“No,” he said, still trying to shake off the effects of the kiss. Not damned likely. “Shelly didn’t have an affair with Jack,” he said. “She was a lesbian.”
Erin’s eyes got big. “Then he wouldn’t have killed her. She’s not one of the victims.”
“That’s our hope.”
“Oh, my God, that’s wonderful. That’s…” She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him, her arms looping around his neck. Nick cupped her ass and lifted her onto the counter, mouths open and bodies straining to come together through their clothes.
He groaned and ripped away. “Ah, God, Erin,” he said, his heart drumming like a timpani. “I can’t do this right now. I can’t—”
She stiffened. “What happened?”
“Things are moving. I just came back to see Hannah, and ask… Would you stay with her the rest of tonight? Deputy Fruth is parked out front, watching the house. But I have to get back.”
She was taking a minute to process things. Thinking about letting him take care of Justin while she babysat Hannah. “Nick, what happened?”
“We found Ace Holmes. Becca isn’t with him.”
Her face drained of color. “Oh, God, Calloway’s out there, isn’t he? He’s got Becca—”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. But Ace has me ninety percent convinced he hasn’t seen her, and Jack
could
still be alive. All I know right now is that Becca’s missing. And she’s in trouble.”
Erin pushed off the counter and looked up at him. Laid a hand on his cheek. “Then you’d better go find her.”
The Angelmaker watched the sheriff leave his house. Wait, now. Don’t be in a hurry. Wouldn’t want to emerge from the backyard tree house too soon and find out that Mann forgot something and came back. Just wait back here in the woods.
The night was young.
A
REPEAT OF THE NIGHT BEFORE:
late meeting in Nick’s office. The difference was the addition of a murdered minister and a missing woman. And two days of dragging the quarry. Divers had quit looking for Calloway’s body.
The mood was different, too. No one was sitting down scratching his head in contemplation over Jack’s
suicide.
Now, a minister was shot and a nineteen-year-old woman was gone. And while it had been easy to believe Rebecca might have gone willingly with Ace Holmes, no one believed that if Jack Calloway was still alive, she’d have gone willingly with him. To a man, they were bouncing on the balls of their feet.
Nick said, “We’ll tap the FBI. This is the kind of shit they do.”
“Suits,” Wart grumbled.
“Suits, maybe,” Nick said, “but we’ll have to scour the whole neighborhood around Rebecca’s house—people, sidewalks, dumpsters, buildings, everything—and that’ll take manpower. And put Rebecca’s picture on the news, every half-hour. Like an Amber Alert.”
“We’ll get the Feds to monitor a tips line while we
pound the pavement. People will talk to us better. But sooner or later—” Quent looked around, all of them an hour past exhaustion, running on adrenaline and caffeine and now fear “—we’re gonna need some sleep. A few Feds could keep things rolling.”
“Tell you what,” Nick said, “I’ve worked a few task forces with the Feds. Some things, they’re good at. And I don’t wanna be the one telling Leni Engel that we’re not calling in the big guns because we don’t work and play well with others. Everyone got that?”
They did.
“Jensen,” Nick said, “put together pictures of Rebecca and get them all over the media along with the details of where she disappeared. I want at least four more of us canvassing Becca’s neighborhood. There has to be something there.”
“Gonna scare this town half to death,” Schaberg said.
“They need to be scared.” Nick smothered the thought and turned to the wall where he’d hung a large whiteboard. A matrix of thoughts webbed the board, scribbles he’d used over the past few days to organize ideas, brainstorm, try to tie things together. One side worked the case as if Jack were alive, the other side as if he weren’t. On the second side, where Jack was dead, one arm considered him the victim of murder, the other the victim of suicide.
Too many unknowns. And the only constant in every scenario was… Margaret.
“Gotta consider it,” Quentin said. They all knew Nick was looking at her name. “If we buy into the idea that Lauren McAllister, Sara Daniels,
maybe
Shelly Quinn, and now Rebecca Engel, have disappeared from the face of the earth, and accept that Jack didn’t do it—at least not
Rebecca and probably not Shelly Quinn—then there are only two other people in the same orbit.”
“Margaret and who? Rodney?” Schaberg snorted. “The minister’s bullet wound was a pretty good shot for a blind man.”
“Besides which,” Jensen said, “he can’t drive. The killer would have to have a car to manage the distances and times of these murders. No way Rodney could have done them. Not here, not in Florida.”
“Unless he had help,” Hogue said. “A driver.”
Which led them back to Margaret again.
Always gotta look at the spouse.
Beneath Margaret’s name, three lines sprawled out with ideas jotted on each:
betrayed wife, motive, opportunity.
Similar lines dropped down from Jack’s name, but at least where Rebecca Engel was concerned, Jack supposedly lacked the third quality: opportunity.
Supposedly. Then again, what better way to allay suspicion of committing a crime than to be thought dead when the crime occurs?
Nick added a new line from Margaret:
afraid of minister?
“God,” Jensen said, shaking his head.
Quent said, “Margaret knew Carl Whitmore came in here and talked to Nick. She knew Jack had spent the day at the chapel. If she did something to those women and thought Jack knew it, it makes sense that she’d worry about Carl having too much information.”
Nick turned to Jensen. “Dig up some background on Margaret; her maiden name is Devilas, like Rodney’s mother. Find out if there’s something there that no one knows.”
“Wife rage? Split personality?”
“Whatever.” Too much talk. Time to move. “Roger, get out with the search team. Jensen, keep with the phones, the list of college girls. Stay with Shelly Quinn until you find her.”
“Shelly Quinn doesn’t fit the pattern. She never had an affair with Jack.”
“Sounds like she might have met Margaret, though,” said Quentin. “Margaret wouldn’t be the first woman to knock off another one out of jealousy.”
“Or two, or five?” Wart said.
Schaberg: “So where was she at five-fifteen this morning?”
“Tucked in bed alone, probably,” Jensen said. “An alibi that makes sense, but can’t be verified.”
“Find out,” Nick said, then clapped his hands. “Let’s go. Wherever Becca is, she doesn’t have time for us to sit on our asses.”
Glances bounced around the room. No one was sitting.
The room started to clear, but Chris Jensen stopped. “Hey, uh, Sheriff? Dr. Sims isn’t at the motel. Where is she?”
Nick scowled, and Jensen smiled.
“Son of a bitch,” said Roger. “You won the pool, didn’t you, Jensen? Nick, you SOB…”
“I’m rich,” Jensen said, as Nick’s desk phone rang.
“Fuck you all,” he said, and picked it up.
Dispatch. “Sheriff, we just got a nine-one-one call. Your house is on fire.”
W
E FOUND
A
CE
H
OLMES
. Becca isn’t with him…
Erin wandered the great room, looking at nothing, feeling the walls closing in around her. She wanted to help. She wanted to be with Nick, searching for Rebecca, talking to neighbors, giving interviews for TV—doing
something
. But she knew Nick was doing everything that could be done. For the first time in twelve years, someone had listened and taken on the fight with her.
And she loved being here in the circle of warmth and love and safety Nick had created for Hannah. Wouldn’t mind being in that circle tomorrow, and the next day—
CRASH.
Erin jumped. Glass shattered at the back of the house, and something hit the floor. D.D. flew down the stairs from Hannah’s room, barking. Erin, heart in her throat, followed him toward the great room.
And saw flames. Huge, bright gold flames climbing the drapes,
whooshing
up the side of the wall and spilling across the carpet.
Erin called for D.D., who backed away but kept barking. She raced for a phone, realized she didn’t know
where one was, then remembered the one in Nick’s office. She grabbed it and ran up the stairs, dialing and trying to dig in her purse for her gun at the same time, screaming for Hannah.
Hannah came out of bed, wide-eyed but only half-awake. “Get up,” Erin yelled. “Fire.”
The nine-one-one operator came on while they were running down the stairs. Hannah screamed for D.D. and Erin pushed her ahead and said, “Go,” then veered to the back of the house and peered into the darkness outside. Something moved. She grabbed her gun and fired a shot, watched the movement and fired another one. Then the hot tongues of the flames licked too close and she dashed out after Hannah, trying to come up with the address for the house, and in the end just shouting, “The sheriff’s house is on fire, the sheriff’s house is on fire.”
Nick almost beat the fire trucks to his house, but not quite. When he got there, he saw water running like a giant fountain, a fire truck in his drive along with a smaller Emergency Response Team truck, and Luke, who had been on his way back to the house when the call came in.
Nick jumped out of the Tahoe, his heart squeezing like a fist. Luke jogged to meet him.
“It’s good, man, it’s good. No one’s hurt,” he said, putting a hand on Nick’s chest to slow him down. It didn’t work and Luke grabbed him by the shirt. “Stop!” he shouted. “You’re gonna scare Hannah to death. Calm down.”
The words finally penetrated. “No one’s hurt?” Nick asked, blowing like a winded racehorse.
“No one’s hurt. Your house didn’t even get much damage.
Just one room. Erin called it in the second it happened. It’s cool, man. Relax.”
“Where’s Hannah?”
Luke slapped him on the back a couple times: Everything okay. “Over there,” he said, pointing at the ERT truck. “She’s sitting in the back.”
Hannah unwound her arms from the dog’s neck and ran to Nick. He held her, squeezing, swaying, and pressed her face against his neck.
She squeaked. “I can’t… breathe, Daddy.”
“Okay, okay,” Nick said, and loosened his grip. The dog circled his knees.
“Pet D.D.,” Hannah ordered. “He’s scared, too.”
Nick hiked her onto his hip like he’d done when she was little, and dangled a hand to the dog. He looked at the back of the ERT truck, where Erin stood watching them.
Nick, I’m scared.
I’ve got it covered, Allison. Let me handle it.
A wave of grief washed over him—for what he was about to lose. He couldn’t say for sure whether loving Erin would have saved his sorry soul from the life he’d made for himself, but he’d never know now. A woman loved by Nick Mann might as well wear a target on her back. He couldn’t do anything about Hannah belonging to him. But he could sure as hell keep Erin away.
A shout went up and the water fountain died, a couple of firefighters dragging on the hose. Nick stripped his gaze from Erin and saw Quentin and Luke take flashlights around to the back of the house, walking through the running puddles of water and ash. He put Hannah down.
“Stay here,” he commanded, and followed. The picture window off the deck was broken; the sofa and curtains
just inside totally destroyed, and the carpet burned in a design Nick had seen before. He glanced around, looking for the bottle shards, and saw them almost right away.
“Molotov cocktail,” Luke said. “From the back. Must have come in on foot.”
“Had to,” Nick said. “I had a deputy out front.”
Quentin said, “We’ll get some floodlights out here and search the yard, figure out which way this motherfucker came in.” No sense in focusing here, where the hoses had already washed away the evidence.
“Start a canvass on Birch Street.” Birch was the closest street running
behind
Nick’s house.
Fruth walked in. “Where did Dr. Sims come up with a gun?” he asked Nick.
“What?”
“She fired two rounds out the back just before she and Hannah came running out. Five seconds after the flames started.”
Nick looked at Quentin. “Find those bullets. They’ll be .22s from a Derringer. I want to know if one’s missing.”
“Think she hit him?”
“On the run, through flames, in the dark with a .22? Doubtful.” But they could hope.
They looked at the carnage for another minute and Luke shook his head. “If they’d been asleep, if Erin hadn’t been awake and walking around downstairs when it came in…”
He didn’t need to finish. Nick looked at him. “I want you with Hannah and Mom.”
Luke nodded. “I was just thinking that.”
They talked for five minutes then Nick went back to Hannah, wanting to die inside, but presenting a strong
front. Luke would take her and they’d go root Grandma out of bed. Take a little spontaneous vacation.
Hannah didn’t fall for it. “You just want me out of the way.”
“Never,” Nick said. “But I want you safe. And Grandma, too. So we’re gonna let Uncle Luke be your personal bodyguard.”
“What about Erin? Doesn’t she need a bodyguard, too?”
Nick looked past Hannah to where Erin stood, stiff as a nutcracker soldier. “Erin’s going away, too.”
Hannah frowned, then leaned in close. “I don’t think she’ll want to.”
“It doesn’t matter a damn what she wants.”
“Quarter. Are you two going to have a fight?”
“Probably,” Nick said darkly.
“Who’s going to win?”
“I am.”
“I wish I was allowed to fight with you like that.”
“Well, you’re not,” Nick said, giving her one last kiss. “So get the hell out of here.”
“Quarter,” Hannah said, and trotted off to Luke.
“Goddamn it.”
He made a beeline to Erin, whose spine grew taller with every step he took.
“No,” she said, before he even got to her.