‘Yes.’
‘I can find out about your family, too. I can find out where they live.’
‘Family?’ William laughed. ‘My notion of family’s a bit different than yours. My people are nothing to me. Except for Hanley, and… well, he’s not around anymore. Is he?’
‘You’ve played a lot of games, but you’ve never said what you want.’
‘To kill you.’
Mike’s skin came alive – thousands of tiny insects crawling on legs of ice. ‘So that’s it?’ He was incredulous. ‘No information? No money? You just have to kill me?’
‘Yes.’ William sighed. ‘We’re foot soldiers, see? We have a mission directive. And you’re the target. It’s a bad state of affairs. I understand that. I wish it weren’t the case. But there are two kinds of crooks, you see. Those with a code and those without. We have a code, Dodge and I. We keep our word. I have never lied to you. And I’m not gonna start now.’
‘What was my father to you people?’ Mike asked.
‘Nothing. He was nothing.’
‘You’re after me for something he did.’
‘Maybe before I kill you,’ William said, ‘I’ll tell you why.’
Mike glanced across at Kat, her chest rising and falling steadily. ‘Then we can settle this face-to-face. I will come to you. But you leave my daughter out of this. She doesn’t know anything. She’s witnessed nothing.’
A faint little chuckle that held no amusement. ‘You still don’t get it, do you?’
The insects squirmed back to life, Mike’s skin alive with movement. ‘Get what?’
‘Katherine’s not a bystander in this,’ William said. ‘She’s our other target.’
The line went dead.
Chapter 41
Mike and Kat were waiting at the front door of the mini-golf play center when the pimply-faced manager arrived to open the place. Mike had parked the Camry at the edge of the lot, its shattered window cleaned up. It sported license plates he’d swapped out with a Jetta.
In the video arcade, he got forty bucks of quarters and set up at the pay phone in the back while Kat played games in the nearest aisle where he could keep her in sight. The darkness and flashing lights were disorienting; they seemed an extension of the endless night they had emerged from. Was it really morning outside?
His eyes barely leaving his daughter, he made call after call, starting with 1-800 numbers, collecting referrals, then referrals of referrals. Given that he was dealing with emergency services, most places were open even though it was Saturday. Kat trudged from game to game, scratching her head, her vacant expression lit by the glowing screens. The arcade filled with kids until the aisles were jammed – all that candy and color and laughter surrounding Kat, a mocking vision of weekends past. Mike had to fight to stay focused. Slotting endless quarters into the pay phone, he ruled out fifty options and sniffed around fifty more, trying to zero in on a viable choice.
By the time he was done, the phone book was marked with sweat from his fingers. What if someone followed and lifted his prints? Could Graham, Dodge, or William pick a clue off the yellow pages that led to Kat? In a spasm of paranoia, Mike smuggled out the phone book and burned it by the Dumpster around back. Kat stayed in the car behind him, watching as if at a drive-in movie. Crouched in the cold morning air, warming his hands over the miniature pyre, he realized he was on the verge of sobbing with horror at what he was about to do.
He drove east through the afternoon, Kat with her face to the passenger window, watching the desert roll by. Juniper wagged in the breeze, lavender shuddered off purple dust, and Joshua trees twisted up, tombstones to unmarked graves.
Why would an eight-year-old be targeted by hired killers? Last week William and Dodge had scared Mike into grabbing Kat at school and bringing her home. He flashed on Hanley’s fingers obscenely working Annabel’s bra strap. This is too messy, too messy. We were supposed to wait. Wait not just for Mike but for Kat as well.
On that morning years ago in the station wagon, the horror in Mike’s father’s voice had been palpable. Maybe he’d feared for Mike’s life as Mike now feared for Kat’s. But why? His father was responsible for whatever mess he’d turned their lives into, at least according to that splash of blood on his cuff. A countering image popped into Mike’s head – himself in the dim garage, using an old rag to wipe Annabel’s blood from his arm. What if Mike hadn’t been abandoned but saved? What if dispatching him to a new life was the only choice Mike’s father had left to protect him?
But Mike didn’t – couldn’t – trust that explanation. It reeked of wish fulfillment, an origin story like Superman rocket-launched from Krypton. But worse, it seemed fueled by hope, by longing, and when it came to Mike’s childhood, he’d decided that hope and longing were dead ends.
And yet how could he hold on to that lifelong outrage given what he was on his way to doing?
‘Arizona,’ Kat said dreamily as the sign drifted past on the side of the freeway. ‘I always wanted to come here.’
When they reached the town of Parker, Mike took Kat to a diner. She ordered a stack of grilled-cheese sandwiches with french fries and a chocolate shake.
‘Aren’t you gonna eat?’ she asked around a mouthful of food, and he just shook his head.
She ran out ahead as he paid the bill. When he dashed after her in a low-grade panic, he found her standing in front of a store window, hand to the glass, captivated. A yellow gingham dress floated on display, strung up by fishing line before a holiday backdrop, a dress without a girl. Mike took Kat inside and bought it, along with new shoes and a few shirts.
They went to the movies afterward, Kat boinging her arm along, as always, with the hopping Pixar desk lamp in the opening credits. For two hours, leaning back in his seat, Mike watched her instead of the screen. Openmouthed smiles, bursts of giggling, snorkel breathing through Red Vines. For a moment it was as though they’d skipped back in time and everything was normal again.
He found a boutique hotel that took cash for a deposit. The country decor was a bit frilly, but it was markedly nicer than the motels they’d been staying in. He bathed Kat, tilting her head back beneath the faucet to wash her hair. The lice were still in there, sure, but he didn’t have the heart to cap the evening with a chemical rinse.
Tucked into bed, her skin flushed and clean, Kat said, ‘Tell me a story.’
Mike realized that he’d pulled his flowery armchair bedside like a nurse on deathwatch. ‘About what?’
‘About next month. About us going home.’ Her blinks were growing longer. ‘Mom’s been cooking all day. You know how she gets with Thanksgiving. And there’s turkey. And pumpkin pie. And those oranges we stick cloves into. And we sit down, all together, and…’
She was asleep.
Mike remembered when she was first handed to him at the hospital, a fluffy bundle with a pink face, how he’d looked down at her and thought, Anything you ever need for the rest of your life. He rested his head on her chest, listened to the faint thumping, breathed her breath.
He stepped out onto the balcony. Smog had wiped away the stars. He asked Annabel if he’d be forgiven for doing what he was about to do, but no answer came back from the firmament.
In the morning Kat wolfed down a tall stack of pancakes, pausing only to scratch her scalp. Back upstairs, Mike packed her few things into the rucksack, laying aside his gun and a chunk of cash. Standing before the bathroom mirror, he brushed her hair slowly, meticulously, and drew it back, at last, into a perfect ponytail.
She smiled and flicked at it. ‘Nice, Dad!’
She lingered in the bathroom and came out wearing her new yellow dress. She pinched out the sides in a show of self-conscious theatricality. ‘Well?’