You're Next (19 page)

He splashed bracingly cold water over his face. He still didn’t like what he saw in the mirror, but it was as good as it was
gonna get.

When he stepped out, Kat was sitting against the headboard with her knees pulled up to her chin. She was staring down at Mike’s
phone, her face drawn and terrified.

Mike rushed over. ‘We can’t turn that phone on.’

‘I was calling Mom, and . . . and . . .’ She started crying.

He snatched the phone from her. The block letters of text message crossed the LED screen.

YOU’RE NEXT.

His stomach went to ice. He threw the cell phone on the floor, crushed it under heel.

She shoved herself farther away, as if to escape the phone’s toxicity. ‘What does that mean? I want to talk to Mommy.’

He crouched at the edge of the bed, took her hands. ‘You can’t talk to Mom right now, honey.’

‘Why not?
Why not?
’

‘She can’t . . . she can’t talk.’

‘That’s
not
an answer. Dad – that’s
not
an answer!’

‘Honey, listen. Mommy . . .’ He took a deep breath, let it out as evenly as he could. The last photo he had of his wife was
in the phone he’d just smashed into the thin carpet. ‘Mommy is—’

The other cell, the sleek Batphone, rang. Mike snapped it up. ‘Shep?’

‘Yeah,’ Shep said. ‘It’s me.’ A rare hesitation.

‘What?’ Mike said. ‘What is it?’

Shep said, ‘She’s alive.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ Mike said. ‘Don’t you fuck with me.’

‘I’m at the hospital,’ Shep said. ‘They have her at Los Robles Med Center.’

‘I saw her. I
saw
the body.’ He was fighting, now, through a different sort of denial. Hope felt too dangerous, a wobbly tightrope.

‘The body?’ Kat’s voice, flat with dread. ‘What happened to Mommy?’

Mike covered the phone. ‘She was . . . hurt.’

‘How bad?’

‘I don’t know.’ Back to the phone. ‘I need to see her.’

‘You can’t come here,’ Shep said. ‘Cops crawling all over the place.’

‘She needs me—’

‘She doesn’t need anything right now. Kat needs you – alive. Now, I managed to grab the doc alone in the hall. I’m gonna put
you on with her.’

‘Wait, I—’

‘Mr Wingate?’ A cool, feminine voice. ‘This is Dr Cha. I’m a trauma surgeon. We have Annabel stabilized. That’s the good news.’

‘Stable? I was with her when she died. She had no pulse anywhere. She was
blue
.’

Kat was crying, Mike holding up a hand for her to wait, just wait. It was going down fast and wrong, exactly how he
didn’t
want to break the news.

Dr Cha was talking in his ear already. ‘The blade slipped between her sixth and seventh ribs, slicing her spleen and puncturing
a lung, causing it to collapse. The collapse is called a tension pneumothorax – that’s what made her lose breathing and pulse.
The hypoxia – low oxygen – is what caused her to look blue. The paramedics needled her on site, got that lung inflated. She
had some blood in her chest from a nick in the artery. We rolled her to the OR and got her spleen out, but I didn’t move on
the artery. I’m hoping it clots off on its own so we don’t have to crack her chest. She’s only lost a few hundred cc’s of
blood over the past few hours, and it seems to be slowing down. We’re continuing to transfuse her, of course.’

Kat was on her knees on the bed, her face focused and alert. Mike circled the room like a caged animal, rubbing the back of
his head, emotions sawing back and forth, cutting him to the quick. His wife, alive. But alone and injured. And him not there.
He started for the door, his feet moving him before his brain slammed into drive. He halted.

‘The bad news?’ he said faintly.

‘She’s not coming fully back online. We’re looking for her to initiate her own breaths –
she’s intubated – and show some pain response, wiggling toes or fingers, anything. Right now she’s not. It’s early yet, and
we hope that it’s temporary, but only the next couple of days’ll tell.’

‘How . . . what does that mean?’

‘The longer it goes, the worse it’ll look. Now, as her husband, you’re her health-care proxy,
is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘You might want to get down here.’

He fought with himself, excruciatingly aware of Kat, her pained face hammering home his responsibility to protect her. Annabel’s
voice came at him again, a ghostly imprint:
Promise me.

‘I can’t. I – There’s a threat. To me, my daughter. The people who hurt my wife—’

‘There are plenty of police officers here.’ The silence spoke volumes. ‘I see. That side of it is not my concern. I am Annabel’s
advocate here. Not the cops’. And I need to make sure I can talk to you if we have to make a tough medical decision.’

‘Can I transfer—’

‘Health-care proxy responsibilities? No. Are you reachable?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You might want to figure that out in a hurry.’

‘Okay. I can be. Through Shep.’

‘Is he family?’

‘Sort of,’ Mike said.

‘Just so you know, if there’s a major decision, we need to see you in person, or we’re going to require something in writing,
a fax, whatever. If not, the decision making passes to the backup proxy.’

Annabel’s father. Jesus.

‘I’m handing you back to your friend now.’

And she was gone.

Mike reached for the bed, lowered himself down, light-headed with relief and a new host of concerns.

Shep again. ‘The doc told me there’ll be security and on-call nurses with her through the night shift, so she’s safe through
morning. No one’s gonna pull anything with this many bodies around.’

‘I need . . .’ Mike lost his train of thought, found it again. ‘I need you to call Hank Danville, my private eye. He’s former
LAPD.’

Kat was rocking herself and moaning. He lowered his voice so she wouldn’t hear. ‘See if he can find out why dirty cops are
gunning for us. What they want from me.’

Shep said, ‘Where are you?’

Mike gave him the hotel name and room number.

Shep said, ‘Contact no one. I’ll see you in three, four hours.’

Mike hung up. Kat was staring at him, her face ashen. He fought
for focus. ‘Your mother’s injured. She’s at the hospital.’

‘Is she gonna be okay?’

‘We don’t know yet.’

She stiffened, recoiling from the words. ‘What happened to her?’

‘She was stabbed.’

‘Like in the movies?’ She stood abruptly, hugging her stomach, shifting from shoe to shoe so quickly it seemed she was stamping
her feet. ‘I want to go see her.’

‘We can’t, honey. Daddy’s in some trouble. I’m not sure what’s safe right now.’

‘Why don’t we call the police?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know which cops we can trust.’

‘You mean
they
hurt Mommy?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t have many answers. I know that must be really scary. But I’m going to figure
this all out and keep you safe. We’re gonna be fine.’

‘And Mommy, too?’ He swallowed hard.

Her face seemed to collapse. He sat on the corner of the bed and rocked and shushed her until her jagged breathing settled.

He said, ‘We need to stick together. I won’t let anyone hurt you. But I need you to be strong as we figure out what to do.
If you can be strong, we’ll get through this. Deal?’

She nodded against his chest, her face flushed in streaks. Her tiny hand poked up, and they shook. ‘Deal.’

Fifteen minutes later they were in Target, a dead-on-their-feet march through the aisles. Wonder Bread, peanut butter, baby
monitor and batteries, a powder blue child-size sleeping bag. He wouldn’t let Kat out of his sight, not around a corner, not
for an instant. She trudged beside the cart yawning, scratching her head, rubbing her eyes. The black vinyl bag, filled with
cash, strained on his shoulder. It occurred to him that Kat had left her eyeglasses back in his truck, but there was nothing
he could do about that now, and besides, she only really needed them to read. In a bin on the checkout lane, Beanie Babies
stared out with
doleful stuffed-animal eyes. Mike plucked a polar bear from the heap, wiggled it at Kat. ‘Snowball II: Bride of Snowball?’

She read the tag. ‘Its name is Aurora,’ she said flatly.

Its
.

He bought it anyway.

The checkout lady said, ‘What a pretty girl you have.’

Mike’s thumb had moved to the cool gold of his wedding band. He had to concentrate to get his mouth to move. ‘Thank you.’

The woman looked at him, uneasy, and rang them up without another word.

Back at the Bates Motel, he loaded batteries into the baby monitor and tried the reception with the connecting door closed
and Kat on the other side. ‘Testing one two three,’ she intoned. ‘Testing one two three.’ Some static, but it worked well
enough. The parent unit had a belt clip, which he hooked onto his waistband. It maintained a decent connection to the edge
of the parking lot and down to the front desk.

When he came back, Kat’s face was gray with exhaustion. On the little counter, he made her a peanut-butter – no jelly – sandwich,
grateful to have something to do, some way to provide
something
for her. Meticulously, he spread the peanut butter and cut off the crust. His hands were shaking, and he thought of his father’s
arms in the station wagon, his arms shaking as he held the wheel. For the first time, Mike felt a stab of empathy for his
father’s situation: the blind panic of watching one’s life come unraveled. The feeling felt forbidden, threatening; he tamped
it down with anger. After all, his father had captained his own fate.

Mike focused on the sandwich, centering it on the plate and slicing it on a neat diagonal. What did he think, that a lovingly
made sandwich could mitigate the hell his daughter was going through? Yes, that was his hope.

He gave her a half, and she took a few nibbles before setting it aside.

He was crestfallen. ‘Can you eat any more?’

‘It’ll make me throw up.’ She pulled her legs in Indian style and scratched at her head.

‘Okay, sweetheart. Okay.’

She was really digging at her hair behind her ear and it hit him: head lice.

He sagged against the counter. For some reason this above all else seemed an insurmountable obstacle. It reminded him of those
endless first nights they’d had Kat home from the hospital, the baby cries, the feedings and changing and burpings. He remembered
the comprehensive exhaustion, himself and Annabel lying there in the dark, trying to rise to the wails, reaching back for
more that they just didn’t have but that as parents they had to produce, because if they didn’t, no one else would.

Slurping at a leaky juice box, Kat was having trouble keeping her eyes open. He went over, turned her head, and parted the
fine hair at her nape. ‘Honey, your head lice are back.’

She had fallen asleep against him.

‘Sweetheart, we gotta run back to Target. I have to buy mayonnaise and Saran Wrap and get
this taken care of.’

‘Can’t I just stay here?’ she mumbled. ‘Can’t I just sleep? Please, Dad?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and her shoulders rocked with dry, soundless sobs.

An exhausting forty minutes later, she was curled in her new sleeping bag atop the starchy sheets, her head wrapped in mayo.
Mike nestled the baby-monitor transmitter into the sleeping bag right beside her. And then he retrieved the polar-bear Beanie
Baby from the Target bag.

‘This isn’t just an ordinary polar bear.’

Her eyes slid over, found him.

‘This polar bear has magical protective capabilities,’ he said.

‘A magical polar bear.’

‘That’s right. He will keep us safe.’

‘If we get attacked by animal crackers.’

‘We have to name him. Do you like Aurora?’

‘Hate it.’ She picked it up by the tiny scruff, studied its face. ‘Snowball II. Like you said.’

‘Snowball’s Revenge.’

Reluctantly, she tucked the Beanie Baby into her sleeping bag. She scratched at the plastic wrap on her head, doing her best
not to look miserable. ‘Will you read me a story?’

They didn’t have any books, but he couldn’t bear handing her another disappointment. Desperate, Mike opened the nightstand
drawer, and there, instead of Gideon’s Bible, someone had left a dog-eared copy of
Green Eggs and Ham
. It might as well have been water into wine. He ran his hand across the beloved orange-and-green cover, then held it up triumphantly.

Kat said, ‘Dad, I’m
eight
.’

‘Oh,’ Mike said. ‘Too old for it.’ He made a show of putting it back.

‘I mean, if you
really
want to read it.’

‘I do,’ he said.

‘Then okay.’ She yawned, half asleep.

‘I heard Dr Seuss wrote this after someone bet him that he couldn’t write an entire
book using only one-syllable words.’

‘“Anywhere.”’

‘What?’

‘“I will not eat them
anywhere
.” Three syllables.’

‘Oh. I guess I heard wrong.’

‘Mom does the best voice for Sam-I-Am.’

He collected himself. Read the first page. And then Kat was out cold.

He brushed an eyelash off her cheek. For a time he sat watching her sleep, waiting for the lump in his throat to dissolve.

Finally he crept into the connecting room with his vinyl bag of cash, easing the door shut behind him. He adjusted the volume
on the receiver clipped to his belt until he could make
out the faint whistle of Kat’s breathing. Slanting the blinds a half inch, he pulled a chair around and sat for a good half
hour with his feet up on a rickety radiator beneath the window.

At last the Mustang’s headlights swept the glass, scanning bars of light through the blinds and across Mike’s face. He rose
and opened the door before Shep could knock. Shep wore an army-green rucksack over his shoulder.

Mike peered out at the night. ‘Were you followed?’

‘No.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know.’ Shep took in the room, his gaze moving from the dark seam beneath the bathroom door to the interior door to the
baby-monitor receiver clipped to Mike’s belt. He nodded faintly, putting it together, then said, ‘Hank wants to see you face-to-face.
He’s gotta make sure he doesn’t have a tail, but he should be here within a few hours.’

Shep dumped the contents of the rucksack onto the bedspread. Soap, a razor, a brush, women’s deodorant Mike assumed he’d bought
for Kat though she was at least a few years away from needing any, and a stack of Safeway phone cards.

‘Prepaid cards go through a central calling center, so they can’t be tracked.’ Shep’s hand dipped beneath his shirt, then
he held out a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver, like the one Mike had left behind at the house but with a black rubber handle.
Mike stared at it a moment, then took it.

Shep stretched out on the bed, closed his eyes.

Mike moved the cash from the black vinyl bag into the rucksack. He returned to Room 9, pulled a chair to the bed, and sat
before the small bump of his daughter beneath the covers. Her back rose and fell, each sleeping breath giving off the faintest
whistle. He felt something inside him give way a little. He swallowed, a dry click in his throat.

His hand, he realized, had tightened around the grip of the Smith & Wesson.