Джеймс Паттерсон - Private Rogue

“Not stuck,” I replied. “Just comfortable.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that.” She flashed a smile. “My car’s this way.”

I followed her outside and ice-cold air stung my lungs. We crossed the street and went into the terminal car park. She led me to her car, one of Private’s staff vehicles — a black Nissan Rogue SUV. We got in, and started our journey north.

Danny was snoring gently when Beth put her hand over his mouth. His eyes opened instantly and filled with a wild look of fear. Beth rubbed his arm to soothe him, and signaled for him to be quiet. Maria was already up and putting on her shoes.

“We need to go,” Beth whispered.

Danny nodded.

Ted’s spare room was much like his living room; full of old furniture and military memorabilia. His life in the Army was all he had, and he clung to it like a desperate lover who refused to move on from a broken relationship. Beth had been glad to leave her old life behind, but then she had her family. Ted had no one.

“I need the bathroom,” Danny said as Beth helped him on with his shoes.

“We’ll stop on the way,” she told him. “Come on.”

She gently ushered the children out of the room and they crept along the corridor through to the kitchen, which was a small, sad place. There was no stove, just a two-hob countertop camping cooker, a small table with a single chair, and some ancient cabinets that had been transplanted from the seventies. Beth pictured Ted eating here alone, suddenly feeling a pang of pity for the difficult old man.

She unlocked the door to the garage and led Maria and Danny inside. She eased the door shut behind them and switched on the light, illuminating Ted’s ten-year-old black Buick Enclave. He might not have been a government employee anymore, but he certainly bought cars like one. It was the kind of sensible SUV favored by G-men all over the country, and Beth wondered whether her former instructor had purchased it at a Federal auction.

She found the keys hanging in a tiny cabinet by the kitchen door, and unlocked the car.

“Is this stealing?” Danny asked as Beth opened the back door.

“No, honey,” she replied. “We’re just borrowing it.”

He nodded thoughtfully, but Maria gave her mother a skeptical look as the kids climbed in the back. Beth slid into the driver’s seat. She found the remote for the garage roll shutter in a cubby in the center console and pushed the button. The door started rising and Beth put the key in the ignition, but when she tried the engine, she was greeted with silence. She tried it again. Nothing happened.

“Mom,” Maria said, and Beth turned to see Ted standing in the kitchen doorway, a look of disappointment clouding his face.

There was a time when Beth would have been afraid of the man, but now, dressed in yellow and black pajamas that made him look like an angry bee, she was only annoyed at having been caught.

“Well, well, well,” he said, shuffling through the obsessively tidy garage in a pair of open-back slippers. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a family of thieves.”

Beth glanced back at her children. Danny seemed on the verge of tears, but Maria was defiant.

“It’s going to be OK,” she assured them.

Ted opened the passenger door and sat down next to Beth. He stared directly ahead, and for a moment she watched him in silence.

“I can’t believe you were just going to steal my car,” he said at last, and she felt the children hold their breath, ready for a scolding. “Without even saying goodbye,” he added, and turned to face Beth with a palpable expression of hurt.

He hesitated. Beth sensed he had more to say, but his mouth snapped shut, and he leaned forward and opened the glove compartment to reveal a bundle of crisp twenties and a holstered pistol.

“I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but it’s rare that money can’t help,” he said. “And I’ll trade you this pistol for that Kalashnikov you brought with you. This is more discreet.”

Beth smiled, overcome by his generosity. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Thank you, Sarge.”

“Don’t go getting soft on me,” Ted said. “I thought I drilled that kind of nonsense out of you.”

He leaned under the dash and signaled for Beth to bend down. She did so and saw his finger against a tiny lever.

“Immobilizer,” he said. “Just flip it.”

He pressed the switch and, when Beth tried the ignition, the engine came to life.

“Ted, I can’t say what this means to me. To my family.”

“That’s Sarge to you, grunt,” he responded, heaving himself out of the car. When he turned to face her, he sported a heavy frown. “I warned you about that soppy stuff. Just make sure you stay alive so you can come visit again,” he said without any change of expression.

Beth smiled and put the gearshift in reverse.

“Yes, Sarge,” she said as she backed the Buick out of the garage.

It took us a little over an hour and a half to reach Elizabeth Singer’s house on Avery Road in Garrison. I used the time to bring Jessie up to speed, and she asked many of the searching questions I’d put to Donald Singer: Did Beth have any connections to organized crime? Strange new friendships? Had there been any ransom requests? The answers to these questions were no, and neither Jessie nor I could figure out why a seemingly law-abiding mother of two would simply disappear with her children.

Three missing persons reports had been filed, and Jessie suggested we check in with the local police as a courtesy, but first I wanted to visit Elizabeth’s house.

Avery Road was located in a quiet residential area north of Garrison. The street cut through a thick forest, and houses nestled in large lots between long runs of densely packed pine trees. Mounds of blackened snow were piled everywhere, and ice crystals sparkled on roofs and treetops.

“This is it,” Jessie said, indicating number 1085, Beth’s address.

Jessie swung the Nissan onto a graveled driveway and took us up to a single-story, red-brick bungalow. Elizabeth’s house stood at the heart of a one-acre garden. The brickwork was pristine, the slate roof covered in a thick layer of snow. An ice-crusted swing set and slide formed a play area near the trees.

I grabbed my Arcteryx winter coat from the back seat while Jessie parked in front of the house. We both got out and approached the front door. She rang the bell and I searched the plant pots for any sign of a spare key but found nothing. Jessie produced a set of lock-picking tools and opened the door in under sixty seconds.

“Hello?” I said, as we went inside, but the place was as still as a museum.

“You take the bedrooms,” I suggested, indicating a corridor that led off to the left.

Jessie nodded and headed that way. I pressed along the entrance hall and went through a doorway on my right, into the living room. There was nothing immediately remarkable about the house. A few toys were scattered here and there, and the living room was clearly set up for a young family. A handful of Lego models were clustered in one corner, near a Captain America beanbag. A fabric-covered sofa faced a large TV and the bookshelf beside it was packed with children’s books. Framed photos of Elizabeth and her two children, Daniel and Marianne, covered every surface, and larger pictures of the children hung on the walls. There was no doubt about Elizabeth’s priorities in life — their smiles could be seen everywhere I looked.

I checked the drawers in the TV stand and found spare batteries for the remote, a couple of kid’s card games.

I moved into the kitchen, which was a large open-plan space at the back of the house, with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the back yard and the forest beyond. The fridge was covered in magnets that secured reminders and school certificates against its surface. The magnets looked like a historical trail of places the family had visited: the Empire State Building, Disney World, Busch Gardens, there were dozens, but a couple of odd ones popped out at me — Kabul Bird Market and the Great Mosque of Kufa in Iraq. Not the sort of places I imagined this family touring. I searched the cupboards and drawers, but found nothing else out of the ordinary.