by James, Ed
“It’s my doofus brother.” Landon stomps across the yard, away from me.
“Landon!” Jennifer races after him. “Landon!”
“What are you doing here?” Landon, sounding pissed. Not desperate to find his kid, just angry.
“Dude, I thought you might need some help?” Chase, sounding goofy. I’d buy it.
“From you?” Landon’s laugh has no humor in it, just spite and malice. “Give me a break!”
Chase’s ploy is working, so I climb the stairs, trying to soften my steps, putting distance between Ky’s screams and Landon. The last few steps over to the nursery feel like they take forever. I stop and listen again.
Nothing, just more shouting from outside.
I try the nursery door. No sign of the nanny. Did they fire her? Are the feds investigating her? I feel sorry for her losing her job. Collateral damage, right?
I walk over to the crib, tears streaming down my cheeks, and loosen Ky from his papoose. I lay him down in the crib, on his back.
My son.
My baby boy.
His perfect little eyes are full of love for me. His mother.
All these things I’ve done, just to let him go like this?
I wipe my sleeve across my nose, clearing snot and tears.
Get a grip!
You need to get out of here!
Now!
But I can’t just leave him. I can’t…
I need to. Chase’s right. I kiss my fingers then touch them to his forehead. “Goodbye, Ky.” I turn to leave.
Jennifer is standing in the doorway. “What the hell?”
Oh my god.
Jennifer rushes over to the crib, her gaze darting between me and her son. She reaches into the crib and picks up Ky, holding him tight. My heart breaks in half. “I’ve missed you, my little soldier.”
I walk over to the door.
“Stop!” Jennifer puts Ky down and races after me. “You think you can just walk in here, give him back and this is all okay?”
But I keep going, out onto the landing. I need to get out of here, get a million miles away from here.
She grabs my arm just by the staircase. “Why did you think you’d get away with this?” Her forehead is a mess of creases.
“You’re wondering how I’d get away with it? Most people would wonder why I took my son back.”
“He’s not your son. He’s mine! Mine and Landon’s. You know how stressful this has been?”
“Of course I do! You separated me from him!”
“So you thought you’d torture us?” Jennifer glares at me like she wants to hurt me, make me pay for what I’ve done to them. No thought about what I’ve been through since I lost him. She laughs in my face, then calls down the stairs, “Landon!”
I tug at my sleeve and she loses hold. I could just push her over the banister. Two stories might be enough to break her neck.
Footsteps pound up the staircase and Landon appears.
“Ky’s back, Landon.”
He races over to me. “You.” He shoves me hard and I hit the wall, then slide down, tears flooding my face. “Call the feds. Now!”
Jennifer disappears into the nursery.
Landon squats down next to me. “You took our son. You thought you could protect a child? You thought you could raise him on your own? He could’ve died.”
“He was safe with me.” I fold my arms around myself. Wish I could tuck myself into a ball. “He grew in my belly. I gave birth to him. I’m his mother.”
“You’re not!”
“You let me take him.”
My words stab him in the gut. “But you’re not on your own, are you?” Landon grabs my arm and hauls me to my feet, then marches me down the staircase. “Think you’re so smart, don’t you? Think you can get one over me?”
My feet are unsteady and I have to lean against the wall to stabilize myself.
He pushes me into the living room. “Sit. Down.”
I land on the front of the chesterfield.
Chase is standing by the fireplace. “What is she—”
“Save it, asshole.” Landon walks right up to him and pushes him against the fireplace, holding him against the granite. He whispers something in his ear, then shouts: “Sit down!”
Head bowed, Chase sits next to me.
“You stole my kid!” Landon’s shoulders slump, looking more disappointed than angry. “I swear, Doofus, I’m going to kill you. Bury you where nobody will find you.” He lets out a deep breath. “Why, Chase?”
“This has nothing to do with me.”
Landon barks out a laugh. “I’m supposed to believe that, huh? You turn up out of the blue, just when she’s up in the nursery returning my son?”
Chase sits there like some dumb kid getting hell from the school principal. Not too far from the truth. “I told her to bring him back.”
“Bullshit!”
“It’s the truth, Landon.”
“You think anyone’s going to believe that?”
“You’re a worm!” Jennifer lashes out and slaps Chase’s cheek. I didn’t even see her come down the stairs.
“I carried Ky in my belly. He’s my son.”
“He’s! Not! Yours!” Tears fill his eyes. “You’re going to jail for this!” He looks over at Jennifer. “Where are the goddamn cops?” He walks over to the door. “POLICE!” The door rattles in the wind.
Chase turns his gaze to me, but the fire’s gone out. He takes my hand and holds it, wrapping his fingers around mine. “She might’ve been doing it for money, but she fell in love with that baby. Ky isn’t her son, so she couldn’t keep him. But that didn’t help her, did it? Neither of you thought about the effect it would have on her, did you?”
“We did everything the agency told us to do, kept her apart from Ky so she didn’t bond, but… I thought she’d get over it.” His voice sounds real close to breaking now.
“Get over it? Like I could just get over nine months of a baby growing inside me, like I lost a job in a bar?”
“This isn’t about you!” Landon grabs my wrist. My skin burns. “You did this to us!”
“Oh, you’re all here.” This little guy stands in the doorway, a wide grin all over his face, holding out a gun.
“Boris?” Landon’s face twists up. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to pay my respects to the baby’s father.”
“Get out of here.”
“Landon, Landon, Landon.” Boris laughs in his face. “For a start, that’s incredibly rude.” He walks inside the hallway. “But also, you’re not Ky’s father.” He switches his gaze to Chase. “He is.”
Landon’s jaw drops. “What the hell?”
Chase collapses back on the settee. “It’s true.”
Sixty-One
LAYLA
14:42
Layla wants to move now, but she hasn’t spent anywhere near long enough scoping out the territory.
Pravda is busy this afternoon. There are a ton of people in there. Maybe a wedding, or maybe it’s always like this, the ladies who lunch eating caviar or borscht or whatever they serve.
Two big security guards out front, probably ex-Mossad by their accents. She doesn’t stand a chance against them.
She needs to get inside and learn the truth, kill the fire burning in the pit of her stomach. It used to be rage, but now…
Hope.
And she doesn’t know which is worse.
No more delaying. She has one play, one move. Risky as hell too.
She reaches into her pocket for her burner and types the old number from memory.
He answers right away. “Bruce’s Burgers.”
“It’s Alison.”
“Uh huh. Can I take your order, ma’am?”
“Sure, I need a special delivery to 3726 East Madison, Seattle.”
“That’s a hotel, right?”
“Sure is.”
“Can I take a guest name real quick?”
She smiles. “E
dwards.”
“Sure thing. Be right with you.”
Flash. The lights go out in the hotel. A group groan bursts out across the road.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it, ma’am. Invoice will go to the usual address. And your transaction ID is 2868. Have a nice day.” Click, and he’s gone.
Layla checks that her knife’s stowed away in her sleeve, then leaves her rental and walks over to the building. The two guards are focused on shepherding guests outside, letting Layla stroll in like a lion entering his den.
Raised voices in a few accents. The maître d’ is trying to exert some control, but he’s fighting a losing battle. Glass smashes to her right. Then another to her left.
She uses the chaos and darkness as cover and skips up the staircase. Halfway up, she steps aside to let an elderly couple descend, smiling as they pass. Acting like she works here.
The second floor is the hotel reception, lit up in the low red of battery back-up lights. Two members of staff behind the desks, trying to handle irate customers long since given up on the system of lines.
Two doors, one pointing to hotel rooms, the other marked PRIVATE.
Bingo.
Layla walks over and taps 2868 into the machine. The green light flashes and the lock clicks. She opens it and enters a long corridor.
The first door on the right is open, in pitch darkness. A shape stands in the middle, facing away from the door. A man, most likely, but she can’t see who it is.
Layla eases out the Glock and steps into the room. Something crinkles under her feet. She presses the gun against his brainstem.
Just then, the lights flash on.
The floor and furniture lie under a plastic sheet, spattered with blood. A man sits on a chair, his head lolling, his torso carved open. Completely still.
She recoils, her gut plunging to the floor.
There’s an inhuman gurgle.
His eye opens through increasing swelling. He’s still alive. Broken, bloody, battered, hanging on to his life by a thin thread.
This is an office, filled with boxes, some with documents, some with shredded paper. Looks like Zangiev’s going to run. There’s a phone on the desk, pushed against the far wall. I dart over to it and pick it up.
“Too late. I’ll be dead soon.”
“No, I’m calling 911.” I hit the first nine.
“Don’t. Please. You ever take ayahuasca?”
“What, no?”
“It’s… this spiritual drug. Amazonian. Contains DMT. When you take it, you get this amazing trip, lasts like a quarter hour. But it’s supposed to be like what happens when you die. That’s what’s happening to me now.” His eyes shut again. He smiles, but his mouth is a mess of gums. Makes her shiver. “I’m a lot harder to kill than Zangiev thinks.”
Layla puts the handset down and rubs it with a cloth. “Where is he?”
“He’s running. Back to Russia.” He coughs up blood, a trickle running down his chin. “He’ll be back soon. Wait here with me. I don’t want to die alone.”
“Okay. What’s your name?”
“Edwards.” His eyes are shut and his breathing’s shallow. “Marcus.” He mutters something. “What has he done to you?”
“How do you know he’s done anything?”
“He does something to everyone, it’s just whether they know or not. I did something behind his back and he didn’t like it. So, tell a dying man your story.”
My mouth’s so dry that my words come out as a rasp. “Someone told me… Agent Dean Lewandowski… He told me that my son, Faraj, that he’s still alive. That Zangiev knows what happened.”
“Layla?” Edwards nods. “It’s true.” He nods at the wall. “There’s a safe there. Combination is the same as outside.”
She nudges the portrait aside to reveal a safe, then puts in the combination. It clicks open. Sitting on top of a pile of documents is a plastic packet.
Faraj’s soccer jersey.
The one she packed that morning, just over two years ago. Blood-stained and torn.
She can’t speak. Her heart thunders in her ears.
“Have you got the photo?”
She tore through the documents. Right at the bottom was a photo of a small boy fielding a baseball. Dark-skinned, his black hair just scraped into a side-parting.
Faraj.
“That was taken two weeks ago.”
Layla stares at Edwards, her heart pounding in her neck, in her ear, making her vision strobe. But she has no choice here, no wiggle room.
Zangiev needs to die.
“Where is Faraj?”
But Edwards was dead.
Sixty-Two
CARTER
14:43
Carter punched the wall. Hard enough to feel like he’d slugged someone in a bar brawl and hit solid forehead.
Out of the window, the university campus sprawled around him, making him feel lost and alone. Two female students walked nearby, dressed in clothes for the weather. Kaitlyn’s age.
She was getting away from him. She’d won.
Not while he was still breathing.
His cell rang and he checked the display. Lori. He couldn’t face her just now. But he answered it anyway. “Hey, Lori.”
“Hey, Max.” Lori sounded like she was in the middle of a hurricane, and not the eye of the storm. “That kid can sure talk the talk.”
“Who?”
“Tyler Peterson.”
“Right. Sure. He can walk the walk too.”
“You seem distracted, Max.”
A cleaner pushed a floor polishing machine nearby, and Carter let the rhythm sweep him away. “Just finished speaking to her stepfather. The only thing he confessed to was a murder nobody knew about, twelve years or so back. Kaitlyn’s father. A murder we probably won’t be able to prosecute him for given his condition.”
“Think he was playing for time?”
“No doubt about it. Deep into the fourth quarter, and he’s leading by a point.”
“You know I hate sports metaphors, Max. Especially football.”
Which is why Carter had used it. “He’s lying for Kaitlyn. There’s no doubt he’d do anything to protect her. He killed her father, assuming that’s true. Duke and her mother both told the same story, about how Kaitlyn was with them for the last fortnight. Postpartum depression. The whole nine yards.”
“Max, I warned you.”
“Sorry. Why’re you calling?”
“Tyler Peterson’s been going through the ferry surveillance video and he’s identified the man Kaitlyn was with. It’s Chase Bartlett.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I’ve seen the video, Max. It’s him.”
“Okay. Try and find him. Text me it. I’m going to take another pass with Duke.” He killed the call and took a deep breath as the cleaner passed by.
His phone chimed with a message. Lori, sending him the screenshot. And sure as eggs is eggs, Chase Bartlett led Kaitlyn Presswood off the ferry. Hand in hand.
What the hell was going on?
Only one way to find out. He charged into the hospital room.
A nurse had a giant needle in Duke’s arm, drawing blood, and Duke’s coughing fit didn’t seem to put her off her stride.
Carter stayed standing, waiting for her nod. “Just need another word with Mr. Stretton.”
“Sure. You need anything, John?”
“I told you, it’s Duke. And I just need this bozo out of here.”
She smiled as she left the room.
“That wasn’t very nice, was it?”
Duke just shrugged.
Carter held out his cell phone. “You see these two?”
Duke took a look then shut his eyes. Disappointment, probably.
“Anything you want to tell me?”
“Fine.” Duke let out a sigh. “That guy, Chase, he ain’t no good. He came to the house, wanted to speak to Kaitlyn.”
“You know why?”
&nbs
p; “He said some crazy-ass bullshit about the kid not being hers, about her returning the kid. I told her not to, told her to leave. I was afraid she’d get caught, or Chase would betray her.”
“Thanks.” Carter stood up tall. “That can’t have been easy.”
Duke grimaced. “Promise me you’ll go light on her.”
“Wish I could.” Carter left the room, now knowing where they were going. He hit dial and put his cell to his ear. “I need you to up the security at the Bartlett home.”
“That’s going to be a problem. There’s been a big car accident on Madison. Four cars. Possible fatalities. We’ve lost our police guards.”
None of that felt right to Carter.
Sixty-Three
CHASE
14:44
They were all staring at him. Kaitlyn, Landon, Jennifer, Zangiev.
Jennifer couldn’t keep her eyes off him. A broiling mass of contradictions and rage. The shock that her son was not her husband’s but his, the third time one of her eggs had been impregnated by Chase’s sperm.
And Kaitlyn… Should he have told her earlier? Knowing that Ky was his son and not Landon’s, would it have changed anything? Would he have stopped her taking him? Could they have driven to Canada or Alaska? It was way too late to fix anything. At any point before she took Ky from his crib, Chase could’ve fixed it. Could’ve involved his lawyers, could’ve stopped this. No, it was way too late.
Landon would be trying to work the angles, trying to see what people knew, trying to push them in certain directions, the ones that best suited him. He darted over to the front door. “Help!”
Zangiev laughed. “My friend, there are no police officers around to help you. I have friends in high places who arranged a little accident they need to attend.”
Landon’s nostrils flared.
“Come on, Chase, why don’t you tell your brother what you did?”
Chase collapsed back in the chair. Legs turned to jelly, and the room started to spin even worse. He had to brace himself against the side of the chesterfield. “When you and Jen hooked up behind my back… I could understand why she did it. I was hitting the scotch at breakfast time. The amount of coke I took.” He shot a glare at Landon. “But you? My own brother? I sank deeper into depression. Then, when I cleaned up, got my head straight, I found out you were doing this surrogacy thing.” He shifted his ire to Jennifer. “You tried to replace Todd with his son. Made me so angry.”