A Face at the Window (25 page)

Pulling them on hurt like hell, but the next thing she knew she was wearing a bunch of them. She found the switchblade she'd put aside and slipped it into a sweater pocket, just in case.

Next,
Eat something more,
a voice in her head commanded. And for the first time it wasn't Jody's. It was her own.
Do the right thing, the smart thing,
she instructed herself, whether she felt like it or not, so that with any luck she could end up at home, warm and safe instead of alone out here bleeding and crying.

Her own voice…Helen might have spent a little more time wondering at this, but instead located chocolate pieces, fig bars, and a can of syrupy fruit with a pull top, in one of the kitchen cabinets. She didn't feel hungry, but she put them into her mouth one after another nevertheless, mushing them around in there with sips of warm tea.

After that, she found a switch that kept the yard lights on, bashed the lock off the shed with the splitting wedge—this took a
long time, and it hurt—and got the kayaks unlocked. She found herself a life jacket that fit, put it on, and pulled the straps tight around her chest.

Finally she dragged one of the kayaks to the dock and was about to push it in when the first nauseating wave of dizziness washed over her. Dropping to her knees, she splashed lake water onto her face. But that brought on chills and when she opened her eyes again, her mouth was bleeding onto the dock's pale wood.

Suddenly the blinking red light on the other side of the lake looked very far away, the sky unimaginably dark and uncaring overhead and the water so cold.

But she could do it. She could. And she had to. There were houses on the road over there, and the people in them would help her.

And…
Forget about Jody for a minute,
she told herself, this new thought more amazing to her than any before.
Jody's who you want. But right now, he's not who you need.
When she got back to Eastport, she decided very firmly for herself, it was Bob Arnold she needed to find, to tell him who the men who'd taken Lee away were: what they looked like, the kind of car they drove, and…

And where they were going. The memory popped suddenly into her head as if triggered by the splash of cold lake water. A big cliff hanging way out over the water…

Bridge to nowhere, the other guy had replied, not caring if she heard. They'd planned for her to be dead. But—

I know that place,
she thought. The scariest, most dangerous spot on the island…
That's where they're going.
Fresh urgency seized her; grimly she shoved the kayak into the water.

If she just kept her eyes on the red beacon and paddled, she would be all right. Not comfortable; not for a while, yet. But…

Eyes on the prize,
Jody would've told her. But somehow what Jody would say wasn't important anymore.

Which, she understood now, was what he had wanted all along.
Because I can say it. I can say it myself.

Grabbing the paddle she swung herself off the dock and into the kayak's seat, stuck the paddle's blade into the water—

Her head jerked back suddenly, very hard. Such anguish as she had never before experienced nor even imagined shot through her jaw. Something yanked her head around and up.

A man crouched on the dock. Pale hair, squinty eyes, and a walrus mustache were all she could see of him. He had a battery lantern in one hand and her long braid wrapped around the other hand like a dog's leash.

"What the hell d'you think you're doing?" he demanded, and Helen tried to answer. She opened her mouth, sucked in a breath, and formed words, ready and eager to speak them. But then…she couldn't help it, she tried, but she really couldn't— her jaw locked up with a horrible, agonizing
crunch!
and she passed out.

Afterward, when rough
hands had come out of the darkness to seize Jake and snatch the little gun and the flashlight away from her, she understood why Pierce hadn't mentioned the screaming on the phone until he had to do it, to make his point.

It was because he couldn't bear to. Her, either; it was what had brought them both out here, she realized as the men hustled her roughly along. To do something about it; anything.

Anything at all.
Stupid,
she berated herself bitterly.

But it was too late for that, too. Night-vision goggles on thick, black rubber straps obscured the men's faces. They passed Pierce's body lying spread-eagled on the driveway, motionless.

Blood stained the gravel. Maybe he'd seen them heading away from the house and decided to forget about ambushing them, just get in there while he had the chance. It was what she'd have done, too, found Helen and Lee if she could and rescued them.

If they were there. But the men must've turned and spotted him. Craning her neck, she gazed back as they pushed and pulled her up the steps—pausing to search her pockets again, find her phone, and hurl it into the woods—and into the house.

"Are you going to let me help him?" she demanded.

Inside, the place smelled of cooking and cordite. "Or is it going to be murder you both end up getting charged with on top of everything else?"

No Lee in sight anywhere; no Helen, either. And no Campbell, or anyway not as far as she could tell…Her knees trembled, and the gun smell in here was very worrisome. But people did scary things all the time, she reminded herself; Wade climbing the rope ladder, Ellie on an airplane, Bella marrying Jake's dad.

Sam not drinking. And if she behaved like a victim, these guys would turn her into one; she could smell the sour, sweaty reek of casual violence coming off them in waves.

"He'll die. Is that what you want? So far it's been fun and games, a sharp lawyer could bargain it down for you, but—"

"Shut the freak up." The harsh, slightly nasal Jersey accent came from behind her; she turned.

The second man was small, compactly built, with dark, curly hair, red lips, and a cruelly amused expression on a face that could've been handsome if it weren't so depraved, as if something inside him were deeply and permanently broken, human-being-wise.

He wore designer jeans, a white T-shirt with blood spattered
on it, and a black leather jacket that was a half-size too big for him and a little too shiny. Fat gold chains hung around his neck, and he had a gun.

Two of them, actually. Her own, and—"I could shoot you right now, you know that?" he smirked.

The gun he had was a snub-nosed .38-caliber Police Special; Wade had one in his shop. It crossed her mind fleetingly that not being scared of guns was a point in her favor.

A slim point. "I'm supposed to meet Campbell," she said. "So where is he?" But the guy wasn't listening.

"Why couldn't you just follow the freakin’ instructions?" he demanded peevishly. "What, it wasn't simple enough? The ‘alone’ part? But no, you had to bring somebody. Dumb freakin’ broad."

"Marky, maybe we should try helping—" the tall one began nervously.

"Shut up!" yelled Marky. "What're you, a freakin’ Red Cross nurse now? Who cares about him?"

He turned back to Jake. "Get in there," he said, waving her down a short hall.

At the entrance to the living area she paused. It ran almost the length of the house, with sliding glass doors facing where the water must be on the long side, a fireplace and sitting area at one end, to the right, and the dining area at the other.

One of the long glass door panels was broken, glass pellets scattered on the shiny prefinished wooden floor nearby. It was the first broken thing she'd seen here; after her own old house, the smooth unmarred surfaces and level floors in this one seemed almost too perfect to be real.

No expense had been spared, she saw by the terra-cotta tile and brushed aluminum appliances past the archway leading into the kitchen. And although the owners only came here in one season,
the house had been built to be livable in all four, so the glass doors had storm sliders, one closed to cover the broken section.

"Sit," Marky ordered coldly. The taller one stood watching from the kitchen archway, still looking frightened.

He's not into this,
she thought.
Or…no, somethings wrong. He doesn't want to say what it is. Something Marky doesn't—

In the kitchen a cabinet door edged silently open. Bottom cabinet on the right…Jake's heart stopped.
Please, let it be—

"Aunty Jake!" yelled Lee, tumbling out of the cabinet. As Lee scrambled toward her, the taller guy's face went slack with relief. Then the child was in her arms, warm and real and…

Alive,
she thought gratefully as Lee's arms clasped tightly around her neck. "Hi, baby," she whispered, breathing in the warm sweet scent of the child's hair and trying not to weep. "I'm so glad to see you. Are you okay?"

Lee seemed uninjured, and her silky blond head nodded j
yes.
But: "I losted my dolly," she whimpered desolately. "And I losted Aunty Helen…"

"Ssh, that's okay. I found your doll; it's at home.
You
can have her as soon as we get there. And we'll find Aunt Helen, too," Jake promised, wondering if it was true.

Across the room, the one the taller guy called Marky turned impatiently to sorting among some equipment on the dining table. The goggles they'd worn, a spotting scope, a cell phone, and … a tape machine. A small, old-fashioned…

An old cassette machine; seeing it, she knew how she'd been tricked.
That scream…

Faked. Lee snuggled closer in her arms as, abandoning the gear, Marky began yanking the chain-switch of a floor lamp that stood near the table, harder each time but without any result.

The tall guy in the kitchen watched anxiously. He was in his early twenties, still wearing the Jersey Devils jacket she'd seen in
the VCR tape over a sweatshirt and dungarees, with a long, sallow face and a big, beaky nose that he hadn't yet quite grown into. His arm was bleeding, inexpertly bandaged with what looked like a torn strip of sheet.

"I can fix that lamp," she said, nodding her head at the one Marky fumed over. Because she needed an angle, any angle at all, and anyway, it would help her to be working on something. Just…

It just would, that was all. "Marky. Listen up a minute. She says she can—" ventured the taller guy.

"Oh, yeah?" Marky glared. "Get over here, then," he ordered belligerently "You, too," he added to the tall one.
"Anthony,"
he added sarcastically.

Go with what you know,
said Ellie White softly in Jake's head. Ellie, Lee's mother and Jake's dearest friend…

Ellie, sweet and delicate as a fairy-tale princess on the outside, was tough as tree bark when push came to shove. As it had now, Jake thought; if she put Lee down on one of the sofas, she decided, when she got near Marky with that lamp in her hands she could swing it.

"I'll hold the kid," said Anthony, stepping forward to lift Lee from Jake's arms. "Don't," he added in lower tones, "make any of this worse." His gaze met hers impassively.

Damn. "Do you have any tools?" she asked. "A screwdriver or something?"

Marky spoke again. "Oh, yeah. We got the freakin’ Snap-on tools guy comin’ in here twice a week. What are you, stupid?"

He checked his wristwatch, a large, many-dialed monstrosity that would've looked more like a Rolex if the gold paint around the bezel hadn't been wearing off. "Okay, let ‘er fix the damn thing," he told Anthony. "But that's it. When the time comes…"

He looked straight at her, drew a finger across his throat. "That's it. I guess that's why they call it a freakin’ deadline."

He chuckled, a dry, unpleasant sound like sharp knives clattering together in a drawer.

Yeah. Maybe that's why,
she thought.

A few minutes
later she had the lamp unplugged and the bulb removed. It was a high intensity fluorescent bulb, its slender tube wound in a spiral shape; staring at it, she wondered for a dazed instant if wiring fluorescent fixtures might be different somehow.

But no. The bulbs were interchangeable so the wiring scheme must be, too. Anthony produced an imitation Swiss Army knife with a minuscule screwdriver attachment and grudg ingly handed it over; she used the flimsy nippers on it to seize and unscrew the nut at the base of the bulb receptacle while Anthony went outdoors. In his absence she considered gripping the knife handle in her fist and plunging the screwdriver's blade into Marky, if she got the chance. A fast sideways punch should do it

But he kept dancing out of range. "Come on," he demanded, stepping briefly nearer to peer over her shoulder. "What's the problem? I thought you said…"

He didn't need the lamp. It just made him angry when things wouldn't do what he wanted them to. Objects, people—they were all the same to him; they obeyed or he destroyed them. She'd met his type often, back in the city, where very few of her money-management clients had resembled Mother Teresa.

Mostly they'd been more like Marky, but with better clothes and more expensive haircuts. And a little better impulse control, maybe. With the bulb receptacle pulled apart she took the brass
wire off one of the tiny screws in the switch unit; the silvery wire had already separated from the other screw.

So that was the problem: a broken circuit in the switch. But as she'd hoped, it was easily repaired; she twisted each wire's strands together tightly, then bent a small hook into the end of each one, pulled on the switch's chain again to make sure there were no problems there. Finally she hooked the wires back over their own screws again, brass to brass and silver to silver. She was screwing the bulb's receptacle back onto the lamp base and tightening the lock nut once more when Anthony returned, raising his hands in a What-can-I-do? gesture at Marky's querying glance.

"Freakin’ guy," Anthony said, and she took this to mean that Jody Pierce was refusing to die. So there was hope; if she could get that cell phone, or if she could put even one of these guys out of action…

"Awright," Marky said disgustedly, with the air of someone stepping manfully up to a chore no one else had the stomach for. He pulled the gun from his inside jacket pocket. "Lemme go out there, then, for freak's sake. I'll take care of—"