Kylie lifts her head but keeps her eyes tightly shut. She’s still trembling. The state trooper has seen that something is amiss. A half second goes by while the cop, Kylie, the woman, and the man all decide what to do next.
The woman groans and then there is the sound of a single gunshot.
2
Thursday, 8:35 a.m.
It’s supposed to be a routine visit to the oncologist. A six-month checkup to make sure that all is OK and that her breast cancer is still in remission. Rachel has told Kylie not to worry because she feels great and everything is almost certainly fine.
Secretly, of course, she knows that things might not be fine. Her appointment had originally been scheduled for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving but she’d gotten some blood work done at the lab last week, and when Dr. Reed saw the results, she’d asked Rachel to come in this morning. First thing. Dr. Reed is a dour, even-keeled, unflustered woman originally from Nova Scotia, and she is not one for panicky overreaction.
Rachel tries not to think about it as she drives south on I-95.
What’s the point of worrying? She doesn’t know anything. Maybe Dr. Reed is going home for Thanksgiving and is scheduling all her appointments early.
Rachel doesn’t feel sick. In fact, she hasn’t felt this good in a couple of years. For a while there she had thought she was bad luck’s favorite child. But all that has changed. The divorce is behind her. She’s writing her philosophy lectures for the new job starting in January. Her post-chemo hair has mostly grown back, her strength has returned, and she’s putting on weight. The psychic toll of the past year has been paid. She’s back to the organized, in-control woman who worked two jobs to put Marty through law school and get them the house on Plum Island.
She’s only thirty-five. She has her whole life ahead of her.
Knock wood, she thinks and pats a green bit of the dashboard she hopes is wood but suspects is plastic. In the arcane clutter of the Volvo 240’s cargo area there’s an old oak walking stick but there’s no point risking life and limb reaching back for that.
The phone says it’s 8:36 now. Kylie will be getting off the bus and strolling across the playground with Stuart. She texts Kylie the dumb joke she’s been saving up all morning: How do you think the unthinkable?
When Kylie doesn’t respond after a minute, Rachel sends her the answer: With an itheberg.
Still no response.
Do you get it? Try it with a lisp, Rachel texts.
Kylie is deliberately ignoring her. But, Rachel thinks with a grin, I’ll bet Stuart’s laughing. He always laughs at her dumb jokes.
It’s 8:38 now and traffic is backing up.
She doesn’t want to be late. She’s never late. Maybe if she gets off the interstate and takes Route 1?
Canadians do Thanksgiving on a different day, she remembers. Dr. Reed must want her to come in because the test results don’t look good. “No,” she says out loud and shakes her head. She’s not going to fall into that old spiral of negative thinking. She’s moving forward. And even if she still has a passport to the Kingdom of the Sick, that won’t define her. That’s behind her, along with the waitressing and the Uber driving and falling for Marty’s lines.
She’s using her full potential at last. She’s a teacher now. She thinks about her opening lecture. Maybe Schopenhauer is going to be too heavy for everyone. Maybe she should begin the class with that joke about Sartre and the waitress at the Deux—
Her phone rings, startling her.
Unknown Caller, it says.
She answers with the speakerphone: “Hello?”
“Two things you must remember,” a voice says through some kind of speech-distortion machine. “Number one: you are not the first and you will certainly not be the last. Number two: remember, it’s not about the money—it’s about The Chain.”
This has to be some sort of prank, one part of her brain is saying. But other, deeper, more ancient structures in her cerebellum are beginning to react with what can only be described as pure animal terror.
“I think you must have the wrong number,” she suggests.
The voice continues obliviously: “In five minutes, Rachel, you will be getting the most important phone call of your life. You are going to need to pull your car over to the shoulder. You’re going to need to have your wits about you. You will be getting detailed instructions. Make sure your phone is fully charged and make sure also that you have a pen and paper to write down these instructions. I am not going to pretend that things are going to be easy for you. The coming days will be very difficult, but The Chain will get you through.”
Rachel feels very cold. Her mouth tastes of old pennies. Her head is light. “I’m going to have to call the police or—”
“No police. No law enforcement of any kind. You will do just fine, Rachel. You would not have been selected if we thought you were the sort of person who would go to pieces on us. What is being asked of you may seem impossible now but it is entirely within your capabilities.”
A splinter of ice runs down her spine. A leak of the future into the present. A terrifying future that, evidently, will manifest itself in just a few minutes.
“Who are you?” she asks.
“Pray that you never find out who we are and what we are capable of.”
The line goes dead.
She checks the caller ID again but the number is still not there. That voice, though. Mechanically disguised and deliberate; assured, chilly, arrogant. What can this person mean about getting the most important phone call of her life? She checks her rearview mirror and moves the Volvo out of the fast lane and into the middle lane just in case another call really is coming in.
She picks nervously at a line of thread that’s coming off her red sweater just as the iPhone rings again.
Another Unknown Caller.
She stabs at the green answer key. “Hello?”
“Is this Rachel O’Neill?” a voice asks. A different voice. A woman. A woman who sounds very upset.
Rachel wants to say No; she wants to ward off the impending disaster by saying that actually she has started using her maiden name again—Rachel Klein—but she knows there’s no point. Nothing she can say or do is going to stop this woman from telling her that the worst has happened.
“Yes,” she says.
“I’m so sorry, Rachel, I’ve got some terrible news for you. Have you got the pen and paper for the instructions?”
“What’s happened?” she asks, really scared now.
“I’ve kidnapped your daughter.”
3
Thursday, 8:42 a.m.
The sky is falling. The sky is coming down. She can’t breathe. She doesn’t want to breathe. Her baby girl. No. It isn’t true. Nobody has taken Kylie. This woman doesn’t sound like a kidnapper. It’s a lie. “Kylie’s in school,” Rachel says.
“She’s not. I’ve got her. I’ve kidnapped her.”
“You’re not…it’s a joke.”
“I’m deadly serious. We grabbed Kylie at the bus stop. I’m sending you a picture of her.”
A photo of a girl wearing a blindfold and sitting in the back seat of a car comes through as an attachment. She is wearing the same black sweater and tan wool coat that Kylie put on when she left today. She has Kylie’s freckly pixie nose and brown hair with red highlights. It’s her, all right.