John Miller - The Last Day

She climbed back into bed, cut the light off, and tried to decide what to do. She didn't want to confront Ward and demand the toy's return. That was impossible after she'd made the point about him taking the little blue car to Las Vegas to be close to something Barney had treasured above all of his other possessions, even the bear.

At Ward's insistence, she had recorded the bear's short message for her child's ears alone. She had imagined that anytime he needed to be comforted by his mother, and she wasn't there, he would have her assurance that her love was constant and he was safe.

Ward had obviously taken it, and if he had, it was maybe because he had needed it as an anchor, since his own line to his dead child-the metal car-had been stolen from him. If he needed Buildy more than she did at the moment, she only prayed that if he pressed the bear's hand, her message would comfort him.

Through everything, Natasha had fought to believe in God, and to believe that He had their son in His arms and loved him-as she had been taught since childhood-more than his parents possibly could. Hugging a pillow to her, she prayed to God to keep Barney in His arms so that he was never afraid, and that God would make sure the boy knew how deeply his parents loved him.

From his hide overlooking the house, Watcher observed the couple through his binoculars as they ate dinner. The romantic tint to the evening was an unpleasant development, but his spirits soared when the meal was ended by an argument. Dr. McCarty stood up, had a few heated words to say-no doubt about what a limp- dick idiot her hubby was-and left the room. Seconds later her bedroom light came on. Ward remained seated at the table alone after she was gone. The man watched through the binoculars as Ward stared out through the window into the darkness-a beetle in a jar. Watcher knew McCarty couldn't see him, but he found himself holding his breath as their eyes met.

Watcher waited until Ward was in the kitchen cleaning up like a housewife before he put down the binoculars. He pulled out his survival knife and the diamond stone and started sharpening the blade slowly and deliberately. The tip was the only part of the knife he had used in a long time, and it was the tip he concentrated on sharpening while he waited in the hole he'd dug into the earth.

He looked at the blade in the moonlight, tested the edge with the sole of his thumb. He felt the notches he'd filed into the top of the blade near the hilt years earlier. Each represented a man killed in a war in a country whose landscape looked like the surface of Mars. He had liked doing it, more than that; Watcher had felt like he'd been born to end the lives of his enemies.

The luminous hands on his watch dial told Watcher it was nineforty He gathered his binoculars, notebook, and camera, and packed them all away in the rucksack. That done, he lifted the hinged roof and slipped out of the hide, lowering the lid until it was flush with the ground. Slowly, he walked through the woods with the pack over his shoulder.

Because tomorrow was going to be a very busy day he would sleep tonight. In the morning, he would go into the house to collect the tape and he'd find out exactly what it was they had been arguing about. Their marriage was at the breaking point, and that gave Watcher a decidedly warm feeling. If things were allowed to run their natural course, the once perfect couple would break up and go their separate ways. Time was too short for that to happen.

After Dr. McCarty left the house at five A.M. on Tuesday morning, Watcher went into the garage and removed the GPS from under Ward's BMW and dropped it into his rucksack along with the stuffed bear. Inside the house he collected his recorder, since he wasn't going to need video going forward from here. He moved silently through the house collecting the other cameras and microphones that were tied into the recorder, leaving only the ones that transmitted so he could access them remotely.

He looked at the thrown- back covers and he leaned down so his face was inches above the sheets. Watcher drank in the scent of the doctor. Smiling, he made up the bed, pulling the sheets and spread tight enough to bounce a quarter on, and all the while wondering what it was going to be like to get a good look at her internal organs.

He looked at the curtains and couldn't see the microphone that was pinned into the top seam. There had been no need to visually record people sleeping.

He eased Dr. McCarty's door closed and crossed to the bedroom where Ward slept. He pressed his ear to the wood, and was rewarded with the sound of McCarty's light snoring. He pressed down the lever carefully, eased the door open. Watcher moved to the foot of the bed, studying the sleeping man's relaxed face. The man was still wearing the clothes he'd been wearing the evening before. Watcher put his hand to the hilt of the survival knife, and suppressed the desire to do something like slit the shirt off Ward's body. Watcher tensed when Ward suddenly rolled over onto his side, but he doubted he'd awaken yet. The Scotch should be good for another few hours.

It was odd, standing there studying a man sleeping like he didn't have a care in the world. And it was exhilarating to know you would be carving him up in forty hours, give or take. Deciding he should not do anything more, he left the room, closing the door behind him.

He went into the child's bedroom, opened the dresser, and placed a special object he'd fashioned under the child's folded underwear.

Outside, the heat hit him like a blast from an open oven door. Watcher made a beeline up through the woods, passing his hide. He kept going until he arrived at the back door of the small house in the subdivision that bordered the McCarty acres. He went to the guest bedroom, his media room, and listened to the audio of the dinner conversation he'd captured. He especially enjoyed the part about the baseball. Being in denial, not seeing themselves as evil people, they dismissed the idea that someone from the outside could violate their precious and expensive security system. The McCarty home was a house divided, and it was going to get much worse.

He looked at the stuffed bear, picked it up, and pressed the hand to hear the message a mother had put there for a child who could never hear it again. He laughed and, holding the animal by its arms, made the bear perform a dance of death.

At 7:43 A.M. Alice Palmer parked her battered Toyota in the student lot and walked away without locking it. Investigator Todd Hartman moved at an angle across a grassy knoll to intercept her on the walkway leading to the nearby campus buildings. Even if Todd hadn't seen her driver's license and student ID pictures on- line, he would have recognized her from Ward McCarty's description, accurate right down to her rainbow nails.

Head down and wearing a baggy tie- dyed T-shirt, cutoff denim shorts, and yellow flip- flops, she approached in a thin line of students trickling from the parking lot.

When she was ten feet away, Todd stepped into her path.

“Alice Palmer,” he said, turning on his warmest smile.

Blocked by the imposing stranger, she stopped and stared up at him. When she grimaced, her braces glittered.

“My name is Todd Hartman. I'm an investigator.”

“Good for you,” she said, her eyes suddenly suspicious, “I got a class. See ya.” But she didn't try to go around him.

“We need to talk for just a minute,” Todd said.

She looked down. “About what? You think I did something, Officer?”

“I'm a private investigator and my client has hired me to retrieve something for him he believes might be in your possession.”

“Who?” Her eyes looked right then left ner vously to take in the students walking past.