Sleepwalker (35 page)

No, not seaweed.

Hair.

Hudson’s long, blond hair.

He pulls, and the next thing he knows, his daughter is above the surface. Holding her up somehow with one hand, he reaches quickly into the Jeep again and his fingers brush more streaming wet hair: Madison. As he pulls her up, his fingers bump against something hard and round, a pole of some sort—

J.J.’s stroller, he realizes, wedged into the backseat.

He’s got both girls above the water . . .

Thank God.

Thank God.

“Hudson!” he screams. “Madison!”

They need to wake up right away; need to keep themselves afloat so that he can dive down for their brother.

“Hudson! Madison!”

Mack is struggling in the water now and they’re limp in his arms, both of them. Why didn’t the blast of icy sea snap them back to consciousness?

Are they alive?

“Hudson! Madison!” He has to get to J.J., but he can’t let go of his daughters or they’ll sink.

“No!” he screams as the top of the Jeep disappears below the surface with his son still trapped inside.

A
llison can see the rotating red and blue lights all over the waterfront: police cars, rescue trucks, ambulances. The jetty is teeming with uniformed personnel: cops and paramedics, and . . .

Divers
.

She watches in mute horror as they approach the scene, trying not to let her mind go to the darkest place. She glimpses a pair of EMTs loading someone onto the back of an ambulance, but she can’t see the person on the stretcher. The EMTs hurriedly climb in after it and the rescue truck pulls away, sirens wailing, racing north, toward the road to the mainland and the nearest hospital.

Lieutenant Sparks pulls to a stop near the foot of the jetty.

“Stay here,” he tells her, gets out of the car, and strides toward the action.

“I can’t.” She shoves the door open.

She forces her legs to work beneath her, willing them to hold her up and carry her toward the wretched scene when all she really wants to do is turn and run away, far away, back home . . .

Home.

A sob clogs her throat. She wants so badly to be back there, back with her little girls and her baby boy, and yes, with Mack, too . . .

We’re going to go home. We are. We’re going to get past this, whatever it is, and we’re going back to our Happy House. We’re going to—

Suddenly, she sees him: Mack.

He’s bundled in a blanket, talking to a pair of wary-looking cops as a paramedic takes his blood pressure.

Something flutters in Allison’s heart. He’s her husband. He’s shivering, maybe injured, and . . .

And he’s alone.

“Where are they?” she yells.

Mack turns toward her, and the rest of them, too.

Up ahead of her, Lieutenant Sparks waves her back. “Mrs. MacKenna, I told—”

Ignoring him, she screams again at Mack, “Where are they?”

His eyes settle on her, and even from here she can see that they’re full of love, and relief, and she forgets.

“Allison!” he shouts, and starts toward her

The cops are on him instantly, holding him back.

“It’s okay,” she hears Mack say. “She’s my wife, I need to tell her . . .”

“Stay right where you are,” a stout man in a trench coat tells him firmly.

He strides in Allison’s direction, pulling a badge from her pocket, and she braces herself.

“Mrs. MacKenna, I’m Detective Looney with the Salt Breeze Pointe PD.”

“Yes. Where are my children?”

He clears his throat. “There was an accident.”

Her knees buckle. She starts to go down, but is steadied by both Detective Looney and Lieutenant Sparks.

“Your children were in the back of the car your husband was driving . . .”

Were
.

They
were
.

“Where are they now?” she asks shrilly, wrenching herself free.

“Your husband pushed the car into the water with the children in the backseat . . .”

“Noooooo!” she wails, and this time she does go down, sinking onto her knees. From where she is, she can see, for the first time, a pool of blood out on the jetty. Beside it is a prone figure covered in a tarp. Much too big to belong to a child, but . . .

“What happened? Oh my God, who is that?”

“Mrs. MacKenna, please try to calm down. We think it was a Good Samaritan who must have come along and tried to stop him. Your husband shot him in the back as he tried to—”

“Mack
shot
him?” she echoes, and shakes her head. “No. He wouldn’t. He
couldn’t
. He doesn’t have a gun.”

“He does. We recovered it. He—”

“No! I just told you, he doesn’t—”

“Mrs. MacKenna, we have his gun and he admitted to using it to shoot the man, okay? He confessed.”

She goes absolutely still.

Mack shot someone?

Killed someone?

Confessed?

“But that . . . that doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m sorry,” Detective Looney says quietly. “But we have word that DNA evidence has linked him to a series of murders in Westchester County, and—”

She gasps, clasping trembling hands over her face, covering her eyes, as if to protect herself somehow from seeing the shocking truth.

But it’s there anyway, right in front of her.

I’m married to a complete stranger.

A few months ago, she remembers, she’d asked Randi, “How could I be such a terrible judge of character?”

She was talking about Jerry Thompson at the time—about how sure she’d been that he was incapable of violence.

Ironic that she might have been right about him after all—and wrong about Mack.

“Mrs. MacKenna?”

“Where are my babies?” she asks dully, lowering her hands and staring at the cold water.

Hudson . . . Madison . . . J.J. . . .

“Your husband, we believe, had second thoughts and pulled the girls out.”

“What?” she turns back to the detective. “They’re
out
? He got them
out
?”

“Yes, the girls are—”

“J.J.?” she asks frantically. “What about J.J.?”

“He was still in the car when we got here—”

“Allison!” Mack calls.

“No, no, no, no . . .” Sobbing, she shakes her head. “My baby . . .”

“Mrs. MacKenna, listen to me. Our men went down immediately and managed to get to him. He was revived, and he was in that ambulance that just—”

“He’s alive? And the girls? The girls are—”

“They’re all alive, Mrs. MacKenna. All three of them.”

“Allison!” Mack again. “Allison!”

Dazed, she looks over.

Tears are streaming down his face. “They’re saying I did this. Please, Allie, you know me.”

I don’t. I don’t know you at all.

She turns her back on Mack.

“Allison, please! I promise you I would never hurt them.”

I promise you . . .

She remembers a string of broken promises.

Her mother’s far outweigh Mack’s. Maybe she’s overly sensitive because of the way she was raised; maybe that’s why she has a hard time forgiving, forgetting, trusting . . .

“You have to believe me, Allison. This guy—this is no Good Samaritan. He’s a monster. He came into the house and he took the kids. I was trying to save them. I chased them here in our car—” He points at the SUV. “If that isn’t true, then why is it here? How could I have driven two cars here?”

Allison looks at Detective Looney, who tells her somberly, “We think that he parked the SUV here earlier and then walked or hitchhiked back to the house to load the kids into the other car—it was a rental, in his name. We think he planned to use the SUV as a means of escape after he . . . uh . . . after the other car was . . . in the water.”

With the children in it.

Oh, Mack.

Oh, God.

“Detective Looney, take a look at this.” A crime scene technician holds out something in his gloved hand. “It was wedged in the padding of the baby’s seat.”

The baby. They’re talking about J.J.

As Detective Looney takes the object, Allison realizes, with a start, what it is.

An iPhone.

“That’s mine,” she tells the detective abruptly. “It has to be. J.J.—he’s always . . .” Her voice breaks.

“Allison!” Mack calls. “Please, just listen to me. I swear to you, I’m not lying. I never lie. You know that.”

Mack . . .

Mack doesn’t lie.

Ever.

He’s a monster . . . he came into the house and he took the kids . . .

I was trying to save them. . .

Allison was so sure he’d taken her phone so that she wouldn’t be able to call for help, but if J.J. had it . . .

She whirls around and asks Detective Looney, “Were there any witnesses? Did anyone actually see my husband do this? Any of it?”

“Mrs. MacKenna, as I told you, your husband confessed—”

“To shooting the man who stole our children, not to trying to hurt them himself.”

“The DNA—”

“No.” She shakes her head rapidly. “I don’t care. I don’t care what the DNA says. If no one saw—”

“Someone
did
see, and he paid with his life.” Out of patience, his eyes blazing, the detective gestures at the bloody figure on the ground. “And we have some questions for you.”

“I have to get to my children, but—”

“And we’ll take you to your children, but—”

“Please,
just listen to me!
My husband didn’t do this. I can prove it.”

“How?”

She closes her eyes briefly.

Forgive me, Mack.

“I’ll tell you. But first, please, can I speak to my husband?”

“I’m sorry. Not now.”

She nods. She’d expected as much.

“Mack!” she calls. “I love you! No matter what. I love you, and I believe you. I do.”

“Thank God.” His voice is ragged. “I love you, too, Allison.”

She swallows hard and turns back to Detective Looney. “Let’s go. I need to get to my children.”

“Mrs. MacKenna—”

“I know. The proof. I’ll tell you on the way to the hospital.”

N
o longer able to stand waiting outside for his cell phone to ring with news of the MacKenna family, Rocky finally called Murph and made him promise to ring the nurses’ station if he hears anything at all.

Now, stepping off the elevator, eager to get back to Ange, he sees one of the nurses come flying at him, and his heart stops.

“Mr. Manzillo! There you are! Dr. Abrams is looking for you!”

Rocky immediately breaks into a run, down the hall toward Ange’s room. He bursts through the door to see the neurologist bending over his wife, with several nurses gathered around the bed.

“What’s going on?” he asks breathlessly—but he sees for himself, before anyone can reply.

Ange’s eyes—those beautiful brown eyes he was terrified he might never see again—are open.

E
ven lying in a big white hospital bed with her scraped head bandaged, Hudson has an invincible air that fills Allison with a tremendous sense of relief the moment she catches sight of her.

“Shh, Mom, Maddy’s sleeping!” her daughter cautions as Allison gingerly gathers her into a hug, and she points to her sister in the adjoining bed.

Allison smiles and leans over Madison, kissing her forehead and stroking her hair for a moment before turning back to her firstborn. “How do you feel, Huddy?”

“Great. But I don’t know what time it is. Do you know where my watch is?”

“I don’t, but I’m sure we’ll find it.”

“Okay. What happened?” She sounds more curious than upset. “How did I get here? The nurse said you would tell me.”

“You were in an accident in the car. Do you remember?”

“No. I thought . . .” Hudson frowns. “All I remember is going to bed last night.”

As helpful as it might be if Hudson could shed some light on the chain of events, Allison knows it’s better this way—better that whatever was in those discarded syringes spared her children the horror of the truth . . .

But, thank God, not the worst truth imaginable.

Hudson looks over at her sister. “Was Maddy in the accident, too?”

“Yes.”

“Is she going to be all right?”

“Yes.”

“What about Daddy and J.J.?”

“They’re going to be all right, too,” Allison promises her. “I’m going to go see J.J. again now.” She’s been with him for the last half hour, ever since she arrived at the hospital. He’s still in serious condition, but stable now. It wasn’t easy to leave him, but of course she wanted to see the girls, who had both been sleeping when she arrived at the hospital. She had asked one of the nurses to summon her if either of them woke up.

“Will you tell Maddy I was here,” she asks Hudson, “and send the nurse back to get me when she wakes up?”

“I’ll tell her. Take your time, Mom. Maybe you can look for my watch out there.”

Allison smiles and kisses Hudson’s bandaged head, then Madison’s again, before slipping out the door to get back to J.J.

Unlike his big sister, he looks tiny and vulnerable, with tubes and wires connecting him to machines that monitor his vital signs. The doctors are fairly certain there’s no permanent damage—although there’s no way of knowing just yet.

A young blond nurse with a round face smiles at Allison as she settles back into the chair she vacated at her son’s bedside. “He’s a tough little guy, isn’t he?”

“He is.” Allison nods, smiling, remembering.

“Your girls look a lot like you,” the nurse tells her. “But not him. He must look like his dad.”

“Yes. He does.”

The nurse doesn’t know.

Hopefully, she never will. Hopefully, Mack will be cleared any second now.

The nurse slips away, and Allison leans back to wait.

H
olding Ange’s hand, looking into her eyes, Rocky can’t seem to stop smiling—or chattering, filling her in on everything she’s missed in the past few months.

“Mr. Manzillo?”

His one-sided conversation interrupted by a nurse, Rocky reluctantly breaks eye contact with Ange and turns around. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry—I have a message for you from a T.J. Murphy.”