Cold Wind - C. J. Box [105]
He dug into her knitting bag and found the gun—a .38 Smith & Wesson Model 36 Lady Smith—while they drove past Columbus Park. He checked to see if it was loaded—it was—then snapped the cylinder home and slipped it into his waistband. He said, “You won’t be needing this.”
As she joined the flow of traffic on Dwight D. Eisenhower Expressway toward the lake and Navy Pier, he said, “Do you know who I am now?”
“Yes.” She chanced a glance at him while she drove. “I thought you were blond.”
“I was,” Nate said. “Before I came out to find you.”
“How did you . . . make it?”
“I wasn’t there when your monkeys fired the rocket.”
She could feel his eyes on her, picking up every flinch, every twitch. She knew she’d reacted to what he said.
“My woman was there. Her name was Alisha.”
“My husband’s name was Chase.”
He was silent for several minutes. It made her more frightened than when he talked. But she found some comfort in the fact that he wanted to go to the pier. On a warm evening like tonight, she thought, there would be plenty of people around. It would be public. Someone might see them. Or maybe she’d have the chance to escape.
They approached the pier. He directed her toward the most remote parking lot. It was practically empty because it was the farthest away. She was dismayed to find that there weren’t many people around.
“Here,” Nate said.
She pulled into a space. Lake Michigan dominated the view of the windshield. The pier reached out into it on their right, and small waves lapped against the pilings. The city was behind them. She could see how simple it would be for him to shoot her in the car, leave her body, and just walk away. Maybe there were cameras—they were everywhere these days—but even if he was seen by them, she would still be dead. She thought about Melissa and Aimee, and pictured their faces when they came out of the studio looking for their ride to McDonald’s. She couldn’t stop from tearing up.
She said, “How did you find me? How did you know about dance practice?”
“Wasn’t hard. Google,” he said. “Your name is all over it. You’re listed as a patron of the dance studio, and the hours and classes are posted. And there were a couple of newsletters listing the students in each class. Melissa and Aimee, right? I figured you’d be dropping them off or picking them up.”
She stared at him. “But how did you know it was me?”
He said, “I killed your husband, but it wasn’t personal. I didn’t even know who he was at the time. He was just a man who turned on me, holding a weapon that a minute before he’d been aiming at an injured girl we were tracking. I had no doubt that he would have finished her off. I didn’t think twice about it at the time and I’d do it all over again in the same circumstances.”
She shook her head. “Chase wouldn’t . . .”
“Of course he would,” he said. “Don’t be dumb. You know what kind of man he was and you’re not a stupid woman. You married him, after all.”
She tried to find the right words to establish some kind of connection with him so he might let her go. But he was inscrutable and impossible to understand. Kind of like Chase. She said, “Did you find Johnny and Drennen?”
“Yes,” Nate said. “I can find anybody.” And by the way he said it, she knew they were dead.
“They didn’t tell me about your wife,” she said. “They never mentioned there was anyone else down there.”
“That’s what happens when you work with amateurs.”
“Professionals are hard to find.”
“In Chicago?”
“I wasn’t in Chicago. You weren’t in Chicago. You were in Podunk, Wyoming.”
“Careful there,” he said. For the first time, she thought she saw a slight smile, an opening.
Then he shut it. “So it was an eye for an eye,” he said.
“My father . . . my father said revenge is a cleanser. I needed . . .” She searched for words and he let her search. “I needed to show myself I wouldn’t just take it. I wouldn’t just let someone take my husband away like that and there would be no consequences. And