Maggy's Child (48 page)

“Wait a minute. We need to get David.” Lyle spoke to Ham as they started along the hall. Ham nodded and pointed, and one of the flunkies broke from the group to enter David’s bedroom.

Maggy looked up at her husband. “Please don’t let them hurt David.” Her voice was unsteady.

Lyle said with smug confidence, “Don’t worry, darling. I would never let anyone hurt
my
son. I’m taking him with me to Europe.”

“Shut up, Lyle,” Ham said tensely.

“What does it matter? They’re not going to be around to tell anybody.”

“What do you think David is going to think of you when you murder his mother?” Nick asked.

Lyle’s lip curled. “I’m not going to do it in front of the boy. As far as he is concerned, Maggy will just disappear. I plan to tell him that she ran off with
you.
”

Just as they came even with his room, David emerged. He was clad in Batman pajamas, his hair was rumpled, and his eyes were huge with fear. The flunky gripped his arm.

“Mom …” David saw Maggy and headed for her, only to be jerked back. Then he saw Lyle, and his face went perfectly white. “Dad!”

“Hello, David.” Lyle sounded as normal as if he’d seen his son over supper only the day before. “Feel like going on a trip?”

David darted a quick, scared glance at Maggy, and then he smiled. For Maggy, that smile was a horrible thing to see, a travesty of David’s usual grin that revealed pure fear. “Yeah, sure,” he said with a good imitation of enthusiasm.

Even under such awful circumstances, Maggy felt a surge of pride in her boy. He was smart enough, and courageous enough, to play the role that he had to play to survive.

“Let him go,” Lyle said to the flunky. Then, to David, “Come here, son.”

The flunky looked at Ham, who nodded, and released his grip on David. David was walking toward Lyle when Nick said, in a loud voice, “He’s going to shoot us, David. I don’t think he should, do you? I think he should shoot
that stupid bird
!”

“Shut up,” Lyle snarled, while Maggy looked at Nick, first in horror, then in dawning comprehension. Lyle was just wrapping an arm around David’s shoulder when Maggy heard it: the flutter of wings.

“Bad boy!” a raucous voice squawked. “Bad, bad boy!”

Horatio exploded through the door of Maggy’s bedroom like a green feather bullet.

“What the hell?” Startled, Lyle and company glanced around, and then, as Horatio flew straight at Nick, every one of the foursome, to a man, ducked.

“Run!” yelled Nick, shoving his shoulder into Ham’s side. Ham went sprawling, knocking one of the flunkies off-balance. Nick butted the other with his head; the man went flying back into David’s bedroom. Maggy drove her elbow into Lyle’s side, wrenched her arm from his grasp, grabbed David’s hand, and ran as if the Devil himself was on her heels. Which, in more than just a manner of speaking, he was.

“Bad boy!” shrieked Horatio, flapping toward the ceiling as a gun discharged with an explosion of sound that hurt Maggy’s ears. “Bad, bad boy!”

Maggy and David bounded down the stairs with Nick right behind them. Her son fled from Lyle with no hesitation at all, his hand tight in hers, clearly as frantic to escape as she was herself.

“It’s only a goddamn bird!”

“Son of a bitch! Get them!”

Only two strides more, and they would be at the door. Maggy risked a quick glance over her shoulder to see Nick only a step behind, and Lyle, Ham and the others pounding down the stairs. Lyle was in the lead, his long legs eating up the distance, gun in hand and aimed toward them.

“Bad boy!” Horatio cackled, hurtling from the ceiling toward Nick. As he rocketed over the heads of the bad guys, they instinctively ducked again. That gave Maggy the time she needed to wrench open the door.

They were through it, she and David, when another gunshot exploded. Maggy heard the impact of it as it hit somewhere close by with a sound like a hand slapping flesh. Behind them, Nick cursed.

“Are you all right?” She glanced over her shoulder at him to see that he was white faced in the moonlit darkness, but still behind them. With his hands cuffed, running was awkward for him, but he was galloping through the darkness in her wake. David, too, was running as he had never run before in his life. His hand grasped hers tightly, and she prayed that terror continued to give his feet wings. There was no way on earth she was leaving David.

“Go!” Nick hurled the word at her when she faltered to look back at him. “To the cliff! Go, go!”

Nick was behind them as Maggy darted around the corner of the house, pulling David with her, heading across the lawn for the path through the woods that led to the cliff.

“Where’d they go? Damn it, they can’t just have disappeared!”

“Spread out! Find them!”

The moon was up, a bright, beautiful moon that Maggy would have loved on any other occasion but tonight wanted to curse. The landscape was bathed in light, the only cover being the black shadows beneath the trees and the lighter shadow thrown into the backyard by the house itself. In this, the wee hours of a Sunday morning, the moon rode high in the western half of the sky. It was in front of the house, accounting for the eerie, elongated shadow in which they ran. But even the shadow didn’t afford much cover. Maggy prayed that their pursuers hadn’t seen which way they had gone.

“There they are!”

Firecrackers exploded behind them in rapid succession. No, not firecrackers: gunshots. Beyond terror now, Maggy tightened her grip on David’s hand and fled.

They were almost to the woods. Branches seemed to stretch out like welcoming arms, beckoning them to safety. Above, the huge rounded tops of the giant oaks and maples were silvered by moonlight. Underfoot the
soft turf of the yard suddenly turned to the harder surface of the dirt path as they ducked beneath the sheltering branches.

“To the boat!” Nick gasped behind her. His breathing was labored, and Maggy could only assume that running with his hands fastened behind his back was more exhausting than she would have dreamed.

Ever fleet of foot, Maggy was in the lead, dragging David after her through the murky darkness of the woods. All about them night insects chirred their individual songs, and leaves and supple twigs tugged at their faces and clothes as they passed.

“Ow, Mom, my feet!” David groaned, and she felt him stumble. Only then did she remember that he was barefoot. Of the three of them, only she was wearing shoes. And the path was overgrown with roots, and rocky …

“Come
on
!” She jerked David to his feet before he could hit the ground, and kept running. Groaning, he nevertheless managed to stay on his feet, stumbling behind her until he regained his balance. Nick, his breathing audibly labored now, urged him on from behind. Behind them Maggy fancied she could hear the pounding of pursuing feet.

They burst from the woods onto the grassy verge, and Maggy bounded toward the cliff. Like the treetops, the stone of the cliff was silvered by moonlight. Far below, a ladder of silver cellophane stretched across Willow Creek.

“Sit down, push off, and
slide
,” Maggy ordered her son breathlessly, pulling him down beside her as she dropped to a sitting position on the edge of the cliff.

“But, Mom …” David, who had never to her knowledge been shown this particular route to the creek, glanced over at her in obvious doubt, his face white, his eyes wide.

“Do it!” Maggy gave him a push and went over after him, her hands skidding in the loose shale. To his credit, David didn’t scream, didn’t make a sound. Instead he
fetched up on the rock ledge only seconds ahead of herself and stood up as she landed.

“Wow!” he exclaimed as Nick slid down almost on his back. The handcuffs were really hampering Nick’s mobility, Maggy saw, but there was no time to do anything about it and nothing she could do to free him even if they had the time. She didn’t
think
Lyle knew about this way to the creek.

Nick was on his feet, and the three of them stepped out onto the path that snaked down the cliff. Maggy went first, holding David’s hand tightly in hers, and Nick brought up the rear. Maggy gave a brief thought to Nick’s balance with his hands cuffed behind him, but when she glanced back she saw that he was hugging the cliff face and moving at a steady pace.

It seemed to take forever for them to reach the ground. Maggy was sweating by the time they did, both from physical exertion and from the terror that accompanied fleeing for their lives. Any second she expected to glance back and see Lyle and Ham and their two thugs in hot pursuit.

“Man, that was so
cool
,” David said as he jumped down onto level ground. Maggy, already in the act of dragging him across the road, stopped for a second to stare at him. He grinned at her, the moonlight gleaming on his braces, his eyes alight.

“You are one great kid,” she said, gave him a quick, hard hug, and pulled him after her toward the dock.

With David beside her, Maggy was already untying the rope securing
The Lady Dancer
when Nick came up behind them. He was breathing hard, and she spared him a glance of concern as she whipped the rope free.

“Get in the boat,” Nick said to David, who nimbly obeyed. Nick followed more awkwardly, and David reached up to steady him as he almost lost his balance stepping in. Nick sank down on a seat. David crouched
beside him. Rope in hand, Maggy hopped in and moved to the rear, yanking on the starter for all she was worth.

She gave a sigh of relief as the engine roared to life on the first try.

“Mom,” David said in an odd voice as she pointed
The Lady Dancer
toward the center of the creek. “Look at my hand.”

He held his hand out toward her, palm out. His fingers were dark in the moonlight instead of pale as they should have been.

“I think it’s Nick,” he said before Maggy could question him. “I think it’s his blood.”

“O
h, my God!” Maggy’s words were as much a prayer as a gasp.

Nick’s expression was inscrutable. “I got hit back there at the house. It’s nothing serious.”

“Let me see!” Maggy started up from her seat.

“No!” Nick said it fiercely, his eyes gleaming at her from the darkness. “I’m bleeding a little, but I’m not dying. You concentrate on getting us out of here. If you don’t …”

He broke off, obviously not wanting to state the self-evident conclusion with David listening. Maggy finished the sentence in her own mind. If she didn’t, he
would
die. They both would. And maybe David, too.

A sudden report, a sharp pop in the clear night air, caused Maggy to frown.

“Look, Mom,” David said, sounding scared again as he pointed. “Look up there!”

On top of the cliff down which they’d just descended stood two figures. Silhouetted against the lighter background behind them, they looked no bigger than fingers at that distance. That they were part of the pursuing party was unmistakable, even before a stray moonbeam glinted off the barrel of a gun. But what worried Maggy was where were the other two?

“Don’t worry, we’re out of range,” Nick said. “They must be crazy mad to try a shot at that distance. But it’s
good for us. The more noise, the better. Maybe somebody will hear and call the cops.”

His speech sounded vaguely slurred, and Maggy gazed at him in concern. How badly was he hurt? If he was dying, he wouldn’t tell her, not now.

“They’re gone, Mom,” David said. Maggy glanced back at the cliff to find that the figures had indeed vanished.

The night was quiet, dark, surprisingly warm. The gurgle of the creek and the drone of the motor were the only sounds. Above them, the sky was obscenely beautiful: a panoply of brilliant stars scattered across a black-velvet ground. The moon was full and yellow and looked as if it had been ordered by some movie’s central casting department to provide a touch of romance. Ahead of them, the river flowed serenely past.

As she looked at it, a cold whisper of warning rushed through her mind.

Maggy set herself to getting them out onto the open river with all speed.

The wind was against them. It blew from the north, and their course took them directly into it.
The Lady Dancer
chugged toward the river, seeming to move almost in slow motion.

The mouth of the creek was their most vulnerable point. At only thirty feet wide, with the channel only deep enough in the middle for the boat, the creek was both their route to safety and their Achilles’ heel.

If a gunman was there waiting, on that point of land at the mouth of the creek …

They made it through and streaked out into the open water. With a quiver of relief, Maggy felt the swell of the river catch the boat, tugging it vainly downstream. What she had feared most had not come to pass.

With River Road running the entire length of the Kentucky bank, Maggy dared not try to make a landfall on that side. It was very possible that Lyle, Ham, and the
flunkies, together or in any combination, were already cruising along River Road, hoping they would do just that. Perhaps they were even watching
The Lady Dancer’
s progress across the river at that very moment. But even if they were, there was nothing they could do. No matter how fast they drove, Lyle and his cohorts could not make it all the way downtown, across the bridge, and over to the Indiana side before
The Lady Dancer
reached the floating service station that was Maggy’s immediate destination. The station itself would be closed, but there was a pay phone. She didn’t have a quarter on her at the moment, but it didn’t matter: Calls to 911 were free.