Where was Samantha? He’d called her twice and gotten only her voice mail. He desperately wanted to talk to her about the visit to Baker Street with Jennifer. She would understand. Not that Jennifer didn’t, but Sam might be able to help him sort out these new feelings.
He walked to the refrigerator, opened it, and pulled out a liter of 7UP. Feelings. Extremes. The hatred toward Slater that had begun to swell in his gut wasn’t so strange. How was he supposed to feel toward someone who had come within a few seconds of taking not only his life, but countless others for undisclosed reasons? If Slater would just quit being so idiotic and tell him what the deal was, Kevin could handle the man. As it was, the imbecile was hiding behind these stupid games, and Kevin was losing patience. Yesterday he’d been too shocked to process his anger. A common form of denial, Jennifer had said. Shock breeds denial, which in turn tempers anger. But now the denial was giving way to this bitterness toward an enemy who refused to show his hand.
Kevin poured half a glass, swallowed the 7UP in several long drafts, and slammed the empty glass on the counter.
He ran his hand through his hair, grunted, and walked to the living room. How could one man wreak so much havoc in the space of one day? Slater was nothing less than a terrorist. If Kevin owned a gun and Slater worked up the stomach to confront him face to face, he was pretty sure he’d have no compunction about putting a slug or two in the man’s face. Especially if he was the boy. Kevin shivered involuntarily. Shoulda gone back and made sure the stinking rat was dead. He would have been within his rights, if not according to the law, then in the eyes of God. Turn the other cheek shouldn’t apply to sick sewer rats with knives in their hands who licked neighborhood girls’ windows.
Slater was listening now, right? Kevin looked around the room and settled on the window.
“Slater?” His voice bounced back at him.
“You hear me, Slater? Listen, you sick scab, I don’t know why you’re stalking me or why you’re too terrified to show your face, but you’re only proving one thing. You’re toilet water. You’re a punk without the guts to face your adversary. Come on, baby! Come and get me!”
“Kevin?”
He whirled around. Sam stood in the rear sliding-glass doorway, staring at him. He hadn’t heard the door slide open.
“You okay?” she whispered.
“Sure. Sorry, I was just having a word with our friend, in case he was listening.”
Sam shut the door and lifted a finger to her lips. She walked to the front window and pulled the drapes.
“What . . .”
She motioned him quiet again and led him to the garage. “If we talk quietly here, we won’t be heard.”
“Slater? The car up the street’s FBI.”
“I know. Which is why I parked two blocks up and came in the back. You don’t think Slater’s going to see them?”
“He didn’t say no FBI.”
“Maybe because he is FBI,” she said.
“What?”
“We haven’t ruled it out.”
“We? Who’s we?”
She held his gaze for a moment. “Just an expression. They find anything else here?”
“No. Some footprints by the oil rig up the hill. They took a bunch of fingerprints, the milk jug. Jennifer didn’t think any of it would help them much.”
Sam nodded. “She told me about the tattoo. You never told me about the tattoo.”
“I didn’t tell you anything about him after that night, remember? He was gone. End of story.”
“Not anymore. They’ll find the warehouse, and when they do, they’ll find more—who knows, maybe the boy.”
“Actually, I went back four months later.”
“What?”
“He was gone. There was blood on the floor and his bandanna, but he was gone. They won’t find him.”
Sam looked at him for a few moments. He wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but something wasn’t quite right.
“You said, wehaven’t ruled it out,” he said. “You’ve always been straight with me, Sam. Who is we?”
She looked into his eyes and put a hand on his cheek. “I’m sorry, Kevin, I can’t tell you everything—not now, not yet. Soon. You’re right, I have always been straight with you. I’ve been more than a friend. I’ve loved you like a brother. A day hasn’t gone by these past ten years that I haven’t thought about you at least once. You’re part of me. And now I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
The revelation made his head spin. She was somehow involved, wasn’t she? She’d been onto Slater before yesterday. It was why Slater knew her!
“What . . . what’s going on?”
Her hand slid down his arm and took his fingers. “Nothing’s changed. Slater’s the same person he was yesterday, and I’m going to do my best to get to him before he hurts anyone. I’m just not at liberty to tell you what we know. Not yet. It wouldn’t make any difference to you anyway. Trust me. For old time’s sake.”
He nodded. Actually, this was better, wasn’t it? The fact that she had some inside track and wasn’t just blindly feeling her way around this case—that was good.
“But you think the FBI is involved?”
She put her finger on his lips to seal them. “I can’t talk about it. Forget I said it. Nothing’s changed.” She reached up, kissed him on the cheek, and released his hand.
“Can I trust Jennifer?”
She turned. “Sure—trust Jennifer. But trust me first.”
“What do you mean, first?”
“I mean if you have to choose between me and Jennifer, choose me.”
He felt his pulse thicken. What was she saying? Choose me.Did she think he would ever choose Jennifer over her? He wasn’t even sure what he felt for Jennifer. She had offered to ease his pain and confusion in a time of vulnerability and he had let her. That was all.
“I would always choose you. I owe my life to you.”
She smiled and for a moment he imagined that they were kids again, sitting under an elm with a full moon on their faces, laughing at a squirrel’s inquisitive head poking through the branches.
“Actually, I think it’s the other way around. I owe you mylife,” she said. “Literally. You saved me from Slater once, didn’t you? Now it’s my turn to return the favor.”
In a strange way, it all made perfect sense.
“Okay,” she said. “I have a plan. I mean to flush the snake from his hole.” She winked at him and glanced at her watch. “The sooner we get out of here the better. Grab your toothbrush, a change of clothes, and some deodorant if you want. We’re taking a trip.”
“We are? Where? We can’t just leave. Jennifer told me to stay here.”
“Until what? Did Slater tell you not to leave?”
“No.”
“Let me see the phone.”
He fished out the cell phone Slater had left him and handed it to her.
“Did Slater tell you to keep this on?”
Kevin considered the question. “He said to keep it with me at all times.”
Sam pushed the power off button. “Then we’ll take it.”
“Jennifer will have a cow. This wasn’t the plan.”
“Change of plans, my dear knight. It’s time for a little cat and mouse of our own.”
13
THE WAREHOUSE was less than a hundred yards from Kevin’s old house, two rows back from the road, an old wooden storage facility that had been white before flaking paint revealed its gray underbelly. From the side entrance, none of the houses on Baker Street was visible.
“This it?”
“It’s abandoned. Looks like it has been for a while,” Milton said.
“Show me.”
Two uniforms stood by the door, watching her. One of them handed her a flashlight. “You’ll need this.”
She took it and turned it on.
The warehouse smelled of a decade’s worth of undisturbed dust. Beyond the side door was a single stairwell descending into blackness. The rest of the three-thousand-or-so square feet of concrete sat vacant in dim light filtered by a dozen cracks in the walls.