The other one hoisted Kylie into her arms.
'Is he hurting you, poor thing?' she said, wiping the girl's tears with a red polka-dotted handkerchief. Lee stared at the red dots, imagining them to be drops of blood. Circular blood spatter patterns indicate dripping as opposed to flung splatter.
The other woman looked as if she was about to hit Lee again. She was tall and hefty, with shoulders like a linebacker and a helmet of thick, gray-streaked hair. Lee backed away from her, bumping his ribs painfully against a pay phone on the wall.
'I'm her uncle,' he said to the woman holding Kylie. She was shorter than her friend, but also thickly built, with fat wrists and ankles, and a plump, dimpled double chin. Both women were wearing the kind of polyester pantsuits only seen on out-of-towners. The shorter one's was geranium red. The linebacker's was marigold orange.
'You may be her uncle, but that doesn't give you the right to engage in child abuse!' the taller one said, squaring off again as if just waiting for an excuse to hit him again.
'It's okay,' Kylie said.
'The victim always protects the abuser,' the shorter one said, folding her flabby forearms over her formless bosom.
'He was just upset because he didn't want me to disappear like my mommy,' Kylie said.
Both women stared at her.
'What?' one said.
Lee considered telling them about his work with the NYPD, but since he had no badge and no gun, felt it would be unconvincing. Instead, he explained about his sister's disappearance.
'Just leave us alone, please,' he begged.
With a sniff, the polyestered protectors of justice relented, albeit reluctantly, and retreated back to the dining room, leaving Lee and Kylie alone in the hallway.
'Look, I'm sorry I got upset,' he said to her. 'It's just-'
'I know,' Kylie replied. 'Fiona says when you act strange it's because of Mommy.'
And what's her excuse when she acts strange? he thought, but said nothing.
'When do you think she'll come back?' Kylie asked.
Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact, as though she were asking when her mother would return from the grocery store. The question put Lee in an impossible position. If he answered it, he would be lying. But if he disagreed with the premise-that his sister was still alive-he would be going up against his mother. Kylie was much too young to be burdened with the disagreement between him and Fiona. He also would be doing his best to shred any lingering hope that Laura could still be alive and might return some day. He bit his lip and took the coward's way out.
'Tell you what, Kylie, why don't we go back in and see if we can catch the last part of the show?'
Kylie took his hand in hers.
'I know why you were being weird. You didn't want to lose me-right, Uncle Lee?' she said as they passed a grinning skeleton hanging on the wall. The skeleton wore a crimson fez and a matching bow tie.
He felt his throat thicken. 'That's right. I didn't want to lose you.'
Chapter Forty-two
When they left the restaurant, there was no sign of the plainclothes officer who had been tailing him. Lee figured his shift had ended and the cop who was supposed to relieve him hadn't shown up. He should have called it in, but he was glad to be alone for a change. He drove along the dark country lanes in rural New Jersey as Kylie slept in the backseat. He had promised his mother to bring her back that night so she could go to a school fair the next day. It was a long drive to make at night, but he didn't mind. It gave him a chance to think.
The dark sedan was upon him before he registered what was happening. It seemed to come out of nowhere, its headlights on full high beams, so close behind his car that they reflected into his rearview mirror, blinding him. At first he thought it was his surveillance protection, catching up to him, but when the driver remained close, high beams on full, he realized it wasn't a cop behind him.
'Christ, what is it with these people?' he muttered as he adjusted the mirror.
His first thought was to pull over and let the car pass him, but that thought was shaken out of his head when he felt the jolt. The sickening realization came instantly: the other car had hit him.
There was no doubt in his mind that it was intentional.
His hands gripped the steering wheel tighter, squeezing it hard as sweat oozed from his palms.
'Oh, God,' he said under his breath. 'Goddamn it.' This time it was more of a prayer than a curse.
The car hit him again-harder this time. He heard the crunch as the bumpers met, metal against metal.
In the backseat, Kylie stirred and woke.
'Uncle Lee? Are we there yet?'
He took a deep breath and tried to will the panic out of his voice.
'No, honey-go back to sleep.'
Another bump, this time sending his car into the opposite lane, so that he had to fight to control it.
Kylie's voice came from the backseat, wide awake now, sounding as panicked as he felt. 'Uncle Lee, what's going on?'
He had no idea what to say to her, how to explain that there was someone trying to kill them both.
'Go back to sleep, okay? Everything's going to be fine.'
Even as he said the words he could feel how hollow they were. Everything wasn't going to be fine.
The headlights glared into his side mirror, the beams bouncing back into his face. He squinted and rolled down the window, pushing the mirror away. A blast of cold air hit his face. He heard the engine behind him rev, and braced himself for another jolt. Instead, the headlights disappeared, and he saw the car pull up next to him. The two-lane road twisted and wound through the Jersey countryside, the solid double yellow line indicating that passing was forbidden. Even at this time of night, he knew, this was suicidal behavior. There was no way for the other driver to see an oncoming car before it was too late.
'Jesus,' he said under his breath. His leg trembling, he rammed his foot down hard on the accelerator. The little Honda jerked and shifted into first gear, spurting ahead of the car next to him.
'Uncle Lee,' Kylie whimpered, 'what's happening?'
'There's a crazy driver following us,' he replied, trying to sound casual. 'Maybe he's drunk or something.'
This was a route he had driven countless times, from the day he got his license at the age of sixteen, and he knew every twist and turn in the road. He had often joked that he could drive it in his sleep. It was the one advantage he had over his unknown pursuer, and he prayed that it would count for something now. If the other driver managed to pull in front of him, Lee knew, he could almost certainly force Lee to stop. If Lee attempted to pass him, he could force Lee off the road.
He pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The Honda's engine revved, and the car pulled ahead of his pursuer. The Honda's engine was small but efficient, and had good pickup speed. Lee offered a silent prayer of thanks to Japanese engineering.
The headlights reappeared behind him once again, and he heard the other car's engine gun as its headlights got closer. He prayed that the other car was not a more powerful machine than his four-cylinder rental Honda.
The road lay in front of him, a dark, curling ribbon of concrete. Ahead of him loomed McGill's Hill, curved as the back of a whale, barely visible in the darkness.
He gripped the steering wheel and leaned forward.
'Okay, you bastard,' he muttered, 'let's see how you like this.'
With an abrupt twist of the wheel, he pulled off the road and headed for the stream at the bottom of the hill, his headlights on full beam. The car shuddered and shook as it hit the uneven ground, bumping and jerking along the frozen earth. He could hear Kylie whimpering in the backseat, but he gritted his teeth and drove on at a steady speed. Seeing the frozen stream-shallow enough to be frozen clear through, he knew from experience-he steered the car toward it.
