“So what are you saying? That we kill someone to make it all go away?” Hailey was being sarcastic, but Mack did not smile, only gazed out across the street, and Hailey’s stomach did a somersault. She stared at him, this man who had set a building on fire with someone inside it, and she realized he was watching something. Someone.
A figure stood under the streetlight opposite Allison’s car. It saw Hailey and Mack and nodded at them. It was the old guy that Mack had befriended, once again caught in the act of patrolling his perimeter.
Mack was scowling at him. “What’s he doing out here?”
“I’m sure he heard the commotion. Anyway, he’s always out here. He walks around at night, I’ve seen him. He tried to talk to me about beach access.” She thought of something then: “Did you throw away the shoes?”
“Of course I did. I put them in a dumpster yesterday.” He stood, fixated, and Hailey realized she couldn’t feel her toes in her thin ballet flats. She turned to go inside; Mack stayed where he was. “I mean, it’s December. Why is the guy just standing there in the freezing cold in the middle of the night? He doesn’t even have his dog. He’s watching us.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“He had all this computer equipment,” Mack said.
When Hailey didn’t reply, he doubled down. “I mean, he had mountains of tech—computers and gadgets... it could have been cameras, I wouldn’t have noticed. He’s obviously insanely rich. He knew our names, where we lived...”
“Why would an old man who hardly knows us do all this to us? To our children?”
“Why would anyone?”
Before she could stop him, Mack was charging down the driveway.
“Hey!” he shouted from next to the empty guard hut, and the figure across the street stilled, then started toward him.
“Mack, stop!” Hailey called, but not loudly enough. She saw the two men meet, watched their postures straighten. She wasn’t close enough to hear them, and, shivering, she crept to the end of the driveway, Gulliver squirming and growling in her arms.
The man was shaking his head, Hailey saw as she rounded the corner by the guard hut. Her feet were soaked.
“... out here snooping on everyone,” she heard Mack say, and she had never heard him this confrontational. Mack dealt in wisecracks and sly insults; he held secret grudges and made faces behind the backs of people who cut in front of him in line or in traffic, but she had never, ever known him to pick a fight. Even when she wanted him to.
The guy looked surprised, Hailey thought, but not intimidated.
“Tell me how come you know so much about us,” she heard Mack say as she got closer. “How’d you know which house was mine? Why—”
Mack was not tall, but he towered over his adversary. Still, the man was unflappable, which was more than Hailey could say for her husband. There was no mistaking the desperation in Mack’s voice.
“I know it’s you!” he shouted, and Hailey scanned the dark, empty street for someone to help her. “You knew that kid would be in there. You set me up!”
“Son,” the man said, “I don’t know what your problem is here—”
“He’s drunk,” Hailey lied, trying to drown out Mack’s rant, to cover his tracks. “I’m so sorry.” She dragged on Mack’s arm as best she could without dropping Gulliver. “You’ll have to excuse my husband’s rudeness. But at least he’s not driving, right?” She tried to laugh.
“Stop fucking with us!” Mack yelled, and as he lurched toward the man, Hailey fought him as hard as she could, felt his muscles tighten against her. He was going to hit this guy, he really was. He had completely separated from reality.
The guy seemed to sense this, and backed toward his own property, hand in the air. He ignored Hailey’s apology and spoke directly to Mack. “Son,” he said again, “when I decide to fuck with you, you’ll damn well know it. Now listen to your pretty wife and get on back to that ugly house of yours. Merry Christmas.”
The easy viciousness in his voice was so unlike the polite conversations Hailey had had with him that, for a second, she wondered whether...no. Mack might be losing it, but he wasn’t going to take her with him.
48.
Mack
The light in the front hall was blinding; it dropped like a sheet over Mack’s vision, the glare eclipsing everything in his house—bouncing from the floor, the walls, the mirrors, right into his eyes.
Mack couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, could think of nothing else but the image of Allison being bundled into that cruiser, her head disappearing inside, the slam of the door.
Then he thought of his girls: someone was going to hurt his girls.
It had to be him: Gerry Baptista, the man Hailey had just let walk away from him. The rich old bastard had slipped right through Mack’s grasp. How could Hailey not see it? Should he go over there, to the guy’s house? Rifle through his office? Punch him? Kill him?
