“What are you talking about?”
“You get into trouble and your father pulls you out.”
“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“We can’t just walk away from this.”
“Spencer killed himself. We didn’t do anything to him.”
Adam looked down through the trees. The soccer field was empty, but people were still jogging around the circle. He turned his head a little to the left. He tried to find that patch of roof, the one where Spencer had been found, but it was blocked off by the front tower. DJ moved and stood next to him.
“My dad used to hang up here,” DJ said. “When he was in high school. He was one of those bad kids, you know? He smoked dope and drank beer. He got into fights.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is this. In those days you could survive a mistake. People looked the other way. You were a kid-you were supposed to blow off steam. My father stole a car when he was our age. Got caught too, but they worked out a side deal. Now my old man is one of the most law-abiding citizens around. But if he had grown up today, he’d be screwed. It’s ridiculous. If you whistle at a girl at school, you can go to jail. If you bump into someone’s chest in the hallway, you can be brought up on some kind of charges. One mistake and you’re out. My dad says that’s nonsense. How are we supposed to find our way?”
“That doesn’t give us a free pass.”
“Adam, in another couple of years we’ll be in college. This will all be behind us. We aren’t criminals. We can’t let this moment ruin our lives.”
“It ruined Spencer’s.”
“That’s not our fault.”
“Those guys almost killed my father. He ended up in the hospital.”
“I know. And I know how I would feel if it was my father. But you can’t go off half-cocked because of that. You need to calm down and think it through. I spoke to Carson. He wants us to go in and talk to him.”
Adam frowned. “Right.”
“No, I mean it.”
“He’s crazy, DJ. You know that. You just said it yourself-he thinks I tried to set him up.”
Adam tried to sort it through, but he was so damn tired. He had been up all night. He was in pain and exhausted and confused. He had spent the night thinking and really had no idea what to do.
He should have told his parents the truth.
But he couldn’t. He had messed up and gotten high too often and you start to buy that belief that the only people in the world who love you unconditionally, the only people who will love you forever no matter how you screw up, that somehow they were the enemy.
But they’d spied on him.
That much he now knew. They hadn’t trusted him. That had gotten him furious, but really, when he thought about, had he earned their trust?
So after last night, he panicked. He ran and stayed hidden. He just needed time to think.
“I need to talk to my parents,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Adam looked at him. “Let me use your phone.”
DJ shook his head. Adam took a step toward him and made a fist. “Don’t make me take it from you.”
DJ’s eyes were wet. He held up a hand, took out his cell, and handed it to Adam. Adam dialed home. No answer. He dialed his father’s cell. No answer. He tried his mom’s. Same thing.
DJ said, “Adam?”
He thought about making the call. He had already called her once, staying on long enough to let her know that he was okay and making her swear not to tell his parents.
He dialed Jill’s phone.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“Adam? Please come home. I’m so scared.”
“Do you know where Mom and Dad are?”
“Mom is picking me up at Yasmin’s. Dad went to look for you.”
“Do you know where?”
“I think he went to the Bronx or something. I heard Mom say something about that. Something about Club Jaguar.”
Adam closed his eyes. Damn. They knew.
“Listen, I have to go.”
“Where?”
“It’ll be okay. Don’t worry. When you see Mom, tell her you heard from me. Tell her I’m fine and I’ll be home soon. Tell her to reach Dad and get him to come home, okay?”
“Adam?”
“Just tell her.”
“I’m really scared.”
“Don’t worry, Jill, okay? Just keep doing what I say. It’s almost over.”
He hung up and looked at DJ. “You have your car?”
“Yeah.”
“We gotta hurry.”
NASH saw the unmarked police car pull up to the house.
Guy Novak got out. A plainclothes cop started getting out of the car, but Novak waved him off. He reached back into the car, shook the cop’s hand and stumbled in a daze toward the front door.
Nash felt his phone vibrate. He didn’t need to check the incoming number anymore. He knew it would be Joe Lewiston again. He had listened to the first desperate message a few minutes ago:
“Oh God, Nash, what’s going on? I didn’t want that. Please don’t hurt anyoneelse, okay? Just… I just thought you could talk to her or get the video or something. And if you know something about the other woman, please don’t hurt her. Oh God, oh God…”
Like that.
Guy Novak entered his house. Nash moved closer. Three minutes later, the front door opened again. A woman came out. Guy Novak’s girlfriend. He kissed her on the cheek. The door closed behind her. The date walked down the path. When she reached the curb, she looked back and shook her head. She might have been crying, but it was hard to tell from here.
Thirty seconds later, she too was gone.
Time was limited now. Somehow Nash had messed up. They had figured out who Marianne was. It was on the news. The husband had been questioned by the police. People think that law enforcement of- ficers are stupid. They are not. They have every advantage. Nash respected that. It was one of the reasons he’d gone through such great lengths to hide Marianne’s identity.
Self-preservation told him to run away, hide, sneak out of the country. But that wouldn’t do. He could still help Joe Lewiston, even if Joe wouldn’t help himself. He would call him later and persuade him to keep quiet. Or maybe Joe would see the light on his own. Joe was panicked right now, but he had, after all, contacted Nash to help in the first place. Maybe he would end up making the smart move.
The itch was there. The crazy, as Nash liked to call it. He knew that there were children in the home. He had no interest in hurting them-or was that a lie? Hard to know sometimes. Humans are all about self-delusion, and Nash wasn’t above wallowing in that overindulgence on occasion.
But on a purely practical level, there was no time to wait. He had to act now. That meant-with the crazy or without it-the children could very well end up collateral damage.
There was a knife in his pocket. He took it out now and held it in his hand.
Nash moved toward Novak’s back door and worked on the lock.
35
ROSEMARY McDevitt sat in her Club Jaguar office, her vest and tattoos now covered by a too-large gray sweatshirt. She swam in it, her hands disappearing into the long sleeves. It made her look smaller, less threatening and powerful, and Mike wondered if that was the point. She had coffee in front of her. Mike had one too.
“The cops put a wire on you?” she asked.
“No.”
“You mind giving me your cell phone, just to be sure?”
Mike shrugged and tossed it to her. She turned it off and left it on the desk between them.
Her knees were up on the chair, again disappearing into the sweatshirt. Mo was outside, waiting in the car. He hadn’t wanted Mike to do this, fearing a trap, but he also knew that they had no choice. This was the best lead they had on Adam.
Mike said, “I don’t really care about what you’re doing in there, except in how it relates to my son. Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“When did you last see him?”