The Search

by Нора Робертс

  “This one.” He snatched one at random. “I can’t live without this one.”

  She laughed even as she grabbed two more. “Perfect. Now I want some of that blue stuff.” She gestured toward a flat of lobelia. “Then we’ll be—Hey, hi, Meg, Chuck.”

  Her friends turned, with Meg’s hands full of dianthus.

  “Hi! Oh, aren’t those pretty.” Meg beamed at Simon. “You must’ve built those window boxes.”

  “Yeah,” he confirmed as he and Chuck exchanged brief yet long-suffering glances over the women’s heads.

  “Are you putting in another bed?” Fiona asked.

  “No. I had to run over and open the cabin for a new tenant, and Chuck stayed back, started cleaning out the shed.”

  “If I try it when she’s around, nothing gets thrown away.”

  “You never know, do you? He was going to toss this old washtub.”

  “Piece of junk,” Chuck said under his breath.

  “It won’t be, once I fill it with these and put it in the yard. I’m thinking of sort of digging in one end, so it looks like it just got tossed there. It’ll be a bit of lawn art instead of a piece of junk.”

  “Meg’s always figuring out how to repurpose things.” Fiona set the flowers in the cart.

  “I hate waste.”

  “I guess it saves us in the long run,” Chuck put in. “She mostly furnished the cabin out of thrift store and yard sale junk she fixed up.”

  “So you’ve got a tenant,” Fiona said as she picked through the lobelia.

  “A two-weeker. Husband’s down by himself this week. His wife and son are coming down next.” Meg picked up some lobelia, held it next to the dianthus and deemed it good. “The boy’s got some swim meet or some such thing he didn’t want to miss. The dad’s a teacher and writes travel articles. We’re hoping he does one on the cabin and Orcas. It couldn’t hurt. Kind of an odd one,” Meg added as they wandered through. “He came in a couple months back, asked to see it. Wanted a quiet place, private, so he could write.”

  “That’s natural enough, I guess.”

  “I guess he likes his solitude because he sure gave me the bum’s rush this morning. Wouldn’t have the housekeeping service, so I’m already feeling for his wife. But he paid cash, up front and in full, and that buys a lot of washtub flowers.”

  “What kind of screening do you do on tenants?”

  Meg blinked at Simon’s question. “Oh, well, there’s really not much you can do there. Most people take a week or two, or even a weekend off-season. You take a security deposit and hope for the best. We haven’t had any serious problems there. Are you thinking of buying a place for rentals?”

  “No. Do you get many who pay cash?”

  “Not a lot, but it happens. Some people just feel uncomfortable giving us their credit card number.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Meg glanced at Fiona, who’d gone uncharacteristically silent. “Ah, he’s... Oh my Jesus, you’re thinking he might be... God, Simon, you’re freaking me out. He’s, well, he’s in his mid-forties somewhere. I’ve got his driver’s license on file because we ask to see ID, but I can’t remember the birthday. He’s clean-shaven, bald as a hard-boiled egg. He’s well spoken, friendly enough. He talked about his wife, and how his boy was going to love the place. He even asked if his boy could bring a friend with him for a few days if he wanted.”

  “We’re all just a little jumpy.” Fiona rubbed a hand up and down Meg’s arm.

  “Do you want to go by the place, check him out?” Chuck asked.

  “We can’t check out everybody who’s rented a place, or who’s camping or spending a few days at one of the hotels or B-and-Bs,” Fiona pointed out. “They’re watching the ferry.”

  It had to be enough.

  She waited until they were in the truck, heading back. “I forget, or don’t always realize, how worried you are. Don’t shrug it off,” she said when he did just that. “This thing has been there almost from the start with us. Like a shadow in the room, all the time. And I’m so busy thinking about it, or telling myself not to think about it, I can forget it’s weighing on you, too.”

  He said nothing for nearly a mile. “I didn’t want you. Got that?”

  “Simon, I hold that sentiment close to my heart.”

  “I didn’t want you because I knew damn well you’d get in my way, and you’d find a way to make me like it. Need it. And you. So, now I do. I keep what’s mine, and I take care of it.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “Like a puppy?”

  “Like however you want to see it.”

  “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “Cops, feds, that’s all fine. They do what they do. But nobody’s getting through me to you. Nobody.”

  This time Fiona fell silent, stayed silent until they made the turn to his house. “You know I can and will take care of myself. No, wait—you know that. And because you know that, hearing you say that to me, knowing you mean it, it makes me feel more cared for than I have in a very, very long time.”

  She drew a breath. “So I’m going to plant window boxes, then I’m going to teach my evening class. And I’m going to hope with everything I’ve got they find Kati Starr, alive, and that soon—really soon—we’ll be rid of the shadows so it’s just you and me.”

  “And a pack of dogs.”

  She smiled. “Yeah.”

  Eckle stepped out of the bathroom, freshly showered, in clean boxers and a T-shirt. On the bed, Kati whimpered behind the tape as her eyes, the left nearly swollen shut, ticked in his direction.

  “That’s better. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about rape as I’ve never found sex to be particularly important. But I liked it. It was an entirely new experience for me, and every new experience is important to the whole—thanks for that. With rape, all the pressure’s off as there’s just no need to worry about pleasing the whore spreading them for you.”

  He pulled the little desk chair over and sat beside the bed. “I like giving pain. I always knew it, but since it’s not acceptable under the rules”—he gave the word quick air quotes—“I buried the urge. I was not a happy man, Kati. I was just going through the motions, living a life in the gray. Until Perry. I owe him for that. I owe him Fiona for that. But this, all the rest? You? That’s mine, entirely. Now.”

  He tapped the mini tape recorder he’d taken from her bag and set on the nightstand. “I’m going to turn this on, and we’re going to have a conversation. You’re going to tell me everything you know, everything your source or sources have leaked to you. If you scream, even once, I’ll put the tape back on and I’ll start breaking your fingers. There’s no one to hear you, but you’re not going to scream. Are you, Kati?” As he asked her he reached up and bent the pinkie of one of her bound hands backward until her face went bone white. “Are you, Kati?”

  She shook her head, arching up as if to escape the pain.

  “Good. This is going to hurt.” He ripped the tape away, viciously, nodded with satisfaction as she bit back the scream. “Very good. Say thank you.”

  Her breath shuddered out, in, her chest trembled with it, but she managed a barely audible whisper. And licked her dry lips. “Please. Water. Please.”

  “This?” He held up the bottle. “I bet you’re parched.” He pulled her head up by the hair, poured water into her mouth so she choked, gagged, wheezed. “Better? What do you say?”

  She said thank you.

  Thirty

  They had more than he’d expected, but not more than he’d prepared for.

  Tawney and his partner had been to College Place, though Kati couldn’t confirm they’d gone to his school or apartment. Even when he broke two of her fingers she couldn’t give him the exact locations. Her source hadn’t given her the data, or hadn’t had the data to give.

  But they’d been there, he was sure of it. They’d pawed through his things, through the daily life of the person he’d once been. Not that it mattered, he thought. They weren’
t his things any longer. They belonged to another life—the gray life.

  They were, as he’d expected, watching the ferries. And Fiona had moved into her lover’s house. She was never alone.

  He’d taken care of the first, and had plans for the second complication. The centerpiece of that plan lay unconscious on the plastic sheet.

  He thought of the e-mail. A trap, just as he’d suspected. He was sure of it now. They thought they could trick him, outwit him, but he was much too smart for that.

  He considered, briefly, tossing the reporter back in the trunk and taking the morning ferry back to the mainland or one of the other islands. But that would leave Fiona undone, and a debt was a debt.

  More, the student would surpass the teacher when he killed Fiona. Correcting Perry’s mistake would be part of his legacy.

  His song and story.

  The pity was he could no longer take his time with Kati, no longer risk two or three days with her as he’d hoped. It left him little time for their collaboration on the book.

  He’d need to do the lion’s share of that himself as he had to start the next phase sooner than originally planned.

  He studied her, shrugged. Really, there wasn’t much more he wanted to do with her.

  He decided he’d study his maps again, then get a few hours’ sleep, fry up a good breakfast. He’d want to get started well before dawn.

  As he went out, he decided it was a good thing he’d broken her fingers instead of her toes. He didn’t want to carry her the whole way.

  Simon kept his music turned off and found work he could do on the shop porch. That way he could see, and hear, who came and went.

  Just something else he owed Eckle, he thought. The fact that he couldn’t focus on his work, couldn’t blast his music.

  He’d already decided to give it one more week, then whatever Fiona’s schedule, he was taking her away for a while. Nonnegotiable. They’d go visit his parents in Spokane, which would kill two birds as his mother would stop nagging him about meeting Fiona every time they talked on the phone or e-mailed.

  He’d already selected the hammer to drive home that nail. He’d sacrifice his dog’s balls. Fiona wanted Jaws neutered—and kept leaving information about it all over the house. He’d give her that; she’d give him this.

  Sorry, pal, he thought.

  Then they’d drive—the whole pack of them if she wanted—to Spokane. He’d rent a damn van if he had to. Driving took time, the more the better as far as he was concerned.

  If Tawney and Mantz couldn’t run Eckle to ground by the time they got back, they didn’t deserve their badges.

  He glanced up at the sound of a car, then set aside the brush he’d been using to stain a pair of bar stools when he saw the police cruiser.

  He hoped to hell it was good news.

  “Davey.” Fiona stepped out of the house. “You’ve got the timing down. My last clients left ten minutes ago. The next aren’t due for twenty.” She pressed her knuckles between her breasts where the breath wanted to stick. “Is she alive?”

  “They haven’t found her yet, Fee.”

  She just sat down where she stood, on the porch steps. Her arms went around dogs as they crowded around her.

  “They sent us a picture. The best they could get from the two witnesses at the motel. I brought you a copy.”

  He took it from the file he carried, offered it.

  “It hardly looks like him—or like he did. The eyes, I guess. The eyes do.”

  “The witnesses were shaky there. They’ve done a composite.”

  “His face looks... beefier, and he looks younger without the beard. But... the cap covers a lot, doesn’t it?”

  “The night clerk was next to useless—that’s the word we got. The other guy, he did his best. But he barely saw Eckle. He left prints in the motel room—Eckle did. They matched them with prints from his apartment. He’s not biting on the e-mail again, at least not so far.”

  He nodded to Simon as Simon walked up. “They don’t think he will now so they’re releasing his name and this sketch to the media this afternoon. It’s going to be all over the TV and the Internet in a couple of hours. Somebody’s going to make him, Fee.”

  Simon said nothing but took the sketch out of Fiona’s hand to study it.

  “We’re going to plaster those on the ferries, at the docks,” Davey continued. “Starr’s paper’s offering a quarter-million reward for information that leads to her or Eckle. It’s blowing open in his face, Fee.”

  “Yes, I think it is. I only hope it blows hot and fast enough to save Starr.”

  He’d made her walk. Even with the speed and the protein drink he forced down her throat it took a full three hours. She fell often, but that was fine. He wanted to leave a good trail. He dragged her when he had to, and enjoyed. He knew where he was going and how to get there.

  The perfect spot. Brilliant, if he said so himself.

  By the time they stopped, her face was filthy, purpled with bruises, hatchmarked with scrapes and nicks. The clothes he’d washed and put back on her were little more than rags.

  She didn’t cry, didn’t fight when he lashed her to the tree. Her head just fell forward, and her bound hands lay limp in her lap.

  He had to slap her several times to bring her around.

  “I have to leave you here awhile. I’ll be back, don’t worry. You may die of dehydration or exposure, infection.” He lifted his shoulders in a what-can-you-do? gesture. “I hope not because I really want to kill you with my own hands. After I kill Fiona. One for Perry, one for me. Jesus, you smell, Kati. All the better, but phew. Anyway, when this is done, I’m going to write the story for you, send it in, in your name. You’ll get that Pulitzer. Posthumously, but I think you’re a shoo-in. See you soon.”

  He popped one of the black pills himself—he needed the kick—and started off in a brisk jog. Without the dead weight, he calculated he could make it back in under half the time it had taken to drag her pitiful ass alone. He’d be back at the cabin before dawn, or just after.

  He had a lot of work to do before he made the return trip.

  Simon watched her push herself through her next class, and decided enough was enough. When he’d done what he needed to do, he waited until the last car pulled away and she walked back into the house.

  He found her in the kitchen running a cold can of Diet Coke over her forehead. “Hot today.” She lowered the can, popped it. “It feels like the sky’s dropped down a few thousand feet so the sun’s pressing against the tops of the trees.”

  “Go take a shower, cool off. You’ve got time,” he said before she could answer. “Sylvia’s coming over to take your last two classes.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you look like hell and probably feel worse. You got fuck-all for sleep last night, and I know because I was the one trying to sleep beside you. You’re wound up and worn out. So take a shower, take a nap. Brood, if you need to, as long as I’m not around. I’ll order some dinner in a couple hours.”

  “Just hold it.” She set the can aside, very deliberately. “My classes, my business, my decision. You don’t get to decide when I’m capable of running my business or when I need a goddamn nap. You’re not in charge.”

  “You think I want to be? You think I want to take care of you? I damn well don’t. It’s a pain in the ass.”

  “Nobody asked you to take care of me.”

  He grabbed her arm, dragged her out of the kitchen.

  “If you don’t let go of me I’m going to deck you.”

  “Yeah, you do that.” He shoved her in the powder room, pushed her in front of the mirror. “Look at yourself. You couldn’t deck an unconscious toddler. So be as pissed off as you want because I’m right there with you. And I’m bigger, I’m stronger and I’m meaner.”

  “Well, excuse the hell right out of me for not looking my best. And thanks so much for not sparing my feelings and letting me know I look like warmed-over crap.”

 
; “Your feelings aren’t my priority.”

  “Oh, there’s news. You do your work, and I’ll do mine, and I’ll do you a favor. When I’m done I’ll take myself off to your slobfest of an excuse for a spare room and sleep there so I don’t disturb your beauty sleep.”

  He recognized by the pitch of her voice she jiggled midway between fury and a crying jag. It damn well couldn’t be helped.

  “If you try to run this next class I’ll make a scene and you’ll lose every client in it. Believe me, I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” She shoved him with considerably more strength than her pale face advertised. “Giving me ultimatums, threats, blackmail. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “I’m the one who loves you. Goddamn it.”

  “Don’t use that on me.”

  “It’s what I’ve got.” Stupid, he realized. He’d let temper bump aside sense—and strategy. This wasn’t the way to handle her, and he knew it. “I can’t stand it.” He gave her the truth, harder for him than the threats. “I can’t stand seeing you like this.” He pulled her in. “You need a break. I’m asking you to take a break.”

  “You weren’t asking.”

  “Okay. I’m asking now.”

  She sighed, hugely. “I look like shit.”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I can’t handle my work, or that you get to call in the reserves without asking me.”

  “We’ll make a trade.”

  “What?” She pulled back. “A trade?”

  “You take the break, Mai gets to cut off Jaws’s balls.” An ace in the hole, Simon figured, needed to be used sooner rather than later.

  “Oh! That’s ridiculous. That’s wrong. That’s...” She fisted her hands at her temples. “Low. You’re using my belief in responsible pet ownership.”

  “A couple hours down for you, a lifetime of never knowing the thrill of a woman for him. You get the shiny end on this.”

  She shoved him back, strode out of the bathroom. Then she turned and scowled at him as he leaned against the doorjamb. “You’re going to do it anyway.”