The Drowning Man (23 page)

“Take me back.”

The barely audible words were the first Caroline had spoken in two days and Simon thought at first that he'd heard her wrong.

“What?” he asked, moving closer to the living room chair she sat in.

Her eyes met his. They were clear and very bright. “I want to go back to the hospital.”

He knelt in front of her, took her hands in his. “Why baby? We're together again. We'll kill Trent and the bitch cop, then we can disappear. Find a beach somewhere. Or the mountains, if you want.”

“No,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “You told me they were together. They deserve a chance at happiness.
Trent
deserves to be happy after what we did to him.”

At least she'd been listening to some of what he'd said since he'd busted her out. “Oh, they're going to get what they
deserve
.”

“Leave them alone.”

He stood, paced, turned back to her, fought to keep his voice calm. “I don't understand. We're so close. I've set it up perfectly.”

“I deserve to be in the institute. Worse, actually. I deserve to rot in hell for what we did. And I will, someday.”

Simon rubbed at the headache that was forming behind his eyes. This was
not
how this conversation was supposed to go. If only he'd gotten her out before Barlow had decided to make his little visit. “Carol, you're not yourself.”

“Take me back. Go away and live your life. It's too late for me to atone for my sins, but maybe you still can.”

“My life,” he shouted. “My life is supposed to be here, with you. We punish them for what they did to us,
then
we can move on. Together.
That's
justice.”

Caroline shook her head. “I won't do it. I won't hurt him anymore.”

Simon's vision blurred as rage took over. “What do you mean, you won't do it? We finish what we started. What
you
started.”

She stood. “I love you Simon, but if you won't take me back there, I'll find my own way. I'm sorry, I wish things were that simple, but I'm ready to pay for my sins. That's the way it has to be.”

“No.” He shoved her back into the chair. He didn't want to hurt her, but she needed to understand what was going to happen.
She
needed to see the way things had to be.

“Simon.” Caroline reached up a hand to him but he pushed it away.

He watched as if from a distance as his fist connected with her cheek. Saw through a fog as her head jerked to the side and she made a small sound of surprise. Then he hit her again. And again. He hit her until she was quiet and stopped moving.

Trent watched as Lora sat at his kitchen table and played with her empty coffee mug. Her body practically vibrated with nervous energy.

If it was anyone else, Trent wouldn’t have poured another cup, but the stuff seemed to relax her. Trent loved to see her hyped up on too much caffeine, talking even faster than she normally did.

He refilled her mug and grabbed himself a beer. He figured he’d need it if she ever decided to share what was bothering her.

And if it was anyone else, Trent would have been bothered by the silence, but with her, he didn’t mind. He liked her quirks. He liked that she was so different from any other woman he’d dated. He could spend the rest of his life trying to figure her out. Surprisingly, the thought was not unpleasant. It should terrify him. It didn’t. It did freak him out a little. He drank half the beer in one swallow. When he put the bottle back down, she was looking at him.

“Sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m not very good company tonight.”

“You’re always good company.”

She shot him a stern look and took a sip of her fresh cup of coffee. “I don’t know why you put up with me.”

He ran a hand up her thigh. “Yes, you do.”

She took his hand in hers, gripping it tight. “I’m scared, Trent.”

There were two words he never thought he’d hear her say. “Of what?” he asked.

“That something terrible’s going to happen.”

“Why would you think that?”

She sighed and looked up at him. “Because things are going
too
well. It’s been too quiet since Caroline disappeared.” She paused. “And because I’m happy.”

“That’s a good thing, Lora.”

“No. You don’t understand. The last time I was even close to being this happy and content, my life fell apart. And now, it’s like I’m just waiting for it to happen again and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to make it through this time.”

Trent put his other hand on her shoulder. “I’ve never been this happy in my life and I have you to thank for that. Not because you saved my life, but because you made me want to
live
.”

“I just have this feeling, that something’s about to happen. Something bad.”

“Then we’ll get through it together.”

She studied his face. “I look at you and I almost believe that.”

He kissed her forehead. “Believe it,” he said, then kissed her lips.

Lora wanted to. But that was the thing about being a cop. It changed the way you look at everyone and everything. You just expected bad things to happen. Like a soldier who's seen combat. And until she knew more about the situation with Simon and Caroline, she couldn’t relax. There was no way in hell they would just leave the area peacefully. She knew it in her gut. But she
would
find a way to end it. She would not let Trent spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.

Simon tracked Trent and Lora from his stolen car down the street the next morning. He’d watched Trent’s house all week, waiting for the bitch cop to stay over. He’d followed Trent as they left his apartment parking lot and drove deep into the heart of the city. He had to laugh as they turned left onto a quiet residential street. Simon knew exactly where they were going.

Now he watched them get out of Trent's truck as Nathan and Amy Barlow came out of their front door to greet them. So happy. They were all so fucking happy and he wasn’t. His one chance at that kind of happiness was gone.

Caroline had stopped talking to him again. He'd hoped the effects of whatever they'd done to her at the hospital would wear off and she'd come to her senses. It hadn't happened. He wished he'd never met her, wished she'd never saved his life.

He continued to stare down the street. He should just burn the damned house down around them all.

As much as the thought of killing the cop in a fire and Trent not being able to save her appealed to him, the chances of it working out that way were slim. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. He’d find a better way.

“UNO,” Lora cried out, slapping her last card down on the kitchen table. Nate groaned, Amy congratulated her, and Trent gave her a kiss. Nate got up, opened the fridge, and pulled out two more beers.

He handed one to Trent. “You can't bring her next week unless she stops winning every hand.”

“Hey! It goes against my nature to throw a game,” Lora said with a grin. She hadn't wanted to come, but Trent had insisted that she take a day off. It had felt awkward at first. She'd never been comfortable with her own family, much less with the family of someone she was dating. Things like that meant commitment. But soon she was having so much fun she quickly forgot about her unease. She felt honored to be a part of the Barlows' Sunday gatherings. Almost like she belonged.

Nate refilled her coffee cup then poured Amy a glass of Chardonnay. It was an unseasonably warm day. The girls were playing outside while the adults played games inside. They could hear the occasional squeal of delight from the back yard. It was hard to tell who was having more fun, the kids or the adults.

Trent looked at the clock. “I think we have time for one more round before the Chiefs game starts.”

Amy turned to Lora and gave her a conspiring glance. “Don’t worry, I have some chick flicks upstairs we can watch while they do their man thing.”

“Actually, she'd rather watch the game,” Trent said, putting a hand on Lora's knee under the table.

Amy raised her eyebrows and Lora nodded. “Sorry, but it's true.”

“Well,” Amy said, turning back to Trent. “You really did hit the jackpot.”

Less than a block away, Simon put the binoculars down and slid deeper into the worn cloth of the driver's seat. What he and Caroline shared together had been nowhere near perfect, but the time he’d spent with her had been the best years of his life. He thought of Lora and the family in the house down the street. How he hated them all.

He’d leave and wait for them at Trent’s house. They would spend the night together. He hoped they enjoyed it because it would be their last time together. He put the car in drive but slowed as a small blur of color came around the side of the house.

One of the little blond kids. If he let them live, Lora and Trent would have kids someday. Simon never would. A fresh wave of rage crashed over him. Simon’s body moved of its own accord. He slowed the car in front of the house.

It happened in a blur. The car jerking to a stop, green grass rushing under his feet, blond hair, his hands on the small body, the slight weight in his arms, a quick pain on his left arm, flashes of blood. Pain. Rage.

He didn’t fully realize what he’d done until he was back in the car driving down the interstate, a blond girl crying in the passenger seat next to him. Christ. What the fuck had he been thinking?

He hadn’t been. That was the problem. He’d been blinded by rage and acted when an opportunity had presented itself.

The throbbing in his arm made him look down. The little shit had bit him. What the hell was he going to do with a kid? This was
not
how he ran an operation. He did
not
make rash emotional decisions. Damn Caroline for fucking up his plan.

Then again, he thought, glancing back at the terrified kid, maybe this was for the best. An unexpected opportunity, yes. But certainly one he could use to his advantage. He imagined the fear that would soon fill the house he'd just left and smiled.

He drove around his block three times to make sure he wasn't being followed or watched before parking and hustling the kid inside. Luckily, the kid was too terrified now to open its mouth. He shut the door and turned to Caroline, sitting silently in the corner of the living room. “Don't start,” he said, as he drug the kid down the hall.

“I'm going to check on the kids,” Nate said during the game's first commercial break. Amy looked up from the romance novel she was reading and smiled at him. Lora snuggled into Trent's side on the couch. They all sat up a minute later as they heard the door being thrown back open and Nate's heavy footsteps pounding towards them.

Trent took one look at his brother's face and stood.

Samantha was a step behind him, crying and babbling. “She was in the front yard, I swear! I ran away! She was supposed to chase me but she was gone.”

Lora grabbed her cell. “I'll call it in.”

Trent blinked and tried to focus. He fought through the nauseating disorientation. This couldn't be happening. Not to his family.
But it was
. And it was his fault.

His heart pounded and his ears rang as he watched Lora go into cop mode, taking Samantha by the hand and leading her into the kitchen. He heard her say, “You didn't do anything wrong. But this is very important. I need you to tell me exactly what you saw and heard outside.”

He saw Nate sit on the armrest of the chair Amy was still sitting in and kiss the top of her head, murmuring soft reassurances into her ear.

He heard the first car pull into the driveway, and because he was the only one not doing anything productive, went to open the front door.

Hours later, Lora stood in the kitchen, looking out the window. Trent was alone on the back deck. He'd walked up and down every street in the neighborhood while Nate had driven them. Lora could see how bone tired he was. She could also see in the slight slump of his shoulders that he was blaming himself.

She wished she had better news to give him. Samantha hadn't seen who'd taken her sister but she had caught a glimpse of the vehicle as it turned the corner. She'd seen a light blue car. Old. And one letter and one number off the plate. It wasn't much. But it was more than they had before.

Trent didn't look up when she opened the back door, didn't turn as she shut the door and moved to stand next to him. There were no words she could say. His hands had a death grip on the deck railing. She moved her much smaller one and placed it on top of his. He stretched his hand out, linking their fingers together.

“I have to go,” he said, his gaze at the back of the yard. “I can't be here any longer. Not while Nicole's gone. I have to do something, anything to help get her back.”

“Where?” Lora asked. “Where are you going to go?”

He shrugged.

She squeezed his hand, reluctant to let him go, but understanding. “Be careful and check in with me or Woods.”

He nodded once and was gone. Lora let out a long breath. Would this nightmare ever end? Hadn't Trent and his family been through enough? She longed for the days when a case was just a case to her. But she wasn't on the outside of this one, she was
part
of it and hoped to hell she wouldn't screw it up.

Nathan found her minutes later. “He's blaming himself isn't he?”

Lora sighed, not wanting to think about the look in Trent's eyes just before he'd taken off. “Yeah.”

He put his hands on his hips and muttered a curse as he looked up at the sky. The gesture, so like his younger brother, made her chest ache.

A few minutes passed and he turned back to her. “Do you really think it was Simon? I just keep thinking she'll come through the door at any second, dragging a stray cat or dog with her.”

“She might,” Lora said.

“But you don't think so.”

“Nate, it's too early to know.”

His eyes cut into hers. “Give me your honest no bullshit assessment. It's my
daughter
out there. I deserve that, at least. Do you think this man has my daughter?”

Lora didn’t let her eyes waver from his. “I think it's a distinct possibility.”