“For a while, I did.”
“Why did you stop?” I said.
“Every time I got hit in the face, I cried,” he said.
So I knew Tom would do his best to keep Denise and himself alive.
But it was up to me to get them safely free.
Near the Wrangler is a pump island for diesel, and four tractor-trailer trucks are lined up, refueling. I tug out the burner phone. This is my connection to the kidnappers, the ones who have upended my life, have stolen my husband and child, and who’ve put them in danger.
I go to a nearby tractor-trailer truck, belonging to Walmart. I shove the phone in a crack under the doors and go back to my Wrangler.
Earlier the kidnapper thought he had sent me on a mission.
He has.
Mine.
Not his.
CHAPTER 7
IN HIS years as a journalist, Tom Cornwall has been in some tight places: under artillery bombardment in a Kurdish peshmerga outpost in Syria, accidentally separated from a Filipino army patrol while they were hunting Abu Sayyaf terrorists in the jungles of Jolo Island, and in an armored-up Humvee convoy in Afghanistan when the lead vehicle did a flaming backflip after it ran over an IED.
In all of these close calls, Tom had one sustaining mantra: his circus, his monkey. He was in danger because that was his choice, his life, and if things went to shit, well, he’d be the only one bloodied out.
Sitting on the edge of a cot in a concrete cube somewhere, he sighs, rubs his head. Now he is in danger again, but now it is so terribly different.
He lifts his head. His daughter, Denise, is curled up on an identical cot, on the other side of the room. She’s barefoot, wearing black tights and an oversized sweatshirt from Epcot Center. She’s clutching a stuffed Tigger in her arms, and it’s been ten minutes since she last let out a sob.
Progress, of a sort.
She looks up and says, “What about Mister Banjo?”
Tom gets up and examines their quarters. A square room, made of light-green cinder blocks. Concrete ceiling with a small air vent. Concrete floor with a drain in the center. One metal door, leading out. No handle or doorknob on this side. Four lightbulbs dangling from black cords. A dial that can lower the lights but not turn them off. In the corner of the room, a metal sink and metal toilet.
That’s it.
“Daddy, what about Mister Banjo?”
He walks back and forth, back and forth, working out the kinks in his legs and arms. The events of the past hours keep on running back and forth in his mind, like a defective DVD that skips and repeats the same scene.
A regular day at home. Denise in the kitchen, running the blender, making a fruit smoothie, having just changed and dumped her soccer clothes in the bathroom, with a promise that she’ll pick them up, real-soon-now. He in his office, supposedly doing research on his book, but going down a YouTube rabbit hole showing black-and-white science-fiction movie clips from the 1950s. Looking out the window, seeing a red van make a turn in a driveway two homes down.
Back to YouTube, seeing old footage of a V-2 rocket launching from White Sands, pretending to be a moon rocket. Hearing a vehicle come into the driveway, leave, and then return.
Doorbell rings. He gets up, goes to the door.
Whirring sound of the blender.
Open the door to two smiling yet nervous men wearing gray jumpsuits, one of them holding a clipboard, and the one on the left, in an accented voice, says, “Sir? We’re here for the carpet cleaning?”
Situational awareness.
It all comes right to him at that moment.
The men are nervous, jittery, their dark-skinned faces sweaty.
He and Amy haven’t ordered a carpet-cleaning service.
This is wrong.
He smiles at the two men, starts closing the door, knowing the gun safe is right at his shoulder, and says, “Sorry, there must be some mistake.”
No more smiles, no more nervousness.
The larger of the two men snaps out something in a foreign language, and they break in, and now it’s like a bad dream that’s only getting worse, and he shouts, “Denise! Run!”
Then on the floor, gasping, legs and arms trembling, as some sort of Taser-like device is being pushed into his ribs. He’s thrown on his stomach, hands and feet are being bound, and in a high-pitched voice that will haunt him to his deathbed, he hears Denise screaming.
He fades in and out. He’s rolled into something. It goes dark. He’s lifted up. Dropped. Movement. Engine sounds. Stops and starts, stops and starts. More lifting. Engine sounds.
Lifting up and down, up and down.
Then…
Unwrapped in this room by the same two men, plastic ties cut away, Denise sobbing next to him, long hours trying to calm her down…
Knowing they are trapped, knowing he is in the greatest danger of his life, and also knowing he has put his ten-year-old girl in a depth of jeopardy he dares not even consider.
CHAPTER 8
NOW, IN their concrete prison, trying not to obsess over his mistakes that got them here.
Right now, trying not to panic in front of the little girl who’s depending on him to make it all right.
“Daddy! Mister Banjo!”
Her scream cuts through his thinking, his memories, and another chunk of guilt has just been added to the monument piling up in his gut.
“Sorry, hon,” he says.
He goes over, sits down on the cot next to Denise. He strokes her back, looks around at their surroundings. Where are they? He’s not sure. He was so out of sorts for such a long time that he has no idea if it’s been three or six or nine hours since their kidnapping.
He tried talking, reasoning, and even begging the two men who deposited them here, taking the unrolled carpets with them.
He tries to remember the word the larger man said back at the house. Middle Eastern, of course, but he didn’t understand it.
And his wife, Amy, a captain in military intelligence.
Lots of puzzle pieces out there.
“I’m sorry, hon, who’s Mister Banjo?”
Her voice is filled with accusation. “I already told you!”
Tom grits his teeth, tries to keep it together. “I’m sorry, hon. Could you tell me again?”
Tears come back to her eyes. “Mister Banjo. In Mrs. Millett’s class. He’s our pet hamster. I was going to bring him home tomorrow and keep him a week, like the other kids. This week it’s my turn…and I won’t be there tomorrow!”
She starts sobbing again, and Tom brings his hand up higher, to Denise’s head and soft blond hair. He strokes her hair and she sniffs and rubs a hand across her runny nose. She’s ten and normally wouldn’t be hugging a stuffed Tigger like this, but nothing here is normal. Still, despite the anger and fear and anguish, there’s pride in his little girl. She’s not your typical ten-year-old, especially since she has parents who sometimes depart for weeks or months, spending quality time on Skype or FaceTime.
He says, “I’m sure Mrs. Millett will understand. Mom…Mom will probably tell her when she can. And then we can fix the schedule so you can get Mister Banjo later.”
Denise nods and Tom wonders at what point his little girl will no longer be convinced that her dad can solve any problem in the world.
“Daddy?” she finally asks.
“Yes, love?”