While the rest of us passed time inside, Joe took Betsy outside to play. I was amazed by how taken he was with the girl. As long as I’d known Joe, he’d never had a particular affinity for children.
“Are you ready to meet with Winters?” I asked Julie while we ate.
She finished chewing and frowned, then nodded. “Yes. I think I am. I guess I’ll have to be.”
John reached over and patted her hand. “You’ll be fine.”
I was about to say more when Joe stepped through the door, grim faced.
“Mrs. Weston, come here, please.”
Julie saw something in his face that scared her, and she dropped her sandwich back onto her plate and said, “What is it? What’s wrong?” A mother’s instinct telling her something Joe’s words hadn’t.
“We’ve been playing hide-and-seek,” Joe said. “I can’t find her, and she won’t answer my calls.”
I was out of my chair even before Julie moved, my hand reflexively creeping toward my gun. This was it, I thought. That bad feeling I hadn’t been able to shake was well founded, after all. The Russians had come, and they had Betsy.
Joe put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me back as I moved for the door.
“Relax, LP. The kid’s just hiding. I’ve been outside the whole time, and nobody’s here.”
“Let’s find her, then.”
We all went out on the deck, with me leading the way. Julie shouted Betsy’s name while I scanned the woods, looking for a trace of movement, my hand still hugging my hip, ready to reach for the gun.
“Elizabeth Ann Weston, you come here this minute!” Julie shouted, and her voice went up in pitch at the end, a note of panic there.
We stood clustered together on the deck, listening for a response. A cold silence mocked us.
“Shit,” I said, starting down the steps. “They’re here.”
“Wait,” Amy said, grabbing my arm. “Listen.”
We all froze again and listened, and this time I heard it, too. A faint voice coming from one end of the cottage.
We hurried around the corner of the cottage, John Weston limping along behind, swearing profusely about his failing legs. At the far end of the cottage Betsy’s voice was louder.
“I’m stuck,” she was yelling.
“She’s in here,” Joe said, dropping to one knee beside the wall. “It’s some sort of crawl space.” He pulled on a short, square wooden panel at the base of the wall. It didn’t move. He grunted and wrapped his fingers around the edge, then gave it a mighty heave. The panel came loose, exposing a dark, dank crawl space beneath the cottage-and the cute little girl with the frightened face inside.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes beginning to well with tears as she saw the concern in our faces, “I got stuck. I pulled the door back so he couldn’t see me, and it stuck.” The tears began to flow freely then, and Joe took her under the arms and lifted her out gently, handing her to Julie. Julie stroked the girl’s hair and whispered softly in her ear, but she held her in an unusually tight grip, the way you might hold something dear to you that had been salvaged from the ruins of a fire.
I took a deep breath and leaned against the wall. Amy caught my eye and grinned, and I shook my head and laughed at myself. The adrenaline rush I’d just felt had matched anything I’d experienced in South Carolina.
“It’s a hell ofa hiding spot, I’ve got to give her that,” Joe said, peering into the crawl space. “And I’m stunned she went inside. Most girls her age wouldn’t go in there without a flashlight for all the candy in the world.”
There was no more hide-and-seek. We stayed inside the cottage and made small talk or sat in silence. Betsy gave up her crying spell quickly, and we adults tried to downplay the scare she’d given us. Without giving it conscious thought, I found myself rising every few minutes to stand at the window and scan the tree line. During the few minutes Betsy had been missing, I’d been sure the Russians had arrived. Now she was back, but I still hadn’t lost the feeling. After a while, Joe tapped me on the shoulder and motioned for me to join him on the deck.
“What’s up?” I said when he’d slid the door closed behind us.
“We’re going to see Winters in a couple hours. The girl doesn’t need to be dragged along for that, and neither does John. Winters asked for us and Julie, and that’s who should show up. The more people we bring, the more chaotic things get, and I don’t want that.”
“So?”
“So I’m not real comfortable leaving John and the girl here alone again.” Betsy’s brief disappearance had rattled him, too.
I nodded. “Me neither. I’ve had a bad feeling ever since she got stuck in that crawl space. Julie isn’t going to want cops here yet, though.”
“I know. That’s why I think we should call Kinkaid.”
I frowned. “Julie’s got enough on her mind today as it is, Joe.”
“Julie won’t deal with him, then,” he said. “You can take her out ahead of time, and I’ll wait for Kinkaid to show. We need somebody here, LP, and he’s the guy for the job. But if you don’t want him here, we can leave the girl with a seventy-year-old man for protection.” He shrugged. “It’s your call.”
I gazed in the window at Betsy and John Weston, thought about Krashakov and Rakic, and nodded again. “Call him.”
Joe used his cell phone and called from the deck. I listened while he gave Kinkaid directions, and I remembered Julie’s explanation of their history to me. A silly drunken advance that was quickly forgotten, she’d said. Not so quickly forgotten for Aaron Kinkaid. I knew how badly he wanted to see her again, and I almost felt guilty for sneaking her out before he arrived. Not too guilty, though.
“You didn’t tell him Betsy will be here,” I said when Joe hung up.
He shook his head. “I’ll tell him when he gets here. I didn’t want to have to explain how Julie’s here now but going to be gone when he arrives. It seems a little shitty.”
“He’ll deal with it.”
“Yeah.”
Julie and I left not long after that. John Weston gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then sat back down on the couch, his eyes never leaving his granddaughter. Joe lingered, waiting on Kinkaid, and Amy left to get started on her story. While I drove, I told Julie that Kinkaid was coming to keep an eye on things at the cottage.
“He hasn’t really convinced himself that he’s in love with me, has he?” she said.
“He’s doing a fine job of pretending, if nothing else.”
“Ugh. How awful. Will he be there when we come back?”
“Yes. Is that bad?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I drove downtown slowly to give Joe time to catch up with us. I didn’t like the idea of leaving my gun behind, but I couldn’t get it past the metal detectors at the prosecutor’s office, so I locked it in the truck’s center console, and we walked inside the building and waited on Joe. We waited for fifteen minutes, but he didn’t show. Maybe Kinkaid had been slowed up. Maybe something had happened. I was starting to grow worried when Joe finally came jogging up the steps and into the building.
“Sorry,” he said as we walked to Winters’s office. “Kinkaid wanted more of an explanation than I had time to give. He’ll want still more when we get back.”
The door to the office opened before I could respond, and a woman stepped into the hall. She was nearing fifty but still an attractive woman, with strong, firm features and auburn hair. She looked at us, her gaze lingering on Julie a bit longer than Joe or me, and then forced a tight smile.
“What a treat,” she said. “And I was planning on going home early today. Which one of you is Lincoln Perry?”
“I am.” I shook hands with her.
“Here’s how we’re going to do this,” she said. “I’m not going to talk to all of you at once. We’ll go one at a time, and because you called me, you’ll go first, Mr. Perry. Mrs. Weston and Mr. Pritchard can wait.” She held the door open, and Joe and Julie sat in chairs in the outer office while I followed Winters into a small conference room. She closed the door, sat behind the desk, and clasped her hands together.