You're Next (14 page)

Kneeling on the frilly bed, Mike finished nailing Kat’s window closed and used his shirt to blot the sweat from his forehead.
The dirt at the base of the window was hard packed and, as before, yielded no footprints. He pulled the curtains closed and
sat on the mattress. In the master bedroom, Annabel was trying to settle Kat down, lying beside her, petting her to sleep.

Across on the bookshelf, Kat’s treasure chest caught his eye. A shoe box she’d wrapped in cloth and bedecked with stickers
in preschool, it held her most cherished items. He retrieved it, placed it on his knees, and lifted the fabric-padded lid.
Annabel’s plastic bracelet from the maternity ward. A sterling-silver baby cup with a lamb imprinted on the side. That missized
butterfly onesie that Shep had brought over the last time Mike had seen him. He picked it up and unfolded it, remembering
how Shep had pulled it from his pocket and offered it unwrapped at the door. It was so big then, sized for a three-year-old,
not a newborn, and yet now it looked so tiny. Those first months they’d used it as a burp cloth, and then Kat had attached
to it the way she did and dragged it around as a blankie. She’d never worn it, even when she’d grown enough that she could
have.

He poked through the relics of pale yellow and baby-girl pink. There was a sanctity here in this sloppily decorated shoe box,
in this room, in this house.

He set the treasure chest back and walked down the hall. Kat was sprawled on the tousled sheets, asleep, Annabel curled beside
her, gazing down, a drape of dark hair framing both their profiles.

Annabel got up, pushed herself back against the headboard. ‘They want us to be scared, right? Well, I’m scared. And if we
can’t go to the cops right now, we need to be creative and figure something out. I can call my folks, have them come here.’

‘With your mom’s new hip, she’s gonna jump on an Airbus?’

‘There are a ton of flights every day from Tampa. My dad knows the
law. He can—’

‘Your father is a retired bankruptcy attorney. And I can only imagine their take on this. They have
never
trusted me—’

‘We don’t need to get off onto that. I’m just saying there are still some legitimate channels to—’

‘There is no legitimate anymore. Guys like this, they don’t listen to reason. They listen to force.’

They listen when you wake them up with your fists after they steal your shirt from under your pillow. They listen when you
stand within the reach of an uppercut and tell them to quit knocking a kid to the dirt.

‘Or they respond with
more
force,’ she said.

‘What do you propose, then? Our hands are tied. We can’t go to the cops until we know which agencies are gunning for me and
why.’

‘I’m just saying, this thing could spin out of control.’

‘Annabel. Are you watching what’s going on here?’

‘Yes. And I’m doing my best to figure out what it is.’

‘What does
that
mean?’

She pulled the blanket up over Kat, gestured that they should keep their voices down. ‘“We know who you are.” That’s what
he said, right? Through the monitor?’

‘And?’

‘I know you pulled some stuff back in the day. With Shepherd. Is there anything you did that might be coming back to haunt
us now? Anyone you stole money from, hurt, whatever?’

The question struck him deep, in a place he’d kept insulated for so long he’d forgotten that it was vulnerable. He squeezed
his eyes shut and pictured that moment he’d frozen in time decades ago, the view out the bay window through the arcade of
yellow-orange leaves to the end of the street, to the station wagon that never appeared. The snapshot was his and his alone,
and he retreated now into the safety of it. It had shown him that he would be okay if that station wagon never appeared, because
he could have something that no one could take from him, and as long as he had that, he wouldn’t need anyone ever again.

But he was no longer seven. He had a wife and a daughter, and he needed them as much as they did him. He opened his eyes,
fighting to keep his anger on low simmer.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘We were petty hoods, not pulling off bank heists.’

‘Are you sure there was
nothing
?’

‘You don’t believe me. All these years I’m still some street kid underneath everything.’

‘Of course not.’

‘How could you ask me that? I’ve never lied to you about anything.’ He turned, his gaze sticking on that award plaque leaning
against the wall.

She blew out a breath and refocused. ‘Because these men are coming after our family, Mike. Given that, nothing is off-limits,
not between us. And if there’s anything—’

‘You don’t think I’ve been racking my brain? There’s nothing.
Nothing
. It was shoplifting, spray-painting shit on walls. Nothing that men like this would grudge-hold this long.’

Kat mumbled a sleepy complaint, and Annabel came off the bed, gripped his arm, and pulled him a few steps into the bathroom.
Having Kat out of sight, even this close, made him nervous, and he knuckled the door open a few more inches so he could see
her.

Annabel’s voice was low but intense, pushed through clenched
teeth. ‘When you wrong someone, you don’t get to say which grudges people may or may not hold.’

She was coming at him, her head canted forward on her neck. He realized that his posture was the same. ‘Some threat arises,
and all of a sudden you married Scarface? I never did
anything
that damaged people. I made some dumb choices, sure, but that’s it. We didn’t all grow up in the fucking Cleaver household.’

Her arm swung out and smashed a perfume bottle off the counter. It skipped once and shattered against the base of the tub,
and a moment later the bathroom filled with the sickly-sweet aroma. Her stare, her face – inches from his – never moved.

The sound of the exploding bottle continued to reverberate around the bathroom.

Annabel took a deep breath. Held it. When she exhaled, her voice was perfectly calm. ‘Okay, let’s try this again. The office
break-in today, the file they looked at, pretty much shows that this doesn’t involve Green Valley. Whatever it is, it’s centered
on you and your past. If it’s got nothing to do with your so-called petty-hood years, then there’s only one option left.’

His throat was scratchy. ‘You don’t think I know that?’

‘What happened when you were four—’

‘For once,’ Mike said, ‘let’s just call it what it was. My father killed my mother.’ He had never said it so bluntly, and
it caused a shift in the muscles beneath his face. The skin hung on like a mask, but the words had set the real him beneath
on fire.

Had he known all along? That the trail of red flags would lead back, eventually, to that spot of crimson on his father’s shirt
cuff? He pictured his father’s ghost hands tensing and shifting on the station wagon’s steering wheel.
Nothing that happened is your fault
. Nothing that happened. What the hell had his father done?

Annabel swallowed, wet her lips. She had one hand up, fingers slightly spread. ‘We don’t know the whole story.’

‘I know enough of it. I know that whatever he did is coming back on us.’

‘Maybe it was something else. Maybe something happened that made him—’

‘
Made
him? Nothing could have
made
him do something like that. There is
no excuse
—’ He caught himself. It was all up, piling on top of him, a barrage of words and images:
Morning Again in America. Shithead still thinks Daddy’s comin’ back. You wreck my stuff because you don’t have anything and
you’ll never be anything. Look at that slice o’ pie there. Your records look like Swiss cheese. We know who you are
.

On the bed Kat mumbled something and rolled over.

Mike fought his voice level: ‘What kind of a man leaves his kid? Just
leaves
him somewhere? There is no forgiving a parent who could do that to a child.’

Annabel kissed him. Long and tender, mouth closed, on the lips. ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Breathe.’

He did.

She said, ‘You get whatever resources here that you need to face this thing.’

He kissed her on the forehead, and she wrapped his waist tightly in a hug.

In the kitchen he paced beneath the harsh fluorescent glow with the cordless phone pressed to his mouth. Finally he dialed.
The last number he had in his book was no longer in service, but the recording gave a forwarding number with a Reno area code.

It rang and rang. Though it had been seven years, the voice was just as he remembered, quiet and a touch hoarse. ‘Yeah?’

‘I need you here.’

‘What?’

‘I need you here,’ Mike repeated, a bit more loudly.

A rustling sound. A second or two of silence. Shep said, ‘’Kay.’ There was a click, then the dull blare of the dial tone.

Five hours and fifty-seven minutes later, the doorbell rang.

The family lay nestled on the master bed, slats of morning light linking their bodies. Mike and Annabel hadn’t fallen asleep
until some time around 5:00
A.M.,
when the adrenaline had finally ebbed, leaving behind mounting dread and stripped-bare exhaustion. He’d drowsed off fully
clothed, revolver in one hand, fistful of bullets in the other.

Mike’s eyes fluttered, and he lifted his head, which seemed to have taken on weight during the night. The alarm clock read
7:47
A.M.
– late for school and work, not that any of that mattered today. Revolver at his side, he trudged down the hall. Since there
was no peephole, he opened the front door the length of the looped security chain and drew back his head, surprised.

Reno was more than five hundred miles away – what should have been an eight-hour drive. After Mike called, Shep must’ve put
the phone down, walked straight out to his car, and pushed the needle to ninety the whole way.

For the first time in recent memory, Mike felt relief. He set the .357 beside the empty vase on the accent table, unfastened
the security catch, and pulled the door wide. Shep blocked out the rising sun. Behind him a ’67 Shelby Mustang sat steaming
in the driveway like a horse in lather, the air above the hood wavering from the heat. Midnight blue, two white racing stripes
laid lengthwise across the top and right down the hood.

Shep shifted, and the sun came across his right shoulder, striking the side of his face. He had a new scar, a twist of hard
tissue beneath his ear – shattered bottle, maybe, though Mike knew that it was something they’d never talk about. Shep still
kept his hair short, a little longer than a buzz, the right length to avoid foster-home head lice. He wore a V-necked undershirt,
the St. Jerome pendant, rubbed faceless like an old coin, swaying on its thin silver chain. The muscles ridging the top of
Shep’s chest were as distinct as those that used to frame the bottom of Mike’s a decade ago. Though Mike was still in good
shape for his age, the contrast made it clear: He had softened.

That slight overlap of Shep’s front teeth – the familiarity – was comforting. It felt like home. But there were differences,
too, beyond the purpled seam of scar tissue. The muscle of Shep’s neck had hardened, grown sinewy with age, and his features
looked more pronounced; they had a lean, hungry intensity that was almost wolfish. Regarding him across the threshold, Mike
was all too aware of the missed years.

Shep said, ‘Well?’

Mike said, ‘You got any stuff?’ ‘Nope.’

Kat’s footsteps pattered on the tile behind Mike. Shep brushed past him and crouched, bringing his head level with hers. ‘The
eyes,’ he said.

‘You’re big,’ Kat said. And then, to Mike, ‘He’s big.’

‘Kat, this is Shep.’

Her hand looked tiny shaking his. Annabel came around the corner, smoothing her shirt. Her posture firmed when she saw Shep.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘The way Mike and I have been going, I need someone new to fight with.’

Shep looked at her blankly.

‘That was a joke,’ she said. ‘Except for the thanks part.’

They moved into the kitchen. With a yawn Annabel tugged the omelet pan from the rack. She looked at it wearily, set it aside
on
the counter, then poured coffee for the adults and cereal for Kat. ‘Eat fast, monkey. We gotta get you to school.’

‘I don’t know that I want her going today,’ Mike said.

‘You think those guys are coming after
me
?’ Kat’s cheeks looked hollowed out, dark fingerprints beneath her eyes. They’d filled her in on what had happened, keeping
the details as vague as they could get away with. She needed to know that dangerous men were focused on them; she didn’t need
to know that they’d crawled into her bedroom while she was sleeping.

‘No, honey,’ Mike said. ‘They want to mess with me. But you can’t be too safe.’

Annabel said, ‘The teachers are on alert, the playgrounds are fenced, they have three supervisors out there at all times,
and frankly, it seems they’re finding it easier to break into our h—’ She caught herself and shot Kat a quick look, but Kat
was busy staring at Shep. It occurred to Mike, with some regret, that Kat had never met anyone like him. ‘Plus,’ Annabel continued,
‘even sitters and relatives
on
the pickup list have to sign out the kids with ID. She’s probably safer at school than she is here.’

‘So it’s
not
safe here?’ Kat asked.

Shep sipped his coffee and stared straight ahead, playing up his deafness. He could retreat like that when strategic or convenient.
Mike would bring him up to speed when the time was right, and until then all this was none of his concern.

‘You are safe,’ Mike said. ‘We will keep you safe. Your mom’s right. School’s safe, too.’

Annabel took Kat by the shoulders, steering her toward the hall. On her way out, Annabel caught sight of her textbook –
Experience & Education
– on the phone table and groaned. ‘I was supposed to write up a mock lesson plan for today. Dr Skolnick’s gonna be annoyed
with me.’

‘We’ll get things back on track,’ Mike said.

Annabel eyed Shep, still gazing blankly forward, taking his coffee one deliberate sip at a time. ‘Promise?’ she said.

The telephone rang, and Mike crossed, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and picked up.

A woman’s voice said, ‘Michael Wingate?’

‘Yes.’

‘My name is Dana Riverton,’ she said. ‘I knew your parents.’

Riverton hadn’t given any more information or revealed why she wanted to meet. She’d said only that she’d rather handle their
business in person. Mike had picked a café nearby, and they’d agreed to meet at noon. Shep would watch from the shadows and
follow the woman home to get an address.

Mike had asked Sheila to clear his schedule for the day, a directive that was met with passive-aggressive cheer. He’d called
Hank, eager to find out who the hell had put the alert out on him and which law-enforcement agencies
didn’t
have him flagged. Hank was still grinding away, hitting walls everywhere he looked, the whole thing feeling more ominous
by the hour. Waiting on several return calls, he swore up and down he’d phone back the minute something broke. Before hanging
up, Mike had told him to also see what he could find out about a Dana Riverton.

The few hours since then, Mike had spent filling in Shep, who’d listened intently, interrupting here and there to ask highly
specific questions that Mike couldn’t always answer – ‘These guys have any jailhouse ink?’ ‘Did Dodge square up on you like
a boxer or a streetfighter?’ ‘Who’s the senior detective, Markovic or Elzey?’ Then he and Shep had walked the property, spending
extra time at Kat’s window – ‘You need a sturdy check rail with the sash lock or you can slide in a flexible form hook and
pop the latch. See the scratch marks here? They ain’t from a chicken.’

Now they sat in the family room, Shep ready at last to weigh in on the big picture. ‘Your locks suck,’ he said. ‘That Schlage
in the laundry room, you could get through with a wet noodle. We’ll change the ones that need changing after we handle this
Riverton broad. The side gates need padlocks. I have a friend
who trains attack rottweilers in Fort Lauderdale, I can have one out in two days.’

‘An attack rottweiler? What about Kat?’

‘I’m thinking of Kat.That’s why we need an attack rottweiler. You can keep him out back.’

‘How will we—’

‘I’ll handle him.’ Shep pulled two sleek black cell phones from his pocket and set one on the coffee table
in front of Mike. ‘These are only for us. Don’t use it for anything else. Let me repeat that: Don’t use it for
anything else
. Each is programmed with the other’s number.’

‘Can I give Annabel your number? In case . . .?’

‘Her and no one else. Keep this phone with you at all times. Text me if possible. I don’t like talking.’

Mike knew that the issue for Shep wasn’t talking but hearing. On the facing sofa, Mike leaned back, picked at his shoe. It
was ten forty-five, his apprehension growing the closer he got to that meeting with Dana Riverton. First Dodge and William,
then all of a sudden she shows up? Pretty big coincidence. Her claim that she’d known his parents
had
to be a manipulation; he despised himself for wondering – hoping – that maybe it was something else.

Refocusing, he plucked the Batphone from the coffee table and slid it into a pocket. Shep leaned forward, the pendant dangling,
and laced his rough hands together.

The first lull since he’d arrived.

Another awkward minute crept by, and Mike asked, ‘What have you been doing?’

Shep shrugged. ‘Cracking jobs mostly, still. A lot of cash floating around Reno, ’cuz, you know, the gambling. I did a bank
once, but no guns. Went through a back wall at night, covered the sound with a fake street crew jackhammering the curb out
front.’ He shook his head. ‘But that was a onetime thing.’

‘I bet you’re something to watch now,’ Mike said. ‘Going at a safe.’

‘You wouldn’t believe your eyes.’ Shep leaned back, stretched his arms across the top of the couch.

Mike thought of the others. Charlie Dubronski, serving a life sentence for armed robbery. Tony Moreno, overdosed on black
tar in a truck-stop bathroom. All those wrong turns, all those dead ends. And here was Mike Wingate of the Ford F-450 and
the land-development deal, with his pure-of-heart wife and bright daughter. He’d been lucky as hell. Until now.

Mike said, ‘What next?’

‘Go get me your cell phone. Your real one, I mean.’

When Mike retrieved his phone, Shep clicked around, then held up the screen. The highlighted entry read A’S CELL. ‘This the
one they have?’

‘Yeah, that’s hers.’

Shep hit
speaker
and dialed. Straight to voice mail. ‘
Hi, it’s Annabel. I’m probably digging around for my phone in that tiny—’

Shep hung up. Heat crept into Mike’s face. The notion that they had even her recorded voice in their possession made him angry.
He pictured her cell phone in William’s sweaty hand, in Dodge’s oversize pocket, riding on the dash of that dingy white van.

‘Tell her not to report her phone missing,’ Shep said. ‘We want to keep it active.’

‘Why?’ Mike asked.

He was punching buttons, so Mike crossed and looked over his shoulder. He’d typed a text message: WHAT DO U WANT?

He looked at Mike. Mike nodded. Shep clicked ‘send’, pulled out a pad, and jotted down the time. He set the cell on the glass
surface of the table.

‘They’re only turning on her phone at intervals,’ he said. ‘Harder to track.’

‘Impossible?’ Mike asked.

‘Harder.’

They sat. Shep, never one for small talk on a job, stared
straight ahead. Mike did his best not to fiddle with his hands. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Pretty soon they’d have
to start thinking about heading out to that café. Mike checked his watch, cleared his throat, about to suggest they get moving.

The clatter of the cell phone against the glass made his breath catch in his chest. It was loud enough for him to feel in
his teeth, but Shep barely blinked.

Mike leaned over and picked it up, his hands shaking slightly as he read the new text.

U REALLY GOT NO IDEA, DO U?

A chill did a slow crawl up Mike’s back. He started to say something, but Shep ticked his finger once to silence him. Shep
checked his watch, jotted down the time, then pointed at the phone.

Mike keyed in, NO.

He set the phone back on the table and leaned back. Both men stared at it for what seemed a very long time, Mike bracing for
the ring this time. The anticipation only made him start worse when it finally did sound.

He pried open the cell. His hands were trembling even more, but he no longer cared what Shep might think. The message stilled
them instantly – it seemed his whole body, his heart, was frozen in a moment of suspended alarm.

JUST WAIT.