Hunted (Reeve Leclaire 2) (6 page)

Dr. Moody’s hands twitch with irritation. His desk notes are sacrosanct. He never shares his work product with anyone unless forced to do so under subpoena.

“I see that Reggie changed her name. Reeve. It’s an odd choice, I think.” He places one fingertip on an evidentiary photograph that shows the scars on her back. “It’s nice to see my old artwork, too. But it’s disappointing that you never told me she’d moved away to San Francisco. Very disappointing.” He narrows his eyes at Moody and nudges the photo aside.

Moody licks his lips. “Confidentiality. You know how it is.”

“So does that mean you also kept quiet about my father? And about Wertz?”

“I did, yes, of course.”

“You’re sure about that? No new book in the works?”

“Nothing to say, right?” Moody swallows. “Your case is old news, right? And both Wertz and your father are dead.”

Flint hesitates a moment before nodding. Then his expression darkens. “But you didn’t say very nice things about my mother. Did you?”

Moody inhales sharply, pursing his lips, and then replies with careful diction, “You realize that virtually everything noted about your mother was merely a reflection of your own comments and feelings. Don’t you remember? In nearly every session you—”

“Hey, I’m just messin’ with you, Terrance,” Flint interrupts, grinning. He brings his feet back to the floor, taps his toe three times. “Why don’t you sit down? You look kinda tired,” he says, waving toward the sofa as if he were the homeowner and the psychiatrist his guest.

Dr. Moody sidles over to the sofa and sits, but immediately regrets doing so. The sofa is low while Flint sits up higher, in what Moody himself designed as the “power position.” He licks his lips and searches for a way to regain control of the situation, but it now occurs to him that he didn’t even think to ask Dr. Blume how his formerly docile patient has today managed to commit murder.

Moody’s mouth has gone dry. He takes a quick slug of liquor for courage.

R
eeve gasps awake. She sits up in the dark, heart thudding, and the nightmare vanishes, as though too terrible for her mind to haul to the shore of consciousness. But then reality dawns: Daryl Wayne Flint has escaped.

Her nightmares are real.

She tosses off the covers and snatches up her phone to scan the headlines. The news hasn’t changed—Flint is still at large—but now the stories have metastasized and there are many more photos. Photos of Daryl Wayne Flint, both from when he was arrested, looking heavy and untamed, and from when he escaped yesterday, looking neat and trim and wearing a beret. Photos of “Edgy Reggie” LeClaire, with fierce eyes and tight lips.

“Dammit!” she says aloud. Tossing the phone aside, she plunges her hands into her hair and curses Flint, curses their shared and twisted history. Why couldn’t that animal stay locked up where he belongs? It has taken years of hard work to shove his memory aside, but it’s like a living, breathing thing, and now it has snarled awake and found its feet.

She checks the clock—6:13—much too early to disturb her dad and Amanda, especially after they’d stayed up late last night, trying to reassure her while answering calls and e-mails from concerned relatives who’d heard the news.

She jumps to her feet and begins to pace, telling herself to cool down. What have years of psychotherapy taught her?

Breathe in and breathe out.

She inhales, exhales . . . and wonders what time it is in Brazil.

Two weeks ago, when Dr. Ezra Lerner had called to let her know that he was heading to Rio, she’d had to stop herself from teasing her psychiatrist about being overprotective.

He’d explained that he was going to Brazil to help a family deal with a hostage situation. “I don’t know how long I’ll be, but if you need to reach me,” he said, “leave a message with my office and I promise to get back to you.”

She had smiled into the phone, bemused that Dr. Lerner, an expert on captivity syndromes, was still so worried about her. She’d felt confident that her years of fuming and weeping on his couch were over.

Of course, she never expected her kidnapper to walk the earth again, rising up like some undead creature in a bad horror flick.

She tells herself to get a grip. Dr. Lerner is out of reach, and she needs to buck up and cope with Flint’s escape on her own.

Do something. Go for a run.

It’s the best she can come up with. But then she looks around and realizes she hasn’t brought a bag. No way she’s going running in those shoes from last night.

After a few minutes of rummaging through the closet, she comes up with some old gym clothes and a pair of Nikes that she left behind when she moved out.

She grabs the spare key, and minutes later she’s running along the Embarcadero, past the early risers and tourists streaming through the Ferry Building. Her muscles warm and loosen as she heads uphill.

By the time she reaches the park, sweat has saturated her clothes. She slows to a walk and shakes out her muscles, then unzips her hoodie and pushes the sleeves up to her elbows, revealing pale forearms dotted with small, circular scars.

The park smells fresh, and as the noise of the city falls away, she hears the parrots overhead and cranes her neck to watch. The birds’ distinctive green bodies and cherry-colored cheeks make them easy to spot. The wild parrots— made famous by a documentary film years ago—swoop and squawk and perch in pairs. She always takes pleasure in watching them flit from tree to tree, relishing the idea that so many South American parrots have escaped their cages to form this unlikely flock.

Once she has cooled, Reeve heads back downhill. As she passes a woman who is unloading boxes from the trunk of a car, the woman turns aside and calls, “Honey, I need your help with this.”

Reeve glances into the garage just as a man lifts his head from his task to call back, “Okay, one second.”

How nice it must be to call a spouse so easily for help. She tries to imagine having someone like that in her life, but intimacy eludes her. And at this particular moment, the only person she really wants to talk to is far away in Brazil.

And just like that, a realization looms.

She stops and shuts her eyes, coaxing it closer, and the idea snaps into certainty: Daryl Wayne Flint will seek out Dr. Moody.

She opens her eyes and stands up straight. “Dr. Ick,” she says aloud.

She’s often skeptical of intuition, but this insight unfolds with perfect logic: If she wants to talk with her psychiatrist, then Flint must also want to talk to his. Of course. Because, just as Dr. Lerner is the one person who has worked to understand Reeve, Dr. Moody is the one person who has worked to understand Flint. Who else has spent so many hours listening to that madman? Flint’s twisted psyche has been Dr. Moody’s bread and butter for years. He even wrote a book about his infamous client.

She absently touches the scar on the back of her neck, thinking that she and Flint are each bonded to their psychiatrists. They’ve likely been treated with some of the same drugs.

With a sudden chill she sees that they are, and ever will be, linked by their shared past. They are two sides of the same crime—captor and captive—and that’s a tie that can never be broken. They define each other. She can still feel him breathing on her skin.

B
ecause Reeve’s father works as a software consultant, his name and number are easily found on the Internet. After the second call from a news scout seeking an interview with his daughter, he mutes the phone and shuts it inside his home office. Then he steps to a front window and checks the street below.

Thankfully, no one seems to have located this address. Not yet.

He and Amanda have conspired to keep Reeve out of sight until Flint is caught. Her grades are good and she can afford to miss a few classes. Luckily, cooking is one of Amanda’s talents, and the house is well stocked with the kinds of foods that college students crave but can’t afford.

Amanda is just setting out the makings of an elaborate breakfast when they hear Reeve come in from her morning run.

Amanda meets his eyes and whispers, “It’s not going to be so easy keeping her indoors.”

R
eeve smells coffee brewing, but instead of heading toward the kitchen, creeps back to the guest room, where she kicks off her Nikes and snatches up her cell phone.

She calls Otis Poe. When he answers, she blurts out, “Otis, I just realized something important.”

“Um, Reeve? Is that you?” His voice sounds sleepy.

She bites a lip, picturing Poe’s new bride pulling the covers over her head with a groan. “I’m sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Um, no, we’re awake. What were you saying?”

“I just realized where Flint is.”

“You did? Where?” Poe sounds instantly awake. “His mother’s, right? Because—”

“No, he won’t go to his mother’s. He’ll go to Dr. Ick’s.”

“Who’s Dr. Ick?”

“Sorry. Dr. Ick is just a nickname. I mean he’ll go to Dr. Moody’s, his psychiatrist.”

“Dr. Moody? Wasn’t he an expert witness at Flint’s trial?”

“Right. And I figure that’s the first place Flint will go.”

“Interesting. So, did you call the cops?”

“No, I don’t want to get even more involved than I already am. Would you do it?”

“I could, but it’s your theory. And you’re the one with the cred.”

She grimaces. “I’d ask Dr. Lerner to call, but he’s in Brazil, working with those hostages who were just rescued.”

“Really? I didn’t see anything about that in the news.”

“No, you wouldn’t. The family paid a huge ransom. It’s very hush-hush.”

Poe starts to speak, but Reeve quickly says, “Oh, crap, here I am blabbing to a reporter. Forget I said anything, okay?”

“Okay.” He chuckles. “Unless, of course, it turns out there’s a link to Jefferson County.”

Each shuffles through their thoughts for a moment, then Poe says, “Do you want the sheriff’s number? He gave a statement yesterday. I’ve got his name right here.”

She suddenly has an idea. “No, never mind. I think I know someone,” she says, and hangs up.

It takes no effort to conjure the name of the FBI agent who was so kind to her during Flint’s trial. “Special Agent Milo Bender,” she says aloud.

It’s been years since she’s thought much about Bender. He was the case agent who stayed with her almost from the moment she was lifted from the trunk of her captor’s wrecked car.

She remembers the crash, the spinning car, the abrupt stillness. She remembers being lifted onto a gurney, lights flashing all around. She remembers lying in a hospital bed, where Milo Bender’s lined face appeared even before her own parents’.

“What’s your name, young lady?” he’d asked, bending over her.

She swallowed hard and told him.

“Glad to finally meet you, Reggie. We’ve been looking for you. But you’re safe now, okay?” he said, patting her hand. “Your parents are on their way. You’re going to be fixed up good as new, and then you can go home.”

And when she looked into his pacific blue eyes, she knew it was true.

Later, Agent Bender had been the one to escort her family into the courthouse. He’d taken them via the back entrance to a private elevator used by the judges. She balked at entering that tight, windowless box, but being with Agent Bender and her family made it tolerable.

Once the trial was over, her family moved to San Francisco, leaving the ugliness of what happened in Seattle behind. And so the FBI agent, who had been so kind to her family, so patient with her, and so stony with the media, also faded into the past.

She remembers that Agent Bender had programmed his number into her first cell phone. Seven years and several phones later, his number is still there. So, after mentally rehearsing what to say, she keys it up and calls.

An electronic voice promptly announces that the number has been disconnected.

She swears under her breath, wondering if something has happened to him, wondering if she should have stayed in touch. What’s the etiquette for crime victims and federal agents? Here’s another type of problem that normal people don’t have.

A quick search yields the number for the FBI’s Seattle office. Figuring she can reach Agent Bender through them, she punches in the number.

A recording says, “If this is an emergency please hang up and call 911.”

She paces while the voice continues listing numbered options. But she does not want to report a crime, she does not know her party’s extension, and so she disconnects, mocking, “If you’d like to report a wild-ass guess, please hang up and get a life.”

F
or the first time in many years, Daryl Wayne Flint sleeps late, awaking in a comfortable, king-sized bed. A momentary disorientation dissolves as he stretches, enjoying the luxurious sheets. Then he sits up and looks around, taking in the elegance of Dr. Terrance Moody’s master bedroom in the soft morning light.

He hums three notes of approval in quick succession and climbs out of bed. He goes first to the window and peeks through the drapes to admire the view: a stretch of blue water dashed with white boats. He watches the clouds smudge across a green island in the misty distance.

“Well, yes, Terrance, your home will do just fine, thank you very much,” he says aloud.

The master bathroom is larger than Flint’s entire room at the hospital. Every surface gleams. Flint urinates, puts on a plush terrycloth robe, and heads downstairs to the kitchen, where he manages to figure out the coffee machine.

While the coffee is brewing, he rummages through the pantry, examines the contents of the fridge, and helps himself to a large glass of orange juice. Next, he makes a simple ham-and-egg sandwich on a toasted poppy seed bagel. It is by far the best meal he’s had in seven years, so he fixes himself a second bagel sandwich, this one with cream cheese and lox, which he eats while roaming around the house, leaving a trail of seeds and crumbs.