Lee Child - Vengeance - Mystery Writers of America Presents

“It’s not hyperbole, Your Honor. I’ve been on this case for ten months. I handled the criminal prosecution. I have shepherded the case through the family court process. I went to Miss Miller’s home multiple times to talk to her about the adoption. He’s seen Kiley — what, six times since this all happened? I’ve seen her on at least twenty occasions. Does he even know her favorite stuffed animal? It’s a raccoon. Its name is Coo-Coo. It was one of the only times Kiley repeated after her speech therapists — she tried to say raccoon , and she said coo-coo , so that became the toy’s name. I was there for that, not him. Kiley knows me. I know Kiley. I will take her.”

The courtroom fell silent. Even Diane could not believe her outburst. In all those hours studying the file, she had never once considered the possibility. But suddenly every piece fell into place. There was a reason she had been the major-crimes attorney assigned to the trial. There was a reason she had requested the transfer from criminal court to the family law unit. Maybe there was even a reason Janice Miller had been hit by a drunk driver.

Diane could do this. She could be a good mother to that girl. She and Kiley could be a family. The two of them, together.

Stone cleared his throat before speaking. “Well, that’s very noble of you, Miss Light, but the best interests of the child value biological connections. Let’s give Kiley a chance at a life with her father. I hope I’m not wrong about you, Mr. Chance.”

“You’re not, sir. I promise you, you’re not. Thank you. Thank you so, so much.”

Chance grabbed both of Hobbins’s hands and shook them hard. Diane saw the defense attorney’s eyes tear up and wanted to slap her.

THREE WEEKS LATER, Kiley officially moved in with her father full-time. Kiley’s clothing and Coo-Coo were packed into a black Hefty bag at the group home. A social worker drove her and the bag to Chance’s recently rented two-bedroom apartment, outfitted with a new twin bed for Kiley, and left her there.

DIANE STARTED HER car engine, searching for the comfort of the radio. All that silence made the minutes tick by too slowly. Where the hell was Jake?

The guy leaving the Wendy’s was looking at her. He saw her notice him. He smiled.

She still wasn’t used to that kind of smile from a man. She had spent her entire life as the type of girl men looked away from. Or if one looked, the glance would be followed by a nudge of his buddy, then a wisecrack and guilty giggle. Dude, that’s just wrong.

At least they usually had the courtesy to keep their voices down. Well, not that one time, back in law school. She’d worn her knee-length purple sweater tunic to class. Even with the black leggings, it was a bold fashion choice. She’d thought she looked pretty good until she heard the male voices singing in the undergrad quad, “I love you, you love me . . .” Maybe she would have managed to forget the incident — the day abandoned somewhere in the recesses of her mind like that enormous sweater discarded in the bathroom garbage can — but someone had yelled, “Barney!” as she walked the stage at commencement. To this day, she couldn’t see that big purple dinosaur without wanting to eat a pint of Häagen-Dazs.

Her cell phone buzzed on the console. A text message illuminated the screen. It was from Mark. Will u pls change cable bill to ur name? Mindy tried 2 add Showtime. Mix-up b/c 2 accts under mine. Thx.

Mark and Mindy. Just the sound of it was ridiculous. Diane had spent nearly thirty years with the man, and now her relationship with Mark was nothing but logistics hammered out through misspellings and abbreviations. She hit Delete.

Where the fuck was Jake?

Maybe pulling Jake into this had been too big a risk. At one point, they’d had something resembling a friendly relationship, albeit based on reciprocal compensation: He was her favorite informant; she was his benefactor in the drug unit. Relying on and rewarding the cooperation of criminals was one of the ugly realities of her job, but as drug dealers went, Jake wasn’t so bad. He sold only to adults and only in small quantities. Most important — for her purposes, at least — he always kept his ears and eyes open for information that he could trade for a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Jake was so well connected to Portland’s white crack trade that she’d gone to him last January hoping he might recognize Kiley’s parents. Maybe he was selling to them or had seen them in the usual spots looking to buy. Jake had never seen either one of the Chances, but Diane had mentally added a chit to his account, just for the time he spent studying their mug shots.

Jake the Snake had been popped fourteen times, but because of the chits, he had never taken a conviction.

That track record made him a good informant, but not a good ally. A senior deputy district attorney’s head on a silver platter was some pretty hefty currency in Jake’s trade, much more valuable to him than yet another IOU from her.

She wondered how the office would respond if she were tainted by the whiff of scandal. She’d been with the office for nearly eighteen years; she’d known colleagues who had DUIs, arrests for so-called domestic disturbances, even coke problems. Some had jobs waiting for them after the appropriate amount of rehab. Others got shipped off, their cases referred to the attorney general for investigation.

A year ago, she would have gotten the kid-glove treatment. She’d been a team player. Kept her head down. Put the office first, always.

And then Mark left her. The boy who’d taken her to the high school prom. The guy she’d shacked up with in college. The man she’d married the weekend after graduation. The asshole left her.

When he’d asked her to prom, she was already approaching two hundred pounds. She was nearly at three when he told her there was someone else.

Her weight was never really an issue for him. That’s what she’d thought, at least. He was big too. They both liked to eat. They both said they were happy in their bodies and wished other people would accept them as they were. Instead, they had accepted each other. Now she wondered whether they’d loved each other only because no one else would.

Everything started to change about five years ago. They’d gotten married so young that they just assumed a baby would come along eventually. Before they knew it, their thirties were almost over. The doctors said her weight might be the reason she hadn’t conceived.

She and Mark went on a diet together. They joined the gym. Success came faster to him than to her.

So did pregnancy.

Ironically, it wasn’t until Mark broke the news that he was expecting a child with someone else — Mindy from spin class, naturally — that her own weight finally started to come off. It was as if that one conversation changed her physical makeup. Her metabolism, her glucose levels, her fat cells — all transformed. It was like waking up in someone else’s body.

But by then, the body was too old. She was forty-four. On a government salary, she didn’t have the money for in vitro, private adoption, or a surrogate. She’d always assumed she was lucky to have Mark, even when he’d looked like Jabba the Hutt. Now she couldn’t believe the person she saw in her mirror every day. She was finally the kind of woman who was appealing to men, but to what end?

It wasn’t just her body that changed. So did her determination. Before the weight loss, though she worked in an office filled with athletes and health nuts who viewed physical fitness as a measure of character, she had nevertheless excelled because she was like an uncaged tiger at trial. But the anger and indignation that had propelled her courtroom performances had somehow burned away with all those pounds. She found herself cutting corners. Winging opening statements. Last December, she’d snapped at a rape victim: What do you think happens when you smoke meth with total strangers? She rang in the new year by oversleeping on the final day of Kyle Chance’s criminal trial, then delivering her closing argument in a groggy haze.