He had then decided to pay blond boy a visit. If blond boy fought back, then fine. He’d had to restrain himself from not beating on Amari Bowman or Matteo Vasquez again once they were down; the sense of power that had coursed up from the steel bar into his brain had nearly been intoxicating.
He had a taste for this, more than for the feel of Mimi’s kisses against his mouth.
Yeah. The blond boy. He headed toward his house.
*
He didn’t quite understand what happened next. He parked down from blond boy’s house and sat and waited, and not ten minutes later a dark-haired boy came to the blond boy’s house. He didn’t know the dark-haired boy. The blond boy met him in the yard of the house; they talked; they seemed to argue a bit.
The blond boy shook the smaller, dark-haired boy and with his window lowered, parked two houses away, pretending to text, Shiloh could hear him yell, “Where is she, Adam?”
And the other boy apparently told him.
The blond boy headed for his truck and the dark-haired boy started to yell at him, Don’t be an idiot. Jane doesn’t even like you. She doesn’t like you and she doesn’t need you. I’m the one who has been there for her, not you. I’m the one she chose to live with, after all. I just need your help, that’s all. But we’re doing this my way.
For a second, Shiloh could tell, the words scored home, and the big kid paused. Oh, looky, looky, who has a crush on Jane. The dark-haired boy came toward the truck, like he was going to get in, but then the big blond shoved him back, knocking him a good ways across the yard. Then the blond boy got into his truck and roared off, leaving his dark-haired rival standing on the lawn.
Shiloh followed the blond boy.
*
The blond boy drove to a big, two-story house on Lake Austin. Shiloh followed, hanging back, but the kid didn’t seem to notice him. Nothing dumber than a guy in love, Shiloh thought, knowing that was well true. As the blond boy slammed the brakes on his truck in the driveway, there was another car there, a Lexus that Shiloh recognized as Perri Hall’s. No other car.
Blond boy ran into the house. The back door was ajar, as if someone had left in haste.
Interesting, Shiloh thought. He got out the second crowbar he’d bought. And waited by the door, to be sure the big dumb blond was alone.
56
THE POLICE HAD left. Jane clearly wasn’t there, and Laurel shivered at the thought of the cops actually inside her house. She texted Cal on the cheap orange phone he’d given her, which she kept locked in a drawer in her office; she was to use it only to contact him and he would give her a new phone every month. He got them in bulk somewhere, he’d told her. The phone was so ugly no one would steal it, he said.
The police were here! Looking for J. I have men looking for her. What do I do? She pressed Send and thought, This isn’t going to make for a good chapter in my book.
The text came back: Come to where the car crashed.
She stared at the words. Why? She texted back.
That’s where your daughter is.
She’s with you?
Yes. She remembers.
Laurel’s chest tightened. Don’t hurt her, please. Laurel’s hands were shaking. She needs help. No one will believe anything she says.
You know it’s not up to me. Get here. Wait for me if I’m not here.
Don’t hurt her, she texted again. But there was no answer.
Laurel ran for her car. She was scared that there would be a police car waiting, watching for Jane to return, but there wasn’t. She nearly dialed the two hired muscles who were now over at St. Michael’s, looking for Jane along her old haunts at the school and along South Congress; she might try to blend in with her old crowd. They had already determined she hadn’t headed to Trevor Blinn’s or Adam Kessler’s house. But if she called them to where Cal had Jane…she would have to explain why her daughter was with this man. It was too many questions for private security.
Laurel opened her safe and found the gun. It wasn’t where she usually put it. She loaded it, put it in her purse, and headed out the door.
57
PERRI THOUGHT, He’s going to kill that girl.
Cal had held out a pair of plastic flex cuffs to bind the unconscious Jane’s wrists—You know, like he was prepared for this, she thought with shock—and ordered Perri to put them on Jane. She stood across from the man she’d taken vows with, loved every night in her bed, kissed on a Paris bridge after attaching a lock to the railing with their names etched on it, bore a son with.
“Do it,” he said, gesturing with the Taser. “Now.”
“Cal…”
“Do it, Perri. For so long you’ve said she killed our son. Why wouldn’t you make her pay?”
“You’re Liv Danger. You. You hacked my computer. You set the fires. You targeted that lunatic, Shiloh.”
He shoved her. “I don’t want to hurt you. Do as I tell you.”
“What are you going to do to her?” To us, she amended in her thoughts.
“Nothing, sweetheart. Nothing to her. She’s not going to rat on her own mother.”
Perri knelt by Jane and put on the flex cuffs, but not too tight.
“Tighten them. Do it right.” His voice was steel.
She did as he said. “I don’t understand this. I just don’t. You were in the car with our son…?”
“Come on.” He unplugged the computers with a kick of his foot against the cords, put the unconscious Jane over his shoulder, and gestured at Perri with the gun. “My car. You’re driving. Do as I tell you and this will all be OK.”
“Cal.” It was as if their whole shared history were in that one, pleading word.
“I did what I had to do.”
“Were you in the car when David died?” Her voice rose. Because that meant he had abandoned their son. In his worst moment of need, Cal had left David dying. It couldn’t be so.
Cal kept his voice steady. “It’s not what it seems. I will explain everything to you when this crisis is over. I am not having this conversation now. If you don’t do exactly what I tell you, I will hurt you. I don’t want to, but I will.”
“I’m your wife.” She nearly spat the words.
“You’re leaving me. You’re divorcing me.”
It could not have been a greater shock to her than if he had struck her. “Cal…”
“For two years I’ve heard you hate on this bitch, blame her for everything wrong in our lives, and now you take her side.”
“Cal, this isn’t you.”
“Shut up. Walk ahead of me. Run and I’ll shoot Jane, I swear I will.”
She believed him. She believed, in a rush, that Brent Norton’s death was no accident, that Cal had killed his best friend. He would kill Jane. Maybe he would even kill her. She was nothing to him, perhaps only the vessel that had given him his son. “Were you with David when he died?”
“I’m not talking about that.”
He shut the house door awkwardly and she, glancing back, saw it didn’t close right. She said nothing. He, flustered and angry, opened the trunk of his car and dumped the limp Jane in it and slammed it shut.
“Drive,” he ordered Perri, tossing her the keys.
“Where are we going?”
“To the crash site. Sort of.”
“Why? Who did you call?”
He didn’t answer.