Another long pause. “I did some research. His age is a big factor. It works against him. But he is in great shape physically, which is in his favor.”
“Babe, please.”
“Fifty-fifty. Bruno, I’m sorry, fifty-fifty.”
I slid down in the seat and laid my head against the door’s window. Marie would sugarcoat it for me, which meant the odds would be closer to sixty-forty, or worse.
“They have great docs here and top-notch hospitals. He’s got a good chance.”
At best, a good chance meant a coin toss.
“Have you found the kids?” she asked. She didn’t want to load me up with any more pressure and asked an indirect question to find out when I was coming home. For the same reason she didn’t want to mention Jonas Mabry’s name.
“No.” Now the conflict to stay or head home pulled harder than ever.
“Are you close?” Her voice broke; she couldn’t hold her emotions together any longer. She needed me.
“Not really. Well, maybe.”
Her voice came back strong. I visualized her posture going straight, her eyes narrowing as the need to nurture took over. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”
“I have the case file, and I think I’ve figured out Jonas. I know what he’s doing. The three kids-”
She asked, “Three? There are three taken now?”
“That’s right, and he’s asked for money. A million dollars. I think after he gets the money, he plans to hurt them.” I looked at Mack who stared at me, back and forth from the road.
“Why? How did you figure that out?”
I closed my eyes. “Because I think they’re replacements for him and his sisters, the sisters his mother killed twenty years ago.” The word “killed” caught in my throat like a sideways chicken bone. I half-whispered the rest. “Jonas never thought his mother should’ve gone to prison and blames me. In some screwed-up, psychotic way, he intends on re-creating the house that bled, to finish what his mother started and, at the same time, punish me for intervening. He’ll kill Elena, Sandy, and the third child to teach me a lesson for intervening and ruining his mother’s life and, in turn, allowing him-forcing him-to continue to live in a world he wanted nothing to do with. A life without his mother and two sisters.”
“Oh, Bruno, are you okay? Really, are you okay? Geez, that’s absolutely awful. You okay, Bruno?”
“Yeah.”
“No, you’re not. I can tell by your voice. You’re not okay. Are you with Mack? Let me talk to Mack.” Marie knew the story about Jonas and the house that bled. I’d told her shortly after we met. She said a number of times she thought I had post-traumatic stress disorder and wanted me to seek help. And maybe I did have PTSD. I just never found the time to go have my head shrunk by a head shrinker. I opened my eyes and looked at Mack. I had not told him the theory about the kids. At the moment, I couldn’t read Mack.
“Bruno, hand Mack the phone right this minute. I mean it, Bruno, do it now, mister.”
I handed Mack the phone. He took it without question. He listened and watched the road as we sped along at 100 weaving in and out of cars.
He said, “No, that was the first I heard of it. Yeah. Now that he pointed it out, I think he’s right. No, he’s only been here one day and he’s gotten us further along than seventy investigators from three agencies. Yes, I understand. I understand, Marie.” He handed the phone back, shaking his head.
Marie said to me, “I’m coming.”
I sat forward. “No, you can’t. You’re wanted just like I am.”
“Exactly, just like you are, and you’re there. There isn’t a difference, is there, mister?” She always threw in a “mister” when she wanted to make her point.
“You’re wrong, there is a difference. The kids. If we both get grabbed, who’s going to take care of the kids? Who’s going to take care of Dad? I’m sorry I’m saddling you with all of this, but you know I’m right.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “Bruno, I know you. This is tearing you up inside. I need to be there with you.”
When I worked the street, I remember being strong, physically and mentally. I had the ability to put heavy emotional issues away behind a door in my mind and not think about them. Most of them. Not this one. And age had weakened all of me. Tears burned my eyes. I didn’t care if Mack saw them.
“This is going to be over quickly,” I said. “We have a plan that will work. I’ll be on a plane in two days, three at most. That’s a promise.”
“You’re lying to make me feel better.”
“No, we have a plan.”
“Give the phone to Mack.”
I handed the phone to Mack. He waved his hand, “Oh no, I’m not talking to that fiery wench again, no way. She scares the hell outta me, man.”
“Please?” I held the phone out to him. As I waited for him to take it. Marie’s voice came out small and tinny, dissipating into the warm desert air.
“All right,” he said, “only because we’re brothers separated at birth.” He took the phone and put it to his ear. Now I was going to owe him big.
He nodded his head again and again. “Yes, we have a plan and it’s a good one. No, it’s not going to put our asses in a crack. No, I promise.” He lied to Marie. He’d be okay as long as she never found out.
Mack had done enough lying for the both of us. I took the phone back. “Honey, it’s me. I promise you, I’m okay. Listen, listen to me for one minute, okay?” She’d closed me out. I needed to change the subject. “Have you seen Jake Donaldson hanging around?”
She knew the game I’d shifted to and let the silence hang. “No, I haven’t seen Jake Donaldson, but I have seen different men watching the house.”
“Good. Don’t worry about them. I hired Ansel to supervise some protection while I’m gone, just in case. Now, babe, we’re pulling into a place where we’re going to be exposed if I don’t get out of the car. I love you, babe, more than you know. I’ll be home soon.”
“I love you too, Bruno. You come home safe. And you don’t worry about anything on this end, I got it covered.”
“I know you do. See you soon.”
We drove in silence. “That’s a helluva theory about the replacements,” Mack said. “I think you’re probably right.”
I looked at him. “My father has stomach cancer.”
He looked at me for a second, his mouth agape. Then he turned back and hit the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Shit.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Valley Suites parking lot contained fewer cars. No one stood watch. All the FBI agents who’d stood by for movement on the Karl Drago surveillance had left, reassigned to find the identity of the third child or to follow Jonas Mabry.
Mack knocked on the door to Room 126. Mary Beth answered and plopped back into a chair in front of her surveillance screens. She wore the same denim pants, a long-sleeve shirt with the FBI badge suspended from her neck, and an angry scowl. She’d been left behind to mind the store, now the sole gatekeeper of the evil that was Karl Drago.
On the screen, Drago, a huge fat man in only an oversized pair of striped boxer shorts, moved around in his motel room down the street. Black-inked tattoos littered his pale skin without pattern or scheme. On his back, from shoulder to shoulder, an ugly Viking with a metal-coned helmet and horns looked at us every time Drago turned his back. By his hips, a thick-bodied anaconda wrapped round his obese torso. His arms, sleeved with tattoos from his shoulders down, had been checkered with too much ink, and blended into nearly indiscernible images of naked women and mayhem. On the front of his thighs, when his knees came together, Jesus was on the right, eyes closed, and, on the left, his hands clasped in prayer. Jesus’ face bulged with chubbiness. Drago had put on some pounds since the body art. He paced the room like a pent-up cat in the zoo.
Mack said, “We’re going to jump into the surveillance of Jonas Mabry and we need a couple of your radios.”