"Have You Seen Her?" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rose Karen)

Chapter Twenty-seven

Tuesday, October 11, 1:00 A.M.

Jenna couldn't sleep. Part of it was her whacked-out sleep cycle. Part of it was knowing it was exactly this time the night before that she'd awakened with a knife at her throat and that the police had no suspects because Victor Lutz had an alibi. And certainly part of it was knowing Steven was sleeping in the next room. She told herself most of it was knowing Steven was sleeping in the next room and not an unreasonable twenty-four-hour anniversary fear.

She considered calling the twenty-four-hour emergency veterinary clinic that still had Jim and Jean-Luc, but figured their conditions hadn't changed in the last hour. Jim was improving but Jean-Luc still clung to life. Even though Kent's friend Wendy had done a superb job, Jean-Luc's stab wounds were deep and vicious. Knowing he'd taken them for her still made her ill.

"Both dogs were poisoned with strychnine," Wendy had told her and Steven earlier this evening when she and Kent had dropped by to give them an update. "Probably introduced to their system through the steak I found when I pumped their stomachs."

"So my intruder was very well prepared indeed," Jenna had remarked, feeling her skin grow cold. He'd brought his own lamp, his own plastic case. Poison for her dogs. Knives.

"Except," Wendy had returned, "neither dog had enough poison in his system to kill him outright, so he wasn't prepared all that well." Then she'd said Jenna could call the clinic anytime.

And Jenna had, but it didn't make sense to do it again so soon. She imagined the clinic staff did have other things to do besides calming her irrational nighttime fears.

So she pulled on her robe and set out for a snack, wishing she'd had the presence of mind to stop for Rocky Road on her way home, when a noise from Nicky's room caught her attention. Peeking in, she discovered him sitting in his sleeping bag on the floor, reading a comic book.

"Aren't you supposed to be asleep?" she whispered.

"Aren't you?" he whispered back.

Touche, little man, Jenna thought with a smile. "Can I come in?"

He shrugged and put the book aside. "Okay."

She settled herself cross-legged on the floor next to his sleeping bag. "Is the book any good?"

"It's okay."

She wondered how many nights he sat and read when he should have been sleeping. "I can't sleep," she confided in a low voice. "Any ideas on how I can fall asleep?"

"Aunt Helen says warm milk."

Jenna grimaced. "Sorry, but that sounds gross."

"It is. Matt says he counts ewes."

Jenna frowned. "U's? How would counting letters help?"

"No, ewes. Brad said he counted sheep, Matt said he counted ewes. They're girl sheep."

Jenna nodded, pursing her lips. "Oh."

"It meant something about sex because Brad smacked Matt upside the head when he said it."

Jenna coughed. "Excuse me?"

Nicky narrowed his eyes. "You know. Sex. You've got to know about sex."

Jenna swallowed hard. "I've heard of it, yes. I'm just surprised you have."

"Well, I am seven," he said.

"Okay." Wildly Jenna searched for something else to say. "Okay. So how often do you sit here reading-" She picked up the book he'd set aside. "The Adventures of Captain Underpants?"

" 'Bout every night."

She set down the book in surprise. "Every night? Why, Nicky?"

He looked at her severely. "Because I can't sleep either. Not since the incident." Then his expression softened. "I heard Daddy and Aunt Helen talking about your incident. Don't worry," he said, patting her hand. "You'll get used to it."

Jenna blinked, not knowing how to respond to his matter-of-fact reference to his abduction. Her fingers moved to the bandage at her neck. "But I don't want to get used to it. I like to sleep."

"Then I'd try counting ewes," he said wisely.

Or perhaps sex, Jenna thought, bnt decided she'd keep that to herself. "Well, when I was a little girl and couldn't sleep my dad and I would play a game."

He looked interested. "Soccer?"

Jenna chuckled, just thinking of what her mother would have said if she and her father had played soccer in the house. In the middle of the night, no less. "No, it was a storytelling game. Dad would start the story, then I'd tell a little, then he'd tell a little, until it was done."

"Which story?"

"We'd make it up. You want to give it a try?"

He shrugged. "Sure, why not."

Jenna smiled at him. "You're funny, Nicky."

He perked up at that. "Really? Everybody always says Matt's funny, but never me."

"Well you are. Why don't we make up a funny story? I'll start. Once upon a time a man lived in a town called Walla

Walla, Washington." She leaned close to him. "That's a real place you know."

Nicky shook his head. "No, it's not."

"Is." She looked at him, suddenly inspired. "How much do you want to bet?"

"I can't bet. I don't have any money."

"Who said anything about money? Tomorrow, we'll look it up on-line. If I'm right-and I will be-you lie down in your bed tomorrow night. If I'm wrong, I'll sleep on the floor with you."

He considered it. "It's fair," he decided. "So the man had a llama. That's got two l's, y'know."

"I know. One day his llama got sick and had to go to the doctor."

"And the doctor said he'd swallowed an alarm clock," Nicky said, snuggling into his pillow.

"Which made an awful racket every day at noon. The llama wasn't welcome anywhere…"

Ten minutes later Nicky had reduced the llama to selling kisses at the circus. And he was sound asleep. Rousing herself she left Nicky's room only to run into Steven's hard chest.

She swallowed. His hard, naked, hairy, naked, golden chest. "He's asleep," she whispered.

"So I see." His eyes twinkled and crinkled at the corners and she wanted to grab him and wrestle him to the carpet and have her way with him. "Kissing llamas, huh?"

She shrugged. "He's your kid." Then she frowned. "Your son knows about sex."

Steven grinned. "Well, he is seven."

She propped her fists on her hips. "Just how long were you standing there?"

"From the minute I heard you leave your room. I haven't slept a wink all night knowing you were in there asleep and not being able to touch you." He leaned closer until his forehead rested against hers. "I've heard of sex, too."

She had to bite her lips to keep from smiling. "Well, you are-how old are you, anyway?"

"Thirty-six." He tugged on her hand. "Old enough to know about sex, and how to do it, too."

Jenna was laughing softly as he closed his bedroom door behind them. "You don't say."

"Oh, I do. And I made a stop on my way home." He thumbed over his shoulder and her eyes widened at the sight of the three big boxes of condoms on his bed. "Think it will be enough?"

"Well, we'll just have to see, Special Agent Thatcher."

He kissed her gently. "And feel. And taste."

"Umm. Maybe you do know about this sex thing after all."

Tuesday, October 11, 8:00 A.M.

"We got a response." Steven tossed copies of his latest note from the killer on the conference-room table. "Special delivery to Special Agent in Charge Steven Thatcher."

Liz picked up a copy and studied it. "He promoted you."

"Yeah, don't tell Lennie." Steven sat down and rubbed his temples. "Harry, you'll need to get started at the search scene. I'll join you when I'm finished with the assembly at Roosevelt."

Meg stared at the page, a stricken look on her face. "I knew this would force his hand, but…"

"He was going to kill her regardless of what we did, Meg," Steven said wearily. "I've arranged for another chopper to take aerial shots of the coordinates in the note. He gave us a more specific range this time. We should be able to find Alev faster than we found Samantha."

"And once we have?" Harry asked.

Steven looked at the note that had no fingerprints. Not a single identifying factor. "Then we hope we've forced him to move more quickly than he'd planned and that he's made a mistake."

Tuesday, October 11, 7:30 P.M.

Steven pushed his front door shut, the desire to see Jenna's face the only thing that kept him on his feet. Shortly after leaving the Roosevelt High School assembly this morning he'd received word from Harry that they'd found Alev Rahrooh's body. Just where the killer's note said she'd be.

What he hadn't been prepared for was the scene that awaited him. Meg had thought the killer would either stop or kick it up a notch.

It had been the second one.

And Harry wasn't the only one to lose his breakfast this time, either. Steven still wasn't sure he could eat a bite, ten long hours later. But the worst part wasn't the body in the clearing. The worst part was having to pay the visit to the Rahroohs to tell them their daughter was dead. To try to prepare them for what they'd see when they arrived at the morgue to identify their daughter's body. That the beast had not only raped and murdered their precious child, but that he'd dismembered her.

Harry had not stumbled on one sign this time, but six. Head, Arm One, Arm Two, Torso, Leg One, and Leg Two. Lorraine Rush had not been the most horrific scene Steven had ever witnessed, but Alev Rahrooh… He could honestly say she was the worst in his career.

And to know he'd pushed the killer to commit such a vile act. Meg reminded him this evening of his own words from that morning, that the animal would have killed Alev regardless of what they'd done. But the words had been easier to believe before he'd seen that young girl's body. He sagged against his front door, emotionally drained. He closed his eyes when he heard Jenna's voice from his office, tried to rewrite her face over the carnage that seemed branded on his very soul.

"Now you remember our bet," she was saying. 'Tell me what that says."

"Walla Walla, Washington," Nicky read in a grumpy voice. "You win."

"So where will you sleep?"

"In my own bed," he heard his son say morosely.

"So get to it," Jenna ordered crisply. "Go brush your teeth and I'll tuck you in."

"And we'll play the story game?"

"Sure, why not?"

They appeared and Steven forced himself to smile even though all he wanted was to drag her in his arms and bury his body in hers and pretend for just a little while that the world didn't exist.

That they were normal people.

That she didn't wear on her throat the evidence of some sick teenage band of thugs and that he hadn't seen an innocent life brutally ended, ravaged even after death.

"Hey, Nicky, how's my boy?" he asked, injecting a happy note into his voice, instantly seeing his son wasn't buying any of it. Nicky looked up at him, then looked up at Jenna, who'd sobered as soon as she'd seen him standing there. She tapped the end of Nicky's freckled nose.

"I think your dad's had a bad day. Maybe when he's had a chance to unwind he can come up and help us with our story. You go on up to bed and brush your teeth. I'll be there in a minute or two." When Nicky was upstairs Jenna turned to Steven and opened her arms.

Without a word he pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair. "You always smell like beaches and coconuts to me," he whispered.

She kissed his shoulder through the layers of his clothing. "You found her. The third girl."

He shuddered and her arms tightened around his waist.

"I'm so sorry, Steven," she murmured, lifting her face. "I'm so sorry."

He searched her face, looking for something he hadn't yet defined, but finding it in her eyes. He kissed her, taking from her whatever comfort she could provide, finding the well more than deep enough. His kiss grew desperate until she slid her hands into his hair and pulled his head back.

"Steven, what happened?"

He closed his eyes and shook his head. "I can't, Jenna. I just can't." Can't talk about it. Can't stop thinking about it. Can't stop blaming myself.

She pulled him close for a softer kiss. "Then stay here. I'll put Nicky to bed, then I'll be back."

As he watched her go up the stairs he realized more than anything in the world he wanted to hear about kissing llamas and any other silly tale Jenna and Nicky could concoct. He followed her up and waited outside Nicky's bedroom door.

"What if I wake up in the night and decide I don't want to be in bed?" Nicky was asking.

Steven peeked around the corner to see Jenna pulling the blanket over Nicky's small frame.

"Then you get out of bed and sleep in your sleeping bag," she said simply.

Nicky snuggled into the pillow and closed his eyes. "Once there was a man who lived in Kalamazoo." He opened one eye. "Aunt Helen has a friend there. It's in Michigan, y'know."

Jenna sat down on the edge of Nicky's bed and smoothed her hand over his hair. "I know. And this man had a kangaroo."

Nicky didn't say anything for a long time, so long Jenna whispered, "Are you asleep already?"

Nicky shook his head. "No. Jenna, I'm ready to get out of bed now."

Steven wanted to sigh, but Jenna just stood up and pulled his blanket back. "Okay."

He squinted up at her. "You're not mad?"

She shook her head. "No, you kept your end of the bargain. So into the bag." Nicky crawled into the sleeping bag and Jenna sat next to him, cross-legged on the floor. "So we have a kangaroo."

"From Kalamazoo."

"Whose shoes were new."

"Who liked to eat glue."

Jenna's lips twitched. "Until he got the flu."

"He had to stay in bed with the flu," Nicky said, abandoning the rhyme. "But one day a bad hunter came and stole him from his bed."

Jenna went still. "This isn't about the kangaroo from Kalamazoo anymore, is it, Nicky?"

Nicky lay motionless. Then he shook his head.

Jenna rubbed his back, making her touch soft against his small back. "Sunday night, when that man came into my apartment, I was so scared," she whispered. "I wasn't sure if I'd live or die. If I'd ever see you and your dad again. If I'd ever see Jim or Jean-Luc again."

Nicky didn't open his eyes. "But they'll be okay, won't they? Jim and Jean-Luc?"

She kept rubbing his back, keeping her strokes gentle. "I hope so. The vet says they ate a lot of poison then and Jean-Luc got stabbed." Her voice faltered and she steadied it. "For me."

"There was a lady who got hurt for me," Nicky offered in a whisper. "Her name was Caroline."

Jenna remembered reading the story in the newspaper six months earlier. Steven had been leading the investigation into a murder, only to find the victim had really escaped her abusive spouse. The woman had bravely started a new life with her young son, but he'd been found and dragged away by her husband. Her husband, who for God only knew what reason, decided taking little Nicky as a hostage would make Steven back off. "The lady was running away, wasn't she?"

His nod was almost imperceptible. "From the bad man. Winters," he added in a harsh mutter. "He tied us up and put us in a dirty cabin. He said he'd kill her. He said he'd kill me.'"

Her hand on his back faltered, then resumed the soothing strokes. "And you were afraid."

"Yes," came his barely audible reply.

Jenna swallowed and prayed for wisdom. "I know how you felt." She let the sentence sink in, then said. "I guess it was hard coming back to sleep in this room. In your bed."

His lips trembled. "Everybody thought I was a big baby."

Her heart cracked. "I'm sure they didn't, honey, even if it seemed like it at the time."

"They still do. Everybody comes to check on me at night, when they think I'm asleep," he continued as if she hadn't said a word. "They stand there and look at me."

"Why do you think they do that?" Jenna asked, very aware of Steven doing that very thing at that very moment. She could see the reflection of his stricken face in the mirror on Nicky's wall.

"Because they think I'm a baby."

"Well, I'm not a baby and I don't think I'm going to be too keen on going back to sleep in my bed either," Jenna said, inserting a tone of practicality into her voice. Anything to let this baby know that everything he'd felt, was feeling now, was so perfectly normal.

Nicky opened one eye. "You can't," he answered, just as practically. "The man sliced up your mattress with his knife."

Jenna flinched, her blood going cold at the memory of the knife at her throat, the sound of the mattress being torn to shreds. She cleared her throat. "Good point. But even if he hadn't, I'd have trouble sleeping in the same bed."

He didn't say anything and she mentally scrambled for a new angle. "Did you know I had a fiance before I met your dad?"

He shook his head into the pillow.

"His name was Adam. He got very sick, and he died."

Nicky squirmed onto his back and his eyes opened. "Was he very old?"

"No, he was still a very young man. Anyway, when he died… I couldn't sleep in my bed. He'd slept there when he was sick and I… just… couldn't."

"So what did you do?"

"I got a new bed. How would you feel about a new bed?"

Outside, Steven kicked himself for not having suggested that months earlier. He'd replaced his own bed, for heaven's sake, after Melissa died. He couldn't even think of sleeping in the same bed he'd shared with the woman who'd betrayed them all. He leaned closer, listening for Nicky's reply.

"My friend Jon? He has a bed shaped like a car."

Jenna smiled at Nicky, watching Steven's face in the mirror from the corner of her eye. He was kicking himself, she knew. "It sounds pretty darn cool. I bet your dad'd go for that if you asked."

Nicky looked contemplative. "Maybe I will."

"Now about everybody checking on you." She made her voice overly dramatic and Nicky smiled. "I don't for one minute believe anyone thinks you are a baby. To escape like you did last spring took incredible courage. Not many boys Brad's age would have been so brave."

His smile faded. "Then why do they check on me every night?"

Jenna considered her answer carefully. "Well, you know my fiance?"

He nodded soberly. "Adam."

"Yes, Adam. Well, I would check on him every night. Not because I thought he was a baby or about to do anything stupid, but because I needed to. For me."

His brows scrunched up. "Why?"

She sighed, searching for the right words. "Nicky, when someone you love is in danger, you worry. And when you get that person back, you still worry." She thought about the hurt on Seth's face and finally understood his pain. "It's like when you cut your finger. It stays sore for a few days, even after the bleeding's stopped. I know that's why everybody checks on you. In the night, when everything is quiet, that's when people realize just how close they came to losing you. They need to get up and make sure everything is still all right. And just because you're safe now-" She gave him a serious look. "And you are safe, Nicky. You know that man can never hurt you again."

He nodded, still sober. "I know. He died in jail."

And I hope it was painful for him, Jenna thought with vicious indignation, but kept the smile on her face. "Well, just because you're safe now, it doesn't take your dad's worry away." Or Seth's, she thought, glad she'd made things right this afternoon.

"He's worried now," Nicky said thoughtfully. "About the bad man that's killing the girls."

Jenna's brows shot up. "What do you know about that, honey?"

"I saw Daddy on TV talking about it."

She glanced to the mirror, saw Steven's face pale. "He doesn't want you worrying about that."

"Well, if he's worried about me, can't I worry about him?"

Jenna's heart squeezed and in the mirror she could see Steven's throat working. Out of the mouths of babes, she thought. "You know what I think he'd like even more than knowing you were worried?" she asked, bending down closer. "A hug."

Nicky's lips thinned. "Hugs are for babies."

Oh, so now it's clear, Jenna thought. Steven had told her Nicky wouldn't hug anyone. "First of all, that's not true. I hug your dad all the time."

"That's different. You're his girlfriend." His eyes went sly. "Aren't you?"

Jenna chuckled, feeling her cheeks heat. "I suppose I am. But, Nicky, grown men hug one another. I saw Father Mike hug your father just last week."

"That's different," he said, overly patient as if she were a dull student. "He's a priest."

"Fine, suit yourself. But you have my word that hugs are not for babies.".

"Hmm," Nicky said, back to thoughtful from patient. "Well, if he wants one, he might as well come in." He looked at her pointedly. "He's been standing outside my door all this time."

Jenna didn't know what to say. "Steven," she called. "Your cover is blown."

Steven came in awkwardly rubbing his jaw. "I guess I need to practice that covert surveillance thing," he murmured and Jenna laughed. He dropped to his knees, grimacing as his joints creaked. "Nicky, I think we'll buy you a new bed as soon as possible. I'm too old to he sitting on the floor."

Nicky scrambled to sit up and Steven felt his heart hammer in anticipation. The one thing he'd missed above all others was the unfettered affection Nicky had always bestowed. He held out his arms and after a long moment's hesitation, Nicky crawled into them, his spindiy arms straining to span Steven's back. Steven hugged him hard, drawing in a breath and letting the simple pleasure flow as the seconds ticked by. "I love you, Nicky," he whispered fiercely.

Again a moment's Hesitation, then, "I love you, too, Daddy "

Steven looked over at Jenna whose fingertips pressed against her lips as her violet eyes filled with unapologetic tears. And in a flash of clarity, he knew he loved her, too.

Nicky struggled in his arms and Steven let go. "Ow," Nicky said comically and he and Jenna laughed, as Nicky wanted them to.

Steven rolled to his feet as Jenna fussed with Nicky's sleeping bag, covering him back up. Then he pulled her to her feet and slipped an arm around her waist. "Good night, Nicky," he said.

Nicky rolled over. "Night, Daddy. Night. Jenna."