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“Dylan Klebold,” Cody lied again.
Klebold had been on Cody’s mind a lot lately. Back in 1999, he and another senior named Eric Harris shot up some school out in Columbine, Colorado. Cody had studied everything they did right. More importantly, he’d also studied everything they didwrong. He was no idiot. No reason to repeat mistakes. Perfection was all about weeding out the errors.
76
Matt
FROM A WINDOW INthe living room, Matt watched Ellie load the strange girl into the passenger seat of her Ford and drive off down the street toward the mountains. Gabby was in the kitchen, making a pot of coffee. Josh had given up struggling and settled into the corner next to the radiator and gone quiet.
Even though he made it clear he didn’t want her there, Addie sidled up beside Matt smelling like fresh lavender. Her damp hair darkened the collar of an FBI T-shirt she no doubt pilfered from Ellie’s closet. When she spoke, she kept her voice low. “Let’s just get in your cruiser and leave, Matt. You and me. Drive until we find an ocean somewhere and start over.” She pressed against him and ran her fingers down the length of his arm until she reached his hand.
He shrugged her away. “Will you back off? Stop flirting with me around Gabby.”
She gave a sideways glance back toward the kitchen beforefocusing back on him with a sly smile. “Just so I’m clear, it’s okay when Gabbyisn’taround?”
“It’sneverokay,” he shot back in a hushed whisper. “Thisis not going to happen. You and me will never happen. I love Gabby.”
“No you don’t. I think you love the idea of Gabby. She’s safe. You can picture yourself living in a little house behind a white picket fence with her and her daughter. The three of you might look like a Norman Rockwell wet dream, but that doesn’t make it real.” She touched the tip of her finger to the back of his hand again. “That there, the electric feeling you get when I touch you, when you touch me,that’s right, that’sreal. You can try to deny it, but your body won’t let you. That kind of attraction doesn’t happen by accident. We were meant to be together. I know you don’t feel that when she touches you. You want to, but you don’t. You tell yourself those feelings will come with time, but they won’t. She can’t give you what I can.” Her hand moved to her belly, and for the first time, Matt realized she was showing a little bit. “You’d be a father to this child from the start. Gabby’s kid will never see you that way. To her, you’ll always be the guy sleeping with her mother. A stand-in. A substitute.”
Matt felt an angry twist in the pit of his stomach. “I’m not that baby’s father.”
“You keep telling yourself that.”
“I swear, Addie, if you don’t stop I’ll—”
“Coffee’s brewing, and I found a pack of cinnamon rolls that expired two months ago in Ellie’s fridge, I don’t know about you, but I’m—”
Gabby’s voice cut off when she saw Addie next to Matt at the window, so close the light didn’t pass between them.
Matt fought the urge to move away quickly and instead turned as if he had nothing to hide.
Because he had nothing to hide, he told himself.
When Addie shifted around, she kept her hand on her swollen belly, drawing Gabby’s eye on purpose. “Have you heard anything else from your daughter?”
Gabby didn’t take the bait. She kept her gaze fixed on Matt. “Ellie has a landline in the kitchen, but calls aren’t getting out. When I dial the rec center in Barton, I get the same thing as everywhere else: two rings and it disconnects. Nothing at all when I dial Riley’s phone.” She nodded at the window. “Any sign of Stu Peterson?”
Matt was about to say no when Peterson’s pickup truck rounded the corner one block to the west and coasted slowly down Ellie’s street. “Shit! Get away from the windows!” He shoved Addie with a little more force than he should have; she stumbled but caught herself on the corner of the couch.
“Down! Get down!” Matt told them.
The location of Ellie’s house was no secret. Half the town showed up on her doorstep when they had a problem and couldn’t find her at the sheriff’s office. At one point about four years back, Peterson had been a regular at Ellie’s Thursday night penny poker game. She’d put an end to that when he kept picking her brain about police procedural stuff and cases around town. Not because it wasn’t any of his business (it wasn’t), but because the purpose of the weekly game was to distract from the toils of local law enforcement, not dredge it all up as some weekly recap.
Crouched beneath the windowsill, Matt couldn’t see the truck, but he heard the rumble of the engine as it neared, tensed when it seemed to pause outside, then only felt slightly relieved when it drove off. He only looked back out when the sound faded and he caught a glimpse of the truck as it vanished around the far bend.
Addie was beside him again. “Did those come from his truck, or were they already out there?” she said, pointing at the street. At least a dozen sheets of paper were fluttering around on the breeze.
“Stay inside. I’ll be right back,” Matt told them all.
He opened the front door slowly, carefully checked the street, then retrieved one of the pages. He locked the door when he got back inside the house. “Looks like some kind of flyer for a town meeting tonight at the middle school. Nine o’clock.” He looked at his watch. It was ten after seven. “Less than two hours.”
“We should go,” Gabby said. “Maybe someone found a way out.”
“That’s risky. It doesn’t say who organized it,” Matt replied. “What if it’s the same people putting up fences and shooting cars when we try to leave? Maybe they’re just trying to round us up? Ellie was right. We should stay here and find some way to get outside help. I know she has a shortwave radio around here somewhere, we should—”
“You’re a pussy,” Josh muttered from his place next to the radiator. “Admit it. You’d rather hide than risk your own skin.” He nodded at Gabby and Addie in turn. “Same reason you won’t marry this one, and same reason you won’t admit to fathering the kid growing in that one. You’re a coward looking out for numero uno and nobody else. If you had half a ball, you’d put Peterson and the others in their place. You’d walk into the middle of that meeting and act like a leader, not some loser who couldn’t hack it in the real world and had to come running home. Someone who disappears when life throws real responsibility at them.”
“Fuck you, Josh,” Matt fired back. “You want me to gag you, just keep talking.”
