Please don’t make it any tougher on her. Please don’t hurt her. Please. I’ll do anything you want, just don’t hurt her.
He heard a noise… like a sob… and realized it was his own voice.
He was crying.
Quickly he wiped his eyes, added his name to the bottom, then hit the function key that would send the message—queue it into the Internet, route it back to the remailer that would forward it to Snake… whoever he was.
To the U.K. and back? How long would that take? Ten minutes? An hour? Two? He had no idea. He didn’t know that much about the Internet. It was all so big, so anarchic.
One thing he did know: He couldn’t stay here. He’d go crazy waiting around for his e-mail icon to start blinking. He—
That reminded him. He had to keep this secret. What if Phyllis knew his password and decided to help him out by checking his e-mail? She’d find out about Katie. He returned to his desk and changed his e-mail password from katie to… what? He couldn’t think. He looked at the message still on the screen and could think of only one word, one that would be almost impossible to forget.
He typed in snake.
Then he grabbed his coat and fled, averting his face as he passed Phyllis.
“Dr. Vanduyne,” she said. “Are you leaving?”
“Yes,” he said without turning.
“Is something wrong?”
“I’ll be on the beeper.” He hurried along the hall, avoiding eye contact with everyone. When he saw a cluster of people waiting for the elevator he ducked into the stairwell and galloped down.
Minutes later he was driving through downtown D.C., heading for home… but not directly. He had to cook up a cover story for his mother. Not only because of what the message had said— no one must know that Katie is missing. !!!NO ONE!!! but also because he didn’t know how she’d react. He had a vision of her clutching her chest and keeling over.
But John wished he could tell someone. Just one person, so he could share the burden, talk about it.
Never in his life, not even during the darkest hours when Katie had been hospitalized in PICU three years ago and it wasn’t yet clear she was going to live, had he felt so alone.
Why Katie? Because of me? What have I got that anybody wants? What kind of “service” requires someone holding my daughter captive?
He heard horns blaring behind him and looked up. The light was green. He hit the gas but after a hundred yards realized he couldn’t go any farther. He pulled onto the shoulder, leaned his head against the steering wheel, and began to sob uncontrollably.
What if Katie was already dead?
18
Paulie had left the garage door open, so now he just guided the panel truck into the narrow space, turned off the engine, got out, and pulled the door down. Dark. Safe. Quiet.
But not for long. Not after Poppy saw the kid.
He could get tough, of course—tell her to shut up and live with it. But when Poppy wasn’t happy, somehow neither was he. He’d never been like that with anyone else. He didn’t get it.
But no sense in putting it off. Sooner or later he was going to have to face the music. Might as well be sooner.
He opened the rear doors, lifted the blanket-wrapped package in his arms, and headed through the door into the house. Another one of Mac’s touches: always a house with an attached garage.
“Oh, honeeeee!” he called, being careful not to use her name, but trying to keep things light. “Here I am, home from a tough day at the office.” He found her standing in the middle of the living room waiting for him.
She was grinning, as he’d hoped she’d be.
“Hey, honey, yourself,” she said. “Did everything go… ?” Her grin faded as her eyes took in the bundle he was carrying. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s the package.” Her face got a funny look as she backed away a couple of steps, like he’d just told her he had AIDS or something.
“Oh, no. Oh, God, no. Not a kid. Don’t tell me that’s a kid!”
“Yeah. It’s a kid. Six years old.”
“Oh, shit, Paulie. Shit!”
“Hey, keep your voice down. And don’t use my name. She’s out cold now, but she could wake up any minute.”
“Take her back! Tell your good buddy you don’t want to have anything to do with snatching a kid.”
This was stupid. He wasn’t going to stand here jawing with Poppy and holding the kid. She was starting to get heavy. He stepped into the “guest room” and gently placed her on the bed. The longer she stayed out, the better.
“She’s already snatched,” he said. “I can’t undo that. So we’re stuck with her, like it or not.”
Poppy was standing at the guest room door, her gaze nicking from Paulie to the blanket-wrapped lump on the bed and back to Paulie. Her shocked expression was gone, replaced by red-faced anger.
“I can’t believe you never told me!”
“I didn’t know. How could I tell you if I didn’t know myself? He hit me with it this morning when I went to pick up the limo.”
“I don’t want any part of this.”
“I don’t like it any more than you do, but we’re stuck with it.”
“What do you mean’we‘? I didn’t sign on to babysit no kid. I’m outta here.” She turned and headed toward the other bedroom.
This was awful. Paulie hurried after her and grabbed her arm. He wanted to shout but kept his voice down to a harsh whisper.
“You can’t walk out on this. Poppy.”
“Watch me.”
“We made a deal!”
Her eyes flashed. “The deal didn’t include no kid! This could turn out like that Limbaugh thing.”
“Lindbergh.”
“Whatever. I don’t want nothin‘ to do with it! Now let me go!”
He released her arm and she continued toward the other bedroom. He couldn’t make her stay or he’d wind up baby-sitting her and the package. He’d have to try something else, like maybe guilt. From years with Poppy he knew that guilt tended to work on her pretty good.
“Fine. Leave me hanging. Walk out and leave me with a kid I don’t know nothin‘ about. Bad enough if it was a little boy, but this is a little girl. How’m I supposed to take care of a little girl?” She stopped at the door and turned, eye’s blazing.
“Damn you, Paulie!”
“Hey, quit saying my name.”
“I oughta shout it from the goddamn roof!”
“You oughta help me, Pop—honey. We both got sucker punched on this one. I thought we were a team. It ain’t right to jump ship as soon as the going gets rough.”
She wandered around the room muttering, “Damn, damn, damn!” under her breath, over and over. That was good in a way… at least she wasn’t in the bedroom packing up her stuff.
“I don’t see why you’re mad at me,” he said. “I didn’t know a thing about this.”
She wheeled on him. “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted him! I knew it. I didn’t want to take this job in the first place, but would you listen? Nooo! You said…” Paulie let her rattle on. She was blowing off steam. In a few minutes maybe she’d run out.
Took more than a few minutes, but finally she quieted and stood there in the middle of the living room, glaring at him.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll help you out. But so help me God, this is the last time we have anything to do with you-know-who. Is that totally clear?”
“As a bell,” he said, reaching for her to seal it with a kiss.
She danced away. “I gotta see to the kid. And I like totally hate kids, you know. I ever tell you that?”
“Like a zillion times.”
“Well, that ain’t changed.”
“But you never said why.”
“I just do, is all. If I liked kids I’d‘ve had some by now. But I don’t. I’ll never have kids. Ever. You understand that?”
“Sure.” Christ, she was acting crazy. “No kids. No problem. That’s all fine with me.” He tried to lighten things up. “This one’s only on rental anyway. We get to return her in a few days or so.” Another glare, this one even meaner than the first— like she was trying to bore holes in his skull or something.