All I've Ever Wanted - Adrianne Byrd [31]
Keenan nodded as he made his decision. “Kill them both.”
Chapter 14
“Is that who I think it is?” Dossman said, peering through the binoculars and then handing them over to Max.
“Where?” Max asked.
“Over there.” Dossman pointed him in the right direction.
“I don’t recognize anyone. Who am I looking for?”
Dossman grabbed the binoculars back. “Let me see those.” He looked again but the man he’d spotted was gone. “I could have sworn—”
“Who did you see?” Max asked as he turned his gaze back to where Kennedy and Tommy had been sitting. They were gone.
“Lawrence,” Dossman finally answered. “I could have sworn I saw Keenan Lawrence.”
“What?” Max rose from his seat. The combination of Dossman’s sighting and Kennedy’s sudden disappearance frightened him. “Come on, we’ve got to go. Kennedy’s gone.”
“Go where? I thought you were watching her.”
“Will you just come on?” Max pushed into the throng marching toward the concession stands. He had been watching. He’d only looked away from her for a moment.
Once they reached the concession area, Max’s hopes for finding Kennedy dipped. There were hundreds of people milling about. It would be next to impossible to find one particular mother and child.
“Any ideas?” Dossman asked, craning his neck as he searched through the crowd.
“Let’s split up. If you find either Kennedy or Keenan, stick to them like white on rice. Something is definitely about to go down.”
Kennedy pushed through the crowd, stepping around everyone who got in her way and keeping Tommy’s hand in an unbreakable grip. Just when she thought she’d never reach her destination, she caught sight of it just in front of her.
She glanced down and smiled encouragingly at her son. She wanted to go into a big spiel about how good he should be at his grandmother’s, and how soon they’d be together again. The problem was that, if she did start such a speech, she would quickly burst into tears.
Tommy looked up at her then. In his gaze, she saw all the things she was feeling, love, uncertainty and fear.
She knelt before him and pretended to tie his shoelaces. “I’ll call you tomorrow at grandma’s,” she told him, then leaned forward and kissed his round cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Mommy,” he said, returning a tentative smile.
Kennedy blinked several times and willed her tears not to fall. She stood and glanced back toward the men’s room to see if she could see any sign of Reverend Warner.
“I can go in by myself,” Tommy assured her.
“No, wait right here with me. I’m sure the reverend will be here at any moment.”
He frowned, obviously hurt that he wasn’t being given the opportunity to prove that he was a big boy.
Kennedy pinched his cheek, but right now even that kind gesture seemed to embarrass him.
“Mom,” he whined. “Not in front of all these people.”
She laughed. “All right. How about we get a soda while we wait?”
He nodded and smiled again. All the while they stood in line at the concession stand, Kennedy kept the door to the men’s room in her view. Her mental list of “what-ifs” began replaying and anxiety churned in her stomach.
“Well, what do you know?”
Kennedy pivoted at the unexpected sound of a familiar baritone voice.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Det. Collier said with a wide smile.
Kennedy frowned. “Go away.”
He laughed and rested a hand on her shoulder.
Her entire body tensed. It was then that she noticed that his laugh rang differently in her ears. Instead of meeting her eyes, she noticed that his gaze skittered through the crowd around them.
“What’s wrong?” She turned and tried to figure out what he was seeking in the crowd.
“You’re being followed,” he whispered from behind her.
“You mean, by someone other than yourself?” She glanced again toward the bathrooms. With her suspicions confirmed, her worry escalated to full-blown fear.
Danger hung in the air, thick and heavy. Something was about to happen—she could feel it.
Before she could do anything, her arm suddenly erupted with an unexpected surge of pain. Her eyes widened with shock.
“Get down!” Collier looped