26
Friday, 3:57 p.m.
Rachel stands under the shower. She scalds herself and freezes herself, but the water doesn’t help—she’s still inside the bad dream. Other people lose their kids, people who don’t pay close enough attention. People who let thirteen-year-olds walk home from lonely bus stops in Mississippi or Alabama. This kind of thing doesn’t take place in urbane, civilized, safe northern Massachusetts.
She steps out onto the chilly bathroom floor and shakes her head. That’s the sort of complacency and snobbery that allowed them to kidnap her daughter in the first place. Her head is light. Her left breast hurts. She’s utterly unmoored. She imagines her face again in the nonexistent bathroom mirror. That gaunt, hollow, ugly, un–Jennifer Connelly stupid face. Getting rid of the mirrors—what a joke that was. Just hiding the truth. All those smashed mirrors in the town dump. All that bad luck circling back to her.
Camus said, “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
What bullshit.
All she feels is pain and fear and misery. Fear above all. And, yes, this is the depth of winter, all right. This is the middle of the Ice Age at the sunless North Pole. My daughter has been kidnapped and to get her back I’m going to have to grab a sweet little boy off the street and threaten him and threaten his family and mean it. Mean it when I say I’m going to kill him, because if I don’t I’ll never see Kylie again.
She pulls on a T-shirt, her red sweater, and jeans and walks into the living room.
Pete looks up from his computer.
He can’t know about the torment within her. He can’t know about the fear and the doubts. He doesn’t want to do it. He’s a good man. A veteran. She needs to Lady Macbeth it. “Right, so we’re all set, then,” she says coldly.
Pete nods. He has just come back from the Appenzellers’.
“How does the house look?” she asks.
“Perfect. Super-quiet down in the basement. A bucket to pee in. I got the kid some comic books so he won’t get bored. Few stuffed animals and games as well. Some candy.”
“Latest weather?”
“Still drizzle. Not heavy rain.”
“What is the family doing right now?” Rachel asks.
“Mike’s still at work. Rest of the family is home. Helen Dunleavy is currently writing a lengthy Facebook post about the fig tree in her backyard. Oh, and Toby definitely does not have the peanut allergy.”
“Good. I was on a plane once with a woman who was allergic to peanuts, and she had a meltdown just from the smell of someone’s peanut-butter sandwich. Nightmare,” she says and lets out a huge sigh. “Thank you for coming, Pete. You’re a rock. I couldn’t get through this without you.”
Pete looks at her and swallows. His mouth opens and closes. He has two things to tell her. He has to tell her about the heroin and he has to tell her about the Camp Bastion incident. He’s not a rock. He’s unreliable. He’s a failure. He would have been court-martialed if he hadn’t resigned first. “There’s something you should know…” he begins.
Rachel’s iPhone rings: Unknown Caller.
She answers it on speaker so Pete can hear. “Yes?” she says.
“There’s been a change of plan,” the woman holding Kylie says.
“What do you mean?”
“You are required to deposit an additional twenty-five thousand dollars into the InfinityProjects account.”
“We already paid the ransom. It’s—”
“It’s been changed. Sometimes they change things. You need to pay another twenty-five thousand. Furthermore, you need to complete part two of the process today. Do you understand? If you don’t do these things today, I’m supposed to kill Kylie.”
“No, please! I’ve done everything you’ve said. I’m cooperating!”
“I know you are. They just messaged me. We have to do what they say, Rachel. Another twenty-five thousand by midnight and part two done by midnight. If you don’t do it, I have to kill Kylie. And if I don’t do that, they’ll kill my son, so I have to do it.”
“No, that’s crazy. We’re cooperating, we’re doing—”
“Do you understand what I’ve told you, Rachel?”
“Yes, I—”
The line goes dead.
Another twenty-five thousand today? How?
“Car coming!” Pete says, looking through the living-room window.
“It’s coming here?”
“It’s coming here,” Pete says. “Two occupants. A man and a woman. Parking next to my truck. What does Marty drive now?”
Rachel sprints to the kitchen window. The car is a white Mercedes; the man in the driver’s seat is Marty, and she’s sure that the woman next to him is Tammy. Rachel’s met Tammy only once, at one of the Kylie handovers, but Tammy is a leggy blonde with a cute bob haircut and Marty’s passenger certainly has the haircut.
“It is Marty!”
Pete runs to the kitchen window. “Jesus, you’re right. What is he doing here? I thought you said he was in Georgia.”
Rachel groans. “It’s Friday evening. He’s come to take Kylie for the weekend.”
“We’re on the clock here; we need to get rid of them.”
“I know!”
Marty waves to her through the window. Rachel remains standing, aghast, at the kitchen sink and watches as Marty and Tammy come up the outside steps. Marty opens the kitchen door, smiles at her, leans forward, and kisses her on the cheek. He looks good. Very handsome. Movie-star handsome. He’s lost a little weight, there’s color to his cheeks, and he’s finally gone to a barber who knows how to cut his thick, wavy hair. His green eyes are twinkling, but his heavy eyebrows are knit together with concern when he looks at her.
She fights the weak, atavistic urge to collapse onto Marty’s chest, throw her arms around his neck, and weep. She sniffs and pulls herself together and smiles.
“Well, you’re looking terrific.” Marty lies like a frickin’ trouper. There’s a little clearing of the throat from behind him and he brings Tammy forward. “Of course you remember Tam,” he says.
Tammy is tall and pretty with boring blue eyes. “Rachel!” Tammy declares and gives her a hug. “How are you doing?” she asks.
“I’m OK,” Rachel says and takes a deep breath.
Now that she’s over the shock of seeing them, she has only two objectives: get them out as quickly as possible and without raising any suspicions about Kylie’s absence.
“Pete, what are you doing here?” Marty asks.
Pete marches across the room and gives his brother a hug. “Hey, Marty.”
“Pete, Jesus, it’s great to see you. Wow, you are as brown as a berry. Look at you. Tammy, this is my big brother, Pete,” Marty says.
“Nice to finally meet you in the flesh,” she says and kisses him on the cheek.
“I think it’s obvious that I got the looks and the brains in the family,” Marty quips. “What brought you up here, big brother?”
Rachel can see the cogs turning in Pete’s brain as he tries to think of something. “I called Pete to help me with the roof,” she says.