“I don’t want you to hurt me either. Mary, what are you planning to do with me? You haven’t made any calls, made any demands.”
Her laugh was brittle. “In the movies, they ask for passage to Mexico.”
“But you’d always be looking over your shoulder. No way to live.”
“Prison is no way to live either.”
“Then you’ve got a hard choice to make. But you need to make it, because I don’t like being forced around at gunpoint. You can’t hide here forever.”
Mary looked around the room longingly. “I wanted to. Live here forever, I mean.”
“When was this?” Phoebe asked gently.
“When I was little. My mom and dad-my real dad-would come up here and we’d have a normal family vacation.”
“How old were you?”
“Four. I was five when he died.” Her jaw tightened. “And then she married him.”
“Who, honey?”
“Crawford. He had a kid already. Andy was nice, but Crawford… We had to be perfect. Make the beds. Up at sunrise. Straight As. I hated Crawford the day I met him.”
“Your mother must have loved him.”
“My mother had no family and no job. When my real dad died, we were so poor. Food stamps. Government cheese. My mother couldn’t feed us. She needed a man.”
“My husband died when my youngest was still in school. It was hard.”
Mary was pacing again, gun in her hand. “How did he die?”
“Car accident. One of my sons was with him. He was paralyzed for a while.”
Mary’s face shadowed. “Like the firefighter will be. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t want to set the other two fires. Eric and Albert made me.”
She sounded like a wounded child, and Phoebe suspected that, deep down, she was. But the wounded child had killed so many and right now held a gun. The wounded child needed to be stopped, however possible. Phoebe had spoken the truth. If she had to, she would use the gun to stop Mary. If I have to, I’ll kill her.
For now, all Phoebe had was her quiet voice and her instinct that was screaming that this girl craved a mother. “I know, honey. But you did. There are consequences to your actions. The condo fire you set killed two people.”
Mary shook her head. “No. No. We didn’t know the girl was there. And somebody else killed the guard. That wasn’t me.”
“My son almost died that night. He almost fell four stories. David would have died.”
“He caught the ball,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean for him to get hurt.”
“What did you think would happen when you set the fire, Mary? Did you think it would burn nicely and stop all by itself? You set fires, firefighters come. It’s what they do. You lit a match and put a dozen men and women in mortal danger.”
“Nothing happened to them.”
“Not Sunday night. What about last night? David almost died again, and his partner may never walk again. And don’t tell me you didn’t mean for that to happen, Mary,” she ordered sharply and saw the girl flinch. Satisfied she’d delivered her point, she softened her tone. “You have to run or turn yourself in. Those are the only choices I see here.”
“Eric was going to France. I should have kept him alive so he could take me, too.”
Phoebe didn’t think her blood could go much colder, but she was wrong. There was no remorse for the murder, only Mary’s regret that she hadn’t been more forward-thinking.
“Well, you didn’t. So, coming full circle, what do you plan to do with me?”
Mary tensed, then slapped the gun on the counter. “I’m going to shut you up.”
Phoebe watched, breath held, as Mary rummaged in the kitchen drawers. She came out of the kitchen with a pair of scissors and a large roll of duct tape. “Lincoln brought this with him the last time we came. He fixed the swing outside for me.” She slapped a piece of tape over Phoebe’s mouth, dragged the chair around the back of the sofa, and shoved it over on its side. “Now I don’t have to look at you or listen to you.”
Phoebe tried to ignore the pain jolting through her stiff joints. She’d pushed the girl as far as she dared. It was clear Mary didn’t want to hurt her now, but if the girl became more desperate, that could change.
There was a chill at her back. The sliding glass door was a few feet away. If Mary went to sleep, and if she could scoot close enough, and if she could manage to get the door open… It was damn frustrating to have an escape so close and so far away.
Okay, David, I’m ready for you to come get me now.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Wednesday, September 22, 7:15 p.m.
That’s done.” Olivia glued Kirby’s photo into the array. Austin was on his way in with his mother, so hopefully the ID and the subsequent warrant wouldn’t take long.
“I sent the text from Austin ’s phone to the fake Kenny account,” Noah said. “We’ve got SWAT and snipers surrounding the meet. We picked an area that’ll be deserted this time of night. I’ll stake it out. You go home, rest your head.”
“I’ll go, too, as soon as Austin ID’s Kirby.” Too nervous to sit, she checked her messages. Deleting the ones from reporters, she stopped dead in her tracks as she listened to David’s voice, then pulled her camera from her desk drawer before the message was over. “Noah, David knows where Mary went. Up at the lake, near the condo.”
“David and Tom went up alone?” he demanded and she flashed him a look.
“What do you think?”
They started to run, then stopped at Abbott’s command. “What’s going on?”
“David found Mary,” Olivia said. “We have to move.”
“Where’s your vest?”
She slapped at her shoulder, realized she still wore the ice pack. “In the conference room. Go get the car,” she said to Noah. “I’ll suit up and meet you downstairs.”
Wednesday, September 22, 7:25 p.m.
“That’s it.” David pointed to a green awning, about a hundred yards away. They’d parked as close as they dared and now crept through the heavy trees lining the lakeshore. “I wish I had binoculars.”
“I wish I had a gun,” Tom muttered. “What’s our plan?”
“I don’t know,” David whispered back. “Yet. Just hurry.” They ran as noiselessly as possible. And then David’s heart stopped. No. Please, no.
They were at the edge of the cabin’s backyard. There was a sliding glass patio door in the rear wall. A few feet from the glass door was the back of a sofa. And behind that sofa lay his mother on her side, tied to a chair.
He heard the swift intake of Tom’s breath. “Is she moving?”
“I can’t see. Stay here, I’ll get closer. If anything happens, you run.”
“Where are the police?” Tom hissed, grabbing his arm.
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re coming without sirens. Trust me.”
He came up on the house from the side, his feet light. Crouching low, he moved along the back of the cabin, peering in the glass door, and relief hit him like an iron fist.
His mother was shifting her feet. She was bound at the ankles, her arms wrapped around the chair and tied at the wrists. There was no blood. No injuries he could see. He could cut her free in under ten seconds.
Except that Mary was in the kitchen, stirring a pot on the stove. The gun was on the counter next to her. Mary might be a lousy shot, but if she saw the glass door slide open, she might shoot, get lucky, and actually hit one of them.
He motioned to Tom who followed the path he’d taken, hunkering down next to him. “She’s okay,” David whispered. “Mary still has a gun. We need a diversion.”
“We need a damn gun,” Tom muttered.
“Well, we don’t have one,” David snapped quietly. “I want you to go to the front and find the biggest whatever you can find. Rock, tree branch, anything you can heft. Throw it through that kitchen window and run like hell. If you hit Mary, great. If not, she’ll be startled enough by the glass breaking that I can get through that door and get Mom out.”
“And if she’s not startled, or goes after you?”
“I’ll get Mom out.”