15 Seconds

ultimate judgment, the smallest measure of thanks for making the world a better place.

But he always knew… Always knew sooner or later that they’d come for him. Fellows’s call showed him that.

Yes, he’d done it well. Still, that didn’t quite make them even.

Not quite yet.

He opened the door to the back and uncuffed the girl’s wrist. “What? Where are we?” the frightened girl called out, pulling back from him. “What are we doing here? Get your hands off me!”

He didn’t care-she could kick and scream all she wanted. She could scream until she was blue in the face; there was no one around to hear. He cuffed both her wrists, then picked her up and carried her into the woods, kicking overgrown branches and brush out of his way, a place he hadn’t been to in a couple of years but that used to be home to him. He found the shed. There was a lock on the door. His own lock. He set her down and opened it.

“No, no,” the girl said. “I don’t want to go in there. I don’t-”

“Better get used to it,” Vance said to her. “It all gets interesting from here.”

He picked her up again and kicked the door open, flicking on the one light. Many of his old tools were still on the walls. It was dark and damp, with cobwebs all over.

He opened the storage hut.

“No, no, please,” she begged, shaking her head. “What are you doing? Don’t. Not in there…”

“What’d you think, you were here on vacation?” Vance grabbed her wrists and undid the cuffs.

Pretty as a picture, he recalled. The horse and rider coming around. The beating of its hooves. The rider leaning. Toward the jump. The graceful bunching of the muscles in the animal’s hind legs, then leaping, clearing, horse and rider frozen momentarily in midair. Then the landing on its forelegs, without missing a stride.

“What are you doing? What are you staring at?” she asked, trembling.

Pretty as a picture, right?

Vance was all set to throw her into the dark compartment, when that gave him an idea.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Carrie and I drove from the gun shop into the center of town, where we got a coffee and sat in the small green off the main street, under a stone pillar commemorating the town’s World War II dead. It was a warm afternoon. A couple of kids were riding their bikes, BMX-style, up and down the stone steps. A woman on a nearby bench was feeding a few birds. All around the square and main street was the languorous still-life of the South.

The sudden proof Carrie had just gotten made me both elated and a little scared. Now I had to turn myself in. That was our agreement. I had to hand myself over to the very people who’d been trying to kill me just the other day. Back in handcuffs probably and in a jail cell. Interrogated in a room, hoping I could convince them, probably the FBI, that they had to hide that I was innocent. Fending off all the media frenzy I knew would follow.

Not even the Jacksonville police could doubt it now.

“So what do you say,” Carrie asked, holding her phone. “You ready to do this now?”

“Yes.” I nodded, tossing her a halfhearted smile. Then: “No. Listen, Carrie, I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you enough for what you’ve done. Without you, I would have driven away from Fellows’s house, not even knowing it was where the plate was from. And I wouldn’t have known a thing about Hofer. I’d still be driving around, confused and panic-stricken.”

“You found Fellows yourself. And you would have found Hofer. Let’s just say it was a team effort.” But I could see the sense of satisfaction on her face too. “So I’m going to call Jack. We’re going to explain it to him. From the start. I’m going to ask him to send a team, maybe out of the Charlotte office. We can arrange to meet somewhere neutral. Maybe in the lobby of that motel over there…” She pointed toward a Comfort Inn. “Or maybe outside of town, so it doesn’t create a stir.”

“We can’t create a stir, Carrie.”

“Or get the local police all involved. That’s just what we need, right?”

“Then you can go back to your life…” I said. “Community outreach.”

She looked at me. “I made a decision. I think I’m gonna put in for something else. Maybe a detective’s shield. It’s what I wanted to do all along, I just put it aside while Rick finished up school and then got called up in the reserves… What do you think? You think I’ve got the goods?”

“I think you’ve got all the goods,” I said, unable to stop myself from smiling.

“If the JSO doesn’t toss me in jail, just on principle… You might well get out first.”

“Look, when this is over…” I didn’t know quite how to say it. “I’d like it very much if… if we could…”

“Still pushing for a client?” Carrie’s blue eyes twinkled playfully.

“No, that’s not what I meant. I…”

She stopped me. I saw my own feeling reflected in her expression. “I know what you meant, Doctor…”

“Henry.”

“Henry.” She shrugged and smiled, this time, from the heart, and I felt my whole being-the one that had been alone and in the dark, separated from any connection for the longest time-light up like a warm lamp had just gone on. She said, “I hope you get your daughter back, Henry. I’d like to meet her when you do.”

“I’d like that too.”

“I’m going to call now…”

“Okay…” I exhaled a breath and nodded.

Carrie shrugged. “This is either going to be one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done-or one of the dumbest. Here goes.”

She smiled, punching in her brother’s number. We both waited with a bit of anxiousness for him to answer. I know I surely did. Carrie looked at me, this time not turning away.

Then I heard someone pick up and Carrie went, “Jack.”

She cleared her throat. “Jack, I have something to tell you… Yes, I’m okay. I’m in Mount Holly, North Carolina- it’s about twenty miles out of Charlotte. And I have Dr. Henry Steadman with me. I want you to know-he didn’t have anything to do with the crimes he’s been accused of and we now have the evidence to prove it. He’s ready to turn himself in. But before you do anything, you have to listen…”

I drew an anxious breath and looked past her, toward the main street of the small town where we had left Carrie’s Prius, as I went over in my mind what I was going to say.

My thoughts suddenly took the oddest turn, and I found myself recalling images from my marriage with Liz. How I had failed to keep it together. Regardless of whose fault it was. How I had just drifted ever since. Never quite put to the test. But now… I looked at Carrie. She curled her hair around her ear as she went on with her brother. Now I was somehow being given a second chance. How life does that. How it provides many chances. Chances to redeem yourself. How-

Suddenly a phone rang in my pocket. Not my cell. One of my prepaids!

Hofer!

I pulled it out while Carrie was on the line with her brother. I saw Hallie’s number.

“Hallie?” I gasped.

“Hey, Doc,” I heard Hofer reply.

My blood instantly heated, just hearing his voice. “Where’s my daughter?” I barked at him-though in some deep place in my heart, I already knew.

“Oh, sorry, Doc,” Hofer said, sighing, “she’s no longer here.”

Chapter Fifty-Six