Vicious (10 page)

“So did I,” Jordan calmly admitted. “But it’s all under control now.”

The man’s eyes narrowed at him. “The clerk in the store seemed pretty concerned. She knew you….”

Jordan just nodded. He slowly reached for the lug wrench.

“She called you something back there, it wasn’t
Brad
. It was—
Jordy….
”

“That’s right.” He had the lug wrench in his grasp now. “My name is Jordan—Jordan Prewitt, and you killed my mother, you slimy fuck.”

Wide-eyed, the man stared at him and started to reach into his jacket pocket again. “No, wait—wait!” he cried.

Jordan hauled back the wrench and brought it crashing down on his scalp. Allen Meeker flopped forward, his face hitting the gravel.

A gun fell out of his jacket pocket.

“Bang, bang!” Mattie said.

Susan stared at him, a hand over her heart.

Her little boy wore an orange life vest over his grey sweatshirt from Disney World—with Mickey, Donald, Pluto, and Goofy on it. He stood near the storage locker in the cabin of the boat Allen had rented for them. He had a flare gun in his hands—and Susan had no idea whether or not it was loaded. She didn’t even know where he’d found the thing. Mattie pointed the gun directly at her. “Bang, bang! You’re dead, Mommy!”

“Mattie—honey, that’s not a toy,” she said, as calmly as she could. Susan wasn’t even thinking of herself; it just panicked her to see her four-and-a-half-year-old handling a gun—no matter what direction it was pointed. Nevertheless, the bulky yellow life vest she had on couldn’t deflect or diminish the deadly impact of a flare—especially one shot at such close range. She was in the cabin’s small galley, by the stepladder-stairs to the deck.

The boat was tied to the dock in back of the house. She’d just put some food and cans of soda pop in the mini refrigerator, and then she’d turned to see Mattie with the flare gun in his little hand.

Susan remained perfectly still. “Put the gun down on the table,” she said. “Right now, sweetie, I mean it. That’s not a toy, Mattie. It’s very dangerous.”

“Bang, bang!” he repeated. Now he gripped the gun with both hands. His finger wiggled near the trigger.

Slowly, she took a step toward him. “Did you hear me, Mattie? Put that down this instant. It’s not yours.” She pointed to the heavily varnished, narrow table in front of the settee. “Put it down on the table—right now….”

He stared at her for a moment, the gun still pointed at her. His tongue poked out past the corner of his mouth. The boat swayed a bit from side to side. Susan could hear water lapping along the sides of the vessel and against the dock pilings.

Susan reached out to him. “Okay, then, just hand it to me, sweetie. That’s a good boy.”

Smiling, he plopped it in her outstretched palm.

Susan let out a long sigh. The gun felt heavy. It was probably loaded. “Thank you,” she muttered, working up a smile. “That’s my guy. Where did you—um, find this, sweetheart?”

“There,” he pointed to a half-open drawer by the storage closet. Susan noticed two big flashlights and about ten flare cartridges in there. She gingerly set the flare gun in the drawer. Closing it, she noticed the lock.

Allen had given her the keys to the boat earlier. Susan dug into the pocket of her jeans and pulled them out. There were three keys on the ring. Her hands were still shaking as she tried each key in the drawer’s lock. The third one worked—thank God.

She’d brought along a whole bin of Mattie’s favorite toys for this boat trip; so naturally, he had to go looking for something else to play with—like a loaded flare gun. She didn’t remember Michael being this much of a handful, but then again, she’d had a lot of help with Michael.

It was ironic; she’d been up half the night worried that Mattie would somehow get his hands on Allen’s gun, and here he’d found another lethal weapon on the boat. So far, except for one nice, mild surprise, it had been a pretty sketchy morning.

Allen had finally come to bed around 4:30
AM
. He’d stashed the gun on the top shelf in the bedroom closet. Susan kept tossing and turning, but managed to nod off about an hour later. She stirred a bit when Allen got up again at seven, but he told her to sleep in. He even volunteered to make breakfast for Mattie.

Susan dozed off again. She had a dream about Walt and Michael. Her firstborn was about Mattie’s age in the dream. They were in a crowded train station, but she could see Walt over by the newsstand, looking at a magazine. She tried to hold on to Michael’s hand, but he kept slipping away. Her husband wasn’t paying any attention to them at all. She was terrified that Michael would get lost. She kept calling to her husband, “Walt, I need you to help me!”

She woke up, feeling as if she were still reaching out for her lost little boy.

It used to be she’d awaken from such dreams and tell herself everything was all right. But now after dreams like this one, she almost always sat up in bed and cried. This morning was no different.

Susan used up three Kleenexes before she smelled the coffee—and there was bacon cooking, too.

It was 9:35. She threw on her robe and paused by the open closet door. She checked the top shelf, but the gun wasn’t there.

Downstairs, she found Mattie in front of the TV again, watching the DVD of
Finding Nemo
for about the zillionth time. Allen was in the kitchen, at the stove. “I looked, but couldn’t find the
you-know-what
in our closet,” she whispered to him. “Please tell me this doesn’t mean you’re packing heat right now.”

“It means I locked the
you-know-what
in the glove compartment of my car two hours ago,” Allen replied, removing bacon from the grill with a set of tongs. He set it on a paper towel on the counter. “And I know bacon sandwiches are your favorite breakfast guilty pleasures, so here we are, babe.”

Susan put her arm around him and kissed him. “Will you marry me?”

“Yeah, come to think of it,” he replied, kissing her back.

While she poured the coffee and made toast, Susan couldn’t quite look her handsome, considerate fiancé in the eye. He had no idea she still had dreams about Walt.

Later, she cut up last night’s leftover chicken, tossed in some bacon, and made a chicken pasta salad to serve up cold with Tuscan bread while they were on their nautical excursion around Skagit Bay. Susan put on sneakers, jeans, a heather-green pullover, and a windbreaker; then she got Mattie into a pair of jeans and his Disney World sweatshirt.

They’d been on their way down to the boat when she’d realized they had no sunscreen. So Allen had said he’d drive to Rosie’s Roadside Sundries and buy some. He’d told her to put the food in the boat’s refrigerator and don their life vests so they’d be ready to sail by the time he returned.

That had been over a half hour ago. Susan sweltered in the life vest and windbreaker. Then again, maybe she was perspiring because she’d just had one of the major frights of her life seeing Mattie with that flare gun.

She led him to the built-in sofa and sat him down. “Now, what did I tell you when we first came aboard this boat?” she asked.

He pouted slightly. “Not to touch anything without axing you.”

“That’s right,” she said. “And did I tell you it was okay to touch that flare gun and play with it?”

“No.”

She nodded. “That was very, very dangerous. One of us could have been seriously hurt. Now, if you can’t obey the rules of being a good sailor, you can’t go sailing. You sit here and think about that while we wait for Allen to come back from the store.” Reaching into the toy bin, Susan laid out some things on the table to keep him occupied. “I want you to stay put and play quietly—like a good sailor, okay?”

“’Kay,” Mattie murmured.

Mussing his hair, Susan walked back toward the galley area. She climbed two of the three steps up to the deck. The wind whipping at her hair, she peered out at the back of the house for a few moments. She kept hoping to see Allen’s BMW come around the driveway. But there was no sign of him.

“Well, Allen must have had to go all the way into town for the sunscreen,” she announced, stepping down into the cabin again. She’d said it more for herself than for Mattie, who was bringing a little Fisher-Price airplane in for a landing on the narrow table.

Susan got busy putting away the plastic plates and glasses—and checking out all the drawers and cupboards of the compact galley.

There was a
click
from the operating panel on the other side of the steps. One of the two built-in monitors had a flashing icon that said
You’ve Got Mail!

It struck her as odd that they couldn’t get decent cell phone service in the area, but they were able to get e-mail on this boat. She sat down at the navigating station and found the pullout drawer for the keyboard and the mouse.

“Will we see any pirates?” Mattie asked, focusing on his toy plane.

“Not on this trip, honey,” she said. She was thinking at this point, they might not even see the rest of the bay. Allen was awfully late. Maybe this e-mail was from him. She clicked on the icon, and the e-mail listing popped up on the screen. The sender was [email protected], and the subject was: Welcome & Happy Sailing!

Susan opened the e-mail.

Susan clicked
KEEP AS NEW
, to save the e-mail for Allen. It looked like he’d gone to a lot of trouble to reserve this particular boat. He’d been adamant about getting out on the water before noon today.

Susan glanced at her wristwatch: 12:40. This was getting ridiculous. He’d been gone nearly an hour.

“Mommy, can we go up on top?” Mattie asked.

Susan got to her feet. “Sure, sweetheart.” She found his Mariners baseball hat in the toy bin and put it on his head. Mattie grabbed his Woody doll from the bin of toys. Susan helped him off the settee and led him up the steps to the deck. “You’ll have to hold on to me while we’re up here—the whole time, okay?”

“’Kay,” he said. “Where’s Allen? When’s he coming back?”

“That’s what your dear old mother would like to know,” she muttered. Susan glanced over at the house again as she came up on deck. There was still no sign of him.

She sat down with Mattie in the cockpit. Susan started to adjust the visor of Mattie’s baseball hat so he wouldn’t get sunburned.

“Is that Allen?” Mattie asked, pointing toward the house.

Susan turned and gaped at their rental house. At first, she didn’t see anything. She’d been focusing on the driveway that wound around near the back porch. It took a few moments for Susan to realize what Mattie had seen.

She gasped. Her son was pointing to a man at the edge of the woods—only a few feet away from the far side of the house. He wore sunglasses, an oversized army camouflage jacket, and a matching hat. She couldn’t quite see his face. He was creeping toward the sunroom window.

“Is Allen wearing a disguise?” Mattie asked.

For a moment, Susan couldn’t move. She sat there, paralyzed.

“HELLO!” Mattie yelled cheerfully. He waved his Woody doll at the man. “HELLO, ALLEN!”

The stranger in the camouflage fatigues spun around and faced them.

Susan jumped up and grabbed Mattie. Her sudden movement made the boat rock. “That’s not Allen,” she said, panic-stricken. Susan could barely keep her balance as the boat teetered from side to side. Bracing herself, she grabbed on to the edge of the boat with one hand and held on to Mattie with the other. “C’mon, sweetie, let’s get down below. Hurry!”

As she guided Mattie to the steps down to the cabin, Susan glanced back at the man by their rental house. Threading through the trees at the edge of the forest, he made his way toward them.

Mattie hesitated at the top of the cabin steps. So Susan scooped him up under her arm and scurried down the steps to the cabin. Setting him down on the settee, she turned and pulled shut the cabin door. She locked it with the dead bolt. The boat was still swaying from side to side.

Any minute now, Susan expected to hear the thunder of footsteps on the old, dilapidated dock. Unsteadily, she hurried toward the storage closet—and the drawer where she’d locked up the flare gun.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Mattie was asking.

“It’s okay, honey—everything’s okay!” she tried to assure him, though her voice was shrill. All the while, Susan tried to get the correct key to unlock the drawer. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. At last, she got the drawer open. She took out the flare gun and several cartridges. Shoving the cartridges in her pocket, she tried to figure out how the gun worked. She tugged at the handle, and the barrel, and then yanked at both ends simultaneously. To her utter astonishment, the gun bent in two. She could see the chamber—and the cartridge snug inside it. Snapping it shut, she went to the long, narrow, horizontal window by the operating panel, and she glanced out at the dock. She didn’t see the man out there. But her view was limited, and for all she knew, he could be hovering near the boat—just out of her line of vision.

“Mommy?”

Susan turned toward her son. “Sweetie, I need you to wait in here.” She led him into the berth at the front of the boat. “I want you to hide in here until I tell you to come out. Do you understand? I—I want to see how good you are at hide-and-seek. Now, I’m going to shut the door. Okay?”

Wide-eyed, Mattie clutched Woody to his chest and gazed up at her. He nodded.

She closed the door and then hurried to the window again. She saw the man retreating. He ducked behind the bushes near the house’s back porch.

Susan wished she could see his face, but he moved so fast, he was just a blur. It might have been the man who had followed her from Mount Vernon yesterday, but she couldn’t be sure.

The boat still swayed a bit. Susan turned to the operating panel, set the flare gun on the desk, then pulled out the keyboard drawer, and clicked on the e-mail icon again. “How are you doing in there, Mattie?” she called, focusing on the monitor.

“Can I come out yet?” he replied—in a slightly frightened tone.

“Not just yet, honey,” she said, typing furiously.