The young woman on the other end of the line hesitated, saying nothing. The silence continued for so long Milo began to fear the connection had been lost or that somehow she had sniffed out the danger. At last she said, “I…uh…I suppose so.”
The little bitch was clearly suspicious but Milo was certain that once she had agreed to return, she would follow through. He knew next to nothing about her, only what he had been able to glean through a couple of intense visions, but it had been more than enough to make him recognize her unusually strong will. “Um, we’ll be there in just a little while.”
The old biddy nodded at the telephone handset as if maybe the younger one could see her. Milo spread his hands in a go ahead gesture, and she said, “All right. I’ll see you soon. And I’m so sorry.”
Milo ripped the telephone out of her hand and pressed the button to terminate the call. “Sorry?” he said to her. “You’re so sorry? You’d better hope you didn’t just blow it with that last little bit of stupidity, or you will be sorrier than you’ve ever been about anything in your entire miserable life.”
He replaced the handset on its charger and led the old lady to a kitchen chair, where he pushed her roughly into it and took a seat next to her. “Let’s get to know each other a bit while we wait for our guests to arrive, shall we?”
CHAPTER 34
“That was the strangest conversation I think I’ve ever had.” Cait held her cell phone at arm’s length, staring at it like she thought it might sprout wings and attempt to fly away.
“Who was it?” Kevin asked as the big Boeing 757 jerked backward and began trundling away from the gate.
“Oh no!” Cait exclaimed, standing up in the aisle. “I’ll explain it to you later. Right now, we have to get off this plane!”
A flight attendant rushed down the aisle. She was middle-aged and harried and looked as though her patience had reached the breaking point, despite the fact the flight hadn’t even gotten off the ground yet. “Miss, you’ll have to take your seat. We’re ready for departure.”
“No, you don’t understand, you can’t depart! We have to get off the plane right now!”
“Miss, please, I’ll have to insist you sit back down. Do it now. Don’t force me to call the captain.”
Cait tried to squeeze past and the flight attendant leaned into her, grabbing her by the upper arm. Cait shook her arm free. The other passengers watched the developing altercation with a mixture of shock and resignation as it became increasingly clear the flight would not be departing anytime soon. “That’s it,” the flight attendant snarled through gritted teeth. “I’m calling security.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Kevin said.
Cait turned in surprise to see him standing behind her, his body half in the aisle, head lowered to avoid bumping it on the overhead storage bin.
“Is that so? And who are you?” All pretense of politeness and professional courtesy were gone. It was clear the flight attendant had bypassed “harried” and was now spoiling for a confrontation.
“My name is Kevin Shaw. Officer Kevin Shaw.” He flashed his Tampa P.D. shield at the woman and continued. “This is my partner, Caitlyn Connelly. We’ve just received information critical to an ongoing investigation, and it is imperative this plane return to the gate immediately and we be permitted to disembark. I’m afraid I’ll have to insist.”
The flight attendant—her name was April, Cait could see the shiny name-plate pinned to her blouse—took a step back, clearly caught off guard by this unexpected development. By now the plane had pivoted away from the jetway and was bumping slowly along a taxiway. Cait wondered how much longer it would be before they reached the runway and accelerated smoothly into the air, forcing her to miss what might be her only chance to take advantage of her mother’s unexpected change of heart.
“Please, miss,” Kevin pushed, utilizing his authoritative law-enforcement voice, the one Cait rarely got to hear. “Every moment counts. Please advise the captain that we need to return to the gate.”
The woman took a deep breath, blowing it out hard. Cait caught the scent of cinnamon. “Lemme see that badge again,” she said.
Kevin retrieved it from his pocket and she studied it carefully. “It says Tampa police.”
“That’s right.”
“What are you doing in Boston?”
“We’re cooperating with the Boston Police Department on an investigation, and if we miss out on an arrest because you were too timid to make a decision, I’ll be sure to let the D.A. know who to thank. Let’s see…” He made a show of squinting at her name tag. “…your name is April. And your last name?”
The flight attendant gave him a frosty glare and marched down the aisle at double speed, stopping at the cockpit door and knocking. She stepped onto the flight deck and Cait could see her talking quickly, gesturing angrily back toward them. A head swiveled around the door and looked back at them and when it did, Kevin held his badge up in response, although they were much too far away for it to be read. The captain shrugged and said something to the flight attendant and she returned, closing the door firmly behind her.
“The captain says he will be happy to return and allow you to disembark.” She emphasized the word “he,” doing her best to make it clear she disagreed with the decision. “Please take your seats and stay in them until we’ve come to a complete stop at the gate.” She turned her back on them without another word and marched back up the aisle, refusing to acknowledge the “Thank you” Cait lobbed at her as she retreated.
Moments later the plane made a left turn, followed a quickly by another left. Cait began to relax as it became clear they really were returning to the terminal. Kevin whispered, “What the hell is going on here?”
Cait squeezed his arm and said softly, “Wow, you were awesome!”
“Let’s see if you still think so when the TSA and the Boston police surround us and stick their guns up our asses when we get off this big tin can.”
“Do you really think the police will be waiting for us?”
Kevin shrugged. “I don’t know. They take airplane disturbances very seriously since 9/11, but the captain seemed pretty cool, and he’s the one in charge, thank God. If it was April the Airline Nazi, we’d definitely be screwed. We’ll just have to wait and see. Now, could you please explain to me why we’re risking imprisonment to return to the very place you couldn’t wait to leave not twenty minutes ago?”
“That was my mother on the phone before.”
“Yeah, I figured that much out on my own. What did she say to you?”
“She wants to see me again.”
“And?”
“And nothing. She changed her mind for some reason and wants to see me right away.” Kevin stared at her long and hard and she felt her face begin to redden. “What?” she asked defensively.
“Why would she do that?”
“What do you mean, ‘why?’ I’m her child and she wants to see me. Isn’t that enough?”
“It would have been enough if we hadn’t gone through one of the more painful meetings I’ve ever attended earlier today. The kiss-off she gave us as we were leaving sounded pretty clear—and pretty permanent—to me.”
Cait said, “But you were the one who said she might change her mind given a little time.”
“Sure I did, and I meant it. But by ‘a little time,’ I was talking about months or even years, not a few hours.” Kevin glanced out the small window next to him. In the distance the Boston skyline moved slowly past.
Cait watched him without speaking as the airplane taxied slowly up to the same jetway they had left just a few minutes before. Finally she said, “Something’s bothering you. What is it?”
He turned his attention back to her, his intense blue eyes clouded with concern. “I don’t know, exactly,” he answered. “But something’s not right.”
* * *
It seemed to take forever to get off the damn airplane once they had nosed into the terminal. Cait had expected to
leap out of her seat and hurry out the door the moment they stopped moving. Their unscheduled return to the gate had meant the flight would depart at least fifteen or twenty minutes late, so she assumed it would be in the airline’s best interest to move things along.
Her assumption was wrong. The plane rolled to a stop and Cait rose immediately, but the harried flight attendant rushed down the aisle before she could take two steps. “There’s no one available inside the terminal to operate the motorized jetway,” the woman said, smug satisfaction written all over her face. “You’ll just have to take your seat again until dispatch can send someone over.”
The unscheduled detour had annoyed most of the passengers in addition to the now-maddeningly polite flight attendant, and the next few minutes passed uncomfortably slowly, as all around them people muttered under their breath, leveled hard stares, and shook their heads in frustration.
At last they were allowed to leave. They walked off the airplane and into the otherwise empty tunnel leading back into the terminal building, passing the flight crew without acknowledgment, not that Cait cared.
She could feel Kevin’s body tensing as they approached the mouth of the jetway tunnel. He had put his career on the line to convince the captain to return to the gate by claiming to be working with the BPD and identifying Cait as his partner. If the police really were waiting for them to exit, as he had said they might be, a call to Tampa would undoubtedly follow and the ruse would be discovered. What would happen then, Cait didn’t know, but she suspected it would not be pleasant, particularly for Kevin.
But the boarding area was quiet. The only people at the gate were a youngish man and woman, college kids perhaps, dozing side by side on two of the hard plastic chairs, clearly waiting out a long layover. Cait turned left and began the long walk through the terminal building with Kevin a step behind. He was deep in thought, still clearly bothered by Victoria Ayers’s sudden change of heart and the resulting strange phone call.
Cait didn’t see the problem. People changed their minds all the time, especially where momentous, life-altering events were concerned. She had put herself in her mother’s shoes for a moment while sitting on the airplane and quickly realized getting contacted out of the blue by your long-lost daughter after three full decades would certainly have to qualify as life-altering.
She slowed to allow Kevin to catch up and they walked side by side, not talking, each lost in their own thoughts. Outside the terminal they hailed a cab and climbed into the backseat, settling in for the ride back to Everett and their second meeting with Cait’s mother in two days.
This one would go better than the first. Cait was sure of it.
CHAPTER 35
This time when Cait rang the bell it was with a genuine smile of pleasure on her face rather than one of nervousness. She still had no idea what might have changed her mother’s mind—Kevin was right about one thing, Victoria had been dead set against ever seeing her again the last time they talked—but at the same time, she didn’t really care. The important thing was that the telephone call represented real progress.
The door swung open and Cait’s mother stood on the other side, just as before. Something was wrong, Cait could see that immediately. Her mother’s face was pasty-white, her lips set in a straight bloodless line. She looked even frailer than before, if that was possible. It seemed to be taking all of her willpower to…what? Avoid screaming? Look Cait in the eyes? Welcome them into her home again?
But it didn’t make sense. She was the one who had called Cait and invited her here. She was the one who had pulled them off the airplane just as it was about to take off. Had she changed her mind again, and now didn’t want to see her? Maybe the woman was just plain crazy; who the hell knew? It wasn’t like Cait had any history to go on. They had just met twenty-four hours ago.
Cait wrinkled her forehead. “Are you all right?”
That was when she noticed the blood.
Victoria Ayers’s right hand hung limply by her side, unmoving and apparently forgotten as the woman gazed at Cait with dead, empty eyes. A slow but steady drip-drip-drip of thick maroon-black blood gathered at the tips of two of her fingers and fell to the floor in a steady rhythm, dropping first off one finger and then the other. It seemed to be a fair amount of blood. It wasn’t a river, exactly, but it fell in a continuous pattern, like the beginning of a soft summer rain, and was gathering into an impressive little pool on the hardwood floor.
“Oh my God, what’s wrong?” Cait asked as she stepped through the door, overcome by her natural impulse to help the elderly woman. She felt Kevin hang back, still concerned about whatever had been bothering him since the phone call on the airplane. He had stepped one foot through the door, resting it on the interior floor, but his body hovered half in and half out.
Kevin grabbed Cait by the elbow as she was reaching for her mother’s injured hand, pulling her insistently backward, trying to drag her out the door and away from her mother, who clearly needed help! Cait resisted, struggling, pulling in the other direction, but she was no match for his superior size and strength. She opened her mouth to complain. What the hell did he think he was doing?
And then a man stepped out from behind the front door. He moved smoothly and quickly behind Victoria, wrapping one arm around her waist, gently, like a lover, and the other around her throat, a long knife pressed to her skin. The blade glittered and winked in the light, drawing Cait’s attention. She froze, her anger at Kevin forgotten.
Her heart stuttered and her stomach flip-flopped. It took only a second to recognize the stranger; his face was burned indelibly into her brain. It was the man from the horrible Flickers of the last couple of days. The man who had tortured the poor girl strapped into the blocky wooden chair. The cold-blooded killer who had begun haunting her dreams.
This was the man.
And he was holding a knife to her mother’s throat.
The intruder offered up an easy smile, the smile of a man comfortable in his surroundings. In control of the situation. “Please, come in,” he said, directing his attention at Kevin, who had stopped tugging on Cait’s arm and now stood unmoving.
Cait tore her eyes from the intruder and glanced back at her boyfriend. She had known Kevin a long time and instantly recognized he was reverting to cop mode, sizing up the situation, trying to determine what action he might be able to take to neutralize this unexpected threat. He instinctively grabbed at his hip, but of course his gun wasn’t there. His gun wasn’t within a thousand miles of there. It was locked safely away in the closet of his apartment in Tampa.
The intruder watched Kevin with dead eyes and a smile flickered across his face and disappeared. “No, really, come in,” he repeated. “I insist. We insist, isn’t that right, dear?” He waved the knife theatrically in front of Virginia’s face before replacing it against the wrinkled alabaster skin of her throat.
“Don’t hurt anyone,” Kevin answered, raising his hands in a calming gesture, his voice steady and reasonable. “If it’s money you’re after, I’m sure we can get some together for you, maybe not as much as you’d like—none of us is rich, as I’m sure you can tell—but we will all be happy to contribute to the cause.”
The man laughed. The sound was unexpected, Cait thought, and blood-chilling. His knife jittered against Virginia’s throat as he chuckled and she let out a gasp either of fear or pain, Cait could not tell which. So far there was no blood besides the droplets that continued to drip steadily off the ends of her fingers. “This isn’t about money,” the man said coldly.
“Then what is it about?” Kevin asked. He eased his right foot inside the door and stepped fully into the house. As he did, the man pulled Virginia Ayers an equivalent distance back down the hallway. The intruder was being careful to maintain a safe distance from Kevin, a precaution that struck Cait as utterly unnecessary. As long as that razor-sharp blade remained pressed to Virginia’s throat, there was nothing Kevin or anyone else could do. It would take but one flick of the
man’s wrist and Cait’s mother would bleed out within minutes.
“What is it about? It’s about her,” he answered, directing the business end of the knife at Cait for just a second. At that moment she thought it looked more like a dagger than a knife.
“Cait?” Kevin answered in surprise. It was clearly not what he had expected to hear.
“That’s her name? Cait? What a pretty name. A pretty name for a pretty girl. A pretty, bad girl. A pretty, bad girl who’s going to suffer.”
In that instant everything clicked in Cait’s mind. The phone call on the plane. Her mother’s sudden, unexpected change of heart. The plea to return immediately. The man had been here, brandishing his knife, injuring her fingers badly enough to make them bleed, forcing her to bring Cait and Kevin back here. What she didn’t understand was why.
Kevin continued to move slowly and unthreateningly forward until he stood next to Cait. She knew he was trying to place his body between her and the lunatic with the knife, partly to put himself in a position to help Virginia, but mostly to remove Cait from as much of the danger as possible. “What has Cait done that requires her to suffer?” He kept his tone conversational, like two neighbors discussing the weekend’s football matchups.
The man shook his head. “Step away from the door and close it behind you. There’s no need for the entire neighborhood to witness our little get-together, not that anyone’s out there to see it anyway.”
Kevin once again took Cait’s elbow, this time moving her one step to the left. He reached back with his foot and pushed the door shut. It closed with a thunk of finality and she knew this was going to be bad. This was going to be very bad.
CHAPTER 36
Maizie Adams had lived in Everett her entire life, the last forty-five years of it right here in Granite Circle. She had moved in when the neighborhood was still nearly brand-new, buying the only house she would ever own with her husband Roger, a printing press operator at the Boston Globe.
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