Kenny is a bit slow on the uptake and Rachel guesses that it isn’t every day that a somewhat attractive older woman comes on to him, but eventually he begins to see that she’s making a pass at him. In fact, he probably thinks she made up the whole story about the kids in the yard just to manufacture this little encounter.
“If you could give me your number, I—”
“Yes,” Rachel says. “This week isn’t good, but next week if you’re not too busy…or we could go for a drink or something. You know, if it’s too cold for ice cream,” she adds, giving her winningest smile.
Kenny smiles back.
“Have you got a pen and paper?” she asks, noting that he doesn’t have them on him. “Back at your car?”
She walks him back to the cop car, touching his arm a couple of times accidentally on purpose. She gives him her number and thanks him for coming out. “I’ll check the locks. I’m supposed to go in and feed the fish anyway,” Rachel says.
“I can go with you,” Kenny offers.
She shakes her head. “Nah, I’ll be OK, I have the heart of a lion…and a lifetime ban from the Boston zoo.”
Kenny hasn’t heard that one before and he laughs. He gets in the police car and she smiles again and waves as he drives off.
When he’s out of sight, she rushes to the back door, enters through the kitchen, and runs down the basement steps, putting on her ski mask as she goes. “Hang on, honey! Hang on!”
Amelia is covered in hives and sweat but, incredibly, is still alive.
Barely.
“Oh my God, sweetie, hold on, just hold on.”
Amelia is drooling and her breathing is getting shallower.
Rachel pulls her out of the sleeping bag.
She’s on fire. Her eyes flutter.
Her breathing slows, slows, slows, and then stops completely.
“Amelia?”
She isn’t breathing. Oh my God! CPR! How do you—
Rachel remembers what to do and begins giving her mouth-to-mouth.
She inhales deeply and then breathes life back into Amelia. Once, twice.
She changes position and pumps Amelia’s chest hard and fast, thirty times.
The little girl is breathing again but she needs help, now. Rachel taps 911 into her phone but doesn’t press send.
One call and the paramedics will come and save Amelia’s life.
They’ll save Amelia and condemn her own daughter to death.
She squeezes the iPhone so hard she thinks the glass is going to crack.
Amelia’s face.
Kylie’s face.
No. She can’t do it. Sobbing on the concrete floor, she puts the phone down.
31
Saturday, 7:27 a.m.
The door at the top of the basement steps opens.
“Breakfast on time this morning,” the man says, coming down the stairs with a jug of orange juice, toast, and a bowl of cereal. Kylie looks for the gun and there it is, tucked in the front of his pants, something her uncle Pete says nobody should ever do with firearms.
“Are you awake?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Kylie says, sitting up in the sleeping bag.
“That’s good. Do you like marmalade? I love it. I never had it before I went to London a few years ago. Had it on my toast at breakfast.”
“Yes, I do like it. My mom gets it sometimes.”
“Toast cut into triangles, Maine butter—from grass-fed cows, of course—Coco Pops, and OJ. That should keep you going for a while.”
He sets the tray down on the ground.
She has deliberately placed Moby-Dick on the floor, opened, facedown, two-fifths from the end. She knows he’ll pick it up, impressed.
“My goodness, you’re doing well with this. You’re over halfway—”
While he is bending over, Kylie clubs him on the head with the wrench. The fact that he’s wearing the ski mask makes it easier to do because she can pretend she’s not hitting a human at all. The man groans and she hits him again.
He falls forward and lands with a sort of pathetic clump on the edge of the mattress.
She has no idea where on the head she’s hit him but it has done the trick, all right. He’s out.
Now she knows she’s in a race against time.
She has to flip him over, get the handcuff key out of his pocket, uncuff herself, and run up the steps.
Out in the yard, there could be a dog or the woman or anything. She’ll have the gun. She’ll have to shoot. If there’s no one there, she’ll have to run straight for the fence as fast as she can. If she’s in the part of New Hampshire she thinks she is, it’ll be marshy and boggy, but if she keeps going east, she’ll hit I-95 or Route 1 or the ocean. She’ll keep going even if they yell at her to stop.
He’s a heavy man but she manages to roll him over onto his back, pushing on his sweaty chest and his armpits that smell like onions.
She takes the gun out of his waistband and searches in all his pockets for the key to the handcuffs.
No wallet, no ID, no nothing, but especially no key.
She searches again just to be sure. He’s wearing old-fashioned brown slacks with deep pockets, but they’re totally empty. There are no rear pockets in the pants, but his shirt has a pocket at the front. It would be the perfect place to hide a handcuff key.
Yes! she thinks, but there’s no key there either. Damn it.
On to plan B. Kylie examines the gun. There are six bullets in the cylinder. OK, she thinks, all he has to do is wake up.
A minute goes by.
Two.
Oh my God, has she killed him? All she did was hit him with a wrench. That didn’t kill people in the movies. She didn’t mean to kill—
The man begins to stir.
“Oh, my head,” he says, smiling weakly. “Right in the noggin. You got me good.”
He groans, and after a few seconds he sits up and looks at her. She has the gun in her hand. The loaded gun.
“What did you hit me with?” he asks. He puts his hands under the ski mask and rubs his eyes, moaning.
“I found a wrench on the floor,” Kylie says.
“What wrench?”
Kylie holds up the wrench in her left hand.
“Oh, wow. How did we miss that?”
“It was under the boiler.”
“Impossible! I checked this room.”
“You had to be in a certain spot at a certain time. I remembered what Howard Carter said when he found King Tut’s tomb. You have to be looking, not just seeing.”
The man nods. “I like that. You’re very smart, Kylie. All right, so what is supposed to happen next in your plan?”
“I’ve searched you. You don’t have the key to the handcuffs, but she must. I want you to yell for her and tell her to bring the handcuff key.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll shoot you.”
“Do you think you’re capable of doing that?”
“Yes. I think so. My uncle Pete took me target shooting a few times. I know what to do.”
“It’s a different thing, though, isn’t it, shooting a target, a piece of paper, and shooting a person?”
“I’m going to shoot you in the leg first to show you that I’m serious.”
“And then what?”
“She’ll give me the handcuff key and I’ll go.”