She felt the color drain from her face.
“Damned unfortunate set of circumstances, you know? Bringing you back into the limelight and all. If you’d have just continued lying low-hell, if you’d just stayed away from Arkansas-we probably never would have had to meet again.”
Meet again? Her mind raced to put the pieces together. Again? Then she had it. The guy on the hill. The guy with the gun and the camouflage. “Oh, my God,” she breathed, bringing her hand to her mouth. She looked frantically to the door again.
“Don’t do it,” he warned, reading her thoughts. “That would be a huge mistake. So I see you remember.” He smiled and shook his head slowly. “Goddamned worst shooting I’ve ever done. I don’t know how you and hubby got outa that place, but I gotta tell you, when I saw you come stumbling out of that fire, I just couldn’t believe it.” He laughed softly. “I was so scared of that smoke cloud, all I wanted to do was run. I just kept pulling the trigger till I had an excuse to get the hell out.”
She stared, her mouth open, her brain overflowing. “But why?” The question sounded more like a gasp.
He eyed her and shook his head. “Actually, that’s none of your concern,” he said. His manner was all business again. “Your concern, Carolyn, should be to keep that handsome young Travis from getting hurt.”
The sound of her boy’s name passing this predator’s lips made her want to throw up. “Don’t you dare…”
He interrupted her with a laugh. “And you can stop me, right?” He laughed. “Look, for what it’s worth, I checked in on the little tyke just before I came here. He looks so small and helpless there in that big bed, tubes coming out from everywhere.” He shook his head pitifully. “Doctors say he’s sick, sick, sick. But with the right care, he’ll probably be just fine.” He paused and looked straight through to Carolyn’s heart. “Unless, of course, something terrible happens to him.”
An icicle materialized in her chest, and for the briefest of moments, she thought she might pass out. There had to be a way to stop him…
“I’ve scared you,” he observed. “How rude of me. Relax. I only kill adults. Well, mostly.” He smiled. “Here, I’ve got something for you.” He opened his briefcase and removed a pad of paper, a calculator, and his FBI credentials and placed them all on the cot next to him. He shot her a conspiratorial glance, then removed a false bottom, to reveal a coiled length of nylon clothesline, which he handed over to her.
“Here’s how this works,” he explained as he placed everything else back into the briefcase and latched it. “With this rope, you can save your son’s life.” He pointed to the ceiling. “I think that light fixture there is plenty strong enough to support a tiny little thing like you.”
The horror of what he was suggesting hit Carolyn hard. Without even knowing it, she started to cry.
“Oh, relax,” he coached. “People hang themselves in jail all the time. So here’s the deal. If you’re still alive for morning roll call, poor little Travis will be dead by breakfast. See how simple that is?” He smiled and stood.
She stared dumbly at the rope in her hands, then back up at him. “But why?” Her voice was merely a sob.
He shrugged. “Because I said so, Carolyn. How’s that?”
She just stared. It was too much to comprehend.
He bent close and took the rope from her. “Let’s just tuck this in under the covers here,” he said, laying the coil underneath the stacked blanket and pillow. “That way, the matron won’t get wind of our little plan.” He patted her on the head. “I’ve given you a lot to think about, Carolyn, and I apologize for that, but there’s really no other way. Now, I can only imagine that you’ll wonder at some point if maybe I’m bluffing. I’d wonder that if I were you.” He leaned in even further, until bare inches separated their faces. “But I swear to you, if you let me down, he won’t go easily. Do you understand?” He was whispering now. “I’ll make him suffer. He’ll suffer, Carolyn.”
He let the words sink in for a long moment, then straightened. “Well, this has been fun.” He called for the matron. “By the way, where did Travis get that scar on the sole of his foot?”
Carolyn’s heart cramped hard, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. This man had been looking at her little boy.
“He’s growing up fast, too, isn’t he?” he added with a smile.
She felt ill. She wanted to rip this man’s eyes out, but even as the image flashed through her brain, she knew the futility of it. Her mind swirled out of control, propelled by the purest form of fear she’d ever known.
A key slid into the lock. “I’ve got to go,” he said heavily.
“Wait!” she insisted, even as she heard the lock turn. “How do I know you won’t kill him, anyway?”
The door opened, and they weren’t alone anymore. He flashed his humorless grin one last time. “You don’t,” he said. “Sweet dreams, Carolyn.”
CHAPTER FORTY
“All you have to do is drive,” Nick mocked under his breath as he crossed the once-grand lobby of the Radford Hotel. He carried the pizza box on his shoulder, bearing the logo of Papa Lorenzo’s Perfect Pizza Parlor. The box was empty, of course. Nick and his coconspirator had consumed the whole thing while sitting down the block in Thorne’s rental car, working out the fine points of the plan. Tasted pretty good, actually, considering the fact that Papa Lorenzo and his staff all wore turbans.
Even though Little Rock was a small city by most standards, the task of locating a single needle named Irene Rivers in a haystack of several dozen hotels seemed hopeless at first. Then Jake got an idea. In fact, he seemed flooded with ideas. Good ones, even. An amazing turnaround, Nick thought, given the quivering mess he’d been just scant hours before.
Their approach was simple: divide the Yellow Pages in half and burn up a ton of quarters in pay phones calling front desk after front desk and asking for Irene Rivers’s room. They were just shy of four dollars into their strategy when Jake got a hit on the Radford. After the phone in her room rang ten times without anyone answering, he just hung up, confident she was still out saving the world from the likes of himself.
Finding the hotel was only the first step, though. They still needed a room number, and for that, Nick needed to do some legwork. Between the two of them, his was the face that hadn’t dominated the news.
The Radford was a big old place, which once had been the destination of choice for visiting presidents and celebrities. On the heels of more than a few slow years, though, the Radford had been unable to keep up with the Grand Marquis and the Crown Plaza, and its once-dependable clientele had shifted its loyalties elsewhere. The place was still several giant steps away from homeless-shelter status, but there was precious little charm left in the threadbare Oriental carpets and scratched cherry walls.
To be put up in a place like this was clear evidence that Irene Rivers had seriously pissed off her travel agent.
As Nick approached the two teenagers manning the front desk, they looked up simultaneously and smiled. “Hi. Can I help you?” one of them said.
Nick noted the similarity of the girls’ features-even down to the matching zits on their chins-and he wondered silently if maybe they were sisters. He smiled back, trying his best to look a little sheepish while praying that his hands wouldn’t shake.
“Hi,” he said back. “You sure can.” With hopes of making himself look more like a local, he spoke around a toothpick he’d picked up at Papa Lorenzo’s. “One of your guests called and ordered a pizza. Unfortunately, I lost the note with her room number on it. Got a name, though. Rivers. Irene Rivers. Can you give me her room?”
The Bobbsey Twins exchanged glances, then shook their heads in unison. “No, I’m afraid not,” said the one on the right. “We can’t give out people’s room numbers to anyone.”