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19
Bayou Gauche, Louisiana
WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 9:45 P.M.
Xavier wanted to scream. Everyone looked so normal. Was acting so normal. Carlos and Manny still played video games. Willa Mae still knitted. His mother was reading a book. Burke was reclining in his chair, eyes closed, his hands folded over his belly. The two guards outside were doing their rounds.
Just like normal.
Except that nothing was normal. Nothing was even remotely approaching normal.
Xavier was the only one moving. Pacing. Nervous. Terrified.
The doctor was dead, too. The one that Rocky had been searching for. Why? Why would they kill him? What had the doctor known? What had Nadia Hall told him?
Xavier had turned it over and over in his mind and the only thing that made sense of the doctor’s murder, the only relevant connection, was the identity of the father of Nadia’s unborn child.
There didn’t seem to be any other reason to eliminate him.
Eliminate.It was such a sterile word. The doctor hadn’t been merely eliminated.
His throat had been slit. His gut slashed open.
He’d been disemboweled.
Xavier couldn’t get the image out of his mind. Why would someone do that?
And what do they plan to do to me? And my mom? And Carlos and the others?
And when would Molly and Gabe get here? Every moment that ticked by was another moment that they were out there, ripe to get grabbed. Killed. Mutilated.
Abruptly Willa Mae put her knitting aside and rose, went to the kitchen, and returned with a chair. Xavier was distracted enough to stop pacing.
“Miss Willa Mae?” he asked. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you something to do,” she snapped. “You’re driving us all crazy, but we feel too bad for you to tell you so.”
His mother put down the book she’d been reading.
Or not been reading. Now that he really looked at the book, he realized that she hadn’t turned many pages.
“Is that true, Mama?”
“Of course it is,” she said with more kindness than he probably deserved.
Carlos paused the video game and turned, interest on his face. “What’re you gonna have him do with that chair? Tame some lions?”
Manny snorted. “Or gators.”
Burke had opened his eyes, watching them all. “Or maybe it’s a prop. Like for a dance sequence.”
Willa Mae shook her head, a fond smile on her lips. “I wish. Xavier can’t dance.”
“I can too.”
“No, you really can’t,” Carlos said helpfully.
Xavier flipped him the bird.
