The Inn - James Patterson Page 0,86
when we came knocking after we got reports of screaming in apartments. They snapped at us, pushed us out of their homes, but I’d heard the fear rattling through their words, seen the relief in their eyes at the presence of another focus for their husbands’ rage.
There were small, mournful footsteps on the stairs and then a long, hard silence.
“The court order says you have to give me forty-eight hours’ notice before you come here,” the woman said.
“Teri, I did give you notice. You just never answer your phone.”
“A text from the fucking car thirty seconds before you knock on the door is not notice!”
“I don’t like that tone,” Cline said quietly. His voice was low, coiling, like a snake about to strike. “You know I don’t like it, and you use it anyway. I come to my own house and you treat me like a criminal in front of my own sons, my blood.”
“I just want a warning. That’s all I’m asking for. The judge said you have to give me that.”
“All I want is a bit of respect,” Cline said. Something clattered on the kitchen counter. “You wear the clothes that I paid for. You live in the house that my hard work built. I gave you those two beautiful boys. I can take all of those things away from you in an instant, and you don’t even have the decency to look me in the eye. Look at me. You understand what I’m saying?”
His voice was closer to hers now, inches away from Nick and me, on the other side of the window. I heard a whimper, and Nick flinched at the sound of it, his eyes distant and wide.
“Someone’s giving me a problem,” Cline said. “I don’t know what he’s going to try to do next. I want you and the kids out of the house.”
“But—”
“But?” Cline snapped. Another clatter, a cry of pain. “But what, Teri?”
Nick had heard enough. He tried to rise but I dragged him down.
“Nothing and no one is going to take me away from those boys,” Cline said. “Until I’ve tied up all the loose ends, you pack your shit and get out of here. I’ll call you with the hotel reservation.”
I heard his footsteps on the floorboards. The boys calling to him from the stairs. Cline’s wife, or ex-wife, started crying from the kitchen beyond where Nick and I hid.
“Do we go inside and help her?” Nick whispered. I thought for a moment, listening to the little boys going to their mother, asking her what was wrong. The helpless confusion of tiny children living in the shadow of a monster.
“There’s a way we can help her,” I told Nick. “And it’s the same way we help ourselves.”
CHAPTER NINETY-SIX
SUSAN KNEW WHAT I had decided to do. She stood with me in the kitchen looking worriedly over my work as I massacred some vegetables and then laid them out on a tray, spice-rubbed a shoulder of pork. A day had passed since Nick and I stood idly by while Cline made his ex-wife squeal in terror. The sound of her frightened voice had kept me up all night, Susan tossing and turning as I failed to settle down. Before dawn I’d crept to my basement bed, knowing I’d need her, at least, sharp and ready to be my ally against the man who had come unwelcome into our lives.
In the end, I decided that I had to finish Cline. One way or another, I had to remove him like a cancer from his ex-wife’s life, from my neighborhood. I had to release the choke hold he had on the addicts and hurting people of Gloucester and make sure that what happened to Marni didn’t happen to anyone ever again.
“Is there something a bit strange about preparing dinner for everyone when we’re about to do … ” She paused, shaking her head. “What we’re about to do?”
“I’m finding a weird comfort in it,” I said, wiping my hands on a dish towel. I tried to explain to her and myself that, somehow, knowing the people in my house were fed, even with my subpar culinary offerings, gave me some consolation. “It’s a job. I have to do it. We’ve got a couple renting the front room tonight. But I’m also doing it because it’s a relief, and I think we’d better grab hold of whatever relief we can get right now.”
She seemed to take the suggestion literally and put her arms around me.