door. Her body looked forty, though her hard, pallid face was older. Her red-rimmed eyes were tired.
The woman wiped a strand of hair from her forehead. “Why are you still here?”
“I’m Billy’s mom.”
“Billy, huh. He’s never here when you need him.”
“I was supposed to meet him here at three o’clock.”
“Well, now you get the picture. Sorry.” She closed the door.
Corey moved toward her car, panicky. Inside, she locked the door and carefully dialed Sally. She said yes, she would hold. She closed her eyes and wiped out her thoughts about Billy’s foster home, her confused feelings about well-meaning Sally, and even her worries about her missing son. Corey kept her eyes closed, her cell phone to her ear. She would keep her head clear and empty until Sally picked up. She knew how to wait. When Sally came on, Corey started right in, pleasant enough. “Do I have the wrong day or something?”
“Is this Corey? Corey Logan?”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Hey. Billy left me a message. He couldn’t make it. I didn’t know where to find you.”
“What?”
“Look, he doesn’t have to see you at all.”
“What?”
“Let’s try again next week.”
“I can’t wait another week. He’s my son.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll talk with him. Do what I can. Okay?”
“Thanks,” Corey said, breathless.
It was late. Corey couldn’t sleep. She sat at her worn plank table, her back to the smoldering fire, writing in her diary:
“Where’s Billy. Why wasn’t he there to see me? My ideas about that scare me. I have to find out. Right away. And who is that woman he lives with? And the girl with the baby? How many other kids live there? What have I done?”
She closed the book, hid it behind the chimney brick, then went into her bedroom and laid down on the bed. She would find Billy tomorrow, after her time with the doctor. She would try not to think about these things until she saw her son, talked with him. When she had finally put Billy out of her mind, Corey slept.
It was 7:30 a.m. The tide was out, and Corey was poking around the tide pools, killing time before taking the ferry to Dr. Stein. Her rocky beach was part of the Blakely Shelf, a rock formation that stretched under Puget Sound. The shelf revealed its hiding places—its shallow crevices, its nooks and crannies teeming with sea life—when the tide was low. She had already seen sea stars, a small flounder, tiny black eels, sculpins, and a Dungeness crab.
She sat on a partially submerged rock, watching a sea anemone swaying gracefully in the water between her knee-high rubber boots. She was working to keep the demons back, wanting to feel okay about herself before seeing Dr. Stein. She slowly turned her head north, toward the little cedar cabin her mother had built and the fancy new house next door. Her dad William Logan had died at sea four months before she was born. His troller went down in the Ouzinkie Narrows between Kodiak Island and Spruce Island, Alaska. He left the Bainbridge property behind—her mom always said that he left it for his daughter. Three years ago she, Billy, and Al, had painted her mother’s cedar cabin white. Now the paint was peeling, worn by wind and rain.
The owner of the new house had sent a balding real estate agent to offer money for her mom’s cabin, to tear it down. She said no.
When the guy came again, Corey shut the door in his face.
Later she was sorry she had done that. He was doing his job, and he had no way of knowing what this cabin meant to her. What it was, she decided, was that she wasn’t used to getting her way with people. She didn’t expect them to understand what she was saying. So she didn’t say much. She needed her energy for other things, like Dr. Stein. At least he tried to listen, even when he didn’t understand. She believed he was working hard and that he thought about what he did. Except at certain times—she could see it come on—when he seemed distracted, preoccupied. It made him miss some things, like setting that fire. Corey caught herself. That wasn’t her problem. She would make him see that she could be a good mom. She could do that. He could do that.
Corey took the steep old wooden staircase that switch-backed up the bank toward the cabin. She went slowly, looking down, reminding herself to replace the unstable, weatherworn steps. She was checking out a wobbly tread when her hand hit something hard—a piece of wood, a cane. She saw him then, an outsized man in a shabby suit, staring down at her from the landing through those oversized, gold-rimmed glasses that made his weird, cloudy eyes even bigger. Nick’s man. Lester Burell. He had set his cane to block her way. Since her arrest, Lester had visited her twice. After those visits she knew two things: Lester had a reptile’s thick skin, and a reptilian heart. She thought about running, but she couldn’t move. She felt cold—on her skin, inside her bones.
Lester tapped his cane against the stair railing. “You get one chance.”
Corey didn’t respond. She didn’t even look at him.
Lester didn’t seem to notice. “You work for me. Whatever I need.”
She wanted to throw up. “Why are you here?” she asked, instead. “I haven’t said anything. I won’t bother Nick.”
Lester ignored her. “Chance to redeem your execrable self—” Another tap, and a mean smile. He nodded. “Show your good intentions…”
She looked out to sea.
He nodded again, as if she had said something, then continued. “I went ahead and squared it with your PO. Dick liked the idea.” He cleared his throat, an attention-getter. “And it could help you get your boy back. Might be the only way. We agreed on that.”
Corey tensed up, every single muscle. The lizard sonofabitch had talked with her probation officer. About Billy. She wanted to grab his ankle and pull, watch him tumble down the stairs onto the rocky beach. She waited, staring at the sea.
Lester went on, his voice gravelly, “Here’s how I look at it.” He waited until she turned back, then he lifted his large left palm, held it out. “In my pocket, or…” He raised his right palm, lowering his left, as if weighing two objects on a balancing scale. “Off the radar screen. Poof!” He blew across his right palm. “Gone.” He held both palms at the same level. “Works either way.”
Lester hawked up a wad of phlegm, lobbed it onto the beach—he was plainly finished here—then he climbed the steps and walked toward his car. Corey shifted, took slow breaths. She watched his back, his odd walk—a war wound. He had been a mercenary, he’d told her once. She knew that twenty years ago Nick had paid Al to ferry this man to Canada on his boat. Now, Al was dead and Lester was Nick’s grim messenger.
She hadn’t spoken with Nick himself since that harrowing night at King County jail. She still remembered the exact time—10:13 p.m.—when she finally made bail. Al, she assumed, had been contacted. She was in a bad dream. Al would help her sort it out, wake her up. When she stepped into the waiting area, her bad dream turned to a sweat-soaked, screaming nightmare. Right there, sitting on a bench next to Billy—engaging him in lively
