Probably a back entrance, he thought. Check to make sure.

“Through there. Don’t mind the mess. I wasn’t expecting company,” O’Connell’s father said gruffly.

Scott let himself in the aluminum screen door, then through a second, solid-wood door, into a small kitchen. Mess was an accurate description. Pizza boxes. Microwavable dinners. Three cases of Coors Light in silver boxes. A bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label on the table to accompany the array of cans.

“Let’s go into the living room. We can have a seat, Mr.-okay, Mr. whatever your name is. What should I call you?”

“Smith works,” Scott said. “And if you have trouble keeping that straight, Jones will do just as well.”

O’Connell’s father snorted a small laugh.

“Okay, Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones. Now that I’ve invited you in here, why don’t you sit right over there where I can keep an eye on you, and you can explain yourself nice and quick, so that I don’t go back to thinking that my friend the ax handle is the better way of dealing with you. And you might get to the how-I-make-some-money part real quick. You want a beer?”

Scott walked into a small living room. There was a threadbare sofa, a recliner with a large red-and-white cooler next to it that served as a table, across from an oversize television set. Newspapers and pornographic magazines littered the floor, along with piles of grocery-store circulars and catalogs from various hunting stores. On one wall there was a stuffed deer head, which stared out blankly from behind glass eyes. A T-shirt hung from one of its antlers. He tried to imagine the house when O’Connell had been growing up here, and he could see in its bones the potential for a kind of normalcy. Get the debris out of the yard. Remove the interior clutter, fix up the couch. Replace the chairs. Hang a couple of posters on the walls, and spruce everything up with paint, and it would have been almost acceptable. The random piles of litter told him much about the father and little about the son; O’Connell’s father had probably replaced his dead wife and absent son with much of the mess.

Scott slid into a chair that creaked and threatened to give way and turned toward O’Connell’s father.

“I’ve been asking questions because your son has something that belongs to the person I represent. My client would like it back.”

“You a lawyer, then?”

Scott shrugged.

O’Connell slipped into the lounge chair, but kept the ax handle in his lap. “Who might this boss of yours be?”

Scott shook his head. “Names are really irrelevant to this conversation.”

“Okay, then, Mr. Smith. Then tell me what he does for a living.”

Scott smiled, as evil a grin as he could muster. “My client makes a great deal of money.”

“Legally or illegally?”

“I’m unsure whether you want to ask that question, Mr. O’Connell. And I would probably lie anyway, if I were going to respond.” Scott listened to the words tumbling out of his mouth, almost shocked at the ease he felt in inventing a character, a situation, and leading the older O’Connell on. Greed, he thought, is a powerful drug.

O’Connell smiled. “So, you’d like to get in touch with my wayward kid, huh? Can’t find him in the city?”

“No. He seems to have disappeared.”

“And you come snooping around here.”

“Just one of a number of possibilities.”

“My kid don’t like it here.”

Scott raised his hand, cutting O’Connell’s father off. “Let’s get past the obvious,” he said stiffly. “Can you help us find your son?”

“How much?”

“How much can you help?”

“Not sure. He and I don’t talk much.”

“When did you see him last?”

“A couple of years. We don’t get along too good.”

“What about at holidays?”

O’Connell shook his head. “I told you, we don’t get along too good. What’s he taken?”

Scott smiled. “Again, Mr. O’Connell, information like that would render your position, shall I say, precarious? Do you know what that means?”

“I’m not stupid. Of course. And how precarious, Mr. Jones?”

“Speculation is useless.”

“Just how much goddamn trouble is he in? The type of trouble that gets you beat up? Or the type of trouble that gets you killed?”

Scott took a breath, wondering just how far to push the fiction.

“Let’s just say that he can repair the damage he’s done. But it will require cooperation. It is a sensitive matter, Mr. O’Connell. And much more delay could prove problematic.” Scott felt utterly cold inside.

“What, drugs? He steal some drugs from somebody? Or money?”

Scott smiled. “Mr. O’Connell, let me put it to you this way. Should your son try to get in touch with you, and you were to advise us of that action, there would be a reward.”

“How much?”

“You asked that already.” Scott rose out of his chair, letting his eyes roam over the room, seeing a single hallway, leading to the rear bedrooms. It was a narrow space, he thought, that wouldn’t allow much maneuvering. “Let’s just say that it would be a pleasant Christmas gift.”

“So, if I can find the kid, how do I get ahold of you? You got a phone number?”

Scott put on the most pompous voice he could manage. “Mr. O’Connell, I really dislike telephones. They leave records, they can be traced.” He gestured toward the computer. “Can you send e-mail?”

O’Connell wheezed out rapidly, “Of course. Who can’t? But I got to have a promise, Mr. fucking Jones or Smith, that my kid ain’t going to get himself killed over this.”

“Okay,” Scott said, lying with ease. “An easy promise to make. You hear from your kid, you send an e-mail to this address.” He walked over to the table and found an unpaid phone bill and the stump of a pencil. He made up a completely bogus e-mail address and wrote it down.

He handed the paper to O’Connell. “Don’t lose that. And the phone number where I can reach you?”

The father rattled off his telephone number as he stared at the address. “Okay,” O’Connell’s father said. “Anything else?”

Scott smiled. “We won’t be seeing each other again. And, should anyone ask you, I presume you will have the sense to say that this little meeting never took place. And, should that someone be your son, well, then that admonition would go double. Do we understand each other?”

O’Connell’s father looked at the address a second time, grinned, and shrugged. “Works for me.”

“Good. Don’t get up. I can show myself out.”

Scott’s heart was moving rapidly as he slowly made his way back out. He knew that somewhere behind him was not only the ax handle, but a gun, which the neighbors had told him about, and probably a heavy-caliber rifle, as well; the glassy-eyed deer head mounted on the wall said as much. He had to trust that O’Connell’s father hadn’t had the simple good sense to write down his license plate number, although it was doubtful that he would fail to recognize the distinctive old Porsche if he saw it again. Scott told himself to take note of every detail on the way out; he might return to the house again, and he wanted to be familiar with the arrangement of the furniture. He took note of the flimsy locks on the door, then exited. Greed was an awful thing, and someone who would sell out his own child owned a cruelty that went somewhere beyond his own emotional reach. He felt a sudden wave of nausea nearly overcome him. But he had the sense to poke his head around the back side of the house, revealing the extra doorway that he had expected. Then he turned and hurried down the driveway. He could see gray clouds scudding across the horizon.

Michael O’Connell thought that he had been far too quiet and far too absent over the past few days.

The key to forcing Ashley to understand that no one-other than him-could actually protect her lay in underscoring everyone’s vulnerability. What prevented her from fully recognizing the depth of his love and the overwhelming need he had for her to be at his side was the cocoon that her parents had erected around her. And when he thought about Catherine, he got a bilious taste in his mouth. She was old, she was fragile, she was out there alone, and he had had the opportunity to remove her from the equation, but had failed to, even when she’d been within his reach. He decided that he would not make that mistake again.