two pieces of crumpled tinfoil in there along with the tube of quick-drying glue. She still had a vivid mental image of the grotesque, long-barreled gun he’d shoved under his belt.
It made her shiver.
Table legs scraped in Ted’s office. For some reason, the stranger was moving the furniture. Blocking the window? She wondered. While he’s busy, I can do this. I can get Cole. I can grab the baby. We can run. I don’t know anything about this man. Maybe he stole the baby from its parents. Maybe the men looking for him are the police. Maybe whoever shot him was a policeman.
I can do it, she repeated to herself. I can do it now.
Peering down at the baby, she imagined how she could go into the living room and put her finger over her lips to warn Cole to be quiet. She could motion for Cole to follow her. In a rush, she could pick up the baby, open the door, and run with Cole into the night.
There wouldn’t be a chance to get coats. In the falling snow, she could hold the baby against her, using the blanket to shield him. She wouldn’t be able to risk stopping to ask a neighbor for help. That might give the stranger time to catch them. She and Cole would need to run all the way to the crowd on Canyon Road.
We’d be safe there, she thought. Can Cole run that far? Maybe we won’t be able to move quickly enough.
She wondered if the stranger would shoot. The thought made her flinch as she imagined the agony of a bullet slamming into her back. Or maybe she wouldn’t feel anything. Maybe the bullet would kill her.
No, she decided. The one thing she knew for certain was that the baby was important to this man. The way he talked about it. The way he looked at it. He wouldn’t do anything to put it in danger.
Did it seem logical, then, to think he was a kidnapper?
She heard him making other noises in Ted’s office, cutting at something. But what? As the cutting sounds persisted, she thought, Now’s my chance. She took a step toward the living room, preparing to cross to where Cole watched the window, but then she remembered the way the man had looked at her and said, “I promise Ted won’t hit you again.” There’d been something about the steadiness of his eyes, the reassuring tone of his voice, the firmness of his expression-they’d convinced Meredith that he meant what he said.
“ Don’t you like surprise presents?” the man had asked. “Help the baby, and I promise Ted won’t hit you again.”
He hadn’t said, “Help me.” He’d said, “Help the baby.” No, the man would never do anything to injure the baby, Meredith decided. We can run without fearing he’ll shoot.
In Ted’s office, the cutting sounds were now almost sawing sounds.
This is our chance! Meredith thought.
But what if he’s telling the truth? What if there really are men outside who’ll do anything to get the baby? If Cole and I leave the house, we might run into them. I can’t risk it. I can’t put Cole’s life in danger.
“ I promise Ted won’t hit you again.”
As much as she was certain that the stranger meant to keep that promise, she was certain about something else. Because of Cole’s short right leg, adults sometimes treated her son as if he wasn’t smart or as if he wasn’t even in the room with them. But the stranger had looked Cole directly in the eyes and had spoken to him as if he were much older than twelve. He’d trusted Cole to watch the window. He’d trusted him to listen for voices on the two-way radio. The respectful way he treated Cole left Meredith with no doubt that he would do everything in his power to make sure no one hurt her son.
Kagan’s pistol wasn’t the only weapon he carried.
On the outside of his right pants pocket, a black metal clip was hardly noticeable against the black fabric. The clip was attached to an Emerson folding knife concealed inside his pocket, an arrangement that made it easy for him to grip the knife without fumbling. When he pulled it out, a hook on the back of the blade was designed to catch on the edge of the pocket and swing the knife open. As he’d learned too well, there were numerous occasions when the ability to open a knife with only one hand could save his life.
He went over to a lamp on the office table, unplugged it, and pressed the blade against the electrical cord. He had no trouble slicing the rubber sheath, but the copper wires resisted, and he needed to press down hard, sawing more than cutting. He ignored the pain in his wounded arm from the effort of holding the wire against the table.
After he freed the cord, he tied it to the leg of a chair and stretched it calf-high across the office, securing it around a heavy box on the bottom of a shelf. Fortunately, the cord was dark. If an intruder broke through the window and shoved past the obstacles on the table, he’d be so fixated on the open door to the living room that he might not notice the trip cord in the shadows.
“ Meredith, you said there was a back garden?”
When Kagan heard her voice in the kitchen, he was relieved to know that she’d remained in the house.
“ A small one. The dry air at this altitude makes it difficult to grow things without a lot of water.”
“ Is the garden easy to get to? Are there gates to the side?”
“ No. Someone could just walk around to the back.”
“ Or climb a neighbor’s fence?” Kagan grasped at a thought. “Maybe the neighbors would notice a prowler and call the police.”
“ Not tonight,” Meredith said. “For Christmas Eve, the family to the left is visiting a sick relative down in Albuquerque. The couple to the right loves to play blackjack. They went to one of the Indian casinos.”
Kagan remembered driving north to Santa Fe from the big airport in Albuquerque. It had seemed that there was an Indian casino every twenty miles.
“ The blackjack dealers are probably dressed as Santa Claus, but somehow I doubt the pit bosses think it’s better to give than to receive,” he said.
He hoped the attempt at a joke would help calm Meredith’s nerves. Then his concern about the garden in back made him remember his hallucination when he approached the house.
“ Meredith, I thought I saw a flower growing in the snow outside.”
“ You did see a flower.”
“ In winter?” Kagan worked to keep his tone casual, to relax her. “How’s that possible? Why didn’t it freeze?”
“ It’s called a Christmas rose.”
“ I never heard of it.”
Feeling pressure in his temples, Kagan crouched, stepped from the office, and turned to the left, shifting along the hallway. He passed a bathroom on the right. Then, opposite Cole’s room, he entered the master bedroom.
Despite the darkness, he managed to see two windows, one straight ahead above the bed, the other to the right of it. The curtains were closed.
Shadowy suitcases lay on the side of the bed.
“ Planning to go somewhere?” Kagan asked.
“ Away from my husband, as soon as Canyon Road was opened to traffic tonight.”
“ I bet you wish you’d gone earlier.”
“ Then I’d have missed all this Christmas Eve fun.”
“ Yeah, this is quite a party.”
He set a chair on the bed, then put a side table and two lamps next to the suitcases, adding obstacles that might holdback someone who broke through the window above the bed. He pushed a high bureau in front of the other window, partially blocking the glass, making it difficult for someone to climb through. Next, he went to the remaining lamp, unplugged it, and sawed its electrical cord free. He attached it to the leg of a cabinet next to the door and stretched it across to a dressing table, rigging another trip cord.
In a bathroom off the bedroom, a night-light revealed a pressurized can of hairspray and another of shaving soap. Leaving the bedroom, he set the cans at the end of the corridor.
When he crept into Cole’s room, a small television showed Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas” to soldiers at an inn while a back wall opened and snow fell on a bridge across a stream. A horse-drawn sleigh went past. Everyone looked happy.
Kagan switched off the television.
