Rachel hugs her tight. “All I did was think about you! Every minute of every second of every day.”
“And then there were times when I thought that maybe those two would just leave me there. Maybe if they thought they’d been discovered, they’d go, and the food would run out and the water would run out and I would just die.”
“I wouldn’t have let that happen,” Rachel says. “I wouldn’t. I would have found you no matter what.”
Kylie nods but Rachel sees that she doesn’t believe it. How would she have found her? She wouldn’t have found her. Her daughter would have been trapped down there forever.
Kylie walks to the screen door and looks out at the basin.
“Your flip-flops are onomatopoeia-ing,” Rachel says, trying to shift the mood.
Kylie turns to face her. “Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“They explained to me that they couldn’t release me until you continued The Chain.”
Rachel looks at the floor.
“Mom?”
Rachel swallows hard. She can’t lie about this—it would make everything worse. “That’s right,” she says.
“So, wait, did you…have you…” Kylie asks, horrified.
“I’m sorry. I, I, I had to.”
“You kidnapped someone?”
“I had to.”
“You still have them?”
“Yes. I can’t release them until The Chain continues.”
“Oh my God!” Kylie says, her eyes wide. “Where?”
“We found a…I found an empty house on the other side of the basin. A house with a basement.”
“They’re over there right now? Alone?”
“That’s where Pete is.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“The less you know, the better.”
“I want to know!”
“A girl,” Rachel says, feeling great waves of shame course through her.
A great river of shame as brown as shit.
“Can’t you just let her go?”
Rachel fights her gag reflex and the flight response and forces herself to confront the present reality. She looks Kylie in the eye and shakes her head.
“C—can’t we go to the FBI and have them hide us and give us new identities or something like that?” Kylie asks.
“It’s not so simple. We’ve—I’ve—actually kidnapped someone. They’ll send me to jail. And you won’t be safe. I believe them when they say that The Chain has never been successfully broken. I think they’ll find us wherever we go. I can’t take that risk.”
“Can I see the girl? Can I talk to her?”
Rachel shudders at the thought of dragging Kylie deeper into this. “No, you go back to school. We’ll handle this. Me and Pete.”
“What’s her name?”
“It’s best that you don’t know.”
“Does she have Marshmallow?”
“Yes.” Rachel tries to hug her, but Kylie pushes her away.
“Don’t touch me!” Kylie says.
“I can get Marshmallow back. I—”
“That’s not the point! It’s not about Marshmallow. It’s about what you’ve done. How could you kidnap someone, Mom? How could you do that?”
“I don’t know. I had to.”
“Did you hurt her?”
“No. Not really,” Rachel says, again swimming in that river of lies and shame.
“How could you do that, Mom?”
“I don’t know.”
Kylie takes a step back and then another until she bumps into the screen door.
Rachel looks at her grubby fingernails and catches a glimpse of herself in the glass. She’s like some skinny, deranged prophet trying to bring a suddenly clear-minded former follower back into the fold. No, she’s not. It’s worse than that. She’s a demon, dragging her daughter down with her into the pit. She’s the opposite of good and kind Demeter. She has made Kylie lie. She’s made her a party to a crime. This fissure between them will widen into a gulf. Nothing will ever be the same again.
She looks into Kylie’s betrayed, teary eyes.
Rachel imagines a sulfurous reek to the air. No, they are not yet escaped from hell. The escape will take months, perhaps years.
Kylie begins to sob. “You had to do it to get me back?”
“Yes.”
“You and Uncle Pete?”
“Yes.”
Kylie slides open the door, and a cold wind blows in from the basin.
“Can we go outside?” Kylie asks.
“It’s freezing.”
“We can wrap ourselves in the comforter. I don’t want to be inside.”
They go onto the deck.
“Can I hold you?” Rachel asks tentatively.
“Yes,” a meek Kylie responds.
Kylie sits on her mother’s lap in the Adirondack chair, wrapped in a blanket, the long tie of Rachel’s robe threaded around them like an umbilical. They don’t talk. They just sit there.
The day dwindles to an end in a line of reds and yellows along the Merrimack Valley. It grows dark, and when the stars come out, mother and daughter are swallowed up by the night. What is going to be a long, terrible night indeed.
37
Sunday, 10:45 p.m.
Her instinct’s right. The Chain is screwing up. Well, her instinct is partially right. The problem, however, is not Rachel Klein. And the problem is not Helen Dunleavy. The problem is Seamus Hogg. Using standard spyware tech, she has mirrored the Hoggs’ phones and read Seamus’s e-mails. Seamus e-mailed his uncle, a guy named Thomas Anderson Hogg, who lives in Stamford, Connecticut, and asked him if they could meet at a Starbucks in Stamford tomorrow morning at ten.
This is a big problem because Thomas Anderson Hogg is a retired U.S. marshal.
Seamus is going to rat.
And not even to the cops but to the goddamn U.S. Marshals Service.
She looks at the data on Rachel again. An uninteresting but surprisingly competent link so far. She has done everything right. Paid the ransom fast, paid the increased ransom fast, carried out a successful kidnap.
She is capable and good. Her ex-brother-in-law is helping her. Another interesting dude. Honorably discharged from the Marines but he had taken some heat for the September 2012 Camp Bastion incident. No pension. Only the minimum VA benefits. Arrested in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 2017 for possession of one gram of brown-tar heroin. Charges subsequently dropped. The mug shot is of a haunted, dour, prematurely middle-aged-looking man.
Is the ex-husband helping too?
She Googles Rachel’s ex-husband, Marty O’Neill.
Now, that’s a good-looking guy. A very good-looking guy indeed. She’s surprised she hasn’t come across him before. The pool of eligible bachelors in Boston is remarkably shallow. Harvard grad, lawyer, dating some drippy blonde. Born in Worcester, lives in Boston, is a partner at the white-shoe law firm of Banner and Witcoff. Yeah, he’s the brains of the family.
Well, let’s see how they collectively handle a little curveball.
She logs into the Wickr app and messages Rachel:
Seamus Hogg is defecting. He is going to rat. He e-mailed his uncle, a retired U.S. marshal, and he’s meeting him tomorrow at ten a.m. in Stamford, Connecticut. Obviously, this meeting cannot be allowed to take place. The Dunleavys have screwed up. They have picked an unreliable target. And their screwup is your screwup, Rachel. Kill your hostage and pick another target or stop this meeting and remind the Dunleavys and the Hoggs that they are part of The Chain. If you do neither of these things, the blowback will come for you and your family. We know where you live. There is nowhere you can go where we will not find you.