We Can See You

by Simon Kernick

  He’d ruined everything. How the hell could life have been so cruel to him? ‘Why did you do it?’ he snarled at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, sickened by the man who stared back at him, and especially by the handsome, chiselled face that had seemed like such a gift growing up, but had now become a curse, leading him into a succession of bad decisions, culminating in the one he’d made only a few weeks ago – the one that now looked set to destroy all of them.

  He lifted a fist, feeling all the anger and frustration welling up in him, and launched it at the mirror, wanting to shatter it – and the man it represented – into a thousand pieces.

  But the mirror didn’t break. Because his fist never reached it, stopping two inches in front of the glass. He couldn’t even manage to do that right – the prospect of a painful cut hand overriding his rage, like the coward he was.

  Shaking his head in disgust, he stalked out of the bathroom into the cavernous entrance hall, with its grand spiral staircase and expensive, abstract paintings of nothing lining the walls. He’d never felt at home in this house. It had been Brook’s choice. Brook’s project. Everything had always been about her, which was why he’d made the decision to end the marriage and leave to start a new life.

  His thoughts were broken by the sound of a cellphone ringing. It was the one the kidnappers had left and he ran into the kitchen, picking it up from the worktop where it was charging.

  ‘Hello,’ he said breathlessly, relieved that the kidnappers were still in contact.

  ‘Have you got the money?’ demanded the man at the other end – the same one who’d called on the previous two occasions. His voice was low and deep and Logan was convinced he was a young man in his twenties or thirties and that he was American and probably local.

  ‘My wife’s going to collect it later. It takes the bank time to get the cash together.’

  ‘If you get the money today, and do everything you’re told, you’ll have your daughter back tonight. Otherwise, the deal’s off.’

  In spite of himself, Logan felt a surge of hope. ‘We’ll do anything you say. Just don’t hurt her.’

  ‘We haven’t hurt her,’ said the kidnapper. ‘She’s fine. You saw that from the photo we sent. Have you deleted it now?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Logan lied without hesitation. He’d always been a good liar. ‘I didn’t share it, either.’

  ‘Not even with your wife?’

  Logan tensed, wondering if they’d found out somehow. ‘No, I told her about it, but that was it. We’re obeying all your instructions, I promise.’

  ‘Keep it that way. And do not, under any circumstances, involve the police.’

  ‘We haven’t. We just want Paige back unharmed.’ He deliberately used her name, hoping it would elicit some human emotions in the kidnapper.

  It didn’t. The kidnapper’s tone was deliberately cruel as he asked his next question. ‘Would you do anything for Paige, Logan? Anything at all.’

  ‘She’s my daughter, of course I would,’ he answered, but he was conscious of the uncertainty in his voice.

  ‘When you deliver the money tonight, there’s something else that you have to do. Something that you must not discuss with your wife under any circumstances.’

  Logan tensed. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s not going to be very pleasant, Logan. Not very pleasant at all. But if you do it, your daughter will be sleeping in her own bed tonight.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he hissed through gritted teeth.

  ‘You’re going to have to betray your wife,’ said the kidnapper. ‘But then you’re used to that, aren’t you?’

  9

  It’s true what they say about time. When you want it to go slowly, it speeds along relentlessly, seemingly accelerating all the time. And when you want it to go quickly, it crawls inch by interminable inch.

  Brook sat in their family living room opposite Logan, the holdall containing two hundred and fifty thousand dollars open in front of them, wishing she could smoke again. She’d quit six years ago, the day after her thirtieth birthday, and had never even come close to going back to it, even though before that she’d had a regular ten-a-day habit. But now, sitting there constantly looking at her watch, willing the hours away until the kidnappers called with instructions, she knew that if there’d have been a pack in front of her on the table, she’d have gone through half of the cigarettes by now.

  Instead she drank strong coffee, wanting to keep awake and alert. She was now on her third cup of the evening, and was so wired she doubted if she’d be able to sleep at all tonight. A day ago she wouldn’t have countenanced drinking coffee at this time. She only allowed herself one cup a day usually, always in the morning. A day ago her body had been her temple. Today, none of it mattered.

  In the end, it hadn’t been that hard to get the money, although she’d been nervous when she’d got back to the bank that afternoon, in case Ralph Byfield had lost his nerve and called the police, or the bank regulator, or whoever the relevant authorities were. But no, he’d been true to his word. The money had been there on his desk, neatly stacked in twenty-five separate ten-thousand-dollar piles, each containing a mixture of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills. He’d offered to let her count it, but she’d declined. ‘I trust you,’ she’d said.

  ‘And I hope you know what you’re doing,’ had been his reply.

  She didn’t, but there wasn’t much that could be done about that now. So she’d loaded the money into her holdall, put it over her shoulder, thinking it didn’t weigh as much as she’d thought it would, and walked out of there, imagining the stares of the bank’s tellers and customers boring into her back, as if everyone in there knew how much money she was carrying and what it was going to be used for.

  She looked at her watch yet again: 10.15 p.m. ‘What time did they say they’d call back?’

  Logan sighed and rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted. The kidnappers’ cellphone was on the coffee table next to him. ‘I told you. They didn’t give a time. They just said they’d phone later with instructions about where to deliver the money.’

  ‘We’re doing an exchange, right? We’re not parting with that money until we see our daughter alive and well in front of us.’

  ‘I told them that,’ he said.

  ‘And what did they say?’

  ‘They said that’s okay. They’ll bring her with them to the rendezvous. When they’ve checked the money’s all there, they’ll release her.’

  ‘That all sounds pretty simple.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s a business transaction. We pay them money. We get Paige back. There’s no need for it to go wrong.’

  ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that they might double-cross us?’

  ‘Of course it has. But we’ve got to play by their rules, Brook. They’re the ones holding Paige.’

  ‘They’re not touching that money until I see that she’s safe and well,’ she said fiercely.

  ‘Hey, this isn’t all about you, you know!’ he yelled. ‘This is my daughter we’re talking about.’

  ‘She’s my daughter, too,’ Brook said quietly. ‘And all I want is for her to be back here safely where she belongs.’

  Logan let out a low groan and put his head in his hands, before looking back up at her. The pain etched on his face looked real enough and she could see that his eyes were wet. She felt sorry for him then and guilty for her lack of trust.

  ‘I’m sorry, Brook,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just stressed. And I know I haven’t been the best husband, either. When all this is over, I’m going to change. I promise you. We’re going to be a proper, happy family again. We’re going to make everything work.’ A tear formed at the corner of one eye as he spoke, and there was an almost childlike desperation in his voice, as if he was willing her to believe him.

  It was a plea straight from the heart, but she remembered Logan sitting here and making a very similar plea soon after their wedding, when she’d found explicit texts on his cellphone
from another woman – a woman that it turned out he’d already been seeing when he first met Brook.

  She’d forgiven him then, because he’d sworn blind that he’d only seen her once since they’d been together, that he’d been drunk at the time and that he was now racked with guilt and would never cheat on her again.

  But she knew he had, and she also knew that he’d never change. Because men like him never did. Logan was a fraud. The question was: how much of one?

  It angered her that she’d stayed with him, because it went against her whole philosophy of becoming strong through self-respect and independence. ‘You write about it, now live it,’ she told herself.

  ‘You believe me, don’t you?’ said Logan now, giving her the kind of look that would have charmed anyone who didn’t know him. ‘I mean it.’

  ‘I know you do,’ she said, getting to her feet and walking out of the room.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Logan called after her, sounding nervous.

  ‘I can’t just sit there, stewing all night. I need to move around.’

  But she was lying. She might not have been quite so suspicious of Logan as she had been, but she didn’t trust the kidnappers an inch, and she wanted some kind of security in case things went wrong. She was going to get the gun.

  It was a cheap Kahr nine-millimetre pistol that Brook had bought herself for security some years before. Logan hated it. He’d never fired a pistol in his life, but for Brook it was a necessary evil. There were plenty of bad guys out there with access to firearms. If one turned up at her house in the middle of the night, then she wanted a level playing field, which was why, when she was single, she’d always kept the gun in the drawer of her bedside table. However, since they’d bought this place, it had been kept in the bedroom safe because neither of them wanted Paige to find it by mistake. Logan had asked Brook to get rid of it on several occasions, but she’d always resisted. Every now and again she liked to fire it over at the range between Monterey and Salinas, just to keep in practice, knowing that there might come a day when such practice came in handy. She truly hoped that today wasn’t that day.

  And then, when she was only halfway up the staircase, she heard it. The tinny, sing-song ringtone of the kidnappers’ cellphone. She continued up the stairs, not daring to increase her pace, in case she was being watched. She heard Logan say a few muffled words, then his footfalls as he came striding out into the hall.

  Brook was two steps from the top of the staircase when Logan called up to her. ‘We’ve got to go. Now!’ He was already pulling on his coat and the kidnappers’ cell was in his hand. ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes to get to the turn-off to the parking lot up at Garland.’

  She froze, not sure whether to tell him to wait a minute or not. He looked agitated. Suddenly she was struck by indecision. The gun was a huge risk. Just pulling it out of the safe might mean she was caught on-camera. The kidnappers probably still had eyes in the house. And if they saw her get the gun, they might call the whole thing off and then she would never see Paige again.

  ‘Come on, Brook. We need to go. Now!’

  Making her decision, she ran down the stairs.

  Logan handed her the car keys. ‘We’ll take the 4Runner. You drive.’

  She frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I need to talk to them on the phone and get further instructions. I can’t do that and drive at the same time.’ He took her by the arm and gave her a push. ‘Come on. We’ve got less than fifteen minutes to get there.’

  Unarmed, unsure and definitely unready – the exact opposite of what someone going into a difficult encounter should be, in one of her books – Brook grabbed her coat and walked out the front door and into the night.

  10

  The night might have been cold, as was typical of the central Californian coast at this time of year, but Logan Harris was sweating. He sat in the passenger seat with the cellphone on his lap and Brook beside him, driving.

  They were heading down the Carmel Valley road away from the sea and towards Garland Regional Park, a popular hiking destination. The Santa Lucia Mountains rose up on either side of them. This was rural, wine-producing country – lush and beautiful – and a place that Logan far preferred to the upmarket boutiques and art galleries of the town of Carmel itself. It had been Brook’s idea to move down here, away from the San Francisco suburb of Pacifica where they’d first met, and where Logan had spent most of his adult life. They’d both wanted to escape the negative attention their relationship had attracted from the people around them, who were never going to accept the fact that they’d got together when Anna was barely in the ground. Logan had wanted to move to the relative anonymity of Oakland or San José, where it was lively and there was plenty to do, but as always Brook had got her way, and he couldn’t help thinking that if he hadn’t met her, and had instead settled down with someone with the same kind of easy-going personality that Anna had, he wouldn’t be in this situation now.

  It was Brook’s fault. He just needed to remember that.

  Traffic was sparse at this time of night. Even so, Logan had asked Brook to keep within the speed limits. There were often cops on this stretch of road after dark, and it would be hard to explain the quarter of a million dollars in cash in the holdall on the back seat if they were stopped. According to the Waze app on his cell, they’d get to the main entrance to the park at 10.28 p.m.

  He looked at his wife as she stared straight ahead, watching the empty road. She was a beautiful woman. Tan, lithe and fit – the epitome of a successful life-coach. Her face was girl-next-door pretty, rather than right-out-there gorgeous, but she had one of those warm, lively smiles that lit up her whole face and was pretty much irresistible.

  Logan had fallen in love with her at first sight. By the end of their first lesson, he knew he was going to have to be with her. Unfortunately he had two problems. First, he was already married. Second, he was also seeing another woman. Logan knew how bad that kind of behaviour would look to outsiders, but as far as he was concerned, he had his reasons. He and Anna had already known she had cancer and that the prognosis wasn’t good. It had been her second bout of it, and had spread to her bones. They’d both fought it hard the first time, and they’d fought it hard the second time, too, but the pressure of watching his wife slowly deteriorate had got to Logan and he’d sought solace with someone else.

  He wasn’t a good man, he knew that. But he wasn’t such a bad one, either, and when he’d fallen for Brook, he’d known she was the one – just as Anna had been when he’d first met her. Anna had never known about Brook (at least Logan hoped she hadn’t), but she’d definitely given her blessing to him moving on.

  Unfortunately, things hadn’t turned out as he’d hoped. Brook might have had a good heart, but there was also a ruthlessness about her that unnerved him, and a determination that bordered on the pathological. She kept her focus and she never gave up, whatever the cost. She had plenty of acquaintances but very few, if any, real long-standing friends, and her past … well, whichever way you looked at it, her past was dramatic. She adored Paige – there was no question of that – but Logan had known a long time ago that Brook didn’t feel the same way about him and that their love had faded to a shell of what it had once been.

  Even so, the thought of what he had to do to her to get his daughter back filled him with dread. The kidnapper had given him specific instructions earlier but, looking at Brook now, he wondered if he could physically carry them out. He was a big man and naturally muscular, the kind people didn’t pick a fight with. But it was all an act. When it came down to it, Logan knew he was a pussycat. He hated physical violence, and always had. The last time he’d hit someone had been back in college, when he and the other guy had been so drunk their punches had hardly even connected. It had been more of a scuffle than a fight, and he’d been hugely embarrassed about it afterwards. In the end, he was a lover, not a fighter, and that, of course, was the root cause of so many of his problems. Take attractive women ou
t of the equation and he probably could have won the Nobel Prize.

  Instead, here he was, frightened and confused, wondering why his daughter’s kidnappers were so keen to hurt his wife. They’d demanded a quarter of a million for Paige’s safe return and they were going to get it. So what did Brook have to do with anything?

  The problem was that Logan also had a possible answer to that question, and it was one that truly made him nauseous. Because if he was right, Brook would only be the first to die. Paige would be next. And then, finally, it would be him.

  Logan had a sudden urge to throw up, and he could feel himself shaking in his seat. He told himself to calm down, that he might well be wrong. But it didn’t work. He was a physical wreck, and he knew it.

  Brook, though, looked different. Tense, yes. But also strong, focused, her jaw set firm. Always the alpha female.

  He saw her check the rear-view mirror. ‘There’s a car behind us,’ she said. ‘It’s been that distance for the last five minutes.’

  Logan turned round in his seat and saw headlights in the distance, maybe two hundred yards back. He swallowed. The moment of reckoning was coming. He looked at his watch: 10.27. They were almost there. He wondered whether Brook had any inkling of his betrayal. He had to act as naturally as possible, but however hard he tried, he couldn’t get out of his mind the picture of Brook dead on the ground covered in blood, with Paige lying beside her.

  She looked at him. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Feeling the pressure,’ he said, taking a deep breath. A thought occurred to him then. ‘Did you bring the gun?’

  ‘No. I thought about it, but thought it was too risky.’

  Logan wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not. Obviously it made his task easier, but somehow Brook having the gun wouldn’t leave them quite so vulnerable and exposed, especially if the car behind them contained the kidnappers.