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“Three Hispanic males,” I said. “And one dark blue SUV.”
“That’s it,” she said, and she slumped back over her coffee cup again. “That’s all of it.” She picked up her coffee cup, looked at the contents, and put it back down again without drinking. “I don’t even know why they snatched the kids. Revenge, somebody I busted?” She shook her head. “If only I knew why…”
Deborah has always had a fairly healthy ego, and I was glad that the present crisis had not beaten it down; she believed that someone had taken the kids to get at her. I hadn’t even considered that idea; I had just naturally assumed that it was Raul’s men getting leverage on me. But I thought about the possibility that it was an attack on Debs instead, and right off the bat the notion had several very appealing elements. For starters, it let me off the hook—I didn’t have to tell her that it was my fault, which might have put a damper on what was turning into a rather heartwarming reunion. I also didn’t have to tell her about Brian, which would almost certainly dampen his life even more severely.
But it wouldn’t do, of course. I had seen the blue SUV, and was now certain it had trailed me to Deb’s house. From there, it was a simple matter for them to watch her, see the kids, follow to day care, and grab them. The only real question remained the same: How had they found me in the first place? I had seen them at dinner, and so they had picked me up before that—and if I could remember where I had seen the blue SUV earlier—
“Are you ou
t for good now?” Deborah said abruptly.
“Out?” I said, still with one foot in my thoughts. “You mean out of jail?” She nodded. “Well, it’s not certain. The state attorney really wants me for this.”
She snorted. “Well, shit,” she said. “If Frank Kraunauer can’t get you out—Jesus, Dex, what’s the matter?”
The matter was simple: My head was spinning like a carousel. Or possibly I was motionless and the room itself was spinning—maybe even the entire Universe, suddenly whirling around like an enormous insane dervish. It must have shown on my face, because the whole natural order as I knew it had suddenly flipped over on its axis. East was now up, and West was tomorrow, and nothing was what it should be, and yet because of that everything suddenly made sense. It was sickening, maddening, dreadful, gut-lurching sense, but it added up perfectly.
I knew where I had seen the blue SUV earlier.
I recalled clearly where I had been and what I had been doing and suddenly all the nickels were dropping into every available slot, and every single light, bell, gong, and siren in the big pinball game of Dexter’s Universe was going off at once. I knew. And with one abrupt, reality-shifting moment of recall, everything fell into place.
And not in a good way. Not at all.
“Dex?” Deborah said uncertainly, as if she wasn’t sure whether our relationship had healed to the point where she could show concern. “Are you all right?”
“I am a dolt,” I said. “A naive, trusting, gullible dolt. Blind in one eye, deaf in both ears, and dumber than a fence post.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but what made you realize it?”
“I know how to find them,” I said.
The look of concern dropped off her face, instantly replaced by a very wicked hunger. “How,” she said.
I looked at her and started to tell her—and stopped. Could I really tell her? That the kidnappers had followed me to her and the kids?
“Dexter, goddamn it, how?” she demanded. “Where are they?”
I couldn’t decide. I temporized. “I don’t know where they are,” I said. “But,” I went on, overriding a stream of very professional curses from Deborah, “I think I can get them to come to me.”
“To you? Why would they come to you?”
I took a deep breath—and I paused.
I am not a trusting person. From my own hard experience and my unclouded observations of people in general, I have always regarded nontrust as a very wise stance. And I had also made an exception for family, for the most part—especially Deborah.
But at the moment, when our new relationship was still defining itself, it did not look like a very good idea. For all I knew, telling her about Brian and Raul and that whole mess—and admitting that the children’s abduction was my fault—might have some very unpleasant consequences.
Trust is such a fragile thing, isn’t it? Once it’s broken, there is no superglue in the world that can put it back together again. Perhaps with time I would come to trust my neo-ex-sister. Not yet.
“Goddamn it, Dexter!” Debs said. “Why the fuck will they come to you?”
I fought down the impulse to smile reassuringly, since it might easily turn into a leer at this point, and instead gave her my very best stout and loyal manly stare.
“You’ll have to trust me,” I said.
TWENTY-ONE
Deborah wanted to come along, of course. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust me, though of course she didn’t. It was merely that she was, and always has been, what is known as a Control Freak. She could not stand the thought of letting something she cared about slip out of her sight and into less competent hands—and of course, all hands were less competent, as far as she was concerned.
