Mixed Up with the Mob

“Mmm-hmm.” He turned his face into her chest, rubbed his nose against her robe and nodded. “Smells good, Aunt Lauren.”

She chuckled. “Tell you what, pal. Let’s get some water in the tub, clean you up and put you into pajamas that smell exactly like my robe.”

“It’s that soften stuff, isn’t it?”

“Fabric softener. A true modern marvel, my friend.”

Lauren eased him off her lap, turned on the bedside lamp, and then rummaged through his dresser for clean clothes. She stripped the bed, redid it with fabric-softener-scented sheets, and then piled the mess outside his bedroom door.

“Here we go, into the deep blue yonder…” she warbled.

Holding hands, they marched into the adjoining red-and-white bathroom. She ran the water, Mark stripped, hopped into the tub and she ran the pajamas and linens down to the laundry room. As she went through the kitchen, she thought she heard a scratch at the back door.

Ooooh, that cat!

“Go away, Adolf! I have no fish bones for you.”

She felt sorry for the neighbors’ ratty-looking tomcat. The Scharffenbergers let the poor animal run wild most of the time, and Philly’s winters were notoriously cold and mean. Still, the critter had outstayed his never-warm welcome in her yard. She’d had to rig up an Adolf-proof system for trash can storage, otherwise, the half-eared thing would knock them over and strew garbage all down the drive.

Still, as much of a trial as he was, Lauren couldn’t make herself rat on the neighbors. She figured the ugly cat’s lot would worsen at the pound. No normal child would beg a mother to take the big, fat, mean-as-a-snake thing home. So she never failed to bungee-cord the trash cans shut and set the brakes on the wheeled, aluminum-rail-sided cart where she kept them.

Evidently, her yell sent her nocturnal visitor elsewhere. By the time she dumped the stinky bedclothes into the washer, poured a capful of detergent and one of softener into the appropriate dispensers, all she could hear was Mark’s happy splashing directly overhead.

She closed the washer, turned the knob to the right setting and started the cycle. One of the songs she’d sung to Mark just a while earlier came back to her, and she hummed a few bars on the way back to the front of the house.

Then she heard it again.

The scratching sound.

At the front door.

Her heartbeat sped up. Her breath caught in her throat. The fear she’d felt as the car rushed at her returned. Her muscles felt frozen, but she knew she had to act.

Mark!

“Lord Jesus,” she whispered on the first step up, “guide me, protect Mark, and keep me safe so I can care for him….”

Screetch! Scratch-scrape-scrape, screeeeeeetch!

Whoever was out there meant to pick that lock.

Lauren gave up on stealth and ran the rest of the way up to her room. She picked up the phone, but all she heard when she put the receiver to her ear was deafening silence.

He’d cut the line.

She ran for her purse. “Thank you, Father, for cell phones!”

On the way to the bathroom, she hit 911. In bursts of whispers, she relayed her plight to the dispatcher. The kind woman assured her she’d sent for help, then kept her on the line, her warm voice a comfort within the swirl of danger around her.

Lauren knew better than to expect a siren; the dispatcher had told her the officers wouldn’t want to alert the intruder.

Still, she kept listening for…something, she didn’t know what, but a signal that would tell her she and Mark were safe, that help had arrived.

Mark was still in the water, splashing his rubber toys in complete oblivion—just the way Lauren wanted it. The last thing the child needed, right on the heels of that terrible nightmare, was another fright. And an intruder in the wee hours of the night was nothing but frightening.

Then pandemonium broke out.

A car drove by at normal speed.

At the front door, a man shouted a curse.

Blazing lights strobed into the house despite the curtains on the windows. She heard scrambling, more voices, more cars. Brakes squealed, doors slammed shut.

“Stop!” someone hollered.

Another car sped up, this one’s tires crunching ice and snow and finally shrieking against the pavement. Others followed, and did the same. A heartbeat later, someone pounded on her front door.

“Open up!” a familiar voice shouted.

Lauren looked at Mark, whose eyes were again wide-open, round, frightened. His mouth formed an O, and his naked limbs shook with fear.

The pounding downstairs never let up.

He yelled again. “Lauren! Let me in! It’s David—David Latham.”

“The monster,” Mark sobbed. “No, Aunt Lauren! Don’t let him in. He’s gonna…he’s gonna eat us up!”

And although she knew Monster David didn’t have a cannibalistic bent, Lauren hesitated.

How could she let that man inside her house again? How could she subject Mark to another trauma? The child had suffered too much already.

But someone had tried to break into her house. She’d heard them at the back and front doors, she’d heard the curse when the cops drove up, heard the running footsteps when they gave pursuit.

And David was a Federal Agent.

Even though he didn’t seem to believe her, she didn’t think he would hurt them, while the intruder wouldn’t have any such qualms.

She took a deep breath. “It’s okay, Marky. Everything’s going to be okay.”

The bright red-green-and-purple-striped bath sheet she used to wrap her nephew felt wrong in their current situation. It belonged to happy summer days, not to a horrifying winter night.

Still, she held the boy close to her heart and ran down the stairs. David’s pounding grew louder the closer she came. At this rate, she wouldn’t have much of a door left by the time she let him in.

She ran.

Mark shook.

Her fingers trembled on the doorknob. She finally got everything to work, threw open the door and glared at the enraged man on her front step. Before he could get a word out, she spoke.

“You’d better have your checkbook ready to pay for a new door, Agent Latham. It was an irreplaceable antique.”

He scowled. “Forget the door, lady. It’s fine. It’s your irreplaceable lives I care about. You and the boy could’ve been killed!”

Lauren’s knees shook then gave way.

On the way down, her only thought was of Mark. The child whose weight left her arms as she slid into a midnight-black hole.

SIX

Lauren woke up in the hospital. She could identify her surroundings before she opened her eyes. The astringent smell of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant stung her nostrils, and the eerie chill of IV fluids flowing into her hand was unmistakable. Her appendectomy two years ago had left her with indelible memories, few of them good.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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