Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

“No one is going to commit you, Nick.”

“If they do, you’re going to break me out. You said it yourself. You’re here for me. Well, if you’re here for me, that’s what it’s going to take, man.” He snorted angrily. “How ironic. Just when we get Cline behind bars, they’ll stick me there too. Only it’ll be padded walls for me.”

I watched the road, tried to think of what to say. “I—”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Nick waved at the car in the distance. “Speed up. We’re losing him.”

CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

NICK AND I had followed Cline to a quiet street in a neighborhood north of Boston but not far from the central business district. The brownstone building had three floors; flowerpots bursting with red flowers hung in every window. It looked like there was a kid’s bedroom on the second floor because a teddy bear was sitting in the window and a hockey stick leaned against the glass.

I took in all these meaningless details with my mind consumed with Nick’s problem. It sounded to me as though his psychiatrist knew exactly what was going on, but I didn’t want to try to convince my friend of this. He was in pain, and pushing him right now would only add to that.

Cline sat in the car texting someone, and then he went to the red-painted front door of the home.

“See? See?” I nudged Nick. “I had a hunch he was coming to meet his boss. He must have a partner or at least a distributor, someone who handles the business on the Boston end.”

“How did you know he’d come to see him?” Nick asked.

“Cline’s guy told me he wouldn’t go to jail. It didn’t matter who stood in his way, he’d stay out of prison at all costs. I told Cline I knew why. It’s because he’s just a puppet. He’s working for someone more powerful, someone who will clean his house if Cline is ever arrested.”

I tapped the window beside me, anxious. I knew I’d spooked Cline with my bluff, that coming directly to Boston after my call must be connected to his business. The fearful, razor’s edge to his words as he’d spoken told me there was something at stake here, and I thought it meant there was a boss in play. Maybe there was more than one. They need me. You might think you’re doing them a favor, but they need me , Cline had said. But what did that mean, exactly? Could they be his bosses?

“You think he’s come here to warn the guy?” Nick asked.

“Yeah. I’m almost sure of it. He’s come to tell the boss that he’s gotten in over his head with us.” I nodded, folded my arms. “It’s probably hard, admitting he needs help. But we’ve got the upper hand now. The element of surprise. We’re going to find out who this guy is, what we’re really dealing with.”

Cline knocked, and the door opened. I don’t know what I expected to see. Cline in an older form, harder, more scarred, a kind of father figure sending my nemesis out into the world to spread the virus he’d created.

But when the door opened there wasn’t a man but a very beautiful woman. Two children rushed from behind her and into Cline’s arms.

CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE

“WHAT THE HELL is this?” Nick asked.

“I … have no idea,” I said. The woman on the stoop seemed angry with Cline. She held a hand up, palm out, like she was trying to keep him from entering. But Cline picked up and carried the two boys, five or six years old, under his arms and barged his way in. I had been wrong about Cline. He was not working for someone else. They need me , he’d said. He didn’t mean his bosses; he meant his family.

“I don’t understand this.” Nick shook his head. “The guy has kids? He spends every ounce of his energy poisoning other people’s kids. Giving them free samples. Trying to get them hooked. How does he do it?”

“Same way he wipes out his whole crew after saving them all like rescue dogs,” I said. “He can turn the care on and off like a faucet. He cares when it’s convenient.” I popped my door as soon as Cline’s clicked closed. “Let’s go,” I said.

“What? Where?”

I jogged across the street and ducked down the narrow alleyway beside Cline’s house, squeezing between two large garbage cans. Nick was close behind me, gripping the bricks as he crouched by my side. There was another flowerpot hanging from a low kitchen window, which was open. Nick and I watched each other as the voices from outside reached us.

The sound of the children was like happy dogs barking, their small feet stomping on the boards.

“Daddy, I want to show you my class project!”

“No, I want to show you my—”

“Come to my room, Daddy. Come to my room first.”

“Frankie, Jamie, I want you to go upstairs to your room,” the woman said.

“But we—”

“ Go upstairs to your room! ” the mother snarled. I recognized immediately the terror, fear, aggression in her voice. Women had turned on Malone and me as patrol cops when we came knocking after we got reports of screaming in apartments. They snapped at us, pushed us out of their homes, but I’d heard the fear rattling through their words, seen the relief in their eyes at the presence of another focus for their husbands’ rage.

There were small, mournful footsteps on the stairs and then a long, hard silence.

“The court order says you have to give me forty-eight hours’ notice before you come here,” the woman said.

“Teri, I did give you notice. You just never answer your phone.”

“A text from the fucking car thirty seconds before you knock on the door is not notice!”

“I don’t like that tone,” Cline said quietly. His voice was low, coiling, like a snake about to strike. “You know I don’t like it, and you use it anyway. I come to my own house and you treat me like a criminal in front of my own sons, my blood.”

“I just want a warning. That’s all I’m asking for. The judge said you have to give me that.”

“All I want is a bit of respect,” Cline said. Something clattered on the kitchen counter. “You wear the clothes that I paid for. You live in the house that my hard work built. I gave you those two beautiful boys. I can take all of those things away from you in an instant, and you don’t even have the decency to look me in the eye. Look at me. You understand what I’m saying?”

His voice was closer to hers now, inches away from Nick and me, on the other side of the window. I heard a whimper, and Nick flinched at the sound of it, his eyes distant and wide.

“Someone’s giving me a problem,” Cline said. “I don’t know what he’s going to try to do next. I want you and the kids out of the house.”

“But—”

“ But? ” Cline snapped. Another clatter, a cry of pain. “But what , Teri?”

Nick had heard enough. He tried to rise but I dragged him down.

“Nothing and no one is going to take me away from those boys,” Cline said. “Until I’ve tied up all the loose ends, you pack your shit and get out of here. I’ll call you with the hotel reservation.”

I heard his footsteps on the floorboards. The boys calling to him from the stairs. Cline’s wife, or ex-wife, started crying from the kitchen beyond where Nick and I hid.

“Do we go inside and help her?” Nick whispered. I thought for a moment, listening to the little boys going to their mother, asking her what was wrong. The helpless confusion of tiny children living in the shadow of a monster.

“There’s a way we can help her,” I told Nick. “And it’s the same way we help ourselves.”

CHAPTER NINETY-SIX

SUSAN KNEW WHAT I had decided to do. She stood with me in the kitchen looking worriedly over my work as I massacred some vegetables and then laid them out on a tray, spice-rubbed a shoulder of pork. A day had passed since Nick and I stood idly by while Cline made his ex-wife squeal in terror. The sound of her frightened voice had kept me up all night, Susan tossing and turning as I failed to settle down. Before dawn I’d crept to my basement bed, knowing I’d need her, at least, sharp and ready to be my ally against the man who had come unwelcome into our lives.