Kiss of the Bees by J. A. Jance Page B

Johnson’s errands were run and he was back on the mountain, watching and waiting. The front yard of the Walker place was an unfenced jungle—a snarl of native plants and cactus—ocotillo, saguaro, and long-eared prickly pear—with a driveway curving through it. One part of the drive branched off to the side of the house, where it passed through a wrought-iron gate set in the tall river-rock wall that surrounded both sides and back of the house.
    Late in the afternoon what appeared to be an almost new blue-and-silver Suburban drove through an electronically opened gate and into a carport on the side of the house. Mitch watched intently through a pair of binoculars as the woman he had come to know as Diana Ladd Walker stepped out of the vehicle and then stood watching while the gate swung shut behind the vehicle.
    She probably believes those bars on that gate mean safety, Mitch thought with a laugh. Safety and security.
    “False security, little lady,” he said aloud. “Those bars don’t mean a damned thing, not if somebody opens the gate and lets me in.”
    Using binoculars, Mitch observed Diana Ladd Walker’s progress as she made her way into the house. She had to be somewhere around fifty, but even so, he had to admit she was a handsome woman, just as Andy had told him she would be. Her auburn hair was going gray around the temple. From the emerald-green suit she wore, he could see that she had kept her figure. She moved with the confident, self-satisfied grace that comes from doing what you’ve always wanted to do. No wonder Andrew Carlisle had hated Diana Ladd Walker’s guts. So did Mitch.
    A few minutes after disappearing into the house she reemerged, dressed in work clothes—jeans, a T-shirt, and hat and bringing her husband something cold to drink.
    How touching, the watcher on the mountain thought. How sweet! How stupid!
    And then, while Brandon and Diana Walker were busy with the wood, the sweet little morsel who was destined to be dessert rode up on her mountain bike. Lani. The three unsuspecting people talked together for several minutes before the girl went inside. Not long after that, toward sunset, Brandon and Diana went inside as well.
    In the last three weeks Mitch Johnson had read Shadow of Death from cover to cover three different times, gleaning new bits of information with each repetition. Long before he read the book, Andy had told him that the child Diana and Brandon Walker had adopted was an Indian. What Mitch hadn’t suspected until he saw Lani in the yard and sailing past him on her bicycle was how beautiful she would be.
    That was all right. The more beautiful, the better. The more Brandon and Diana Walker loved their daughter, the more losing her would hurt them. After all, Mikey had been an angelic-faced cherub when Mitch went away to prison.
    “What’s the worst thing about being in prison?” Andy had asked one time early on, shortly after Mitch Johnson had been moved into the same cell.
    Mitch didn’t have to think before he answered. “Losing my son,” he had said at once. “Losing Mikey.”
    His wife had raised so much hell that Mitch had finally been forced to sign away his parental rights, clearing the way for Mikey to be adopted by Larry Wraike, Lori Kiser Johnson’s second husband.
    “So that’s what we have to do then,” Andy had said determinedly.
    This was long before Mitch Johnson had taken Andrew Carlisle’s single-minded plan and made it his own. The conversation had occurred at a time when the possibility of Mitch’s being released from prison seemed so remote as to be nothing more than a fairy tale.
    “What is it we have to do?” he had asked.
    “Leave Brandon Walker childless,” Andy had answered. “The same way he left you. My understanding is that one of his sons is missing and presumed dead. That means he has three children left—a natural son, a stepson, and an adopted daughter. So whatever we do we’ll have to be sure to take care of all