The Escape Artist

by Diane Chamberlain

  Adam looked at Kim, his eyes narrow with pain. He grabbed her hand. "It's not me, Kim, " he said softly. "It's Jessie. I think she's going around to the rear of the house."

  "What's he talking about?" Linc looked at her. "Who's Jessie?"

  In a horrified instant, she understood. She looked toward the street, but there was no sign of the police and the siren was still weak and distant. They would never arrive in time.

  "Stay with him," she said to Linc.

  She ran out of the woods, cutting through the side yard to reach the rear of the house. The small back porch was dark, but the moonlight illuminated a wide, grassy yard interrupted only by a swing set.

  She crossed the back yard and stopped short when she came face to face with Jessie, who was emerging from the woods, an express mail package in her arms. She stopped walking when she spotted Kim.

  "Jessie," Kim said. "Don't do it."

  "This isn't any of your business," Jessie said.

  "Please, Jess. Put the box down. Or give it to me." She reached her trembling arms out in front of her. "I understand why you're doing it, but please. Forget the vendetta. It's only hurting you in the long run."

  "A vendetta." Jessie looked very calm, and a small smile played at her lips. "Good word," she said. "And I admit that's what it is. Revenge, pure and simple. It feels great." She started walking toward the dark back porch of the house again, but Kim darted in front of her.

  "If you leave the package, I'm only going to warn the people who live here not to open it," Kim said. "So why bother?"

  "You won't warn anyone," Jessie said calmly. She raised her right hand, and for the first time Kim saw the gun. It looked like the gun from Adams night table, and it was pointing directly at her. She had the feeling Jessie wouldn't hesitate to use it.

  The wail of the siren was closer now, but Jessie didn't seem to hear it, and Kim wasn't certain which of them had more to fear from that sound. She raised her own arm slowly to point to the swing set in the back yard. "Did you see the swings, Jessie?" she asked. "Children live here. They could get hurt."

  Jessie shook her head. "There's only one person's name on the package. He'll be the only one—"

  "What about the children at Sellers, Sellers, and Wittaker? That bomb didn't have their names on it, did it?"

  Jessie flinched, and Kim knew she'd hit a nerve. The magnitude of the carnage at the law firm had been an accident.

  The barrel of the gun had drifted downward, but now Jessie lifted it again, pointing it at her once more. Kim had to make herself hold her ground. She knew firsthand the damage a gun could do, and she wanted to turn around and run from it.

  Her throat was dry, and she swallowed hard. "Liam and Molly were innocent victims," she said. "But so were those children at the law office."

  "Please don't talk about them." Jessie hunched up her shoulders as though she could make them reach her ears and block out Kim's voice. The sirens were very close now. Jessie had to be able to hear them.

  "And so are the children in this house," Kim said. "They're innocent, too. Just as innocent as Molly and—"

  "Stop it!" Jessie said. "I said don't talk about them."

  "Are you going to take that risk again?" Kim asked. "Hurting, maybe killing some more little kids?"

  Jessie suddenly dropped to her knees, and Kim jumped, fearful that the gun would go off,

  "I never meant for those kids to get hurt," Jessie said. She was crying. It was too dark for Kim to see her tears, but she could hear them in Jessie's voice. "Their mother should never have brought them into work with her."

  "I know," Kim said. She could hear car doors slamming in front of the house, more sirens. Any minute, it would all be over. Jessie's vendetta and her own escape. "I know you would never intentionally hurt any children," she continued, and she could hear the tears in her own voice. "And I'm sure you don't want to hurt the children who live here, either."

  Jessie was sobbing. The gun shook with the trembling of her body.

  "Please put the gun down, Jessie," Kim said.

  To her surprise, Jessie obeyed her. She set the gun on the ground next to her, and Kim closed her eyes briefly in relief. She took a step forward, but Jessie immediately raised her hand in the air, palm forward, to stop her.

  "Stay back!" she warned.

  Kim stopped walking, horrified to see that Jessie had slipped the fingers of her other hand under the lid of the box.

  "Jessie, no!" She took another step closer, but Jessie quickly grabbed the gun again, and Kim froze.

  "I just wanted Molly back," Jessie said, a catch in her voice. "That's all I wanted," Her fingers still in the box, Jessie quickly lay down on top of it. Before Kim could even think of reacting, the world exploded with a burst of light and noise. She heard herself scream as she fell backwards, and a searing pain cut across her forehead. In an instant, all was black.

  The air was filled with smoke and sirens when she opened her eyes again. She tried to get up, but someone was holding her down.

  "You're all right." It was Linc's voice, and she leaned back against him.

  She was vaguely aware that he was moving her, turning her, and she knew there was something he didn't want her to see. "Linc?" Her voice sounded weak and far away.

  "You're all right," he said again. She felt his hands on her shoulders, and she wondered if he was trying to support her or if he was simply holding onto her to keep her from running away again. Maybe they were both the same thing.

  She heard voices, so loud they hurt her ears, and wide bands of light cut through the darkness. The earth vibrated as people ran past her. She had the feeling they were running in circles, and she closed her eyes because the sounds and lights were making her dizzy.

  Cody.

  She tried to sit up, but there was no strength left in her body. Letting herself lean back against Linc, she sat still as a statue, waiting for her fate. She knew she would not be running away again.

  –36–

  There were more police officers at the hospital than there were doctors and nurses. At least it seemed that way to Kim. Two of the officers, a stern-faced young woman and a man who reminded Kim of her father, were sitting with her and Linc in the small waiting room, but they were not the same two who had been questioning her for the last hour. She had not bothered to lie. The jig was up, and she knew it.

  "What time is it?" she asked Linc. He was sitting close to her on the hard, vinyl-upholstered couch, and Cody was on her lap. The three of them formed a tight, inseparable unit. For a little while longer, anyway.

  "A couple minutes after midnight." Linc answered without looking at his watch.

  Kim had completely lost track of the time. All she knew was that a child protection worker, armed with her own set of questions, was on her way to the hospital, and that unless a miracle occurred, the social worker would take Cody from her. Kim held onto him now as he slept on her lap. The social worker would have to wrench him from her arms.

  Kim had come to the hospital by ambulance, Linc had told her, but she had no memory of the trip, nor did she remember the doctor stitching the cut above her eye. She'd been in shock, Linc said. As far as she was concerned, she was still in shock. She couldn't string two coherent thoughts together in her head.

  "I still don't get it," she said to Linc. "How did you know where I was?"

  Linc explained, for the third or fourth time, how he had learned about the connection between the victims through the librarian at the Naval Academy, how he'd figured out that "the artist," whose family had been killed by a drunk driver, was probably behind the deadly explosions. "So, I knew that Adam would not have taken the information to the police, as he'd told you he would. I had the addresses on the list you'd left with me, and I thought I could try to intercept Adam myself, or at least to provide some warning to the residents in the house."

  "And why didn't you just call the police?"

  "Why do you think?" he asked. "I was afraid I'd be leading them straight t
o you."

  Another police officer, a dark-haired woman, came to the door of the waiting room.

  "We've finished taking Mr. Soria's statement," she said to Kim. "He'd like to talk to you now."

  "I'll keep Cody here," Linc said. He reached for him, but Kim held tight.

  "No." She pictured the social worker arriving at the hospital while she was in with Adam, marching into the room, snatching Cody from Linc's arms, and spiriting him away to some undisclosed location.

  "I won't let anyone take him without talking to you first," Linc said. "You don't need to worry."

  Reluctantly, she shifted Cody to Linc's arms, grateful that the little boy had slept through the entire adventure. The thought of him being taken from her while he was still asleep was intolerable to her, though. She couldn't imagine him waking up surrounded by strangers.

  She followed the policewoman down the hall to one of the treatment rooms. The room was cold and sterile and made her shiver the second she walked inside. Adam was propped up in a hospital bed, a bandage around his head and a smear of blood on the shoulder of the blue hospital gown. He looked pale and sick, and her heart went out to him. She pulled away from the policewoman to take his hand.

  "I'm so sorry about Jessie, Adam," she said, sitting down in the chair next to his bed. "I'm sorry for everything."

  Adam squeezed her hand and shut his eyes. "I need to tell you…to try to explain things to you," he said slowly. His voice was hoarse, and she had to lean close to hear him. From the corner of her eye, she saw the policewoman sit down in the chair by the door.

  "Are you all right?" Kim asked. "Is it just your head?"

  "Ribs." Adam opened his eyes, squinting against the light in the room. "Two of them broken. That boyfriend of yours packs a wallop." He tried to smile, but didn't come close to succeeding.

  "Adam, I'm—"

  "Listen to me," he interrupted her. "I want you to know some things."

  "I think I know everything," she said. "I know Jessie was targeting drunk drivers. The people on the list—the 'one adult' or 'elderly couple'—they were the people who were killed in those accidents, right?"

  "There's more."

  She couldn't imagine what more there could be, but she leaned even closer to the bed. "I'm listening," she said.

  Adam closed his eyes again, a deep line in his forehead below the bandage, and it was a few seconds before he seemed able to speak.

  "Molly was Jessie's daughter," he said finally.

  His words didn't register right away. "Molly was what?" she asked.

  He looked directly at her. "Jessie got pregnant when she was fifteen. She knew she couldn't raise a child, and our parents were not very supportive. But since Dana and I were already married, we decided to adopt her baby so that Jessie could always be close to her."

  "Oh, my God," Kim said. "No wonder Jessie felt such a bond with your children."

  "Molly was everything to Jessie," Adam said. "She and I were both nearly insane with fury when that driver got off so easily after the accident. Actually, I guess we were insane. Neither of us cared if we lived or died. Then we started thinking about all the other families who had suffered the way we were suffering, all the drunk drivers who were still out there, free to kill again. Jessie joked about taking those drivers out, one by one. At least, I thought she was joking." Adam gingerly touched the bandage wrapped around his head. "I realized after the break-in at your apartment, when you told me about the information on the computer, that Jessie had actually gone through with it. I didn't want to believe it, but I—"

  "I still don't understand," she interrupted. "I thought you owned the computer before me."

  "Uh uh. It was Jessie's. She used a loaner computer while hers was being repaired. One morning, she asked me if I could take it back to Computer Wizard for her and pick up her repaired computer. I said I would do it that night, but then my schedule changed, and I was able to take it that afternoon. I didn't realize there was information on it that Jessie wanted to delete before it was returned. She was furious with me when I told her I'd taken it back." He looked into space for a minute, as if he were remembering that scene. "I never understood why she was so angry—until the day someone broke into your apartment." He returned his gaze to Kim. "When you told me what you'd found on your computer, I knew what had happened. Jessie had called Computer Wizard to see if she could get the computer back to take her file off it, and they told her it had already been sold, but that the person who bought it had called to tell them someone had left a file on the disk. They said you didn't leave your phone number, but the salesman thought it would be okay to give Jessie your address, since you'd seemed concerned about getting the information to its rightful owner."

  "So she knew where I lived. Was it Jessie who sent me the invitation to your show, then?"

  "Yes. She followed you around for a few days, I guess, and knew that you were interested in the murals."

  Kim remembered the feeling of being followed during her early days in Annapolis. She had not been imagining it after all.

  "Those kids at the law firm," Adam said. "I can't tell you how upset I was when I realized Jessie was behind that… catastrophe. And I wanted to tell you. We were in your apartment and you were telling me all about your life and your running away and I was lying to you through my teeth."

  "You said you'd go to the police with the disc and—"

  "What I did was go to Jessie's house that night when she was asleep. I checked out her basement. She has a little workroom down there, and it looked like an explosives factory. Then I couldn't deny it to myself anymore. But I couldn't turn her in, Kim. She's…she was my sister. She was all I had left, and she was obviously sick and needed help. So I talked to her instead of to the police. I told her I knew what she was doing, and she admitted everything. We argued and she cried a lot, but she finally promised me there'd be no more bombings. When I called her last night, though, and got no answer, I was afraid she was on her way to the next house on her list. I was hoping I was wrong. I thought I'd go to that address, and if she did show up, I could head her off." His eyes filled with tears. "But it didn't work out that way."

  "Maybe if I hadn't been there, you could have stopped her," Kim said. "But I thought you were the person behind—"

  "I know, and I can't blame you for that," Adam said. "Or for any of this, Kim. You're not responsible for what happened last night."

  She looked at their hands resting together on the bed. It would be a long time before she could shake her guilt over what had taken place the night before.

  "What will happen to you and Cody?" Adam asked.

  She kept her eyes on their hands. "Well, Cody will go to my ex-husband and his wife." Her tears started again, and it was a minute before she could continue. "They love him. At least I know Peggy does. She'll take good care of him."

  Adam stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. "That's not fair," he said. "You couldn't be a better mother."

  She tried to smile. "As for me, I don't know exactly what will happen. I've been told I'm a felon. I suppose they lock felons up. Right now, I don't really care." She shrugged her shoulders. "When I think about my life without Cody, I just… I don't see the point."

  "Don't talk that way," Adam said quickly. "You sound like Jessie."

  Kim tried to wipe her tears away with her fingers, but new ones quickly took their place. "I feel like it's my fault," she said. "If I hadn't interfered last night…if I hadn't tried to stop her, she'd be alive."

  "Yes, but someone else wouldn't be," Adam said. "There were five people in that house. You did what you had to do, Kim. You saved at least one life, probably more."

  Kim bit her lip. "And Jessie saved mine, you know."

  Adam nodded. "They told me. They said you were so close to the bomb that you would have been badly injured if she hadn't…covered it with her body."

  Linc poked his head in the door, Cody still in his arms. "The social worker's here, Susanna," he said.
>
  "I'll be right there." She turned back to Adam. "I have to go," she said.

  "I'm sorry you had to get mixed up in all of this, Kim," he said. He ran the back of his hand lightly up her arm. "You and Cody mean a lot to me."

  "You've meant a lot to us, too."

  He smiled at her. "Susanna, huh?"

  She nodded.

  "So, how is Susanna different from Kim?"

  She sighed. "Kim is brave and independent and gutsy. Susanna is weak and needy. But right now, they're both the same person." She glanced at the door leading to the hallway. "Both of them are terrified of walking out that door," she said.

  "They've both been the same person all along, Kim," Adam said. "And don't you forget it."

  –37–

  Susanna and Linc arrived at the hotel close to two in the morning, after they'd finished talking with the police at the hospital. Susanna was exhausted and sick to her stomach. She felt as if she'd been riding a roller coaster all night. She'd been nervously waiting to be driven to police headquarters when she was told that charges against her had been dropped.

  At first she hadn't understood. She was standing in the hallway of the emergency room, numbly waiting to be handcuffed or whatever they would have to do to her to take her to the police station, when the policewoman brought her the news.

  "You're free," the policewoman said. Susanna stared at her blankly, and the woman continued. "It happens a lot once a child's been located and taken into custody. The custodial parent is really only interested in getting his or her child back."

  Susanna never would have figured Jim for one of those parents who would drop charges. Somewhere deep inside her, she knew she should be elated by that news, yet she had no room in her for joy just then.

  "And Cody?" she'd whispered.

  The social worker who'd questioned her earlier appeared next to the policewoman. "Tyler will be in protective custody overnight," she said. "Colorado's sending a child protection worker out here in the morning, and she'll take Tyler back with her. You can be on the same plane, if you like," she added. "We know you have a good relationship with your son, and it would probably help if you were with him for the flight."