by Chris Jordan
“They’re covering the house from both sides,” Shane says.
When we’re about a hundred feet from the house, the commander of the local SWAT unit steps out from behind a tree and tries to wave us off.
“Do they know who I am?” I ask Shane.
“Not sure,” he says. “They might. Or they might think we’re from the neighborhood.”
“Will they shoot us?”
He shrugs. “I seriously doubt it.”
“Good enough for me,” I say, and steer him around the picket fence, into the yard.
All the curtains are drawn. The house looks sleepy somehow, as if waiting for something, or someone, to wake it up.
“What’s your plan?” he wants to know, keeping his voice low.
“Get in the house.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“Around the back,” I say. “There’s a bulkhead door.”
Behind the adjacent home, barely in our line of sight, men in camouflage gear have assembled, sniper rifles at the ready. More furious arms wave, trying to warn us off. We studiously ignore them and proceed to the bulkhead. It’s not fair to these brave and dutiful men, but I can’t help thinking about the SWAT unit at Columbine, waiting until all the killing had been done before they send a man into the school. Following procedure, even if it means a courageous teacher bleeds to death while they “access the situation.”
Shane wraps both big hands around the bulkhead handle and attempts to ease it open. “Locked,” he whispers.
I lead him around to the breezeway. When in doubt, ring the doorbell. Before pressing the button, I try the knob and much to my surprise, find the door unlocked.
“Let me go first,” Shane whispers.
Shaking him off—not hard, considering his condition—I ease the door open and step into Lyla Cutter’s kitchen.
Pancakes. The kitchen is rich with the smell of frying pancakes. And I can scarcely believe my eyes. Lyla stands at the stove, wearing a frilly white apron, a spatula raised in her hand, as if conducting a symphony only she can hear. Slumped at the table, looking wan and sleepy and confused, is an eleven-year-old boy. Tall and lanky for his age, dark hair matted to his head, as if he’s been deeply asleep for an eternity and just been awakened by the smell of breakfast.
Tommy.
Every fiber of my being wants to rush to the table, but there’s an impressive rack of knives on the counter, within easy reach of Lyla’s pale, nervous hands, so I approach cautiously.
“Good morning,” says Lyla with manic brightness. “Is everybody hungry?”
My son is alive. That’s blinking in my brain like a giant neon sign. But if Tommy is here, so is the man in the mask. Is he waiting, watching? Tormenting me one last time before he brings the hammer down, pulls the trigger, whatever he’s got planned?
“Mom?” says Tommy, voice thick, head lolling. “Is that you?”
Then I’m hugging him, holding him tight to my breast, and for once he does not protest. “Mom, my throat hurts,” he says, slurring his words. “They stuck something in my throat.”
Holding his precious face in my hands, I search his eyes. He’s been drugged, no surprise, and I can see him fighting to clear his mind. His fingernails are torn up and he’s thinner than he should be, and he stinks of sweat and pee, but other than that he seems to be unharmed.
A miracle.
“This is Tomas,” Lyla says gaily, waving the spatula. “Tomas is Jesse’s brother, isn’t that nice? I figured if my Jesse likes pancakes, so would he.”
“Is your husband here?” Shane asks her.
Lyla shrugs prettily. She’s wearing a face borrowed from television, the Happy Housewife making breakfast for the kids. “Oh, he’s around, I guess. Up to something, as usual. Wanted me to think that this boy was Jesse, isn’t that silly? Swore to me. But a mother knows. A mother always knows.”
My plan is to roll under the table with Tommy if the moment comes. Shield him with my body.
“Mrs. Cutter, is that the basement door?” Shane asks.
“Yes,” Lyla says. She won’t look at the door, as if she knows that something bad is down there. Something that will ruin her fantasy of being normal and happy.
Shane eases the door open, revealing a slice of shadow, stairs going down. Holding his finger to his lips, he gives me a look and then descends into the basement.
“Pancakes?” Lyla says, setting a plate on the table. “There’s real maple syrup from Vermont.”
Shane’s voice comes up from the basement. “Hold it right there!” he orders in his best cop voice.
That’s when I remember that Randall Shane doesn’t have a gun. He’s unarmed. Went down those dark steps with nothing but his courage.
Shane, Shane, Shane.
In my precious son’s ear I whisper this: “Can you hide if you have to?”
Tommy nods. I kiss the top of his head and go to the basement door.
Shadows. Stairs going down. A single light at the bottom. And there in a pool of light, the man in the mask, unmasked. Wearing his army uniform, crisp and clean and perfect.
Gun in his hand. A big, ugly, black thing. Aiming at Shane, who stands a few paces away.
“Take two steps back,” the man says. “That’s an order.”
Shane takes two careful steps back.
The man looks up the stairwell, spots me.
“Hello, Kate,” he says. “You have a beautiful son, you know that? When the moment came, I couldn’t do it, can you believe that? Couldn’t kill one for the other. Thought I could, but my own beautiful son was gone, so what did it matter if his heart keeps beating?”
“Put the weapon down,” says Shane.
The man in the perfect uniform shakes his head. “Can’t do that,” he says, and he raises the gun to his own head.
A clap of thunder and he falls.
When Shane comes up from the basement I reach for his hand and pull him to me and kiss his battered face and thank him, again and again.
A few minutes later the men in the flak jackets and the assault rifles burst through the open door and find us sitting around the kitchen table, me and Tommy and Randall Shane. Lyla, too. She’s pretending nothing bad has happened. At her insistence we’re eating pancakes with butter and real maple syrup. Not as good as my pancakes, of course, but not bad, all things considered.
EPILOGUE
one year later
One Year Later
The Fairfax Yankees finally got a new manager. Me. Figured this was my son’s last year in Little League, I wanted to share every moment. Selfish, I know, but I can’t help it. He’ll grow up soon enough, turn into a surly teenager like all the others, and decide that the worst experience in life is appearing in public with his mother. But for right now he’s my twelve-year-old miracle boy, and he’s coming up to bat with the game on the line. Snapping and tugging at his gloves like his hero, A-Rod.
A-Rod is short for Alex Rodriquez, did you know that?
We’ve got a couple of new coaches, too. At third base, throwing hand signals like soft brown grenades, is one of my new partners, Sherona Johnson. When she signs for a bunt, you better believe the players obey. Connie, my other new partner, declined a coaching position by pleading overwork, but we all know she doesn’t give a fig for baseball. That’s okay, she and Mr. Yap attend the big games, and she cheers at all the wrong moments while he barks punctuation, and we love her for pretending to care who wins.
That tall, rangy galoot coaching first base is Randall Shane. He’s still doing his thing, finding lost children, but shows up as often as he can. The kids love him, no surprise, and whenever I hear them shout, “Shane! Shane!” it reminds me of Ted’s favorite movie, and I know he would approve, which makes me feel easy in my mind, and leaves my heart open.
The big news is, Shane recently got his driver’s license. That sleep-disorder thing has improved to the point that he often gets several good nights’ sleep in a row. The doctors think it had to do with a blow t
o the head, but I like to think it has something to do with us. Tomas and me, making a place in his life.
We’ve talked with Tomas about searching for his birth mother, but he says he’s not ready, maybe when he’s sixteen—like all twelve-year-olds, he thinks sixteen is practically grown-up. Whatever, I’m in no rush to deal with that particular problem. Time will take care of it or it won’t.
Truth is, I’m not sure where all this is going. Or if it has a happy ending. All I know is we’re taking it one day at a time, and finding joy in the smallest things, all three of us.
So far so good.
Now you’ll have to excuse me. My perfect, precious, truly gifted son is stepping into the batter’s box.
“Come on, Tomas! Clean stroke! Good at bat!”
I have no doubt.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0383-3
TAKEN
Copyright © 2006 by Rodman Philbrick.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
MIRA and the Star Colophon are trademarks used under license and registered in Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.
www.MIRABooks.com
First Printing: July 2006
About the Author
Chris Jordan grew up on the New England coast and has been writing novels since the age of 16. His books have won many awards and have been translated into numerous languages. One of his novels was adapted into the film The Mighty, starring Sharon Stone. He and his wife, journalist and writer Lynn Harnett, divide their time between Maine and the Florida Keys.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgment
1 Field of Green
1 Fairfax, Connecticut
2 In My Chair
3 Olly-Olly-Entry
4 The Man in the Mask
5 What Hinks Thinks
6 Method Man
7 Where’s Jesse?
8 A Small Villa in the Caymans
9 Fasten Your Seat Belt
10 Dead to the World
11 In the Basement
2 The Methods
12 Face Down on the Infield Grass
13 Memory Lane
14 Killer Mom
15 What He Lives For
16 When His Knuckles Brush the Ceiling
17 What the Pastry Chef Said
18 My Bad
19 Queens for a Day
20 Lawyers, Guns and Money
21 Mr. Smith Goes to the Bathroom
22 The Boy Scout
23 The Way a Man Walks
24 In the White Room
25 The Blur called Bruce
26 What Have You Done?
27 Sine Pari
28 Bing-Bing
29 Six Degrees of Pizza
30 Baking Bread
3 The Good Heart
31 No Stinking Badges
32 One Thin Dime
33 Good Night, Irene
34 Following Mom
35 When the Dark Lightning Strikes
36 Tenpins in Heaven
37 A Sleep So Deep
38 Already Dead
39 White Lady in the Moonlight
40 Friends
41 Forming Rank
42 Ask Dr. Google
43 A Pair in the Hole
44 What Would Shane Do?
45 Get You a Flyboy
46 He Said Goodbye
Epilogue
About the Author
Coming Next Month