Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(95)

J.J., too, was bathed and well cared-for in her absence. She peeked in on him first and found him sound asleep in his crib, settled in for a morning nap he hasn’t taken lately at home. But he obviously needs it today, what with all the wee-hour commotion.

She hunted quietly in the darkened room for her cell phone and found it on the floor beside the crib. Had she dropped it there herself in a drunken stupor when she went to bed last night? Or had J.J. gotten his hands on it again?

The tiny smudged prints on the phone seemed to be evidence of the latter, and her heart sank. She can’t leave him. She just can’t.

J.J., with his love of pressing buttons, had managed to turn the phone off. She checked her voice mail to see if she’d missed any calls from Mack—she hadn’t—and put it into her pocket, hoping he would call.

“Where did you go?”

That question comes from Hudson, and is followed up with another from Madison.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“Did you two eat breakfast yet?” Allison asks to distract them, not wanting to lie to them about anything unless she absolutely has to.

They nod vigorously.

“Aunt Randi sent Greta out to buy us Cap’n Crunch,” Hudson reports, “since we didn’t get any yesterday and it was a Saturday. She said you wouldn’t be mad.”

God bless Aunt Randi.

“I’m not mad. I wonder how she knew that you always get it on Saturdays and you missed it yesterday?”

“Huddy reminded her,” Madison says proudly.

Allison starts to laugh, pulls them both close again, and the laughter suddenly gives way to a flood of tears. She hastily wipes them away behind the girls’ backs before releasing them.

“Why don’t you two go back to whatever you were doing,” she suggests, “while I go find Aunt Randi to thank her for taking such good care of you?”

Obediently, the girls climb back onto the twin bed. Hudson picks up the book again and resumes reading to her sister, who becomes reabsorbed in the story in a matter of seconds.

Allison watches them for a few seconds before turning away, wiping her eyes once again.

Awash in tears and regret, she thinks about Mack who, according to Captain Cleary, was transported to the local precinct for DNA testing.

“Is he under arrest?” she asked in horror, and braced herself for the answer.

“No.”

“So he’s free to leave?”

“When we have what we need from him, if there’s no reason to hold him, he’ll be free to leave.”

She was torn between asking if she could be with Mack at the station and coming straight back here to her children.

Maternal obligation—and concern—won out. But now that she knows the kids are fine, she almost wishes she’d opted to see Mack.

Almost.

She’s not quite ready to face him just yet.

Now that the seed has been planted in Allison’s own mind—and, thanks to herself and Ben, in the detectives’ minds—that a sleepwalker might be capable of violence, she keeps wondering if Mack could possibly have committed two murders.

Not Mack, the kindhearted husband she’s loved all these years, but a man under the influence of a powerful medication with frightening side effects.

She’s seen firsthand the destruction drugs can wreak on the human mind. If drugs can cause a person—an otherwise loving mother—to take her own life, then surely they can also cause an otherwise sane and stable husband and father to take someone else’s life.

But . . . Mack?

Her Mack?

Her partner, her protector, the love of her life, the father of her children . . . ?

We can never really be sure what’s going on in someone else’s head, even someone we think we know well . . .

Mack never talks about the details of Kristina Haines’s murder, even though he was there that day, right alongside Allison. She always figured that for Mack, that murder was, understandably, overshadowed by the drama of losing Carrie in the World Trade Center—not that he talks about the specifics of that, either.

But what if Kristina’s murder has been there all along, festering in the back of his mind? What if Jerry Thompson’s death or the sleep medication somehow triggered his subconscious to reenact—

“You’re back!”

Allison turns to see Randi in the hallway just outside the guest suite.

She’s wearing jeans and a pristine white silk top and looks so like her usual self—hair done, face fully made-up, jewelry on—that Allison’s first instinct is to resent her.

How can Randi focus on her appearance at a time like this?

But of course, that isn’t fair. The kids are fine, and Greta is here, too—Allison saw her downstairs when she came in—and anyway, Randi is one of those women who always manages to look pulled together. Even at her own father’s funeral a few years ago, she was elegantly stunning.

“What’s going on? Are you okay?”

Allison bites her lip, unable to reply, and shakes her head, conscious of the girls in the next room.

“Come on downstairs, Allie. I’ll make you some tea.”

She nods and follows her friend down the hall. Ordinarily, she thinks, Randi would already be asking more questions, but today she walks in silence a few steps ahead, all the way down the back stairs that lead directly into the big, empty kitchen.