Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(62)

“Want to feel worse about it?”

“Oh yes, please,” she says dryly. “I’d love to feel worse.”

“When she was a little girl, her family had mob ties. I’m not clear on the details, but I guess there was a murder and she and her parents were put into the witness protection program.”

Randi just looks at him.

“What?” he says.

“I don’t know . . . the witness protection program?”

“Why are you saying it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t believe it.”

“Because I’m not sure that I do.”

“You think Mack is lying about it?” he asks incredulously.

“I didn’t say that.”

It’s Ben’s turn to just look at her.

Unlike him, Randi has always been incredibly intuitive. Where Ben pretty much likes everyone he meets and tends to give strangers the benefit of the doubt—and has been burned for it, many a time—Randi is far more wary, far less trusting.

What she likes to say is that she has a highly functioning bullshit detector. Ben wouldn’t argue with that.

He’s come to rely on her judgment whenever they cross paths with new people—though back when they first met Carrie Robinson, he didn’t need his wife to tell him that they weren’t going to become a cozy foursome with the MacKennas. Even easygoing Ben found his best friend’s new girlfriend to be disappointingly stiff and reserved. Carrie was the kind of woman who, at a group dinner, would turn and talk to her date as if no one else were even present—when she talked at all.

Had Mack ever asked him, afterward, what he thought of Carrie, he was prepared to be truthful. Well, as truthful as he could be. Randi had coached him on what to say: I’m sure she’s a nice person, and if you’re happy with her then I’m happy for you, but just make sure you take it slow.

Mack never asked.

Mack, who had been best man at Ben’s wedding seven years ago, eloped without ever having told Ben he was engaged.

On Randi’s advice, he swallowed the hurt and invited Mack and his new bride out to dinner to celebrate their wedding. Mack made excuses every time they tried to set a date. Ben got the hint.

His friendship with Mack eventually got back on solid footing, but he saw Carrie only a couple more times—once at the office Christmas party, and once when Mack was presented with a sales award.

They never discussed Carrie, other than in passing.

But last night, when Mack drunkenly confided in him about Carrie’s past, Ben immediately forgave her. Now, thanks to Randi, he has misgivings about her all over again.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he tells his wife.

She shrugs. “It sounds far-fetched. That’s all.”

“There is such a thing as the witness protection program, you know. It’s—”

“I know what it is, Ben.”

Ben. Not Benjy.

“It’s been around for a long time,” he tells Randi, “and real people are in it—families with kids. Why couldn’t Carrie have been one of them?”

“I’m not saying she wasn’t.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“Just—”

“Mommy?”

They look up to see Lexi standing in the doorway.

“Can I have some Goldfish crackers?” she asks, and then, without missing a beat, “I thought you went to work, Daddy.”

“And I thought you were watching Blue’s Clues.”

“It’s in a commercial. I hate commercials.”

“We don’t say hate,” Randi automatically corrects her.

“Especially about television commercials,” Ben puts in.

“Why not?”

“Because,” he tells his daughter, “they’re how Daddy makes a living.”

“Shouldn’t you get to work, Daddy?” Randi asks, looking at her watch. “The sooner you get there, the sooner you’ll be able to get out and come home.”

“You’re right.” He plants a kiss on her cheek, and one on the top of Lexi’s dark head.

“Bye, Daddy. I love you.”

“Love you, too. And you—and we’ll talk later,” he tells Randi meaningfully as he heads for the door, wondering again about the mysterious Carrie Robinson MacKenna.

“Is someone there?” Allison calls again, standing poised in the doorway of her office, her eyes scanning the bullpen.

She skims right past the shadowy corner behind the copy machine. Crouched there, Jamie can clearly see the exquisite fear in her blue eyes.

This is going to be good.

Allison reaches back and plucks a small pair of scissors from the pencil cup. She holds them like a dagger, her elbow bent, her trembling fist wrapped around the finger holes, the closed blades poised before her, ready to make contact.

Nice try, but those are no match for this.

Jamie glances down at the eight-inch chef’s knife that had once belonged to Kristina Haines. The blade is clean now, but her blood—and Marianne’s—still stains the wooden handle.

Now Allison’s will join the mix.

It’s just a pity this time won’t be like the last two . . . setting the scene with lingerie, candles, music . . .