“The lake?”
Laura nodded. “I thought he might find someone there who could call for help.”
“Lady, you’re a lousy liar. And I don’t have time for this. Where’s the kid?”
“You don’t have time to find him,” Nick said. “I told you, the FBI are coming in a chopper. They know you stole the police cruiser yesterday, so it’s going to be easy to find you on the road. If you’re smart, you’ll get out of here now.”
The gun didn’t waver, but the sweat was building on the man’s brow with every wail of the sirens.
“Time is running out,” Nick said.
“Shut up! Where’s the boy?”
“I told you,” Laura said, “he’s at the lake.”
“I don’t think so,” the cop said, then turned back toward the woods. “I heard him back there. I bet you were there with him. And I bet I can get him to come out.”
Laura shut her eyes and listened to the sirens, which were coming ever closer. All they needed was another minute or two.
“Rico!” the cop yelled into the woods. “I’ve got your teacher here with me. You know what I’m going to do to her? The same thing I did to your mother if you don’t get your butt out here right now!”
He pulled a knife from his left boot. “See?” He let the sunlight glint off the blade. “See what I have? Remember what this does, Rico?”
Laura prayed that the boy would stay where she’d left him, but she honestly didn’t think he would.
“Where is he?” Nick whispered into her ear as the cop walked toward the woods.
“Buried under a pile of leaves. But if that man goes back there, he’ll find him”
“Then we’ll have to make sure he doesn’t go back there.”
“Nick?” Again there were so many things she wanted to tell him and no time to do it. She settled for an urgent request. “Be careful.”
He stared back at her, the look in his eyes telling her that he had a lot of things he’d like to say, as well.
“We should have had more time,” she said.
“We’ll get it.” He almost made her believe it. “Laura, if Rico comes out into the open, you hit the ground, all right?”
She nodded.
“Promise me.”
“I will.”
“Rico!” the cop shouted again, walking back toward Nick and Laura. “This is it! I’m through waiting. Come over here, teacher”
She swallowed hard and started to move. Nick wouldn’t let go of her hand.
“No,” he said.
The cop brought the gun around and pointed it toward Nick. He was getting more and more nervous as the sirens grew louder. “You know,” the cop said, “you’re right. I don’t have time for this. And I’m going to kill you all anyway, so I might as well start right here with you.”
Laura couldn’t even scream. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Nick squeezed her hand. He was going to do something, but what could he do? What could she do? She didn’t know. She—
“Wait!” From somewhere in the woods came the rustling of leaves and a little boy’s cry.
Laura felt something shove her until she was off balance. She fell hard to the ground. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rico running out of the woods and saw Nick lunge at the gunman.
She screamed. Nick collided with the cop, but the cop still held on to the gun. Laura remembered Rico’s trick from the hospital. She grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it into the cop’s eyes.
The man choked and spit. He howled in outrage. In a reflex action his hand went to his eyes, and dropped the gun. Nick grabbed it and backed away toward Laura.
Nick was dirty from rolling on the ground. There was a trickle of blood coming from the side of his mouth. He had never looked better to her.
The cop was still howling and cursing. And Rico was standing frozen by the tree and crying.
Laura hesitated.
“Go on,” Nick said. “He needs you right now.”
The deputies were there in less than a minute. The whirling sound of a helicopter came soon after that. Nick handed over the gun, then went to the edge of the woods where Laura stood holding Rico.
Nick’s heart was still racing painfully, his mind on those awful minutes before he arrived, when he didn’t know if he would get there in time.
All of a sudden, he had no energy left. He’d been running on sheer nerves alone, and now even those deserted him.
Rico was crying. “He hurt my mother,” he said.
“I know, little man,” Laura replied.
“He killed her.”
“Oh, Rico.”
“Didn’t he?”
Laura looked to him for guidance. Nick nodded.
“Yes,” she told the boy. “I’m sorry. He did.”
“I saw him after he did it. He said . . . he was going to get me, too. He chased me down the alley, and I just ran and ran and ran.”
“It’s all over now,” Laura said with tears screaming down her face. “He won’t be able to hurt you now.”
“Really?”
“I promise. He’s going to jail. He won’t be able to get to you from there.”
Rico turned back toward the cabin, to the woods, then back to Laura. His sad little face crumpled again as he started to weep. “But what . . . what’s gonna happen to me?”
“I thought you might want to come home with me. And be my little boy. Or, my little man?”
Rico nodded vigorously. Laura hauled him back into her arms. “It’s going to be all right,” she told him. “I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
Laura looked over the top of the boy’s head to Nick. She was crying even harder now. He reached out and wiped her tears away.
Then she held out an arm to him in invitation to join the two of them. Nick took one step, then another. He made it to her side. Her arm came around him, drawing him into the circle of the two of them, which now became a circle of three.
Chapter 14
Nick let three long weeks go by without touching her, without kissing her, without having her in his bed. He saw her only when Rico came twice a week for therapy sessions at the shelter, where Nick was volunteering again.
And he couldn’t say why he stayed away or what he was waiting for to make him understand what he should do next.
He felt restless and uncertain—two entirely common emotions of late. But there was a difference now. The restlessness and the uncertainty bothered him. They gnawed at him. He wanted to do something, but what?
More than anything, he wanted to go to her. But what would he say?
Would she see him differently now that they weren’t running for their lives?
They’d had only five days together. Five incredible, intense, life-altering days. At least, for him they had been.
He was a psychiatrist. He knew what fear and danger and adrenaline could do to people. All their emotions were heightened. Was that all it had been between them? Not for him.
At first, he thought he would give her some time, give this whole mess time to settle out.
Morris, along with another police officer and an FBI agent, were in jail awaiting trial. Among other things, Morris was charged with the murders of Renata Leone and a police officer.
Drew explained to them that Morris and his partner had indeed gotten a case of sticky fingers, helping themselves from time to time to seized drug money, sometimes to stolen property they recovered but never turned over as evidence. They’d helped themselves to drugs from time to time, as well.
Morris had met Renata Leone when he busted her supplier one night while Renata was there. He suspected she saw him take some of the heroin, and he found her the next day. They made a deal. He offered her some of his take if she would keep quiet. Occasionally, she led him to a dealer she thought might have a lot of cash on hand.
The partnership turned sour when Renata wanted out. She was under pressure from the social workers to get off the drugs for good or lose Rico. And she wanted to
get away from Morris, but he wouldn’t let her go.
One day, after she threatened to turn him in to the cops if he didn’t leave her alone, Morris killed her. Rico found him as he was trying to get rid of the body. And then Morris had to make a choice. Did he take the time to hide the body as best he could or go after the boy?
He chased Rico for blocks, but Rico got away. Not knowing where to turn, threatened with his life if he talked, Rico ran for three days before stumbling into the Hope House shelter.
By the time Morris returned to the alley, there were too many people around. He couldn’t risk moving Renata’s body. Luckily for him, it was days later before anyone found her.
He had time to search the apartment, and if Renata kept any written account of what happened between her and Morris, they would never know it. There was nothing left when the police searched.
Morris was facing two counts of murder.
Nick was something of a celebrity again. He and Laura and Rico had more than their fifteen minutes of fame. Of course the papers dredged up the whole story of Carter Barnes’s shooting spree from a year ago. Carter’s mother, who’d won her election, was running off at the mouth again about Nick. But Carter’s mother wasn’t the only one. Nearly a year after his death, Jason Williams’s family was after the truth about what had happened to their son, and they came to Nick, among others, for answers.
Amazingly, the Williamses didn’t blame Nick, and they weren’t letting Carter Barnes’s parents get away with blaming Nick publicly, either. The story that came out was vastly different from the one the television stations and the newspapers had run the summer before.
At first, Nick went into hiding from the reporters. The shooting in front of his apartment led reporters to that scene, so he abandoned it for a few days. He ended up sleeping in A.J’s old room at the shelter, which was still empty because A.J’s replacement hadn’t been hired yet. And then he found himself working again.
He reclaimed a part of his old life, and it felt good. He was also helping Rico deal with his mother’s death, which meant that twice a week, he and Laura greeted each other like polite strangers in the halls of the shelter, then talked after his session with Rico as if they had nothing more in common than an interest in the boy.
He thought she was even more beautiful, more desirable than before, if possible. He wanted so badly to touch her, to take her in his arms. And he had dreams about her—vivid, endless, erotic dreams.
Nick tried to keep busy. It shouldn’t have been that difficult with a shelter full of kids, all in desperate need of help. He tried not to think about the things he’d never asked her, the things they never had time to discuss. He wondered if she’d think he lost his mind if he simply called and asked her out.
They’d never had a date, and here he was believing he was in love with her, wondering if she might possibly feel the same and how they might build a life together.
Funny, he’d never been shy around women, never been one of those men to fumble around for the right thing to say. But the past year had changed him. Not as much as he feared, thanks to Laura. But he wasn’t the man he used to be.
He was still debating what to do, what to say to her, when he picked up the phone two days later and found her on the other end of the line.
“What’s wrong?” He sensed instantly that something wasn’t right.
“Rico is gone.” Her voice was low and strained. “I thought ... I didn’t know who else to call”
Nick was glad she’d turned to him. “Tell me what happened.”
“I went in the bedroom to take a call from the social worker. I don’t like to talk in front of him because it upsets him. He knows it’s up to the social workers and the judge to decide whether he gets to stay with me. I was on the phone for maybe ten minutes. When I came downstairs, he was gone.”
“Okay, hang on, Laura. We’ll find him. How long ago did this happen?”
“Nearly an hour.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Do you think I should? I mean, do I have to bring them into it? He’s still so afraid of them. He just can’t understand that most of them aren’t like Morris. If a police officer tried to pick him up, I don’t know what he’d do”
“I don’t know,” Nick said. “Where do you think he’d go?”
“To see you, maybe. He talks about you all the time. He wants to know ... why the three of us aren’t together anymore.”
Nick turned his face away from the receiver and swore. “Laura, if I could begin to explain it to you or to him I would, but I—”
“I didn’t ask you for anything,” she shot back. “Not even an explanation. I just ... I want you to watch for him, in case he comes to find you. And, uh, call me if he does, all right?”
“Of course I’ll call you.” He was angry then, when he had no right to be. He had created this situation by avoiding her, by pushing her away. Clearly, he’d hurt her by doing that. And he’d hurt Rico, as well. ”Is that all you want from me now? A phone call if I happen to find him?”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. Then finally she added, “I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give. I don’t want guilt. I don’t want some sense of obligation. I don’t want you to say anything that you don’t mean or don’t feel.”
“Okay, tell me what you do want.”
“Right now, I just want my little boy back.”
“All right.” As he had in those tense moments in back of the cabin with Morris and his gun on them, Nick thought of a million things he wanted to say right then. And he didn’t think this was the time for any of them. He settled for “I miss you. Both of you.”
“Well, you have a strange way of showing it, Doctor.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I. I ... I can’t talk to you about this right now. I have to find Rico.”
“You need to stay there at the apartment. He might come back. Or he might call.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
She sounded so afraid.
“I’d come and stay with you, but if you really think he’s coming here, I should be here to talk to him. He must have something pretty important on his mind to take off like that.”
“He—” Laura choked on the words. “This isn’t the time to get into this. But, in case he comes, you need to be prepared.”
“For what?”
“He thought you and I, or that the three of us, were going to be a family.”
There. was an opening he couldn’t afford to pass up. “Do you still want that?”
Dead silence greeted him, and it went on for so long that he thought she’d gotten mad at him and simply walked away. Then he beard her put down the phone, or maybe she put her hand over the mouthpiece. Whatever she did, he was certain he heard the hushed sound of a woman weeping, and he felt like an absolute jerk.
“Laura, please, don’t. It’s going to be all right. I swear to you. We’ll find Rico, and then we’ll sit down somewhere together and we’ll work this thing out. You’ll see. I just need to—”
He turned his head toward a commotion in the hallway, saw one little boy break through the crowd of teenagers. Then the boy stopped and stared at him defiantly.
“He’s here,” he told Laura.
“Rico?”
“Yes. Right here in front of me, mad as hell—at me, I’m betting. But otherwise he looks fine.”
“I’m on my way,” she said.
“Laura?” he said, too late. She hadn’t told him whether she, too, wanted the three of them to be together.
Surely that’s what she wanted. Women didn’t cry over men they didn’t care about, did they? There was enough doubt in his mind to drive him a little crazy between now and the time she arrived.
Carefully, Nick put down the phone. He didn’t have any more time to be uncertain, no more time for self-doubt. He had to turn and face the boy standing in the hallway.
“Friend of yours, Dr. Nick?” the
teenager working the door that night asked him.
“Yes.”
“He didn’t want to tell us anything but that”
“I’ll take care of him,” Nick said, motioning for Rico to follow him down the hallway.
He didn’t turn around to see if Rico followed. He didn’t want to give him the upper hand. Nick took him upstairs to the room where he now slept, the one where Rico and Laura had spent that first night at the shelter.
Nick sat on the side of the bed, rested his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him, as he tried his best to appear relaxed.
Rico was mad enough for the two of them,. Nick was trying to be reasonable about the whole thing.
“You’ve got some explaining to do, young man.”
Rico shot him a sullen look that said he didn’t have to explain anything to Nick. He had a premonition of what the years ahead, particularly the teenage years, would hold for the people raising this boy.
Nick laid into him. It was time he got used to the fact that he would be answering to someone for his behavior. “Did you ever think that someone might be worried to death when you ran off like this?”
“Nobody ever did before,” Rico shot back.
“Well, a couple of people do now.”
“Like who?”
“Laura, for one.”
“That’s one,” he conceded, daring Nick to name someone else.
“And me.”
The bravado was running thin at that point. Rico looked more like a scared little boy than anything else. Nick sensed that they had reached the crux of the problem.
“Want to tell me what was so important that you had to scare Laura half to death to come talk to me about it tonight?”
Rico scuffed one shoe against the other and remained silent.
“It must have been awfully important,” Nick prompted. “Because I know you care about her. You know she loves you.”
Rico stared at the floor. “I meant to leave her a note.”
“Not good enough.”
He glared at Nick. Nick wondered whether he would be insulting the boy’s dignity if he gave him a quick hug. It was a toss-up with eight-year-old boys, with the urge to grow up warring with the tenderhearted kids inside them. Nick decided not to risk it at the moment.
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