Steven James - The Knight

I completely understood his concern.

The pilot maneuvered the plane into the gate.

“You know that my wife is out of town for the week. Well, Dora went over to be with Tessa after school; I just wanted to ask if she could stay over there tonight. I don’t think I can get out of here until 10:30 or 11:00. I can swing by and pick her up if I get off early-”

“No need. She’ll be fine. Tessa’s at my mom’s; the girls can stay there. Two officers are watching the house.” The seat belt light went off. I stood. Collected my things. “In fact, I’m on my way to check on them right now. Just one quick question. Your resident, Lance Rietlin, was he working with you on Saturday afternoon?”

“Yeah. We were at the hospital together until almost six. Why?”

Then he couldn’t have been at the ranch. He couldn’t be John.

Dead end.

“Just checking up on everyone involved in the case.” All the passengers were deplaning. I joined the pack.

“Well,” he said. “I’ll let you know if my plans for tonight change. And can you have Dora give me a call when you see her?”

“Sure. Talk to you soon.”

I hung up, exited the plane, escaped the terminal.

And headed to my car.

As Amy Lynn Greer turned her car onto her street, she couldn’t help but smile.

Since meeting with the FBI profiler-and digitally recording their conversation-she’d spent a few hours writing, drove to Evergreen to get a look at Sebastian Taylor’s house for herself, and then talked with two literary agents in New York who were both interested in representing her-well, her and her coauthor.

And since she’d been careful to keep her Blackberry turned off for most of the day and had an older model car with no GPS, she’d enjoyed the freedom of being alone and not being followed everywhere by a cop or an FBI agent. Still, she knew Reggie would be incensed that she’d slipped away from him. It was time to get home. Kiss and make up.

But as she approached the house she saw that his car wasn’t there.

Hmm.

He might be out looking for her. How sweet.

Well, once she got in the house she could see if he’d left a note for her, and if not, just check her voicemail. She turned on her Blackberry. Punched the garage door opener.

Cruised inside.

And then closed the door.

Tessa hadn’t found any Paul Lansings in Minneapolis, Minnesota, so she’d expanded her search and eventually came up with eighty-two of them scattered throughout the country.

She knew that her mom had attended college with her dad, so it was easy to see that in each of the cases, either the length of time the men had spent at their current address or their date of birth or the universities they’d attended precluded them from being her father.

Finally, after the last one didn’t pan out, she let out a frustrated sigh.

Dora was tweaking her hair. “Nothing, huh?”

“No.”

“So what now?”

Tessa sighed. “I don’t know. It doesn’t look like he’s anywhere online, and it’s not like you can just erase your personal history. Once something gets posted on the Internet… You know.”

Dora shrugged. “Could he have moved out of the country or something?”

“Maybe.”

For a moment, Dora found a way to chew her gum silently. “You don’t think, maybe, I mean… you know.”

“What?”

“You know, that he, um… well… that he died.”

That was something Tessa hadn’t allowed herself to consider. “I don’t know,” she said softly. As she thought about that, she noticed that Dora had stopped working on her hair and was just staring blankly into the mirror.

She gave Tessa a smile, but her eyes betrayed her.

“What’s wrong?” Tessa asked her.

“I was just thinking about him dying and I thought about… well… ”

“Hannah.”

“Yeah.”

“Seriously, Dora. You have to stop beating yourself up about all that. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Dora was quiet.

“You sent a text message. That’s it. That’s all you did. It was the other girl, the babysitter. She’s the one who left the baby alone

…” Tessa could see this wasn’t helping, and going on describing everything would probably only make things worse. But before she could think of anything better to say, or consider the dark possibility of her father’s death anymore, she heard the front door pop open, and Patrick calling, “Tessa? Dora? You girls in here?”

She and Patrick had been through enough hard times together, enough weird stepdaughter/stepfather stuff already. The last thing she needed right now was for him to find out she was looking for her real dad without discussing it with him first.

She closed the webpage and then yelled down the stairs, “We’re up here.”

Amy Lynn stepped into the kitchen and set her purse on the table.

And saw a black duffel bag on the floor, next to the refrigerator.

What in the-?

But the footsteps behind her cut her off mid-thought.

“Hello, Amy Lynn.” She knew the voice and spun and saw a man in a black ski mask. “Welcome to Day Four.”

She gasped, couldn’t believe who it was, but before she could say a word, before she could move out of the way, he struck her, hard, in the face, and the world went dark.

The door to Tessa’s room was half open and she could vaguely overhear Patrick opening and closing doors downstairs. He spoke with Martha for a moment, although it was too mumbly to catch what he was saying. Then he came pounding up the stairs and knocked once as he pressed her door all the way open. “Hey, Tessa. Dora.” His eyes scanned the room. He walked over and looked in the closet.

“You girls all right?”

OK, so that was a weird question. “Why wouldn’t we be?” she said. She folded her laptop shut. Dora tucked her legs under her on the bed. Tapped her finger anxiously against a pillow.

“No reason.” Patrick looked like he was trying to figure out what to say next. He crossed the room toward the window. “Your exams go OK?”

Tessa shrugged. “I guess so. But I might not get an A in chemistry. Just so you know.”

“Well, that’ll be good for you. A little variety.” He stared intently at the street.

“Way to steer me toward mediocrity.”

“Anything I can do to help. Just a sec.” He left the room. The doors on the second floor opened and closed, then he returned and addressed Dora. “Hey, your dad called me. He said he needs to take care of a few things tonight and asked if you could stay here until tomorrow.”

“Stay here?”

“Yes. He wanted you to give him a call.”

Dora looked a little concerned. She pulled out her cell and elbowed past Patrick, who watched her for just a second and then looked back at Tessa.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“It’s OK. Everything’s OK.” She could tell he was trying hard to find the right words before continuing. “Are you feeling better? I mean after yesterday, with the diary and everything?”

“Yeah, of course.” This was definitely not the time to get into all that. “How was the trial?”

His eyes found the Rubik’s Cube sitting on the bed.

I didn’t want to talk about the trial.

I picked up the cube.

None of the sides were completed, so it didn’t look like Tessa had made much progress. “These things are pretty tough, huh?”

“I do all right. You didn’t answer my question about the trial.”

“It went about as well as I expected.” I moved the cube through a few turns then handed it to her. “Show me.”

She accepted it, flipped it around in her hands, studied it, and then quickly twisted the sides until, only a few seconds later, two of them were solved.