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Wonderful,” I said. “Hispanic accent. Shouldn’t be hard to find in Miami.”
“The car was an SUV, dark blue. Nobody saw the plates,” she added in the same dull voice.
I opened my mouth to say something sarcastic, and then snapped it shut again as a gigantic alarm gong began to ring in the back of my brain. Something Debs had said had raised the hairs on my neck and sent the troops to the parapet. I didn’t get it at first. I rewound her last few sentences. Three men with guns—check. Hispanic—check. Two short, one taller—check. Dark blue SUV—
Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.
I had naturally assumed that Raul’s men had taken the kids. The only question had been, as it was with everything else at the moment, How? How had they found me? Having found me, how did they make the connection and find the children?
Suddenly a very large part of the answer had come clear.
A dark blue SUV. I had seen one recently—in fact, I had seen it more than once. When I parked my car in the alley at Pepino’s—and then later right here, outside Deborah’s house, a dark blue SUV had gone crawling by. And hadn’t there been one other time recently?
“Dexter,” Deborah said, interrupting my train of thought. “I can’t do this. I have to…They put me on administrative leave. And I’m supposed to sit here and let them find my kids?!” She looked up at me with a pleading expression, something else I had never seen from her. “I can’t do that. Jesus fuck, we have to do something!”
“What do you suggest?” I said.
For a second it looked like she was going to lose her temper and snarl at me. But then she wilted, just slumped back over the coffee again. “I don’t know,” she said, barely over a whisper. “They won’t let me near it. I can’t even…They sent me home, and I just…” She shook her head slowly, as if she barely had the energy.
“So you called me?” I said. “Because you think I can find these guys?”
“No,” she said. And then she raised her head and looked at me and she was Debs again. More—she was Über-Deb, the Dragon Slayer. The fire that showed in her eyes would have melted a Buick’s fender. “I called you because when I find them I want them dead.”
I nodded as if that was the most natural thing in the world, for her to ask me to tag along and do the finish work. And actually, for a moment or two, it really did seem quite natural. She would find them, and I would take it from there. Each of us doing what we did best, working together in harmony, world without end. A proper display of Harry’s real legacy.
But on a moment’s reflection, it didn’t seem that natural at all. Mere hours ago I was as good as dead in Deborah’s eyes, lower than pond scum—and for the very same reason that she now found my company desirable. It was such a cold and utilitarian about-face, so completely reptilian, that I should have admired it. I didn’t. I needed more.
Because I have no real human feelings, Harry had molded me to look on family bonds as rules. I’ve always been quite good with rules. They help keep things neat and orderly, and it would be a much better world if everybody paid more attention to them—or even if we all agreed on the same set.
Deborah had broken a very important rule, one that Harry had pounded into me over and over again: Family comes first. Everything else in life will come and go, and things that seem important now will melt away like snowflakes in a summer rain. Not this. Family is forever. I had believed it, even relied on it. And Deborah had violated it. I had needed her as I’d never needed anyone else in my life—needed her help and comfort and support, the things only family can really provide. And she had swept me out of her life like a dust bunny on the living room rug. The only reason she was letting me back in now was because suddenly she needed me.
Of course, it’s always nice to have your talents appreciated, especially by a family member, but at this point in our present nonrelationship, I thought she should give me just a little bit more than a temporary come-kill-things-for-me pass.
So I met her gaze with a steely one of my own. “I think that’s absolutely wonderful,” I said. “But why should I do that for you? Why,” I went on as she gaped angrily at me, “should I do anything at all for you? And don’t,” I cautioned her, showing her the palm of one hand, “please don’t say because I’m your brother and they’re my kids. You burned those bridges, and very thoroughly, too.”
“For fuck’s sake, Dexter,” she said, and it was nice to see some color returning to her cheeks, “don’t you care about anything but yourself?!”
“I’ve got nothing else left to care about,” I said. “You let Anderson take away my job, my reputation, and my freedom—and then you took away my family.” I nudged the custody papers toward her and raised an eyebrow. “Remember? It wasn’t that long ago.”
“I did what I thought was best for the kids,” she said, and it may be that now she had just a little too much color in her cheeks. “That’s what I always do.” She tapped the tabletop with a finger, hard, once for each word. “It’s What I’m Doing Now.”
“Really? It’s best for them if I stay in jail until I come sneaking in to kill a few bad guys for you? And then I disappear conveniently again, is that the plan?” I shook my head. “That’s something only my sister could ask for—and I no longer have one.”
“Well, fuck,” she snarled. “What do you want, an apology? Fine, I’m sorry, okay?”
“Nope. Not okay. Not enough.”
Debs leaned across the table as far as she could go and still stay seated. “You miserable shit,” she said. “They’re your kids, too!”
“Not anymore,” I said, and I glanced meaningfully at the custody papers.
For a second she just showed me her teeth, anger building up in her eyes and looking for somewhere to go and something to burn. And then she lashed out with a hand—I flinched, but it wasn’t my face she was going for. Instead, she snatched up the custody papers, ripped them in half, and flung the pieces at my head. Since I had already used up my flinch, most of the pieces hit me. Considering what I’d already been through in the last few hours it didn’t hurt that much. In fact, in an odd way, it felt kind of good.
Apparently I had a family again.
“Apology accepted,” I said. “How do we find them?”
She glared a few seconds longer; after all, she had to go from rage back to plotting revenge, and it’s much harder to shift gears that quickly when you have emotions. Debs leaned back into a more normal sitting posture and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I told you everything I’ve got.”
