by Joanna Wayne
“I don’t know, but I sure as hell plan to find out.” Jack stood and shuffled papers around until he found his jacket under one of the piles. “Right now I’m paying a visit to central lockup.”
“I guess that means you’re not eating that biscuit.”
Jack grabbed his breakfast just before Casanova swept down on it like the vulture he was. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, buddy, limited as you are, but I can do two things at once. Like eat and drive.”
“Limited? Is that any way to talk to a man who did the busywork all week while you kept company with the gorgeous dragon lady?”
“You’re right. I owe you one, but not my breakfast.” Jack headed out. “Are you coming or not, bad cop?”
2:55 p.m.
SUSAN’S MORNING had passed uneventfully. She’d come to her office as always, even though a madman had vowed to kill her. Sitting idle would have made her even more irritable and restless than she was already.
Going about her usual routine helped, but it didn’t make her forget that Darby was probably lurking somewhere nearby, waiting for the opportunity to finish what he’d started. Especially when Simpson, a plainclothes officer with a loaded gun hidden beneath his stylish sports coat, sat in her reception area, scrutinizing every patient who walked through her door.
She’d called home after each session to make sure there had been no more notes and that everything was fine. It always was. This afternoon Lucy and the children were baking Christmas cookies. Before lunch, Lucy and the hopefully unobtrusive guard had taken them into the courtyard to play hopscotch and bounce balls.
Thanks to Lucy, the children’s lives were almost normal. Thanks to Jack and the NOPD, Susan knew they were protected every second. Hammonds would be back on duty at three, only a few minutes away, and Lucy was looking forward to having the friendly female return.
The male cop working the day shift was much too stern and silent for Lucy’s taste. Not only that, but he’d eaten half their cookies, and Lucy detested gluttons.
Wonderful Lucy. She was not only a caretaker for the children, but a special friend. She would have to think of something really nice to do for her when this nightmare was finally over.
When? If?
Two days until Christmas, but Susan was determined to keep planning as if the day might actually come and go without the promised catastrophe. This morning she’d ordered the beautiful, freckled doll from the store on Royal Street and had it delivered to her office. She hoped Rebecca wouldn’t be disappointed when what she really wanted didn’t show up under the tree. Whatever that might be.
The only problem had been in the puppy department. She’d let her fingers walk the yellow pages, but the pet stores were sold out of small, friendly puppies suitable for a three-year-old who lived in a city apartment. The rest of her shopping had been completed long before her life had dissolved into a mass of fear and chaos.
Before Christmas, you’ll be begging me for mercy.
Susan shivered as the words of the killer’s note haunted her mind. John Jasper Darby planned to kill her. Jack planned to make sure he didn’t. She’d put her money on Jack. Everything he’d promised, he’d delivered right on time.
The phone rang, and Susan picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
“Susan, this is Lucy. We have a little emergency.”
Apprehension sucked away Susan’s breath. “What’s happened?”
“Rebecca cut her hand.”
“How bad?”
“Not too bad, but she’ll need stitches. We’re leaving for the hospital?”
“Who’s going with you?”
“Jack. Officer Grouchy called him, and he’s on the way.”
“How did it happen?”
“We were wrapping gifts. I was watching her with the scissors, but there was a piece of glass in the bow box.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault, Lucy. Are you sure Rebecca’s all right?”
“She’s not even crying anymore. She’s sitting on my friend John’s lap, and he’s holding the cold cloth on her finger. The bleeding’s almost stopped.”
“John? What’s he doing there?”
“He come by to make an emergency Christmas-paper delivery. The children had a couple of surprises to wrap. The officer said it was okay for John to come in if I vouched for him, but he’d have to stay in the room with us.”
“Okay, tell me about the cut.”
“Wait, Susan. Someone’s at the door. I think it’s Jack. We’ll call you after Rebecca sees the doctor.”
“No, I’ll meet you at the hospital”
Susan hung up the phone just as her next patient walked in the door. She’d see her for a few minutes, but not for the full session. Auntie Mom was needed at the hospital.
4:00 p.m.
SUSAN AND HER ever-present bodyguard rushed down the hall toward the room where the nurse had directed her. She heard Jack’s booming voice before she got there.
“Now, see? That wasn’t so bad, and you have a greatlooking bandage. I bet Missy Sippen never had a bandage like that.”
She pushed through the half-open door.
“Auntie Mom, you came.”
“Of course I came.” She hugged Rebecca tightly.
“You’re too late,” Jack said. “You missed all the fun.”
“It was not fun,” Rebecca corrected him. “The doctor gave me a shot right here.” She pointed at the appropriate spot. “And he gave me stitches. I didn’t even cry”
Susan hugged her and pulled her pigtail out of her collar. “I’m so proud of you.”
Rebecca filled her in about all the details of the stitches. She was still talking when the doctor came in and gave them directions for cleaning the wound and changing the bandages.
“Can you go home with us, Auntie Mom?” Rebecca asked, when the doctor finished his spiel and left them alone.
“I’m afraid I have to go back to work and see a few more patients, but I’ll be home early so that I can have lots of time with you and Timmy before you go to sleep.”
“Is that one of your patients?” Rebecca asked, pointing at the officer who had accompanied Susan.
“No, this is Mr. Simpson. He’s a friend of mine.”
“You sure have a lot of new friends lately,” she said, shaking her head as if she didn’t quite get it. “Miss Lucy says they eat a lot, and they’re as messy as Timmy.”
Susan stuck her head outside the door to see if she could catch a glimpse of the waiting area. “Where is Timmy?”
“He stayed with Mr. John and one of those friends who keep hanging around our house. He was taking a nap and Lucy didn’t want to wake him up, did you, Miss Lucy?”
“No way. Timmy’s much too fussy when he doesn’t get his nap out.”
They started back down the hall and toward the car. “I still can’t imagine how a piece of glass happened to be in the bow box,” Susan said.
“I’m afraid I have to take the blame for that,” Lucy explained. “I ran out of wrapping paper one day and borrowed some of yours. I had a little present for John’s birthday, and I wanted to give it to him that night.”
“I remember now. You mentioned you’d come over one day when we were out and used the wrapping supplies.”
“Actually, I never got to use the paper, or the bows. The aftershave slipped out of my hand and splintered into a thousand pieces before I could get it wrapped. It took me almost an hour to clean up the mess. You must have smelled it when you came home that day.”
“You broke…a bottle of aftershave lotion…that you’d bought for John.” Susan’s knees grew weak.
Jack’s gaze met Susan’s in the split second realization hit home. He took off at a dead run. And Susan was right behind him.
Chapter Fourteen
5:00 p.m.
Jack pulled into the tow-away zone, lights flashing and sirens yelling. Susan jumped from the car before the motor died. Hammonds was there. She had to focus on that. Even if Lucy’s Mr. John w
as Darby, Hammonds would protect Timmy.
She raced up the walk, her breath coming in jagged puffs, knowing deep inside her that her logic was faulty. Hammonds couldn’t stop Darby. No one could.
Jack beat her to the door. He slammed his hand against the wood paneling as Susan fitted the key into the lock. The key turned, and he shoved in ahead of her, gun drawn.
A string of curses flew from his lips. Susan pushed around him and then stopped dead in her tracks. Hammonds was sprawled across the foyer floor, her face blue, a scarf knotted around her neck.
She opened her eyes, dark circles in her swollen face. “It was Darby,” she said, gasping for breath. Jack fell to the floor beside her.
Susan turned away. Her mind shut down, but adrenaline shot through her body, driving her on. “Timmy.” Feet flying, she raced from one room to another, calling his name. “Timmy!” But the house was deathly silent.
Jack grabbed her and held her. “He’s not here, Susan. Darby took him, but we’ll find him.”
Rage consumed her, and she lashed out at the only thing she could reach. She beat her fists into Jack’s chest until he took her hands and forced them to stop. He rocked her shaking body against him.
“It was me he wanted. Me!” she cried. “And he can have me. I don’t care anymore. Just don’t let him hurt Timmy.” Her voice was choked with pain and fear. And fury such as she had never known before.
Jack’s body tensed, a knot of muscle and resolve. “He can’t have you,” he said, his voice bitter and hard. “And he can’t have Timmy. We will not let a madman win. Not this time.”
JOHN JASPER DARBY carried the sleeping child wrapped in a light blanket into his apartment on the edge of the French Quarter. A little sedative powder in the boy’s soft drink had worked wonders and made his job so much easier. He’d vowed to put Susan McKnight through the longest day of her life before he killed her, and that day had begun.
He hadn’t considered kidnapping in the beginning, had never imagined that Susan would be the kind to want or have children He’d merely set out to hook up with her friends and discover the best way to engineer his payback.
Finding Lucy Carmichael had been an act of pure luck, though he hadn’t thought so in the beginning A fruitcake, who went around talking to her dead husband as if he were as alive as she was and sitting beside her.
And then there had been Bobby Chambers. He’d been a tougher shell to crack than Lucy, but he had come around. A few beers and the man would talk.
But his crowning achievement had been finding Maggie Henderson for his first victim. He hadn’t intended to kill anyone that day, hadn’t even sent his first note to Dr. Susan McKnight. But Maggie looked so much like Susan had that first time he’d met her—seven long years ago—that he’d changed his plan.
Seven years he’d spent locked away, on the say-so of some green psychologist straight out of school. Kelsey and Susan, the Drs. McKnight. They had ruined his life. But they wouldn’t get away with it. Kelsey had already paid. Now it was Susan’s turn.
His hands itched to wrap around her neck. Maybe he wouldn’t even use a scarf this time. Maybe he would do it with his bare hands. He had pretended it was Susan he was killing the night he’d strangled the life from Maggie’s beautiful body. But this time it would be a thousand times sweeter. This time it would be Susan, and his payback would finally be complete.
Timmy would deliver her to him.
Friday, December 24
3:00 a.m.
SUSAN SAT at the kitchen table, waiting for a phone call from Darby. The same way she’d been sitting and waiting for the last ten hours.
“Any news?” she asked, when Jack left the command post he’d organized in the wide foyer, and joined her in the kitchen. She didn’t have to hear his answer. His tormented eyes said it all.
“No news.” He stopped behind her and massaged her shoulders “And no news is good news.”
“I have to believe that. I just wish Darby would call, let us know Timmy’s all right.”
“Is Rebecca sleeping?”
“Yes, Lucy lay down with her and they both fell asleep.”
“She’s a real little trouper.”
“She is,” Susan agreed. “I’m just thankful Lucy and Simpson kept her away from the house until after the paramedics and the ambulance arrived for Hammonds. I tried to keep her in her room and shielded from all this most of the night, but I think she knows something’s wrong, something more than your using the apartment to work on a police case.”
“Did she ask about Timmy again?”
“No, apparently the fact that he went to spend the night with Lucy’s Mr. John is fine with her.” Susan shivered, wrapping her arms about her chest. “I can’t bear to think that Darby was in my home, playing with the children, but evidently they never saw the monster side of him.” She buried her head in her hands. “I just pray Timmy isn’t seeing it now.”
“No reason to think he is. Darby has no reason to harm Timmy. According to Lucy, they were buddies. Hold on to that, Susan.” He took her hands. “Hold on to me. I’ll be here.”
“Will you, Jack?”
“As long as you need me.”
“What if that turns out to be forever?”
Jack ran his fingers through Susan’s hair, tangling a curl around his finger and letting the soft tresses slip away slowly. Forever. It was a word he seldom thought of. A word he wasn’t sure existed in his world.
“We’ll talk about forever when this is over with,” he said. “Right now every hour seems an eternity.” It was the only honest answer he could give.
“What happened between you and your wife?”
He dropped to the chair beside her. “That’s a strange question to ask at a time like this.”
“Not really. You’re so supportive, so loving, so good with kids. But she left you. She had to have reasons.”
“She did. I’m a cop. You’ve been with me for ten days. I don’t sleep, eat, or make decent conversation when I’m on a case like this. I lose all perspective.”
“You’re a dedicated detective.”
“That wasn’t the kind of dedication she was looking for. She wanted a man who was home for dinner at five, who spent Saturday mornings working in the yard, who kept social engagements.”
“But she married you.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t take her long to tire of the roller coaster. She jumped off at the first stop, two months before we’d have celebrated our first anniversary. She did the right thing for both of us. I don’t have any hard feelings. We just didn’t mesh, as you call it.”
The phone rang, and Susan jerked to attention. Hands shaking she picked up the receiver. Her hopes plummeted when Casanova asked to speak to Jack. She handed him the phone and went back to the range to start yet another pot of black coffee.
5:00 a.m.
LUCY WOKE UP and stared at the ceiling over the double bed where she lay beside Rebecca. “Are you there, Stephen?”
She closed her eyes and waited for a sign. At first there was nothing. Then her heart did the crazy flutter it always did when he came around.
“I made a big mistake. I think you tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen. I missed you so much. I just wanted another person to talk to and laugh with. I won’t make that mistake again. From now on, I’ll check out any man I meet with you before I so much as have a cup of coffee with him.”
Rebecca squirmed in her sleep, and Lucy calmed her with a pat. Poor darling. She’d probably rolled over on her cut finger. Lucy waited a second, until she felt Stephen’s presence again.
“Take care of Timmy,” she whispered. “Watch over him. You were so good with kids, just like the nice detective who’s here with Susan. If you have any powers at all, do this one thing for me, Stephen. I wouldn’t be able to bear it if I thought I’d brought harm to that little boy.”
She waited quietly in the dark. Her heart didn’t flutter again, but a warmth seeped into her as if she were cradled in someone�
��s arms. “Thank you, Stephen,” she said and brushed a lone tear from her eye. “I knew I could count on you.”
Rebecca rolled over. “Are you talking to me, Miss Lucy?”
“No, honey. You go back to sleep. I was just talking to my angel.”
“Is he watching over us?”
“Yes, over all of us.”
Lucy waited until Rebecca was asleep again. Then she got up and tiptoed back to the kitchen to wait for news.
8:00 a.m.
SUSAN OPENED burning eyes that were swollen from the avalanche of tears she’d finally shed. The living room was dark, but she could hear voices in the background. She stretched and checked the clock over the mantel. She’d only meant to rest a minute, but she must have fallen asleep.
Sliding her feet back into her shoes, she stumbled to the kitchen. Jack was the first thing she saw. “Any news?”
He took her in his arms and held her close, like she might have done Timmy after a bad dream. “Not yet.”
“Did you sleep at all?”
“A quick nap.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” She hugged him close and then left the circle of his arms to find a cup for coffee. “Where’s Casanova?”
“He went out to get some food, but he’ll be back. Hammonds’ replacement is in the foyer.”
“How is Hammonds? Is she in the hospital?”
“She’s doing fine. In fact, she apparently said she wanted to be here, on duty. We have a missing child. You could have every cop in the city here today if we needed them.”
Susan poured a cup of strong, black coffee.
“You could go back to sleep instead of drinking that. I’ll wake you if we hear anything.”
“I’m not sleepy.” She dropped to the kitchen chair. “Why doesn’t he call? Or send a note. He couldn’t wait to deliver notes before.” Desperation tore at her voice. She didn’t try to hide it. The wait had been too long.
