at day care till five. No one’s at the house.”
“And that means?” Keller said.
She poked him hard in the ribs and laughed. “You know damn well what it means, Jack Keller.”
“I’ll drive,” he said.
She laughed and gave him a squeeze. Then her face turned serious again. “Did you think it was going to be this hard?” she said.
“What?”
“Being together. You and me.”
He tucked her head back under his chin and stroked her light brown hair. “I didn’t think at all about it,” he said. “It just kind of happened.”
Her voice against his chest was muffled, but he could still hear the tension in it. “So is it worth it?”
He kissed the top of her head. “Yeah.”
***
DeGroot was frustrated. He sat down in a wooden chair in front of his subject and took off his surgical mask and goggles. The subject was presumably HIV negative, but one never knew. He wiped a spatter of blood from the goggles with a towel.
He realized now that he had made a mistake. He had tried to rush things, instead of going by the book. He should have known better. Through a dozen wars, across Africa and Asia, he had perfected the craft of extracting information. Physical interrogation should start with small indignities: a cuff, a slap, denial of food or sleep. Then the pressure should be ratcheted up in small increments, between periods where the subject is left alone to consider the next level, his imagination becoming the interrogator’s ally as he worries and wonders how bad it could get. The extreme methods should be saved for the last resort. But DeGroot had let the time pressure get to him. He wondered briefly if his earlier speech to the subject had been a bit of denial on his part, wondered if he was becoming one of those people who enjoyed inflicting pain.
“Maybe I’m gettin’ bossies in my old age,” he said out loud to the subject in the chair. The word was slang for bosbevok—“bush crazy.” “Maybe it’s time to retire, eh, boet?” The man didn’t answer. His head still hung forward slackly so that DeGroot couldn’t see his face. A drop of blood fell from his face to join the pool on the chair between his legs.
DeGroot picked up the galvanized steel bucket beside his own chair. It was empty. He sighed. Besides the dodgy electrical wiring, the running water in the safe house was a meager trickle of rust-stained water from the faucets.
He would have to revive the subject with water from the ancient pump outside. As he stood up, his cell phone rang. He muttered under his breath and answered it. “Go,” was all he said.
The voice on the other end was agitated. “We still haven’t found Dave,” he said.
The Afrikaner looked at the man in the chair. “Keep looking,” he said. He turned away. “Do you have his key?”
The brief pause was all the answer he needed. DeGroot cursed under his breath. “No,” the voice said. “We figured he had it with him.”
“BOBBYYYYY!” the man in the chair bellowed. “MIIIIIIKE! HELP MEEEEEE!”
DeGroot looked up in shock. The subject was awake, struggling against his bonds and yelling at the top of his lungs.
DeGroot heard a confused “Dave? Was that Dave?” before he swore and snapped the phone shut. He advanced on the man in the chair, his arm poised for a backhand blow. He stopped short. Lundgren was smiling at him through his mouthful of broken teeth. His one remaining eye glittered with triumph. “Psych,” he whispered. “Psyched you out, you fucker.”
“Clever boet,” the Afrikaner said. He knew the school-boy taunt was designed to make him lose his temper. It worked. He drew his gun and shot Lundgren in the head.
Carly Fedder was not taking the disappearance of her daughter well. Her eyes were red from crying, and her hands shook as she lit a cigarette. It was the third one Marie had seen her light since she and Keller had arrived.
They were seated in the living room of her two-bedroom apartment. Carly Fedder lived in one of the cookie-cutter apartment complexes that were expanding outward into the rural areas surrounding the growing city of Fayetteville.
“The son of a bitch,” she said. She took a deep, angry drag on the cigarette. She was slim, blond, and blue-eyed. She looked like a high school cheerleader who had managed to keep her figure, but fatigue had worn furrows in the corners of her mouth and eyes.
“Mrs. Fedder—” Marie began.
“It’s Ms.,” the woman interrupted. “We were never married.” She took another drag.
Marie tried to ignore the anger that hung in the air like the smoke from the cigarette. “How do you know David Lundgren took your daughter?”
She looked at Marie as if the question was idiotic. “Because he told me he was going to take her. He said he wasn’t going to wait for the courts.”
“What did he mean by that?” Marie asked.
Carly didn’t answer. Instead she looked at Keller and said, “What’s he doing here?”
Keller stared back. He kept all expression from his face. He decided to let Marie answer.
“Mr. Keller is a friend of mine,” Marie said. “He’s helping me. He has some…military experience.”
“Great,” Carly snapped. “One of them.” She turned to Marie as if Keller had ceased to exist. “What if I don’t want him along?”
“Suits the shit out of me,” Keller said as he stood up. “I only came along as a favor to Ms. Jones.”
Carly’s laugh was nasty. She addressed Marie again. “Oh, now I get it,” she said. “I’ll bet you’ve got him jumping through hoops right now, honey. But when you run out of tricks, he’ll leave. They all do.”
Keller gritted his teeth. “I’ll be in the car.” He was almost to the door before he heard a small voice behind him. “I’m sorry.”
He stopped and turned. Carly was turned toward him, but her eyes were cast down to the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said again. She looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. There was something contrived, almost theatrical, about it, as if she had studied the signs of contrition and was putting them on.
“I’m not the only one you need to apologize to,” Keller said. He jerked his chin at Marie.
She turned to Marie. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, “I’m just really wound up about this.” She smiled. “Tammy said you’re a mother. You understand, don’t you?”
Marie gave a different smile back, the smile of one being polite to someone she’d rather be strangling. “Sure,” she said. “And the sooner we get to work, the sooner we get your daughter back. Have you got any pictures of her?”
Carly
