by Karen Rose
Seth lowered himself into the chair next to Mrs. Kasselbaum’s bed. Trembling visibly.
Jenna crossed the room, knelt by the chair. “I should have told you. I’m sorry. I didn’t want—”
“To worry me?” Seth finished, his smile bitter and twisted. “I thought we’d settled that last week, Jenna. I thought you trusted me enough to tell me when you’re in trouble.”
Jenna opened her mouth. Closed it. Didn’t know what to say.
Seth sighed. “You are so damn independent. You think you can handle everything and everyone yourself. You make decisions for people, Jen. And you have no right. You think you’re a superwoman, that you can manipulate everything to be the way you want it to be.” He closed his eyes. “And rob the rest of us of the privilege of caring about you.”
Still she didn’t know what to say.
“I made a promise to Adam,” Seth went on, his throat swallowing convulsively, his eyes still closed. “He made me promise to take care of you. To make sure no one ever hurt you. He made me promise never to tell you, that you’d find some way of . . .” He faltered. “Of ducking me, he said. He said you were too accustomed to doing things for yourself. Of never trusting anyone to do things for you. Of taking care of you. Why is that, Jenna?”
Jenna shook her head. Adam had been right of course. “I don’t know.”
Seth opened his eyes and Jenna saw weariness mixed with the hurt. “He said it was because you never grew up with the love and trust of your parents. That you’d been on your own, essentially, since you were a little girl. That you didn’t know how to really be a family.”
Jenna’s feathers ruffled. “My dad loved me.”
“But not enough to make your mother stop criticizing you. Not enough to take care of you. Not enough to make sure you knew you didn’t have to do everything all alone.” He fluttered his hand in the air. “Never mind why. The fact remains that he was right. I can’t fulfill my promise to my son, Jenna. You won’t let me take care of you. You were almost killed last night and I had to get all the details from Evelyn’s nurse.”
Jenna let his words sink in and realized he was right, just as Adam had been right. Shaky, she laid her cheek against Seth’s knee. And made herself allow him to care about her. Made herself allow him to share what she was feeling. “I was so scared, Dad. I thought he would kill me.”
He stroked her hair and said nothing.
“He put the knife to my throat. He tried to cut me open, but I got away and he cut the mattress instead. Jean-Luc bit him and he ran. And knocked Evelyn down on his way out.”
His hand on her head trembled, then resumed stroking. “Jenna, you’re coming home with me.”
Jenna looked up, not sure how he’d take her next words. “I stayed with Steven last night. He wants me to stay with him.”
Seth studied her for a long moment. “He cares for you?” She remembered the way Steven had held her the night before. Like rare china. “Yes.”
Seth’s eyes narrowed. “And he has a spare bedroom?” Jenna felt her cheeks heat. “Dad!”
“Well, does he?”
Jenna nodded. “Yes.” Then smiled. “And an aunt who doesn’t make meat loaf on Wednesdays.”
Seth smiled at her and she knew she was forgiven. “Can I come, too?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Tuesday, October 11, 1:00 A.M.
JENNA COULDN’T SLEEP. PART OF IT WAS HER whacked-out sleep cycle. Part of it was knowing it was exactly this time the night before that she’d awakened with a knife at her throat and that the police had no suspects because Victor Lutz had an alibi. And certainly part of it was knowing Steven was sleeping in the next room. She told herself most of it was knowing Steven was sleeping in the next room and not an unreasonable twenty-four-hour anniversary fear.
She considered calling the twenty-four-hour emergency veterinary clinic that still had Jim and Jean-Luc, but figured their conditions hadn’t changed in the last hour. Jim was improving but Jean-Luc still clung to life. Even though Kent’s friend Wendy had done a superb job, Jean-Luc’s stab wounds were deep and vicious. Knowing he’d taken them for her still made her ill.
“Both dogs were poisoned with strychnine,” Wendy had told her and Steven earlier this evening when she and Kent had dropped by to give them an update. “Probably introduced to their system through the steak I found when I pumped their stomachs.”
“So my intruder was very well prepared indeed,” Jenna had remarked, feeling her skin grow cold. He’d brought his own lamp, his own plastic case. Poison for her dogs. Knives.
“Except,” Wendy had returned, “neither dog had enough poison in his system to kill him outright, so he wasn’t prepared all that well.” Then she’d said Jenna could call the clinic anytime.
And Jenna had, but it didn’t make sense to do it again so soon. She imagined the clinic staff did have other things to do besides calming her irrational nighttime fears.
So she pulled on her robe and set out for a snack, wishing she’d had the presence of mind to stop for Rocky Road on her way home, when a noise from Nicky’s room caught her attention. Peeking in, she discovered him sitting in his sleeping bag on the floor, reading a comic book.
“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?” she whispered. “Aren’t you?” he whispered back.
Touché, little man, Jenna thought with a smile. “Can I come in?”
He shrugged and put the book aside. “Okay.”
She settled herself cross-legged on the floor next to his sleeping bag. “Is the book any good?”
“It’s okay.”
She wondered how many nights he sat and read when he should have been sleeping. “I can’t sleep,” she confided in a low voice. “Any ideas on how I can fall asleep?”
“Aunt Helen says warm milk.”
Jenna grimaced. “Sorry, but that sounds gross.”
“It is. Matt says he counts ewes.”
Jenna frowned. “U’s? How would counting letters help?” “No, ewes. Brad said he counted sheep, Matt said he counted ewes. They’re girl sheep.”
Jenna nodded, pursing her lips. “Oh.”
“It meant something about sex because Brad smacked Matt upside the head when he said it.”
Jenna coughed. “Excuse me?”
Nicky narrowed his eyes. “You know. Sex. You’ve got to know about sex.”
Jenna swallowed hard. “I’ve heard of it, yes. I’m just surprised you have.”
“Well, I am seven,” he said.
“Okay.” Wildly Jenna searched for something else to say. “Okay. So how often do you sit here reading—” She picked up the book he’d set aside. “The Adventures of Captain Underpants?”
“ ’Bout every night.”
She set down the book in surprise. “Every night? Why, Nicky?”
He looked at her severely. “Because I can’t sleep either. Not since the incident.” Then his expression softened. “I heard Daddy and Aunt Helen talking about your incident. Don’t worry,” he said, patting her hand. “You’ll get used to it.”
Jenna blinked, not knowing how to respond to his matter-of-fact reference to his abduction. Her fingers moved to the bandage at her neck. “But I don’t want to get used to it. I like to sleep.”
“Then I’d try counting ewes,” he said wisely.
Or perhaps sex, Jenna thought, but decided she’d keep that to herself. “Well, when I was a little girl and couldn’t sleep my dad and I would play a game.”
He looked interested. “Soccer?”
Jenna chuckled, just thinking of what her mother would have said if she and her father had played soccer in the house. In the middle of the night, no less. “No, it was a storytelling game. Dad would start the story, then I’d tell a little, then he’d tell a little, until it was done.”
“Which story?”
“We’d make it up. You want to give it a try?”
He shrugged. “Sure, why not.”
Jenna smiled at him. “You’re funny, Nicky.”
“Well you are. Why don’t we make up a funny story? I’ll start. Once upon a time a man lived in a town called Walla Walla, Washington.” She leaned close to him. “That’s a real place you know.”
Nicky shook his head. “No, it’s not.”
“Is.” She looked at him, suddenly inspired. “How much do you want to bet?”
“I can’t bet. I don’t have any money.”
“Who said anything about money? Tomorrow, we’ll look it up on-line. If I’m right—and I will be—you lie down in your bed tomorrow night. If I’m wrong, I’ll sleep on the floor with you.”
He considered it. “It’s fair,” he decided. “So the man had a llama. That’s got two l’s, y’know.”
“I know. One day his llama got sick and had to go to the doctor.”
“And the doctor said he’d swallowed an alarm clock,” Nicky said, snuggling into his pillow.
“Which made an awful racket every day at noon. The llama wasn’t welcome anywhere . . .”
Ten minutes later Nicky had reduced the llama to selling kisses at the circus. And he was sound asleep. Rousing herself she left Nicky’s room only to run into Steven’s hard chest.
She swallowed. His hard, naked, hairy, naked, golden chest. “He’s asleep,” she whispered.
“So I see.” His eyes twinkled and crinkled at the corners and she wanted to grab him and wrestle him to the carpet and have her way with him. “Kissing llamas, huh?”
She shrugged. “He’s your kid.” Then she frowned. “Your son knows about sex.”
Steven grinned. “Well, he is seven.”
She propped her fists on her hips. “Just how long were you standing there?”
“From the minute I heard you leave your room. I haven’t slept a wink all night knowing you were in there asleep and not being able to touch you.” He leaned closer until his forehead rested against hers. “I’ve heard of sex, too.”
She had to bite her lips to keep from smiling. “Well, you are—how old are you, anyway?”
“Thirty-six.” He tugged on her hand. “Old enough to know about sex, and how to do it, too.”
Jenna was laughing softly as he closed his bedroom door behind them. “You don’t say.”
“Oh, I do. And I made a stop on my way home.” He thumbed over his shoulder and her eyes widened at the sight of the three big boxes of condoms on his bed. “Think it will be enough?”
“Well, we’ll just have to see, Special Agent Thatcher.”
He kissed her gently. “And feel. And taste.”
“Umm. Maybe you do know about this sex thing after all.”
Tuesday, October 11, 8:00 A.M.
“We got a response.” Steven tossed copies of his latest note from the killer on the conference-room table. “Special delivery to Special Agent in Charge Steven Thatcher.”
Liz picked up a copy and studied it. “He promoted you.” “Yeah, don’t tell Lennie.” Steven sat down and rubbed his temples. “Harry, you’ll need to get started at the search scene. I’ll join you when I’m finished with the assembly at Roosevelt.”
Meg stared at the page, a stricken look on her face. “I knew this would force his hand, but . . .”
“He was going to kill her regardless of what we did, Meg,” Steven said wearily. “I’ve arranged for another chopper to take aerial shots of the coordinates in the note. He gave us a more specific range this time. We should be able to find Alev faster than we found Samantha.”
“And once we have?” Harry asked.
Steven looked at the note that had no fingerprints. Not a single identifying factor. “Then we hope we’ve forced him to move more quickly than he’d planned and that he’s made a mistake.”
Tuesday, October 11, 7:30 P.M.
Steven pushed his front door shut, the desire to see Jenna’s face the only thing that kept him on his feet. Shortly after leaving the Roosevelt High School assembly this morning he’d received word from Harry that they’d found Alev Rahrooh’s body. Just where the killer’s note said she’d be.
What he hadn’t been prepared for was the scene that awaited him. Meg had thought the killer would either stop or kick it up a notch.
It had been the second one.
And Harry wasn’t the only one to lose his breakfast this time, either. Steven still wasn’t sure he could eat a bite, ten long hours later. But the worst part wasn’t the body in the clearing. The worst part was having to pay the visit to the Rahroohs to tell them their daughter was dead. To try to prepare them for what they’d see when they arrived at the morgue to identify their daughter’s body. That the beast had not only raped and murdered their precious child, but that he’d dismembered her.
Harry had not stumbled on one sign this time, but six. Head, Arm One, Arm Two, Torso, Leg One, and Leg Two. Lorraine Rush had not been the most horrific scene Steven had ever witnessed, but Alev Rahrooh . . . He could honestly say she was the worst in his career.
And to know he’d pushed the killer to commit such a vile act. Meg reminded him this evening of his own words from that morning, that the animal would have killed Alev regardless of what they’d done. But the words had been easier to believe before he’d seen that young girl’s body. He sagged against his front door, emotionally drained. He closed his eyes when he heard Jenna’s voice from his office, tried to rewrite her face over the carnage that seemed branded on his very soul.
“Now you remember our bet,” she was saying. “Tell me what that says.”
“Walla Walla, Washington,” Nicky read in a grumpy voice. “You win.”
“So where will you sleep?”
“In my own bed,” he heard his son say morosely.
“So get to it,” Jenna ordered crisply. “Go brush your teeth and I’ll tuck you in.”
“And we’ll play the story game?”
“Sure, why not?”
They appeared and Steven forced himself to smile even though all he wanted was to drag her in his arms and bury his body in hers and pretend for just a little while that the world didn’t exist.
That they were normal people.
That she didn’t wear on her throat the evidence of some sick teenage band of thugs and that he hadn’t seen an innocent life brutally ended, ravaged even after death.
“Hey, Nicky, how’s my boy?” he asked, injecting a happy note into his voice, instantly seeing his son wasn’t buying any of it. Nicky looked up at him, then looked up at Jenna, who’d sobered as soon as she’d seen him standing there. She tapped the end of Nicky’s freckled nose.
“I think your dad’s had a bad day. Maybe when he’s had a chance to unwind he can come up and help us with our story. You go on up to bed and brush your teeth. I’ll be there in a minute or two.” When Nicky was upstairs Jenna turned to Steven and opened her arms.
Without a word he pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair. “You always smell like beaches and coconuts to me,” he whispered.
She kissed his shoulder through the layers of his clothing. “You found her. The third girl.”
He shuddered and her arms tightened around his waist. “I’m so sorry, Steven,” she murmured, lifting her face. “I’m so sorry.”
He searched her face, looking for something he hadn’t yet defined, but finding it in her eyes. He kissed her, taking from her whatever comfort she could provide, finding the well more than deep enough. His kiss grew desperate until she slid her hands into his hair and pulled his head back.
“Steven, what happened?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t, Jenna. I just can’t.” Can’t talk about it. Can’t stop thinking about it. Can’t stop blaming myself.
She pulled him close for a softer kiss. “Then stay here. I’ll put Nicky to bed, then I’ll be back.”
As he watched her go up the stairs he realized more than anything in the world he wanted to hear about kissing llamas and any other silly t
ale Jenna and Nicky could concoct. He followed her up and waited outside Nicky’s bedroom door.
“What if I wake up in the night and decide I don’t want to be in bed?” Nicky was asking.
Steven peeked around the corner to see Jenna pulling the blanket over Nicky’s small frame.
“Then you get out of bed and sleep in your sleeping bag,” she said simply.
Nicky snuggled into the pillow and closed his eyes. “Once there was a man who lived in Kalamazoo.” He opened one eye. “Aunt Helen has a friend there. It’s in Michigan, y’know.”
Jenna sat down on the edge of Nicky’s bed and smoothed her hand over his hair. “I know. And this man had a kangaroo.”
Nicky didn’t say anything for a long time, so long Jenna whispered, “Are you asleep already?”
Nicky shook his head. “No. Jenna, I’m ready to get out of bed now.”
Steven wanted to sigh, but Jenna just stood up and pulled his blanket back. “Okay.”
He squinted up at her. “You’re not mad?”
She shook her head. “No, you kept your end of the bargain. So into the bag.” Nicky crawled into the sleeping bag and Jenna sat next to him, cross-legged on the floor. “So we have a kangaroo.”
“From Kalamazoo.”
“Whose shoes were new.”
“Who liked to eat glue.”
Jenna’s lips twitched. “Until he got the flu.”
“He had to stay in bed with the flu,” Nicky said, abandoning the rhyme. “But one day a bad hunter came and stole him from his bed.”
Jenna went still. “This isn’t about the kangaroo from Kalamazoo anymore, is it, Nicky?”
Nicky lay motionless. Then he shook his head.
Jenna rubbed his back, making her touch soft against his small back. “Sunday night, when that man came into my apartment, I was so scared,” she whispered. “I wasn’t sure if I’d live or die. If I’d ever see you and your dad again. If I’d ever see Jim or Jean-Luc again.”
Nicky didn’t open his eyes. “But they’ll be okay, won’t they? Jim and Jean-Luc?”
She kept rubbing his back, keeping her strokes gentle. “I hope so. The vet says they ate a lot of poison then and Jean-Luc got stabbed.” Her voice faltered and she steadied it. “For me.”
