“That wasn’t a cop.”
“How do you know?”
“His shield was phony. Also, any street cop would have a radio on him, and he didn’t.”
“So who was he?”
“Had to be working for your husband,” Black said. “I have no idea how they knew where to find us. Maybe a second tracker on the van I didn’t find, though I looked pretty carefully.”
Was it possible Dallin had some kind of army scouting for Hannah? It was hard enough to believe Dallin had turned into the monster he now seemed to be, but the logistics of his efforts to find her seemed like something out of a Cold War spy novel.
“That man said I was accused of embezzlement,” Hannah said. “If he was planning to kidnap me, why would be even say something like that? I mean, what does that even mean?”
Black made another left and Hannah spotted the sign for the interstate a block away.
“There’s a script,” Black said. “Contingency plans. When they failed to abduct you yesterday, they went to Plan B. Pose as cops. Tell you you’re under arrest, get you to come with them. They probably thought that would be enough to get me to let go of you, but they were wrong. But now we have more problems. I did shoot someone, and there were witnesses. A video will surface of the shooting, and both our faces will be on it. And that embezzlement thing? My guess is your husband’s company managed a way to make that a real accusation against you, and if you go to the police you’ll have to deal with that.”
“You have an answer for everything,” Hannah said.
“It makes sense, and it’s what I would do if I were him. I’d make sure if Plan A failed, you’d have no safe harbor. Start building a story so if you came out against me, you would immediately have credibility issues.”
The car started to close in on Hannah, shrinking smaller around her, suffocating her. She rolled down her window, but the rushing air whipping her face didn’t help.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in this car. I just need to stop and think for a few minutes.”
Her chest tightened, and despite the chill in the air, her face flushed with a flu-like heat. Saliva suddenly started filling her mouth.
“Hannah, I don’t see how stopping the—”
“Please, just let me out.”
“Hannah, I’m not your enemy. You have to understand—”
“Stop the fucking car!”
Black said nothing for a moment and then swerved the car over to the curb, earning a blast of the horn from the person he’d just cut off. Black turned down a side street flanked by industrial buildings and warehouses, stopping in front a shop with a weathered metal sign reading Amco Import Repairs.
Hannah flung the door open, stood on wobbly legs, then bent over and dry-heaved onto the asphalt of the parking lot. She retched twice before catching her breath. Acid burned her throat, but she managed not to vomit. She stood to find Black staring at her. If he was sympathetic, she didn’t read it on his face.
“I know your world is rocked,” he said. “But this isn’t the time to reflect on that. This is the time to keep moving.”
She wiped her dry mouth with the back of her hand.
“I don’t trust you,” she said. Then she added, “I don’t trust anyone right now.”
“Hannah, I can’t wait here while you figure it out. I need to keep moving.”
Hannah looked around. She didn’t welcome the idea of being stranded here.
“I don’t have a wallet,” she said. “Or phone.”
“Yeah, I know. Which is why I wasn’t just planning to abandon you. But that’s what you want, so here you go. I’ll even give you some cash.”
Hannah looked around at the unfamiliar buildings, and as she did, memories of the past twenty-four hours flashed through her mind. She saw them as if they were sloppily stitched together in some grainy, out-of-focus movie, the scenes short and the storyline incomprehensible yet jolting.
She saw Dallin, his face so different than the man she knew. A mannequin.
I’m doing this for you.
Then the smell of bacon. The sunlight streaming through the trees in some swath of woods unknown to her. The voice of Black.
I help people disappear. That’s what I do.
The bullets splintering the wood, the smell of morning air mixed with her own sweat. The coppery smell of blood smeared on her face. Concussive thumps against the bare metal floor of the van as Black drove them away.
She looked up at Black and wanted desperately for him to be one of the good guys.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “Can you understand that?”
Black held up his hands to her. “Of course I do, Hannah. But you have a choice to make, and it needs to happen now. You can walk right now. Walk away. I’m sure you can find someone who will let you use their phone. Then you can go to the police and take your chances. You can tell them everything you know about me. About what happened to you with your husband. I have no idea what will happen to you, but I have a lot of experience dealing with people who have shitty lives. My guess is you’ll wind up dead. If not in the next few days, then certainly within a year.” His voice grew in volume as he pointed to the distant buildings of downtown Seattle. “That fake cop back there? You’ll probably be seeing him again.”
A siren wailed in the distance. A few seconds later a second siren joined, both punctuated by the deep bass of a fire engine’s horn.
“I can’t stay,” Black said, thumbing in the direction of the sound. “I shot a man back there and that’s no small problem for me. I need to keep driving, and you can either come with me or stay here. I want to help you, but I’m done insisting.”
Black didn’t wait for an answer before he began walking back around the car. Hannah stood there with his words—his anger—in her head, and she couldn’t help but flash back to Billy, the yelling, the insults. The disdain for her existence, a disdain Hannah never understood.
“I’m not helpless,” she said just as Black opened the car door.
“What?”
“I said I’m not helpless.”
She heard her father’s voice in her head. So many years of being called a rube, a good-for-nothing, and, the worst of all, a follower. Little Hannie, just doin’ what the cool kids tell her to do. You gonna end up pregnant by sixteen and that’s prob’ly for the best.
Black folded his arms onto the roof of the car. “You have to do what you think is best, Hannah. All I’m saying is I’m leaving right now, and if you’re coming with me you need to move.”
Black climbed into the car.
Hannah reached for the door handle. She was wary of following, but was swept in a current she couldn’t seem to swim against.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
She scanned the car as Black drove. Spotless. No stray receipts on the floor, no water bottle in the cup holder, not a single pet hair on the upholstery. The car was as unadorned as the cabin had been. It served a function, but that was it.
“Can this car be tracked?” she asked.
“No.”
“I thought the van couldn’t either.”
He shot her a look but said nothing.
“I want to use your phone,” Hannah said.
“Who do you want to call?”
Anyone, she thought. Everyone. Call the police, tell them everything that happened. Call Dallin and give him a hearty fuck you, I’m still alive. Call—
“My sister.”
“Who you called back at the cabin?”
“Yes. I have no idea if she got my last message. I mean, if they do anything to her family…”
“Is that your only sibling?”
“Yes.”
“Where does she live?”
“Nearby.”
He let out a deep sigh. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they have her line monitored. Or someone watching her house. Better not make contact. At least not yet. Let’s get a little distance first.”
“Yes, for now.”
“You haven’t even asked me why my husband is trying to…” What word did she want to use? Kidnap? Murder? “Hurt me.”
“Do you even know?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Not really. That’s almost the worst part of all of this. I think he’s…I don’t even know exactly what he is. He seems to have some kind of sexual fetish. He said something in his sleep, and then I found something on his computer. When I confronted him on it, he flipped out. Shoved me against the wall. Choked me.”
Black didn’t seem fazed by the information. “Has he ever done anything like that before? Anything violent?”
“No. Never. It came out of nowhere.”
“Maybe he’s worried about you divorcing him and taking half of his money.”
This couldn’t be about Dallin wanting to avoid a costly divorce. It had to be about something else.
She said, “When we met at the hotel, he wrote something down on a piece of paper. He wrote ‘I’m doing this for you.’ He showed it to me for just a second and then took the paper away. After that, the other guy came in and things went bad quickly. But that keeps sticking with me. Dallin was trying to tell me something.”
“What do you think he was trying to tell you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The night he had the dream, before he spoke in his sleep, he told me he was sorry, and I didn’t know what for. I asked but he didn’t answer. It’s like there are little pieces of the Dallin I used to know still in him, trying to connect with me. But other than that, it’s like he’s a different person.” Then she shook her head. “It’s not just that. He is a different person.”
“People change,” Black said. “Especially when they become successful.”
“Not like this,” she said. She looked over and glanced at his ringless fingers. “I’m guessing you aren’t married?”
“No.” His stare was fixed straight ahead, and he squinted against dull sunlight. “I was once,” he added.
“Did you leave her or did she leave you?”
He glanced away from her. “She left me.”
“How long were you married?”
“She died the day after our fourth anniversary.”
It wasn’t the answer Hannah expected. “God, I’m sorry.” She knew better than to ask what happened, though she was curious. Black was no older than forty, she guessed. So his wife had died young. An early case of cancer? Or was it something sudden and tragic? Maybe something violent relating to Black’s line of work?
Black continued. “Your next question is how I would have reacted if my wife, the one person I knew the most, suddenly tried to have me killed. Is that it?”
“I just don’t know how to relate to anyone what it feels like.”
“And no one could ever understand unless they were going through it themselves. But I can tell you this: I’ve worked with dozens of people in your situation. Mostly women, though not always. And I can tell you if you looked back, really looked back on the last few years, there will be clues. Signs, subtle ones, usually, that will point to the true nature of who your husband is. There are very few reasons for this type of behavior to come out of nowhere.”
“Such as?”
Black seemed not to be expecting the question.
“Actually, off the top of my head I can’t think of any reason.”
“So you’re saying I should have seen this coming?”
“I’m saying what your husband is doing is extreme, but I would guess there were behavioral clues in your past that suggested he was capable of violence.”
That feel good, cunt? I want you to tell me what it’s like to bleed out. Tell me everything…
Hannah felt her stomach tighten as Dallin’s words came back to her. But that was just last week. What were the clues from the past year? The past five years? She hated the thought of obvious signs to which she had been oblivious. Moreover, she hated the idea she should have been looking for signs of distrust in someone she loved so deeply. She had been on edge her entire childhood. In Dallin, she thought she had found someone she could lose herself in. Instead, she realized he was no better than Billy.
Black opened the center console. Hannah immediately saw the butt of a handgun and her body tensed as Black reached in. His fingers moved past the gun and he pulled out a cell phone and handed it to Hannah. The phone was tiny and had only the requisite parts to make a phone call, and nothing else.
“Prepaid cell, untrackable,” he said, handing it to her. “I always have one nearby, usually for a client. That one is now yours. Use it to call your sister, but keep your conversation short. Don’t tell her about me. Do tell her to remain vigilant.”
“She should go to the police,” Hannah said. “She could tell them what I told her. About Dallin.”
Black shrugged, which was the most indecisive thing Hannah had seen him do. “It probably won’t help.”
“You really don’t like cops.”
“I’m sure there are some good ones,” he said. “You just have no idea which ones those are.”
“That sounds a little dramatic.”
“Look, I’ve been doing what I do for a long time, and in that time I’ve learned many things, usually the hard way. I’ve learned never to trust someone who has nothing to lose. I’ve learned the value of prepaid cell phones. I’ve recently learned never to take someone else’s car unless you know it’s free of any tracking devices. And I’ve learned that the chances the police will help someone in a complex situation like yours are lower than the chances they will either hurt you or just fuck things up worse than they already are. These rules are not absolute and don’t always apply. But they are my rules, and if I were you, I wouldn’t go to the police, nor would I recommend it to your sister. Now, there are several things I would advise, so call your sister and then we can go over your options.”
“I think that’s the most you’ve ever said to me.”
“I’m not the chatty type.” He nodded at the phone in her hands. “Keep it under a minute.”
She dialed and Justine picked up on the third ring. Hearing her voice made everything suddenly seem so real. It was both comforting and terrifying.
“Justine, it’s me.”
“Oh my God, Hannah. I got your message. Where the hell are you?”
She felt an impulse to blurt out everything, despite being told less than a few seconds ago not to.
“I’m fine, that’s all I can really say right now. I can’t tell you more. It’s…not safe.”
“Hannah, Dallin came here. To my house. With the police.”
“What?”
Black shot her a look.
“What did he want?” Hannah asked.
“He didn’t talk much. The cops were looking for you.”
“Was he under arrest or something? Did they know what he did to me?”
“I don’t think so. I think they were looking for you for some other reason. Dallin said his company was missing a lot of money and you disappeared right after it happened.”
Embezzlement. “Did you tell them what he did?”
There were a few moments of silence before Justine answered. “I…they were in and out so fast. I didn’t know what to say. And some reporters came by as well. Hannah, what the hell is happening?”
Black nodded at her. Get off the phone.
“Justine, listen to me. I need to hang up soon, but you need to know Dallin is…he’s trying to kill me. I can’t believe I actually just said those words. I’m safe now, but that’s why I’m not coming home. Not yet.”
“Hannah, what are you talking—”
“Please, Justine. Just be careful. I don’t even know what that means. But protect yourself and your boys. Take Zoo to Cynthia, across the hall from my place. You know her, right?” Justine said she did. “Good, she’ll take care of him. Maybe you and the boys should get out of town for a few days. I’ll pay for everything when
this is all over, okay? Take a nice vacation somewhere.”
“Hannah, what happened? Where are you?”
“I have to go.”
She disconnected the call before she could second-guess herself, and then filled Black in on what her sister had said.
He had no questions. He nodded twice but otherwise didn’t react to Justine’s side of the conversation.
After five minutes of silence, he pulled the car over in the parking lot of Walmart, parking in the back of the lot.
“What size are you?” he asked.
“Size? Size for what?”
“Clothes. Pants. Shirts. Bra. You need to go underground for a while. That requires a few supplies.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hannah fidgeted as she waited in the car. She watched the shoppers enter and exit the store, none smiling. An overweight woman in hot pink sweats—the word LOVE stretched to the limit of the fabric along the width of her ass—barked at her daughter, then reinforced her message with a palm to the back of the little girl’s head. The girl just looked down and frowned, accepting the punishment as she probably so often did.
Twenty minutes later Black exited the store and loaded at least ten plastic bags of purchases into the back. Hannah figured most of what he bought were clothes and toiletries, but the one item not bagged was a black suitcase, its American Tourister tag flapping as Black loaded it into the back of the car.
As they drove, the radio dribbled out soulless songs from the 90s, and the increasingly fading reception heralded their proximity to no-man’s land. Black didn’t say more than a few words until at least ten songs in, at which point he reached in front of Hannah and opened the glove compartment. He pulled out a long piece of red silk. At first she thought it was a handkerchief, but then she realized it was a blindfold.
“We need to go to my place,” he said. “It’s the safest place to hide out for a while. I know this sounds extreme, but I don’t want you seeing how to get there, so I need you to put this on. That’s more for your protection than mine.”
“You keep a red blindfold in your car?”
“I’m a magician with many pockets,” he said, offering nothing else.
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