PROLOGUE
“Dad?
Mom?”
Stu and Sarah
Billings simultaneously leaned up in bed; Sarah dragged the sheets
up over her bosom, flicked on the lamp.
How’s that for
timing? Stu
thought, flushed in embarrassment. He’d been out of town on
business for two weeks, and this was the first time since then that
he and Sarah had a chance to…
In the bedroom
doorway stood their thirteen-year-old daughter, Melissa, tall and
slim in her flannel nightgown. She was rubbing sleep from her eyes
but also… quivering.
“Honey, what’s
wrong?” her mother asked.
“You have a bad
dream?” Stu guessed.
Their daughter
just stood there for a few more seconds. When she lowered her fists
from her eyes, it was obvious she’d been
crying.
“I-I woke up,”
she peeped, “and…”
“What, honey?”
Sarah asked.
“There was a
man looking in my window.”
Stu got up,
hauled on his robe, then guided Melissa to the bed. “You stay here
with your mother, honey. I’ll go check it out.”
“But, Stu,”
Sarah fretted, “shouldn’t we call the police?”
Stu considered
this, then tossed a shoulder. “Naw, it’s probably just one of those
kids from down the road. They’re always cutting through our yard at
night to drink beer behind the fence.”
Melissa sat
next to her mother on the bed. “But, Dad, this wasn’t a kid. It was
a man. He was bald.”
“A lot of those
punks shave their heads, honey. It’s this Goth thing. Just stay
here with Mom, and I’ll be right back,” Stu assured. “I
promise.”
Sarah hugged
Melissa. “Your father’s right, sweetheart. Everything will be all
right…”
Yeah, Stu thought. When neither Sarah nor Melissa were
looking, he quickly slipped the Smith & Wesson revolver out of
the dresser and stuck it under his robe.
««—»»
First, to
Melissa’s room. He peered out the window, saw nothing outside but
the night. Yeah, it’s probably those pinhead punks. They drop out of
school, shave their heads and put all these metal studs and rivets
in their faces…and throw their empty beer cans in my
yard.
Of course,
Melissa had probably just had a dream; she’d
dreamed of the face in the window. The counselor at school
had told Sarah and him it was typical.
Melissa had
been only three years old when her father had been killed in a
plane crash; her mother killed herself a year later. That’s when
Stu and Sarah had adopted her—immotile sperm had prevented them
from having a child themselves. It didn’t matter to Stu, nor to
Sarah. They wanted a child and they got one.
And after ten
years, neither of them even gave it thought that Melissa was
adopted.
She was a model
child. Intelligent, courteous, perseverant. A straight-A student at
Sligo Junior High.
But she was
shy, too. Pensive. Too often, she seemed bottled up, uncomfortable
about revealing her feelings. The counselor had told them that even
though she didn’t consciously
remember her early childhood and
biological parents, there would indeed be some
subconscious shadows. Ghosts of things that weren’t right,
that weren’t the way they were supposed to be. Melissa felt haunted
but by what she didn’t know.
Father dead, mother dead. Her whole world turned
inside-out, Stu considered.
Didn’t matter
that she’d only been three. Of course that’s gonna have an
impact on a kid, whatever the age.
Stu walked down
the long hall to the living room, then turned toward the kitchen
and laundry room. This was the first time he regretted buying a
one-level rancher. That’s just great, I’ve got these
bald-headed Goth kids looking into my daughter’s window.
Christ…
No one could be
in the house; the ABC alarm would’ve gone off. In the laundry room,
he stepped into his floppy yard boots, which he donned every
Saturday to mow the grass. He turned off the alarm on the console
by the door.
Then he went
outside.
It was warm.
Crickets trilled, making the air thrum. The darkness looked
infinite. Goth kids, huh? he thought. They think it’s funny to scare my
kid?
He pulled out
the Smith revolver, a .44.
We’ll see who scares
who.
He backtracked
the opposite direction. If there really was a peeping tom, this
would be his probable direction of escape. Stu’s unlaced, booted
feet took him around the back yard, across the patio, and then
along the west side of the house.
He honestly
expected to find nothing. What he found instead—
“Oh,
shit!”
—was a tall,
bald-headed man standing beside the azalea
bushes.
“Calm down,”
the man said in the softest tone.
“The fuck!”
Stu yelled, and all at once the sensation shocked him: snakes
churning in his stomach. He jammed the gun forward. “You were
staring into my daughter’s window!”
“Yes, I was,”
the man said.
“You’re a
goddamn pervert! You get off looking at kids!”
“It’s not that
at all, nothing like that at all,” the bald man
said.
“Oh, it
isn’t?”
A stare-down in
the warm noisy night. Mosquitoes buzzed about Stu’s head. He
pointed the revolver out straight, its sights lined directly onto
the bald man’s night-shadowed face.
“Let me give
you some sound advise,” the man offered. His voice flowed like some
smooth liquid. “Never point a deadly weapon at someone you aren’t
fully prepared to kill.”
The man held
his hands half-up. Stu was sweating but maintaining his
bead.
Then—
swish
The man’s hands
moved in a blur, snapped the revolver out of Stu’s
grasp.
Fuck, Stu thought.
“It’s nothing
like you think,” the man said.
“I’ve got
money, I’ve got two cars, credit cards, some jewelry,” Stu said.
“I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“To spare your
life?”
“No, to spare
my daughter and my wife.”
The man wasn’t
pointing the gun back at Stu, he was just holding it. “And if I say
that’s not good enough?”
Fuck, Stu thought again. “Then I’ll…fight
you.”
“Oh, a tough
guy, huh?”
“I’m no tough
guy,” Stu said. “Christ, you just took a gun out of my hands in
less time than it takes me to blink. But let’s be real. I’ll give
you everything I have to leave my family alone. But the only way
you’re walking into my house is over my dead body.” He didn’t know
where these words were coming from. In his terror he could barely
think, and he was so scared he’d already pissed himself. “You got
the gun. But if you miss, I’ll gouge your eyes out, I’ll bite your
face off. I’ll do anything to defend my family.”
“Right answer,”
the man said. “Relax. Civilians don’t handle stress very well.” He
handed the big pistol back to Stu.
What the—
“My name is
Willard Farrington,” the man said.
Wait a minute, Stu thought. Farringt—
“That’s
right,” the man added. “I’m Melissa’s real father. That’s the
reason I was looking in her window. I just wanted to see
her.”
“But—”
“There’s no
time for that,” the man said. “No time for explanations.” He passed
Stu a pale-blue piece of paper. “That’s a routing number and an
account index. I’ve deposited $500,000 in a trust for Melissa. You
can’t ever touch it. She can’t touch it until she’s eighteen. I can
only hope that, as her father, you’ll guide her to do the right
thing with it. It’s for her future, college, things like
that.”
Stu stared at
the sheet. Her father, he thought. “They said you were killed in
a—”
“There’s no
time for that,” the man repeated. Then he looked at his watch.
“They’re on their way. I can’t be here when they arrive.” Then the
man tossed Stu what looked to be a shoebox. “This is for you and
your wife, to help out. Don’t be assholes with it. Take care of
Melissa.”
Stu, now in
total disbelief, opened the top of the box. It was stuffed with
bands of $100 bills. This must be a couple hundred
grand, Stu
realized.
“I—wait,” Stu
said.
“No time,” the
man said again. He lifted up the cuff of his left pant leg. A metal
band lay atop his ankle. “It’s a direction-finder. I’ve got to get
out of here.” The bald man stared at him amid the cricket cheeps.
“You’re a good man, I can tell.”
Stu stared
back.
“Take care of
my daughter,” the man said. “And don’t ever tell her about
this.”
The pistol felt
like dead weight in Stu’s hand. Crooked under his elbow was the box
of money.
A reef of
clouds drifted away from the moon. Suddenly white light filled the
yard, spilling onto the intruder’s form. Stu noted the tears
streaming down the strange man’s face. He also noticed—
Mittens? Stu thought.
The man seemed
to be wearing mittens. Mittens, in
summer?
But that was
it.
Stu couldn’t
think of anything to say as the bald man disappeared across the
yard into the darkness.