Rock point collection, p.101
Rock Point Collection, page 101
“Not yet.”
“Okay. Do not get out. No matter what,” I tell the boys. I grab my phone, get out, and hit the locks.
I find the front door unlocked when I test it. Reaching down I slip my gun from my ankle holster and ease the door open.
“Mom?” A white-faced Theo is standing in the hallway, eyes fixed on the gun in my hand. Behind him I can see Marya sit up and twist around in the couch.
“What’s wrong?” she addresses Theo, who looks frozen on the spot.
“Where’s Harry?”
I see her startle when she hears my voice and her eyes zoom in on me. “Dylan? Guys? What’s going on?”
“Sweetheart, where’s Harry?” I walk into the living room, just as she gets to her feet.
“Probably downstairs, why?”
It’s only when I walk up to her and her eyes get big that I remember the gun in my hand. I quickly tuck it in the back of my waistband.
“He’s not,” Theo says from behind me, and I turn around to find him looking concerned. “I didn’t want to wake you, Mom. He just went across the street to David’s. I watched him all the way until he got inside, I swear.”
“That’s okay, he’s—” Marya starts but I cut her off.
“Jeremy was released.”
“Wait, what?”
“Not now, babe.” I feel bad about being short with her, but I need to find Harry. “Theo, come with me, yeah?” I grab the boy by the arm in passing and pull him behind me. “Which house is David’s?” He points to a raised bungalow, with blue siding a couple of doors down, on the other side of the road. “I need you to get the other boys inside, lock the door, and set the alarm. Can you do that?” I push the button on my car keys to open the doors.
“He answered.” Liam shows me the screen on his phone as soon as he gets out of the truck.
10-7
“What was 10-7 again?”
“Hiding.”
“I need to know where he is, keep trying, okay? I need you guys to go inside with Theo, if he answers, send me a message, yeah?”
I already have my phone out and am dialing Damian, even as I’m crossing the road to David’s house.
“Berger’s been spotted near Marya’s place,” I snap. “Her youngest is out there. I need help.” I don’t even wait for an answer, raising my hand to knock on the door.
“Yes?”
A woman opens the door and looks at me with some reservation. I can’t blame her, if my face shows any of the emotion I’m feeling right now, it’s bound to be scary.
“Is Harry here?”
“Who is asking?” She looks over my shoulder at Marya’s house.
I flip my badge open. “Special Agent Dylan Barnes, FBI. Ma’am this is urgent. Is Harry Berger with you?”
She shakes her head, looking increasingly worried. “No, the boys went down the road to play in the park. Why? What’s going on?”
“Ma’am, if they show up here, do not let them leave, and call me right away.” I dig a card from my wallet and shove it at her before jogging in the direction she points me.
There’s no one in the damn park.
The small neighborhood park has the road on one side and the open mountainside behind it. I scan the road, and then the brush. No one.
“Harry!” I yell, while pulling my phone out of my pocket. I type in a quick message.
Dylan: Where are you?
I watch as the check mark appears next to my message, but there’s no response.
Dylan: Harry? I can’t help you if you don’t answer me.
Again the check mark appears, but then I see the dots beside his name move.
Harry: Is he gone?
“Harry!” I yell again, just as a patrol car pulls up to the curb. I swing back to scan the mountainside when I see something move halfway up the rise. “Stay here,” I tell the officer who joins me. “Keep an eye out while I go up there. We’re looking for a man in his forties, six one, blond hair.”
My eyes stay focused on the two boys slowly making their way down as I jog up to meet them. Harry runs the last stretch and throws himself against me.
“Is he gone?”
TWENTY-SIX
Marya
My legs almost give out from relief when I see Dylan come walking down the street, holding on to Harry with one hand, and David with the other. By the time they come walking up the path to the front door, relief has been replaced with anger.
“Harry, go inside.” Dylan gives my guilty-looking son a little shove in my direction. “I’ll be right back. Just dropping David off at home,” he tells me, and all I manage is a stiff nod.
I step to the side to let Harry—who’s dragging his heels—inside, where he’s immediately questioned by his brothers.
“Guys,” I close the door and turn around. “Do me a favor, and hang out in the basement for a bit.” There isn’t a single protest as the boys move toward the stairs. “Not you, Harry.” My youngest, who clearly thought he could sneak off with the others, looks crestfallen.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he apologizes. “But we—”
“What is it, Harry? Are you sorry or are you making excuses? I’ve told you before, sorry is not an apology if it’s followed by but.” I lean my crutches against the side of the couch before dropping down. I’ve lost ten years off my life in the past ten minutes. “Sit down, so I don’t have to crane my neck to talk to you.”
With tears tracking down his cheeks, he wisely sits in the chair across from me, and my hard shield of anger starts cracking. I’m about to start lecturing him when Dylan comes in the door, followed by Damian, who hangs back.
“Tell us exactly what happened,” Dylan’s voice is much calmer than mine was as he passes by me and crouches down in front of my son.
Accompanied by sniffles, Harry starts recounting how he and David went to throw a Frisbee in the park. When he had to climb the hillside to retrieve it, he saw his father get out of a car at the far end of the block, and dart down the small alleyway four houses down from us.
My eyes are immediately drawn to the sliding doors off the kitchen, that open up to a decent backyard, beyond which is a gully that runs all along the back. It fills up with spring runoff or when we’ve had a bad rainstorm, but most of the time it’s dry.
The men look at each other and I know some silent communication has taken place when Damian disappears out the front door.
“Why didn’t you call your mom?”
Harry’s eyes dart to me. “I thought I’d be in trouble.”
“So you know you did something wrong,” I point out. “First you sneak out without telling me, getting your big brother to do your bidding, and then you thought it would be a good idea to play in the park?”
“But I was just—”
“Being stupid,” Dylan interrupts, and Harry’s face dissolves. It’s one thing being told off by your mother, but he hero-worships Dylan, so coming from him it hurts. I almost intervene, but this is about safety. “Remember those boys who went missing?” he continues and I wince. “They didn’t mean for anything to happen to them, but it did. Just last week, you had to hide under your mom’s car after you took off when you weren’t supposed to and got yourself into trouble. Yet today you do it again, putting yourself in a position where you’re not safe. You figure that’s smart?”
“N-no.”
Dylan gives my boy’s shoulder a little shove with his fist. “You want to know what was smart, though? Hiding and sending that message.”
Typical Harry, he grabs onto the positive and hangs on for dear life. Smiling through his tears at the compliment, he explains, “I didn’t want Mom or Theo to come looking with him around, so I sent the message to Liam.”
“See?” Dylan grins, ruffling his hair. “Smart. Now you’ve gotta try and be smart all the time.” Then he leans in and stage-whispers in Harry’s ear, “I’m thinking your mom could use a hug right about now.”
Harry doesn’t waste a minute and launches himself at me. He buries his head against me and I look up at Dylan, whose face is serious as he tilts his head to the door. I nod in response. I assume Damian, and whoever else is out there, is looking. I can understand Dylan wants to be out there too.
“I’ll lock the door behind me,” he says before slipping outside.
I snuggle Harry for a minute before I grab his shoulders and move him back a little. “You think maybe you should go downstairs and apologize to Theo?”
The reluctant, “Okay,” tells me he’d rather not, but he knows better than to argue at this point and heads down to the basement.
I hoist myself up and walk into the kitchen, making sure the sliding door is still locked. I peer into the thick brush threatening to overgrow the back fence, but can’t see any movement. After a few minutes I give up trying, and set out to make a fresh pot of coffee.
I’m pouring some fresh brew in a travel mug—the only thing I’m able to carry with my crutches without spilling—when I hear yelling outside, followed by a sharp crack.
Gunshot.
Instinct has me drop down, spilling coffee all over, when I hear footsteps running up the stairs.
“Mom?”
“Stay down there!” I yell out, hearing Theo’s worried voice. “All of you stay in the basement. I’m fine!”
Or as fine as I can be with my back pressed against the cupboard and my ass sitting in a hot puddle.
Five minutes is a long time when you can’t stop your mind from conjuring up images of the horrible ways your boyfriend could be bleeding to death in your backyard. So long that, when I finally hear a key in the lock, I’m light-headed and my chest hurts from my heart pounding hard.
“Marya?”
The “here,” I’m trying to formulate comes out in a sob, and Dylan’s on his knees in front of me in a nanosecond.
“Shit. Are you hurt?” His hands run over my body until he feels the puddle on the floor. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he says with a sympathetic look on his face.
“It’s coffee,” I snap, shoving his shoulder. Immediately followed by, “Did anyone get hurt?”
“I wish,” he mumbles before adding at normal volume, “Found the idiot hiding in a culvert behind your neighbor’s yard. He didn’t want to come out and we didn’t want to crawl in the mud after him. Damian fired off a warning shot, which got his ass moving. He’s in custody and being transported to the station.”
He gets to his feet and helps me up as well, brushing the back of his fingers down my cheek before leaning in for a bruising kiss. If not for his arms holding me steady, I surely would’ve ended up back on my ass.
“Can it be over now?” I ask in a small voice when he lifts his mouth, and tucks me under his chin.
“Fuck, I hope so. I’m about ready to pack you all up and move to Alaska.”
“Can we go dogsledding?”
Both our heads turn in the direction of the stairs to find four pairs of eyes on us.
“We’re not moving to Alaska,” I tell Harry.
“I wouldn’t mind dogsledding,” Theo says with a shrug.
“We’re not moving to Alaska,” I repeat.
“That would be really cool, though,” Max contributes with a cheeky grin on his face.
“Forget about Alaska.”
“I’d go.”
My eyes shoot to Liam, who shrugs, grinning sheepishly when the others start snickering. Hope blossoms in my chest—almost painfully—when I take in his playful blue eyes among the brown ones.
Blinking against the burn, I let go of Dylan and wag a finger at the boys.
“No Alaska.”
Dylan
“You’d better have a real good fucking explanation!”
Detective Tony Ramirez doesn’t flinch when I come charging up to his desk at the DPD station. He simply turns his chair, stretches his legs, and folds his arms over his chest.
“Take it easy, Barnes,” his partner, Keith Blackfoot, suggests.
It wasn’t until after I left Marya and the boys at her place that I realized how badly this could’ve ended, which meant by the time I got to the station, I was worked up again.
“Have a seat.” Ramirez indicates a chair across the desk from him and waits until I sit down. “I followed Berger and his two sleezeball lawyers to the DoubleTree Hilton, watched them park the car, and walk into the lobby. I kept an eye on the door and their vehicle the whole time.”
“And yet, Berger ended up behind Marya’s house.”
“Regrettably, yes. He must’ve gone straight out the back. There’s just one of me, Barnes.”
It’s a natural enough reaction to want to blame someone, but the truth is, there’s nothing I would’ve done any differently myself.
“How’d he get from the hotel to Marya’s?”
“Uber,” Blackfoot answers. “I just got off the phone with the driver. He confirms picking up Berger behind the hotel and dropping him off on Lawrence Avenue.”
“The lawyers?”
“Still at the DoubleTree, as far as I know,” Tony confirms.
“Wouldn’t they be on their way back here?” I suggest.
“You’d think so, but as it turns out, our boy in there—” He nudges his head in the direction of the holding cells. “Doesn’t want them around. He’s been yelling he wants to talk for the past fifteen minutes.”
“So what’s the hold up?”
“Yeager’s on his way.”
-
“So talk.”
I’m wedged into the small room with Blackfoot and Ramirez, watching and listening as Yeager barks at Berger. Like last time, Damian’s in there, as is Joe Benedetti, who has taken up his spot leaning against the wall.
“Before I talk, I need your guarantee my daughter is safe,” Berger fires back. His eyes nervously dart from one to the other.
Damian flips through the file in front of him. “Amelia?”
My mind immediately pulls up the image of the little girl I saw on the mantel at Sylvia Berger’s house.
“Yes. You need to get her out of there. She’s not safe.”
“Why would you say that?” Yeager wants to know and Berger’s eyes flit back to him.
“If you don’t get her safe—”
He swallows the rest of his words when Yeager gets out of his chair and leans with his fists on the table. “Let’s talk about why you were caught hiding behind your ex-wife’s house, violating the protective order yet again.”
“Please,” Berger pleads. “I’m trying to protect my daughter.”
“I think we get that,” Damian jumps in. “What we’d like to know is what, if anything, that has to do with Ms. Berger and her children.”
“Everything!” he bursts out, agitated.
“You’re going to have to give us more than that, Jeremy,” Yeager picks up. “Why do you feel your daughter is in danger?”
“Please, just make sure.”
“You’re not telling us anything that would justify the Montrose PD to go knocking on the door, Jeremy,” Yeager pushes. “There needs to be cause. Is there anything we need to know about your wife? We can call her, see if—”
“No—not her!”
The chair topples over when Berger surges to his feet. Joe immediately pushes off from the wall, closing in on the agitated man from behind.
“You need to calm down, Jeremy,” he says in a cautioning tone. “Or we’ll be forced to shackle you.”
“She…she’s been brainwashed. Talk to Alba. She’s Amelia’s nanny. Please…”
I’ve heard that name before. Sylvia mentioned the nanny when her father ordered her to check on the little girl. There’d been something off about that whole scene. Keswick being the pompous asshole he is, I thought at the time he was just flexing his muscle for our benefit, but maybe…
“Shit,” I hiss, remembering the way Keswick possessively snatched Amelia’s picture from my hands.
“What?” Keith wants to know.
“I need to talk to Roosberg. For the life of me I can’t see the connection with Marya and the boys, but Berger may be right, the little girl might be in trouble.”
-
“It’s possible,” Luna concurs over the phone. “It crossed my mind at the time that the interaction between father and daughter seemed weird. Uncomfortable, even.”
“Exactly.”
“Still doesn’t explain why, if he’s so worried about his daughter, he’s in Durango, harassing his ex-wife and the kids.”
“I know, but I don’t think he’ll talk unless the girl is safe.”
Luna promises to start looking into Connor Keswick when the door to the interrogation room opens and Berger is being led out by Joe.
“I gotta go.”
Damian steps into the hallway, catches my eye, and with a nudge of his head tells me to follow. I walk into the conference room where Yeager and Benedetti look to be in a heated standoff.
“We’ve got a boy to find, we don’t have time to indulge this asshole,” Yeager barks.
“He’s not talking unless we do,” Joe counters. “Local PD can’t do shit without an official report filed. You guys can as part of this investigation.”
“It’s a waste of time, he’s just stalling.” It’s clear Yeager is frustrated with the lack of progress after he drove here from Farmington—for the second time in as many days—hoping to get ahead in his search for Thomas.
“Actually,” I interrupt and launch into my observations during our interview in Montrose.
“You think he’s abusing his granddaughter?” Yeager sounds incredulous.
“I think it may be possible.”
“Let’s suppose that’s the case,” Damian puts forward. “It makes him a child molester…a pedophile.”
His words hang in the conference room and you can almost hear everyone thinking.
“Do we have anything on him?” Yeager asks in general.
“Roosberg is digging,” I volunteer.
“We should all get digging. Fucking lay the man bare. Talk to the damn nanny, to the daughter, but we better play this by the book, because that asshole has the means and the connections to slip through our fingers.”
