Even Steven (36 page)

That made all of this just a matter of waiting.

It bothered Ricky that no one had seen the woman. April, that was her name. No one had seen April. He'd asked two people in passing, and both of them had said no. He'd paid Fuzzy fifty bucks to ask in more detail, but he'd come up empty as well. This was troubling to Ricky. The woman was a loose end, and sooner rather than later it would need to be tied.

As he'd set up his sniper's nest, he'd considered holding off on William until he could nail them both, but logic told him that whacking the husband now would at least serve to make the lady think twice before opening her mouth. She was a pretty ballsy broad, though. It wasn't beyond the realm that this would cause her to panic and take everything public.

When William stepped out of his apartment into the open, however, the target decided the issue himself. Some opportunities are so juicy that you can't turn away. Ricky watched through the rifle scope as William walked straight toward him. The target looked a little nervous, but no more so than anyone else walking out into this neighbourhood at night. The few working streetlights provided just enough illumination so that Ricky didn't need the night scope.

He'd thought about ending it quickly with a head shot, but with the silencer in place, he could afford to play around a little. Logan always wanted his enemies to know they'd crossed the wrong guy, and without a few moments of panic-the kind of panic that comes from seeing your own guts spilling onto the sidewalk-the lesson could be wasted.

It was always hazardous going for the spine if you didn't want an outright kill; even more difficult when shooting head-on as he was here. The heart, the liver, and the lungs all bled like sons of bitches, and if you weren't careful, the target would bleed out before he had a chance to realize what was happening.

So, that first shot was something to be proud of. Three inches above the belly button and out through the backbone. Perfect. Instant paralysis. The leg shot, on the other hand, was so artless that he almost felt ashamed for firing it. Sure did make the target fly, though. Ricky laughed at the spectacle and allowed his concentration to sag, and now he couldn't believe he'd completely whiffed with the last shot.

Now it was about pride. The guy was probably dead already, even if he was still breathing, but Ricky was not in the business of taking chances. There's dead and there's damned dead. Ricky never liked compromise.

Kneeling just far enough away from the window to remain invisible, he assumed a classic kneeling pose and locked his elbows in. He took his breath, let half of it out, and held it. Settling his crosshairs on the target, he slipped his finger through the trigger guard and squeezed, gently and slowly.

The silenced weapon hissed, his shoulder easily absorbing the recoil. Even from this far away-even at night-he could see the brains fly.

BY THE TIME he saw Susan's headlights sweeping up the driveway, Bobby's anger had blossomed to rage. Here he was, trying to keep his sanity, even as the friggin' FBI was closing in on his ass, and Susan was out shopping. And not by herself, thank you very much, but with a child who, by any other definition in the world but hers, had been kidnapped.

Not misplaced, not misdirected, not lost, but kidnapped! Jesus.

He'd never before endured the kind of fear he'd lived with over the past twenty-four hours. The specter of getting caught far outweighed the physical fear he'd felt in the woods last night when he was fighting for his life. That kind of fear you just reacted to; there was no thinking to be done; no weighing of options. When someone threatened to kill you, you just did what you did, and it wasn't until after the fight that you even knew who won.

This new terror brought with it too many options; too many deci-10ns with consequences that he couldn't even begin to calculate. He realized now that his visit to Barbara Dettrick's office, and the phone calls that had followed, weren't really about finding a way to avoid prosecution. They were really about seeking permission to turn himself in. He'd wanted somebody to tell him that all was lost; that he had no choice but to do the right thing.

But that's not what she'd told him at all. And when he turned to his best friend-his life partner, with whom he was supposed to grow old__she wasn't there. She was off in some make-believe world where she could claim a lost child as her own, as if he were a lost puppy.

Jesus, she was calling him Steven. How sick was that? How could she blaspheme their son's memory like that? Was she so unbalanced over his loss, or was this just a way to escape the pain that their life had become? And who the hell was she to leave him all alone to deal with such unspeakable terror?

Now that he saw the headlights, though, the jumbled emotions all drained away, leaving behind only a miserable sense of dread. He stood framed in the living room window, the space behind him darkened so he couldn't be seen. Ever since Agent Coates had left him in the garage, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. What was the word from the cops show? Oh, yeah. Surveilled. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was being surveilled.

Susan's Chrysler stopped short of the garage, and as the overhead door climbed its track, a dim rectangle of light crawled across the drive-way to meet her. Instead of pulling inside, though, she climbed out while still on the driveway and walked around to the backseat on the passenger side. For a second, Bobby wondered what she was doing, but then he saw the little boy's head bobbing in the glare of the dome light, and he remembered that Susan probably didn't have enough room on that side of the garage to wrestle him out.

The way she moved, and the way she smiled as she lifted him out of the car, you'd think she hadn't a care in the world. It seemed like a million years since he'd last seen that expression on her face, and seeing it now only deepened his anger. What gave her the right to feel anything but miserable? Their next stop was the trunk, from which Susan lifted half a dozen shopping bags before closing the lid again. She handed one of the bags to the boy at her side, and he hugged it to his chest, beaming. A stuffed tiger dangled from his left fist.

Bobby continued to watch just long enough to make sure that they were coming in through the garage before he headed back toward the kitchen to meet them. He and Susan arrived at the door at the same time, each startling the other.

"Oh!" Susan exclaimed. "Bobby, you scared me."

"Sorry," he said, but he didn't mean it. "Nice to have you back."

"Steven and I had such a wonderful time! You wouldn't believe how many mothers are at the mall this time of day. We just shopped and shopped and shopped. Steven was a perfect little angel." She gushed on breathlessly, the whole way ushering the boy across the kitchen into the family room, where he zealously tore into a package, which, as it turned out, contained another stuffed animal, this one a foot-tall Pooh bear. He beamed as Susan sat down next to him on the floor to play.

Bobby tried a half dozen times to interrupt, but she was on a roll that wouldn't be stopped. Finally, as she paused to remove her coat, he said quickly, "The FBI came by this afternoon." He hoped to rattle her, but his words apparently missed their mark.

"Oh, really?" She didn't even look up. "What did they want?"

Bobby's eyebrows launched up to his hairline. "Excuse me? They wanted to talk about a certain dead body they found up in the woods last night, remarkably close to the place where we pitched our tent."

Susan had the tiger now, and the stuffed animal flew through the air to tickle the boy's tummy, competing with Pooh for attention. Giggles bubbled up from the toddler's toes.

"Susan, are you even listening to me?"

"I'm right here, Bobby. Of course I'm listening to you."

"Think you could look at me, too?"

She lifted her face and threw a smile over her shoulder, batting her eyes in exaggerated flirtation. "How's this?"

The anger in Bobby's gut froze to a block of fear. "Honey, are you drunk?"

She laughed. "You know me better than that. I don't get drunk, I get sleepy. Besides, I'd never drink with Steven in the car." She switched to pouty baby talk as she added, "I was driving precious cargo today, wasn't I, my little Steven?"

Bobby moaned. "Honey, they're getting close to us. We need to do something."

I am doing something. I'm playing with my son. You ought to come down here and join us."

Your son? Susan, stop it! Goddammit, just stop it!" She looked horrified. "What? What's wrong with you today?" "I just told you. The FBI-"

"I know. I heard you the first time. The FBI came by here today." Suddenly, Susan's voice took on a condescending tone that Bobby wasn't used to. She sounded as if she were lecturing a child in school. "What you keep forgetting, Bobby, is that God sent this child. He's not going to let anybody take us away from him. Not the FBI or anyone else. So just relax."

A headache erupted behind Bobby's eyes. "You're not hearing me, Susan. You may be listening, but you're not hearing the words. They know. They already know. It's just a matter of time-"

Again without looking: "If they were all that close, we'd be in jail now, wouldn't we? Or at least we'd be on our way downtown for questioning. " She leaned on that final phrase, lowering her voice as if to mock a television announcer.

Bobby's jaw dropped. "I don't believe this. Are you telling me that you don't think-"

"That's exactly it," Susan said abruptly, cutting him off. "Stop right there, because you hit the nail on the head. I don't think. Not about this. I don't waste my time thinking about it, because I know that it will all work out somehow. Where you have fear, I have faith. It's that simple." She turned away from him again. "And I don't think this is something that we should be discussing in front of Steven."

"He's not Steven!" Bobby roared, making them both jump. "Steven is dead, Susan! He was never born, don't you understand?"

The boy started to cry and Susan gathered him into her arms. She shot a look to Bobby that came as close to pure hatred as he'd ever seen. She looked possessed. She looked insane.

"Shut up, Bobby."

"I won't shut up! Jesus, Susan, do you see what you're doing? Do you see what you've become? Our son never lived! He never will live. And this one here"-Bobby gestured to the terrified boy in her arms- "he's not Steven. We don't know who the hell he is, but the one thing we do know is that he's not our son!"

Susan rose abruptly to her feet. "I'm not going to sit here and listen to this."

"Yes, you are!" Bobby boomed. She tried to push past him and he grabbed her arm. "That's exactly what you're going to do! These are capital crimes, Susan! These are the crimes that people get sent to the electric chair for. You can't just climb into some fantasy world and pretend that it will all go away."

Susan yanked hard to get her arm free, then smacked Bobby's face. "You keep your hands off of me."

"Jesus, Susan."

"And you keep your hands off of my son, do you hear? He's mine. He's my Steven. I don't give a shit what you do. Leave if you want. Go turn yourself in. But nobody's taking my little boy away from me again."

She shoved past him toward the center hall, knocking Bobby off-balance. He couldn't believe she'd struck him like that. They'd never even had a serious argument before, let alone exchanged blows. This whole thing was even further out of control than he'd feared.

Susan's footsteps fell like hammers on the marble of the foyer and like bass drumbeats on the stairs. Bobby ran to catch up, clearing the foyer in a few strides, and nearly tearing the railing off its mounts as he slid the turn to head up after her. Susan sensed his approach and quickened her pace, heading for the bedroom, where he knew she would lock him out. Bobby wouldn't have that.

His trot became a run as Susan hit the top step, and as he closed the distance, he zeroed in on the look of terror in the little boy's face as he watched, facing backward over Susan's shoulder.

God, what must the kid think of me?

With a two-step lead, Susan scooted through the open door and tried to push it shut with her free hand, but Bobby was already there. The door banged his shoulder, then rebounded open. Susan caught it again with her hand and tried to slam it shut, but by then, Bobby was already inside.

"Get out!" she screamed. "Get out and leave us alone!"

"Us!" Bobby yelled back. The boy was screaming now, too, and pushing his hands against his ears. "Which us, Susan? Which us am I supposed to leave alone? Until this morning, we were us. Now you're telling me I'm not a part of my own family anymore?"

"Not if you're going to take my baby away, you're not!"

They'd been down this road already, and Bobby knew it was a loser. He let the moment pass. He let Susan's words just hang there, hoping that she would hear them for herself. Hear how bizarre a situation she'd created.

"Look," he said softly, trying to make peace, "I'm sorry I yelled, okay? I'm sorry I got mad at you. It's just that things are so wrong now." "Don't take Steven from me."

Bobby looked at Susan hard. He looked at the commitment in her eyes, and he realized with perfect clarity that until he conceded that one point, until he swore to her that he would not take the little boy-that he would not take Steven away-nothing he said would be heard. Until that ground was covered-unless that ground was covered-he'd find himself wading through this nightmare alone.