Thomas Perry - Runner

"What happens?"

"My mother wants that grandchild. If I don't get Christine by the time that baby is born, my father is going to give up on me. It's what he's wanted to do for years. He'll take control of the company away from me, fire me, and evict me from my house. I'll be out on the street with no job and no place to live. I'm thirty-eight years old. I've never worked anywhere but the family business, so I wouldn't even have anything to put on a résumé. Meanwhile, Christine will be out there somewhere. She's twenty, but she won't be twenty forever. At some point she's going to understand everything she saw while she worked and lived with me. She'll either hold it over my head for money or just flat out turn me in. Are you starting to get the picture?"

Steve Demming's tone changed. "If I were you, I'd be setting aside a lot of cash, pulling it out of the businesses as fast as I could, and hiding it."

"What do you think I've been doing? But I don't know how much my father knows. I don't know who works for me, and who works for him."

"So you've decided to prepare for the chance that things don't go right."

"Yes," said Richard. "For all I know, everything is going the right way, and he'll get what we need from Christine's father. But if he doesn't, and Christine doesn't turn up where you're looking, then I've got to have a way to save myself."

"Of course," said Demming. "And what about your mother? If he's gone, will she be on your side and keep from asking questions?"

"No," said Richard. "We'll have to think about her, too, I suppose. But not yet. Give my father some time."

18

The next morning, as Andy Beale drove into the parking lot outside the prison, he saw his detective Grace Kandinsky getting out of her car so he would see her. She turned her head at an odd angle to her left as she lit a cigarette, so he couldn't help following her eyes to see a woman in a black sedan across the lot. She seemed to be young, and had a sweet-faced attractiveness, with long blond hair. That had to be the replacement for the woman Grace had told him about, the one Demming had assigned to watch the prison. The blond woman took out her telephone while Andy parked his car a distance away from hers. He supposed she was going to report to Demming that he was here, but when he got out of his car and walked toward the prison entrance, he realized that she was taking his picture over and over with her cell phone as he walked. He looked the other way and pretended he hadn't seen her do it. It was always best to keep to himself how much he knew and how much he didn't.

He went inside the prison entrance and separated himself from the proceedings emotionally. The prison officials cleared him and briefed him and made him wait. He reminded himself that the guards didn't have anything against him and no reason to be impressed by him. They just needed to be sure he wasn't going to hand one of their prisoners something dangerous or forbidden. Andy Beale had learned in the navy that a man who tried to resist authority was wasting his time. He could see that prisons were the same. Getting by was really just a matter of going where they pointed you and waiting quietly until they were ready to point you somewhere else. In due time he found himself in a visiting room, being ushered to a counter across from a man about fifty in khaki clothes. "Mr. Monahan?" he said. "I'm Andy Beale."

Monahan sat down. "Hello, Mr. Beale."

There was no handshake, no smile. Andy Beale sat down, trying to use the seconds before he talked to read Monahan's face. There was a lot of wrinkling around the forehead and eyes, where he saw a look of anxiety that he was sure predated the prison term by many years. Monahan had the look of a man who had gotten used to losing. "Mr. Monahan," he said, "the reason I drove up here today is to meet you in person and see whether you and I can help our children. I'm the father of a strong, healthy, successful son who's had his heart broken."

Monahan was impassive. "Is that something I'm supposed to worry about? When you drove into this place did you happen to notice it was a federal prison?"

"Maybe I'm just teasing myself with false hopes. I know from Richard that Christine loves you very much, so I thought she might have confided in you a little, and you would know what I'm talking about."

"She does confide in me. I know who Richard is."

"I'm glad," he said, in spite of the fact that Monahan's expression didn't indicate that he'd heard anything good. "Then what I have to tell you is that since Christine left, he's been absolutely devastated. He's always been a cheerful, optimistic young man. Now he's moping around all the time. For a few days he'll throw himself back into business and be in the office working from dawn until dark the way he always did, but it's not the same. I can see he's just desperate to take his mind off her for a few hours. I can see he hasn't slept much. His eyes are hollow and he never smiles. Then he'll exhaust himself and one day he won't even get out of bed. I'm telling you, I'd turn him over to the psychiatrists, except that I know what's wrong. All they could do for him is load him up with antidepressants, and that won't solve anything."

"I'll be honest with you, Mr. Beale. When I first heard Chris was dating your son, I didn't encourage it. She was eighteen years old, and that's too young to be getting serious with anyone, let alone an employer, a man who is twice her age. He had no business putting her in that position."

"I understand what you're saying," said Andy Beale. "I get the sense that you've spent most of your life the way I have—working in business. And we've both seen a lot of times when executives have fooled around with young secretaries, and been real users, and haven't cared about those young women at all. That's why the laws have changed and become very punitive about sexual harassment. But if you've talked with Christine about Richard, you know that isn't what was going on between them. I respect your worries, and I respect you for having them, but your daughter and my son are in love."

"The reason I didn't try to interfere was that I was in here," said Robert Monahan. "I wasn't in any moral position to tell anyone that what they were doing was wrong. And Christine has had to be independent, making all of her own decisions and working to support herself, since she was sixteen. All I could do for her was just to help her feel good about herself."

"You're a sensible man," said Andy. "I admire you for that. If I'd known, I would have discouraged it, too, but Richard is the same—self-motivated, self-reliant, and not someone to come to his father for permission. You and I couldn't stop it, but maybe we can salvage it. Do you know what went wrong for Christine? What made her decide to leave him like this?"

"Not specifically. Until recently I didn't know that she had moved in with him, and I don't know exactly what made her decide this was the time to leave. I do know she isn't planning to go back."

Andy Beale looked down at his feet and shook his head. "Kids. They do these things on impulse, without thinking." He looked at Robert Monahan again. "You know she's going to have a baby?"

"It doesn't make me happy, but I know. She'll be a good mother."

"She's a girl you can be sure will be responsible. My son has told me a lot about her, and I saw a lot of her when she worked in our family business. But I use the word 'girl' intentionally. She's not entirely grown up."

"And your son didn't give her much time to finish growing up, did he?"

"You have my profound apology for that. He's always been a fine young man, and no fool either, until he fell in love. I was deeply surprised that he would ever take such a chance, put the girl he loved in that kind of jeopardy. He's not the first to do that, but it wasn't like him. I talked to him about it in pretty harsh terms, I can tell you. He said that at the time they were taking all the precautions, but maybe they got careless once because they both knew they'd be married before long and it wouldn't matter."