Sleepwalker (43 page)

As soon as the door was closed behind them, Mick dropped down beside Jenny and the girls.

“Lean up. Let me see your hands,” Mick told her sister urgently. Jenny complied. Clothesline was wrapped around Jenny’s wrists and tied in a knot. Clearly they did not consider her much of a threat, and had not feared what might happen if she got loose.

“Can you get me untied?” Jenny whispered, her eyes huge as she cast a scared look at the stairs.

“I think so.” Mick turned her back to her sister and, relying on feel, started working at the knot. Desperation made her fingers nimble: she was able to tease it free, although every second she plucked at it seemed to stretch into an hour.

“Oh, thank God,” Jenny breathed as the rope fell away and she brought her arms swinging around to chafe her hands.

“Mom, you’re free!” Kate whispered, her blue eyes that were so like Jenny’s wide with excitement.

“Hurry, Aunt Mick.” Lauren, too, was casting scared looks at the stairs.

“Free the girls,” Mick told her sister, who was already unfastening the bungee cord securing her feet. “Hurry.”

Rocking to her feet, Mick ran over to the furnace, skirting Curci’s body, unable to resist giving it a quick look. As she had expected, he had been shot in the head, double tap. The pool of blood around his head had already started to congeal. He had not betrayed her, then, but had been a victim. He had been a friend, but she couldn’t stop to mourn for him. She had to do what she could to save her own family.

The furnace was forced-air gas, exactly like the one in the house she had grown up in, and she was familiar with how it operated. Crouching down, she opened the little door that housed the pilot light and peered in at the flickering blue flame. Gritting her teeth, she turned her back and thrust her hands into the opening. She felt the lick of the flames searing her wrists and almost screamed at the pain. She jerked her hands back, wincing at the reddening places on both wrists, but the flames had done their work. The zip tie fell away, melted through.

Remembering the phone, she reached down and snatched it out of her shoe. Now was the moment to call for help just in case they couldn’t get away. She fumbled with the button. The phone lit up. Then she remembered: she had no idea where they were. The city had trace technology. Could they trace it here?

It didn’t matter. There was no signal. Hitting 911 anyway, she thrust the phone into her pocket.

There were two small windows set into the wall behind the furnace. If she and Jenny and the girls had not been very slender, there would have been no chance of escaping through them. But if she could just break the glass …

A desperate glance around in search of something she could use to break the glass told her that Jenny had untied Lauren, freed Kate’s hands and was unfastening the cord around Kate’s feet.

Then Mick saw that Curci was wearing steel-toed boots. She ran to him and yanked one from his foot.

“Jenny! Bring the girls over here,” Mick’s voice was hushed but urgent. In case breaking the glass made more noise than she hoped, the girls had to be ready to go. They rushed to join her as, wrapping the boot in her coat, swinging the improvised mallet by the sleeves, she whacked the glass.

“Hurry, Aunt Mick!” Lauren urged.

The second time, she swung with every bit of strength she had.

The glass broke. The melodic tinkle as the shards rained down galvanized her. Cold air rushed through the opening. Only a few sharp pieces remained. Dumping Curci’s boot from her coat, she threw her coat over the bottom edge of the window.

“Come here, Lauren. You wait out there for Kate, and then you two run away as fast as you can. Don’t wait for us. Don’t stop for anything. Jenny, let’s lift them out.” Mick and her sister grabbed Lauren and practically threw her out the window. Then they did the same with Kate.

“What about you?” Jenny asked as Mick offered her sister a leg up.

“I can get out,” Mick said, and when Jenny put her foot in Mick’s hand, Mick heaved Jenny up toward the window. The opening was a little snug for Jenny; she had to wriggle her way through.

While she waited, Mick realized that there was one more thing she could do: she could record the evidence of Curci’s murder.

Taking out her father’s phone, she hit the camera button and took two quick snaps of Curci’s body. Even as the pictures recorded, she got a glimpse of the preceding pictures.

The closest one on the roll was the one of Edward Lightfoot sitting in a chair, a gun held to his head. The other pictures, the pictures of the Lightfoot murder, were all right there. Mick stared at them in shock.

It meant—it had to mean—that her father had been there at the scene of the Lightfoots’ murders. That he’d taken the pictures.

Mick’s mind reeled. Then she heard the door open at the top of the stairs.

Thrusting the camera into her pocket, she leaped up, grabbed the edge of the window, and pulled herself through with a strength and agility she hadn’t known she possessed.

“What the hell …? They’re gone!” she heard Iacono yell. “They’re outside! Go …”

But she missed the rest, because she was running for her life, slip-sliding on the snow, bounding after Jenny and the girls. They were in a
wooded area, on a hill. The scent of logs burning was strong; someone, somewhere, had built a fire. They had come out behind the house, and the only choice was to run uphill. Mick watched as Jenny caught up with the girls, then Mick caught up with them, too. Each sister took a child by the hand and raced through the trees. Jenny had Lauren; Mick had Kate.

“Where are they?”

“Find them!”

Mick’s heart hammered as she realized that the men were already outside, already giving chase. She and Jenny and the girls weren’t far enough away.

“Look! Here are their tracks!”

Her stomach clenched. Her pulse raced. Clutching Kate’s hand, she flew over the snow.

“Are they going to catch us, Aunt Mick?” Kate gasped.

“No, honey, no!”

“There they are!”

A quick glance over her shoulder told Mick that six men were charging up the hill behind them. Jenny and Lauren were to her left and had fallen a few paces back. Mick’s heart leaped into her throat as she saw that one of the thugs was only a few paces behind them.

“Jenny, look out!” Mick screamed. But it was too late. The thug lunged and grabbed the back of Jenny’s sweater. Jenny fell face-first in the snow.

Lauren screamed and stumbled as her mother went down.

“Lauren! Run!” Jenny cried, even as her captor straddled her.

But Lauren stopped and turned back to help her mother.

Kate screamed. Mick kept on going, dragging the child with her, even though her heart was exploding with terror and grief and her legs felt all rubbery. But if she could, she had to save at least one child.

Then she heard footsteps pounding behind her. Glancing wildly
around, she saw another of the thugs only a few yards away. He was going to catch them. There was no way he was not, with Kate slowing her down.

“Kate, keep going! Run, run, run!” Mick shrieked, releasing her niece’s hand and whirling to face the man plunging toward her. At least Kate did what she was told, her little legs churning up the slope.

Mick’s throat closed up as she saw that the thug was leveling a gun …

Then a trio of helicopters rose up over the top of the house. Searchlights shone down on the hill, catching Rossi, the farthest down the slope, and then Iacono and the thugs and Jenny and Lauren and herself in their brilliant white beams.

A loudspeaker boomed the most beautiful words she had ever heard in her life.

“Freeze! FBI!”

“Mick!”

Jason came running up the hill, along with a ground wave of FBI agents as the helicopters hovered overhead, keeping the hill as brightly lit as a football stadium. The snow glittered, the trees threw deep shadows, and the sky was black and low. The thump-thump of helicopter blades filled the air. While Iacono and Rossi and the others were being handcuffed and read their rights, Mick helped Jenny, who was insisting she was fine, to her feet. Lauren and Kate converged on their mother.

“Who’s
that
?” Jenny asked as Mick responded to Jason’s shout with an uplifted hand. Jenny had an arm around both girls, who were clinging to her on either side. Mick knew her sister had been traumatized, knew that she had just had the most terrifying experience of her life, but Mick felt safe in assuming, based on the amount of interest Jenny was displaying in Jason’s arrival, that she was going to be fine.

“A friend.” Mick described him to Jenny just as she had to their father, only in an even more repressive tone.

“Cute friend,” Jenny observed a breath before Jason reached them.

Of course, the first thing he did was sweep Mick up in his arms.

“Jesus Christ, you scared me to death,” he said in her ear, hugging her close. “When we heard that the tracking signal was lost, I think I aged about a hundred years.”

After that, what could she do? She wrapped her arms around his
neck and kissed him. And, despite everything, there it was, the electricity, the passion, the sense that in his arms she had found her true home.

When she let go, it was to find that her sister and nieces were regarding the pair of them with identical fascinated gazes.

“Uh-huh,” was what Jenny said, sliding Mick a look.

“Is he your boyfriend, Aunt Mick?” was Lauren’s contribution.

“Aunt Mick saved us!” Kate told Jason with enthusiasm.

“Aunt Mick is wonderful beyond words,” Jason said solemnly to Kate.

Jenny raised her brows at Mick. “I like him,” she said.

Mick sighed. “Jenny, Lauren and Kate, meet Jason Davis.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” Lauren asked again.

Mick’s eyes met Jason’s. He smiled at her, his eyes dancing. And she realized that this man had suddenly become just about the most important person in her life.

“Yes, I guess he is,” she told Lauren, and Jason’s smile widened.

“How are my girls?” Her dad came puffing up. Mick’s heart did a weird little stutter when she saw him. The evidence that he had been there at the scene of the Lightfoots’ murder was right there in her pocket, in the form of those pictures on his cell phone. It was overwhelming, impossible to deny. She wished with all her heart she had never looked at the damn phone. But having looked, she could not erase the knowledge from her mind.

My God, what was she going to do?

He had already gathered Jenny and her girls into a big hug, and even as she had the thought he pulled Mick into it, too. Heart bleeding, she hugged him back.

Then, with everyone talking over everyone else, she and Jenny and the girls related everything each one of them had been through.

“Charlie’s the one responsible for finding you,” Jason said. Mick would have found it kind of sweet that Jason and her dad had apparently
bonded over their shared ordeal, except she was too disturbed about her new knowledge. “He’s the one who remembered that Marino had a safe house up here in the hills.”

“I’ve been up here a couple of times. Long time ago, though,” her dad said. “It was Jason who really saved the day. Once I had an idea where you were, he’s the one who had a fit at that FBI agent to call out the choppers. If we’d tried to drive it, we’d still be on the road. For a minute there, I thought he was going to take that guy apart.”

Mick looked at Jason, who shrugged. “At that point, I was a little concerned.”

“I don’t mind saying I was a whole lot concerned. But I should have known.” Charlie playfully punched Mick in the shoulder. “That’s my girl. I knew you’d get your sister.”

“What happened to Jelly and Tina?” Mick asked.

Jason grinned. “Far as I know, they’re still in the FBI van. I lost track of them in all the excitement.”

“Can we go home now? I’m cold. And I’m hungry,” Kate said. Her words reminded all of them that they were standing in the snow in the middle of a freezing winter’s night.

“Sure we can,” Charlie, the doting grandpa, answered, and they all started down the hill.

“Here.” Something warm and bulky dropped around Mick’s shoulders. She was a little startled until she realized that it was Jason’s coat. Remembering when he had given her his coat on the
Playtime,
Mick marveled at how far they had come. He was the one thing out of this whole nightmare she didn’t want to just make disappear.

“Thanks.” Smiling at him, she pulled his coat closer.

An FBI agent came up to them. “You the ladies who were kidnapped? We suggest you go to the hospital to get checked out. There’s an ambulance out front waiting for you.”

“It’s probably a good idea,” Mick told Jenny. “For the girls.”

Jenny nodded. They were rounding the house by that time—an ordinary brick ranch house, just as Mick had thought, set all by itself on a wooded hill with a winding drive leading up to it. The house was ablaze with light now, and a dozen different vehicles were parked in the driveway. An ambulance, strobe lights flashing, was among them. A black van had edged around the others and was backing up to the front door. Mick recognized it as being from the coroner’s office. For Curci, of course.

Grief slowed her step. Then she remembered she was a cop, and professionalism took over.

“You guys go on to the hospital. I need to go inside, see if I can help with the investigation,” she said, already starting to move away toward the front door, where an army of official types was going in and out.

“Wait a minute.” Jason caught her wrist. Mick, surprised by the sudden stab of pain, yelped. Until that instant she had forgotten all about being burned.

“What the …?” Jason let go when she cried out. Now he caught her hand, lifted it into the light. The outside of her left wrist was raw and red, with a black char mark along the top edge. “Jesus.”

“It’s a burn,” Mick said.

“Aunt Mick stuck her hands in the furnace,” Kate told him.

Jason’s face was suddenly grim. “Forget the investigation. You’re going to the hospital, too.”

Mick might have argued, except the entire crew chimed in. And now that she remembered the injury, her wrist really did hurt. She piled in the ambulance with Jenny and the girls. Because there wasn’t room, Jason and her dad caught a ride in a separate car.