I took another step forward. In response, she backed away toward the tree across the stream.
“Jason?” I asked. “Where’s Jason?
My God, was he shot?
”
As I stared frantically under the tree toward where I’d last seen Jason, Kate scrambled under it, trying to get away from me. I lurched after her, rising on the other side. Fearful that I’d see Jason’s body blown apart from Petey’s last shotgun blast, I breathed out in relief when I found him standing next to the stream.
He threw a rock.
It struck my chest, but I was far beyond pain. All I wanted was to get him out of there.
“It’s okay, Jason. You’ve got nothing to be afraid of now.”
I took a step toward him. Covered with blood, singed by the fire, I must have looked indistinguishable from Petey.
He scrambled up the bank and into the forest.
Off balance from my injuries, I struggled after him. Heat and smoke almost succeeded in pushing me back as I stumbled through the underbrush.
I saw bright flickers within the smoke. The heat intensified. A tree exploded into flames. A wall of fire reached bushes.
“Jason!” Smoke clogged my throat. I bent over, coughing, forced myself to straighten, and veered past more trees.
The wind cleared the smoke for an instant. Ahead, Jason was blocked by the approaching fire. He turned, desperate to run from it, then stopped when he saw me. I must have been more threatening than another wall of fire. He dodged to my left and raced toward an opening in the blaze. As I leapt, the wind hurled flames toward him. I knocked him down an instant before a fiery gust flashed above our sprawled bodies. With the remaining strength in my wounded arm, I dragged him back from the flames. He kicked and hit me. Then Kate was hitting me. “Let him go!” she screamed.
The three of us tumbled down the bank and landed in the water. They kept hitting and kicking, but I didn’t resist. Their punches weakened. Finally, they collapsed, staring at me, their gaunt chests rising and falling.
“I love you,” I said.
They stared.
Something slowly changed focus in their eyes, as if they dimly remembered a time when those words had been familiar.
“Stay here. There’s something I have to do,” I managed to say.
As the fire approached the top of the bank, I splashed water over me. Then I ducked under the tree that spanned the stream. I came to where Petey lay. His body was almost totally covered with blood from the number of times he’d been shot.
But that wasn’t good enough. He’d come back once. I needed to be absolutely certain that he was dead, that he could never come back again, not even in my nightmares.
I grabbed his feet, but my injured arms had stiffened too much, causing too much pain for me to drag him up the bank. I tried as hard as I could but was about to give up, when Kate’s hands came into view. I looked at her, startled, but she didn’t say a word, just helped me tug Petey up the slope.
We threw him toward the fire. His corpse burst into flames. Only then did we stumble back down to the stream. At the bottom, Kate fell, but she wouldn’t let me touch her to help her get up. Keeping a wary distance from me, she and Jason ran.
The three of us were in a hospital for quite a while. The police and the district attorney questioned me, demanding to know why I hadn’t let the authorities go after Petey. I did my best to tell them that events had overtaken me. How could I explain that I was afraid the police would have gotten Kate and Jason killed instead of saving them? Despite my repeated denials, they insisted that my motive had been rage, that I’d been determined to get even with Petey.
So I had to appear before a grand jury, and the way my attorney explained it to me, I could have been charged with what amounted to taking the law into my own hands. But I doubt there was a person on the jury who, after looking at my broken arm in a sling and the burns on my face, didn’t think that I’d gone through enough. Certainly Kate and Jason had gone through plenty. Their eyes had the haunted expression of war refugees.
It took three weeks before we were allowed to leave. I paid someone to drive the Volvo back to Denver while Kate, Jason, and I flew home from Columbus. Our friends welcomed us back. They phoned. They visited. They had a party for us. We thanked them. But the truth was, we were too traumatized to be sociable. Smiles and small talk were difficult to manage, and as for “large talk,” when we were asked details about what had happened, we weren’t ready to discuss it yet. After a while, the newness of our return wore off. The phone calls, visits, and invitations declined. Finally, we were left to ourselves.
Jason remained so silent that the parents of his friends didn’t feel comfortable having him around their children. For her part, Kate got nervous whenever she had to leave the house. She finally gave up trying to do so. The only good thing was, as soon as I shaved my beard, as soon as the drugs wore off and Kate and Jason distinguished me from Petey, they no longer considered me a threat, although I’m always careful to let them see when I’m going to touch them.
I’ve tried to be honest with myself. I’ve done my best to understand what happened, hoping to adjust to it. But sometimes I wonder if it’s
possible
to adjust to what Petey … Lester … did to us. Odd how I struggled so hard to deny that Petey was Lester and now I accept that the two were the same. My brother died a long time ago. Because of
me
.
Sometimes when Kate and Jason aren’t aware of it, I study them, trying to decide if they’re getting better. Without being obvious, I try to see beyond their eyes. I look in the mirror and try to see beyond my own. Do we carry darkness in us?
Payne came over the other day, a welcome visitor.
I asked him about his wife. “Is she well? What was the result of the biopsy?”
“The lump on her breast turned out to be a cyst, thank God.”
Only then did I realize that I’d been holding my breath. “I’m glad to hear good things can happen,” I said.
In the backyard, Payne eased his weight onto the chaise lounge where Petey had sat the previous year, peering up at our bedroom window.
Kate brought us two glasses of iced tea.
We pretended not to notice that her hands shook and the ice rattled.
“Thanks,” I said.
When I touched her shoulder, she actually smiled.
Payne watched her return to the house. “Has she been seeing anyone?”
“A psychiatrist? Yes,” I said. “All three of us have.”
“Is it doing any good?”
“My own guy has me writing a journal, describing what happened and how I feel about it. I talk to him about it once a week. Is it doing any good?” I shrugged. “He claims that it is but says that I don’t have the objectivity to know it yet. He also says that because the trauma we went through lasted a long time, it isn’t reasonable to expect to get over it quickly.”
“Makes sense.”
“Kate went into the supermarket all by herself today.”
Payne looked puzzled.
“It’s a big step,” I explained. “She has trouble being near crowds and strangers.”
“What about
you
? Do you plan to go back to work?”
“I’m going to have to soon,” I answered. “Our insurance doesn’t cover all the medical expenses. Certainly not the
legal
expenses.”
“But how are you feeling? Are you
ready
to go back to work?”
I sipped my iced tea and didn’t answer.
“When I was with the Bureau, I had to shoot somebody,” Payne said.
“Kill him?”
He concentrated on his glass. “I got shot in the process. Three months medical leave. A lot of counseling. I think I told you that’s when I put on all this weight and left the Bureau. It took me a long time to feel normal again.”
“
Normal
’s a complicated word. I wonder if I
can
feel normal again. In my previous life, it’s like I was blundering around in a world of hurt but was too stupid to realize it.”
“And now?”
“I think Kate’s right to be careful of what’s going on around her. Anything can happen. One moment, I was standing on a ridge, admiring the scenery. The next moment, my brother shoved me into a gorge.”
“Caution’s a virtue.”
“So I’ve learned. You asked me if I planned to go back to work. I
am
at work.”
“Oh?” Payne studied me.
“Taking care of my family. It’s my job to love Kate and Jason as hard as I can, to thank God for every moment I have with them, to hold them and cherish them and do my damnedest to keep them safe.”
Payne’s concentration was powerful. “You know what, Mr. Denning?”
“Please call me Brad.”
“The more I get to know you, the better I like you.”
More David Morrell!
Please turn this page for a preview of
T
HE
P
ROTECTOR
available in May 2003.
Cavanaugh got out of the taxi at Rockefeller Center, glanced down at the United Nations flags around the outdoor restaurant in the Lower Plaza, went through the front of Brookstone’s, and exited through the back, glancing behind him to make sure no one had followed him through the store. Two indirectly taken, crowded blocks later, he reached Fifty—fourth Street and the Avenue of the Americas, entering the Warwick Hotel. The Manhattan landmark had recently been renovated, but its marble and dark wood lobby still evoked tradition and character.
Cavanaugh turned to the left and entered the hotel’s quiet bar, where an attractive woman with green eyes and an intriguing expression sat with her back to the wall at a corner table. He approved of her choice of location: against an inside wall, away from the bar’s numerous windows. Not that he believed she was in any danger. Even so, like the roundabout route he’d taken to get to the Warwick, it was always good to maintain precautions. If there’d been any risk, he wouldn’t have let her appear in public in the first place.
Her name was Jamie Travers, and until recently, she’d lived in seclusion with him at a ranch in the mountains near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from where he periodically set out on security assignments, taking care that her weapons training was up—to—date and that a few colleagues in need of R and R were there to watch over her when he had to go away. Two years earlier, she had testified about a gangland killing she’d witnessed. The mob boss who’d gone to prison had put out a contract against her. Twice, despite police protection, she’d nearly been killed, prompting Cavanaugh, who admired her determination, to step in and arrange for her to disappear. The contract had finally ended when the man who’d ordered it had choked to death while eating spaghetti and meat balls in a federal prison. Despite the seeming innocence of the mob boss’s death, Jamie had been convinced that Cavanaugh had something to do with it, but he continued to deny any involvement, even though he’d once told her that the only way to stop the mob boss from being a threat was to kill him. “Kismet,” was all Cavanaugh would say about the reportedly accidental death. Now they continued to base their lives in Wyoming, but for its beauty, not its seclusion.
Jamie had shoulder—length brunette hair that looked as casual and comfortable as the attractive black slacks and turquoise blouse she wore. Admiring, Cavanaugh moved a chair so he could sit in the corner with her. The location allowed him to survey both entrances to the room as well as the people passing beyond the windows along Fifty—fourth Street and the Avenue of the Americas.
“What are you drinking?” he asked.
“Perrier and lime.”
Cavanaugh tasted it, savoring the lime. “How was your afternoon? Enjoying being a tourist?”
“Love it. I haven’t been to the Museum of Modern Art in years. It was like seeing an old friend. And how was your afternoon?”
Cavanaugh explained why Duncan had wanted to see him.
“You accepted another assignment?” Jamie looked surprised.
“We planned to head home the day after tomorrow, so this won’t interfere with much, especially since you’re getting together with your mother again tomorrow. I didn’t think you’d mind going back to the ranch ahead of me. I’ll join you in a week.”
“But you’re barely healed from the last job you did.”
“This one’s easy.”
“That’s what you said the last time.”
“And the money’s good.”
“I’ve got more than enough money for both of us,” Jamie said.
Cavanaugh nodded. His protective agent’s income allowed them to stay at the Warwick, which was comfortable without being palatial. But if they’d used Jamie’s money, which came from the sale of a promising dot—com company she’d founded during the Internet frenzy of the 1999s, they’d have stayed in a master suite at the Plaza or, at the very least, the St. Regis.
“Why don’t you let me take care of you?” she asked.
“Foolish male pride.”
“You said it—I didn’t.”
Cavanaugh shrugged. “People need protecting.”
“And that’s what you are—a protector. I shouldn’t have bothered asking.”
She hooked her arm around his. “So what makes this job so easy?”
“The client doesn’t want anybody to shield him.”
“Oh?” Jamie looked surprised again. “What does he want?”
“The same as
you
did. To disappear.”
Cavanaugh got out of the car, a two—year—old Taurus that International Risk Management had supplied him. Apart from its special modifications, including a race—car engine and a suspension to match, it had been chosen because its dusty dark blue color and ubiquitous design made it nondescript. Sunday afternoon, however, it was the only vehicle in this abandoned industrial area of Newark, New Jersey. He scanned the graffiti—covered warehouse: a sprawling three—story structure that had most of its windows smashed.
Rust—streaked doors hung open, revealing what at first appeared to be garbage but turned out to be a city of the homeless. As far as Cavanaugh could see into the shadows, listing cardboard boxes provided shelter. Black plastic bags held whatever possessions the inhabitants treasured.
Dark clouds cast a cold shadow. On the river behind the warehouse, boat engines droned. A tug blew its horn. Thunder rumbled. Cavanaugh pressed his right elbow reassuringly against the 9 mm handgun hol—stered on his belt beneath his leather jacket. The Sig Sauer 225 held eight rounds in the magazine and one in the firing chamber. Not a massive amount of firepower, not the sixteen rounds that a Beretta was capable of holding, but Cavanaugh found that a pistol containing that much ammunition was slightly large for his hand, affecting the accuracy of his aim, nine well—placed shots being better than sixteen that went astray because of a poor grip. Plus, as the Federal Air Marshals had decided in the late 1980s, the Sig Sauer 225’s lighter weight and thin compact design made it an ideal concealed—carry weapon. But just in case, Cavanaugh had two other eight—round magazines in a pouch on the left side of his belt beneath his leather jacket.