Second Shot

Oh God. Simone … Ella…

“Don’t you have a rental car out there on the lot?” the woman asked.

“That guy … it wasn’t them,” I said.

“Well, wait a minute now.” She frowned, dug around under the desk and came back up with a set of car keys. “There you go. The boy came and dropped it off not more than a half hour ago. Said if you could swing by the office first thing tomorrow, they’d deal with the paperwork and such then.”

A half hour ago…. We must have almost passed each other on the driveway. I grabbed the keys with hardly a word of thanks and sprinted for the door again. She called something after me, but I didn’t hear it.

The cold bit me as soon as I was out of the door, like it had always been waiting just below the surface, like I’d never really been warm. I didn’t care.

As I jogged through the parking area, I fumbled for the button onthe key fob, stopping short as the hazard lights flashed on a white Buick SUV to my right.

I jumped in, fumbling with the unfamiliar controls, and cranked the engine. I knew I headed down the driveway faster than it was wise to do, but the way the Buick slipped and slithered despite its four-wheel drive only served to make me angry, like it was trying to slow me down.

I don’t remember getting between the hotel and the main road. The only reason the junction registered was because the traffic light was on red, but I suppose I would have hesitated there anyway. Miss Kerse wants to go to herfather’s place, Jakes had said. Did that mean the surplus store, or the house? Left for Intervale, or right for the center of North Conway? I stabbed my thumb on the button to redial and listened to the empty ringing until the lights dropped onto green overhead and the driver behind me blew his horn.

Her father’s place.

The house. I turned right, not knowing why I’d made that decision, or if it was the right choice. I gunned the Buick down the main street, not seeing the prettiness of the lights wrapped round the trees outside the Eastern Slope Inn, until I reached the turnoff on the left for Mechanic Street, towards Mount Cranmore. The family houses I’d noticed the first time Lucas had taken us to his home looked very different in the dark, all lit up along the eaves like storefronts. The lights were deceiving and I almost missed the turn for Snowmobile, jamming the brakes on at the last moment.

I drove past the Fitness Center and plunged into darkness on the other side of the lights. Maybe it was the illuminated ski runs farther up the mountain that made things look so shadowy at ground level, but people apparently didn’t go for excessive outside lighting here. Maybe they liked to be able to see the stars, which were scattered starkly across the inky blue-black sky above the trees.

I stopped the Buick just short of the driveway and shut off the engine. I was close enough to be able to see that Jakes’s nondescript Ford Taurus was parked in front of the steps leading up to the front door. The two lamps on either side of the doorway were lit, but otherwise the place was in darkness. I wished wholeheartedly that Vaughan’s men had given me back the Beretta.

I slid out onto the road, staying low behind the front end of the Buick while I waited for my eyes to adjust and tried to take stock. There was nothing for it-I was going to have to get closer.

I left the cover of the Buick and ran across, doubled over, to duck behind the Ford. There was no response from the house. I waited a moment longer, took a couple of deep breaths, then pelted for the door.

The door itself was closed but not locked. I eased it open and stepped through into the hallway There was a little light bleeding through from the two lamps outside on the deck, but it was dark enough so that I didn’t see the body until I almost fell over it.

I stumbled back, biting off a gasp. A man, lying on his back at the foot of the stairs with his right leg twisted awkwardly underneath him. It was too dark to see his face clearly. I forced myself to kneel alongside him, feel for an arm and work along to the wrist so I could check for a pulse. Nothing. I ran my hands up over his torso, looking for obvious injury As my hands reached his left hip, I found the holster and identified the familiar blunt shape of a Glock semiautomatic.

Jakes.

I swallowed, pulling the gun free. Whatever had happened here, he hadn’t seen it coming. Not enough to have got his gun out, at any rate. I ran my hands up to his head, gently, waiting for the fatal wound, but there didn’t seem to be one. There was no blood. He didn’t even smell dead. So what the hell had happened? Unfairly, maybe even unjustly, I cursed Jakes for allowing himself to die without even drawing his gun.

I pulled out my mobile phone and dialed 911.1 gave them the address and the fact that there was a man dead and a child in danger but I didn’t stay on the line to give further details.