Page 85 of Return of the Spider

“The baby kicks, Daddy!” Damon said. “The baby kicks!”

Maria started laughing. “That’s all this baby does these days.”

“Like you said, maybe it’s a sign we’re gonna have a little athlete. A soccer star or maybe a runner,” I said, going to embrace them both.

“A marathoner, at this rate.” My wife kissed me and then groaned and rubbed at her side. “My lower ribs are all sore.”

Damon frowned. “Mommy hurt boo-boo?”

She smiled at him. “Mommy a little hurt boo-boo, D-man.”

He put his hand on her belly and leaned in close, still frowning, very serious. “Stop that, baby. No kicks. No hurt Mommy little boo-boo.”

For some reason, Maria and I both found that hilarious, and we laughed until we had tears coming down our faces.

“I love being that little boy’s mom,” she said later after Damon had gone down for the night and we’d laughed again about him lecturing his little sibling in utero.

“I love being his dad,” I said. “And your husband.”

“Aww,” Maria said, and kissed me. The baby kicked again.

“Wow, even I felt that,” I said.

“Baby wants out,” Maria said. “I predict this little one will be coming any day.”

PART FIVE

Deeper Cover and Renewal

CHAPTER

70

Classes at washington daySchool formally ended at noon on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

Getting in his Saab, Gary Soneji felt grateful to be leaving the city and heading north before the traffic that would snarl the highways up and down the East Coast in the next twenty-four hours started. He’d packed last night and put his things in the trunk this morning. The short academic day meant Soneji had not had a chance to see Cheryl Lynn Wise before the vacation. But that was fine.

If he got too close too soon, he’d risk suspicion, and his interest in the chief of staff’s daughter might swell to uncontrollable obsession.

This was for the best. He had five free days now to not onlywiden his cover but thicken it to the point he’d be all but invisible to the police.

He drove north on I-95 until he reached an exit he’d circled on his map, near the Maryland-Delaware line. He drove east and then across the border, looking for the address of an abandoned farm he’d found in a real estate listing.

His experience with Bunny had made him realize how fortunate he was to have the cabin in the Pine Barrens. It had also made him aware of his remote property’s rareness and fragility. He could not make it a constant center of his quiet activities.

He had to use it as a frugal man might a treasure.

And Diggs’s grandmother’s place was out of the question. Soneji planned never to set foot on that property again. Which meant he needed a new place, one he could explore and develop before he welcomed dear Cheryl Lynn or whoever it was he decided to snatch.

When he arrived at the farm from the listing, however, he dismissed it as a possibility, given the property’s open nature. He wanted no view of the house or barns from any road or hillside.

Over the next two hours, he drove to two more farms for sale. The first one, also in Delaware, was another disappointment. The second was in New Jersey, fifteen miles north of the border. Instead of heading east toward his place in the Pine Barrens, Soneji went west in search of the elusive, secluded, and abandoned farm of his fantasies.

At first glance, the third property seemed the perfect spot: one hundred and sixty acres, forty of it overgrown CRP fields, none of it tilled in three years. And the farmhouse, barn, and yard were all well shielded from the road.

Driving by the entrance to the property, he got a glimpse of the yellow farmhouse far down a lane flanked on both sides bymature ornamental spruce trees. He also saw aFOR SALEsign with a real estate agent’s picture, name, and number.

That alone made Soneji nervous. When he swung the Saab around and drove past the property again, his instincts were confirmed and then amplified.