car accident, he was still in intensive care.

Matt was speaking now, sounding remarkably sure of himself. "I say they've caught the wrong guy."

Elaine scowled. "You simply can't give it up. You can't give up the chase."

They'd caught the wrong guy
. As in a dream, Kerrin recalled the thread of disbelief in Gary's voice on that last night.
Oh, is that right?

"Today is October 10," Matt went on. "Day after tomorrow is Columbus day. How much do you want to bet we'll be hearing from the bomber on October 12?" He held out his hand toward Elaine. "How much you want to bet?"

Elaine glared at Matt's outstretched hand, then turned to Kerrin for support. "Do you know what he says? He says the bomber is going to strike here? Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? Not only have they caught the wrong guy, but this still-loose mad bomber is going to set off his next bomb here, in Freedom!"

Kerrin turned to frown deeply at her brother, disparate concepts orbiting in her brain like planets.

Matt responded to Elaine's salvo with outraged male ego. "Mr. Holiday likes politically controversial water projects, and he's consistently moved south. The aqueduct is perfect, and it's directly in his line of progress."

The planets lined up in Kerrin's mind, as for a major astrological event. They exerted a powerful gravitational pull on one central idea. "Gary," she said aloud.

Matt shot her a glance. "So, you agree with me?"

Elaine sat up straight. "Gary? What's this got to do with Gary?"

Matt cocked his head in Elaine's direction. "Can I tell her?"

Wordlessly, Kerrin nodded, stunned. Marty's car accident fluttered through her thoughts.
Don't let Rogers get you alone
.

"Gary was doing a special job for the DWP," Matt explained to Elaine. "Looking for holes in the security system down at the plant."

Elaine opened her mouth in astonishment. "You didn't tell me that! Undercover? For real?"

"For real," Kerrin murmured. Holy Mary, mother of God.
The Holiday Bomber -- here
!

"Looking for holes," Matt went on, "that the Holiday Bomber might use. What do you think, Ker?"

Kerrin swallowed and tried to get some moisture back in her throat.
The Holiday Bomber, here in Freedom
. "Dear God, I think you're right."

Matt didn't look triumphant, however, just cold stone sober as he met his sister's eyes. "What do you think, Ker, did Gary find any holes?"

Kerrin closed her eyes, casting her mind back, remembering; remembering Gary's frustration with his 'DWP work,' remembering the way someone had taken a shot at him, and then remembering the way he'd stopped going out in the middle of the night. Was it fear that had kept him inside? But then, when had fear ever stopped Gary?

She opened her eyes again, meeting her brother's clear gold gaze. "Oh yes, I think he found some. I think he knew exactly how it was going to be done." Pride crept into her voice. "Gary's very good at that sort of thing."

Elaine's eyes were wide upon brother and sister. "Well, don't you think we ought to call him?"

Matt cleared his throat. "That," he replied dryly, "might be easier said than done."

~~~

Gary thought he'd been two weeks in the cell in isolation, but it was hard to say. One tended to lose track of time without things to do. Meals were shoved through a slot near the floor three times a day, and that was all the contact he had with the rest of the world. One thing this stint was teaching him was the blessings he'd had before. Gary never would have dreamed he'd long for normal prison life; the noisy mess hall and the sweaty hours in the laundry, even the tension of dealing with the other inmates. At least then he hadn't been alone. This solitude was deadening. It ate away at your intellect, pounded down your soul. The heroin would have killed him quicker, and with more humanity.

Gary went to the narrow slit of window and peered through it. This morning he hadn't woken up with the gray, listless illness, however. This morning he'd woken up the way he used to wake up in Freedom, when he knew his kids were waiting for him to start class. A sense of purpose, contentment, and anticipation hummed through him.

It was probably because of the dream he'd had last night. He'd dreamt he was back in Freedom, up at Lutheran Falls. With the water rushing down on him, he'd been making love to Kerrin again, her deerlike legs wrapped around his waist, his cock where it belonged deep inside her velvety warmth.

The water was white and clean and cool. It pounded on his shoulders and washed right through him, washing away all the dirt, leaving him clean and pure. When he came, the seed he shot into her was just the same: clean and pure. Heaven.

Gary squinted into the sun. He wasn't going to beat this good mood into submission. It was too rare and precious.

You are the dearest, sweetest most wonderful man
. Gary closed his eyes and soaked in the narrow ray of sun. A marvelous warmth spread through him.

You're brilliant, but no one ever told you that, did they?
Just words, but they were powerful, more powerful than any drug. Besides, they were all he had.

The most wonderful man
. They were all he had, but they were also all he needed. With sudden, brilliant clarity Gary saw this fundamental truth. It didn't matter where his feet happened to be planted, under Lutheran Falls or on the grimy surface of the isolation cell. He was still Gary Sullivan, no matter where he stood.

Gary's closed eyes tightened as a wave of sheer exhilaration rose up in him. At just that moment the heavy metal door of the cell, the same door that had remained solidly closed for two weeks, clanged open with a mechanical thud. Johnson, the football-player guard, stood in the opening, a disapproving look on his face.

"Come on, Sullivan," he snarled. "You've got a work assignment."

"Out there?" Gary's exhilaration instantaneously transformed into a keen, animal awareness.

"Out there." Putting his hands on his chunky hips, Johnson's scowl deepened in disgust. "All the way out. You've got a trusty assignment, for crissake."

Gary's hyper-alert brain began to move very quickly. A trusty assignment, outside the walls of the prison? Straight from isolation? This was unusual, to say the least. Bits and pieces he'd been mulling over through the long hours prodded at him now.

He walked toward Johnson and the door, realizing he was missing one key piece of information. "Say, Johnson," he remarked, in as casual a way as a man could ask such an extremely significant question. "What's the date?"

"It's Thursday," Johnson answered him. "October 11."