Chapter 48 Mack
Mack
The light in the front hall was blinding; it dropped like a sheet over Mack’s vision, the glare eclipsing everything in his house—bouncing from the floor, the walls, the mirrors, right into his eyes.
Mack couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, could think of nothing else but the image of Allison being bundled into that cruiser, her head disappearing inside, the slam of the door.
Then he thought of his girls: someone was going to hurt his girls.
It had to be him: Gerry Baptista, the man Hailey had just let walk away from him. The rich old bastard had slipped right through Mack’s grasp. How could Hailey not see it? Should he go over there, to the guy’s house? Rifle through his office? Punch him? Kill him?
Or it was his father. Of course it was his father. Mack burned with rage at all his father had done to him, to his mother—but how would he find a dead man?
David Rainier. Against all reason, against the laws of time and space, it could be the man who had fucked Mack’s very own wife, then sailed off into the sunset on his yacht.
It was all those pricks, all around the world. Pushing him, daring him, torturing him. Driving him to acts he’d never, ever have committed without their voices in his ear. Trapping him. And he’d been stupid enough to walk right into it.
Why couldn’t they have left Mack alone? Why couldn’t he have lived his life like he wanted to, in his nice little house with his clever job and his wife who had, at one point, loved him? He hadn’t asked for too much. He had never hurt anyone. Why him?
He bounded up the stairs; they had left the door open and unguarded. His girls . . . were his daughters okay? His heart would explode from his chest.
They were. His girls were in their beds, oblivious and safe.
But for how long?
How long would he wait while this thing circled outside? All these things? All these people the voice had mentioned, willing to do his job for him, willing to punish him for not doing it? Willing, maybe, to kill him or his family?
He paced. He checked the windows. At some point in the wee hours, he became aware of the floorboards—the ruined, splotchy floorboards stretching all through the house like a desert wasteland—and of Gulliver looking up at him, whining.
Hailey was whining too, but her voice was a thousand miles away, and he could see, rather than feel, her hands grabbing at his arms, clasping his shoulders.
Then a piercing thought shot through the fog, and Mack frantically scanned the front hall—had anyone checked it?
He tore both light fixtures from the walls on either side of the big mirror, sent them crashing to the floor.
He turned the console table over, upended the porcelain umbrella stand. There were no cameras.
“Mack, stop!” Hailey wasn’t whining anymore; she was pleading. “Please. I understand. But this isn’t helping. We need to sleep for a little, so we can think. This isn’t helping anyone,” she said again.
“No,” Mack agreed. “It isn’t.”
He knew then what he had to do. He grabbed his keys and bolted, ignoring the sound of Hailey’s voice calling after him.