“Yes, I'm keeping track of her,” Peter said tersely. “She doesn't do anything except drive her kids around and go through red lights.”
“Great. Let's hope she doesn't kill them before we get them. Does she drink?”
“I don't know. She doesn't look it. I think she's distracted or upset.” The day before, he had watched her nearly hit a woman in yet another crosswalk. Everyone had honked at her, and she had jumped out of the car and apologized profusely, and when she did, he saw that she was crying. Fernanda was driving him crazy. She was all he could think of now, not only because of what they had in store for her, but because of what he wished he could say to her, and the time he wished he could spend with her, if things were different. In other circumstances, he would have liked to get to know her. In his mind, she had become the perfect woman. Seeing her with her children, he had come to admire her so much. He loved watching her, and wondered what she'd been like when Barnes married her. Thinking of her as a young girl nearly drove him insane.
Why hadn't he met her then? Why was life so cruel? While he had been busy screwing up his life, and his ex-wife's, Fernanda had been married to a lucky guy, and building a family. She was spectacularly beautiful. And Sam had won his heart the first day he saw him. Ashley was a beauty. Will looked like the kind of son every man wanted. Whatever else Allan Barnes had done, and the name he had made for himself in the business world, it was obvious to Peter Morgan that he had left the perfect family behind. Peter felt like a Peeping Tom watching her, and when he went back to his hotel to sleep at night, invariably he found himself dreaming of her, and couldn't wait to go back in the morning to see her again. She had begun to haunt him like an old friend, or a lost love. In fact, for him, she was like a reminder of a lost world. A world he had always wanted to be part of, and had been for a time, but seeing her reminded him of the life and opportunities he had blown. She was everything he had always wanted and would never have again.
He hated to turn her over to Carlton Waters on Saturday, when he gave him the car, and used the van to go to Tahoe. He had a listing of houses to rent he'd gotten on the Internet. He didn't want to work with a realtor. But as long as no one saw Carl and his boys, there was no problem. If anything happened, Peter could always say that the men had broken in and used the house while he was in San Francisco. They were all making painstaking efforts to keep all of the various elements separate, and so far, there had been no problems. No one in Modesto, other than Stark and Free, knew that Carl was in the city. He was going to be back by curfew.
No one was going to follow Fernanda after six o'clock that night, until Peter got back from Tahoe sometime around ten. And if she followed her usual pattern, she'd be home with her children long before that. The only time she went out at night was to drop off Will or Ashley at friends' houses, or pick them up after a party. She didn't like Will driving at night, although as he told her frequently, and Peter could have verified, her driving was far worse than his was. From everything Peter had seen, she was a total menace.
“What's she liable to do today?” Carl asked Peter when he picked up the car keys. He was wearing a baseball cap that shielded his face, and changed his looks, and dark glasses. When Peter followed her, he looked as he always did, and if there were too many people on the street, he drove around the block a few times, and came back again. But so far he didn't have the feeling anyone had spotted him, least of all Fernanda.
“She'll probably take the older boy to a game, maybe in Marin. Or the girl to ballet. She usually has the little one with her on Saturdays. They don't seem to do much, probably even on weekends.” The weather had been great, but she didn't seem to go out much. In fact, almost never. “You'll get a good look at the kids. She's with them pretty much all the time, and the little guy never leaves her.” Peter had a sense of betraying them, and Waters nodded. Carl wasn't interested in making friends with them. This was a reconnaissance mission for him, and nothing more than that. To him, this was business. To Peter, it was becoming an obsession. But Carlton Waters didn't know that. He took the keys, got in the car, and drove to the address Morgan had given him. It was ten o'clock on a brilliantly sunny Saturday in May as Peter left for Tahoe.
He thought about her all the way, wondering what would happen if he backed out now. It was simple, Addison would have his daughters killed, and Peter himself shortly thereafter. And if he confessed to the police and did time for it, or was violated, Addison would have him killed in prison. It was all so simple. There was no turning back. They were on a roll now. And as he reached Truckee finally, Waters was following her to Marin, to one of Will's lacrosse games. He had seen all three kids by then, and she looked about the way he had expected her to. To him, she looked like a suburban housewife, which was of no interest to him. To him, she was a victim, and a lucrative one, and nothing more. To Peter, she looked like an angel. But in some ways, Waters didn't know what he was seeing. The kind of women that appealed to him were a lot jazzier-looking than Fernanda. He thought she looked pretty but plain, and noticed that she didn't wear makeup. At least not when she went out with her children. In fact, she hadn't worn any since Allan died. It no longer mattered to her. Nor did fancy clothes, high heels, or any of the jewelry he'd given her. She had already sold most of it, and the rest had been in the safe since January. She didn't need jewelry or fancy clothes for what she was doing, or what her life was now.
Peter drove to the first address on his list, and saw that it was bordered on three sides, and within two feet in each case, by other houses, which made it impossible for their purpose. He had the same problem with the next four. The sixth one was insanely expensive. The next four were equally unsuitable. And much to his relief, the last one was the right one. It was perfect. It had a long winding driveway that was full of potholes and weeds, the house itself looked ramshackle, and was so overgrown, you couldn't even see in the windows, which were shuttered, which was yet another bonus. The house had four bedrooms, a kitchen that had seen better days but was functional, and a large living room with a fireplace Peter could have stood up in. And behind it, there was a cliff of sheer rock face. The man who owned it showed it to him, and said he no longer used it. It had been used by his sons, and they had moved away years before, but he kept it as an investment. He was renting it since his daughter didn't want it either. Both his sons lived in Arizona, and he was spending the summer in Colorado with his daughter. Peter took it as a six-month rental, and asked the man if he minded if he cleaned it up a bit, and weeded the yard, since he was going to be using it to entertain clients, and the owner looked delighted. He couldn't believe his good fortune to have Peter as a tenant. Peter hadn't even quibbled about the price. He signed the lease, paid three months' rent and a security deposit in cash, and by four o'clock he was back on the road when he got a call on his cell phone from Carlton Waters.
“Something wrong?” Peter sounded worried and wondered if something had happened, or if Waters had been spotted. Or even scared her, or one of the children.
“No, she's fine. They're at the kid's ballgame. She doesn't do much, does she? And she's always got one of the kids with her.” It was going to complicate things for them eventually, not that it really mattered. She was too small to give them any trouble. “I just thought of something. Who's getting the weapons?”
Peter looked blank for a moment as he thought about it. “I guess you are. I can ask, but he probably doesn't want to supply us anything that can be traced back to him. Can you handle it?” Peter knew Addison had the connections to supply them. But he also knew Addison wanted no link whatsoever to this project.