I found it impossible to maintain my clinical detachment. This wasn’t one of my patients. This was Sam.
I read the message: If no good deed goes unpunished, the consequences of the bad ones should be even worse, don’t you agree? So it’s time to make a choice.
A string of texts followed.
You can choose to save your children, or you can choose to save your husband.
My heart shattered, each piece heavier than the whole.
If you call the police again, all three will die.
If you try to negotiate, all three will die.
If you make any calls from this phone, all three will die.
If you try to signal anyone, all three will die.
The text-in-progress bubbles appeared on the screen. Another photo was delivered, this one of me in my car. I didn’t look around to see who had taken the photo. It had been taken from my own phone.
The bubbles appeared again, then another text: Pick now.
It became clear to me that it didn’t matter if Sam was alive, because, depending on my choice, he might not be much longer.
Another text, a single number: 3.
I couldn’t choose, even though the choice was clear.
As a father, Sam had been puked on, lied to, yelled at. He had wounded his feet on misplaced toys and had weathered heartbreaks, sleepless nights, and illnesses, both terrifying and imagined. He had sacrificed time, money, and the entirety of his heart—he had never ceased loving Audrey and Leo with unfaltering abandon.
2.
No matter if he had been unfaithful, Sam was a man who would risk his life to save a stranger. So there was no question he would surrender his life to save his children. Without pause or regret.
1.
I had believed the greatest test in my life would be Audrey’s illness as a baby. Then Sam had disappeared, and my children had been threatened, and I thought, no, that would be my greatest challenge. But now, with a single word, I would be sentencing my husband to death.
I made the only choice I could and typed: Children.
39
Once off the highway, there were no cars, only weeds that threatened to overtake the asphalt. Forgoing the main thoroughfare, I approached Daryl’s from a private road. The property owner might decide to take issue with my trespass, but that was the least of my concerns.
When the road veered toward a white ranch house with red shutters, I turned right sharply. The cracked asphalt became concrete, which became gravel, which became dirt and dead grass. No longer on a true road, I carved my own way across the uneven field. I rattled at each bump, barking my knee on the steering wheel twice, but I drove as fast as I was able.
Daryl’s house grew on the horizon, until I could clearly make out its features even in the approaching dusk. I looked for police cars, but none had yet arrived.
A short wire fence separated the two properties. I slowed, intending to abandon the borrowed car and scale the fence. Daryl’s truck was parked just a short jog away on the opposite side, its door open, closer to the main road. I could reach it in minutes.
As it turned out, I didn’t have minutes. An unfamiliar white sedan pulled out of the carport, which had earlier been occupied by the car I drove now. At first, the white sedan appeared to be heading toward the driveway, but it turned abruptly, approaching the road from the backside of the property.
If I had driven in from the front, off the main road, I would have missed the white sedan. Had I not driven ninety on the highway to get there, I would have arrived too late.
I braced myself and then stomped on the gas. I hit the wire fence with a jolt, again banging my knee, two of the three wire strands of the fence breaking on impact. I dragged the third strand behind me. The car screeched in protest as the metal became entangled in the wheel well.
The white sedan disappeared into a stand of trees, a mix of oak and pine, but not before I saw a figure slumped against the front passenger window.
Leo.
If Leo was in the front seat, Audrey was likely in the back seat, still unconscious.
Though I had chosen to save the kids, they were being taken anyway. I hadn’t really expected the bastard who threatened my family to play fair, but I had hoped, and I choked on the absence of that now.
The wire wrapped itself around the drive shaft, too, and the car shuddered to a stop. Despite the pain in my knee—I could tell it had already started to swell—I sprinted the few feet separating me from Daryl’s truck. I prayed the key would be in the ignition.
It wasn’t, and I almost dropped to my knees. But then the glint of green metal caught my eye. A keychain in the gravel, cut in the shape of a marijuana leaf and attached to the key to Daryl’s truck.
I acted on instinct, clear thought a luxury that further endangered my children.
I threw the truck in gear, pressing the accelerator so it surged toward the driveway. I hit the road a second later, just in time to see the white sedan vanish around a bend in the road.
I reached for my phone to call 911 and realized my fatal mistake. I had left it behind in the disabled car.
I followed the truck, beating the steering wheel with the palm of my hand.
Faster. I needed to go faster.
The truck swallowed half of the gap between the two vehicles, but then the white sedan accelerated. I glanced down at my speedometer and cringed. Eighty. The road was posted at half that.
A crash at eighty would kill my children.
I reduced my speed, praying the driver of the white sedan would too.
After a moment, the car slowed, although it still outpaced mine. With the difference in speed and a well-timed turn or two, the white sedan would be able to evade me in minutes.
I expected the other vehicle to turn toward the freeway, but then I realized what the other driver likely had—there were more police cruisers monitoring freeway traffic.
I got a glimpse of a baseball cap as the car turned left, and the curve of a male jaw that seemed familiar, though in the fading light and with the growing distance between the two cars, it was impossible to see more.
As I pursued, memories intruded.
Audrey in her hospital gown on the day she had been transplanted with part of Sam’s liver. After, her newly pink skin had been perfect except for the scar.
Leo as a toddler, at Salmon Creek Beach, studying a tiny crab he held on his palm. His nose had wrinkled as he held it up for my inspection.
Audrey fidgeting at her preschool graduation, because she wasn’t meant for stillness, or for quiet. She had been meant to dance, to twirl, to laugh.
Leo at his high school orientation, leaving me behind to join his friends. I hadn’t minded. My greatest happiness had always been in witnessing my children’s joy.
Likewise, my greatest sadness had always been in seeing their heartbreak. I wouldn’t allow the possibility that I couldn’t save my children.
I released the memories, though they weren’t distractions. Instead, they provided focus.
My respiration and pulse slowed, the waning light intensifying as my eyes adjusted. My knee ceased to throb. I was no longer plagued by fear, or fatigue. The world had narrowed to the road ahead and the white sedan.
The car turned suddenly, back toward civilization, and I recognized where we were. Though I came from another direction, I drove this road nearly every day. Nearly a mile ahead was my clinic.
I wondered at the location. Certainly, the abductor wouldn’t want to continue this pursuit on these more populated streets.