by Tami Hoag
“I'm in love with Hannah Garrison,” he murmured. “A madman stole her child.”
He looked up through the windshield. Heaven was black and silver with the light of a broken moon. A sea of stars so far away. A feeling of abandonment yawned inside him.
“Someone up there's not doing their job.”
6:24 P.M. -28° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -50°
Paul's lungs hurt from the cold. His legs ached from struggling through the deep snow and his toes hurt as if each one had been struck with a hammer. The only part of him that was warm was the glowing coal of his anger in his chest. He stepped over a fallen limb and leaned against the trunk of a cedar tree at the edge of the woods that ran behind the houses of Lakeside. To the east and north lay Quarry Hills Park, wooded and pretty with its groomed cross-country ski trails. One of his badges of honor, one of his deserved rewards: living with the lake out his front door and the park out his back door. One of the signs that he had made something of himself.
And Mitch Holt and Megan O'Malley wanted to treat him like a criminal.
How could they look at him as if he were a suspect when he had thrown himself into the effort to get Josh back? He had gone on the searches, made appeals on television. What more could he do?
This was all the fault of that little bitch from the BCA. She was the one who was so hung up on that damned old van. She was the one who kept trying to poke holes in his explanation of why he hadn't checked his messages that night and called Hannah back. And they both, of course, felt sorry for Hannah. Poor Hannah, who gives so much of herself. Poor Hannah, the mother who lost her son.
The stinging in his fingers brought Paul's attention back to the here and now. He had trudged through the woods because the street in front of his house was lined with the cars and vans of reporters. He had plenty to say to them, but not just then. Now he had other needs. A need to be held by a real woman, someone who understood him and would do anything to please him.
He crossed the Wrights' backyard and went in the back door of the garage. Garrett's Saab was gone. Karen's Honda sat alone, as it did most evenings. Garrett Wright was married to his work, not his wife. Home was the place he came to shower and change clothes. Karen's place in his life was largely ornamental—someone to take to faculty dinners. Any other interest he had once had in her as a woman had dwindled away. According to Karen, they rarely had sex, and when they did, it was more duty than desire on Garrett's part.
They had no children. Karen wasn't able to conceive by the usual means and Garrett wasn't willing to go through the endless marathon of tests and procedures involved with the in vitro process. Having children wasn't important to him. Karen talked of adoption, but that process was daunting as well and she didn't know if she had the strength or endurance to tackle it alone. And so they went on, just the two of them, in a shell of a marriage with which Garrett seemed perfectly content and to which Karen clung because she didn't have the courage to break free.
Paul seldom thought of Garrett Wright in anything but abstract terms. Even though they were neighbors, they barely knew each other. To Paul, Garrett Wright lived in an alternate universe. He was a shadowy figure who buried himself in his psychology texts and his research at Harris and gave what free time he had to a bunch of juvenile delinquents called the Sci-Fi Cowboys. He and Garrett Wright existed on two different planes that intersected in only one place—Karen.
Using the spare key that was always left under an old coffee can full of nails on the workbench, he let himself into the laundry room. He took off his heavy boots and brushed the snow from the legs of his sweatpants.
“Garrett?”
Karen opened the door to the kitchen, her dark eyes going wide at the sight of him. She stood there in her stocking feet, a green checked dish towel in one hand, purple leggings clinging to her legs. A shapeless ivory V-neck sweater reached down to her knees. Her ash-blond hair hung as limp as silk, the bangs soft above her doe eyes. Small and soft and feminine, full of comfort and concern for him. The first rustlings of desire whispered through him.
“Are you expecting him?” he asked.
“No. He just left to go back to work. I thought he might have forgotten something.” Self-conscious, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and brushed her fingers through her bangs. “I thought you'd be with Hannah tonight. I heard about the jacket. I'm so sorry, Paul.”
He slipped off his old black parka and tossed it on the dryer, his eyes on hers. “I don't want to talk about it.”
“All right.”
He took the towel from her hand and looped it around the back of her neck, pulling her closer with it. “I'm sick of it,” he said, winding the checked cloth into his fists. The anger burned in his chest. “I'm sick of the questions and the accusations and the waiting and everyone looking at Hannah and saying ‘Poor brave Hannah.' It's all her fault. And that little bitch is trying to blame me.”
“Hannah blames you?” Karen asked, puzzled. She had to strain back against the towel to look up at him.
“Agent O'Malley,” he sneered. “She's too busy screwing Holt to do her job right.”
“How could anyone blame you?”
Dad, can you come and get me from hockey? Mom's late and I wanna go home.
“I don't know,” he whispered as his throat tightened and tears burned his eyes. “It wasn't my fault.”
“Of course it wasn't.”
“It wasn't my fault,” he murmured, squeezing his eyes shut and dropping his head. He wound the towel tighter. “It wasn't my fault.”
Karen flattened herself against him to escape the pain. She slipped her small hands beneath his sweatshirt and stroked the lean muscles of his back. “It wasn't your fault, sweetheart.”
Dad, can you come and get me from hockey? Mom's late and I wanna go home.
The voice haunted his mind. It overlaid images of the afternoon: O'Malley questioning him—you never checked your answering machine? The jacket in his hands—He's dead. He's dead. He's dead. . . .
The towel fell from his hands to the floor.
“. . . not my fault,” he whimpered, trembling.
Karen pressed a finger to his lips. “Shh. Come with me.”
She led him through the kitchen and down the dark hall to the guest bedroom. They never made love in the bed she shared with Garrett. They seldom met there in her house; the risk of discovery was too great. But he made no move to stop her as she undressed him like a child, and he made no move to stop her as she undressed herself. This was what he had come for, but he made no advances. It wasn't his fault. He deserved to be comforted.
He lay on the clean peach sheets in the soft glow of the bedside lamp and allowed her to arouse him with her lips and her hands and her body. She teased with her mouth, caressed with her fingers, rubbed her small breasts against him, opened herself, and took him inside her. She moved on him slowly, murmuring to him, stroking his chest, stoking a fire of physical need that gradually burned through the haze of numbness.
Grabbing her by the shoulders, he pulled her to him and rolled her beneath him. He deserved this. He needed it. Release for his body and for the anger smoldering inside him—anger with Hannah, with O'Malley, anger at the injustices that had been heaped on his life. He let it all pour out as he pumped himself in and out of another man's wife. Deeper, harder, until the thrusts were more punishment than passion.
And then in a burst it was over. The strength was gone. The power drained away. He collapsed beside Karen and stared at the ceiling, oblivious to her curling against him, oblivious to her tears, oblivious to time passing. Oblivious to everything but the insidious weakness that crawled through him.
“I wish you could stay,” Karen whispered.
“I can't.”
“I know. But I wish you could.” She raised her head and gazed at him. “I wish I could give you all the love and support you need. I wish I could give you a son.”
“Karen . . .”
“I do,” she insisted, rubbing the p
alm of her hand over his heart. “I'd have your baby, Paul. I think about it all the time. I think about it when I'm in your house, when I'm holding Lily. I pretend she's mine—ours. I think about it every time we're together, every time you climax inside me. I'd have your baby, Paul. I'd do anything for you.”
This was just another of life's cruel ironies, he thought as he watched her bend her head and press kisses to his chest. He had the wife he had always thought he wanted—the independent, capable Dr. Garrison—and now he wanted the kind of woman he had grown up loathing—Karen, born to serve, subjugating her needs to his, willing to be anything he wanted just to please him.
He checked the clock on the nightstand and sighed. “I have to go.”
He washed up in the guest bath while she changed the sheets. As always, there would be no evidence of their stolen time together, not so much as a scent of sex in the linens. They dressed in silence and walked in silence back down the dark hall to the kitchen, where a single light burned over the sink.
“I heard they're going to resume the ground search tomorrow,” Karen said, leaning a hip against the oak cupboards. “Will you go out?”
Paul took a glass from the drainer beside the sink and filled it. “I guess,” he said, staring at his reflection in the window.
He took a sip from the glass and dumped the rest of the water. He rinsed the glass and put it back in the drainer; blotted his mouth with the green checked towel, refolded it, and laid it back on the counter.
From beyond the laundry room came the sound of the door to the garage opening and closing. Paul's nerves jangled. Guilt gripped its fist inside of him. The kitchen door swung open and Garrett Wright walked in, tucking his gloves into the pockets of his navy wool topcoat.
“Paul!” he said, his dark eyes widening. “This is a surprise.”
He set his briefcase on the oak kitchen table and unbuttoned his coat. Karen took up her rightful place beside him, leaning up to brush a passionless kiss to his cheek. They made a pretty couple, both blond and fair with dark eyes and carefully sculpted features. The kind of couple that could have passed for brother and sister.
“I stopped by to ask Karen if she would be willing to do some extra duty at the volunteer center tomorrow,” he said. “We're resuming the ground search, regardless of the cold.”
“Yes, I heard. I didn't see your car out front.”
“I walked.”
Garrett's pale brows rose in unison. “Cold night for a walk.”
“I thought it might clear my head.”
“Yes, well,” he said, making a good show of being concerned, “you've got a lot on your mind these days. How are you holding up?”
“I'm getting by,” Paul said, trying not to sound grudging. On the occasions of his conversations with Garrett Wright he had always felt like a bug under a microscope. As if he were a potential candidate for psychoanalysis, as if Wright was, even as they spoke, analyzing his words and gestures and expressions or lack of them.
“I know you've been very active in the search,” Garrett said, slipping off his coat. The dutiful wife, Karen took it from him without a word and went to hang it in the front hall closet. “That's a healthy way of dealing with the situation, even if there are a lot of frustrations. How's Hannah doing?”
“As well as she can,” Paul said stiffly.
“I haven't seen her on the news—except in the paper last Sunday. She collapsed, didn't she?” Garrett shook his head. Frowning gravely, he slipped his hands into the pockets of his dark pleated pants and rocked back on his heels. “The loss of a child is a terrible strain on the parents.”
“I'm well aware of that,” Paul said tightly.
Garrett gave a little jolt of realization, his dark eyes widening with contrition. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound patronizing, Paul. I just wanted to say if either of you feel a need to talk to someone, I can recommend a friend of mine in Edina. He specializes in family therapy.”
“I've got better things to do,” Paul said, his jaw rigid.
“Please don't take offense, Paul.” Wright reached a hand out toward him. “I only meant to help.”
“If you want to help, then show up at Ryan's Bay tomorrow morning. That's the kind of help we need, not some overpriced shrink in Edina.” He turned his attention to Karen. “I'll see you tomorrow at the center.”
Karen nodded, her gaze on the floor. “I'll be there.”
She stood there, holding her breath until she heard the door to the garage open and close.
“That wasn't very sensitive of you, Garrett,” she admonished her husband softly.
“Really? I think it was extremely generous of me, all things considered.”
He went to the sink and ran a finger down the side of the water-dotted glass in the drainer. He picked up the neatly folded green checked towel, dried the glass, and refolded the towel.
“You should be more careful where you leave things,” he said, holding up the towel.
The towel Paul had taken from her. The towel with which he had drawn her to him, his fists wrapping tighter and tighter into the cloth.
The towel he had dropped on the floor in the laundry room.
Karen said nothing. Garrett set the towel aside on the counter and walked away.
CHAPTER 28
* * *
DAY 8
9:03 P.M. -30° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -55°
Mitch stared at the message board on the war room wall until the messages from the kidnapper began to swirl together. Elbows on the table, he put his face in his hands and tried to rub the weariness from his eyes. A futile effort. The fatigue went far deeper. It beat at him relentlessly, a cold, black club that struck again and again to loosen his hold on his logic, his objectivity. It stung his temper, made him feel mean and dangerous. It cracked the hard protective shell of control and allowed guilt and uncertainty to seep in like a toxic ooze.
Guilt. He'd seen the look on Hannah's face when Paul had hurled his accusation at her with the same violence that had sent the fireplace poker hurtling into the wall. A burst of pain, but beneath it guilt. She blamed herself as much as Paul blamed her. He knew exactly how that felt—the constant, pointless self-punishment, the pain that became so familiar that in a perverse way you almost didn't want to let it go.
“You should probably put something on those knuckles,” Megan said quietly. “God knows what kind of cooties might be running around in Steiger's bodily fluids. I'm on my way to the hospital. Wanna ride along?”
Mitch jerked his hands from his face and slapped them palms-down on the tabletop. He didn't know how long she had been standing there, leaning against the door frame, while he wrestled with his inner demons. She came into the conference room with her eyelids at half mast as she rubbed at the tension in the back of her neck.
“I'm fine,” he said, glancing at the hand he had skinned breaking Steiger's nose. “I've had my tetanus shot.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of rabies or maybe hoof-and-mouth disease,” she said dryly, perching a hip on the tabletop across from him.
“Why are you going to the hospital?”
“Trolling for suspects. I know we've questioned everyone down there, but I want to dig a little more. Hannah doesn't think any of her patients or their families could have been driven to something like stealing Josh, but I think it's worth checking out again. Hannah might not be aware of any animosity toward her, but I'm willing to bet the nursing staff will come up with a name or two. Everybody is hated by somebody.”
“Cynic.”
“Realist,” Megan corrected him. “I've been on the job long enough to know that people are basically selfish, bitter, and vindictive, if not out and out nuts.”
“And then there's our guy.” Mitch rose from his chair, his eyes on the message board. His gaze passed over each line, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. “Evil.”
Evil. The thing all of them had feared from the beginning. A kidnapping for ransom was about greed; greed co
uld be dealt with, greed could be tricked. Mental illness was dangerous and unpredictable, but sickos usually screwed up somewhere along the line. Evil was cold and calculating. Evil played games with unknown rules and hidden agendas. Evil planted evidence, then calmly walked to a neighbor's house and asked for help finding his victim's dog.
The composite drawing of Ruth Cooper's early morning visitor was pinned to the cork bulletin board. A man of indeterminate age with a lean face that seemed almost devoid of features. The eyes were hidden behind a pair of high-tech sport sunglasses. The hair might have been any color beneath the dark cap. Not even his ears were visible. The hood of a black parka created a tunnel around his face, making him seem like a specter from another dimension.
“It's not exactly a photograph, is it?” Megan said dejectedly.
“No, but at least Mrs. Cooper thinks she might be able to ID him if she sees him again. She thinks she'll remember his voice.”
The rage rose inside him at the thought of the overconfidence, the contempt, the cruelty of the act this man had played out to flaunt his power and his cunning mind. Mitch's hands curled into fists at his sides. “Arrogant son of a bitch,” he muttered. “You'll take a wrong step somewhere, and when you do, I will take you down hard.”
“If we're lucky, his partner might trip him up for us,” Megan said, slipping down off the table. “I'm arranging to have Christopher Priest take a look at Olie's computers and see if he can get into the files. Olie was auditing computer courses at Harris. I figure if anyone has a chance at getting past his booby traps it's Priest. In the meantime, there's still Paul to deal with.”
Before Mitch could react, she hurried on. “You can't deny his connection to the van,” she said, ticking her points off one by one on her fingers. “You can't deny that he tried to hide it from us. His alibi for the night Josh disappeared holds as much water as a two-dollar sieve. No one knows where he was at six o'clock this morning while Ruth Cooper was meeting our mystery man. He told the agent on duty he was going out to drive around, looking for Josh. The timing seems a little coincidental, don't you think?”