The Hunter

by John Lescroart

  “What about it?”

  “There’s still a lot of it out there, is what. I mean, possibly in the millions. And my editors are kind of pushing me to dig around a little more since we hit such pay dirt on the Spencers. They think maybe I’ve barely scratched the surface.”

  Hunt paused. “I think maybe they’re right. Have you come across anything specific yet?”

  “Nothing more than what you started me with a few weeks ago, but look where that led.”

  “It led to the bad guy being dead, Lynn.”

  “Right. That was one.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that this Spencer story has kind of blown the lid off this thing—I mean the whole Jonestown lost-money angle—and I’m going to still be writing about it and maybe you should be a little hyperaware for a while and watch your back. If there are more Spencer types out there, they’re probably not going to be nice people, either.”

  “But, I notice, you’re still looking for them, too.”

  “That’s my job, Wyatt. But I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t a little concerned. And maybe you should be, too.”

  “But I’m not looking for anybody.”

  “I know that and you know it, but maybe they—whoever they may be—maybe they don’t. Or maybe they wouldn’t care.”

  Hunt hesitated again. “Could you stop digging?”

  She laughed a brittle laugh. “That’s like saying could I stop breathing. But I will keep you informed if I stumble onto anything like a real bite. I just wanted to give you a little bit of a heads-up in the meantime. Just be aware, okay?”

  “Always.”

  “A little more than normally aware.”

  “I will be. Promise.”

  “Maybe I should just stop.”

  “Breathing?”

  She laughed again. “I’m just being paranoid, aren’t I? But I felt I had to tell you.”

  “I’m glad you did. And maybe you’re not being paranoid. Somebody out there has that money, and they probably want to keep it. I hear what you’re saying, though. I’ll be extra vigilant.”

  He heard the relief in her voice. “For a while, anyway.”

  “For a while,” he said. “Or forever.” Then added, “Whichever comes first.”

  IN THE WORKOUT CLOTHES HE SLEPT IN, in the dim glow of the screensavers on the court side of his warehouse, Hunt slumped in his ergonomic chair, his hands templed at his mouth. Very occasionally, he registered a vehicle passing by outside, or the house heating cycling on and then off on the residence side. By these nearly subliminal signals, he was aware that time was passing, but he couldn’t have given any length to the amount of it he’d been sitting there—an hour, three?

  He knew that when he had jerked awake it had been 1:15. In the bed next to Tamara, he’d tossed until nearly two, then gave up and came out here, shot a few hoops, then simply had sat down on the court, finally stretched out full length.

  Uncounted minutes passed. Cars droned by outside. A siren wailed somewhere in the distance. At last he got himself up, intending—no, determined!—to go and give sleep another try, but when he got to the door, he couldn’t make himself turn the knob. Instead, he switched off the lights on this side and made his way over to his computer area, where he lowered himself into his chair and tried to will himself into a state of calm, of acceptance, of grace.

  It wasn’t happening.

  Tamara knocked gently on the connecting door and pushed it open, whispering as though afraid that she might wake him. “Wyatt?”

  “I’m here.”

  She pushed open the door and started to make her awkward way forward—she’d be limping for at least another few weeks—when Wyatt pushed himself up from his chair. “Whoa,” he said. “If anybody is going to be walking around here, it should be me.”

  “I can walk.”

  “Of course you can. It’s just that I can walk without pain.” By this time, he’d crossed to where she stood and put an arm around her. “I didn’t mean for you to have to get up and go searching for me. Let’s go back in.”

  “Only if you want to.”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to?”

  “Because you came out here. Maybe this is where you really want to be.”

  “As opposed to?”

  “In your bed.” She paused. “In our bed.”

  Hunt let a breath escape. “I was thrashing around and didn’t want to wake you up.”

  “I know. But are you sure that’s it?”

  “Yes. What else would it be?”

  “It might be that this thing we’ve just been through together went too fast, pushed us together when we might not have gotten there on our own.”

  “Yes, we . . .”

  She put her hand up against his lips. “No. Let me say this. So now I’m basically living here or at work, limping around both places, half disabled, and it’s like you’re my caretaker, which is maybe not what you had in mind about all this. And then you get in bed with me and wake up every couple of nights to go sit by yourself. And you say it’s because you don’t want to wake me up, but I don’t think it’s that. Or I don’t think that’s all it is, at least. What do you think?”

  Hunt stood for a long beat in silence. Finally, his voice husky, he said, “You talk about yourself being disabled. How about if the disabled one is really me and I don’t want you to see me this way?”

  “Wyatt,” she whispered, “do you remember how you were in Mexico?”

  He shook his head with a kind of restrained violence. “That’s done. I got that way for a few days and then got out of it. That problem’s over. Lance is dead, Tam. The whole thing’s in the past. I don’t know why I can’t just put this behind me and get on with my life. And meanwhile, I risk losing…​I mean, if you…​if this is the way I’m going to be, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want any part of it. I don’t even want you to see it. I’m trying not to blow things here with you and instead, every night or two it’s this…​this whatever it is. It’s wiping me out. To say nothing of driving you away.”

  “Hey! Listen to me. It won’t drive me away. Nothing’s going to drive me away, you understand? Except maybe you not sharing this stuff with me. This real stuff.”

  “This real stuff,” Hunt said. “I don’t know how long it’s going to go on, Tam. I can’t guarantee a damn thing. It just wells up, doesn’t let me sleep, gives me these goddamn headaches . . .” He shook his head in fatigue and frustration. “I don’t need to put anybody else through that.”

  She put her head up against his and held him close against her. “Wyatt,” she said. “It’s been what? Three weeks? Five weeks? Versus your whole life before all this started? You can’t expect this to go away for a while, maybe even a long while, and that’s okay. Don’t you see that? In fact, facing all this real stuff, as we’re calling it, may be the best thing that could happen for you. Get the decks cleared so you can start moving ahead on the next stage of your life, whatever that might be. And all I really want is that you let me be part of it, too. Be part of you. You think you can do that?”

  “I hate it,” Hunt said.

  “I know you do. But you don’t have to face it alone. Really. I’m here. I want to be here.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to scare . . .”

  Again, she touched her hand to his lips. “Stop right there. Okay, you’re afraid. It’s okay to be afraid. You being afraid, me seeing you afraid, isn’t going to scare me away. I’m here until you kick me out.” She kissed him. “You hear me?”

  He held her tightly against himself, his breath coming heavily.

  “Come back to bed,” she said.

  DODIE HADN’T EXPECTED that Lance would be killed.

  She told herself that that had never been her idea. Her plan had been only that the law catch up to him, take him away, and leave her free, unencumbered, and financially comfortable. When she got the news that he was dead, it completely and unexpectedly hollowed
her out.

  So she had no trouble playing the grieving widow—in many ways it wasn’t even an act.

  To have someone you’re living with suddenly die was traumatic, even if you felt nothing like love for him. Still, they’d had sex within the last week. For the past three years, he’d treated her with reasonable respect, following their rules. Her part of their deal was being available for him. And it wasn’t that he was unattractive, or unskilled. Rather the contrary, in fact. She had her needs in that direction, too, and he more or less satisfied them.

  But now she’d been three weeks in black. She’d done the endless press interviews, then the funeral, the lunches with her friends, the meetings with her attorneys, her accountants, the Execujet staff, now all her underlings.

  She was carrying on, bearing up.

  Wyatt Hunt, to his credit, said nothing about the role she’d played in giving him Lance’s cell number. She still didn’t understand how knowing that could pinpoint a location, but apparently it was possible.

  In any event, enough!

  Today, the Friday before Thanksgiving, she rang Execujet when she woke up and ordered the Gulfstream for ten o’clock. By dinnertime she had checked into the Ritz-Carlton in Kapalua—twenty-five hundred square feet with wraparound ocean views. If you would have asked her, she would have said she needed the space because Jamie would be coming over on Wednesday for the weekend. But to herself, really, what did it matter? She had the money.

  She had all the money.

  She opened the complimentary bottle of champagne and ordered a dozen oysters, a platter of sushi, and a lobster tail from room service. When she’d had enough of all that, she went in and took a bath.

  The sun was just going down as she stepped out of the tub. The night was balmy, with a light trade, so she didn’t bother drying off. Instead, she poured the last of the champagne into her fluted glass and walked out, naked, onto the patio.

  Looking out over the grounds and the ocean beyond, she rested her champagne glass on the railing and spread her arms out as if to embrace the whole world, her eyes sparkling with avarice and delight.

  THE QUESTION OF WHERE TO CELEBRATE Thanksgiving every year was ongoing in the greater Hunt family. The clan consisted of five kids, four with their respective spouses, plus the parents, Bob and Charlene, and the possibilities seemed almost endless. Until this year, Wyatt had always been a guest at someone else’s house, but suddenly, with a newfound appreciation for the importance of family, he felt it was time to step up and host the day himself.

  He’d had the place professionally cleaned, got the inner door fixed and painted, and rented three large circular tables, setting them up beside the basketball court. Besides his natural grandmother from Indianapolis, he had invited all seventeen members of the extended Hunt family, plus Tamara, Mickey and Alicia, and their grandfather, Jim Parr.

  Mickey, of course, was honchoing the cooking for all twenty-three of them, loving every minute of it. Tamara—bad leg and all—and Alicia were sous-chefing. The seven young cousins—ages four months to eight years—pretty much thought they’d all died and gone to heaven with the basketball court and all the various toys that Uncle Wyatt allowed them to touch and play with.

  He had Pandora hooked up to his terrific speaker system, and it was playing the Tony Bennett channel, mostly classics from Bennett himself, along with a decent smattering of Sinatra, Billie Holliday, Steve Tyrell, Mel Tormé, Steve Lawrence, and Eydie Gormé. Great sounds.

  Hunt was helping out in the kitchen whenever Mickey asked for it. Otherwise, he was making the rounds playing the host, shooting the occasional hoop, playing some guitar, giving mock surfing lessons and real motorcycle rides around the room’s periphery—not a big hit with the parents, but he was the eldest brother, he never exceeded ten miles per hour, and they were all pretty much helpless against him.

  The four oldsters—Bob, Charlene, Jim, and Susan—sat at one of the tables with their Old Fashioneds, enjoying the bedlam around them, chattering like they were the oldest friends in the world. At one point, Hunt looked over and was pretty sure he saw Jim Parr, the dog, holding hands with Susan, who looked about twenty years younger than she had the day they’d met in Indianapolis.

  When Hunt walked into the kitchen to see how things were coming along on the food front, Mickey pointed up to a hole in the wall above the kitchen door. “When did that get here?”

  “Guess. I thought I’d leave it as a souvenir. Not everybody has a bullet hole in their kitchen.”

  “That’s odd,” Alicia said, “when you think about how many people want one.”

  Hunt gave her a smile and asked Mickey, “How long till dinner?”

  “Forty-five minutes or so.”

  “Can I borrow your sister for a minute? Tam?”

  They walked down the hallway and out the door into the courtside space, then picked their way through the maelstrom of kids and their parents, and finally made their way outside onto Brannan.

  “Where are we going?” Tamara asked.

  “It’s a surprise,” Hunt said. “I can’t tell you yet.”

  Holding her hand, he led her up to the corner, then around to where the alley came out behind his building, then into the alley itself.

  “What’s that on your stoop?” she asked.

  “Hmm,” Hunt said. “Looks like flowers.”

  And in fact, it was a large mixed bouquet of roses and nearly everything else the flower shop had available.

  “When did this get here?” Tamara asked. “We’ve been in the kitchen all along. I don’t know why they didn’t just knock.”

  “Maybe it was here earlier. Maybe it got here this morning.” Or actually, as Hunt knew, Mickey had gotten the signal when Hunt had left the kitchen with Tamara, and had just put it out there from its hiding place in his closet, where it had been since yesterday.

  Hunt went to a knee and pulled the card out from the middle of the bouquet. “It says it’s for you. Must be an admirer.” He handed the bouquet up to her. “We can just take it inside, if you want. It can be a centerpiece.”

  “Or three centerpieces. It’s big enough.” She smiled down at him. “Wyatt, you are so sweet. Was this the surprise?”

  “Most of it,” he said. “The other part I’m a little nervous about.”

  “What’s that?”

  He swung around to sit on the back stoop and patted the concrete next to him. “Here,” he said. “Sit a minute. Take some of the pressure off that leg.”

  Hesitating briefly, she finally set the flowers down, then lowered herself and said, “Okay. I’m sitting. Now what?”

  “Now I need to ask you something.”

  “Butterfly wings,” she said.

  “That’s amazing,” Hunt replied. “I was going to ask you the main ingredient in butterfly-wing soup.”

  “Great minds,” she said. And took his hand. “Are you really nervous?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “What about?”

  He drew in a breath. “Change. The future.” Squeezing her hand, he continued, “You know, when I heard you were shot, the first thing I thought is that he’d killed you. And just like that, you were gone out of my life forever.”

  “Which, as you can see, I’m not.”

  “No, thank God. But the point is you might have been. Easily. And the last few weeks I keep coming back to that moment, and every time, the idea of going on without you gets more and more impossible to imagine.”

  “I am with you, Wyatt. Completely.” She brought their clasped hands together in her lap and now held his hand in both of hers. “That’s what you’re nervous about? You don’t need to be. We’ve already been through this, babe, in one version or another. I’m not going to die. You’re not, either. Neither of us is going away, or breaking up with each other very soon, either.”

  Wyatt sat a minute, then reached into his pocket and withdrew a small fuzzy black box. Opening it to reveal the ring, he said, “I was thinking maybe we should make it
a little more formal, if you want to.”

  Her eyes went down to the ring, up to his eyes. She brought his hand up to her lips and kissed it. “This is what you were nervous about? You thought there was any small chance that I’d say no?”

  “I didn’t know for sure. A small one, maybe.”

  Now her own eyes glistened with joyful tears. “How about maybe no chance at all, you idiot? How about never, no how, no way could I tell you no?”

  “Okay.” He let out a breath. “I realize this might be a little soon, but . . .”

  “Wyatt, we’ve known each other for fifteen years. That’s a fair start.”

  “Right. I know. But since we really got together, I mean. I don’t want you to feel rushed, or any pressure, or . . .”

  Reaching out, she wiped a tear from her cheek with her fingertip, then pressed that fingertip against his lips. “Shhh. I say yes. Get it? Yes.” She leaned over, tight against him. “Now, in the immortal words of Mary Chapin Carpenter,” she said, “shut up and kiss me.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book’s genesis came about because of a discussion with a former e-mail correspondent, now friend of mine, Dr. Jack Crary. Jack had been helpful before on issues related to traumatic brain injury in both Betrayal and A Plague of Secrets. At a dinner we were having in San Francisco, Wyatt Hunt’s adoption came up, and Jack mentioned that he thought it would be fascinating to explore commitment and abandonment issues in adults in light of time spent as children in foster homes and with an adoption background. He was right—it’s fascinating stuff—and I thank Jack for pointing me down this path and helping to show me the way.

  Because I am not the most technologically savvy person on the face of the earth, when I began the general outline for this book, I knew I would need an expert in all things cell-phonic, and I was extremely fortunate to make the acquaintance of RJ Reynolds, a long-time employee of AT&T who was working at the company’s retail shop in my hometown. Over several meetings, RJ opened my eyes to many of the common realities of our tech-driven culture that I had never known about or even considered. Our privacy is, it turns out, not as sacrosanct as many of us think. RJ’s contribution to this book was seminal and I am grateful for his time, knowledge, and advice.