Hot Secrets (3 page)

One more kid.

“Manuel? What do you think your mom would like as a present?”

He was silent a long moment, long enough for the chattering of the kids to die down. He swallowed, small Adam’s apple bobbing. “For my step-dad to die,” he whispered.

Caroline actually felt her heart contract—with pity, with sorrow, with the heaviness of painful truth. Because it
was
true. Manuel’s life and his mother’s life would be infinitely better without that violent monster in it.

It wasn’t until she’d worked in the shelter that she’d even known there was such a thing as bad fathers in the world. Her own father had been wonderful—loving and generous and fun. A larger-than-life figure whose love for his wife and children was manifested a thousand times a day.

Caroline was pregnant. She’d taken the test first thing this morning in the bookshop. She knew how much Jack wanted a child, so she didn’t run the test at home. No sense disappointing him. Somehow, though, even before the strip had turned red, she knew.

Just as she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Jack would be a marvelous father. He’d probably be wildly overprotective, as he was with her, but he’d be there for his children in every way there was. She also had no doubt that he’d give his life for her without question. As he would for any children they might have.

Jack had come late to love, but he cherished it. Caroline hoped with all her heart that the young souls in front of her would one day experience the precious gift of love for themselves.

She thought of all she had in her own life—a loving husband, the beautiful home she’d grown up in, the prospect of a child to love—with enormous gratitude, because between the death of her family when she was twenty and the sudden, mysterious reappearance of Jack in her life, there had been hard, barren years. Years in which she’d cared for a sick brother, had watched her friends disappear one by one as her life grew harder and money grew scarcer. Years of working hard and watching her brother die, inch by slow inch. Years in which she couldn’t allow herself to cry at night because Toby would have noticed her swollen eyes and blamed himself. Years of hardship and sorrow.

She knew firsthand how hard it was to hope when all around you is bleakness and despair.

But on this Christmas Eve, at least there’d be hot chocolate and muffins and a book for these children.

She clapped her hands. “Kids! Let’s get ready! Put on your coats because we’re going across the street for a treat.”

The artificial lull created by the storytelling was over. The noise level rose and the twenty kids seemed to become a hundred and fifty as they pulled on ragged coats and dirty scarves.

The noise level was so loud she didn’t hear the bell over the shop door ring, and only understood that someone had entered because within a minute, all the kids fell silent.

She looked behind her and froze.

Oh shit
, was her first thought. She was instantly ashamed of it. The man who entered looked like a thug, but she knew better than to judge solely on appearance. One of Jack’s best friends looked like an extra out of
Resident Evil
—rode a big black bike and spoke in a low growl—and was a sweetheart.

This man had the
Resident Evil
vibe down pat, but he didn’t look like a sweetheart at all.

While her head was running through all this, her body went right ahead into overdrive. Sweat broke out all over and her heart kicked into a thumping beat guaranteed to pulse blood to her extremities simply because her body recognized that she was going to need it.

Nonetheless, ten thousand years of civilization and her mother’s strict upbringing had her asking in a perfectly normal tone, “May I help you?”

The man had been scanning the room but at her voice he turned slowly toward her, and her involuntary danger signals started booming.

He was truly huge—taller even than Jack, and seemingly twice as broad. But where Jack was all tight muscle, this man looked like vats of lard had been thrown onto his frame before he’d been shoehorned into clothes. Underneath the fat, though, there had once been muscle. He must have weighed three hundred pounds, every ounce mean and stinking.

The stench reached across the room. Booze, unwashed clothes, unwashed man, and that awful something some humans emanated that was like a dog whistle to normal people.
This man is crazy.
She’d seldom come across it, but it was unmistakable.

There was absolute silence. The kids all had an instinctive understanding that danger had just walked into the room. They’d lived shoulder to shoulder with danger. Several of the kids were hunched in on themselves as if to make themselves smaller. Some had hidden under her desk, in corners; some stood frozen, white-faced.

The man was dressed in filthy leather pants and a leather vest with no shirt, as if impervious to the cold outside. He shook the snow off himself like a polar bear and took a step forward.

God, he was
big
.

Jack had taught Caroline a lot of martial arts moves but there was nothing she could do against someone this massive. She simply didn’t have the weight or muscle mass.

And anyway, the guy was flying higher than a kite.

Looking closer, it was clear. The pupils were dilated and his eyes were slightly unfocused. He swayed a little where he stood as if he were in a strong wind, though there was no wind in her bookstore. Just twenty little kids and a very frightened bookshop owner.

“Can I help you?” she repeated, keeping her voice neutral and soft, exactly as if she were trying to calm a wild beast.

“Help me?” he repeated. “Can you fucking help me? Yeah, lady. Yeah, you can help me.” His eyes narrowed. “Looking for my boy. Manuel.”

Oh God, oh God. This man didn’t only look dangerous, he
was
dangerous. He’d nearly killed his wife. He was like a walking bomb in her bookshop—a bookshop filled with twenty young kids. Her breath clogged in her lungs. She didn’t dare look around, but from what she could see in her peripheral vision, Manuel had disappeared.

“So.” The man swayed. For a second she hoped that he’d simply collapse to the ground, stoned, but he stayed on his feet. “Where the fuck’s my boy?”

Caroline swallowed heavily. She heard Jack’s voice in her head.
What do you do if you sense trouble, honey?

They’d gone over it a million times, and each and every time they talked about it, he tried to convince her to carry a weapon. He’d lived in a dangerous world all his life and he was always armed in some way.

Not to mention the fact that, to a certain extent, Jack’s entire body was a weapon.

“Where is he?” the man bellowed, voice hoarse and cracking. “Where the fuck is my boy? Where’s that little shit?” Her heart nearly stopped when he reached behind him and a big black knife appeared in his hand.

In that instant, Caroline regretted bitterly not taking Jack up on his constant offers to teach her how to shoot. Oh man, if she had a gun and knew how to use it, she’d drill him right between the eyes—without any compunction at all, because it was clear he was here to hurt.

His black, piggy eyes scanned the room with a narrow focus and he moved toward the kids. One girl screamed, the sound abruptly cut off by her own hand. The kids were like small animals, hoping to avoid the gaze of the predator in their midst.

The man growled at the girl, moving forward unsteadily.

Caroline stepped in front of him. He swatted her away backhanded like a bothersome fly.

His blow took her by surprise. She landed against the corner of the bookshelf, the breath knocked out of her, and nearly passed out from the pain. She hung onto consciousness ferociously, understanding that she was the only thing between those kids and tragedy.

“Manuel!” the crazy guy screamed, the booming voice echoing in the room. He brandished the knife. “Come out, you little shithead! You’re a worm, just like your fucking mom! Don’t have the courage to come out, eh? Then I’m coming after you!”

He lurched forward and Caroline watched, horrified, as he plowed into the kids. Those who weren’t quick enough to scramble out of the way were swatted away, as she had been.

She’d nearly been knocked unconscious by those huge ham hands. He could do real damage to a thin eight-year-old.

Though her head was still spinning, she rolled to her knees, waited for some strength in her limbs. The kids were crying, screaming, two lying in little heaps on the ground.

Caroline gritted her teeth and rose unsteadily to her feet. As she rose, she glanced across the street and saw Sylvie staring, wide-eyed. The man’s back was to her so Caroline pantomimed a phone to her ear. Sylvia grabbed a cell from the counter and punched three numbers in.

9-1-1. Good girl.

Sylvie spoke into the phone, clearly reporting what was happening in First Page. A huge man armed with a knife, a roomful of kids, and a potential hostage situation. They’d want to know numbers and positions and Sylvie spoke for a full minute.

Sylvie gave a thumbs up and Caroline motioned for her to get down, since she was highlighted in the huge picture window. Sylvie dropped from sight.

“Come out, you little fucker!” the monster was screaming. Except for the two small heaps, all the kids had scrambled out of his way. He didn’t pay them any attention, focusing on his specific prey.

Please, Manuel, run out the back door,
she prayed. Maybe he had, because he was nowhere to be found. Monster Man was roaring with rage, upending bookcases, scattering books and magazines, shattering a lamp.

Caroline’s mind cleared. The first thing to do was get as many kids out of here as possible. While the monster was bellowing, wallowing in his rage, she quietly went behind a waist-high counter and opened the back door. Holding a finger to her lips, she ushered out ten of the kids while the man’s back was turned. When he turned around, all he saw was Caroline, who’d moved ten feet from the door. The counter hid the kids slipping out, one by one.

Now for help.

Sylvie had called for official help, but Caroline had a husband who was way more dangerous than Monster Man. She had on a sweater and a long wool jacket over it. Out of habit, she always kept her cell on her at all times. Jack had insisted early in their marriage and it was second nature by now.

Jack’s cell number was the first on speed dial. “Honey, hi.” His deep voice was unmistakable.

Oh God, she’d forgotten to take it off speaker!

She pressed the button to disengage speakerphone and took a chance, knocking over an earthenware bowl of apples to catch the monster’s attention. He turned his head briefly. It was almost painful to watch his reflexes. He was so drugged up they were slow, stimuli penetrating with difficulty.

“Put down that knife!” she screamed, knowing Jack was listening. “There are kids here in the bookstore!”

That would be enough.

Wherever he was, Jack was coming for her now. She knew that like she knew the sun rose in the East. Monster Man paused in trashing her store to look back at her, narrow-eyed. He looked her up and down and, horribly, licked his lips, opening his mouth in a grotesque smile. His teeth were ground down and brown. “Pretty lady,” he growled, and pointed the knife at her. “You’re next. After the brat.” Then he turned back around, looking for Manuel.

Caroline beckoned, and the kids who had been trapped behind Monster Man ran to her. She herded them behind her, pointing to the back door. Five kids were left.Jamal was by her side, trembling with fear. “Where’s Manuel?” she whispered. “Did he get out?”

Jamal shook his head. “He’s holed up in your office,” he whispered .Oh God. The door to her office could be locked from the inside, but it was only a pine door. Monster Man could shove it in with one kick from his boots.

The five kids left were crouching behind the counter. There were none left in the shop. She had to hope that screaming Monster Man, who seemed to have the intelligence of a slug, had the attention span of one, too.

Quietly, Caroline signaled to the kids around her to scuttle to the back door. She shepherded them out as fast as she could while the man bellowed and crashed into chairs and shelves, screaming for Manuel.

Across the street, Sylvie’s head peeped up over the counter and she made the OK sign, then the gun sign. Caroline nodded, then signaled for her to duck back down.

Okay. The police were here, hopefully with SWAT snipers.

She jolted at the sound of wood crashing, but what terrified her even more than that were the animal sounds Monster Man was making as he dragged little Manuel out by the hair. High-pitched, unholy screams of rage that raised the hairs on the back of her neck and along her forearms.

To her dying day, Caroline would never forget those bestial sounds coming out of a human being’s mouth. It was terrifying, like being in the room with a wild animal.

Heart in her mouth, she watched as he dragged little Manuel out by the hair to the middle of the room, stood him up, and held the knife to his throat.

What horrified her most was that the little boy didn’t make a sound. White-faced and trembling, he stood as still as a soldier—even when that meaty fist pulled his hair so hard the scalp raised a little.