The Escape Artist (33 page)

“Really?” he asked.

She nodded, then without a word stepped back into the bathroom. She didn’t know if Linc was close to tears, but she definitely was, and she didn’t want to cry in front of him.

When she came out of the bathroom, she found Cody already in his pajamas and in the crib. The room was dark except for one light near the door. Linc sat on the bed, his back against the headboard, and she felt his eyes following her as she walked across the room.

Kim tucked Cody’s monkey next to him under the covers and rubbed his back. Then she closed the drapes and moved to the bed, sitting down cross legged in front of Linc. Taking his hands in her own, she looked deeply into his eyes, his face. There was still enough light in the room for her to see him clearly, and she was determined to commit every one of his features to her memory.

Linc sighed. “Where do we begin?” he asked.

“Tell me how Grace and Valerie are doing.” It seemed a safe topic to start with.

“They’re slightly annoyed with you,” he said. “I mean, they understand your motivation, and they sympathize with you, but you really have shaken up everybody’s lives, you know.”

She couldn’t tell if he was speaking from anger or not.

“And what else? What else is going on in Boulder? Are they still looking for me?”

“Oh, yes.” He nodded. “They’ll be looking for you until they find you.
If
they find you.” He squeezed her hands. “Jim and Peggy have hired a private investigator. Plus they have the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children working on it. I think Peggy talks to them a few times a week. She really has it in her head that you’re not a fit mother. She thinks Tyler”—he smiled—”
Cody’s
going to wither under your care.”

“That makes me angry.”

“Don’t blame her. That’s what she’s gotten from Jim. She’s heard all the negative press on you. And she sincerely cares about Ty…Cody.”

“I know that.” She suddenly had a clear picture in her mind of Peggy, the way she looked as they were all leaving the courtroom. Pretty, white-skinned, dark-haired, and smiling with the knowledge that she was about to gain a son. “How close do you think they are to figuring out where I am?” she asked.

“I don’t know. They don’t keep me informed. I
do
know that the FBI’s gotten involved, though.”

“The FBI!” Somehow that made her feel hopeless.

“They’ve questioned me
ad nauseam
and I guess I have to thank you for not telling me anything, although, I swear, Suze, I thought I was going to go out of my head at first. I was so angry with you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know how else to—”

“And you were right. If you’d let me in on it, I would have tried to stop you and I would have had a harder time talking to the cops. This way I didn’t have to lie.”

She undid the buttons on his shirt sleeves and slipped her fingers up his forearms. “Do you think they’re going to find me?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve been impressed with the means they have. You should know that they’ve alerted doctors around the country to be on the lookout for a child with Cody’s condition.”

“I was afraid of that. But we’ve been to a doctor and even to the emergency room once, and—”

“The emergency room? Why?”

His arms were warm beneath her hands. “Cody had an ear infection on a weekend. I had no choice. No one said a word to us, though, No one seemed the least bit suspicious.” Of course she’d had Adam with her. Adam’s presence had made her look less like a woman on the run with her child.

“That’s good,” Linc said. “Did you use your insurance, though? They can probably trace you that way.”

“No. I knew that would be a bad move.”

“So…how did you pay the doctor?”

“With some of the money I brought with me.”

“Let me send you more. You must be running low.”

“No, Linc. I have to make it on my own. Besides, it would be dangerous for you to send anything to me. I don’t want you to know where I am.”

He grimaced, and she felt the muscles of his arms tighten beneath her hands.

“I don’t like this,” he said.

“I know. Neither do I.”

Linc sighed. “The National Center Peggy’s working with sends out these postcards with pictures of missing children on them. They can send them to just about every household in the country, and I’ve heard they’re really effective.”

“Have they sent one out with Cody’s picture on it?” She’d seen one of the cards only the week before in a stack of Ellen’s mail. There were two pictures on the card, two sisters who had been abducted by a parent. There was a number to call if you’d seen them. The card had frightened her for a few hours, but then she’d convinced herself that there were far too many cases of missing children for hers to attract such attention.

“Not that I know of,” Linc said. “Peggy keeps badgering them to, though. Peggy’s a real squeaky wheel. And they get tons of responses from those cards.”

“You sound as though you think it’s only a matter of time till I’m found.”

Linc was very quiet. He looked down at his splayed shirt sleeves and her hands where they rested on his arms. “Please consider coming home with me,” he said.

“And give Cody up?” She felt a wave of anger. “No.”

“It’s true he’d go to Jim and Peggy, but hopefully you’d be able to see him. I’ll do whatever I can to help you. I’ll hire the best lawyer I can find to keep you out of jail.” He turned his palms up and leaned back to draw her hands into his. “And the truth is, Suze,” he said slowly, carefully, “in some ways, Cody would probably be better off with Jim and Peggy. He’d have a stable home. He’d have better medical care than—”

“I’m doing fine with him, thank you.” She pulled her hands away from his and folded her arms across her chest.

“You can’t run away from your problems for the rest of your life,” Linc said.

“Have you forgotten what happened the last time you said those words to me?” He lowered his eyes and she knew that he understood exactly what she was talking about.

“That was half your life ago,” he said quietly. “This is totally different.” He leaned back against the headboard. “I know I’m being selfish,” he said. “My motivation’s simple: I want you home with me again. Grace keeps talking about fixing me up with other women. I’m not interested. I want my buddy back.”

She forgave him for suggesting she might not be doing a good job with Cody. She knew he didn’t mean it. “I want you back too,” she said, “but I’m not willing to give up my son, not even for you.”

“All right.” Linc shook his head as if clearing it of the conversation. “Let’s not talk about it anymore tonight. We don’t have that much time together. I don’t want it to spend it arguing with you.”

“Me neither.”

“Come here, then.” He reached his hand toward her as he stretched out on the bed, and she lay down next to him.

She rested her hand lightly on his side, and for a moment, neither of them said a word.

“I’m afraid to kiss you or touch you,” she said finally.

“Why is that?” He was on his side, facing her, stroking her cheek.

“Because I’m afraid if I do, I won’t be able to leave you again. Deprive myself of you again.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

She drew away from him. “Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?”

“Count on that.”

“All right. I’m sorry.” He leaned forward to kiss her. His lips were so warm, so familiar. She drew out the kiss, making it last. She wanted this entire night to last. She would not let herself think about tomorrow, or the day after that.

Linc sat up. He straddled her, then leaned forward to kiss her again and she felt her hunger for him mounting. It had been too long. She reached for his belt buckle, but he gently moved her hands to the bed and began undoing the buttons on her shirt.

She rested her hands on his denim-covered thighs, her eyes closed, as he slipped her shirt off her shoulders. He unfastened her bra and lowered his head to her breasts, and when he slipped his legs between hers, she felt the heat of his erection pressing against her through their jeans. She arched her back as he caressed her breasts with his lips, as he drew her nipple into his mouth. A moan escaped her own lips, and she had to fight the urge to rip his clothes from his back.

Slow down
, she told herself.

The memory of tonight might have to last her an eternity. Linc seemed to feel the same way, because he lingered over every inch of her body, touching her softly with his hands and his mouth, and it was a long time before she finally gained permission to undress him, and longer still until he was inside her. Even then, his movements were slow and measured, as they’d always been. He knew how to bring her to the brink and hold her there until she begged him for release.

She succeeded in blocking thoughts of the future from her mind until that instant, when all the longing she’d felt for him this past month and a half exploded inside her. Despite the exquisite pleasure of that moment, she found herself sobbing as the sensations faded.

“Don’t think,” he said, holding her tightly. “Don’t think about anything.”

But she couldn’t put an end to her heaving sobs. She held on to him, her fingers clutching his skin, and he rolled onto his side and pulled her into his arms, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, as he waited for her tears to stop. For a while, it seemed as though they never would.

She must have tired herself out, though, because when next she opened her eyes, the room felt different, and she knew there’d been a shift in time. She must have fallen asleep.

“Are you awake?” Linc asked.

“Yes. How long was I out?”

“Half an hour or so. You okay?”

“Yes.” She rolled onto her back and looked at the dimly lit ceiling, trying to sort reality from her dreams.

“I took your photo albums from your apartment,” Linc said. “I didn’t want Jim to have them.”

“Thank you.” She’d thought about those albums, about how carelessly they would have been treated in Jim’s hands.

“I loved seeing the few remaining sketches you did of my old band,” Linc said. “Haven’t seen them in a while.”

She remembered the summer nights she’d spent in his garage, sitting on the lumpy old sofa, sketching the band while Linc and his friends played music and joked with one another. She’d treasured the warmth and security she felt in his house, and she’d hated going home, never knowing if her father would be a mean drunk or a weepy drunk that night.

“Your house was my oasis,” she said.

“I know.”

Unbidden, the memory of the night her father was killed slipped into her head. Linc was quiet, and she wondered if his thoughts were on that grisly night as well.

“Sometimes I think about what happened that night,” she said,

“and I realize I’ve told the story the way you said it happened for so long that I’ve almost come to believe it’s the truth.” It wasn’t that far from the truth, anyway. Just a little twisting, a little distortion of the facts. She had even managed to pass a lie detector test corroborating Linc’s account of her father’s death.

“Well, it’s all behind us.”

“I just regret that you had to do time.”

“Shh. Water under the bridge.”

She pulled closer to him. She didn’t want to fall asleep again and waste this time with him, but she was sinking down. Dreamlike images floated in and out of her head, and she comforted herself with the fact that, at least for tonight, she would be sleeping with the man she loved.

LINC WOKE UP TO
find her still asleep. She looked very young, like the delicate little girl he’d loved as a sister before he’d loved her as anything else. The reddish-brown hair didn’t fit her, and he wondered how anyone could look at her and not realize she had made herself into someone different. He brushed the hair back from her forehead, searching for the pale roots, but she had taken care not to let them show. Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to her hairline. She didn’t wake up, and he liked to think that she was sleeping happily and securely in his company, just as Cody was sleeping soundly in his crib.

He got out of bed, used the bathroom, then opened the drapes and looked out at a still quiet, still dark Philadelphia.

She’d brought up the night her father was killed, opening a whole world of memories for him. And they all began with him posing for her in her bedroom.

“Fully clothed,” she’d assured him.
Right, Susanna
. That had lasted about a week. Then she’d upped the ante. She’d gotten those books on figure drawing from the library, and she wanted to draw “more of him,” she said. Would he please take off his clothes?

“You wouldn’t have to be totally nude,” she assured him. “You could leave on your…you know.” She glanced at his crotch, giving him an instant erection.

He posed as she wanted him to, although he knew he was asking for trouble. He could still picture her bedroom clearly. It was quite small, a bed in one corner, a desk against the wall next to it. She’d lock the bedroom door with the big key that hung from the doorknob, then he’d sit or lie on the bed, while she’d sit in the desk chair, her feet propped up on the bed, the sketchbook on her lap. Carefully taped to the walls were her dozens of sketches of his band. Some were of the instruments, some of the guys themselves. Most of the drawings were in black and white, but some were in colored pencil. She was very proud of all of them. He didn’t blame her. They were excellent, and she was about to enter them in a statewide competition, along with the work in one of several sketch books resting on her desk. She’d already won the local competition with what she called “The Garage Band Series.” Winning the state would guarantee her scholarships for college. It was almost all she talked about.

She wore a serious look on her face as she sketched him, and he felt guilty for the prurient thoughts running through his twenty-two-year-old male mind. But sitting there would have been intolerably boring if it were not for those fantasies; they kept him returning to her bedroom time and time again.

One evening, she set down her sketch pad with a sigh and stepped over to the bed. Linc was sitting up, his back against the wall. Susanna sat down and leaned forward, slipping the tips of her fingers under the waistband of his boxers, tugging them gently. He grabbed her hands in surprise.