My Darling Husband

by Kimberly Belle

  The only sound is Baxter breathing into my shoulder.

  The man gives another thrust to the gun, jabbing it deeper into my bone. “Tell her it’s safe.”

  “I don’t think she’s down here.”

  The pressure between my ribs releases, the pain dulling to a low throb. My muscles release until I realize the gun isn’t gone; it’s just moved. The muzzle is pressed into Baxter’s thigh.

  “Say it.” The mask casts purple shadows on his face, making him look like a monster. His teeth, the golden flecks in his eyes—they flash yellow in the darkness, standing out like ugly headlights.

  “Beatrix, sweetie, it’s safe for you to come out. I’ll show you how to play the Partita no. 2. You said you wanted to try a piece in C minor.”

  The partita reference, I’m hoping, is a tip-off. Partitas are known for their difficulty, and this one from Johann Bach is long, and it’s fiendish, and it’s in D minor, not C. It’s the piece every violinist aspires to, one of the most difficult ever written, a good fifteen minutes of pure, uninterrupted hell. Me referring to it now is a secret message buried in what sounds like an ordinary sentence.

  Come out means stay hidden. It’s safe is a warning of danger.

  Without warning, Baxter pitches with all his weight to the left. “Mommy, there.” He stabs a finger into the darkness, at the spot where a bulky HVAC unit cloaks the concrete in ragged shadow.

  The man whips his gun to the unit, and I stumble in that direction, too, mostly to hold on to Baxter. It’s like last summer biking on Hilton Head, when he leaned so far out of his seat I almost steered us into the bushes. Now he comes close to tumbling out of my arms, his weight dragging me with him.

  “Good job, Baxter,” the man says, grinning. He keeps his eyes and the gun trained on the spot. “We got you, Beatrix. You can come out now. Tag, you’re it.”

  “Not Beatrix. My bouncy ball with the stars on it and the dinosaurs. I thought I lost it.”

  I let out a hoarse laugh, then swallow it when the gun swings back our way.

  But now that Baxter’s seen the ball, there’s no ignoring it. I crouch down and pick it up, my gaze sweeping the concrete for a box cutter, a nail, something sharp and deadly. A weapon would be a game changer. But my hand comes away with nothing but rubber and dust.

  I push to a stand, brush the ball off on my shirt and place it in Baxter’s sticky palm.

  “Keep moving,” the man says, glaring because I’m taking too long. “You better hope she shows up soon.”

  What I really hope is that Beatrix is upstairs right now, throwing open the front door and sprinting down the driveway, arms flailing at whoever happens to be jogging past, hollering for them to call the police. With us deep in the bowels of the basement, now would be her chance. We wouldn’t hear the alarm pad’s warning beep from where we’re standing, not until the sixty seconds were up and the sirens started wailing. By then she’d be far from the house. I might die here in this dusty basement, but at least Beatrix wouldn’t. With any luck, she’ll live to be a hundred.

  The man shoves me in the shoulder, pressing me forward. “Let’s go.”

  The thought of Beatrix growing up like I did, without a mother, punches the air from my chest, a dagger twisting in my heart. No waving to me from the first chair of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. No scolding me to stop bawling in the front pew when she gets married. No handing me my first grandchild. These are the things both of us will miss if I die here today.

  But Beatrix can still finish school. She can still fall in love, get her heart broken, celebrate birthdays and weddings and Christmases. It won’t be long before she forgets my face, my voice and smile and smell, the way I tug on her ringlets or tickle that spot behind her ear, but she’s still so young. Her grief will turn wooly and imprecise, a general malaise for the loss of a mother she barely knew and can no longer remember.

  I know because it happened to me.

  That’s why I gave up the career I loved, why I’m room mom and snack mom and library reading-time mom, why I cart them all over town, to soccer and music lessons and trips to the library and zoo, why I swallow my impatience at having to ask them three times to clean their room and sweetly ask them a fourth. I tried my best to fill the gap my mother left with all the love I have for my children. If nothing else, Beatrix will remember that her mother bent over backward to care for her, that I filled the house with happiness and love.

  I just won’t be here to see it.

  “Move it.”

  With the man on my heels, we search the rest of the basement. I sweep the space from back to front, calling for Beatrix until my throat is sore. Every move is a calculated risk, every box I peek behind a potential land mine. Because as soon as I find Beatrix, she will be punished. And if we don’t, Baxter and I will be. Maybe not with a bullet to our heads—not yet, not until Cam gets here—but in the meantime, his switchblade can do a lot of damage.

  By the time we come into the last room, the one with Cam’s workbench, I’m ready. I cling to the shadows by the shelves and keep up the pretense, calling for Beatrix as I move deeper down the line. I’m just waiting for the right moment.

  I find it at the wine shelves, where I shriek and jump back, jiggling Baxter from my hip. The relief is instant—my throbbing back loosens, and my deadened fingers go tingly. Baxter’s feet hit the floor and instantly bounce back up. He leaps onto my leg and latches on, climbing me like a playground slide. I shake him off and stomp on the floor with a shoe.

  Baxter skitters backward. “What? What is it?”

  I stomp again, moving closer to the shelving. “A cockroach just crawled over my foot. A big one.”

  The cockroach ruse is lame, I know, and it’s a good thing it’s dark down here because my cheeks have got to be an ugly purple. I am stomping empty air, everything about me visibly rattled, but at least it fits the ridiculous scene. And at least my lie does exactly what I needed it to: it got Bax off my arm and gave me room to move, while also sticking the man’s gaze to the floor.

  I eye the distance between me and Cam’s workbench. Six, maybe seven feet.

  “It went under there.” I gesture to the row of hard-shell suitcases, lined up under a bottom shelf by color and size.

  The man makes a disgusted sound. “Leave it.”

  I whip the suitcases one by one away from the wall, wheeling them into a messy spin behind me. They crash into the room like bumper cars, backing up Baxter and the man even farther. Bugs have never been Baxter’s favorite, but bees and cockroaches are the stuff of nightmares. He shoves his thumb into his mouth and starts sucking.

  The man leans a shoulder against a wall stud. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m looking for the cockroach.”

  “Why?”

  “Why else? So I can kill it.”

  It’s bullshit, of course. But moving down the line of suitcases has me edging closer and closer to Cam’s workbench, taking stock of the tools hanging from a pressed-wood pegboard, assessing which would make the most deadly weapon. A box cutter, a lug wrench, a drill bit, a big, fat, sharp nail. Anything I can wound him with, maybe sink into an eye socket.

  “You’re not supposed to stomp on those things, you know.” He’s put even more space between us now, a good ten feet at least. “Their eggs squirt all over the soles of your shoes and then you drag them all through the house. A couple of days from now, you’ll have a hundred baby cockroaches.”

  I look over my shoulder, but in my head I’m running through the logistics. One more step toward the stairs and he’ll lose sight of my right arm. One more suitcase and I’ll be standing in reach of the workbench.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s an old wives’ tale,” I say, creeping closer to the bench. “And it’s too late anyway. My Terminix guy told me by the time I see one roach, there are a million more crawling around behind the w
alls.” It’s why I pay him to spray the shit out of this place every other month, so we don’t have bugs. I shove a box away from the wall and stomp on the empty floor. “Bax, go get the broom, will you? I think I saw it at the bottom of the stairs.”

  Baxter shakes his head. His feet stay rooted to the floor, his gaze to the spot where I just stomped on empty air.

  The man doesn’t move, either. “What? Why?”

  I whirl around, positioning myself one more step to the right. Two feet, no more, the line of tools within arm’s reach. I pick my target in my periphery, a blue-handled screwdriver at the end of the board, thin and six inches long. One unwatched second, that’s all I need.

  “So I can sweep it out before it disappears behind the wall.”

  “Just leave it and let’s go. Did you hear that, Beatrix?” He leans his upper body back into the hall, craning his neck to holler into the empty rooms. “We’re going back upstairs, so that leaves just you down here with about a million cockroaches.”

  He turns back, rounding us up with his gun and marching us back toward the stairs. Baxter whines for me to carry him again, and I hoist him onto a hip and drag us both up the stairs.

  But as we’re coming up to the main level, I tug my right sleeve over my hand and prick the pad of my thumb with the screwdriver, and a thrill travels up my spine. It’s a Phillips-head, the point sharp enough to break the skin.

  Bring it on, asshole.

  I’m ready.

  C A M

  5:24 p.m.

  I sit in my truck in the bank parking lot, traffic drumming on the other side of the bushes at my bumper, and scroll through the messages on my phone. Missed calls from my mother, a buttload of bills and marketing emails, a flurry of texts from Flavio and a local Housewife hounding me to cater a dinner for the cast and a hundred of their closest friends. I ignore them all, searching for the one I need, but it’s not there.

  Ed’s silence cannot be a good sign. It means he couldn’t talk his boss into fronting the funds for my IRA or, at best, that he doesn’t yet have an answer. Either way, I’m screwed.

  Jade’s words ring on a constant loop through my head, the way her voice sounded on the phone, how fear turned it high and thin. The sound of it shoots a new jolt of adrenaline through my veins, turning me radioactive. I can’t shake the image of her beaten and bloody and tied to that chair, helpless to stop the bastard from going after the Bees—an image that breaks me.

  I run a shaking hand down my face and force myself to focus.

  Stick with the plan.

  Get the money.

  Go get Jade and the Bees.

  This mantra is the only thing keeping me sane.

  I pull up Ed’s contact card and tap the number for his cell, my leg jiggling against the steering wheel. To my left, a neat line of crepe myrtles flutter under a stiff wind, and I start the car and crank up the heat even though I’m sweating. Panic sweat, the kind that makes you feel cold and slightly nauseous, like you’re coming down with the flu. I gun the gas and the vents spew lukewarm air.

  One ring. Two rings. Three. I suck a breath and hold it there, ready to let loose a primal scream if Ed doesn’t pick up.

  On the fourth ring, a slurp of garbled static beats through the truck’s speakers, followed by a fumbling of metal against fabric and finally, thankfully, Ed’s voice.

  “Hey, Cam. I was just about to give you a call.”

  Relief shoots through my veins like a drug, and I settle the phone in the cupholder, then throw the gearshift in Reverse. “Ed, please. For the love of God, please tell me you’ve got good news.”

  I look over my shoulder and punch the gas, swinging the truck backward into the mostly empty lot. I’ve already thought about the best way to Ed’s office, on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise on the Buckhead loop, already plugged the coordinates into Waze. I screech to a stop and shove the gearshift into Drive, but Ed’s next words freeze my fist around the stick.

  “I’ve got some news, yes, but I’m not certain it’s the good news you’re hoping for.”

  A sick tremor works its way across my torso. “Please, Ed. I’m begging you. I am desperate.”

  “Yeah. I’m getting that, Cam, and I want you to know that I really went to the mat for you. My boss may be all smiles at those soccer games and cocktail parties we’re always inviting you and Jade to, but here at the bank Alissa is a hard-ass, and she plays by the rules. I have very little wiggle room in these matters.”

  The parking lot in front of me smears, a hazy gray wash of asphalt and skeleton branches and gauzy air. “I don’t have time for guessing games, Ed. Just tell me what she said so I can figure out how I’m going to plug the hole.”

  “Basically, it’s a yes but. Yes, Alissa agreed to extend a loan to cover the time it takes for us to cash out your IRA, but there are two strings attached. First, she capped the loan at $350,000. Now I realize your IRA is worth much more than that, and that’s great news on the back end, but as far as extending the money up front, Alissa was pretty adamant. Three-fifty is as much as we’ll be able to get out of her.”

  I don’t have to do the math: $350K, plus the cash in the bag on the seat next to me, is a little over half of what I need for the ransom. That leaves one hell of a hole, but it’s an amount that feels a little more feasible. My mind kicks into overdrive, racing through a mental Rolodex of people I know with that kind of cash. Business-owner pals whose fields are cash driven, friends who flaunt wives hung with diamond jewelry and Birkin bags, who blather on about yachts and vacation homes and who have homes with panic rooms and safes stuffed with cash.

  Only problem is, why would they give any of that money to me?

  And then I replay Ed’s words and realize there’s more. He just said there were two strings, two conditions to the money.

  “What’s the other one?”

  At Ed’s sigh, my body turns to stone, bracing for what comes next.

  “The earliest I could get you the cash is tomorrow morning.”

  His message is a gut punch. “Tomorrow morning is unacceptable, Ed. I need this money tonight. I need it now.” I slam my fist against the steering wheel.

  “I understand that, but even if we could get through the paperwork today, an amount that large takes time to pull together. I’m up here at the executive offices, which means I don’t have that kind of cash just lying around. I’d have to call down to a local branch, but it’s already past five. I doubt I could even find anybody to pick up the phone.”

  He pauses, sitting through a silence I know I’m supposed to fill, but with what? I’ve got nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Cam. I know you were counting on this, but truly, my hands are tied. As much as I want to help you out here, and I really do want to help, it’s the best I can do. Come by first thing tomorrow morning, and we’ll get you sorted out.”

  I slump in my seat, resting my forehead against the wheel and breathing through a brutal wave of panic. I see a younger Jade, her curls hanging wild like they used to before she started straightening them, grinning above me in bed. A purple-faced Beatrix, waving wrinkly fists and raising hell in her hospital bassinet. Sweet, innocent Bax, sacked out under the Christmas tree atop his Woody blanket. Devils by day, angels at night, Jade is always joking, but the truth is, Bax is an angel when he’s awake, too.

  And now—

  “Please, Ed. Please, I am begging you.” A sob is stuck in my throat like a brick, so thick it hurts to swallow. “I’ll take any amount you can offer me, at any interest rate. I don’t give a shit what you charge me for it, I just need that money today. This is life or death for me. I know that sounds cryptic, and I can’t tell you anything more, other than that it’s true. If I don’t get this money today, people are going to die.”

  Another long pause. More silence waiting to be filled.

  “Look, I...” Ed clears his th
roat. “I feel obligated to ask what this is all about, because honestly? From where I’m sitting? This sounds like something the police should be involved in. Is everything okay, Cam? Is Jade?”

  I wipe my eyes, fist the steering wheel, and drive the truck out of the lot to God knows where. Where do I go now? Whom do I ask for money now? I follow the asphalt around the building and to the road, and everything around me goes black around the edges. For a shivery second I think I might pass out, but I shake it off, clenching down on my teeth until my vision turns solid again.

  “I know our relationship is mostly professional, but I like you,” Ed says. “I consider you a friend, which is why I’m going to ask you again. Do you need help? Do I need to, I don’t know, send in the cavalry? Because I’ll do it if you need me to. I’ll make that call. All you have to do is say the word.”

  No police.

  And for God’s sake, no sirens.

  “Thanks for trying, Ed. I’ve got to run.” I hang up and pull into traffic.

  * * *

  I drive down an unfamiliar street and try my damnedest not to throw up. $49,000 and some change. That’s all I’ve got to show for ninety full minutes of hustle, and now it’s too late. The banks are closed. Ed packed up his papers and clocked out, and I have less than an hour and a half to scrounge up seven hundred grand from God knows where. What a nightmare.

  Ed’s final words to me echo in my head. I’ll do it if you need me to. I’ll make that call. All you have to do is say the word.

  For the first time today, I wonder if involving the police isn’t my best option. There are loads of home invasions in this city, drama you hear about every day on the news. Surely the cops have a SWAT team, a playbook, skilled negotiators who know what not to say. Surely they know to turn off the sirens. Surely they know how to avoid a standoff.

  Only, how many of them end in tragedy?

  My mind swirls with real-life scenarios I saw on the news. The pregnant lady shot in the stomach by a stray bullet, the girl who watched her twin sister get gunned down, the mother who escaped out the basement window only to have her entire family murdered when the cops busted down the door. I had to flip the channel because their stories were so tragic—and these are just the ones I can remember.