What are you doing? What are you getting into? You’re not a cop. You should let Cordelli and Ortiz handle this, he thought as he came to the bungalow. But what if Sarah and Cole are being held here, right now? What it they’re being tortured, or worse?
He couldn’t live with himself if it turned out that he was this close but did nothing to save them. He’d already faced an unbearable loss. Standing in the street, in front of the house, Jeff had no choice.
My wife and son could be in there and I’m going in after them.
He wrote down the Honda’s New York plate and scanned the interior. It had an overflowing ashtray. The passenger seat was covered with flyers and junk-food wrappers. Other than this car out front there was no sign of any vehicles at the house.
The curtains were drawn.
All quiet, except for the jets flying in and out of LaGuardia.
How was he going to do this? Call the phone number he obtained on the search record printout? Or ring the doorbell? A dog’s distant bark underscored that he was losing time. There was a diffusion of light near a window. A shadow passed by a curtain.
Someone’s in there.
Jeff stepped onto the property, walked to the side of the house, bent down and cupped his face to a basement window. His eyes adjusted to a double laundry sink, a washer and dryer, clothes heaped on the floor.
He flinched.
A child’s earsplitting scream shattered the quiet.
Cole?
Something inside the house vibrated, someone moving around. Jeff started for the backyard but was stopped by a wooden fence and a gate that reached to his shoulders. He tried the handle; the gate was locked. He tried reaching over it for a latch but got nothing.
Gripping the top of the fence, he hefted himself over it, landing on a garden hose that snaked to the back. Jeff followed it past a back door to patio steps, a small deck with lawn chairs and picnic table. It was a typical family backyard.
He stopped at the sight of two children standing in the grass, some fifteen feet away: a boy about Cole’s age and a girl who looked to be four or five, both wearing swimsuits.
The hose meandered to the girl. She used both hands to hold the dripping nozzle, which she pointed at the boy, who was drenched. For a moment, water plunking from the boy to the deck was the only sound.
Then the boy, his blond water-slicked hair darkened, turned to Jeff at the same time as the girl.
The boy was not Cole.
The children’s eyes widened slightly as they stared at Jeff, speechless until the girl said, “Hello.”
At a loss, Jeff scanned the small yard when he noticed the children’s attention shift a fraction to his left.
“I have a gun,” a woman’s voice said from behind him.
Jeff turned.
The woman’s arms were extended; her hands were wrapped around the pistol aimed at him.
“Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head!”
Before Jeff could explain she shouted.
“Do it now, asshole! Or I swear to God I’ll shoot you dead.”
13
Neverpoint Park, the Bronx, New York City
Jeff raised his hands and lowered himself to the lawn.
The woman holding the gun ordered her children into the house.
Jeff got on his knees, his mind racing.
Are Sarah and Cole here? Where’s the SUV?
The woman kept her gun on him and kept her distance.
A shrub of frizzy red hair haloed her face. She had to be in her late twenties but the lines carved deep around her mouth suggested an embittered life. She had an overbite. She wore jeans and a T-shirt showing a pit bull guarding a motorcycle. Tattoos swirled along her arms.
“Get out your wallet.”
Slowly Jeff pulled it from his pocket and tossed it to her feet. Keeping her gun on him she retrieved it, examined his driver’s license and fire department photo identification.
“Montana? Why the hell are you here, trespassing, threatening my kids?”
His pulse galloping, Jeff thought it odd she hadn’t called the police. Or maybe she has and I’ll hear sirens? Her voice was throaty, she may have been drinking. She looks like someone who has been arrested before. If she’s involved in the abduction she wouldn’t want police coming to this place.
“Answer me, asshole!”
He tried to think.
“My wife and son were abducted a few hours ago near Times Square in an SUV registered to this address.”
“That’s a crock of shit!”
“It’s the truth. Do you know Donald Dalfini? Where is the SUV? Are you his wife?” The woman didn’t answer. As she considered his questions, Jeff kept talking. “Let me show you something?”
She took a moment, then nodded once. Jeff fished out Sarah’s digital camera and Cole’s key ring. He cued up the photos and held the camera to her with the ring.
“Look at these, please. Pictures we took today. I’m telling the truth.”
Hesitating, she inched forward, keeping the gun on Jeff. She took the items with her free hand, then backed away. As she looked them over Jeff told her everything—about Lee Ann, the trip, everything. He explained all the events that brought them here, to this moment.
“Tell me where my wife and son are. I’m begging you.”
Jeff saw that her eyes were blue, a bit glassy, as he searched them for her reaction. With each passing second her hardness started to fracture. As she blinked back tears her mouth began moving and she spoke, in a whisper, to herself. Jeff struggled to hear, certain she’d said, “I told Donnie it’s freakin’ wrong, stupid.”
“Please,” Jeff said. “I’m begging you. Are they okay? Are my wife and son hurt? Please.”
On the verge of tears, she dragged the back of her hand across her mouth.
“Shut up! Your shit’s got nothing to do with us!”
“It’s your SUV. It’s registered to this address.”
“It was stolen three weeks ago when I went to the Neverpoint Mall. I’ve been scared the fuckers who took it would come here.”
“Then we’re on the same side. We both need to know what happened.”
“Sheri, you need my help?”
A woman’s voice came from just inside the sliding doors to the deck. A large woman in her fifties with long white hair stood in the dim light. She was wearing an oversize Mets T-shirt and tapped the tip of a baseball bat into the palm of her left hand.
“Did you call Donnie?” Sheri asked the older woman.
“I left him a message. Did you find out who this asshole is? Want me to help you with him?”
“No, I’ve got this.”
But Sheri’s voice quavered; her hands were shaking, signaling that she was losing her internal struggle to regard Jeff as a threat. He needed to search the house, then he’d alert Cordelli and Ortiz.
“Sheri, I told you the truth,” he said. “If what you told me is true, let me look through your house for my family, then I’ll go.”
“I told you we got nothing to do with that.”
“I need to