Blindside f-8

by Catherine Coulter

  “Excellent. Oh, Sheriff,” Agent Hodges paused a moment, then said, “I’m, er, really sorry, but there’s something else that you need to know, something you might not be expecting. You know I told you the truck was roped off? Well, that was after it was checked over real good. We decided not to bother you with it right away, what with your heading off to the hospital with Agent Savich, and Wade agreed with us.”

  Didn’t need to bother me with something?

  Keeping her voice mild and easy, she asked, “What didn’t you think was important enough to notify me about, Agent Hodges?”

  “Well, it’s not exactly that it’s not important… it’s like this, Sheriff: There was no body inside the van.”

  11

  W hat?”

  “It looks like Clancy-big gut and all-got out before the van blew,” Agent Hodges said. “Of course, he had lots of motivation. Wade called all the county sheriff’s offices and all area police departments, and the state police. He gave them all the particulars and a description of Clancy. We figure he’s got to be in bad shape, I mean, he did crash the van hard into that tree, and Wade told me you’d shot him in the arm or shoulder, so he’s got to be in pretty bad shape.

  “As I said, we’ve already got a manhunt going. Any stolen cars will be reported directly to us. We’ll find Clancy.

  “I’m really sorry we’ve got to add this to the mix, Sheriff. As for Beau, the coroner has his body. There’ll be paperwork for you to do, but I guess you know that. And I’m sure you’ll be getting a call first thing in the morning from the TBI.”

  The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation-oh yeah, she’d get lots more than a call. But that was tomorrow. At this moment, she was so mad at Agent Hodges that if she’d been within arm’s reach she would have clouted him in the head, really hard. She told herself keeping calm was her forte and she used that now, her voice still smooth and mild. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You decided not to bother me with this small detail, Agent Hodges? It didn’t occur to you that since I’m the sheriff I should be called immediately?”

  “Well, ma’am, we’ve got a lot going on here-”

  “You just made a big mistake you will not repeat, Agent Hodges. I’m the sheriff of Jessborough, I run things here, you don’t, regardless of anything my deputy might have said.”

  “Now wait a minute, Sheriff. I’m sorry about the delay, but it is our case.”

  “I don’t need to speak to you any longer, Agent Hodges. Put Wade back on the phone.”

  “Yo, Katie. Come on now, don’t be pissed.”

  She pictured driving her truck over him, maybe letting the back tires with their cast-aluminum wheels sit on him, really settle in and get comfortable. Savich was right. She should boot his butt to the Tennessee line and hand him over to North Carolina or Virginia or Georgia-she had lots of choices. Hey, Kentucky sounded good. She said, “You should have called me immediately, Wade, not agreed with the Feds.”

  “Look, Katie, you were on your way to the hospital with Agent Savich. I didn’t want you to have to worry about something else. Everything’s being done that should be done.”

  “Worrying is my job, Wade. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. Right now, I want you to bring our people in. Have them go home and sleep, but keep a patrol going near my house, no, that’s not enough. I want a couple of deputies sitting out in front of my house. If Clancy is alive, chances are he’s hiding in the forest. If he’s not badly hurt, he might double back.

  “Oh yeah, tell Dicker to bring his dogs over to my house first thing in the morning if Clancy hasn’t been found by then. The state police can keep looking tonight, those guys don’t deserve much sleep. One other thing, check in with every family within a five-mile radius of my house. Warn them. You got that?”

  “I already had Mary Lynn call all the neighbors. I do know what to do, Katie.”

  “He’ll try to steal a car if he’s able to.”

  “Yeah, we know that.”

  “He’s a dangerous man, Wade. Keep reminding everyone just how dangerous.”

  “Yes, I have, of course. Even though I’m sending out deputies to guard your house, Katie, you be careful, too. No telling what that moron will do.”

  “There’s something else, Wade-something very important-but I think I’ll let it wait until tomorrow morning when Agent Savich is back in the land of the living. You don’t need to worry about it now, Wade.”

  “Wait! Whoa, Katie, what do-”

  “Nah, you’ve got enough on your plate tonight, Wade, both you and Agent Hodges.” She smiled as she hung up. That should have him thinking and cursing about me not telling him something.

  She pushed away from the wall and walked to the waiting room. Her brain was fried, or very nearly.

  So Fatso had managed to get out of the van and into the forest before the sucker blew. Well, wasn’t that just peachy?

  Now she had to tell Miles, though she didn’t want to. She had to tell him, it was his right to help protect his child.

  It was time to herd her daughter and her guests home. Maybe they should just wait and go to Mother’s Very Best, just to be on the safe side. No, she was losing it. A headache started to burrow in over her left eye. Home would be safe. Home sounded like heaven right now, even with a boarded up front window and a burned-out van in the front yard.

  She walked into the small waiting room that prided itself on having the oldest Time magazines anywhere-most of them from the Watergate period in the seventies.

  Keely was wearing her pajamas, a robe, and bunny slippers over nice thick socks. Sam had on a pair of Katie’s gray sweats, with the legs rolled up more times than she could count, the long sleeves of her shirt pushed up as well, so thick it looked like he had tires around his arms. He had a pair of her socks on his feet. A nurse, Miles told her, had brought them each a couple of blankets and pillows.

  That would be Hilda Barnes, she told him. Hilda always took special care of any visiting children.

  Katie realized Miles was the only damp one in the waiting room.

  Sam was on his feet the instant he saw her. “How’s Uncle Dillon, Katie?”

  “He’s going to be just fine, Sam. He’ll be staying here tonight. Dr. Able just wants to make sure everything is okay.”

  Miles said, “You look sharp in your scrubs, Katie.” Actually, she looked rather ridiculous, her hair in a ratty wet ponytail, the scrubs hanging off her. And she looked valiant-a strange thing to think, but it was true. She leaned down to scratch her knee. If only he’d known, he would have offered to do the scratching for her.

  “They wouldn’t let me in with Dillon unless I got hosed down first. Here are my clothes, wrapped in this towel.”

  “Mama, I think you look cuter than Dr. Jonah.”

  “Let’s just keep that between us.”

  “Okay. Who is this man who needs to shave?”

  “You mean me, Keely?” Miles said, momentarily distracted. “You know who I am. Your mama needs some aspirin.”

  How did he know that?

  “No,” Keely said, “the man in the picture, in the magazine.”

  “Oh, that was President Nixon,” Katie said. “I was born just before he resigned, a very long time ago. When was it?”

  “In 1974,” Miles said. “I was just a bit younger than Sam.”

  “Does your head hurt, Katie?” Sam said, and looked up at her.

  “Just a little bit. Don’t worry about it. Miles, I hear there’s a bet on as to how fast Sherlock will get here. Savich told her not to come.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Miles said. “When Sherlock’s on a mission, if you don’t help, you’d best get out of her way. Now, kids, it’s after midnight, time for both of you to be in bed-again.”

  “I’m not tired,” Keely said immediately, and yawned.

  “Sure you’re not,” Katie said and swung her into her arms. She smiled at Miles Kettering, a man she’d not even known existed until she’d come across Sam. His clothes looked dam
p and itchy, the wool smelled, and his feet squished in his shoes, but no matter, he’d made the kids comfortable.

  “You look dead on your feet, Miles. Maybe close to a coma, even.” Actually, even with fatigue and worry for Sam etched on his face, those eyes of his were brilliant with relief and just plain happiness. She knew to her toes that he was a strong man, competent, a good man who loved his child more than anything.

  Miles Kettering was so tired after two days of little sleep and endless worry that a coma didn’t sound like a bad thing. “I’m good for a few more miles yet” was all he said. He rose slowly, Sam in his arms, looking like he never wanted to let him go again. And she knew exactly how he felt. He wanted Sam close, he wanted to feel Sam’s heartbeat against his palm, to know that he was safe, and with him again.

  “Let me take Sam to see Dillon for a moment. He’s scared and I want to reassure him. Then we’ll be right with you.”

  At that moment, a nurse came around to let them know Special Agent Savich was in his room, on the medical ward.

  “That was good timing,” Miles said. “Could you get some aspirin for the sheriff, nurse?”

  “Oh, sure. Katie, just a minute, I’ll get you some even stronger stuff.”

  “Not too strong,” Katie called after her. “I can’t be comatose just yet.”

  “I want to see Uncle Dillon, too,” Keely said.

  Katie knew no one was about to keep the kids out at this hour. Almost everybody here had known Keely from the moment she was born, five years before just two floors up. Come to think of it, everybody knew everything about everybody within a ten-mile radius of Jessborough, with updates every couple of hours or so. You’d have to be sick or dead to be out of the loop about what happened today.

  The four of them stood by Agent Savich’s bed, watching him sleep. Sam lightly patted his shoulder, and looked up to his father. “Uncle Dillon doesn’t look so good, Papa. Why’s he on his stomach?”

  “You remember, he got cut on his back, that’s why. He’ll be just fine, don’t worry, Sam.”

  “I think he’s handsome,” Keely said. “Do you think you’d like him, Mama?”

  “It’s too late for us, pumpkin,” Katie told her daughter, “he waited as long as he could, and then he met Sherlock and she proposed to him. She was more in need than we were. What could he do?”

  Miles wanted to laugh, but he was just too tired to do more than blink.

  By the time Katie walked out of Dillon’s hospital room, two Advil in her system, Keely’s head rested on her shoulder, and she was sound asleep. Ten minutes later, Katie eased down into the front seat of Miles’s rented Ford and settled Keely on her lap. Miles fastened the seat belt. Then he paused, and both of them realized they didn’t want Sam to be alone in the backseat.

  It would be a tight fit, but they could do it. Miles said, “Sam, do you think you can hold real still?”

  “Sure, Papa,” Sam said, so tired his voice slurred like a drunk’s.

  “Okay, I want you to sit on my lap, but since I’m driving, you can’t move a whisker.”

  Katie had given people tickets for such stupidity, but she didn’t say a word. It would work.

  Once Miles had the seat belt around both of them, Sam nearly touching the steering wheel even though Miles had pushed the front seat all the way back, Katie said, “Maybe you’d best stay at Mother’s Very Best tonight, Miles. The other Feds are staying there.”

  He was silent for a long moment as he started the car.

  “It’s not that I don’t want you at my house. It’s something else entirely.”

  12

  S he paused, saw that both children were asleep, then said, her voice low, “Something’s happened, Miles.”

  His hands were fisted around the steering wheel. “Tell me.”

  “It seems that Fatso/Clancy got out of the van before it blew. They haven’t found him yet. The hunt will begin in earnest early tomorrow morning, at first light. If he’s still in the forest, he might be dead of his wounds or pneumonia by morning. But I don’t think we’ll get that lucky.”

  His right hand thumped the steering wheel. Sam jerked, but didn’t awaken. “So there’s still danger.”

  “Well, yes. I felt much better thinking he was dead and accounted for, given what’s happened. I’m hoping that he’ll run as far and as fast as he can. At least when we catch him, we’ll have a chance to get out of him why he and Beau took Sam.”

  “That would make me feel a whole lot better. There wasn’t a ransom note. Everyone was thinking a pedophile had taken him. Now? I don’t have a clue.” He paused, then added, “I guess you don’t think he’s dead.”

  There was such hopefulness in his voice, but she didn’t lie. “No, I don’t. Life is never that neat and tidy. When you mix criminals in, things really get mucked up.”

  “So that’s why you want me to stay at this B and B in town.”

  “It might be for the best.”

  “Wouldn’t we be just as safe with you and your deputies, Sheriff?”

  “Two deputies will be in front of the house all night and there will be lots of people there tomorrow. Either way, you should be fine, but it’s up to you, Miles.”

  “If you’ll have us, Sam and I would like to stay with you. He knows your house, Sheriff, he’s comfortable with Keely and with you. I don’t want to take him to another strange place unless I’m forced to.”

  “No, you don’t have to. But please remember, Clancy and Beau came back to my house to get Sam again. I’m not really sure Clancy is going to hightail it out of here.”

  “Ah, I don’t think you know this, Katie, but I was in law enforcement myself until five years ago, in the FBI. Savich and I worked together, as a matter of fact, and that’s how we became friends. I can handle myself and a gun, if the need arises.”

  She shook her head at him. “I knew there was something about you, something that made me think you’d been in the military, or something.”

  “Yeah, I can just imagine how bad-ass dangerous I looked holding two children in my arms.”

  It took them a good twenty minutes to get there, never going faster than twenty miles an hour. The rain had slowed to a drizzle but a low-lying gray fog blanketed the ground. The air was bone-numbing cold, pregnant with more rain.

  The children continued to sleep all the way back to Katie’s house, a neat two-story with a wide porch built in the forties. It was just outside Jessborough proper, along a road lined with tulip poplars, set back on five acres that were mostly covered with hardwood trees-beech, red maple, white ash, sassafras.

  Miles said, “Do you know, I can’t see the mountains, but I know they’re there, nearly in your backyard.”

  “Just wait until morning. Fall is the most glamorous time of the year. So many different trees, so many bright colors, each one distinctive. Come back, say, the end of March and it isn’t so pretty.”

  Miles pulled the Ford in behind the deputies. Katie waved to them, then handed a sleeping Keely to Miles to put on his other shoulder. She watched him pause a moment and stare at the still smoldering van and the boarded-up front window. Then he took the children into the house.

  Katie was pleased the car was parked right out in front, as conspicuous as could be. No way Clancy could miss them. They also had a huge thermos of black coffee on the front seat between them, enough, they assured her, to last them until doomsday, or later.

  It was nearly 2 a.m. when Katie handed Miles a cup of hot chocolate and pointed to a big easy chair.

  “Why don’t you drink this. I find hot chocolate always slows me down even if my brain is revving. I’ll bet it’ll send you right off to sleep.”

  “Your headache under control?”

  “Oh yes. But how did you know?”

  He smiled at her. “I just knew.”

  She couldn’t help herself and smiled back. “It’s been an eventful day,” she said and both of them sipped the hot chocolate.

  She closed her eyes in blis
s as it warmed her belly.

  “An understatement. Both kids were boneless. I just poured them into their beds. It’s always amazed me how a kid can do that.”

  Katie smiled. “Thank you for taking care of Keely. My sweats are warm even if they don’t fit Sam very well. I haven’t had time to wash his clothes. We can do that first thing in the morning. Sam’s a brave kid, Miles.”

  “Yeah, he is. Obviously it’s you who deserves thanks for saving my son’s life. I owe you, Katie, I owe you forever.”

  “You’re welcome. Remember, Sam saved himself. It was luck that I was driving really slow and Keely saw him.”

  Miles said, “When I put Keely to bed while you were drying my clothes, she still had that blanket Hilda gave her at the hospital. She didn’t want to give it up.”

  “She didn’t mention Oscar? That’s her rabbit. They’ve been inseparable since she was six months old.”

  “She sleeps with her rabbit?”

  “Oh, sure. Does Sam have a favorite animal he sleeps with?”

  “Yes,” Miles said. “A big stuffed frog named Ollie. It’s really ratty, but Sam refuses to let it go.”

  “Wait just a second.” Katie left the living room only to return a few seconds later, a big green frog under her arm. “Would you look at this sitting in her closet-her grandmother, my mother, gave it to her for Christmas last year. Maybe Sam would let it be a stand-in for Ollie.”

  He smiled, the first one Katie had seen. “You have a name for the critter?”

  “Oh yeah, she’s Marie.”

  “Sam might not want a girl.”

  “Trust me. Green isn’t girly. And you’ll make it Martin.”

  She watched him close his eyes again, saw the tension flooding back over him, and waited. After a minute or so, he said, “Best I can tell, Sam was taken out of his own bed close to dawn, early Friday morning. It’s been like an unending nightmare.” He swallowed convulsively. Katie just let him talk.

  “I went to get him up for school, and he wasn’t in his bed. I thought he was in the bathroom and I went yelling for him to hurry up. It took at least five minutes before I realized he was gone, that someone had taken him. My first thought was a sexual predator, and believe me, the FBI checked that out immediately. Then we all wondered if it was some sort of revenge-after all, I’d been in the FBI myself and captured some bad guys. Since I own a good-sized company, it could have been ransom. They spoke to my sister-in-law, to some of my employees, even a couple of friends. It all takes time, so they’d really just gotten started. But no matter what the agents said, no matter what they did, all I could think about was some child molester had gotten him.”