Lorraine would not get out of Detective Tuckney’s car again with the reporters around. He drove them to the motel, a policeman behind them in her car. No reporters followed. No need — they’d already gotten their dramatic shots.
In the motel room it took some time to calm Tammy down. Lorraine berated herself for losing control. It had only scared her daughter. She couldn’t let that happen again.
As Tammy finally slept Lorraine lay beside her, exhausted and heartbroken, staring at the stained ceiling.
TWENTY-FOUR
As Kaycee headed out her back door, the phone rang. The sound jangled her nerves. Not even outside yet, and she was trembling.
She lunged for the receiver and checked the ID. It was Tricia’s number at work. Her shoulders slumped. She pressed Talk. “Hi, Tricia.”
“Have they found her yet?”
“No. Not a sign. Not a clue. Except they found a note she left in her bedroom. She ran away because of her dad and stepmom and everything. She mentioned me. I wouldn’t let her come live with me — ” Kaycee’s voice cracked on the last word.
“Hey, hey, stop. Don’t go blaming yourself for this.”
Sure, no problem.
Tricia blew out a breath. “What about her friends? She must have gone to one of them.”
“No one knows a thing.”
Silence spun out. Kaycee envisioned minutes, hours, days of the same hovering lack of words.
“Kaycee, hang in there. They’ll find her.”
“I know. I’m . . . fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I’ll manage.”
“How are you doing there in your house? See anything else strange?”
“Yes. But I can’t worry about that right now.” Right. Like the fear of being watched wasn’t doubling the panic within her.
“What did you see?”
“You know the camera and the picture of that dead man? Turns out they were real after all. The same dead guy blipped onto my computer screen this morning, then went away. So far he hasn’t come back.”
“Kaycee! Are you sure?”
“Tricia, I saw him. That makes twice now. And he’ll show up again. I think some lunatic ‘Who’s There?’ readers are trying to drive me crazy.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I have no idea.”
More silence. Dread rolled around in Kaycee’s gut. Double the panic or not, if it weren’t for Hannah, she’d be on the floor right now, catatonic.
Her thoughts skipped to the column she’d just written — that final trip to the dentist and what it had taught her. She needed that power now.
Kaycee glanced out toward the backyard. The day was sunny and warm. Utterly terrifying.
“Did you tell the police about this?” Tricia asked.
“No way. They’re all looking for Hannah. When she’s found, I’ll tell them.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Tricia sounded too easily convinced. As if she didn’t believe in the second photo any more than she believed in the first.
“Tricia?”
“Huh?”
“If something happens to me before Hannah’s found, tell Chief Davis everything. About the first picture and the second. And last night at your house I dreamed about it. It’s like I was in someone else’s body, seeing the dead man and all the blood. I heard screams and footsteps. And the floor under the dead man was dark yellow. Then guess what — the picture I saw this morning on my desktop? The dead man was lying on that very same floor. The one I saw in my
Tricia hesitated. “Really.”
“Really. Somehow I think they made me have that dream. Maybe they pushed the sights and sounds into my head, sort of like subliminal advertising. Then they sent a second photo onto my computer this morning, matching the details.”
Absolute deadness over the line.
Kaycee’s lips firmed. Okay, Tricia wasn’t buying any of this. Kaycee could picture that cynical expression of hers, one side of her mouth pulled up, neck arched back. And the raised left eyebrow.
“Tricia, I need to go now. I’m leaving to look for Hannah.” Before Tricia could reply, Kaycee clicked off the line.
She hung up the phone and closed her eyes. So she couldn’t talk to her best friend about this anymore. Fine. She didn’t need Tricia anyway. She just had to find Hannah.
Raising her chin, purse over her shoulder, Kaycee stepped out into the menacing day.
TWENTY-FIVE
Nico got the call to come in just before noon.
He was pacing the floor in his den in a rage. He’d swept liquor glasses and bottles to the carpet, kicked over the coffee table. Over and over in his mind ran that split second when he pulled the trigger — twice. Why couldn’t Giordano have just done what he was told? Nico should have kept his cool, fought the man, pistol-whipped him. Anything to keep him alive and get him into the car. Now cops were crawling all over that place.
Good thing Bear didn’t want the money out of there today. That one fact just might keep Nico alive.
He should have gone to the underboss and reported what happened right away. But he was too furious. Not a good frame of mind to be in when you met with Bear. Instead Nico burst through his own front door, shouting curses. In time he calmed down enough to send an associate to drive through AC Storage. Rizzo reported five police cars, some unmarked, and crime-scene tape around the apartment.
You could be sure the police had questioned those two renters Nico had driven by. They wouldn’t trace his unregistered Chevy. And he knew the one man who glanced up couldn’t have seen much of his face. But would Bear believe that?
After the associate reported, Nico got a call from Dom, one of his soldiers. Dom had heard from his friends on the police force that the homicide detectives were suspicious. Martin Giordano gets held up by a gun at night and shot to death the next morning? A little too convenient. The detectives were talking to the G-men investigating the
