You're Next (26 page)

Mike and Kat were waiting at the front door of the mini-golf play center when the pimply-faced manager arrived to open the
place. Mike had parked the Camry at the edge of the lot, its shattered window cleaned up. It sported license plates he’d swapped
out with a Jetta.

In the video arcade, he got forty bucks of quarters and set up at the pay phone in the back while Kat played games in the
nearest aisle where he could keep her in sight. The darkness and flashing lights were disorienting; they seemed an extension
of the endless night they had emerged from. Was it really morning outside?

His eyes barely leaving his daughter, he made call after call, starting with 1-800 numbers, collecting referrals, then referrals
of referrals. Given that he was dealing with emergency services, most places were open even though it was Saturday. Kat trudged
from game to game, scratching her head, her vacant expression lit by the glowing screens. The arcade filled with kids until
the aisles were jammed – all that candy and color and laughter surrounding Kat, a mocking vision of weekends past. Mike had
to fight to stay focused. Slotting endless quarters into the pay phone, he ruled out fifty options and sniffed around fifty
more, trying to zero in on a viable choice.

By the time he was done, the phone book was marked with sweat from his fingers. What if someone followed and lifted his prints?
Could Graham, Dodge, or William pick a clue off the
yellow pages that led to Kat? In a spasm of paranoia, Mike smuggled out the phone book and burned it by the Dumpster around
back. Kat stayed in the car behind him, watching as if at a drive-in movie. Crouched in the cold morning air, warming his
hands over the miniature pyre, he realized he was on the verge of sobbing with horror at what he was about to do.

He drove east through the afternoon, Kat with her face to the passenger window, watching the desert roll by. Juniper wagged
in the breeze, lavender shuddered off purple dust, and Joshua trees twisted up, tombstones to unmarked graves.

Why would an eight-year-old be targeted by hired killers? Last week William and Dodge had scared Mike into grabbing Kat at
school and bringing her home. He flashed on Hanley’s fingers obscenely working Annabel’s bra strap.
This is too messy, too messy. We were supposed to wait
. Wait not just for Mike but for Kat as well.

On that morning years ago in the station wagon, the horror in Mike’s father’s voice had been palpable. Maybe he’d feared for
Mike’s life as Mike now feared for Kat’s. But
why
? His father was responsible for whatever mess he’d turned their lives into, at least according to that splash of blood on
his cuff. A countering image popped into Mike’s head – himself in the dim garage, using an old rag to wipe Annabel’s blood
from his arm. What if Mike hadn’t been abandoned but
saved
? What if dispatching him to a new life was the only choice Mike’s father had left to protect him?

But Mike didn’t –
couldn’t
– trust that explanation. It reeked of wish fulfillment, an origin story like Superman rocket-launched from Krypton. But
worse, it seemed fueled by hope, by
longing
, and when it came to Mike’s childhood, he’d decided that hope and longing were dead ends.

And yet how could he hold on to that lifelong outrage given what he was on his way to doing?

‘Arizona,’ Kat said dreamily as the sign drifted past on the side of the freeway. ‘I always wanted to come here.’

When they reached the town of Parker, Mike took Kat to a diner. She ordered a stack of grilled-cheese sandwiches with french
fries and a chocolate shake.

‘Aren’t you gonna eat?’ she asked around a mouthful of food, and he just shook his head.

She ran out ahead as he paid the bill. When he dashed after her in a low-grade panic, he found her standing in front of a
store window, hand to the glass, captivated. A yellow gingham dress floated on display, strung up by fishing line before a
holiday backdrop, a dress without a girl. Mike took Kat inside and bought it, along with new shoes and a few shirts.

They went to the movies afterward, Kat boinging her arm along, as always, with the hopping Pixar desk lamp in the opening
credits. For two hours, leaning back in his seat, Mike watched her instead of the screen. Openmouthed smiles, bursts of giggling,
snorkel breathing through Red Vines. For a moment it was as though they’d skipped back in time and everything was normal again.

He found a boutique hotel that took cash for a deposit. The country decor was a bit frilly, but it was markedly nicer than
the motels they’d been staying in. He bathed Kat, tilting her head back beneath the faucet to wash her hair. The lice were
still in there, sure, but he didn’t have the heart to cap the evening with a chemical rinse.

Tucked into bed, her skin flushed and clean, Kat said, ‘Tell me a story.’

Mike realized that he’d pulled his flowery armchair bedside like a nurse on deathwatch. ‘About what?’

‘About next month. About us going home.’ Her blinks were growing longer. ‘Mom’s been cooking all day. You know how she gets
with Thanksgiving. And there’s turkey. And pumpkin pie. And those oranges we stick cloves into. And we sit down, all together,
and . . .’

She was asleep.

Mike remembered when she was first handed to him at the hospital, a fluffy bundle with a pink face, how he’d looked down at
her and thought,
Anything you ever need for the rest of your life
. He rested his head on her chest, listened to the faint thumping, breathed her breath.

He stepped out onto the balcony. Smog had wiped away the stars. He asked Annabel if he’d be forgiven for doing what he was
about to do, but no answer came back from the firmament.

In the morning Kat wolfed down a tall stack of pancakes, pausing only to scratch her scalp. Back upstairs, Mike packed her
few things into the rucksack, laying aside his gun and a chunk of cash. Standing before the bathroom mirror, he brushed her
hair slowly, meticulously, and drew it back, at last, into a perfect ponytail.

She smiled and flicked at it. ‘
Nice
, Dad!’

She lingered in the bathroom and came out wearing her new yellow dress. She pinched out the sides in a show of self-conscious theatricality.
‘Well?’

He swallowed hard. ‘It was made for you.’

He drove the route he’d been given over the phone yesterday as he’d sat in the back of that arcade. The referral chain to
the address was too convoluted to remember – a caseworker to a social worker to a character reference – but that was partially
the point. Somehow, through prevaricating, cajoling, and begging, he’d managed to arrive at a name he thought he could trust.

He looked straight through the windshield, his hands fastened robotically on the steering wheel, his gaze on the dotted center
line, yellow streaks on black tar. He was heartless, insentient, a thing of steel and purpose. He sensed Kat’s gaze tug over
to him once, twice, then stick, and he felt his resolve melting away. But then they were there, parked across the street,
and she looked out the window and saw the rambling ranch house and the backyard crammed with play structures and girls.

She breathed in, a sharp intake of air. ‘Why are we here.’ It was not phrased as a question.

He couldn’t talk. He could barely breathe.
There is no forgiving a parent who could do that to a child
.

‘Why,’ she repeated, ‘are we here.’

He forced words through the tangle of his throat. ‘I need your help, honey.’

‘Dad?’

‘Mommy’s in danger, and I need to . . . I need to go with Shep to help her.’ He couldn’t look over at her. ‘And I can’t do
that and keep you safe at the same time.’

‘No, Dad.
No no no
. You can’t.’

‘I need to make sure you’re safe first. Before I do
anything
else.’

She was crying, little-girl crying. ‘What did I do? It’s not my fault I got lice.’

‘No, honey,
nothing
is your fault. Remember that. Nothing—’ ‘I’m sorry.

I’m
sorry
I got lice.’ She was twisting one hand in the other like a wet rag. ‘Please, Dad.
Please
. You can shave my head like Shep said. I don’t care.’ She’d popped up to her knees on the seat, eyes wide, pleading. ‘You
can protect me.’

‘This is how I am doing that.’

‘You
always
protect me. I’m safe with you. You’ll take care of me.’

He struck the wheel. ‘
I can’t
.’ His words rang around the car. His fist throbbed. Choking back panic, he searched for words soft enough. Jesus – how to
put this in terms she could grasp. ‘This . . . this is what you can do to help Mommy right now.’

Kat wilted in the seat. ‘How long?’

He lifted his hands from the steering wheel, spread his fingers, lowered them again. ‘Whatever happens, you’ll be okay. It
may not feel like it. But you will.’

‘What do you mean
whatever happens
? What does that
mean
? So if Mom . . . if Mom
dies
and they get you, then I . . . I . . .?’ A breath shuddered through her, and then she was still for a moment, her shoulders
curled, arms hugging her stomach. ‘I’m eight,’ she said. ‘I’m only eight.’

He did his best to fight his throat open, his chest still. His jaw was clamped shut, but he could feel the muscle pulsing
at the corners. Still, he could not look over at her. The silence lasted ten seconds or ten minutes.

‘If that happens’ – his fingers, clenched around the steering wheel, had gone white – ‘you’ll think I won’t know how great
you turned out and how you built a family and what a wonderful woman you grew up to be. But I do. I know already.’

‘No. No no no no
no
.’

He had to get it all said before his will deserted him. ‘However long you’re here, you can’t tell
anyone
your last name.’ An echo from his childhood tore into him like a drill bit. ‘You’re Katherine
Smith
. Listen to me, Kat. You’re Katherine Smith now, do you understand? Don’t give my name. Don’t give your mom’s name. Don’t
say where you’re really from. You have to make it all up and memorize it, and never forget it.’

Each word ground like broken glass on the way out. She had buried her head in her arms and was shaking her head violently.

He thought,
I am damned for telling her this. I am going to hell. My heart will fall out of my chest and disintegrate into a cloud of
ash
.

‘You need to be tough. Your life is at stake. No one can know anything about you.’

It was every lesson he wanted
not
to teach her, every Bad Parent caricature. But he steeled his back and drove on into the face of it. ‘Swear it to me, Kat.’

‘No.’

‘You have to. They’ll find you.’

‘I’m not going.’

‘There is
no choice
here, Kat.’

She looked up sharply, her face streaked with tears. Her words warbled through sobs. ‘Then you swear to
me
. If I stay here and I keep my mouth shut about who I am then you
have to
live and come back for me. You have to.
Promise
. Or I won’t go. I won’t.’ She stuck out her hand. ‘Deal?’

He stared down at her trembling fingers, his blood rushing so fast and hard that it vibrated his vision. Was that a promise
he could make? Did he have a choice?

She kept her hand pointed at him, her bruised gaze on his face. He blew out a breath, pinched his eyes closed, then reached
over. ‘Deal.’

Her hand was warm, and it trembled.

‘You will come back for me.’

‘I will come back for you.’

‘You swore it, now,’ she said. ‘You
swore
it.’

He lifted the rucksack from the backseat, and they headed for the house.

A plump woman answered the door, drying her hands on an apron. Behind her, four girls older than Kat were glued to cartoons
while a toddler played with a one-legged Barbie. The sounds of the kids playing outside wafted through an open window – laughter
and thumping and someone crying. A visceral reaction set Mike’s gut roiling. He looked around to assess the surroundings,
but past and present were fused. There sat the Couch Mother on the sofa, fanning herself with a TV Guide. There, the yellow
cushion with its effluvium of cat piss.
Sure, shithead. My momz, too.
All
our parents is coming back
.

Mike’s eyes stung, and he blinked his way back to the present. There was no Couch Mother, no cat-piss reek, but there
was
a bay window, put there as if to tempt kids to watch and wait. The couch arms were threadbare, the walls dented and scuffed,
but the foster girls looked healthy and the house was suffused with the rich scent of tomato soup.

‘Can I help you?’ the woman asked.

He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there. ‘Jocelyn Wilder?’

The woman twisted her curly gray hair up into a knot. ‘Yes?’

‘Can we talk for a moment in private?’

Kat swiped at her nose with a sleeve. She was staring at her
shoes. Jocelyn’s gaze flicked to her, then back to Mike. ‘Do you want to play outside, sugar?’

Head down, Kat walked through the open back door and sat alone on a bench. Warily, Jocelyn gestured toward the kitchen, and
he followed her through a swinging door. They faced off over yellow peeling linoleum. Her handsome face showed that she’d
dealt with a variation of this scene a time or two.

He said, ‘We’re in trouble. I need to take care of some business.’

‘Sir, I don’t run a—’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know. But if she goes into the system, she’ll be in danger.’

‘A lot of kids are in danger.’

‘Not like this.’

She blinked. ‘What does that mean? Like she’ll be
killed
?’ Though she’d said it herself, the word made an impression. ‘Why would anyone want to kill her? She’s a little girl.’

‘I don’t know,’ Mike said. ‘That’s what I need to find out. I have to go. I have to be gone. My car can’t be out front. If
they see the car, they’ll know she’s here.’