Maggy's Child (15 page)

O
nce in her room, Maggy locked the door with the key, threw the deadbolt, and leaned back against the wooden panel for a moment while she planned what she had to do. Then she began to shed her clothes, hurriedly, because she suddenly couldn’t wait to be out of them, kicking off her satin mules and shimmying out of her pantyhose and leaving them where they fell, tossing the four-thousand-dollar dress across a chair, dropping the even more expensive diamond earrings in a saucer on her dresser. Crossing to her dressing room, she pulled on a pair of black stirrup pants, a black turtleneck, black running shoes, and a black leather motorcycle jacket. She ran a quick brush through her hair, caught it at her nape with a wooden barrette, and was ready to go.

The security system did not extend to the upstairs windows. She had discovered that years ago, when she had been desperate to find a way to leave the house without being found out. From the beginning, Lyle had insisted that Tipton drive her wherever she wanted to go. For security reasons, he said. In case some nut should get it into his head to kidnap her to get at him. At first she had defied him by occasionally taking a car out herself. Her father had still been alive at the time—he had died three years after her marriage—and he and
Tia
Gloria were the only family she had left. Not even her fear of Lyle was going to keep her from them.

At first she had gone to see them openly, at times driving herself and at other times having Tipton drive her, hoping that that would appease Lyle. Sometimes she had even taken little David to see his
Papi
Jorge, though Lyle threw a fit at that. But Lyle had found ways to punish her every time she went, subtle, cruel punishments that escalated to physical abuse when she dared to take David with her. Facing Lyle afterward became such an ordeal that Maggy at first stopped taking David, then found her visits growing less and less frequent, so much so that her father complained of her neglect. That was before she discovered the lifesaving combination of the flawed security system, her bedroom window, and
The Lady Dancer
.

The Lady Dancer
was a twenty-year-old, fifteen-foot powerboat that was kept moored at Windermere’s small dock on Willow Creek. The boat was never used by anyone except Herd, who liked to fish the creek and river. Often in the summer Louella would cook up his catch of bluegill or catfish or a mess of crawdads for supper. If Lyle remembered the boat’s existence, Maggy would have been surprised. He had a huge, luxurious yacht he used for entertaining, which he kept moored at an exclusive enclave about five miles farther along River Road.

Maggy hated the yacht almost as much as she loved
The Lady Dancer
. In its luxury, its silent testimony to the perquisites of wealth and position and power, the yacht was so very
Lyle
that she could hardly stand to set foot on it. Fortunately, he rarely required that she do so. The people he entertained on the
Iris
were his guests alone.

It was time to go. Maggy turned off the light, plunging her bedroom into inky darkness. Crossing the room, she pulled aside the heavy curtains of fringed ruby brocade that the decorator had insisted would contrast beautifully with the pale pink silk walls (in Maggy’s opinion, they clashed) and cranked open the window farthest to the left, one of a half dozen abutted casements at the far end of her
bedroom. Beneath the casements were the huge bow windows that graced the library. Many-paned, curving twins, the bow windows jutted out from the house with majestic grace—and the tin roof of one of them rested not two feet below her window.

Each casement was eight feet tall and a little more than two feet wide. Though Maggy cranked the window open only the bare minimum that was required for her to squeeze through, getting out was ridiculously easy. More than once she had thought that a burglar could have a field day with those windows. Though she supposed, to give Lyle’s highly paid security consultant his due, getting in from the outside without the benefit of a previously opened window probably would have been much more difficult than getting out.

Maggy crouched on her bedroom floor, stuck a foot out into space, found the tin roof with it, and then shifted her body weight through the casement until she was standing on top of the bow window. The brisk night air surrounded her, caressing her skin, filling her lungs, making her feel alive as she glanced cautiously around.

The view from up there was magnificent. Pale wisps of clouds scuttled across the sky, aiding dozens of tiny twinkling stars in their game of peekaboo with Earth. The small, frosty-white crescent of the moon rode low over the rounded dark forms of swaying treetops and cast an eerie light over the stone patio below. Beyond the patio, the rose bushes, which were still mounded with mulch against the early spring chill, thrust bony black fingers toward the sky. The bench depicted in David’s painting sat in the middle of those rosebushes, its white wrought-iron form looking skeletal in the darkness. The just-greening lawn that surrounded the rose garden was washed silver by the moon. Maggy’s gaze swept the lawn as it sloped toward the dense wall of shadows that was the woods.

She could see no one. Turning, pushing against the casement so that it closed as far as possible (there was always a small danger that someone might spot the opening, although in the darkness she felt it was a very remote chance), she sat on the edge of the bow window’s roof and lowered herself, feeling for a toehold with her foot. Her bandaged wrist throbbed as it was forced to bear some of her weight, but it did not give way, and the pain was not so severe that she couldn’t ignore it.

In her twelve years with Lyle, she had learned to ignore worse.

The natural protuberances of the stone were jaggedly uneven at the angle where the wall met the window, creating niches and crannies for her feet and hands that over the years had become as familiar to her as the treads of the stairs inside. In seconds she was on the ground, almost completely shielded from the view of any who might be looking by a large Taxus bush, which grew taller than her head. It was one of a thick row of identical bushes that grew along the back of the house.

The night was still except for the cries of night animals and the sounds of branches rustling in the wind. It was not really cold yet, but the wind promised lower temperatures later.

Maggy set off at an angle from the house, following the trajectory of the driveway without getting too close to it and skirting the dog kennel for fear her canine friends would somehow sense her presence and bark.

She headed for the path through the woods she had taken that morning. The first item on her agenda was the retrieval of Nick’s “present.”

There was a small penlight in her jacket pocket, kept there in case of necessity. The moon provided ample light until she was deep beneath the trees. Then she pulled the penlight from her pocket and turned it on. She would not leave it on continuously—the fear that Tipton or some
other of Lyle’s minions might be lurking about the grounds just when she least wished them to be never left her—but she flashed it when she needed it and turned it off again. Thus she was able to locate the place where she had left the path, and, with only a little backtracking, find the forsythia. The log beneath it was undisturbed, she saw with another quick flare of the light. Relieved, she pocketed the light, crouched before the log, and worked to unearth what she had buried earlier in the day.

The darkness of the woods was far more intense than the darkness of the lawn. Without moonlight to alleviate it, it was heavy, portentous, almost menacing. Which was ridiculous, of course, Maggy scolded herself even as she paused in what she was doing to glance uneasily around. She had never been afraid of the dark, and she was not about to start now.

Still, the woods were not silent. They creaked, and groaned, and rustled, and moaned. Insects whirred and chirped, birds muttered to themselves high up in the branches overhead, and small nocturnal animals squeaked and shrieked and scuttled among the fallen leaves. All of which would have been mildly charming by daylight. By night it made her spine prickle.

Maggy shook her head at herself and turned her attention back to the job at hand. Scooping out the last of the loose dirt and leaves was the work of only a moment. Everything—package, tape, pictures, envelope—were just as she had left them. Apparently Lyle and his spies were not as omnipotent as she had feared.

Maggy let out the breath that she had not realized until that moment she was holding, and got to her feet.

She was standing there, tucking the package inside her jacket for safekeeping, when a sudden, sharp noise rent the night.

Maggy jumped, then glanced almost guiltily around. Of course it was nothing. A dry branch breaking, perhaps,
as a larger animal stepped on it—but what kind of larger animal would be abroad in Windermere’s woods?

The noise had come from her left. Maggy zipped up her jacket to secure the items inside it, her eyes boring past the solid gray of the closer trees as she tried vainly to penetrate the blackness beyond.

It was impossible. She could see nothing except the shadowy trunks of oaks and maples and walnuts and pines for five feet in every direction. Beyond that was utter darkness.

The sound came again—the snap of a dry, brittle stick breaking as it was stepped on. Maggy was almost sure that was what it was.

The hairs rose on the back of her neck. Someone—or something—was in the woods with her. She knew it in her gut. At that moment she couldn’t decide whether she would prefer to come face-to-face with Lyle and his minions or some hideous night-stalking monster. Then, remembering the pictures and tape, she decided. She would take her chances with the monster anytime.

For the minute or so that had elapsed since Maggy had heard the first sound, she had stood frozen with fear like a rabbit mesmerized by the headlights of a car. Regaining her wits along with the use of her feet, she began to back away, her movements quick and stealthy. Her eyes remained glued to the shadowy blanket of darkness that hid whoever or whatever was lurking in the trees.

Five steps back, six—another snapping, sound, about twelve feet to the right of the last. Closer, much closer. Maggy’s head jerked around and her eyes searched vainly through the night. Her pulses jumped, her heart pounded. She knew, as well as she knew her name, that someone or something was in the dark with her, and very near.

Pressing one hand over the objects in her jacket to keep them safe, Maggy took a deep breath and pivoted. Then she bolted like a scared colt from a burning barn.

An enormous dark silhouette stepped out of the woods directly into her path.

Maggy couldn’t help herself. She screamed like a fire engine. Immediately an arm whipped around her from behind, and a hand clamped down hard over her mouth.

M
aggy’s heart stopped even as her scream was cut off in mid-blast. Her blood froze. For an instant, a dangerous instant, her muscles refused to work and she was not fighting but shocked motionless in her assailant’s hold.

“Christ, Magdalena, who are you expecting? It’s only me.”

The familiar voice in her ear made her go limp. Her knees sagged, and for a moment she rested weakly against him. Against Nick.

As fear swept away, sudden fury rolled in to replace it. She hadn’t forgotten that coerced dance, and he had no business scaring her to death, either. Maggy bit the hand that still covered her mouth, closing her teeth over the meaty part of his palm with relish. Nick yelped, jerking his hand away. Maggy wrenched herself out of his arms.

“You scared the
crap
out of me!” she hissed, turning on him and delivering a hard, swift punch to his unprotected belly, the kind she hadn’t thrown in years. The muscles were taut there beneath his clothes, but he was not expecting her attack and the punch connected with satisfying force.

“Ouf,” he said, bending, his arms coming out in front of himself to ward off further assault.

“You almost made me pee in my pants!” she raged.

Nick was laughing, the sound rich and low and full of amusement. Listening to him made Maggy wild.

“Stop laughing, you son of a bitch!” She punched at him again, and when her fist connected with nothing more promising than his hard forearm she aimed a kick at his shin. In the nick of time he jumped back out of range. “I said, stop laughing!”

“She hasn’t changed a bit,” said a disapproving voice behind her.

Maggy had forgotten the huge man who had originally stepped out of the darkness to confront her.

“Not much,” Nick agreed, amusement still plain in his voice, as Maggy whirled openmouthed to gape at the second man.

“Link!” Maggy gasped, one hand flying to her mouth as she stared up at him. In the darkness it was impossible to make out his features, but the sheer size of him left her in no doubt that it was really he: Travis Walker, Nick’s half brother. Five years older than Nick, he was otherwise known to the street kids he used to run with, courtesy of his size and the blunt ugliness of his face, as the Missing Link.