No keys to Slater here.

A wail—Eugene—carried through the house. Bob turned and ran for the sound. So it was true.

Kevin walked back out to the living room, ignoring the sounds of lament issuing from the back bedroom. He should take a torch to this place. Burn out the rat’s nest. Add a few more ashes to the backyard. The stairwell to the basement was still choked off with a mountain of books and magazines, stacks that hadn’t been touched for years.

Jennifer stepped out of the master bedroom. “He took her.”

“So I gathered.”

“He left a note.” She handed him a blue slip of paper. Three words were scrawled in the familiar handwriting.

Fess up, Puke.

“Or what,” he said. “You’ll dump her in the lagoon?”

Kevin stared at the words, numb from four days of horror. Part of him didn’t care, part of him felt sorry for the old hag. Either way, all of his deepest secrets would soon be on the table for the world to pick through. That was the point. Kevin wasn’t sure how much he cared anymore.

“Can we go now?”

“Are you finished?”

“Yes.”

She looked around. “The health department is going to have a field day once this gets out.”

“They should burn it.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” she said. Her eyes settled on his. “Are you okay?”

“I feel . . . confused.”

“As far as the rest of the world is concerned, she’s your mother. They may wonder why you don’t seem to care. She may be a witch, but she’s still human. Only God knows what he’ll do to her.”

The emotions came from his gut, unexpectedly and in a rush. He suddenly felt suffocated in the small, dark space. She was his mother, wasn’t she? And he was horrified by the fact that he even thoughtof her as a mother, because in reality he hated her more than he hated Slater. Unless they were one and the same and she had kidnapped herself.

A confusing mixture of revulsion and sorrow overcame Kevin. He was falling apart. His eyes swam with tears and his face wrinkled.

Kevin turned for the door. He could feel their stares on his back. Mommy. Fire burned through his throat; a tear spilled from his left eye.

At least they couldn’t see. He would never allow anyone to see this. He hated Balinda and he was crying for her and he hated that he was crying for her.

It was too much. He hurried for the door, crashed through with far more noise than he wanted, and let out a soft sob. He hoped Jennifer couldn’t hear; he didn’t want her to hear him acting this way. He was just a lost boy and he was crying like a lost boy and he really just wanted to be held by Mommy. By the one person who had never held him.

“Kevin?” Jennifer was running after him.

He only wanted to be held by Princess.

22

Monday

Afternoon

THE QUESTIONS HAD NAGGED at Samantha through the night. The scenario fit some unseen hand like a glove; the question was, which hand? Who was Slater?

She’d talked to Jennifer upon waking and heard about the note on Kevin’s windshield. She should have taken an earlier flight! Jennifer suspected kidnapping, but as of seven this morning there had been no evidence of foul play.

Sam told Jennifer about Salman. If the Pakistani Salman had indeed met with Slater in New York, then whoever the FBI had located with a tattoo could not be Slater, because Slater’s had been removed. Furthermore, Slater couldn’t be the Riddle Killer—he’d been in New York at the time of Roy’s murder. Jennifer hadn’t been ready to accept her conclusion out of hand, but the two cases did have a few significant disparities that were obviously weighing on her mind. She talked about objectives. She was beginning to suspect that the Riddle Killer and Slater weren’t similarly motivated.

As for the tattoo, they would know within a few hours.

Sam’s plane landed at LAX at 12:35. She rented a car and headed south for Long Beach. Traffic on 405 was as bad as it got for a weekday. She called Jennifer. The agent answered on the first ring.

“Hi, Jennifer, it’s Sam. Anything?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. The tattoo is a bust. Our man works on an oil rig six months a year. He’s been out on one for the last three weeks.”

“Makes sense. Any word on a kidnapping?”

Jennifer hesitated and Sam sat up. “Balinda was taken from her home last night,” Jennifer said.

“Balinda Parson?” Sam’s pulse spiked.

“One and the same. No contact, no leads, nothing but a note left in Slater’s writing: ‘Fess up, Puke .’Kevin took it pretty hard.”

Sam’s mind was already whirling. Of course! Taking Balinda would force media attention on Kevin’s family. His past. “Does the media know?”

“Yes. But we’re keeping them away from Baker Street under the claim that it could trigger Slater. There’s wall-to-wall coverage on this thing. I’ve spent the last hour handling interagency concerns. The bureaucracy’s enough to drive me nuts. Milton’s ticked off, the ATF wants the evidence from Quantico—it’s a mess. Meanwhile we’re dead in the water.”

Jennifer sounded tired. Sam braked and came to a stop behind a pickup truck billowing black smoke. “How is he?”

“Kevin? He’s dead to the world. I left him at his house about two hours ago, sleeping. God knows we could all use some rest.”

Sam pulled around the truck. “I have some ideas, Jennifer. Is there a chance we could meet sooner?”

“What is it?”

“I . . . I can’t explain right now.”

“Come by the station. Unless something breaks, I’ll be here.”

“Okay. But I have to chase something down first.”

“If you have information that’s pertinent to the investigation, I expect to be told. Please, Sam, I can use all the help I can get here.”

“I promise you I’ll call the second I know anything.”

“Sam. Please, what’s on your mind?”

“I’ll call you,” Sam said and hung up.

Without evidence her fears would have to remain the paranoia of a close friend, desperate for answers. And if she was right? God help them. God help Kevin.

She drove south, ticking off the facts. Slater had been in New York at the same time she’d been there. Slater knew her, a small detail she’d withheld from the CBI. Knowing Roland, he’d yank her from the case.

Slater was obsessed with Kevin’s past; Slater was the boy; Sam had never seen the boy; all of the riddles had to do with opposites; all demanded a confession. Slater was trying to force Kevin back into his past. Who was Slater?

A chill snaked down her arms.

Samantha approached Kevin’s house from the west, parked two blocks down, and took to foot, careful to keep yard fences between herself and the black car parked up the street. She had to do this without causing a fuss, and the last thing she wanted to do was wake Kevin if he was asleep.

Dread swelled in her chest as she neared. The notion that Kevin might indeed be Slater refused to budge from her tired mind.

She had to wait for the agent up the street to turn his head before crossing from the neighbor’s fence into Kevin’s backyard. She hurried up to the sliding glass door and knelt so that Kevin’s picket fence blocked her head from the car’s line of sight. Working quickly above her head, she inserted a thin pick into the lock and worked it with as much precision as she could from the awkward angle. The pin fell and she pried up the latch. She wiped a bead of sweat from her cheek, glanced back at the black car, slid the glass door open a foot, and slipped past the pulled blinds. She reached back through and closed the door.

If they’d seen her, they would be moving already. They hadn’t.

Sam looked around the house. A two-by-four-foot travel poster of a bikini-clad native walking down a white beach said that New Zealand promised paradise. Dear Kevin, you want so much. I should have known how badly you were hurting, even when we were children. Why did you hide it from me? Why didn’t you tell me?