Third Degree (42 page)

“My water?” Warren said.

She looked down at the tumbler in her hand. “Oh.” She handed him the glass, her hand shaking.

“I guess I’ll get my own ice,” he said, going to the freezer.

“I’m sorry.”

As he shoved the glass into the automatic ice dispenser, Laurel realized that the dog, rather than almost delivering her destruction, might have delivered her salvation instead. Her plan would be risky, but she saw no safe way out of this trap.

“Warren? I have something to tell you.”

He took a thoughtful sip from his glass. “What is it?”

“I wanted to tell you this morning, but you were so upset about the audit—or that’s what I thought, anyway—that I decided to wait. But now that I know about”—she lowered her voice—“your illness…you need to know this. It just might change how you feel about everything.”

He set his glass on the table and folded his arms across his chest. “What are you talking about?”

Laurel suddenly sensed that she was making a mistake. But what other gambit did she have? “I’m pregnant,” she said simply. “I just found out this morning.”

He blinked once, slowly, like a lizard in the sun. Other than that, he gave no sign of having heard her.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“We’ve only had sex twice in the last month.”

She prayed that Danny wasn’t hearing this. “It only takes once, you know. It only took once with Grant.”

Warren looked down at her belly, but of course she wasn’t showing. If anything, she looked thinner than she had a month ago.

“More lies,” he said.

She somehow managed a confident smile. “Open the trash compactor. Look inside that bag Christy brought in.”

He stared at her awhile longer. Then he opened the compactor and fished out the Walgreens bag. Out came the tampon carton.

“Keep going,” she said.

He looked into the empty bag, then opened the tampon box. He stared for several seconds, then drew out the e.p.t box, and his expression changed from irritation to a kind of wonder. Pulling the used test strip out of its little baggie, he studied it for a while, then looked up at her with suspicion.

“When did you take this test?”

“I told you, this morning.”

“Why did you hide it?”

“Because you hadn’t even come to bed the night before, and you were obviously upset. I decided to wait until you’d resolved the audit.”

Warren stared at her like a parent listening to a lying toddler. “If you’re pregnant, the baby’s not mine.”

He seemed so utterly convinced of this fact that Laurel’s smile faded. “Why not?”

“Because I can’t father a child anymore.”

There was a roaring in her ears like the birth of an avalanche. “You…why not?”

“Because of the drugs I’m taking. Massive doses of steroids, plus some experimental compounds Kenneth Doan prescribed for me. He got me into a Genentech trial. I’d be surprised if I have even one viable sperm left.”

“You must have!” she said quickly. “There’s no other explanation.”

“Of course there is.”

“All clean!” Beth announced, bounding into the kitchen with her wet hands held high. She patted Christy on the back, earning a warning growl, then climbed onto a chair and started rolling a Tech Deck across the table.

“Let’s continue this later,” Laurel said, wringing her hands. “Please.”

Warren eyes looked even more reptilian than they had before. “Beth, honey?”

“What?” She twirled the little skateboard in a circle.

“Mommy’s got a surprise for us.”

Beth looked up from the board, her eyes on Laurel. “What is it, Mommy?”

“You’re going to get a new brother or sister soon,” Warren said.

Beth’s mouth and eyes opened wide. “A baby sister?”

“Maybe,” Warren said. “We don’t know yet.”

“I want a baby sister! No more
boys
!”

Warren set the Walgreens bag gently on the counter. “Do you have any more surprises, Mom?”

“It’s your baby,” she whispered. “There’s no other option but virgin birth, and I’m no virgin.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Where’s Grant?” Beth asked. “I want to tell Grant we’re getting a baby sister!”

“Grant’s spending the night with Gram,” Warren said, his eyes never leaving Laurel’s face. Gram was Laurel’s mother; she lived thirty-five miles up the river in Vidalia, Louisiana.

“I want to stay with Gram, too! No fair!”

“Hush, Elizabeth,” Warren said. “We’ll see about that later.”

“Does Gram know about my baby sister?”

“Quiet!”

Beth’s head snapped down, and she went back to twirling the skateboard.

Warren stepped close enough to Laurel to kiss her. “If this baby was mine, you would have told me as soon as you heard I was sick. After I got off the phone with Danny.”

“Who’s sick?” Beth asked. “Is Daddy sick?”

“Quiet, baby,” Warren said in a silky voice.

“Please don’t do this,” Laurel implored.

“You were trying to give me hope before. You would have told me about it then, if it was true.”

She answered with quiet urgency, trying not to communicate her growing panic to Beth. “I wasn’t sure if it would make things better or worse. I was afraid you’d feel you were missing that much more.”

“A man lives to pass on his genes. You know that.” He lifted his hand and tenderly brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. She shuddered. “There’s only one reason you would have kept this secret from me.”

“You’re wrong.”

He picked up the Walgreens bag and slapped her with it.

Beth screamed.

“Dad, stop it!”
shouted a voice from the hallway.

Everyone froze as Grant stepped from the hallway into the kitchen. “Stop yelling at Mom! She hasn’t done anything!”

Warren looked his son from head to toe, and Laurel saw pride in his eyes. “There’s my son,” he said. “It’s written all over him.”

It was true. Grant had Warren’s muscular body and regular facial features; but it was her eyes that looked out of his face.

Warren took three steps toward Grant and held out his right hand. “I knew you’d come back, Son. You had the wrong idea before.”

Grant drew back, but then Warren raised his hand, and Grant slapped it in some kind of high-five ritual. “There’s guys outside with guns,” Grant said. “Lots of them, and some of them are mean. We have to get ready.”

“Yes, we do,” Warren said calmly. “We’re all here now, just as it should be. I want you kids to go into the safe room.”

Laurel shivered at the name.

“Are you and Mom coming?” Grant asked.

“In a minute, yes.”

“I’ll wait until you go, then.”

“Mind me, Son.”

Grant looked back at his father with a combination of disappointment and defiance. “I’m not a little kid anymore, Dad. I want to help. I can do stuff now. Grown-up stuff!”

Warren looked appraisingly at his son, then knelt and beckoned him closer. When Grant came forward, Warren spoke softly into his ear. Grant nodded several times, then hurried past Laurel into the pantry.

“Where’s he going?” Laurel asked.

Warren smiled. “Don’t worry about it.”

Danny was so stunned by the revelation of Laurel’s pregnancy that he could hardly think. He and Sheriff Ellis sat shoulder to shoulder in the helicopter, headsets on, with the rotors already whirling at full rotational speed.

“I don’t think we can wait until Carl gets a clear shot,” the sheriff said, his worried face illuminated by the cockpit lights. “I know you want to, but I can’t risk Shields barricading his family in that panic room. He could cut their throats and laugh at us while he was doing it.”

“He hasn’t done that yet,” Danny pointed out.

“No, but he’s coming apart in there. I didn’t like the sound of his voice. I’ve got that Jim Jones, Kool-Aid feeling.”

Danny wanted to argue, but his mind kept jumping back to the fact that Laurel had lied to him about sleeping with her husband. This morning she’d told him flat out that she hadn’t. But she
had.

“Shields doesn’t believe her about that pregnancy either,” Ellis added. “I think that pushed him over the edge.” He elbowed Danny. “You think Shields is the father of that baby?”

Jim Jones,
Danny thought, twenty seconds behind the conversation.
Kool-Aid.
“I don’t know. Might be the guy who wrote the letter.”

“Shields is a doctor, so he must know what he’s talking about. He says he couldn’t have got her pregnant. Aw…in five minutes it won’t matter anyway.”

Danny closed his eyes, trying to work his way to the heart of what had really been going on in his life.

“Fuck this,” Ellis said, abandoning his deacon’s rectitude. “Take us up, Danny!”

Danny pulled pitch and the Bell leaped into the night sky. In seconds he was looking down at the glowing yellow windows of the Shields home in miniature, an aerial shot of the perfect suburban home. A Steven Spielberg movie.

“This is Black Leader,” Ellis said. “TRU will carry out explosive entry on my command. Acknowledge by turns.”

Danny gripped the controls with too much force, trying in vain to bleed off his anxiety.

“Black One, in position.”

“Two, in position.”

Ellis pointed down toward the front yard. “I want you to flare out there and hit your light, pull him to a window. He might come alone, and I’ll blow the doors then.”

Danny shook his head as though to clear it. “You can’t send Ray in there, Sheriff. You’ve got to let Carl take the shot.”

“There’s no more time! And Carl’s still on the back side of the house.”

“Move him!”

“It’s too late! We’re going in. Shields has left us no choice.”

“Six, in position.”

Danny descended to 150 feet and flew left turns as he waited for the acknowledgments to come in. From this altitude, the beating of the rotor blades would sound to someone in the house like a giant robot pounding on the roof.
Maybe that baby
is
Warren’s,
he thought. But the sheriff was right; Shields was a doctor and he’d sounded certain about his inability to father a child. Danny flashed back to the morning’s school conference, when Laurel had started to tell him something, then pulled back at the last moment, when the next parent showed up at the door—

“This is Black Six,” crackled the headset. “I’ve got movement on the front thermal cam. It’s real faint, but it looks like a large figure moving from the pantry toward the central hall. The foyer area.”

“What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a green blob, Sheriff. Like a ghost.”

“Keep me posted. Carl, stay ready. If Shields moves back into the great room, we may blow those back windows yet.”

“Understood. I’m glassing the windows, and my spotter’s on his thermal. I’m ready to fire.”

Danny looked down at the house, praying for the X-ray vision promised in the comic books of his youth. Where was Laurel? What was Warren doing? Would he really execute her?
Yes,
answered a voice in his head.
Not to kill her, but to murder the child she’s carrying. It’s his only chance at revenge against an invisible enemy. He’ll shoot her in the stomach….

Danny thought about the cell phone in his pocket. He should already have used it to try to find out what was happening inside. But with Warren moving around the house, what good were texted answers? Every passing second could change the reality in there.
Maybe it’s time to call her,
he thought. But would that give the TRU the edge they needed, or get Laurel killed before they could even blow the doors?

For once in his life, Danny had no idea what to do.

Grant sat huddled in the pantry with the lights off, just as his father had told him to do. He had one job: pull the big breaker switch if he heard shooting. He knew all about the breaker switch, because his dad had told him about it when they lost power during Hurricane Katrina. It wasn’t hard or anything. He’d seen twenty different cartoon characters pull the same kind of switch to make the lights go out.

Grant was confused about what was happening with his parents, but he was glad to have a job to do, and he didn’t want to disappoint his father again. No matter how crazy it might seem that his dad was acting, Grant knew there was a reason for it, because his dad always did the right thing. His mom had told him that. Plenty of times. And now wasn’t the time to start doubting it. He was only a kid, after all.

As he stared up at the big switch lever, his back pressed into a corner, someone slid open the pantry window. Grant jumped because he was startled, but after that he stayed absolutely still. He’d been hunting enough times to know what to do when you didn’t want to be seen. No movement. No sound. Not even a breath.

It didn’t surprise him that the alarm system didn’t chime. The same silence had greeted him when he sneaked back through the window upstairs. He figured the cops had turned off the system somehow.

A dark head came through the window, and with it the smell of cigarettes. Then the head vanished, and a leg with a boot on the end of it came through. Four fingers curled under the window frame. Then the head returned, followed by shoulders and the rest of a body. Grant tensed, preparing to spring to his feet and tear out of the pantry, but his father’s instructions held him back. He could not abandon his post.

He heard a grunt, followed by creaks and stretchy sounds like those his grandmother’s knees made when she got up from her easy chair. The intruder stood tall in the darkness. He was wearing a uniform, Grant realized, just like the one Deputy Sandra had been wearing. Grant thanked God there was a shelf above his head, or the guy would probably have seen him already.

When the man took a step forward, Grant’s eyes bulged. This man had coached the baseball team Grant played against in the city championship last year. His son was a pitcher on the team, a boy who cussed all the time and tried to pick fights after he lost. The referees had threatened to throw the coach out of the game for yelling cuss words.

Trace
…that’s what the kids called him.
Coach Trace.
Like the Natchez Trace.