he pushes his thighs together so he won’t piss himself.
Lisle rattles him again. “Man up, ya pussy!”
“Lisle!” Brandi’s eyes are wide, baby still crying at arm’s length, and she shakes it, skinny legs ringing like clappers on a bell. “Hurry the fuck up.”
“We want the money.” Lisle puts his mouth right up against Jason’s head; he can feel the bristle of his brother’s stubble, the edges of his teeth when he talks.
“Fuck you,” Jason exhales.
Victor comes at him again, and Jason braces, holding on to the knot of comfort that he’s still smarter than his idiot brother. This time Victor hits halfheartedly, a thump on his ribs.
“How do you think I got the money if we still got the kid?” Jason says, and you can practically hear the creak of the gears turning in Lisle’s fool head.
Umph! Air is knocked out of Jason’s mouth, blood spraying, when Victor slugs him in the gut, and then Lisle’s pounding around his ears and jaw. Umph! again and again, until his eyes go black and all he can hear is a dull ringing and, faintly, the familiar wailing of the baby.
“Ya can’t shake it like that, ya flaky!” Lisle yells at Brandi.
UMPH! From the front, fucking Victor again. Jason sags, let Lisle hold all two hundred and twenty pounds of his ass up, break his own back for a change.
“Someone’s coming!”
“Shut it up!” Lisle’s got him around the chest now, breathing hard, and Jason’s boots scrape up gravel and leaves as they drag him under his armpits behind the Dumpster, throw him to the ground.
“We’re coming back,” he hisses, close enough that Jason can smell the liquor on his breath, and then, “Leave it be!”
Footsteps, running, an engine starts, sprays gravel, pinging against the metal sides of the Dumpster, stinging his bare head like shrapnel.
More footsteps, slower, a car door being opened.
Help, he wants to say, but his jaw won’t open right.
On the other side of the Dumpsters, someone gags, and then the slap of vomit hitting the ground. A car door closes, another engine starts, and the car crunches slowly over leaves and gravel.
Jason’s eyes burn as he opens them, lids swollen like slabs of bacon, blood flooding in, breathing hard and shallow, gulping air, sweet cold air.
His eyes focus. Thank god; they left it. Next to him, flat on its back, sickly quiet in the raw air. Their eyes meet, and for the first time Jason notices something, a triangle of bright blue at four o’clock in the baby’s brown left eye. Jason lifts his right arm, pulls himself carefully across the gravel. He’s not in bad shape from his fall, just a scrape on his nose. Jason dusts the cinders and shreds of leaves off his forehead, then scoops him to his pounding chest and holds him there, his hand palming the small head.
46
Change of Heart
CHLOE
Sick. Chloe is doubled over by the Dumpsters, retching up tea and two coffees. She wants nothing more than to go home and crawl into bed, but first she has to figure it out: Where is Angus McAdoo? She starts the engine and drives northwest toward the city, crossing at the Burnside Bridge. She winds uphill toward Portland Heights, passing rain-laden cathedral pines in the failing light, squatting Craftsman bungalows and austere modern glass rectangles, stucco with neat chocolate-brown Tudor trim, a drive she could usually do in her sleep, but tonight she passes her own overgrown lawn and peeling-paint porch. She drives another three minutes uphill, turning streets, where was it? Somewhere on Patton, she remembers. Sweat prickles on her brow, slicks her armpits, as she turns up the steep street, the sidewalks here edged with thriving green moss. Big stone pillars, she remembers, gas lamps, near Vista…
Could this be it, with the Premier Properties For Sale sign? She pulls into the driveway. The Tudor is as closed as the face of an ornately carved, stopped grandfather clock. For sale—they’re gone. Chloe’s stomach clenches again; Heather was right! They gave the baby back, and they’ve fled! She grabs her cell phone, scrolls quickly for Francie McAdoo’s number. It rings and rings. She clicks down to the next one, FRANCIE CELL. She presses Call.
“Hello?” Francie, agitated, sounds of a baby fussing lightly in the background. “Hello?”
“Hi, this is Chloe Pint—”
“I know, I saw you on caller ID. Can you hang on a minute?” She hears the ping of a car door opening, rustling of fabric, the baby quiets. “Sorry, we’re just arriving at the grocery