While You Were Dead (11 page)

“Vacuum,” she whispered, desperate now. But she couldn’t vacuum, or clean, not while Max slept. She dropped the mail on her desk, then noticed her message light was blinking. Six messages–too many for a Saturday. Frowning, she turned the volume down so it wouldn’t disturb Max and hit play.

The district attorney, with a new case that would have caught her interest last week. Her dentist reminding her of an appointment on Tuesday.

And Max.

“Kat, baby, I’ve got to talk to you. I really hope you’ll give me a chance to explain. I know it wasn’t right. I know I hurt you, baby.” Saturday. After she’d left him in Bluff River Falls, before that meeting distracted him so much he’d left Lizzie alone to be kidnapped.

Geoffrey Klaussen, one of her clients, needed her soonest available appointment. Kat made a note to call him in the morning.

Max again. “Kat.” His voice was different this time, cold and hard. “Call me. It’s an emergency.” She erased that one, remembering how angry and distant he’d been when she got home last night. If not for her alibi–no doubt she’d be his primary suspect. Her answering machine beeped again, announcing the final message in the group.

“This is Mitch. I’m ready to demo your new copier at your convenience. Call me.”

Kat frowned. She hadn’t ordered a new copier. She hit play and listened again. This time it clicked.

Mitch. Her mother’s latest and greatest get-out-of-jail-free card. What had she said? “You can trust him. He’s got pretty eyes.”

She erased the message with a sigh. Her life was rife with denial and lies. A certifiably nuts mother, who wouldn’t even use that certification to get out of jail and into an institution where she belonged. The man she loved more than life asleep in her bed, worried about the child he thought was his niece. Her daughter, a virtual stranger to her, kidnapped, tortured, with a serial killer?

No! When Max woke up, they’d go back to the police, figure out who had taken Lizzie and get her back. It was that simple. It had to be that simple. And she had to move. Now.

She strode into the kitchen and picked up the hasty grocery list she’d made while Max ate. She rarely ate dinner at home and though she used to love to cook for Vic, she had never enjoyed cooking for just one. Usually she worked through the dinner hour anyway. Supplies were definitely needed. Max would need to eat, wouldn’t he? All men needed to eat.

With an anxious glance down the hall at the closed bedroom door, she grabbed up her purse and house keys and let herself out the door. If he woke and she was gone, he’d be worried. Kat stopped and scratched out a note, leaving it conspicuously on the kitchen island. The corner market would have everything she needed for tonight. And tomorrow, after they found Lizzie, she’d go to a large grocery store. After they’d rescued Lizzie from—

Groceries. She rammed the thought through her mind, firmly keeping pictures and thoughts of her daughter out. Get the groceries. Then cook. Then. . .then think of something else to do so you won’t have to think.

She didn’t notice the lingering fog, or the unusual humidity in the air during her three block walk. Kat did smile at Sam, the oldest son of the owner of the small corner store, when he leapt off his stool by the front door as she approached. He was almost exactly Lizzie’s age and helped out on weekends and after school. His father immigrated from Viet Nam years ago, and Sam and his mother joined him only two years ago. She’d enjoyed Sam’s journey through acclimation, amazed how quickly he’d achieved it. His accent was barely noticeable now and she knew his grades were exceptional–he always proudly showed off his report card.

Kat tousled his dark head when he opened the door for her. She headed for the canned goods section, wondering, as she always did, what Lizzie’s hair felt like. Today the familiar thought choked her throat and the rows of red and white soup cans blurred.

Lizzie. Stay safe, baby girl. Stay alive.

“Need some help, Miss Kat?”

The soft voice made her tears stream harder.

Groceries!

“I–I think I do, Sam.”

“Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she whispered the lie and scrubbed her hands over her cheeks. “Just worried about. . .things.” The little bell on the front door tinkled as she tried to focus on her list. Sam didn’t leave her side.

“I hope it’ll be all right, Miss Kat. Can I help?”

“You already have.” She patted the hand he laid on her arm. “Where’s the tomato?”

“One can or two?” Sam pressed two into her hands. A super salesman, just like his father.

Snick. A gun’s trigger engaged directly next to her ear.

“Don’t move, lady, and everybody will walk away.” The barrel of a gun inched over her shoulder, pointed at Sam’s dark head. “Don’t even breathe, little chink.” The man’s voice was a sneer, almost directly in her ear.

Kat felt heat from his body when he yanked her back, closer to him. All too aware the gun stayed pointed on Sam, she kept her gaze on the little boy. His eyes would swallow his head if they got any wider. The boy glanced from the gun to Kat. Cold determination froze deep inside her at the terror in those dark, trusting eyes. “Do what he says, honey,” she urged, angling her body between them with a barely perceptible movement. If she could get the barrel of the gun back behind her shoulder, Sam might be protected, even if it went off.

“Yeah, yella, go open the cash drawer.”

Kat glanced over Sam’s head to the open front door, where another man stood, his face obscured by the hood of a sweatshirt. Two of them, then. One she might have handled, but not two. “Sam, do what he said. Very carefully get the key to the register from the back room.”

Sam showed he was as smart as she’d always suspected. She saw understanding dawn in his eyes and then watched him back away down the aisle, his direction taking him in the opposite direction of the front door, toward the safety of the storeroom.

“Hold it!” The gun jerked, the barrel smashed against her eye socket as an arm snaked around her waist. “Open that drawer!”

Sam froze at the man’s bellow and now he blinked back tears. Kat kept her voice calm and quiet. Still focused on Sam, she let her eyes dart toward the store room door. “The key to the register is around the corner in the back room. Do you really think his parents would leave him in charge of an open cash register?” She didn’t give the man behind her time to figure out if he believed her or not.

Shouting, “Now! Run, Sam!” she rolled her fingers around the soup cans, forming fat fists. Kat swung around, hammering the man in each eye. At the same time, she brought the spiky heel of her boot down on his instep, his fashionable tennis shoes no match for her classy Italian leather. The man dropped the gun, howling in pain even before she brought her knee up hard to finish the job. The gun’s single eye tracked the second man by the time he reached the top of the aisle.

Kat backed up, giving herself enough range to cover both men. “On your knees!” she ordered the one still standing, then held her breath and prayed she wouldn’t have to shoot him. She’d only shot a gun in her life once. Before that day, at the shooting range with Vic, she’d never even held a gun. The men danced in her vision and she could only pray the gun was held steadier than it looked. She repeated her order, but the man was already kneeling. The one she’d injured was still curled up on the floor, cursing, but very still.

“Sam, get your father!” Also unnecessary, because by the time the words had left her mouth, he was there, with a much bigger gun. His wife was right behind him, on the telephone to the police. Kat’s vision blurred even more and her knees started to shake.

By the time the police came, her knees were absolute gelatin. Sam’s father, Sun Ye, insisted on dragging his prized office chair out for her to sit in, then had Sam fill her forgotten grocery order while the police hand-cuffed and hauled the perps away. Kat thought she might throw up, given the slightest chance, as she gave her statement to the police. Lin, Sam’s mother, never said a word but brought ginger ale, snapped open the cold can and held it steady while Kat sipped. She also insisted on calling an ambulance for a cut Kat had somehow received on her left temple. Kat didn’t have the strength to refuse.

But before the admiring young paramedic had thoroughly cleaned the wound, finished applying a butterfly bandage, and listened to exaggerated tales of her bravery eight times, she was better. And by the time Sun Ye delivered her back at her front door, she felt herself again. He insisted on carrying in her groceries, setting them on the counter in her kitchen and finally Kat put her foot down, flatly refusing his offer to put them away. She also turned down the reward he offered her, but accepted his tearful gratitude with a smile. The smile was still in place when she closed the door behind him. Her hands still shook, she noticed.

She thought maybe she wanted to sit for awhile, but a little voice in her brain told her thinking might not be such a good idea. Groceries. Then cooking. At least her knees seemed to be working again. Groceries. Kat swung around. Directly into Max. She bit back a scream and pressed her hands on her barely-calmed heart, which was now galloping wildly again. She’d forgotten how quiet he could be when he wanted. “You scared the life out of me! I didn’t think you’d be up so. . .soon.” Her voice, every thought in her head, died with one look at his face.

Max shut off his cell phone, replacing it in its holster at his waist and Kat backed up into the front door. “Lizzie,” she breathed.

“Another package at the hospital.” His voice was harsh, his eyes anguished. Kat reached for him and he brushed her hand away. “You don’t have to come.”

“Yes,” she whispered, getting out of his way as he flung open the door. “I do.”

Just like the last one, the package was left outside Miriam’s door. Like the last one, the only inscription was written in crayon in a childish hand. And like the last one, the package was addressed to “Uncle Max.”

Unlike the last “delivery” this one was a box. The police wouldn’t let him open it. So they waited again, first at the hospital while workers were carefully interviewed with no significant results, and then at the police station while the box was scanned. After the scan, she and Max were shown to a private interrogation room and left alone. Kat tried not to imagine why. She also tried very hard to ignore the gravity in the unfamiliar face of the detective who’d ushered them into the small, airless room.

“It’s the only private place we’ve got,” he apologized, before the heavy door clicked shut—and automatically locked—behind him.

Kat had never known Max to be claustrophobic but he exhibited the symptoms now. He paced, then braced his hands against the wall, for all the world as if testing what it would take to bust them out, and then he paced some more. Kat thought she might explode. “Max?”

The restless whisper of his soft leather shoes never stopped. When he finally spoke, his voice was cold. “You shouldn’t have come, Kat. This doesn’t concern you.”

Rage exploded in a loud gasp. Not concern her? Somehow she caught the words back just before they erupted out of her throat. She couldn’t tell him. Not now, when it might be too late. That kind of pain she just couldn’t inflict.

So she curled up in her chair, not moving, except to flinch when his fist connected solidly with the heavy table that occupied the center of the room. Kat pressed her eyes into her drawn-up knees and wanted simply to die.

An hour crept by. A second uniformed officer brought in a tray and then left them alone again. Coffee, soft drinks and stale-looking donuts. Neither of them touched the refreshments. The silence became almost tangible. Kat’s guilt grew with every second that ticked by on the old clock high above them on the wall. She played out the argument in her mind:

“You were dead, Max. I’m not a fit parent.”

“You had no right, Kat! I’m her father! You should have told me yesterday!”

And there wasn’t an argument for that, so Kat kept her mouth shut. The red second hand ticked its way down to the quarter hour for the ninety-third time.

Max no longer paced. He stared at one spot on the wall, his eyes scaring her they were so icy cold.

Tell him!

Kat didn’t trust herself not to, so she blurted out a request instead. “Talk to me,” she pleaded. “Tell me about Lizzie.”

Max met her gaze for the first time since the door of the little room closed. The pain etched there rocked her. “Lizzie is wonderful.” His voice cracked and his eyes shifted back to the blank dingy grey wall. “She’s smart, really smart, which is why I don’t understand. . .” he tried to clear the emotion from his throat, wasn’t quite successful. “She loves to analyze stuff, figure things out–like word puzzles. Her heart is huge.” Silence fell. As much as she wanted to, Kat didn’t move. Max sucked in a breath that sounded painful. “Witty. She’s got this great wit–sarcastic, but cute, y’know?”

She knew. Just like her daddy. Tears slipped down her cheeks but Max never looked away from the wall.

“Miriam says Lizzie’s the only thing that got her through losing me and Doug. She’d never hurt anyone–not ever.”