“It was Max Randall?” Click asked, from the floor.
Winter nodded. “Yes, Click, I saw his face clearly.”
“Why would he shoot me?”
“I’d bet he came back to cancel the job offer Sarnov extended to you earlier this evening.”
“Why would he do that?” Click demanded.
“Because Sarnov as much as told you that he was planning to wipe your family out, and Max probably decided it was too much information too soon. He knows nothing you can do with a computer is unique enough to jeopardize his ass after Bryce is free.”
Click said, “You saved me-so I know you aren’t going to hurt me.”
Alexa laughed and shook her head slowly. “Boy, for a genius, you do
46
Winter Massey looked in his rearview mirror at Alexa’s headlights, and then beside him at sulking Click’s profile. Being almost killed had a sobering effect on people lucky enough to be able to remember it after the fact. Click was still wearing his red-and-blue plaid flannel robe over his T-shirt and boxers. The athletic sock on his right foot was bunched around his ankle like a badge of defeat.
“Your girlfriend was going to kill me,” Click said.
“You were trying to load your gun. If you had,
“You have children?” Click asked.
“No,” Winter lied.
“Married?”
“No.”
“Girlfriend?”
He shook his head.
“Gay?”
“Don’t talk to me unless you’re ready to tell me where the Dockerys are.”
“Why?”
“You really want to know?”
“Du-uh,” Click said. “I wasn’t asking so I could smell your breath.”
“I don’t want anything personal about this. It’s business. I intend to keep your family from killing two innocent people, and I am willing to do whatever I have to do. I don’t want to remember you as a real person because it might make me feel bad about what I had to do to you.”
“I was just making conversation.” Click looked at the road ahead, sullen. “I mean, somebody saves your life, keeps their girlfriend from killing you, and plans to torture you, you have to wonder about them.”
“I didn’t save you because I like you or give a damn if they kill you. I did it because I want to find out what you know. You’re just a map to me. Whatever happens to you depends on how it affects my route to find the Dockerys.”
“I can’t help you hurt my family.”
“You’re not like them. They’re killers, you’re not.”
“They might be what you say they are, but they’ll be around a long time after
“If they murder the Dockerys, I’ll make sure you spend the next thirty years in prison without access to computers.”
“Smoot blood goes back hundreds of years. Our ancestors came here from England. No Smoot has ever ratted out another one.”
Winter figured the first Smoots came kicking and screaming, clapped in irons, straight from the bowels of some British penal institution.
“One way or the other, you’re going to tell me where the Dockerys are. That, Click, is a dead-certain fact.”
“You can’t make me tell you anything.”
Winter smiled.
“I bet you’ve never beaten anybody up or tortured them before. You don’t have the eyes for it. You didn’t even shoot back at Randall.”
“No need to make a racket that would have brought the cops.”
Click reached down, opened his robe, and pulled up the T-shirt. Even in the dimly lit cab, Click’s torso looked like Jackson Pollock had created a masterpiece on the young man’s canvas of skin by using a variety of blades and red-hot objects to get the desired effect.
He sneered. “Do anything you want to me. We have this family tradition that gets passed down from father to son. You can burn me with cigarettes, break bones, pull out my fingernails, or carve me up like a Thanksgiving turkey and all you’ll get for your trouble is your own sweat.” Click dropped his shirt and closed his robe. He said offhandedly, “Whatever you can do, I’ve already had. You might as well just shoot me and go on about your snooping business without wasting any more time than you already have.”
Winter thought about a man who would do such a thing to his own child. He thought then about his own son and his infant daughter, and deep inside he was on fire.
He intended to find Lucy and Elijah, but after he did, he wanted to kill Peanut Smoot.
Maybe Click truly believed he wasn’t going to rat out his father, but Winter knew differently.
47
The sign that had been suspended from a bar between the brick columns had been taken down. As a precaution Winter handcuffed Click’s wrists behind him before he got out of the truck. He opened the padlock and swung open the steel pole that stretched, from hedgerow to hedgerow, across the asphalt driveway. The No Trespassing signs on either post glowed in the headlights. Winter watched Alexa drive through, took his truck in, then locked the gate.
The parking lot had been cut into the side of a hill studded with pine trees. The building at the base of the hill stood on a flat beyond a rock-walled stream. Its dark roof, accented by pools of rainwater, looked every bit as large as a football field.
“What is this place?” Click asked.
“Isolated,” Winter said.
Winter led Click and Alexa down a long run of wide stone steps, across a wooden bridge over a rushing brook. The slopes and flower beds were buried under a carpet of rust-colored pine needles. A motion-sensitive light came on, illuminating the walkway and the front of the structure. The trio crossed an expanse of concrete, beneath a cantilevered awning, to arrive at a set of glass doors. Streaks of adhesive were evidence of logo graphics that had been removed from the inside of the glass at some point with a razor. Subtle lighting from a fixture over the reception counter, which was faced with wood veneer, allowed the arrivals a view of a lobby that had been stripped of all other furniture. Winter took his keys from his jacket and, isolating one, used it to unlock the door. As he ushered the others inside, a rhythmic beeping filled the space.
“What is this place?” Click asked again, sounding like a curious tourist.
Winter strode behind the reception counter and, using another key, opened a steel box and typed in the
