Or it was his father. Of course it was his father. Mack burned with rage at all his father had done to him, to his mother—but how would he find a dead man?
David Rainier. Against all reason, against the laws of time and space, it could be the man who had fucked Mack’s very own wife, then sailed off into the sunset on his yacht.
It was all those pricks, all around the world. Pushing him, daring him,torturinghim. Driving him to acts he’d never, ever have committed without their voices in his ear. Trapping him. And he’d been stupid enough to walk right into it.
Why couldn’t they have left Mack alone? Why couldn’t he have lived his life like he wanted to, in his nice little house with his clever job and his wife who had, at one point, loved him? He hadn’t asked for too much. He had never hurt anyone. Whyhim?
He bounded up the stairs; they had left the door open and unguarded. His girls... were his daughters okay? His heart would explode from his chest.
They were. His girls were in their beds, oblivious and safe.
But for how long?
How long would he wait while this thing circled outside? All these things? All these people the voice had mentioned, willing to do his job for him, willing to punish him for not doing it? Willing, maybe, to kill him or his family?
He paced. He checked the windows. At some point in the wee hours, he became aware of the floorboards—the ruined, splotchy floorboards stretching all through the house like a desert wasteland—and of Gulliver looking up at him, whining. Hailey was whining too, but her voice was a thousand miles away, and he could see, rather than feel, her hands grabbing at his arms, clasping his shoulders.
Then a piercing thought shot through the fog, and Mack frantically scanned the front hall—had anyone checked it? He tore both light fixtures from the walls on either side of the big mirror, sent them crashing to the floor. He turned the console table over, upended the porcelain umbrella stand. There were no cameras.
“Mack,stop!” Hailey wasn’t whining anymore; she was pleading. “Please. I understand. But this isn’t helping. We need to sleep for a little, so we can think. This isn’t helping anyone,” she said again.
“No,” Mack agreed. “It isn’t.”
He knew then what he had to do. He grabbed his keys and bolted, ignoring the sound of Hailey’s voice calling after him.
49.
Hailey
The Cherokee’s headlights filled the garage as Hailey pounded on the driver’s side window. She said Mack’s name, but he wouldn’t look at her. He put the key in the ignition and started the engine.
Hailey ran around the side of the car, slamming her hands on the glass so he would know where she was, so he wouldn’trunher over—and then she stopped behind the rear windscreen. Her eyes met his in the rearview mirror, and he looked like a wild animal: cornered and ferocious.
“Get out of the way,” Mack shouted at her. “I mean it.”
“Where are you going?”
He shook his head, and she saw the motion of his right hand as he put the car in reverse.
“Mack! Stop it!”
“Move!” he shouted, and something in his voice made Hailey do it. He was past her and out of the garage in an instant. The Cherokee’s tires spun on the icy driveway as he went to pull forward.
“This is not helping! Why can’t you ever act like a grown-up?” she yelled after him, but he was too far gone to hear her.
50.
Mack
They were salting 77, a day late and a dollar short, Mack thought, because the road was already so iced over that the salt wouldn’t do much good now. Still, Mack stuck close behind the salt truck all the way out of Cleveland, its cargo of tiny white crystals chipping away at his windscreen. He left the city’s dark warehouses and plumed factory chimneys behind and slid down mostly empty, tire-strewn lanes until, after about forty minutes, he saw the sign for Richfield. He knew where he was going; it couldn’t have been simpler.
Take 77, the voice on the phone had told him.Go right off the first Richfield exit, right into the Deerfield Woods development, follow the main road right until it dead ends, and then you’ll see it: Danekar Road.
Was it just luck, then, that this unfortunate jogger lived maybe five actual turns away from Mack, tops? Or was this whole setup more about Mack, and less about wanting to kill this particular guy? Did it matter? Because somehow here Mack was, heading for the frontier of a housing development that looked pretty much like a bigger version of his own, minus the Great Lake. Deerfield Woods consisted of one long Deerfield Lane, lined on both sides with maybe twenty fully-grown houses, from what Mack could see. It was still dark, but he could make out big trees and mature hedges; he saw the shadows of Christmas decorations and the outlines of frosty basketball hoops and tree houses. He followed the road as it wound around to the right and the yards became scrubbier, newer. One house still had a dumpster out front; then a few empty lots down there was what looked like a French château whose roof hadn’t been finished in time for winter. There were piles of lumber under tarps out front, freshly covered with snow.
Mack cut his lights and kept going.
51.
