Cold Silence (A High Stakes Thriller) (5 page)

Peter was sitting on one of the giant eucalyptus logs that marked the edge of the parking lot. His skinny legs were pale against the brown bark. His small feet kicked alternately, right then left, right then left. The collar of his shirt was tucked under one side of his school sweatshirt. The other side stuck straight up in the air. Though it had stopped raining, he had to be freezing.

Travis honked and Peter looked up, the expression on his face changing from despair to a flash of relief and then a smile. He knew Peter was thinking about his mother. He worried constantly that his dad might disappear the same way his mother had. In hindsight, Travis suspected he'd let Jill keep the cancer a secret too long.

He pulled around the bend and leaned over to open the door of the Mercedes for Peter to hop in.

"Dad, you're late. You promised you'd be on time."

Travis shook his head. "I know, partner. There's no excuse. I'm sorry. Are you really mad?"

Peter hung his head.

"Where's R.J.?"

"He got picked up when you didn't come."

Travis frowned. "I was only ten minutes late." His new PR staff had kept him on the phone about this and that. He never realized how much of running a business would be the damn PR.

"Fifteen, and you promised his mom you'd be right on time."

Travis nodded. "I know. I'm sorry I'm late, Peter. I'm here now. What can I do to make it up to you?"

He pouted. "Nothing."

"Should we go to R.J.'s house and get him?"

Peter shook his head.

Travis thought immediately of R.J.'s overprotective mother. "His mom picked him up?"

Peter shrugged.

Travis put his arm around his son. "Tell me what happened, partner."

"He didn't even tell me hisself. Jamie Underwood told me he got picked up by his dad."

"I didn't know the dad was in the picture," Travis said.

Peter looked at him with a frown. "In what picture?"

"Still around. Where does his dad live?"

Peter shrugged again, disappointed.

Travis looked around the schoolyard. "You're sure he got picked up?"

Peter nodded. "Positive."

"By his dad?"

Peter nodded again.

"Because I was late?"

Peter crossed his arms. "Yes."

"Should we call him?"

"I don't know."

That meant yes. "Do you know R.J.'s number?"

He recited the number from memory.

Travis ruffled his son's hair and then pulled out his cell phone and dialed. "What's his mom's name again?"

"Mrs. O'Brien."

Travis laughed, remembering now that her name was Cody. "Her first name's not Mrs., silly."

Peter broke into a smile.

He listened to the phone ring but no one answered. He dialed again and let it ring again. Still no one. Who in the world didn't have an answering machine these days?

Travis closed the phone and looked at his son. "They're not answering. Should we try later?"

"Forget it. He won't be able to come over now anyway."

Travis let his head fall back and then sat up again. "Okay, Dad's a jerk. I'm a big, fat, terrible jerk, okay?"

Peter cracked another smile. "Okay."

"So what can I do to make it up to you?"

"Can we have McDonald's for dinner?"

Travis thought about the pork chop being cooked for him at home. "Sure."

"And can we still rent
Terminator?"

"Sure."

"And you'll watch it?" Peter pressed.

"I've seen it twenty times."

Peter frowned. "You asked what you could do to make it up to me."

Travis raised his hands in surrender. "You're right. Okay, we can rent
Terminator
and I'll watch it."

"The whole thing."

Travis crossed two fingers over his heart and then raised them in the Boy Scout pledge. "The whole thing. Do we have a deal?" He reached his hand out to his son.

His son took it, and while they shook, Travis reached over to ruffle Peter's hair again.

Someone knocked on the window and Travis and Peter looked up. It was Wendy Dickson. She was a divorced mother of a little girl in Peter's grade, and she'd been hinting at Travis about a date for the whole year.

Travis rolled his window down. "Hi, Wendy."

Wendy ran one finger across the edge of the car door. "Travis. I saw you sitting here in your car and had to stop by." She looked into the car and waved at Peter. He turned to the window, pretending he didn't see her.

"Did you say hello to Mrs. Dickson?"

Peter waved without looking at her. "Hello, Mrs. Dickson," he mumbled.

"Well, it's good to see you. Don't you two get too crazy, now." She winked.

"Thanks, Wendy. We promise to behave."

She leaned down and whispered in his ear. "If you're looking to misbehave, you can always give me a call."

He laughed and waved good-bye, starting the car and pulling around the drive toward the street without looking back. His phone started to ring and he handed it to Peter. "Want to throw it out the window?"

Peter's eyes lit up and he grinned. "Can't you just turn it off?"

"Absolutely." Travis opened the phone and pointed to one of the buttons. "Push that one there."

Peter turned off the phone and closed it up. Then he looked at his dad. "Would you really have let me throw it out the window?"

Travis rubbed his head. "Probably not."

"I didn't think so."

Travis looked at Peter, who was now staring out the window. Maybe Peter had already forgotten about being mad at him. But Travis wondered how many times he could afford to screw up. He had to be more careful. At least it was the weekend. Nothing about work would get done now. He could concentrate on Peter. Next week he might not have the chance.

"Dad?"

"Hmm?" he said, pushing his company from his mind.

"Can we rent
Terminator II
instead?"

"Sure, partner."

"And can we get bubble-gum ice cream?"

Travis laughed. If only life after forty were as simple as Arnold Schwarzenegger and bubble-gum ice cream.

"Can we, Dad?"

"Absolutely."

Chapter 4

Colonel Walter Turner knew something was wrong. He had known it from the day they moved in. He split the shades wider with two fingers and surveyed the windows. The boy's room was straight across from the window, but tonight it was dark. He'd seen her in and out, but not the kid. Tonight was the first time he'd noticed the kid out at night. It wasn't normal for a kid that age to spend every single night at home. That had been one of his first clues that she was on the run. Not that many would notice, he didn't think. She was attractive—lean and angular like a distance runner. She wore her dark hair down and it had the gentle wave that the women in the shampoo commercials always tried for, but the way she dressed made it clear she didn't put much into it. She wore jeans and flannels most of the year—shorts and tees in the hot months. She had light brown or green eyes; he'd never been quite close enough to tell. And she was relatively tall—five-seven or maybe five-eight, and not more than one-thirty. If he hadn't taken the time to watch her, he would have thought she was simply not interested in knowing her neighbors. But there was more than that.

He'd studied her, and he had some ideas about her, but that was all they were. She'd never let on about her story. But thirty-seven years in the Marine Corps had given him a damn good eye for trouble. She was ex-law of some kind. A street cop, detective, maybe even military, he wasn't sure. It was in the way she pinned her shoulders back when she walked, the way her eyes scanned left and right when she took out the trash or swept the front walk, the way her right hand flirted with the inside of her left jacket whenever anyone approached.

There was no weapon there, but he'd seen the instinct. He watched her pull the blinds apart with her fingers, just as he had, and look out. He dropped his hand, but she'd seen him. She let go of the boy's blinds and the light went on and then, after a minute, off. He lifted the edge of shade and looked back out, wondering again where the boy was.

R.J. was his name. Florence had asked one day when they were outside. The boy had hesitated, then looked at his mother, who had given him a slight nod. It had been his second clue. He was about the same age as Roni's boy. Nine years since he'd seen his daughter.

He made his way out with the trash, thinking about R.J. The kid had just grown on him. Every time he saw him, he thought of Roni. He wondered what her boy was like, what his name was. And even when he tried to ignore R.J., he couldn't. The kid was too damn smart.

Colonel Turner had made the mistake of telling R.J. that he collected bugs as a hobby. It was something he'd done as a kid. He'd had them pinned in a shoebox inside his closet because his mama had put her foot down when he'd started to pin them up on his bulletin board.

Most people looked at him like he was just plain weird when he told them he was a bug collector. But R.J. seemed to think it was just about the neatest thing ever. The boy had promptly returned to tell the colonel that his mother said he couldn't start his own bug collection.

"That's okay, son," he had told R.J. "You can come see mine anytime." And damn if the colonel wasn't surprised when the kid had shown up. And the boy had learned the names. He'd come around from time to time with a new bug and ask what it was. The colonel had taken to saving the new ones for R.J., and they spent an average of an hour or so together a week. He enjoyed that time as much as any other. That kid was special.

He knew the mother didn't like it, but R.J. never said anything about her. Or his father. In fact, just about the only thing they ever talked about was bugs.

Just then he heard the O'Brien woman behind him.

She seemed startled when she saw him, so he tried to smile. "Where's the little guy tonight?"

She gave him a glare.

"Just noticed he wasn't home."

"He's out," she said, throwing her bag into the trash can and turning back to the house without another word.

The colonel shook his head and turned back toward his own house, telling himself to mind his own business. He'd never managed to get that much right. Why should he worry about anyone else?

He kept to himself as a rule, and he didn't mind others who did, but in the same right, he liked to know who his neighbors were. His Florence had always been the friendly one, his social butterfly. Now on a good day she knew her name and his. On a bad day she thought she was a butterfly and she ran from him in fear as though he might try to capture her with some giant, invisible net. He watched her mind melt before his eyes, day after day, month after month. And there was not a goddamn thing he could do about it.

First the cancer. Then Roni's drug-dealer boyfriend and the pregnancy. She'd been stealing for him and gotten caught. His daughter in jail. The colonel bailed her out, but when that no-good son-of-a-bitch ex-con came back for her, he and the colonel had had it out. The colonel had hit him, knocked him down, and told him to get lost.

But Roni had chosen him, had sworn they'd make a life together. The colonel had never believed it. He'd warned her off him, told her not to make that kind of mistake, told her how guys like him turned out. And when push came to shove, Roni had chosen Doug over her father. She'd walked out and sworn never to come back.

And she never had. It had been too much for Florence. She had fought off the cancer, but the heartache had been too strong. And he knew that was when she had started to shut herself out. She felt too much. He didn't feel enough and she felt too much. She'd always told him that. Forty-three years they'd been married, thirty-seven of it in the marines. And now his girls were gone. Roni was living with an ex-con and their son, and Florence spent most of her days like Alice in Wonderland.

He rubbed at the empty feeling in his stomach. Heartburn, he told himself, though he hadn't eaten in hours. He pushed it aside and went up to look in on Florence. She was snoring slightly, one balled fist stretched out as if she were reaching for something with all her might.