Dexter by Design (Dexter 4)

It was a wonderful idea, very decisively delivered, but I saw one small problem with it. “Go where?” I said. “Where has he taken Rita?”

He blinked at me. “What. He told you,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Come on, you don’t watch public television?” he said, sounding like I had committed some kind of crime with small animals.

“Not very much,” I admitted. “The kids have outgrown Barney.”

“They been running promos for it for three weeks,” he said. “The Art-stravaganza.”

“The what?”

“The Art-stravaganza, at the Convention Center,” he said, starting to sound like the promo. “Over two hundred cutting-edge artists from across North America and the Caribbean, all under one roof.”

I could feel my mouth moving in a game attempt to make words, but nothing came out. I blinked and tried again, but before I could make any sound at all, Coulter jerked his head at the door and said, “Come on. Let’s go get ’em.” He took one step backward. “Afterward we can talk about why that looks like you with the guy in the tub.”

This time I actually got both of my feet on the floor, together, ready to propel me up and out—but before I could take it any further my cell phone rang. Out of habit more than anything else, I answered it. “Hello,” I said.

“Mr. Morgan?” a tired young female voice asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“This is Megan? At the after-school program? That, you know, um, with Cody? And Astor?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, and a new alarm began to clatter on the main floor of my brain.

“It’s like five after six?” Megan said. “And I gotta go home now? ’Cause I have my accounting class tonight? Like, at seven?”

“Yes, Megan,” I said, “how can I help you?”

“Like I said? I need to go home?” she said.

“All right,” I said, wishing I could reach through the telephone and fling her away to her house.

“But your kids?” she said. “I mean, your wife never came for them? So they’re here? And I’m not supposed to go if there are kids here?”

It seemed like a very good rule—especially since it meant that Cody and Astor were both all right, and not in Weiss’s clutches. “I’ll come get them,” I said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

I snapped the telephone shut and saw Coulter looking at me expectantly. “My kids,” I said. “Their mother never picked them up, and now I have to.”

“Right now,” he said.

“Yes.”

“So you’re gonna go get them?”

“That’s right.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “You still want to save your wife?”

“I think that would be best,” I said.

“So you’ll get the kids and come for your wife,” he said. “And not, like, try to leave the country or anything.”

“Detective,” I said, “I want to get my wife back.”

Coulter looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded. “I’ll be at the Convention Center,” he said, and turned around and walked out the door.