3rd Degree - James Patterson [9]
It was that she never came back.
I hadn’t thought about it until now. After the blast… The kid with the Razor was there. Lots of others. But the blond woman wasn’t among them. No one interviewed her. She never came back… Why?
Because the son of a bitch was running away.
That moment flashed over and over in my mind. Something in her arms. She was running away.
It was the au pair.
And the bundle in her arms?
That was the Lightowers’ baby!
Chapter 15
HER HAIR FELL in thick, blond clumps onto the bathroom floor. She took the scissors and cut again. Everything had to start over now. Wendy was gone forever. A new face began to emerge in the mirror. She said good-bye to the au pair she had been for the past five months.
Cut away the past. Wendy was a name for Peter Pan, not the real world.
The baby was screaming in the bedroom. “Hush, Caitlin. Please, honey.”
She had to figure it out—what to do with her. All she knew was that she couldn’t let the baby die. She had listened to the news reports all afternoon. The whole world was looking for her. They were calling her a cold-blooded killer. A monster. But she couldn’t be such a monster, could she? Not if she had saved the baby.
“You don’t think I’m such a monster, do you, Caitlin?” she called to the bawling child.
Michelle lowered her head into the sink and dumped a bottle of L’Oréal Red Sunset dye all over her, massaging it into her cropped hair.
Wendy, the au pair, disappeared.
Any moment now, Malcolm would come by. They had agreed not to meet until they were sure she hadn’t been followed. But she needed him. Now that she’d proved what she was made of.
She heard the sound of the front door being rattled. Michelle’s heart jumped.
What if she’d been careless? What if someone had seen her coming back with the kid? What if they were kicking the door down now!
Then Malcolm stepped into the room. “You were expecting cops, weren’t you? I told you they’re stupid!” he said. Michelle ran over to him and jumped into his arms.
“Oh, Mal, we did it. We did it.” She kissed his face about a hundred times. “I did the right thing, didn’t I?” Michelle asked. “I mean, the TV is saying that whoever did this was a monster.”
“I told you, you have to be strong, Michelle.” Mal stroked her hair. “The TV, they’re bought and paid for, just like the rest. But look at you…. You look so different.”
Suddenly, there was a cry from the bedroom. Mal took a gun from his belt. “What the fuck was that?”
She was behind him as he ran into the bedroom. He stared, horrified, at Caitlin.
“Mal, we can keep her, just for a little while. I’ll care for her. She’s done nothing wrong.”
“You dumb twit,” he said, pushing her onto the bed. “Every cop in the city will be looking for this kid.”
She felt herself wheezing now. The way she always did when Mal’s voice got hard. She fumbled around her purse for her inhaler. It was always there. She never went anywhere without it. She’d had it just last night. Where the hell was it now?
“I cared for her, Malcolm,” Michelle said again. “I thought you’d understand….”
Malcolm pushed her face in front of the child. “Yeah, well understand this…. That kid is gone, tomorrow. You make it stop crying. Stick your tits in its mouth, put a fucking pillow over its head. In the morning, the baby’s gone.”
Chapter 16
CHARLES DANKO didn’t believe in taking unnecessary chances; he also resolutely believed that all soldiers were expendable, even himself. He had always preached the gospel: there’s always another soldier.
So he made the call from a pay phone in the Mission District. If the call was interrupted, if the call was discovered, well, so be it.
The phone rang several times before someone picked up at the apartment. He recognized the voice of Michelle, the wonderfully coldhearted au pair. What a performance she’d put on.
“I’m proud of you, Michelle. Please don’t say anything. Just put Malcolm on. You are a hero, though.”
Michelle put the phone down, and Danko had to choke back a laugh at how they obeyed his orders.