Chadzynski stepped away from the bed and was about to open the door when she turned around, her gaze level. ‘You may want to remind Mr Cooper what he’s putting on the line. I hope, for his sake, he’s not deliberately withholding vital information.’
I do too, Darby thought, reaching for the phone.
45
Jamie sat in a lawn chair under a bright morning sun fishing a cigarette from the pack of Marlboros she’d purchased on her way back from Belham. She had started smoking at eighteen, then quit when she and Dan had decided to try to start a family.
Halfway through her second cigarette, she realized how much she missed smoking, how the nicotine cleared her head and calmed her nerves.
The kids were outside with her. Michael relaxed in a hammock set up in the shade between two elms, a book propped open on his stomach. He held it with one hand while the other dangled over the hammock’s edge, gripping a humming red lightsaber. Carter, dressed in a brown Jedi robe, the hood covering his head, ran across the grass (which desperately needed cutting), alternating between awkward somersaults and jumps. He dropped his lightsaber and stretched out his arms, wiggling his fingers at his older brother.
‘You’re not paying attention!’ Carter yelled.
Michael turned to him. ‘What?’
‘I’m using the Force on you.’
‘What Force Power?’
‘Lightning. It’s shooting from my fingers.’
‘Cart, you can’t use that.’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘No, dumb-dumb, you can’t. How many times did I tell you only the Dark Side can use Force Lightning? You’re Luke Skywalker, remember? He’s one of the good guys. They can’t use that.’
‘I’m a special Jedi Master. We know all the secrets.’ Carter kept wiggling his fingers, making crackling sounds with his mouth, spittle flying everywhere.
‘Whatever,’ Michael said, turning his attention back to his book. ‘I’m blocking it with my lightsaber like Mace Windu in Episode Three.’
Jamie watched them, smiling. Despite yesterday’s ugly confrontation with Michael, she was glad to have both boys home. This morning’s encounter with Kevin Reynolds had spooked her.
She had checked Ben’s phone before coming into the backyard. Reynolds hadn’t called or sent a text message.
She felt confident that Reynolds hadn’t recognized her. Yes, he had stood in front of the minivan, staring at her through the windscreen, but she had worn sunglasses and pulled the lid of the baseball cap low across her forehead. Add that to the fact it was still dark out and there was absolutely no way in hell he could have recognized her.
Driving home, she had had a moment of panic, wondering if Reynolds had memorized the front licence plate. Had he left the park to have one of his cronies run the plate? The panic evaporated when she remembered there was no plate in the front. The plastic holder for the plate had broken a few months ago, and she had stuffed the plate into the back of the minivan in case she ever got pulled over by a cop.
Maybe he recognized your minivan.
Not possible. When Ben and his crew had been at her house five years ago, they would have seen a brand-new navy-blue Honda Pilot in the garage. Shortly after Dan’s death, she had traded in the Pilot for a used minivan, not wanting to be saddled with the hefty car payments.
Still, Reynolds had left. Something had spooked him.
A sinking feeling bloomed in the pit of her stomach. So close, she thought. He was so goddamn close… I should have got out of the car and shot him.
Was Reynolds still lurking somewhere close to Charlestown? Or had he left the state?
You’re not going to find him, Jamie. It’s time to pack up and leave.
No. She wasn’t going to leave now. For the last five years she had lived each moment with a held breath, her every waking thought consumed with the possibility that the men who killed Dan and the man she knew only as Ben would come back to the house and finish the job. By some miracle of God, she had found Ben, and now Ben Masters was dead. And she now knew Kevin Reynolds was the second man. She had to find him. She couldn’t stop now, not when she was this close.
Did you suddenly forget the part when he tore out of the car park? He’s gone, Jamie. You can’t get close to him. You tried luring him in pretending to be Ben Masters. It was a good plan – it really was – but it didn’t work out. Pack up what you need, take the kids and leave.
Ben’s phone had only three contacts: Pontius, aka Kevin Reynolds; Alan; and this person named Judas. Why so few contacts? Maybe it was new and he hadn’t got round to programming in the numbers. Or maybe he simply used the phone for emergencies, wanting only the numbers he needed on hand. She thought back to her moment in Mary Reynolds’s basement, remembering Kevin Reynolds saying something about how Ben didn’t trust mobile phones.
Jamie thought about Judas. He had three phone numbers. Call the numbers – not from Ben’s phone but from a payphone. Call and see –
Do you honestly believe Reynolds hasn’t been in touch with this Judas person? After what happened this morning at the park?
You don’t know that Reynolds and Judas know each other.
You’re right, I don’t. And neither do you. For all you know Reynolds did, in fact, recognize you and is now speaking to Judas.
That’s why I have to find out who he is. I have to –
What you have to do, Jamie, is keep your children safe. That is your priority. Or do you want to relive what happened in the dead room?
Her mind started filling with images. She tried to turn away from them, and then she saw herself removing her hands from the duct tape – by some miracle of God she hadn’t died, hadn’t passed out – ripping the tape off one ankle and standing, and there was no time to do the other one because Michael and Carter were bound to the chairs crying, bleeding out, and they needed an ambulance or they would die. She ran with the chair dragging behind her into the hall, down the stairs and into the kitchen, where she saw Dan hunched over the sink, what was left of his right hand – a shredded stump of raw muscle, torn skin and jagged bone – dripping blood into a growing puddle on the floor. She saw his head lying crookedly inside the blood-spattered sink, his skin a dark purple from the noose wrapped around his neck, the other end of the rope fed into the waste-disposal unit. She took a knife from the butcher block, cut the bindings on the other ankle and grabbed the phone as blood clogged her throat, and she kept crouching and staggering while the 911 dispatcher kept saying, ‘I can’t understand you, I can’t understand you.’ She saw herself standing in the room thick with gun smoke and Carter not moving and he was so small and he couldn’t lose much blood and he’d lost so much, oh God Jesus, she descended on him first and cut through his bindings as Michael turned and coughed up blood and in between sobbing said he was scared and she screamed at him to hold on, hang on, baby, help is on the way – and she realized she was saying this to Carter, not Michael, and she was giving her baby mouth-to-mouth and watching his tiny chest rising and between each breath she was screaming to the phone lying on the floor next to him, screaming to the dispatcher to hurry up, Jesus, please hurry, please hurry, and then Carter opened his eyes and he was coughing up blood but he was breathing and his eyes were wide and scared and bright with tears as he coughed up more blood and started crying, ‘Mamma? Mamma?’