Catherine Coulter - Blindside

“They wouldn’t let me in with Dillon unless I got hosed down first. Here are my clothes, wrapped in this towel.”

“Mama, I think you look cuter than Dr. Jonah.”

“Let’s just keep that between us.”

“Okay. Who is this man who needs to shave?”

“You mean me, Keely?” Miles said, momentarily distracted. “You know who I am. Your mama needs some aspirin.”

How did he know that?

“No,” Keely said, “the man in the picture, in the magazine.”

“Oh, that was President Nixon,” Katie said. “I was born just before he resigned, a very long time ago. When was it?”

“In 1974,” Miles said. “I was just a bit younger than Sam.”

“Does your head hurt, Katie?” Sam said, and looked up at her.

“Just a little bit. Don’t worry about it. Miles, I hear there’s a bet on as to how fast Sherlock will get here. Savich told her not to come.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Miles said. “When Sherlock’s on a mission, if you don’t help, you’d best get out of her way. Now, kids, it’s after midnight, time for both of you to be in bed-again.”

“I’m not tired,” Keely said immediately, and yawned.

“Sure you’re not,” Katie said and swung her into her arms. She smiled at Miles Kettering, a man she’d not even known existed until she’d come across Sam. His clothes looked damp and itchy, the wool smelled, and his feet squished in his shoes, but no matter, he’d made the kids comfortable.

“You look dead on your feet, Miles. Maybe close to a coma, even.” Actually, even with fatigue and worry for Sam etched on his face, those eyes of his were brilliant with relief and just plain happiness. She knew to her toes that he was a strong man, competent, a good man who loved his child more than anything.

Miles Kettering was so tired after two days of little sleep and endless worry that a coma didn’t sound like a bad thing. “I’m good for a few more miles yet” was all he said. He rose slowly, Sam in his arms, looking like he never wanted to let him go again. And she knew exactly how he felt. He wanted Sam close, he wanted to feel Sam’s heartbeat against his palm, to know that he was safe, and with him again.

“Let me take Sam to see Dillon for a moment. He’s scared and I want to reassure him. Then we’ll be right with you.”

At that moment, a nurse came around to let them know Special Agent Savich was in his room, on the medical ward.

“That was good timing,” Miles said. “Could you get some aspirin for the sheriff, nurse?”

“Oh, sure. Katie, just a minute, I’ll get you some even stronger stuff.”

“Not too strong,” Katie called after her. “I can’t be comatose just yet.”

“I want to see Uncle Dillon, too,” Keely said.

Katie knew no one was about to keep the kids out at this hour. Almost everybody here had known Keely from the moment she was born, five years before just two floors up. Come to think of it, everybody knew everything about everybody within a ten-mile radius of Jessborough, with updates every couple of hours or so. You’d have to be sick or dead to be out of the loop about what happened today.

The four of them stood by Agent Savich’s bed, watching him sleep. Sam lightly patted his shoulder, and looked up to his father. “Uncle Dillon doesn’t look so good, Papa. Why’s he on his stomach?”

“You remember, he got cut on his back, that’s why. He’ll be just fine, don’t worry, Sam.”

“I think he’s handsome,” Keely said. “Do you think you’d like him, Mama?”

“It’s too late for us, pumpkin,” Katie told her daughter, “he waited as long as he could, and then he met Sherlock and she proposed to him. She was more in need than we were. What could he do?”

Miles wanted to laugh, but he was just too tired to do more than blink.

By the time Katie walked out of Dillon’s hospital room, two Advil in her system, Keely’s head rested on her shoulder, and she was sound asleep. Ten minutes later, Katie eased down into the front seat of Miles’s rented Ford and settled Keely on her lap. Miles fastened the seat belt. Then he paused, and both of them realized they didn’t want Sam to be alone in the backseat.

It would be a tight fit, but they could do it. Miles said, “Sam, do you think you can hold real still?”

“Sure, Papa,” Sam said, so tired his voice slurred like a drunk’s.

“Okay, I want you to sit on my lap, but since I’m driving, you can’t move a whisker.”

Katie had given people tickets for such stupidity, but she didn’t say a word. It would work.

Once Miles had the seat belt around both of them, Sam nearly touching the steering wheel even though Miles had pushed the front seat all the way back, Katie said, “Maybe you’d best stay at Mother’s Very Best tonight, Miles. The other Feds are staying there.”

He was silent for a long moment as he started the car.

“It’s not that I don’t want you at my house. It’s something else entirely.”

S he paused, saw that both children were asleep, then said, her voice low, “Something’s happened, Miles.”

His hands were fisted around the steering wheel. “Tell me.”

“It seems that Fatso/Clancy got out of the van before it blew. They haven’t found him yet. The hunt will begin in earnest early tomorrow morning, at first light. If he’s still in the forest, he might be dead of his wounds or pneumonia by morning. But I don’t think we’ll get that lucky.”

His right hand thumped the steering wheel. Sam jerked, but didn’t awaken. “So there’s still danger.”

“Well, yes. I felt much better thinking he was dead and accounted for, given what’s happened. I’m hoping that he’ll run as far and as fast as he can. At least when we catch him, we’ll have a chance to get out of him why he and Beau took Sam.”

“That would make me feel a whole lot better. There wasn’t a ransom note. Everyone was thinking a pedophile had taken him. Now? I don’t have a clue.” He paused, then added, “I guess you don’t think he’s dead.”

There was such hopefulness in his voice, but she didn’t lie. “No, I don’t. Life is never that neat and tidy. When you mix criminals in, things really get mucked up.”

“So that’s why you want me to stay at this B and B in town.”

“It might be for the best.”

“Wouldn’t we be just as safe with you and your deputies, Sheriff?”

“Two deputies will be in front of the house all night and there will be lots of people there tomorrow. Either way, you should be fine, but it’s up to you, Miles.”

“If you’ll have us, Sam and I would like to stay with you. He knows your house, Sheriff, he’s comfortable with Keely and with you. I don’t want to take him to another strange place unless I’m forced to.”

“No, you don’t have to. But please remember, Clancy and Beau came back to my house to get Sam again. I’m not really sure Clancy is going to hightail it out of here.”

“Ah, I don’t think you know this, Katie, but I was in law enforcement myself until five years ago, in the FBI. Savich and I worked together, as a matter of fact, and that’s how we became friends. I can handle myself and a gun, if the need arises.”

She shook her head at him. “I knew there was something about you, something that made me think you’d been in the military, or something.”

“Yeah, I can just imagine how bad-ass dangerous I looked holding two children in my arms.”

It took them a good twenty minutes to get there, never going faster than twenty miles an hour. The rain had slowed to a drizzle but a low-lying gray fog blanketed the ground. The air was bone-numbing cold, pregnant with more rain.

The children continued to sleep all the way back to Katie’s house, a neat two-story with a wide porch built in the forties. It was just outside Jessborough proper, along a road lined with tulip poplars, set back on five acres that were mostly covered with hardwood trees-beech, red maple, white ash, sassafras.