betray us.
Almost as soon as my doubts arrived I dismissed them, but still I couldn’t bring myself to make contact. Xander and Aimee and Scott had thought of Trey as their friend. They’d trusted him – trusted me, more to the point – and had paid a high price for that friendship. Too high a price? Scott was still in hospital. He might not walk again. Even if they were completely on the level I doubted that they’d really want to see either of us right now. Besides, coming hard on top of the morning I’d had already I didn’t think I could face another showdown.
Then Aimee turned and caught sight of us, and it was out of my hands.
She gave a whoop and ran across the short distance that separated us, scooping Trey up into a bear hug so fierce I thought his skinny ribs would crack.
I realised then that Xander was watching me and something about the tension in him told me he knew I’d spotted them first. Spotted them and done nothing about it. As he moved across to join us the nod of greeting he gave me was cautious, to say the least.
“So how did you get out?” I tried but couldn’t keep the touch of cynicism in my voice. “Dig a tunnel?”
Xander didn’t react to the faint jibe. “Once Mom and Dad got over being angry and being scared they kinda realised it wasn’t our fault Scott was caught up in a, like, random drive-by,” he said, with little apparent irony in his tone.
“Mine even thought we’d acted kinda brave and responsible, y’know, under the circumstances,” Aimee put in, releasing Trey so he could catch his breath.
“So here you are,” I said, cool.
“Yeah, here we are,” Xander said, matching me, his eyes a little narrowed.
Aimee flicked her eyes over the three of us. “How you doin’, girl?” she asked, studying me with her head on one side. “You hanging in there OK?”
“Just about,” I said, breaking my gaze away from Xander’s to glance at her.
“Anybody thirsty?” Trey asked suddenly, his voice a touch high. “Let’s go ‘cross the street and grab a bunch of sodas, yeah?”
For a moment none of us gave any sign of having heard him, then Xander blinked a couple of times. “Sure,” he said, raising a smile. “Good idea. Why not?”
We walked out of the show area and crossed over the road, dodging the backed-up traffic that was already snarling the main drag. As we went I noticed Trey casting anxious looks at each of us and realised that he’d just been trying to keep the peace. We were the only things so far he’d been able to rely on. He couldn’t afford us to be at one another’s throats. Not when I’d cracked up on him once this morning already.
We went to the same little diner where we’d been eating when Henry’s fateful phone call had arrived. It was only after we’d sat down at one of the round outside tables that the significance of that seemed to occur to him. He shuffled for a moment, looking awkward, but the waitress arrived to take our order and the moment passed.
I hutched my chair sideways until I was mostly in the shade of the umbrella over our table. Even so I could feel the heat radiating from my burnt arms like I was sitting next to a furnace.
“You should, like, put something on that, y’know,” Aimee said, nodding to them. “It’s real bad to let yourself burn like that.”
I’d been doing a lot of things lately that were real bad for me.
“I know,” I said. She shut up.
The drinks arrived, full to the brim with ice, and I settled for leaning my arms against the sides of the tall red plastic glass instead. It wasn’t scientific, but it was certainly soothing.
To begin with the kids were stiff and uncomfortable with each other but gradually they began to loosen up a little and to chat. I didn’t join in, just let the conversation flow over and around me. I kept my gaze sweeping over the surrounding area, looking for trouble.
It took about ten minutes before I found it.
One moment my eye had skimmed across the far pavement outside the front of the Ocean Center and it was empty of any threat. On the return pass, however, there was a man standing there.
He stood easily, relaxed, with his thumbs hooked into his pockets, waiting. Waiting for me to spot him and make my move.
I came to my feet automatically, clutching my bag.
“Wait here,” I said to Trey, clipped, without shifting my eyes from my target. He followed my gaze and let out a gasp, half rising in his seat. I put a hand on his shoulder and eased him back down again.
“Don’t worry,” I said, trying a small smile. “If he was out to get us we wouldn’t have seen him coming.” And I hoped that it was true.
I walked down the couple of steps from the diner and threaded my way through the cars waiting for the next green light at the junction. Not that there would be any gaps for them to pull out into, even when they got the signal.
The man stood still and watched me come to him.
When I reached the pavement I stopped and made a show of glancing around.
“So where’s the heavy mob, Walt?”
“No heavy mob,” Walt said simply. “No SWAT team. Just me.”
He was wearing the same battered Panama hat I’d first seen him in, and now he regarded me gravely from under its brim. I stuck my own hands in my pockets, aware of the tensely frozen audience on the other side of the street.
“Oh really?” I said, not trying to keep the doubt out of my voice.
Walt smiled a little, the action crinkling his eyes until all I could see were pinpoints of a gunmetal grey beneath his washed-out brows. “Let’s just say that Harriet and I kinda persuaded young Andrew to call off his dogs until he’d had time to check out your story some.”
“And?”
He nodded slowly. “And so far, it checks out.”
“So, why are you here?”
I didn’t bother to ask how he’d found us. I didn’t really need to. That first morning Trey and I had eaten breakfast with the old couple, the kid had been full of the Spring Break Nationals, shooting his mouth off about the event. I remembered thinking at the time that Walt had paid unusual attention to him. Now I realised it was probably from habit of half a lifetime spent in criminal investigation. Never overlook the smallest fact. You never know when it’s going to come in useful.
Like now, for instance.
Walt didn’t answer straight away, his eye apparently caught by a huge drophead Chevy Impala with metalflake paint and gold wire wheels that was being driven by a kid who didn’t look old enough to buy cigarettes. Walt shook his head and turned back to me.
“I called that young feller you mentioned – John MacMillan,” he said. Only someone of Walt’s years could get away with referring to a policeman as senior as Detective Superintendent MacMillan as “that young feller”.
I started to nod, then paused as a thought struck me. “On a Sunday?”
“Oh, you mention multiple homicide and kidnapping and it tends to kinda get folks’ attention,” Walt said softly. “Even on a Sunday.”
“Yes, when you put it like that, I suppose it does,” I said, my own voice wry. “So, what did he say?”
Walt took his time about replying, giving me a thorough scrutiny. It took effort to stand calm and casual in the face of it.
“He said you’d damned near gotten yourself killed on a coupla occasions since he’d first met you,” Walt said, still watching me minutely. “Said you’d just about laid down your life to protect the people who were important to you.”
His eyes flicked away from me briefly then, shifting to the little group at the diner across the street and to one face in particular. I didn’t have to follow his gaze to know which of them he was looking at.
I felt my chin come up and tried not to make it a challenge. “MacMillan say anything else?” I asked, neutral.
“Yeah,” Walt returned lazily, swinging his attention back to me. “He said you had good instincts and as how I should probably trust them.”
“And is that what you’re going to do?”
