The hitch was, she didn't want to.
But if she loved him, wasn't that all the more reason to leave? As long as he was near her, his life, too, was in danger.
He wouldn't allow the Burnwoods to lay a hand on her or Kevin, with whom he bonded closer each day. He could lose his life protecting them, and he would die not knowing what it had all been about.
She couldn't let that happen. They had no future together, but, even if she lived the rest of her life without him, she wanted to know that he was alive.
What should she do? Turn herself in?
She immediately dismissed that thought. Ricki Sue had said that the FBI had been to the law office, asking questions, delving into her background. If they found out everything about her, her credibility would be reduced to shreds.
She would be deemed an unreliable witness, so what good would she be to them? Either they would prosecute her for kidnapping John and she would be sent to prison, or the authorities would release her, leaving her without any protection against Matt, his father, and their disciples.
Her only viable choice was to disappear again. She berated herself for having left Kevin with John this afternoon. If she had the baby with her now, she could just keep driving. It would have been heart-wrenching not to see John and tell him a silent goodbye, but leaving after seeing him again would be even harder.
But she knew she must.
"Who fucked up?"
The agents under Pepperdyne's unmerciful gaze didn't say a word. They were afraid to breathe. "Well?" His bellow ;' rattled the window glass in the Sheridan, Tennessee, police station, where he had set up his command post after moving it from Prosper.
One of the two agents involved in the snafu the night before finally worked up enough courage to speak. "We'd been staking out the house ever since her disappearance, sir, and nothing had happened."
"So?"
"So, we . . . uh . . . fucked up," the agent finished lamely.
"Sir?" the other agent ventured timorously. "We were afraid to shoot for fear it might be Mrs. Burnwood. Or Marshal McGrath."
"That's right, sir," his partner chimed in, grateful for this granule of defense. "What if it had been them, and they'd had the baby with them?"
"Well, for all we know it was them. Or maybe it was Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. We don't know who it was, do we? Because you didn't identify the intruders or get a make on their car."
"It wasn't Mrs. Burnwood," one agent stated adamantly.
"It was definitely two men."
"Oh, definitely two men. Well, that narrows it down.
Maybe it was Batman and Robin." Pepperdyne exhaled, letting ! several obscenities float out on the stream of air. "You guys are going to spend an hour today on a firing range I've set up in the sunniest, hottest spot in this county. You're gonna shoot till your hands are on fire. Because last night you couldn't hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle." One of the agents unwisely cracked a smile. "You think that's funny?" Pepper dyne roared.
"You can stay two hours on the range. Now get out of my sight before I get really pissed."
They filed out, closing the door behind them. Alone, pepperdyne sank into the desk chair and dragged his hands down his face. The optimism he had felt upon returning to Stephensville and getting a description of the car had long since fizzled.
He hadn't had a single break in this case from the very beginning, when they'd mistakenly thought they had a computer glitch.
If the computer technician hadn't dismissed the data he had received, Ruthie Fordham would still be alive, and Mrs. Burnwood wouldn't be missing again with John right along with her. By the time they had realized their error and unraveled the data puzzle, John was driving toward disaster. Efforts to reach him on his cellular phone had failed.
Then he'd had a run-in with a felled tree and his memory had been wiped clean.
Jesus. What a bizarre chain of events.
The Burnwoods' jailbreak in Prosper had been another major setback. Now, he not only had to find Mrs. Burnwood and John, he had to find them before those maniacs did. It wasn't going to be easy. She had managed to lose herself in Denver for a whole year before they had tracked her there.
She wasn't dumb enough to return to her hometown, but obviously someone else thought she might. They had gone looking for her in her grandmother's house last night.
Pepperdyne's reaction to the debacle was founded as much on fear as anger and embarrassment. He feared he knew the intruders' identities Gibb and Matt Burnwood.
He gazed down at the photograph of Mrs. Burnwood that had been sent to law enforcement agencies across the country.
Then he looked at the crime scene photos that had been brought to him less than an hour ago. The pictures of Lottie Lynam's bloody, nude corpse turned his stomach.
Addressing the photo of Matt Burnwood's wife, Pepperdyne muttered, "Lady, you'd better hope I find you before he and his daddy do."
And what the hell was John doing all this time?
Chapter 29
John watched from the front door as Kendall drove out of sight, then he hobbled into the bedroom where Kevin lay on his back in the playpen.
"Look, uh, I'm on a tight schedule. So I need your full cooperation, okay? You'll be all right here by yourself. I won't be gone long. I can't be gone long. Just, you know, chill out until I get back."
He hesitated, as though he might get an argument from the baby. Kevin blew bubbles and waved his fists, giving no indication that he was upset over being left alone.
"Okay then," John said, backing away.
He left the house and was halfway across the clearing when he halted, thinking he'd heard a noise. Was it a choking sound? A whimper? He considered all the horrendous possibilities.
Fire. Wild animals. Insects. Asphyxiation.
"Shit."
He retraced his crutch-assisted steps. "Okay, sport. I hope you're up to this." Then he added beneath his breath, "I hope I'm up to this."
He slipped on the sling that Kendall sometimes used to carry the baby against her chest. Propping his crutches against the playpen, he balanced on one leg and bent down to lift Kevin out.
"Yeah, yeah, this is lots of fun," he muttered when Kevin gurgled happily. Once Kevin was comfortably positioned, he retrieved his crutches and set out again.
"Not a word of this to your mother, understand? She's a clever lady, your mother. She's got my weapon again, so I can't hold her at gunpoint and demand that she drive us out of here. I could drive myself, but she would be gone by the time I returned."
He glanced down at the child. "I don't suppose you know where she hid my weapon, do you? She's too smart to have thrown it away, but damned . . . excuse me, darned if I can find it. I've turned the house upside down."
He quickly covered the distance to the main road, where he paused to catch his breath. Sweat was already pouring from him. It trickled down his forehead and ran into his eyes, stinging them. Wiping them with his sleeve was difficult when he needed both hands to maneuver the crutches. He had known this expedition was going to be physically exerting, and he hadn't counted on carrying Kevin's extra fifteen pounds.
He struck out for the house he had spotted the day he'd gone to town with Kendall. "Frankly, I think your mother is too smart for her own good," he said, huffing. "She should return my pistol to me. I'd know better how to use it if the need arose."
He talked to keep from thinking about what a long shot it was that this expedition would meet with success. He wasn't in condition for this much exercise, so his breathing was labored. It was a hot, sultry afternoon. Although he took advantage of every patch of shade along the road, even they provided little relief.
He was working under a deadline. He had to return to the house before Kendall did, and he had no idea how long today's errand would take her. The day he rode with her to town, he had mentally clocked the distance. One way it was twelve miles, give or take a few. On the curving roads, and factoring in time spent on errands, she couldn't possibly make the trip in under half an hour. He'd given himself only that long to try to get help.
But his pace was slow, and he was out of shape. If luck was with him, a car would come along and give him a ride to the nearest telephone. That's all he needed sixty seconds on a telephone.
He glanced at his wristwatch. Seven minutes had elapsed since she'd left. The muscles in his back and arms were burning with the strain, but he pushed himself to move faster.
His efforts were rewarded when he topped a rise in the road and spotted the house he had made note of. It was a quarter of a mile away, maybe less. Distance was hard to gauge because of the heat waves rising from the pavement and distorting the landscape.
"If I push myself to the limit, I might make it there in four minutes," he said to Kevin. "Five, max. In any event, I'm crazy for talking to someone who can't possibly understand me. Maybe I'm still in a coma and having one hell of a dream.
That's it. You're only a dream. You"
Suddenly John began to laugh. "You're peeing on me, aren't you?" The scalding stream trickled down his chest. "Well, that's one way of convincing me that you're real."
The one-sided conversation had helped keep his mind off his protesting muscles, the blistering heat, and the distance he had yet to cover. He was enormously grateful when he reached the driveway to the house. The incline nearly killed him. When he got to the porch, he collapsed.
Leaning against a support post, he called out, "Hello?" To his surprise, the word came out as a dry croak. He took several deep breaths, swallowed all the saliva he could work up, and tried again. "Hello!"
Kevin began to cry. "Shin. I'm not shouting at you." He patted the baby's butt reassuringly. Kevin stopped crying, but his mood was tenuous. The corners of his mouth were turned down, and tears hovered in his eyes.
"I know how you feel, buddy. I might start crying myself."
Now that he had taken a closer look at the house, it became apparent that no one was at home and hadn't been in a long time. The potted plants on the porch had turned to brown, leafless stalks. All the window shades were lowered. Spiders had set up housekeeping in the corners of the doorjamb.
Now what? His clothes were soaked with perspiration. He might well dehydrate before he got back to Kendall's house.
And the baby Christ! If he was this hot and dry, Kevin had to be, too.
He remembered having heard something about babies having a higher body temperature than adults. He pressed his palm against Kevin's forehead. His skin was hot; he was burning up.
Galvanized, John slipped one of his crutches beneath his arm and leaned on it heavily as he stood up. Using one of the terra-cotta flower pots, he broke out a windowpane in the front door, reached inside and undid the lock, then opened the door.
He didn't care if a silent alarm alerted the local police. Now that he knew he wasn't a fugitive guilty of a crime, he wanted to be caught. In the meantime, he had to get some fluid into him and the baby.
It wasn't a large house. The rooms hadn't been occupied in a while and showed obvious signs of neglect. But John moved through them so quickly, he scarcely took in the appointments.
He located the kitchen within seconds, moved to the sink, and turned on the cold water tap. Nothing.
"Dammit! "
But then there was a knock, a rattle and a ping, and water gushed from the faucet. It was rusty at first, but after several seconds it ran clear. John scooped handfuls of it into his mouth and swallowed greedily. He ladled water over the back of his neck.
Then, wetting his hand again, he smoothed it over Kevin's ;
head. "Feel better? Cooler?" He bathed the baby's red cheeks But Kevin needed fluids inside him, and it suddenly occurred to John that he didn't have a means of conveying water into the child. Kendall sometimes gave him a drink of juice or water from a baby bottle, but of course John hadn't thought to bring one along. There was glassware in the cabinets, but if he tried pouring water down Kevin's throat, he might choke.
The kid only knew how to suck, so how He didn't even think about it before thrusting his index finger beneath the faucet. He carried it, dripping, to Kevin's mouth and tapped it against the baby's lips. Kevin immediately began to suck.
The sensation was foreign and unsettling, yet oddly gratifying. "Not exactly your mother's milk, is it, boy?" he murmured as he wet his finger again and let Kevin suck the water from it.
John wondered what his friends and colleagues would think if they could see this bizarre scene. They wouldn't believe their approach.
"I'd like to have a baby, John. And I'd like you to be the father."
"I'm flattered, but no thanks. I don't want a baby. Never have. Never will."
And Lisa? Forget it. Li sa had called him a selfish son of a bitch because he refused to give her a baby. He had refused even to discuss having a child. That was the disagreement that had caused their split.
"My biological clock is running out," she announced one evening.
"So wind it," he said from behind his newspaper.
She threw a pillow at him. He lowered the newspaper, sensing that they were gearing up for the battle royal, the Waterloo of their relationship. She had raised the topic before, but he'd always skirted it. That night she took the direct approach.
"Why not?"
"The reasons are too many to name."
She nestled her bottom more comfortably in her chair, the way a soldier burrows into a foxhole and psyches himself up for hand-to-hand combat. "I'm in no hurry. Let's hear your objections."