The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [116]
Until Jason began to notice her growing stomach. Until he started asking more questions. Until the night she broke down in tears and it became clear to him the solution to both of their problems. Sandy wanted away from her father for whatever reason. He just wanted away. So they’d taken off together. Fresh city, new last name, clean start. Right up until Wednesday night, Jason would’ve said neither one of them had ever harbored regrets.
Now Max was back in the picture. A man with money, brains, and local legal connections. Max could hurt Jason. Yet Jason still couldn’t grant the man access to Ree. He’d promised Sandy that her father would never touch Ree. He wasn’t going back on that now, not when his daughter needed him more than ever.
So Max would stir the pot, while the police continued to dog his heels. They were tearing apart his computer. Probably digging into his financial records. Interviewing his editor, perhaps even touring the Boston Daily offices. Would they spot the computer he’d left there, put two and two together?
How long could this game of high stakes poker go on?
Jason had taken basic steps when he’d become a family man. His “other” activities existed under a different identity, with a separate bank account, credit card, and P.O. box. Payment confirmations and the single credit card statement went to a suburban post office out in Lexington. He visited once a month, retrieving the paperwork, sorting through it, then shredding the evidence.
All good plans, however, had at least one central flaw. In this case, the family computer contained enough damning evidence to send him to prison for twenty to life. Sure, he employed a decent scrubber software, but any web visit generated far more temp files than one scrubber could cover. Three, four days tops, he decided. Then the forensic specialists would realize that something was wrong with the computer they had seized, and the police would return in earnest.
Assuming they hadn’t already discovered Sandy’s body and were even now standing on his front porch, waiting to arrest him.
Jason got out of bed, too keyed up to return to sleep. His ribs protested when he moved. He couldn’t see out of his left eye. His injuries didn’t matter to him, however. Nothing mattered, except one thing.
He needed to make sure Ree was still sleeping safely in her room, a tiny, curl-topped form with a bright orange cat at her feet.
He padded quietly down the hall, senses alert. The house smelled the same, felt the same. He cracked open the door to Ree’s room, and discovered his daughter lying straight as an arrow in her bed, hands clutching the top of her comforter, big brown eyes staring up at him. She was awake, and, he realized belatedly, she had been crying. Damp lines of moisture smeared her cheeks.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said quietly, coming into the room. “You all right?”
Mr. Smith looked up at him, yawned, stretched out one long orange paw. Ree just stared at him.
He took a seat on the edge of the bed, where he could brush tangles of brown hair off her damp forehead.
“I want Mommy,” she said in a small voice.
“I know.”
“She’s supposed to come home to me.”
“I know.”
“Why doesn’t she come home, Daddy? Why doesn’t she?”
He didn’t have an answer. So he crawled in bed beside his daughter and pulled her into his arms. He smoothed her hair while she cried against his shoulder. He memorized the smell of her Johnson & Johnson skin, the feel of her head pressed against his shoulder, the sound of her tired little sobs.
Ree cried until she could cry no more. Then she spread her hand on top of his, aligning each of her short stubby fingers against his own larger, longer digits.
“We will get through this,” Jason whispered to his daughter.
Slowly, she nodded against his shoulder.
“Would you like some breakfast?”
Another short nod.
“I love you, Ree.”
Breakfast turned out to be more complicated than he’d planned. Eggs were gone. Same with the loaf of bread,