I try to reach for the gun but my hand doesn’t want to move. I try again, and it starts moving.
Zane says, “Which kid do you want me to kill first, Holly?”
“Don’t you know … what goes around … comes around?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“If you send it”—grasping onto the Kimber, holding it tight—“you better duck.”
And I sit up, raising my arm, aiming the gun at Zane—who’s now standing there with David in front of him, the barrel of his own gun pressed against David’s head.
“You waited too long,” Zane says. “You forced me to pick for you.”
David is struggling to get out of Zane’s grip, his eyes wide and full of tears.
I stare back at him, just stare, hoping that my lesson from yesterday is still fresh in his mind. Hoping that he’ll stop struggling. Hoping that he’ll go completely still and then bring his elbow back and smash it into Zane’s crotch.
“Say goodbye, Holly,” Zane says, cocking the hammer back, and I realize that I’m being unfair, expecting David to be a hero when he’s just a scared six-year-old boy. I’m his nanny, and like any nanny, it’s my job to take care of him.
So I say, “Goodbye,” and place two bullets between Zane’s eyes.
Part Four
Tu Tienes Suerte Perra
Sixty-Six
By the time I make the turn down Arbor Drive, it’s almost seven o’clock and the light of the morning sun is crisscrossed by all the branches towering over the street. The circus of vehicles in front of the Hadden residence is gone, all except two unmarked cars taking up the driveway. I’m forced to park along the street, in another stolen hot-wired car, a Toyota Corolla that I had no choice but to grab because the police had converged on the other car and the van two blocks away by the time we came out of the alley.
David and Casey are in the back, David with his arms wrapped tight around his sister, who has dozed off. Now, as I stop the car, turn off the engine, David nudges her awake.
She opens her eyes, blinks, looks around. I watch her from the rearview mirror, rubbing her eyes, and then she looks out the window and her face lights up and she shouts, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”
Marilyn Hadden is coming out the front door, hurrying down the porch steps and sprinting across the lawn. She must have been waiting and watching all night, she looks so tired.
But she isn’t alone.
Four men follow her, soldiers, their weapons drawn.
When Marilyn reaches the car, she doesn’t put on the brakes; she smacks into the side, definitely hurting something, but she doesn’t show it, opening the back door, saying, “Oh my babies, my babies, are you okay?” leaning in and kissing Casey on the forehead, then David, then Casey again.
I have my door halfway open by the time the soldiers arrive. Their weapons are aimed now, right at me, and one of them tells me to freeze, show my hands, slowly get out of the vehicle.
I do as he says, and once I’m out of the car, one of the soldiers pushes me down on the hood. Pain flares from my broken rib. My arms are yanked behind my back and handcuffs are snapped around my wrists and then one of them starts frisking me and I’m barely aware of Marilyn talking to the children and the children crying, and I’m barely aware that some people along the street have stepped out onto their porches to see what the fuss is about, and then I hear Walter’s voice:
“Let her go.”
The hands frisking me pause, wait a moment, then disappear.
“Take those cuffs off her, too.”
“But sir—”
“Do it now.”
The cuffs are taken off, my hands set free, but still I don’t move. I stay on the hood of the stolen car, watching as Sylvia rushes across the yard, meeting Marilyn and the children. Marilyn holding Casey with one arm while she grips David’s hand with the other, David looking over his shoulder at me every few seconds, Casey not taking her eyes off me at all.
“Go back in the house.”
“Sir—”
“Don’t make me tell you again.”
When the four soldiers have left us, Walter tells me to stand up. I don’t. Instead, I ask him a question.
“How hard did you try to get them back?”
“What?”
I push off the hood, turn to face him. “Casey and David—how hard did you try to get them back?”
He’s wearing his uniform, only it looks worn, just like his face and eyes, the man having aged more than ever since the last time I saw him.
“They’re my children,” he says.
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“You don’t understand. I was powerless. My hands weren’t tied on this. They were chopped off. I was up all night making calls, begging and pleading …”
“They were just going to let them die, weren’t they.” I don’t bother making it a question.
Walter can’t look at me, staring at something over my shoulder. “Our government doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”
“That’s a sorry excuse.”
His old eyes shift to meet mine. In a voice barely a whisper, he says, “Thank you.”
“Nova’s dead, you know.”
“What?” A whiteness spreading across his face.
“His pickup went over the Woodrow Wilson.”
“That was him? If that was Nova, he’s not dead.”
My legs start to shake. “What … what are you saying?”
“I heard about the chase on 495 last night. I heard about the driver of the pickup that went over the bridge too, how they got him out of the water and took him into custody.” He shakes his head. “It never once crossed my mind that it was Nova.”
“So he’s alive.”
“Yes.”
“And they arrested him.”
Walter nods.
“What are you going to do about it?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Walter, Nova didn’t have to do what he did. I never could have done it without him.”
Looking at whatever’s over my shoulder again, Walter says, “I know.”
“And?”
“And I’ll take care of it.”
I shake my head and glance at the house, then glance at all the houses down
