John Miller - Side by Side

“I love you, Winter,” she’d said. “I love you way more than that. We’ll always be able to trust each other. I know what you have done for me, and I will always love you for it. You showed me who I really was.”

“But we could have it all,” he had said. “Lex, we could be stars.”

She’d shaken her head slowly.

“No, Massey, it isn’t all right. I wish it could be.”

After that, it was never the same. She was accepted to Berkeley and left that summer to get an early start. Their good-bye had been painful for Winter. He wasn’t as sorry he had tried to change the ground rules as he was that he had ever made her the promise he had the day she’d come to his house for her notebook.

They had remained friends, but the closeness they had shared as teenagers was never there again.

He had thought back on their adolescent relationship thousands of times. He had been in love. Alexa hadn’t. Then he’d fallen in love with Eleanor and the direction of his life was set in stone.

He had thought about it from every angle he could look at it from.

It always came out the same way.

He and Alexa were just never meant to be.

And since the moment he’d first met Eleanor, Winter had been relieved his life had gone the way it had. Of course, he desperately regretted that Eleanor had died and that Rush had been blinded. But he didn’t regret meeting and falling in love with Sean and having Olivia. He had gone on with his life, and it had flowed from one thing to the next. .

“Massey,” Alexa said, breaking the spell. “You asleep?”

“Resting my eyes.”

“Sean was married before?”

“Widowed.”

“What happened to him?”

“Gunshot wound.”

“Self-inflicted?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Once upon a time, he would have told her the whole story, that Sean’s first husband was a professional killer, and that he had met Sean on a witness security detail-an operation to protect Dylan Devlin so he could testify against the head of the Louisiana Mafia. Luckily, Alexa let it drop. Nobody was more curious about things than Alexa, and Winter was sure this subject would come up again later. Alexa had always interrogated people, which was why being an FBI agent had come so easy for her. If she wanted to know something, she’d ask the same question over and over in differing forms and from different angles until she had the truth. It was a natural talent born out of necessity. When you are a child that nobody wants, you learn to spot lies and you learn to hate liars. You want to know when you are about to be moved from one home to another. You learn about hidden agendas and ulterior motives, and you lose the ability to trust and accept things at face value. And, if you are trying to make sure your baby sister-the only person you have a real bond with-remains with you, it’s crucial to figure out the truth of things and plan ahead. You learn to manipulate the things in your world you can change to your advantage.

“I have a question,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“What kind of name is Ferny Ernest?” Alexa asked, bringing Winter back from his past. “What was his mama thinking?”

He shrugged. “No idea.”

She giggled. “I guess she could have picked Beanie Weenie, or Herkel Jerkel.”

Winter laughed. “We need to find Peanut or Click’s siblings,” he said. “They’re likely to be involved with the Dockerys. I think Click Smoot is a dry hole.”

Winter had been watching the flickering TV-generated light in two of the windows in Click’s house. Now he lifted the binoculars he had brought from his truck and focused them on one of the windows. “Click’s not moving around.”

A BMW passed slowly by the Lathams’ driveway, headlights out. It drew up at the curb outside Click’s house.

“Click’s got company,” Winter said, sitting straighter and watching the sedan.

There were two people in the car, and after a few seconds, the doors opened without the interior light coming on. Two figures stepped out and quietly closed their doors.

Winter focused on the men as they approached the first illuminated window and peered in from behind the bushes.

“Who is it?” Alexa whispered.

“The Russian, Sarnov, and Max Randall.” Winter recognized them from pictures Clayton had shown them. “What the hell is this?” he asked. “They’re not involved in the grab. So why are they at a Smoot house?”

“This is good,” Alexa said. “Players gathering in the middle of the night. It sure doesn’t look like the hole is as dry as you thought.”

“Maybe this meeting isn’t in Click’s best interest,” Winter said. “Based on the fact that they’re lurking in the bushes, I don’t think he’s expecting them. What do you want to do?”

“Wait,” she said.

“Wait? What if they came to hurt him?”

“They’re professionals. If that’s the case, I doubt they will require any assistance from us. We should give them a wide berth. Remember Clayton’s admonition. An ‘Able’ admonition is not anything to ignore.”

Able had also said Sarnov and Randall weren’t directly involved in the kidnapping. “They’ve gone around the back. I’ll give them time to get inside, then I’ll go see if I can find out what they’re up to.”

“I don’t know-” she said. “Okay. Just don’t shoot anybody.”

“If they’re going to kill Click, should I just watch them do it?”

“Yes. I don’t know. Play it by ear. But remember what’s at stake. This isn’t about Click and Sarnov. It’s probably a side deal.”

“Obviously they are involved. Maybe the great oracle is wrong about that.”

“Clayton isn’t often wrong, Massey.”

“Often isn’t always, Lex. Ring him up while I’m gone.” Winter reached for the door handle.

“Wait for me,” she whispered.

“Call Clayton. Stay with the car. If I need help, you’ll know it.”

Winter pulled up the hood of his rain jacket and started for the house. He tried to clear his mind of the worry that had invaded it.

The Alexa Keen he knew had never seemed unsure of herself before.

Click Smoot reclined in a padded leather chair in front of the twelve-thousand-dollar plasma-screen television set that someone named Dakin T. Wilson had unwittingly bought for him. It was the first time Click had gone into the Advance Capital mainframe, using a code he had purchased from a programmer at the bank. If there was a trail to Click, the programmer would make it a circular track to nowhere.

He was watching a DVD called The Number One Stripper in America Contest, and at that moment he was imagining that he was right there in the club and the girl was stripping just for him. Had he not been engaged in a sexual fantasy, he might have heard the strangers coming in through the back door. He opened his eyes to get another look at a blonde who was doing a series of squat twists, when he noticed the two men standing in his kitchen doorway, looking right at him.

“What the hell!?” Click yelled. The men smiled, and he knew they were smiling at what he was doing to himself under the towel in his lap. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said indignantly.

“Saying hello,” the smaller of the two men said in a foreign accent. “Don’t let us interrupt your beeg show.”

Click was more embarrassed than frightened or angry, but he was plenty scared and pissed off by the intrusion. And he resented being pulled so violently from his engagement with the stripper.

“Get out,” he ordered.

“Sorry we didn’t have an appointment,” the smaller man, who looked like a detective, said. The larger one looked like he might be a plainclothes cop too.