Free The Devil's Bag Man by Adam Mansbach Page B

needed?
    The quivering, terrified rock.
    â€œIt’s nothing. Just . . . be careful. I’ll see you later on, okay?”
    â€œYeah, I guess. You be careful too, or whatever. And Nichols?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œI’m not going back to school.”
    Click.
    Nichols banged a right, tires screeching. Two blocks from home.
    He lifted his phone again, wondered if he should call Jess, give him a heads-up. But Knowles would never be able to find him anyway—and if he did, well, best of luck. Galvan would see the biker coming a mile away. Probably rip off his head and punt it into the fucking stratosphere.
    It was Ruth whose name was in the phone book, who’d liberated Sherry and her mother from Seth’s compound, gone after the cult leader so relentlessly he’d filed a restraining order against her.
    Nichols skidded to a halt in front of the house, and what he saw kicked the panic into a higher gear.
    Ruth’s red Audi, parked in the driveway, the driver’s door jacked open, the car beeping insistently.
    Her gym bag, lying on the ground.
    â€œRuth!” He raced toward the house, found the front door standing open, tore inside.
    â€œRuth! Baby, where are you?” The front hall, the kitchen. Empty.
    Only then did Nichols think to draw his gun.
    He spun into the living room, weapon first, swept left to right.
    Nothing.
    â€œRuth!”
    From the back of the house, a tiny, breathless cry. “In here.”
    He found her in the bathroom, curled around the toilet.
    Nichols holstered his gun and felt the adrenaline flow out of him, leaving him weak, deflated as an old balloon. He slid down the wall and reached out to touch her hair, sweat-plastered to her forehead.
    â€œBaby,” he breathed. “What’s wrong?”
    She gave him a weak smile. “What are you doing here?”
    â€œI was worried about you,” Nichols said. “You weren’t answering your phone, and then . . . your car was . . . I . . .” He smiled at her—helpless, ridiculous, not caring, his limbs rubbery with relief.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” he asked again.
    She blinked rapidly, then wiped a phantom tear from her cheek.
    â€œI didn’t want to say anything yet,” she started, and Nichols’s heart surged.
    She read the joy on his face and smiled broader. “It’s only been eight weeks. But . . .” She reached out, grabbed his warm meaty hand in her thin clammy one, and pressed it to her belly.
    Nichols didn’t realize he was crying until the first tear hit his knee.
    â€œI know what it did to you and Kat,” she whispered. “Trying for so long. I wanted to wait until I was little further along, in case . . .”
    But Ruth was glowing like she didn’t believe a word.
    â€œI know the timing is kind of crazy.” She caught his eye, held it, squeezed his hand between both of hers. “But you want this, right?”
    â€œMore than anything in the world,” he said, and Ruth pitched forward into his arms.
    Nichols pressed his cheek to the top of her head, closed his eyes, and tried to figure out what it was he felt. A soaring sense of hope, for sure. Of possibility. The searing burn of love, for Ruth and for their baby.
    And also a pounding trepidation, like a drum inside his stomach.
    How do you bring new life into a world you don’t even recognize?
    For reasons that were beyond him, the phrase no free lunch popped into Nichols’s head, and once it was there it wouldn’t leave.

CHAPTER 10
    T he late-afternoon rush was crazy, one youth soccer team after the next, the place filled up with the high-pitched laughter of seven- and eight- and nine-year-olds, kids too young to practice proper cone management, the ice cream sliding down their elbows in white and brown and peppermint-green rivulets, their parents giving duck-walk chase with wadded-up paper napkins while their own scoops went melty in their Dixie