Thomas Perry - Runner

Richard's shock had been growing, and now he realized he had forgotten to blink his eyes. He blinked them five times, and it made them water. "You're not behaving like he's my son. It's him instead of me. You're making him my replacement, aren't you?"

Andy said, "Isn't that what's supposed to happen? A man works in a business, has a child, and when the child grows up, the man steps aside and retires. It's natural, like the seasons or something. When you were old enough, I made you president of my company, and to the extent that I dared, I stepped aside. When Robert is ready, it's going to be his turn. Now we're going to bed. Be sure somebody with a gun keeps his eyes open so we live until morning."

He stood, and Ruby got up from the couch, too. They walked to the elevator and Ruby pressed the button. The doors opened, the two stepped inside, and the doors closed. Neither of them said anything more to Richard.

Richard walked to the couch and sat there for a few minutes, as though if he could see what they had been able to see, maybe he would understand. But he was too restless. He got up and walked to the stairs.

Demming sat on the staircase that led up to the walkway between the two wings of the house. The architect had apparently decided that the walkway with its Plexiglas sides and its hidden supports and the glass wall created enough of an illusion of openness. The staircase where Demming sat was hemmed in by chest-high walls with railings on them.

"What are you doing here?" Richard asked.

"Somebody's got to be awake, and the girls were tired. If that woman is crazy enough to break in tonight, the place she'll want to go is upstairs where everybody's sleeping. There are only two ways in, and I can control them both from here." He waited. "How about you? Going to bed?"

"Not yet. I wanted to talk to you."

"Something new?"

"Weren't you talking about a way to go out and get this woman, and not just sit here and hope you can shoot her in my parents' house?"

"That's a last resort. It's better to know where someone is going to be than to know where she is."

"You know she's going to come here?"

"You bet. This is where she thinks we're keeping everything she wants."

"She's winning, isn't she?"

"What?" Demming laughed. "Hardly."

"Come on," Richard said. "She's got us under siege. You're afraid to go outside. That's why you won't go look for her."

Demming took a deep breath, then let it out. "When we started, there were six of us to do the looking. We're down to three—two of them women, at that. Just be patient."

"Be patient so she can come and take her shot?"

"Sometimes you have to win in a way you didn't choose. It feels just as good. Look, I know you're under pressure. I was sitting here while your parents were talking. I heard."

"Be ready," Richard said. "I may have no other choice. If we can't solve this problem they really will cut me out of everything. I'll be out in the cold. I can't let that happen."

"Andy, and then Ruby, right?"

"Right. Him, then her, and then the baby."

32

Jane watched the trucks arrive at the Beale house in Rancho Santa Fe. There was no moving van, and there were no long trailers. These were four white, squared-off trucks with roll-down cargo doors and hydraulic lifts on the back, the kind used for delivering furniture or appliances.

At six A.M. Jane had parked her SUV far up the road beyond the Beale house and walked back inside the property lines and away from the road, then climbed another oak tree near the back fence so she could see the house clearly. The trucks arrived much earlier than she had expected. They were small enough to pass through the front gate and park in a row in front of the big garage, then back up to the house for loading.

Jane watched the doors and windows, until she was sure that none of the people she had seen at the house on her first trip were here. Then she turned her attention to the things that were being carried from the house.

Jane could tell from the start that this was not like any other moving day she had seen. It was more like the striking of the set of a play.

Each truck held six men. They jumped down and went to work with the kind of relentless efficiency that meant there were no watchful customers around to see them. There was little wrapping or concern for breakage. They quickly hauled a lot of furniture out to the first truck, loaded it tightly, and closed its rear door. Then two men drove it away. The other four stayed, joining their comrades in packing cardboard cartons inside the house and moving them out to the next truck, where two men stood on the truck bed to stack them from floor to ceiling from the cab to the rear door. The two rolled down the door and locked it, then drove the truck off while the second group of four stayed to keep packing and loading. The men worked with the fevered concentration of thieves. They loaded one truck at a time, then sent it off and backed the next one to the door.

Finally she saw one of the items she had been waiting for, a large white wooden crib. The men didn't dismantle it or even remove the mattress. Two of them simply carried it out and set it on the truck bed, then went back for more. Jane saw a changing table, a stroller, a big toy box, another box that seemed to hold brightly colored decorations, possibly a mobile.

Jane climbed down from the limb where she had been sitting and walked to the SUV, then drove toward the freeway. She passed the Beale house and saw the next truck was filling up rapidly because of the excess of laborers, so she drove ahead and waited in a mall parking lot near the freeway entrance.

About ten minutes later one of the white trucks passed her parking lot and rolled up the ramp onto the freeway. Jane waited for thirty seconds, then went after it. She drove hard until she could see the truck, then dropped far back and merely watched for it to take an exit.

She followed the truck until it entered the front gate of a real estate development called Florentine Ranch. She could see from outside the tall fence that it was full of large new homes, all of them vaguely Mediterranean with tile roofs and white stucco sides. Each of them was placed on a lot so small that the sides of the houses shaded each other in the morning sun. She parked her car down the road a distance where there was a second gate that had no gatehouse. She waited until a resident of the community coasted to the exit, opened the gate with a remote control, and drove out. As soon as the car passed she stepped inside.

It took her only a few minutes to find the right house. The first truck to arrive was leaving now, and the second was pulling up to the front to unload. As she walked along she studied the place. Its primary function as protection consisted of being different from the house in Rancho Santa Fe. It was the sort of place that only someone who had never broken into a house would think was safe.

She walked back to the gate where she had entered, found the button mounted on the wall for pedestrians to open the gate, pressed it, and walked out. As she drove back to Sharon's house she thought about the ways into the Beales' new home. There were two skylights on the roof that she could probably open, at least three windows on the sides of the house that she could unlock with a length of wire looped at the end, a set of French doors with very small panes of glass. She could tape one, break it without making much noise, reach in and turn the knob. There were certainly other ways she would discover if she came closer.

Jane went to a pay phone on a large plaza a few miles away from the development, and called Richard Beale's cell phone.

When he answered, she said, "Hello, Richard. It's me again. I've been to see your parents' new house."