Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(111)

Jamie would feel a lot better if Allison’s kids were suffering the way Jerry had suffered.

“It isn’t fair! You just get to go to sleep, and you’re not going to feel a thing! Why did I take the easy way out?”

Jamie glances into the backseat. It might be worthwhile to wait until they wake up. . . .

Worthwhile, yes. But not feasible.

Things are already in motion. It’s now or never.

“I’ve got the kids. I’ve got the opportunity. I’ve even got this.” Jamie pulls Mack’s Blackberry from the console. It’s going to add such a nice touch.

Funny how things just fall into place. The device was conveniently lying on the dresser in one of the bedrooms when Jamie reached the second floor of the beach house.

In another bedroom, the girls were sound asleep. It was so easy to jab one slender white neck, and then the other, with the syringe that would knock them out almost instantly. Carrying them down the back stairs without making a sound was a little more challenging, though. They were heavier than they looked—dead weight, Jamie thinks now, with a grim little smile.

The painstaking process took much longer than anticipated, so long that it was a wonder the girls’ father hadn’t stirred from the kitchen, or their mother hadn’t come back from her walk.

At last, the still figures lay on the floor of the Jeep.

Then came the truly tricky part.

Jamie knew it would take some kind of diversion to separate Mack from the baby. Knocking over the table in the upstairs hall seemed like a good idea—and one of the few options available—but it wasn’t without risk. Had Mack decided to search the entire second floor before going to check on his daughters, whose room was at the end of the hall, he might easily have come across Jamie, hiding inside the linen closet right at the top of the stairs, a few feet from the toppled table.

But Mack didn’t do that. He must have sensed that Daddy’s girls needed him.

But it was too late for that, wasn’t it, Daddy dear?

As Mack’s footsteps pounded down the hall toward his daughters’ room, Jamie bolted from the closet and raced down the stairs as quietly as possible. She grabbed the baby, stroller and all, jabbed him with the needle, and ran out to the waiting Jeep.

Driving away from the house, Jamie spotted Mack in the upstairs window, looking out. It was so tempting to give a jaunty little wave.

How does it feel to be helpless when your child needs you? How do you like it?

Jamie coasted down the street, making sure Mack got a good look at the Jeep, on the off chance that there might be other cars on the road.

We wouldn’t want you to get confused, now, would we?

Mack was soon chasing the Jeep that, ironically, Jamie had rented using the desktop computer in the house on Orchard Terrace just a few days earlier. The username and password were even conveniently saved on the car rental agency’s Web site, along with the credit card information.

After making the rental reservation, Jamie used the search engine to type in some information that might come in useful . . .

Not for me, though.

The computer search was strictly for the benefit of the investigators who will confiscate Mack’s hard drive after this is all over—if they haven’t already.

The final step, as Jamie drives the Jeep out onto the jetty, is to toss Mack’s cell phone onto the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, where it will be easily found later by the divers.





Chapter Seventeen

“Calm down, ma’am. Calm down.”

“I can’t calm down!” Allison screeches at Lieutenant Sparks, the young police officer who escorted her away from the front steps of the old man’s house. “My babies! He took my babies!”

“Who did?”

“My husband!” She clutches Lieutenant Sparks’s arm. “He’s . . . I don’t know, he’s gone crazy or something. Please. It’s not him, it’s the drug—”

“He’s on drugs?”

“No, not like—please. You have to stop him before he hurts them. Please . . .”

At the wheel of the SUV, Mack screeches to a stop on the narrow jetty, jams the gear shift into park, and jumps out. There’s barely room alongside the car for him to stand; the rocky drop-off into the water is mere inches from his shoes.

He edges past it and pushes forward.

Through the mist, he can see the car whose taillights he chased from Salt Breeze Pointe, after he realized, in a panic, that someone had taken all three of his children.

It’s a miracle that he even managed to catch up with the vehicle—which he can now make out is a Jeep—considering that the driver had a generous head start.

It didn’t take long for Mack to dump out Allison’s purse and grab her keys, yet those were seconds that carried his children farther and farther away from him. He lost precious seconds, too, in a frenzied, futile search for her cell phone so that he could call 911, but it didn’t seem to be there, and he quickly gave up.

By the time he got outside, he was shocked to see the taillights still visible down the block, almost creeping along, almost as if . . .

Several times, he almost managed to catch up to the car and then would lose it again as it raced south along the barrier island.

Now it’s almost within reach, parked just ahead, right at the end of the jetty, again, oddly, almost as if . . .