But she did know one interesting tidbit. Jeremy’s professed reason for installing the Winnebago, that he had taken family trips in one as a boy, was only partly true. The real reason was, he’d lost his virginity in one when he was fifteen. The RV was a way of commemorating that blessed event.
Jeremy was in the residence today. He wasn’t jetting off to Europe or Asia or Africa. Sooner or later, he’d be coming up to the third floor. It was where he spent much of his day. So, without being seen by any of the staff, she got up to the third floor and got into the RV.
Twenty minutes later, he showed up.
She was peeking out the window, and while she was relieved at first to see him, his expression gave her pause. His face looked like thunder.
Oh-oh.
Jeremy went straight to his desk and picked up the phone. In case he looked her way, she dropped down below the window. But she could still hear his side of the conversation.
“I’ve been trying to get you all day. This is serious.”
A pause.
“Don’t tell me to calm down. This is a whole new ball game. Twenty years ago no one could have predicted this. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and I can’t see but one way to contain it.”
Another pause.
“Look, so far, it doesn’t appear that many of them have done it. But more might. And the more people who do, the more likely this will all lead back to me. That can’t happen. You can’t afford to let it happen, either.”
Pause.
“Shut up. Stop blathering. There’s no point rehashing what was done. It happened. We have to deal with things as they are now. Things are already under way.”
Pause.
“No. Money can solve a lot of problems. But not this time. Too many variables. Tentacles reaching out in too many directions. That’s why I’m going at this another way.”
Pause.
“I don’t think you really want to know.”
Pause.
“I suppose the only upside is, I’ve formed no attachments. If I had, this might have been more difficult. But based on the latest reports, there aren’t exactly any standouts. Not a great loss.”
And then he said something else, prompting a chill that ran the length of Nicky’s spine.
I did not hear that. Forget you heard that.
Jeremy was finishing up his conversation. A couple more grunts, an “uh-huh,” and then, finally, “Fine.”
At which point he put the phone back onto its cradle.
“Sweet Jesus,” he muttered to himself.
Nicky raised her head high enough to peek out the window again. Jeremy didn’t look any happier now than he did when he’d walked in. Her plan to put things right would have to be postponed to some later date.
She ducked her head back down, figured she would hide here until he left for another part of the house. Nicky sat down on the floor, resting her back against the cabinet door under the sink. Her movement set off the tiniest, almost imperceptible squeak from the springs in the recreational vehicle’s undercarriage.
“Who is it?” Jeremy called out.
Shit, Nicky thought.
Should she step out, reveal herself? Shout “Surprise!” and see if she could bring a smile to his face, pretend she hadn’t heard a thing? Or hold her breath, not move, make him think there was no one there?
But again, he called out, “If there’s someone in there, you better come out. Now.”
There was a small bed at the back end of the vehicle, with horizontal cabinetry doors underneath it instead of open space. Not exactly a place to hide there.
Nicky heard a drawer in Jeremy’s desk slide open. Some rustling.
She peeked through the window. He was tossing items from the drawer onto the top of the desk. A notepad, some scraps of paper, a set of keys with a silver W attached to them, some pens.
Finally, he found what he was looking for.
A gun.
“Last chance,” he said. “I’ve every right to shoot an intruder, and I will do it.”
If he entered the Winnebago, he might shoot before he realized it was her.
“It’s me!” she cried. “It’s Nicky!”
“Nicky?”
She got to her feet and opened the door. There were already tears coming down her cheeks. “I wanted to surprise you. Make things right.”
Jeremy stared, dumbfounded. At least, Nicky thought, the gun was pointed at the floor.
“Christ, you’re lucky I didn’t load this. I could have shot you.” For a moment, he had looked relieved. But now his face was awash with worry.
“You were listening.”
Nicky shook her head. “No. No, I wasn’t. I didn’t hear anything.”
“How could you not?”
She tried to think of something to say, some lie that would be convincing, but she couldn’t come up with anything.
“Oh, Nicky,” Jeremy said sadly. “Oh dear, dear Nicky.”
Seventeen
Lewiston, ME
Before there was Todd Cox, there was Jason Hamlin.
They had decided to do him first.
Kendra Collins, again posing as a police detective, and Rhys Mills, who was also carrying a very authentic-looking police badge, knew that Jason went for a jog very early in the morning. Most young men his age, particularly those attending college, liked to sleep in, but Jason was different. He was a sports-oriented individual. Not so much football. That had never been his game. Jason was more a winter sports kind of guy. Skiing, snowboarding. And attending school up in Maine afforded plenty of opportunities through the winter months for him to engage in his favorite activities.
But before the snow fell, Jason liked to stay in shape with jogging. He set his iPhone to wake him at six, although he usually woke up on his own minutes before that and turned the alarm off so as not to bother any of his housemates. He would slip on some shorts, a T-shirt, and a pair of Nikes, and then leave the old house a few blocks from the campus and do a four-mile route that took him through the town.
This was usually a time when he could clear his head. Breathe in that cool, crisp morning air through his nose, feel it filling his lungs. Slip the buds into his ears and listen to Garth Brooks. (Jason wasn’t a big country-western fan, but there was something about this Brooks guy that spoke to him.) On this morning, however, Jason was unable to appreciate the freshness of the dawn or Garth singing “The Night I Called the Old Man Out,” which always had a place in Jason’s heart, reminding him of the shouting matches he’d had with his own old man, or, more accurately, the old man who’d raised him. And that was because he could not stop thinking about what had happened the night before, when he was with Jenny, this girl he’d been seeing pretty seriously for the better part of two weeks.
She was from Kingston, Ontario, on the other side of the border. She’d picked Bates College because her mother had gone there, and her grandfather had gone there, so it was kind of a family tradition. She’d actually have been glad to go to Queen’s, in her hometown, and saved her family a fortune, but hey, you couldn’t fight tradition.
Jason hailed from Baltimore, and he’d been wrestling with whether to find a job here in Lewiston for the summer, and hang on to his off-campus accommodation, or head home. Jenny planned to go back to Canada once school ended. So Jason had been thinking, if he wanted to visit her through the summer, was it better to be in Lewiston or Baltimore? He’d checked Google Maps and saw that either way it was an eight- to nine-hour drive. How could you visit someone for the weekend when it took two whole days just to get there and back?
But that was not what he was thinking about as he went for his run this morning.