Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three (46 page)

“We’re not here to talk about the weather, for chrissake!” Nate explodes at the lawyer. “I think it might be more important to learn if you caught the timestamp on the incriminating tape than to hear you yap about the progress of a storm system that was still in the fucking Bay of Biscay last I heard . . . Well,
did
you?”

“Yes, I did. The timestamp would have the lad gone missing three hours and more, if that’s what you’re asking, and your atypical outburst would have you under a bit too much strain,” Emmet says without rancor. “Given almost any other circumstances I’d recommend a stiff drink, but absent that recourse perhaps a—”

“Nate can handle the strain without your help, thank-you-very-much.” Amanda rises all the way from the chair this time. “If you must hand out recommendations and advice, go back to the command center, go see what you can do about preventing well-meaning volunteers from endangering themselves and maybe even providing cover for the very guy they’re after, because that’s what I see happening as word spreads and everybody flocks to the cause like villagers with torches and pitchforks.

“And you . . .” Amanda takes a deep breath and turns to Laurel who has retreated to the spot in front of the fireplace. “
You
need to concentrate on the belief that the Jakeway creep won’t harm Anthony—saying he even has him—for the simple reason Anthony is Aurora’s biological child—something Jakeway can’t help but know, if not from the photo wallet he allegedly swiped, then from regular media sources—and his sick obsession with Aurora won’t
allow
him to harm anything of hers . . . At least that’s the way
I
see it.”

“You think, then . . . that if Jakeway does indeed have Anthony, it’s as a hostage . . . as one of the security people tried to sugarcoat it to me earlier . . . and that he
is
recoverable,” Laurel stammers.

“Yes, I do, I absolutely do and I’m not just saying that to make you feel better,” Amanda replies. “And here’s something else to hold onto. All signs say this freaking nightmare is very close to being over with. Have you thought about that? Every indicator says this is it for Jakeway, that this is his final effort, his last stand, that he’s worn down and doesn’t care if he’s caught. He’s taking huge
humongous
chances out there and that’s gonna be his downfall. Tonight. Virtually guaranteed.”

In the silence following Amanda’s gutsy pronouncements, Emmet slips out of the room without further comment. Laurel withdraws soon after, saying only that she needs to look in on Simon.

Left alone with Amanda, Nate regards her as he has countless times before—with unabashed wonder. “Jesus, I don’t know how you do it . . . how you keep coming up with those inspired little pep talks of yours.”

“I’m only saying what I believe. That Anthony won’t be harmed. That’s what you believe isn’t it?”

“I want to. I’m trying to, but—”

“But you’re not convinced.”

“I can’t afford to be. None of us can and that’s why—”

“I know. You have to go back . . . out . . . there.” She indicates “there” with an angry chop of her hand and turns away.

He catches her other hand, laces his fingers with hers and draws her close. “Pulchritudinous,” he mumbles a word once considered too overblown for thinking much less speaking.

“What?” she murmurs against his chest.

“Nothing . . . nothing, just a stray thought.” He kisses the top of her head, gives her a hard squeeze before letting go. “I love you, you know.”

“No! Don’t say that! Not now! You make it sound as though I might never see you again!” She jerks away from him, her eyes as wide and shiny-bright as he’s ever seen them.

“Go, I said,” Hoop growls at the boy, who seems not to understand that the bindings have been removed from his ankles. “You’re gonna walk from now on and you’re gonna show me how to sneak into that big house you live in,” Hoop says directly into the boy’s ear after groping for it in the dark. “That’s the deal. You get me in the house and I don’t mark you with this.” Hoop presses the flat of the blade against the boy’s cheek. “Not yet, anyways.”

That gets the kid going, lurching along at the end of a tether fashioned by feel from the leather carry straps and now stretched taut between the kid’s neck and Hoop’s wrist. They work their way out of the dense stand of canes, where they laid low while searchers coursed all around in a confusion of crisscrossed flashlight beams and garbled shouts. Now, with the slapdash army moved on a ways, the time’s as good as any for following along like he’s one of them—like he’s the straggler in their midst.

Hoop jerks on the tether, cautions the boy to stay behind him and low to the ground. Then, as a test of sorts, he switches on the flashlight he took from the boy. The down-directed light doesn’t bring any attention, so he leaves it on and soon sees that they’re about to meet with a well-beaten footpath. But a footpath to where? He jerks on the tether again, signals that the boy should choose a direction and flashes the knife to remind that the direction he picks had better lead to the mansion house.

With the light still held low, they work their way to the top of a rise that offers a full view of the house that’s lit up like a national monument or famous nightspot. While his eyes get used to the sight, he dares loosen the boy’s gag in another test of sorts.

The boy doesn’t make a sound when the gag’s half loose and doesn’t holler out when it’s all the way loose; he doesn’t strike out when Hoop cuts through the bindings to his wrists. But that doesn’t automatically mean he can be trusted. There’s no forgetting who his father is, after all. He prods the kid into a stand of needled trees where there’s some protection from the rain and the wind-roar’s not quite so bad.

“Them-there outside lights on all the time?” Hoop asks, keeping his own light aimed at the ground.

“Only . . .” The boy struggles, then swallows hard. “Only when there’s shite like you about,” he croaks in a cheeky way that gets him a sharp tug on the neck tether.

“Again,” Hoop says like he’s got all the time and patience in the world. “Are the lights left on all night?”

The kid nods. And nods a second time when asked if the space around the house is covered with spy cameras. “The cameras are on all the time, day and night,” the kid says in the same croaky voice minus the cheek.

“But there’s ways to get in and out without being seen.”

“Not unless you’re me.”

Unsure if this is a boast or a true fact, Hoop doesn’t respond right away. And it’s a good thing because they’ve suddenly got company. A lone intruder bulks large against the distant wall of light and pushes through the lower branches of the evergreens, carrying on about drizzles having become sheets of rain and him having come away from shelter without even a windbreaker—not that it would have done much good in a full force gale.

This is said in a voice Hoop recognizes from his time in the church loft—a voice that didn’t say as much as the detective did that day, but still made itself heard. The owner of this voice kind of grunts when he sees he’s not alone and lets out a string of cusswords when he sees the boy and draws his conclusions. The next sound he makes is a gurgle that can’t be heard much beyond Hoop’s ears.

After he wipes the blade off on the intruder’s already soaked clothing, Hoop makes sure the kid understands what happened by shining the flashlight on the still-twitching body. The kid squeezes his eyes tight shut, makes a gagging noise, but he doesn’t puke. And he doesn’t commence squalling, either. But no one would hear him if he did; the snap-crack of breaking branches and the whoosh-thump of whole trees coming down won’t let you hear yourself think, let alone holler.

Unsure of how this development will affect his next move, Hoop gets caught up in realizing he broke his newest rule by neglecting to whack the intruder over the head before slicing his throat. Is it luck or know-how that let him pull it off without the kind of fight the detective put up? Does this mean he’s got one less thing to worry about when the time comes? And does it matter which one of Audrey’s bad-mouthers is draining there on the spongy ground beneath the evergreens? Where that’s concerned, one less is all that matters.

But what if there had been two? What if he’d had to deal with two intruders just now? Would he have held them both off by threatening to cut the boy? Would he have quick whacked one over the head before taking on the other? He’s pondering all this when the boy brings him back to present vexations by straining at the tether and waggling his head in the direction of the house that’s no longer surrounded by a wall of bright lights. Lights inside the house are still burning; lights outside the house are not.

“What’s going on? What’s that mean?” Hoop demands without getting an answer. He shakes the boy till his eyes blink and water flies off him as it would a dog, and still doesn’t get a reply. “You don’t know or you won’t tell. Which is it?” Hoop gives him one last shake and tightens the tether enough to show he means business.

“I d-don’t know. Honest.” The boy quivers, most likely from the weather because he has yet to show fear in any regular way.

“Okay,” Hoop says and loosens the tether some. “I’m gonna believe you for now, but if I find you’re holdin’ out on me, you’re gonna pay. Understand?”

The boy hunches his shoulders in what could be a shrug.

Certain deductions are possible without the boy’s say-so. The kid doesn’t have to confirm that the lights and cameras and other security precautions called for a fresh supply of electrical juice. Didn’t Hoop see that work being done with his own eyes the day he walked the fenced borders of the property? No one has to confirm that the new power hookup is separate from the one to the house. That’s plain enough, isn’t it? And with trees and tree limbs coming down all over the place, it doesn’t take much brain power to figure out what happened to the new power source.

This can only compare with the Red Sea splitting open in that story from the white man’s holy book. He couldn’t get a bigger break; he couldn’t feel more braced and bucked up if he already had the rock star’s blood on his blade with the lawyerwoman’s soon to follow.

As they edge clear of the evergreens, Hoop senses movement that’s not of the worsening storm. Before he can figure out what it is, he and the boy are knocked flat by the full force of the wind. When they try to recover they’re held to a low crawl the way the others are whose hindered motions prickled his senses.

In twos and threes, these others—the main band of searchers by the looks of them—are moving in the direction of the mansion house. In wild disarray, their flashlight beams point every which way without revealing anything but how bad the weather is.

At the end of this long-drawn-out parade of jackassed-fools, at a safe distance and with the boy tethered tight behind him, Hoop again brings up the rear.

Colin stops battling his captors as it becomes apparent their efforts would be better spent holding the golf cart upright. Bodily removed from the search when rapidly deteriorating weather conditions suspended the manhunt, his further resistance now will put them all at greater risk. And greater risk is all he’s heard about since Sam Earle’s dire weather predictions came into being.

But how the fuck much greater can a risk get when everything says a knife-wielding nutter with a taste for rooster flesh and dog meat has possession of your boy? How much worse can things get? How much sicker can he feel about a forced retreat from a strengthening storm whilst a far more threatening menace is bearing down on them?

Those thoughts intensify when their progress is halted by a toppled tree and they’re compelled to cover the remaining distance on foot—on knees and elbows, actually. Those thoughts loom so large he fails to notice the detested perimeter lighting has gone dark till the lack is pointed out by an anguished outburst.

“Sum
bitch
!” Bemus bellows. “You know what that means, doncha? That means the freakin’ cameras are out too!” In a commando-crawl he moves in the direction of the studio. Whatever else he had to say about this latest reversal is carried away by the vicious wind.

Clawing his way along the stonework of the porte-cochère, Colin reaches the massive, outward-opening main door to the house. Joined by two of the heftier security blokes, the three of them only just manage to pry it open against the tempest and slip inside before it can be torn from its pinning. Inside, there’s potential for another ordeal: confrontation with those awaiting news—any kind of news. But it they’re holding a vigil, it’s not here in the grand entry hall.

Sodden, glowering, he passes two of the kitchen staff on his way to the first floor, where he doesn’t stop to see who’s in the winter parlor that’s leaking food smells and the hushed talk of several voices. He’s nearly made a clean getaway when his mother’s voice stands out from the rest. He can’t very well ignore her; it’s his name she’s calling from the doorway to the parlor and he can’t be more than six feet from that doorway when she again shrills his name. He stops, turns, shakes his head, displays empty palms, which must send enough of a message because she withdraws without another word.