“You are to me. Did you know that Mom and Dad had this picture of you in your dress blues on the mantel in the living room, and I stole it and put it in my room? Mom searched for days before she found it. When she did, she let me keep it. You were my hero then, and you’re my hero now. Even though sometimes you act like a pill.”
She picked up the plate he’d just rinsed, and dried it with the dish towel. “You know,” he said, scrubbing at a second plate, “when Dad and Rose told us they were expecting you, the three of us were all a little embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed?” She scrunched up her nose. “Why?”
“Think about it. We were teenagers, only a couple years older than you are now. We didn’t like to think about our parents doing that kind of thing. I mean, this was my dad. There was a big ick factor. And they were both closing in on forty. Practically geriatric. Did people that old even have sex? But of course, all we could do was accept it. A new baby sister? Yeah, whatever.” He rinsed a glass and handed it to her.
“And then,” he said, “I saw you for the first time.” He stared into the suds, remembering. “And you were…perfect. Innocent and flawless and perfect. Until that moment, I’d never realized I could love anybody that much. I made a vow, right then and there, to dedicate my life to making sure you were safe and protected. That was fourteen years ago, and nothing’s changed. I still feel the same way. It’s just that protecting you now means something very different from what it meant then.”
“I’m not a kid anymore, Mikey. I keep telling you this, but you’re not listening. You have to let me make my own decisions. My own mistakes. It’s part of growing up.”
“But there are degrees. Dye your hair green? It’ll grow back out. Lesson learned. Shoot up heroin? The lesson’s a lot bigger, and you might not live long enough to learn it.”
“Jesus, I’m not that stupid.”
“I never said you were. But we all do stupid things sometimes.” He’d certainly done enough of them. One of those stupid things involved Paige MacKenzie.
“You need to stop being afraid, Mikey. You’re afraid for me. You’re afraid for you. If you live your life in fear, you’ll miss out on all the good stuff. You need to figure out what it is that’s holding you back, and you need to fix it.”
“God, Beth, if only it was that easy.”
They settled on the couch with the movies. She’d picked up a couple of chick flicks. He preferred action films, but since his goal tonight was to keep her distracted from thoughts of the Washburn kid, it was all good. But he was tired. It had been a long day, and he had to work early tomorrow. By nine-thirty, he could barely keep his eyes open. He’d gotten little enough sleep since Paige left. Night after night, he’d wake around two and lie there for hours, his mind churning as he wrestled with the decisions he’d made and the reasons for them. If this turned out to be another of those nights, he’d need to get in a few hours of sleep before the inevitable waking, or tomorrow would be hellish. Not that most days weren’t hellish since she went back to California. But a lack of sleep would only make it worse.
He yawned and stretched and said, “I’m heading off to bed.”
“You’re such an old geezer.”
There was contempt in her tone, but also affection. He supposed that at fourteen, thirty did sound geriatric. “Just wait,” he said. “Your time will come, and sooner than you think. Guest room bed’s made up for you. Don’t stay up all night.”
“I won’t.”
* * *
SOMETHING WOKE HIM. Half-asleep, Mikey checked the clock. It was a few minutes past eleven. Too early for his usual nocturnal wakefulness. In the darkness, he blinked. Headlights. In his driveway. Somebody was out there.
He sat up, yanked on a pair of jeans, and grabbed the crutch he kept next to the bed. The trailer was silent, but he could hear hushed voices outside. The guest room was empty. So was the couch.
Mikey opened the trailer door, shaded his eyes from the blinding headlights. A red Camaro, circa 1968, sat in his driveway, engine purring. The radio played some metal song he didn’t know, muted so it wouldn’t wake the entire neighborhood. But the steady boom-boom-boom made him grit his teeth. Through the open window, he could see Beth’s blond head in the back seat.
He knew that car. Knew who it belonged to. He should. He’d spent enough time trying to pin seven burglaries and one assault charge on the driver and his frequent companion. He knew exactly who was behind the steering wheel. If Nicky was driving, then Alex must be in the back seat with Beth.
Mikey flipped on the outside light, flooding the yard with illumination. “Beth?” he said.
Her face, when it turned his way, revealed a mix of surprise and guilt. “I thought you were asleep,” she said.
“I was. Now I’m not. What’s going on?”
“Jesus, Mikey, we’re just talking.” How was it that a teenage girl could pack so much contempt into a mere four syllables?
“It’s past eleven. Come back inside, before we have the whole park awake.”
“She’s busy,” Alex said from the shadows behind her. “Go back to bed, gimp.”
“That’s my brother!” Beth turned on him hotly. “You don’t call him a gimp.”
“Why not?” Alex drawled. “It’s the truth.”
Moving slowly and carefully with the crutch, Mikey descended the three steps to the ground. “I want you out of the car, Beth. And I want your friends—” He eyed the driver coolly. “—to leave. Now.”
“No. I’m not coming in. Nicky promised me a ride in his car, and I’m going.”
“You are not going anywh—”
“You’re not my father, Mikey. You can’t order me around. I’m just trying to have some fun with my friends.”
The girl sitting in the front passenger seat said sweetly, “It’s okay, Mr. Lindstrom. We’re just going out to the quarry to meet up with some friends. Beth won’t be gone long. I have to be home by twelve-thirty. My mom is really strict.”
“Deanna,” Nicky Washburn said, “shut up.”
He had no idea who Deanna was, but he knew all the different ways that four teenagers joyriding in a fast car could get into trouble. “She’s not going,” he said.
Nicky gunned the engine. In a put-upon voice, he said, “Are we doing this, or what?”
“Listen to me, Beth. Remember what we talked about earlier? The degrees? This is a big one. These guys are bad news.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Nicky said, “can we cut all the touchy-feely shit? Are you going with us, or not? I don’t have all night to wait around.”
“Beth!” Mikey ordered. “Get out of the fucking car!”
His sister looked at him for a long time, her face painted with indecision and regret. “I’m sorry,” she said.
The car windows went up. Adrenalin surged through his body. Mikey rushed the door, yanked at the handle, but it was locked. He banged on the window as Nicky put the Camaro into gear, backing it up so abruptly it nearly ran over his foot. Mikey clutched at the door handle, was dragged for a few yards before his sweaty hand slipped and he fell ass-first in the gravel. His heart slamming against his ribcage, he watched the Camaro bump its way down the narrow lane between trailers, its license plate imprinted on his brain: 1HOTCAH. Brake lights flashing, it stopped at the verge of the highway. The thumping of a bass line floated back to him on the summer air. Nicky had turned the radio back up. The car inched forward, paused, and roared away.
Jesus Christ. He held up his hand and watched the trembling of his wrist. If anything happened to his sister, he would shoot both of those boys and ask questions later. Mikey reached into his pocket for his phone, intending to call the cops, and realized two things simultaneously. One, he’d left his phone on the bedroom dresser.
And two, he was the cops.
At this time of night, he’d get the sheriff’s department, where one lone deputy was responsible for patrolling 1200 square miles of Maine back roads. Short of a miracle, by the tim
e somebody got here, it would be too late. He didn’t have time to wait for Nicky Washburn to wrap that cherry-red classic Camaro around a tree. He had to act now, before something happened.
He was the one who’d lost her.
He was the one who had to get her back.
* * *
THE KIDS WEREN’T at the quarry.
He chased off an amorous teenage couple who said they hadn’t seen a cherry-red 1968 Camaro. If Deanna had lied about where they were headed—or if the Washburn boys had lied to her—they could be halfway to Lewiston by now.
Where would a carful of teenagers go at 11:30 on a late-summer Friday night? He couldn’t think of a single option that didn’t twist his stomach into knots. The Washburn boys were trouble. They came from a long line of trouble. Larceny and lengthy incarcerations ran in their veins. So did mixing alcohol with motor vehicles. If anything happened to her, it would finish him off. There were things, he was now realizing, that were worse than being a failure. Losing your kid sister was one of them.
He dialed her cell phone for the third time. The call went directly to voice mail. Where the hell was she? Why wasn’t she answering her phone? Anxiety gnawed at his innards as a glut of possible scenarios raced through his brain. Finding the Camaro upside-down in the river. Or in pieces, scattered across the highway. Finding Beth assaulted. Raped. Strangled.
That telltale hitch started in his breathing. Stop it, he told himself. Take a breath and calm yourself down. You can’t help her if you work yourself up into a lather.
Fingers gripping the steering wheel, he recalled what the hospital shrink had taught him. Breathe deep, hold it for a count of ten, then let it out. He did this three or four times. The anxiety stepped down a couple of notches. There were relaxation exercises that went along with the deep breathing, but he didn’t have time for them. He had to find Beth.
He drove the length of Main Street, slowly, went around the backs of all the businesses in the downtown area. The IGA, the donut shop, even the police station. Nothing. The municipal parking lot on the riverbank held nothing but a half-dozen cars that belonged to residents of the apartments above the stores. Mikey turned right at the town’s one traffic light, crossed the river and drove a mile up into the hills to the high school. He found it quiet and deserted.
Where the hell had they disappeared to? Nicky Washburn’s car, with its classic lines and striking paint job, wouldn’t be easy to hide. It would stand out in any crowd; it would certainly stand out at midnight in a town where they rolled up the sidewalks at five o’clock.
He parked the truck, picked up his phone, typed a terse message to his sister: CALL ME. NOW.
Still no response. Mikey headed out onto the main highway, drove a couple of miles in each direction before he circled back around toward downtown on the older section of road that had been mostly forgotten when the state had built the bypass a couple of decades ago.
He was somewhere in that half-mile stretch of marshy no man’s land near Gunther’s place when his headlights picked out two small figures, heads down, walking rapidly toward him on the opposite shoulder. Illuminated by his high beams, Beth’s blond hair was unmistakable. Relief turned his insides to liquid. Beth raised her head, and he saw blood trickling from her lip.
Mikey brought the truck to a screeching halt. When Beth recognized his vehicle, she grabbed the other girl by the hand, and they raced across the deserted roadway to where he sat with his four-way flashers on. He leaned over and unlocked the passenger door, and the girls scrambled up into the truck cab. “What the hell happened to you?” he said, grabbing Beth’s chin and turning her head so he could get a better look. Her lip was split, and blood trickled from her nose.
Through a sob, Beth said, “Alex punched me.”
The fury rose, instantaneous and seething. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch! Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“Nicky took our phones,” Deanna said. “And he threatened us.”
He realized he was holding his sister’s chin tightly enough to leave bruises. Releasing it, he leaned over her, reached into the glove compartment, and pulled out a fistful of napkins left over from his last fast-food meal. Handing them to her, he demanded, “Threatened you how?”
While Beth mopped blood, Deanna said, “They’re breaking into the store. The one that belonged to the old guy that died. When Beth told them we weren’t getting mixed up in anything like that, Nicky threatened to kill us if we told anyone. He has a gun. He made sure we saw it.”
“I’m sorry,” Beth said, her voice muffled by the wad of fast-food napkins clamped in front of her face. “When Alex told me what they were planning, all I could think about was what you’d said to me about degrees. I was such an idiot to get into that car with them.”
“You’re not an idiot. And better late than never.” He pulled the truck onto the shoulder, turned off the lights and the engine, and handed her his phone. Unfastening his seat belt, he said briskly, “Call Teddy. His number’s programmed into the phone. You’ll get his voice mail. Ted doesn’t usually answer his phone at night. Leave a message. Then keep calling until you get him. Sooner or later, he’ll get out of bed and answer. Tell him I’m at Gunther’s, I’m taking down the Washburn brothers, and I could really use backup. And for Christ’s sake, tell him not to use his lights and siren.”
“But what—”
“Just do it! Lock the doors and keep the windows up. Don’t open them for anyone but me. And if either of you gets out of this truck, I’ll strangle you myself.”
An odd calm descended on him as he strode up the gravel roadside, his Glock in its shoulder holster a familiar weight against his ribs. The night was pitch-black, moonless, the sky lit only by starshine. The darkness would swing things in his favor; he had better night vision than most people, honed by a buttload of military training that had taken him over countless miles of rough terrain in the dark.
His nerves had given way to a steely reserve. His sister was safe. If his words had influenced her, all the better. But what mattered, the only thing that mattered, was her safety. Everything else was secondary. Now, he had a job to do, and he wasn’t about to screw this one up. He was a Marine. He’d be a Marine until his dying breath. He had this covered.
Mikey paused at the corner of the paved lot. Inside the store, a flashlight beam played around. Sticking to the darkest, most shadowy areas, he crept around behind the store, where they’d left the Camaro. He silently raised the hood, pulled the spark plug wires, then lowered the hood back into place. The Washburns wouldn’t be going anywhere in this car tonight.
These boys were not intellectual giants. Their family tree wasn’t exactly peopled with rocket scientists, but these two were stupider than most. Did they really think the girls wouldn’t talk? That somebody wouldn’t ask what had happened to their cell phones, or how Beth had wound up with a split lip and a bloody nose?
He leaned against the hood of the Camaro, Glock in hand, and waited. He could hear them inside, banging around, the faint murmur of conversation. Five minutes passed. Ten. Then, the creaking of a door, and they stepped out onto the porch, still talking. In his hands, Alex carried a pillow case filled with cartons of cigarettes. Nicky was toting a crowbar. The brothers looked up, saw him, and froze.
He stepped away from the car. “Evening, gentlemen.”
Nicky was the first to recover. “Hey, look,” he said, “it’s the gimp.”
Alex dropped the pillowcase, scattering cartons of Marlboros across the wooden floor of the porch, and took off running. Mikey let him go. He wouldn’t get far. Sooner or later, he’d have to go home, and the JFPD knew where he lived. Besides, it was Nicky—who stood his ground, crowbar in hand—that Mikey really wanted. Nicky, who’d threatened to kill his baby sister. Nicky, who was carrying, probably the firearm he’d stolen from the Ellis household a couple of months ago.
“You know,” he said, his Glock trained directly at the center of Nicky Washburn’s body mass, “I’ve
spent months trying to pin something on the two of you, so I’m really happy to see you here tonight. On the other hand, that cowardly asshole you call a brother just punched my fourteen-year-old sister in the face. And I hear you threatened to kill her. That was a really bad thing to do, Nicky, and now my good mood’s gone down the toilet.”
“I’m shaking in my shoes, asshole.”
“That’s Officer Asshole to you, Washburn. Drop the crowbar and put your hands up where I can see them. You’re under arrest for burglary, theft, criminal threatening, and assault.”
“I didn’t assault anyone!”
“Little old lady? Came home and caught you rummaging through her jewelry box? You shoved her to the floor? Any of this starting to sound familiar, Nick? She broke her hip, you know.”
Guilt flashed in Nicky’s eyes before his face hardened. “Fuck you!” The kid dropped the crowbar and inched his hand toward his pocket.
Mikey’s heartbeat quickened. He really didn’t want to have to shoot this kid. He would if he had to, but he really didn’t want to. As a Marine, he’d killed before, but he’d never felt good about it. Killing was a messy, obscene act that had no place in this peaceful little town.
In a deadly quiet voice, he said, “Don’t be stupid, Nicky. Because if you touch that goddamn gun, I’ll have to kill you. Think about it. Think about your mother.” He’d met Lois Washburn. She was a pathetic little thing who looked a decade older than he knew her to be. A mother loved her sons, even when they were no-good punks. “Do you really want to do this to her?”
Nicky froze. His gaze darted left, then right. He lowered his hand, and Mikey’s heart rate slowed. In one smooth move, Nicky grabbed the porch railing, vaulted over it, and hit the ground running.
The kid could run, he’d give him that. Could’ve been a track star if he’d wanted to turn his energies in a positive direction. But so could Mikey. The hours spent at the gym, the months of running with Paige, had him in top form. Nicky crashed through the underbrush about three seconds ahead of him. In pitch blackness, just a few feet apart, they ran over bumpy, rocky ground, tree branches slapping them in the face. His foot caught on a root and he stumbled, caught himself, kept on running. They burst out of the woods and into the wetlands. There goes the prosthesis, he thought, but didn’t slow. He was making progress, closing the gap between them. His Marine training had prepared him well for all kinds of terrain. Nicky, on the other hand, was starting to have trouble with the sloppy, wet bog. His harsh, raspy breaths carried back to Mikey. The kid was slowing. Mikey filled his lungs with oxygen, estimated the distance between them, and launched himself through the air toward Washburn.
Face the Music: Beyond Jackson Falls Book 1 Page 32