At a sound outside her door, Betty switched off the television set. Then she pulled up the blankets and closed her eyes so the Nurse-bird would think she was sleeping when she came in to do the bed check.
SIXTEEN
Walker moved close enough to recognize Alan and Laureen stretched out on the lounge chairs. Alan was sleeping on his stomach, snoring softly, and he looked very uncomfortable. Laureen was on her back with the blanket pulled up to her chin, as if she were taking the air on the deck of a cruise ship.
He studied their sleeping faces for a moment. Walker couldn’t blame them for fleeing their own apartment. Dead bodies made him uncomfortable, too. He’d never grown used to seeing the slack features and wide-open eyes staring up at nothing. Sometimes there was a surprised look, a perplexed expression, or a grimace that didn’t quite fade as death froze the features into a mask.
Walker’d had several close encounters and he had the scars to prove it, a six-inch knife cut that had nearly spilled his guts out on the ground, and a shoulder wound that still twinged whenever it was about to rain. Usually it didn’t bother him, but there were times like tonight when he wanted out. They’d offered to let him retire after this job, but now that his family was gone, there was really no reason to take them up on it.
Some people accepted death as inevitable. Others sought all sorts of ways to ensure immortality, like spending a fortune to be preserved at subzero temperatures and thawed when modern medicine had found the cure for their fatal disease. Walker had decided that he’d be better off ignoring death and living each day as it came, which seemed to work just fine until something happened to remind him that his luck couldn’t last forever.
Many might argue that his luck was relative. Walker had lost his wife and his six-year-old daughter in an auto accident. At least that was what he’d told people, omitting that the accident involved a bomb under the hood of his car. If you had good protection, they moved on to your family.
As Walker reached out to press the elevator button, his hand was trembling. His still got the shakes every time he thought about that morning, five years ago. The phone had rung at eight o’clock, just as Jenny had been sitting down to her favorite cereal, a gruesome concoction that turned pink and soggy when she poured milk on it.
“I’ll get it, hon.” Cheryl had sprinted across the floor to grab it before he’d even pushed back his chair. She’d been a long-distance runner before they were married and had almost made the Olympic track team. She probably could have made it four years later, but she’d married him and had Jenny by that time.
“He did? Right next to his eye? That sounds nasty, Mavis.” Cheryl had held the phone with one hand and refilled his coffee cup with the other. “It’s not really serious, is it?”
Walker had studied the furrow that appeared on his wife’s forehead and sighed. Definitely a problem.
“Of course.” Cheryl’s voice had been very sympathetic. “We’ll just switch weeks, all right? And tell Danny he’ll look like a pirate.”
Cheryl had hung up the phone and poured herself a cup of coffee. Then she’d flopped down in a chair and sighed. “Danny had an allergic reaction to a spider bite. His eye’s swollen shut and Mavis has to keep him home from school. Do you mind driving the bug today, Walker? I have to do the car pool.”
“Sure, no problem.” Walker had agreed immediately, even though he hated to drive Cheryl’s bug. When rust spots had appeared on her lime-green car, she’d covered them up with flower decals. From a distance, it looked polka-dotted, which was bad enough, but when people got a close look at the pink and purple and yellow daisies, they smirked.
Cheryl had laughed and Walker had known she was reading his mind. “Sorry, hon. I know how you feel, but I can’t cram six first graders into the bug, and there’s no time to run over to get Mom’s station wagon.”
“I told you, no problem. It’s probably good for me to drive around in a flowered car. Builds character. What was that business about the pirate?”
“Oh, that.” Cheryl had smiled. “The doctor gave Mavis a patch to put over Danny’s eye. Naturally, he hates it. I just thought he might leave it on if she tells him he looks like a pirate.”
Jenny had nodded solemnly. “Danny wants to be a pirate when he grows up. He loves airpranes.” Walker and Cheryl had exchanged amused glances over the rims of their coffee cups. “Want to explain?” Walker had done his best to maintain a straight face. Jenny had developed a slight lisp and she was very sensitive about it.
“On the drive to school.” Cheryl had pushed back her chair and stood up. “Any gas in the van?”
“Not much. I was planning on filling it this morning.”
“Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow. Isn’t that our motto, hon?” She’d given Walker a quick kiss on the forehead. “There’s not much in the bug, either. Come on, Jenny. Give Daddy a kiss and get your coat. We have to leave right now or we won’t make it to school on time.”
He’d still been sitting at the table, drinking the last of his coffee, when he’d heard the explosion. By the time he’d run out the door, his van had been an inferno. The doctor had said they’d died instantly, but that had been small comfort.
For the first few weeks, Walker had been in a state of shock. And when that had worn off, his guts had churned with white-hot anger at the men who’d killed his family. He knew that a man hell-bent on revenge took foolish chances, so he’d waited, and two years later the opportunity had come. His retaliation hadn’t brought Cheryl and Jenny back, but it had been sweet. And then he’d closed the book on his dream for a normal life. A man in his profession had to be a loner.
Walker thought about Ellen as he got off the elevator and walked down the hall. It was a real pity they’d raised questions about Johnny Day, and he was glad that Ellen hadn’t joined in their speculation. He hated to think of what would certainly happen if she started adding up the facts. If there was some way to warn her off, he’d be tempted, but the orders he’d been given were very specific.
In spite of his orders and training, Walker had still gotten personally involved. He’d liked Ellen the first time he’d met her. She was bright and witty, and because she was so totally defensive around men, he’d spent a lot of time trying to bring her around. The turning point had come just a week ago, when he’d found her on a ladder, arranging supplies on her storage shelves. She’d asked him to please give her a hand, so he had. Right out of the box of spare parts.
Ellen had stared at him for a moment and then cracked up. She’d laughed so hard, he’d had to help her down from the ladder and she hadn’t stopped laughing for at least five minutes.
Now she even teased him back occasionally. And she was an absolute master of the pun, Walker’s favorite form of humor. That crack she’d made to Vanessa after he’d given her the bunny slippers had almost finished him off. And as her ability to laugh had grown, so had her trust in him. That had been his real objective. Ellen had to trust him enough to believe the lies he was required to tell her.
Walker smiled. He’d actually talked her into going up to the Jacuzzi with him last night, a step in the right direction. Of course she’d worn a discreet one-piece suit, and over that, a terry-cloth robe. She’d taken it off to jump into the Jacuzzi, but only after asking him to turn off the lights. Even though she had the perfect body for a bikini, Walker knew it would reveal too much of what she thought she had to hide. He’d never met a woman so paranoid around men before, which made his job even more difficult. There were times when Walker felt like marching Ellen over to the mirror, stripping off every stitch of her clothing, and forcing her to look at herself objectively.