Third Degree

Chapter 14

Danny McDavitt was sitting on the elevated deck at the Athens Point Airport, drinking a lukewarm Schaefer and listening to Marilyn Stone give him an informal legal assessment of his custody situation. No alcohol was sold on the premises, but a mechanic friend had come up with a cold six-pack for Danny. He and Marilyn had been talking for over an hour, but he was in no hurry to get home. The only other thing on his mind was what might be happening with Laurel, but he’d checked his cell phone a dozen times, and she’d sent no text messages.

“Bottom line?” said Marilyn. “Starlette can get physical custody of Michael, and she can probably limit you to minimum visitation. Every other weekend. It all depends on the judge. But she will not be able to institutionalize Michael if you’re willing to take him on. No judge is going to warehouse a special-needs kid when there’s a parent ready and willing to take on that responsibility.”

Danny nodded. “Every other weekend’s not good enough. Michael needs one-on-one attention, all the time.”

Marilyn was obviously sympathetic. “What about his teacher? Laurel Shields would make one hell of a witness for us, if she’d get up and tell the truth about Starlette.”

Danny sipped his beer but said nothing. He was trying not to think about Laurel. After Marilyn landed the Cessna, he had broken down and sent Laurel a third text message, this one an almost panicked plea to alert him as soon as the encounter with Warren was over. But she still had not answered.

“What’s the problem there?” Marilyn asked. “You don’t think Laurel would do it?”

“She probably would. I’ll have to talk to her about it.”

“You do that. Every day counts, Danny.”

He forced a smile. “I sure appreciate you taking this time.”

“Oh, I expect a free lesson in return.”

“I’ll make it two.”

“One’s enough. How’s Starlette acting now?”

“You don’t want to know. Bitch city. Running up my credit cards like the Germans are about to roll into Paris.”

“SOP for a woman who thinks her husband’s about to dump her. You need to get out while you can. Take your chances.”

Danny was about to reply when his legitimate cell phone rang. He checked the LCD and saw that the call was from the Sheriff’s Department. “Excuse me, I need to take this.”

Marilyn turned up her Schaefer and drank it off with an unladylike gurgle.

“Danny McDavitt,” he said.

“Major McDavitt, this is Dispatch. I’ve been told that the sheriff needs the aerial unit to pick him up at Lake St. John. You know where that is?”

“I do.” Lake St. John was a popular recreation spot forty miles up the river. “When are we talking about, Carol?”

“Now, sir.”

“Now? What’s going on?”

“Radio silence on this one, Danny. No specifics on cell phones either. You’re the pilot on the board. Jim’s in Las Vegas with his wife for his anniversary. How soon can you get to the airport?”

“I’m at the airport now.”

“Good. I called Mr. Markle already. They should be getting the aerial unit ready now.”

The unit. Danny almost laughed, but something in her voice stopped him. “This is a real emergency?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the sheriff doing at Lake St. John?”

“Fishing. I’ll give you his GPS coordinates once you’re airborne.”

Danny didn’t want to spend his afternoon searching the river for some lost fisherman when Laurel might need him. But there were only two chopper pilots, and if Jim Redmond was out of town, then Danny had no way out of the duty. “Roger that,” he said in a tone of surrender. “Call me back in ten minutes with the coordinates.”

“What’s the emergency?” asked Marilyn.

“Our illustrious sheriff wants a chopper ride back from Lake St. John. He’s tired of fishing.”

“Are you serious?”

“Nah,” said Danny, getting to his feet. “It’s probably somebody lost on the water. Unless one of the sheriff’s campaign contributors sprained an ankle wakeboarding.”

Marilyn laughed. “That sounds like the Billy Ray Ellis I remember from high school.”

“You’re not that old, I know.”

She winked. “I was a ninth-grader when Billy Ray was a senior. He was the cat’s meow back then. Big football star, all the girls after him. Of course, it was mostly white boys then. Different game.”

“You’d better believe it.”

“I think it’s safe to say Billy was elected sheriff on his high school rep and his status in the Baptist church,” Marilyn said in an arch tone.

“Politics. The same everywhere. He’s okay, actually. I’ve known a lot worse in ranking uniforms.”

The lawyer nodded thoughtfully. “We should do this more.”

“I agree.”

“If you’d hire me, we could.”

Danny’s smile faded. “I’m thinking about it.”

By the time Danny reached the hangar, the mechanics had rolled out the Sheriff’s Department helicopter and prepped her for flight. She was a Bell 206B, eight years old but still in good shape. White with blue and gold stripes, and a big gold star painted on the fuselage. The machines he’d flown in the air force were five times this size and infinitely more sophisticated, but the Bell handled well in the air, a kite compared to the massive predators he once flew. A Pave Low IV could carry twenty-four fully equipped commandos into battle; the Bell 206 had two seats up front and room for one passenger and a stretcher in back. Not much else.

“How goes it, Danny boy?” called Dick Burleigh, the silver-haired chief mechanic. “Ready to crank and bank?”

Burleigh had served as crew chief on a Huey with the First Air Cav in Vietnam. After surviving the Ia Drang and A Shau valleys, he’d moved to Baton Rouge and serviced news choppers for thirty years. At sixtysomething, Burleigh decided to retire to Athens Point, where he started filling in at the airport for kicks. Pretty soon, he was running the maintenance department. For Danny he was a godsend.

“You tell me, Dick,” he said. “How’s she running?”

“Hot as a preacher’s daughter.”

Danny laughed and shook hands with Burleigh, then nodded to a blond kid in coveralls trailing behind him. “Let’s forget about those beers, huh, guys?”

Burleigh smiled. “Long as you’re okay to fly, Major.”

Danny gave the old crew chief a salute. “My inviolable rule is, don’t drink and fly. However, one night in the Caribbean, I had to go up and chase down a Bolivian drug boat with half a bottle of tequila in me. Long story, but we knocked down ninety keys of marching powder that night.”

“You get to keep any of it?” asked the kid, his eyes twinkling.

Danny chuckled. “Nah. But there were reports of confiscated reefer weighing in a little light after some of those takedowns. MPs never got to the bottom of it, either.”

“You take her easy, Major,” said Burleigh, his smile gone. “Wind’s getting up, and you got thunderheads blowing in from the northwest.”

“That’s the way I’m headed, too.”

“Maybe the sheriff ought to drive back to town. He could make it in the time it takes you to fly both ways.”

No, Danny thought, Billy Ray likes the chopper too much for that. “I’m just an old rotorhead, Chief. I live to serve. Have a good one.”

The mechanic winked and opened the Bell’s door. Danny climbed into the right seat, fastened his harness, cinched it tight, and hit the starter. Then he put on his headset and ran the preflight checklist. He didn’t miss having to put on his helmet, night-vision goggles, body armor, or any of the other gear required to fly the Pave Low. Compared to his military flying, this was like barnstorming in the 1920s.

When the main rotor system hit 360 rpm, Danny felt the chopper reach neutral buoyancy. He pulled up on the collective, which put the Bell into a low hover. After trimming the ship with his left foot pedal, he lightly touched the cyclic and tilted the rotor disk forward. A few moments later, the bird gained translational lift and launched herself into the sky.

At that moment, Danny’s cell phone vibrated. He applied friction to the collective and let go long enough to grab the phone from his pocket, assuming that Laurel had finally texted him back. To his surprise, he found himself holding his legitimate phone instead. The Bell drifted a little as he flipped it open. The new message was from the Sheriff’s Department dispatcher. There were only four words in the text box:

CODE BLACK/THIRD DEGREE.

Danny’s ass puckered as he stared at the coded message.

Code Black meant a hostage situation.

Third Degree meant loss of life.

With visions of Columbine and Virginia Tech in his head, he twisted the throttle, pushed the chopper to 122 knots, and stormed toward the thunderheads rolling down from the northwest.

Kyle Auster was dead.

Laurel saw his body lying on the hall floor when she followed Warren down the stairs with Beth in her arms. She buried her daughter’s face between her breasts, then looked over the rail. Kyle lay faceup with his eyes open, as still as a human body could be. His absurd shirt was hiked up to his nipples; Warren must have done that while working on him. How strange, she thought, to shoot a man and then immediately try to save him. Despite Warren’s two shots, she saw only one wound, at the midline, above Auster’s navel but below his heart. Dark blood covered his pale belly, matting the hair that so many gullible women had lain against in adultery.

“Did you call 911?” she asked from the landing.

Warren had already reached the ground floor. “No point.”

“He died before you came upstairs?”

“No, but he was slipping away fast. I think the bullet hit his spine. He couldn’t move his legs. It must have clipped his descending aorta as well, because he seemed to be bleeding out internally.”

“What a shot you are,” she said bitterly.

Warren was looking down at the body. “He shot first. You saw it.”

“Such a waste. I can’t…I guess I can’t really believe it.”

“Mommy, I can’t breathe,” Beth said.

Laurel turned her daughter’s head but kept her facing away from the rail. Beth hadn’t spoken since the events on the roof; she only sucked her thumb and lay glassy-eyed against Laurel’s chest.

“Cover him up with something,” Laurel said.

“You do it. Let me have Beth.”

“You’re not touching this child.”

Warren looked up, his jaw set hard. “Don’t think anything has changed. Kyle is dead because of a choice he made. Every choice has consequences. Yours included.”

“Who the hell do you think you are? God? Get over yourself! You just shot a man. This insanity is over.”

“Come downstairs. Into the kitchen.”

Laurel shielded Beth’s eyes and walked down to the foyer, then followed Warren to the kitchen. Beth was a lot heavier than she’d been only a year ago. Laurel’s back and shoulders were already aching. While Warren stared out the kitchen window, she took a glass down from the cabinet.

“What are you doing?” he asked, still looking out over the front lawn.

“Getting her some water. She’s tired out. No, actually she’s not. She’s traumatized by what you did upstairs. Probably scarred permanently. What is wrong with you?”

“Give her a teaspoon of Benadryl.”

“Is that your professional advice? Drug our daughter to sleep?”

Warren rolled his eyes. “This will be a lot less traumatic for her if she sleeps through it.”

Laurel’s stomach tightened. “What will?”

“Don’t worry about it. She can sleep in the safe room.”

Laurel felt as though she were having a conversation with a robot. “Warren, you just killed your business partner. Your office almost burned to the ground. Your employee tried to kill a federal agent. Don’t you realize the police will be here any minute?”

“That’s why she needs to be in the safe room.”

Laurel whispered, “You’re not putting our daughter into that room alone. She’d be terrified.”

“She’d also be safe. Bullets can’t penetrate an inch of steel plate.”

A bolt of alarm shot through Laurel, despite her fatigue. “Do you seriously intend to hold us hostage inside a ring of armed men?”

At last Warren’s face betrayed some emotion. “This is our house, Laurel. My house. My land. I expect the police to respect our rights and leave us alone to deal with our own family problems.”

She closed her eyes, trying to blot out his face long enough to think, but it was impossible. The enormity of what had happened finally sank into her soul, and the floodgates opened. As she cried, she experienced an epiphany that revealed the road to freedom. The password to that road was a lie. But unlike the lies of omission she had been telling for the past year, she was going to have to sell this story. At least Kyle won’t have died for nothing, she thought. In death, he was going to do her a service he could never have done in life.

She carried Beth to the built-in banquette in the corner of the kitchen. Beth tried to cling to her, but Laurel set her firmly on the seat and rubbed her forehead for half a minute. “Warren,” she said, straightening up and putting her hands on her hips, “I can’t let you put Beth at risk like this. I’m going to tell you what you want to know. But first I’ve got to know that you’ll bring this insanity to an end. I don’t care what you do to me, but you’ve got to let Beth leave the house.”

Hearing resolve in her voice, he looked away from the window and focused on her. “Do you really think Beth is in danger from me? You’re the one who put our children at risk. If you tell me the truth, the real truth, you might be surprised by how things turn out.”

Laurel tried to read his meaning, but it was impossible. “Send Beth outside first. As a sign of good faith. Then I’ll tell you.”

He smiled sadly. “I can’t do that. You haven’t proved yourself worthy of trust. She’s in no danger.” He took a step toward Laurel. “Tell me.”

She realized then that he wasn’t holding the gun. Was it still in one of his pockets?

“I’m waiting,” he said.

She pictured the awful scene upstairs, when he had told the kids she was having an affair. That was sufficient to bring more tears to her eyes. “It was Kyle, okay?” she said softly. “I saw him for almost a year.”

Warren’s eyes narrowed, and he moved closer. Close enough to hit her. “Kyle. You were having an affair with Kyle?”

She nodded. “I didn’t love him. But I wanted to hurt you. I knew that would hurt you more than anything else. If I cheapened myself like that.”

Warren moved closer, close enough to kiss. “You made love with him?”

“No. I fucked him.”

Warren flinched. She expected a blow any second.

“And you knew about the other women? About Vida? The nurses?”

Laurel nodded. “That was part of it, I think.”

“Did Kyle love you?”

She was about to say no, but then she thought of Danny’s letter. “He thought he did. Kyle was crazy. He’d never had anyone like me before. He said he would give up all the others if I would run away with him. But I didn’t want that. I just wanted to make you realize what you were doing to me. How you were ignoring me.”

Warren tilted his head to the right, like a scientist studying an animal in the midst of some curious act. “You’re lying,” he said at length.

“You don’t know the truth when you hear it.”

“If Kyle was the one who wrote that letter, you would have let him shoot me. But you didn’t. You warned me.”

“Of course I did! I didn’t love Kyle! I love you. Besides, you’re the father of my children.”

Warren shook his head. “You’re lying now. Kyle could have smashed your laptop while I ran to answer the kitchen phone, but he didn’t. He didn’t care about that Hotmail account at all.”

“I could have done the same thing.”

“No, I was watching you. And you did try, once. Kyle never did. He even screamed at you to tell me the password. He didn’t care about your computer, because he knew it was no threat to him.”

She searched her mind for some rational argument, but there was none.

“You’re still trying to protect someone,” Warren said, his voice low and dangerous. “Who is it?” He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her violently. “Tell me who he is!”

“Daddy, stop it!” Beth screeched. “You’re hurting Mama!”

“Mom’s fine,” Warren said, stopping his assault but not taking his eyes from Laurel’s face. “If you were really having an affair with Kyle, you can answer one simple question for me.”

Her stomach rolled over.

“Kyle had a unique feature below the waist. What was it?”

She lowered her voice. “I’m not going to discuss another man’s genitals with you in front of our daughter.”

“Let’s go to the great room, then.”

Laurel closed her eyes as though disgusted, but she was thinking desperately.

“You don’t know,” Warren whispered. “Because you’ve never seen Kyle’s…package.”

But she had seen it, once. A couple of years ago, at a Halloween party that lasted into the wee hours. A few drunken guests had peeled off their costumes and leaped into their hosts’ heated pool. Naturally one of them was Kyle. He’d been standing behind a plastic cubicle that served as a changing room, out of Warren’s line of sight but well within Laurel’s. After stripping off his pants, he’d turned toward her long enough for her to take in his full nudity; then he’d burst into the open and dived into the steaming water. Laurel had a clear memory of the event, but no matter how hard she focused, she saw nothing but a normal, middle-aged penis of average size.

“Time’s up,” Warren said. “You lose.”

“There’s nothing different about him.”

Warren’s smile was triumphant. “Kyle had hypospadias. Do you know what that is?”

Laurel had heard the word, but she couldn’t recall what condition it described.

“His urethra opens on the underside of his penis, rather than at the tip. It’s fairly common. One in three hundred live births. And if you’d been sleeping with him, you would definitely know about it.”

She looked away.

“You can go check his corpse, if you’re curious. No? Then I repeat: tell me who you’re trying to protect. If you don’t-”

The kitchen phone rang loudly. Warren let go of her, glanced at the caller ID, then walked to the kitchen window. “And awaaay we go. It’s started now.”

Laurel stood on tiptoe. Over the hedges in front of the window, she saw a Sheriff’s Department cruiser parked at the end of their driveway. One man inside.

Warren pressed the speakerphone button, then came back to the window. “This is Dr. Shields. Who’s this?”

“This is Deputy Ray Breen, Doctor.”

“Afternoon, Ray,” Warren said in a cheerful voice. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, Doc, I just drove out to check on some things.”

“Is that right? What things would those be?”

“Well, your wife and daughter for one. We heard y’all might be having some trouble out this way.”

Laurel closed her eyes as Breen’s deep drawl echoed through the house. This was why she hadn’t called 911 in the beginning.

“No trouble,” Warren said. “Nothing serious, anyway.”

There was a long pause. Then Ray Breen said, “Well, I’m afraid your boy says different. He’s over to the neighbors’ house scared half out of his wits. He says maybe you shot somebody.”

Warren laughed loudly. “No, no. Kyle Auster and I were cleaning a pistol, and it accidentally discharged. Put a hole in the floor, but other than that, no harm done.”

This time the pause was longer. “I’m glad to hear it, Doc. But I’d feel a whole lot better if I could just say hey to everybody for a second. One at a time, if you please.”

Warren’s tense face gave the lie to his nonchalant voice. Maybe Deputy Breen wasn’t so dumb after all. Warren took the phone off speaker, picked up the receiver, covered the mouthpiece with his palm, and whispered to Laurel, “Tell him you’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

“I won’t.”

“If you don’t-if you say something’s wrong in here, or that I shot Kyle-you can bet your life they’ll come busting in here with guns blazing. And I can’t be responsible for what happens after that.”

She wondered if this was true. So far, she’d seen only one car outside. But there had to be more. And the local cops she’d met seemed more likely to use guns than diplomacy to resolve a standoff. She nodded once, and Warren held the phone up to her face. “Deputy Breen?”

“Yes, ma’am. Can your husband hear me?”

At that moment, Warren pressed his ear to the receiver. “No.”

“Are you all right today?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in any danger?”

“Danger?”

“We heard there might have been some gunplay in the house.”

“Just an accident. It’s all right now.”

“And your daughter? Is she all right?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Could I talk to her?”

“Of course.”

Warren knelt in front of Beth and said, “Say hello to the man, Beth. He’s a nice man.”

“Hel-lo,” Beth said, reverting to her usual telephone ritual. “What’s your name?”

“She’s busy, Ray,” Warren said, standing erect with the phone. He listened for a few seconds, then said, “Kyle’s busy right now, too…. Uh-huh…. I understand that. Look, our practice is being audited by the IRS right now, and we’re having a pretty tense day going over our books. Kyle is deep into them with the calculator right now, but as soon as he’s done, I’ll have him call you.”

Laurel couldn’t believe what she was hearing. In all the time she had known Warren, she had hardly ever heard him lie. Now he was spinning out bullshit with the facility of Kyle Auster. As he continued to evade Breen’s questions, she thought about what the deputy had said. Grant had obviously reached a neighbor’s house, probably the Elfmans’. He would be terrified, but Bonnie Elfman would take good care of him.

“Listen, Ray,” Warren said, his tone growing testy. “The thing is, I’m waiting for something in here. We’re running a computer program, and we’re waiting for a certain result. Once I have that, we’ll all come out and visit with you guys for the rest of the evening, if you want. But this is business, Ray. It’s important. You know what I mean?…Of course you do. All right. As soon as I have what I need in here, we’re all coming out…. Kyle, too, absolutely…. Good talking to you, too.”

Warren hung up, jerked the curtains over the kitchen window, and turned to Laurel with manic energy. “Get some sheets out of the laundry room to cover Kyle. I’ll stay with Beth.”

Laurel started to argue, but then she remembered that her clone phone was sitting on the shelf in the laundry room. Warren was letting her go alone because he knew she wouldn’t leave Beth inside the house with him. “I’ll be right back,” she said, touching Beth’s arm. She walked into the pantry, which led to the laundry room.

“The door to the garage is bolted,” Warren called, in case she had a lapse of maternal judgment.

She reached up and slid her Razr off the detergent shelf. Her heart leaped when she saw 3 NEW MESSAGES on its LCD screen. Flipping open the phone, she bent over the laundry basket and made rummaging noises among some folded sheets. The first message read, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll b close by if u need me. I love u. So much hope and relief suffused her heart that she felt giddy. The second message read, Saw both cars home. What should I do?

“What’s the holdup?” Warren called.

Laurel picked up two folded sheets as she read the third message: Text me the instant u r out of there! Crazy with worry!

“Me, too,” she whispered, sliding the phone into her back pocket.

She carried the sheets out to the kitchen and set them on the granite countertop. “What now?”

“I’m going to move Kyle out of the hall,” Warren said softly. “You’re coming with me.”

“I think I’m going to give Beth that Benadryl after all,” Laurel murmured. “If we’re lucky, it’ll cause short-term memory loss.”

He frowned and picked up the sheets. “I need some food. We all do.”

“I’ll cook something,” Laurel offered. “Breakfast would be easiest.”

He nodded.

She looked at Beth lying on the banquette. “Would you like an egg with a hat on it?”

Beth actually sat up at this suggestion. “And grits and biscuits? And grape jelly!”

“Tell you what,” Warren said to Laurel, “you do the work with the sheets. Leave Beth with me. I’m going to shut all the blinds, then start the food.”

Laurel hesitated, then nodded in agreement. She took the sheets and went down the hall with Danny’s messages running through her mind. She hadn’t thought to check the time stamps, but he obviously hadn’t followed her advice to leave town. Running simply wasn’t in him. So where was he now? He must have driven by the house at least once, she thought. Or else that was his plane I heard before. He knows I’m here with Warren. And that, combined with me not showing up in the clearing, started him worrying. But what can he do? Danny sometimes flew the Sheriff’s Department helicopter and so was fairly tight with the sheriff. If he’d heard the report of a shooting out here, Laurel was sure he would find a way to get himself into the loop. Once that happened, it would only be a matter of time before someone came to save her and Beth. Danny would have a tricky job trying to explain his concerns without betraying their affair, but she felt sure he could do it.

She looked down at Kyle’s body. His eyes were still open, but the opaque irises held no life. The dead face already looked more like a wax figure of Kyle than the man himself. Pity rose in her, but she knew that her duty was to the living, not the dead. She thought of texting Danny that Kyle had been shot, but Warren might be watching from the end of the hall.

Unfolding one of the sheets, she laid it gently over Kyle’s corpse, then with considerable effort rolled the body over. Then she stood and dragged it to the guest room door. With the sheet under him, Kyle slid fairly easily on the polished hardwood. Getting him over the threshold was harder, but she turned away from him, grabbed his ankles under her arms as though hitching a cart to a mule, and in three great heaves dragged him onto the carpet and clear of the door.

With the walls of the guest room around her, an almost irresistible compulsion to call Danny took hold of her. As she reached out to close the door, Warren appeared there with Beth in his arms.

“Good enough,” he said, keeping Beth’s head turned away. “We miss you.”

She swallowed hard, then followed Warren back to the kitchen. Danny knows I need help, she told herself. He knows everything he needs to know. I’ve got to keep the phone secret, no matter what. It might make the difference between life and death.

“You take over,” Warren said, pointing at the iron skillet heating on the stove. An egg carton and a can of Pillsbury biscuits lay beside it. “I’m going to check the computer.”

The computer. As it had been from the beginning, her laptop remained the greatest danger to her. At any moment, the Merlin’s Magic program could give Warren access to hundreds of messages from Danny: love letters, embedded digital photos, all the stuff she’d been insane ever to put on her hard drive. All the things someone in love can’t live without. “No worries,” she said brightly. “Beth and I have got it under control.”

Warren seemed about to take Beth with him to the great room, but then he walked away alone. “All the doors are bolted,” he reminded her. “And I took out the keys.”

“Thanks for that information,” Laurel replied in a tone that said, Stop upsetting our daughter.

“Don’t open the blinds,” he added. “And tap the skillet with a fork while I’m down there.”

“Just go already!”

He vanished into the great room.

She clanked the skillet a couple of times, then lifted Beth onto the counter beside the Viking cooktop. Laurel felt almost drunk with adrenaline. A new plan had come to her, and she had no time for second thoughts. There was risk, yes, but she was almost certain that she and Beth would survive it. She cracked four eggs open and dumped them into the skillet with her right hand while holding Beth’s hand with her left. “Daddy’s not right in the head now, punkin,” she whispered. “Can you tell that?”

Beth nodded with wide eyes and whispered, “Daddy lied to that policeman on the phone.”

“Yes, he did. I need you to do one thing for me, darling. One easy thing, and then we can go outside where Grant and the nice policemen are. Will you do that for me?”

Beth nodded again.

“Do you remember where my laptop is? Down on the coffee table?”

“Uh-huh. Where Daddy is.”

“After Daddy comes back up here, I want you to take your glass of water down to the great room like you’re going to play. Then I want you to unplug the computer and dump your water into my keyboard.”

Beth opened her mouth in shock. “What?”

“Pour it right into the keys, where the letters are. But be sure you unplug it first. And don’t touch the computer with your hands afterward. That’s important. Just dump the water into the keyboard from high above it. Far away. No touching.”

Beth blinked several times, processing Laurel’s request. “I can do that. But won’t Daddy be mad?”

“He’s going to be mad at me, not you. But that’s what we have to do to make all this stop. Okay?”

Beth smiled. “Okay.”

“Unplug the computer first. And don’t touch it with your hands.”

“I know. Electricity, right?”

Laurel smiled with satisfaction, then retrieved Beth’s glass from the table by the banquette. She knew from experience that it would take a couple of seconds for the water to penetrate the Sony’s keyboard, and unplugging the computer from the wall socket would step it down to battery power rather than the 110 volts coming from the mains. The danger of lethal voltage arcing back to Beth was almost nonexistent, but the probability of frying the computer itself was high. As Warren came back to the kitchen, Laurel said, “Any luck with your computer program?”

“It’s coming along,” he said without looking at her. “A seven-space password has seventy-eight billion possible combinations. Even more, really, depending on how many characters you choose from.”

“How interesting.”

He looked at her oddly. Stay cool, she told herself. Don’t get cocky. He’s going to go ballistic in about two minutes-

“Where are you going?” he asked Beth, who had been spinning in circles like a ballerina on Warren’s side of the island, but now was walking toward the hall.

“Nowhere!” she said breathlessly. “I’m tired of sitting around.”

“Well, we have to sit around awhile longer.”

Laurel saw that Beth didn’t have the water glass in her hand, but it was nowhere in sight either. She had stashed it somewhere, like a good little conspirator. Probably on the floor.

Laurel needed Warren to move to her side of the island. She rotated the burner control beneath the eggs to HIGH, then turned toward the sink and began loudly washing the bowl she’d used to hold the broken eggshells.

“Hey,” Warren said. “Hey! You’re burning them!”

“What?”

“You’re burning the eggs!”

She spun from the sink and let her anger show. “Is your butt nailed to that stool?”

He got up and stalked around the island. Laurel went back to rinsing the bowl. She was turning off the water when a cracking sound came from the great room, followed by a screech.

“What the-?” Warren looked around anxiously. “Elizabeth?”

He scanned every corner of the kitchen and den, then ran for the great room. Laurel scrambled around the island and went after him.

“Where are you?” Warren shouted. “What are you doing?”

Laurel heard a primal scream of fury just before she reached the great room. The acrid stink of burned plastic filled her nostrils. Beth was cowering by the arm of the sofa, the empty water glass still in her hand, her eyes on to her enraged father.

Warren stood over the silent Vaio, staring down with mute incomprehension on his face. When he looked down at Beth, she bolted toward Laurel, tossing the glass aside as she ran. She leaped into her mother’s arms, and Laurel backed slowly toward the arch behind her.

“Elizabeth?” Warren snapped. “Did your mother tell you to do that?”

“No!” Beth shouted, stunning Laurel. “I hate that computer! It’s making you crazy!”

Warren glared at his daughter like a sea captain staring down a mutinous member of his crew.

“Of course I told her to do it,” Laurel said with a calm she did not feel. “It had to be done. I’m sure you can hire a lawyer to get those e-mails from the company, and that’s probably what you should do. But this nightmare has to end. It has ended. I’m not playing this game anymore.”

He opened his mouth but did not reply. Then he squeezed his hands into fists, which he pressed hard against his temples. Laurel was starting to believe that she had actually won when he closed the space between them in four quick bounds and backhanded her to the floor.

Beth screamed as they fell.