The Chain

by Adrian McKinty

  Pete thinks back to that night at Camp Bastion in September of 2012 when everything went wrong. He bites his lip. “Yeah, it’ll be fine, Rach,” he says.

  “But even if it all goes right,” she replies wretchedly, “it’ll still be absolutely terrible.”

  24

  Friday, 11:39 a.m.

  Kylie wakes up in a sleeping bag. Where—

  With a gasp of horror she remembers where she is and what has happened. She’s in a basement somewhere north of Newburyport where two people, a husband and wife, are keeping her until her mother pays a ransom. Kylie’s throat constricts. She sits up in the sleeping bag and hyperventilates. The air down here is musty and thick.

  She pulls it into her lungs nevertheless and forces herself to calm the hell down. They’re going to kill me, they’re going to kill me, they…no. They’re not. They’re not psychopaths. They aren’t going to harm me if Mom does what they want. What happened with the state trooper was an accident.

  And she’s not dead yet.

  She’s been working on a plan. The wrench…yes!

  Judging from the sun, she probably slept late. Amazing that she slept at all. She needs to pee real bad now. She turns her back to the camera, grabs the pee bucket, and uses the scrunched-up sleeping bag as a shield.

  A few minutes later the door opens, and she can see the man at the top of the stairs. Beyond him are a yard and a tree. He leaves the door open as he comes downstairs holding a tray. He’s wearing pajamas and he has his ski mask on. She can hear him breathing heavily, as if coming down the stairs has been a bit of an effort.

  “Good morning,” he says. “If it is still morning. It is, I think. I brought you, a, um, late breakfast. Cheerios. You like Cheerios, yeah?”

  “Sure.”

  He walks across the basement floor and sets the tray down next to her. A bowl of Cheerios and milk, a glass of orange juice, another bottle of water. The gun handle is poking out of his pajama pants pocket.

  “Apologies about the hour. We didn’t get to bed until very late last night. We weren’t, um, expecting things yesterday to go so…you must be hungry. Did you get any sleep?” he asks.

  She shakes her head noncommittally.

  “It’s not surprising,” he replies. “This is a crazy set of circumstances. Never in my wildest dreams…”

  “Why are you doing it?” Kylie asks.

  He takes a deep breath. “Because they’ve got our boy,” he says softly and shakes his head. “Did you get a chance to look at the books?”

  Kylie sees a little opening here. “Yes. I’d never read Moby Dick before. I always thought it would be boring.”

  “But you liked it?” the man asks excitedly.

  “Yes. What I read of it.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. A classic. Boring at first, maybe, for someone of your generation. But once you let your mind get into that way of thinking, it just sort of flows along.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I liked the tattooed guy.”

  “Queequeg? Isn’t he wonderful! Melville lived with the South Pacific Islanders for nearly a year, and his portrayal of them is quite affectionate, don’t you think?”

  Kylie desperately tries to come up with something to say, something that would have impressed her English teacher if she was put on the spot in class about a book she hadn’t read.

  “Yeah, and the whole book—it’s all a big metaphor, isn’t it?” she says.

  “Of course it is. Yes! Very good. You’re—”

  “Just leave the tray and come back up!” a voice says from the top of the stairs.

  “I better go,” the man whispers. “Eat up and relax and please don’t try anything. I’ve never seen her like this.”

  “Come on!” the woman screams, and the man goes up the stairs and locks the door behind him, leaving Kylie alone again.

  This time too he came down with the gun.

  The gun is the key to the whole thing.

  25

  Friday, 3:13 p.m.

  Her phone chimes. She set an alert to let her know when the latest batch of ransom money cleared the Bitcoin system and landed in their Swiss bank account. Sometimes Visa or MasterCard or, especially, AmEx blocks the charge, but apparently now it has been paid in full.

  Her brother mocks her for this kind of micromanaging. When she lets him run The Chain, he claims he does almost nothing. He says he pretty much lets the whole thing self-police. But she’s more hands-on. It’s her baby.

  She looks at her phone. Yup, twenty-five thousand untraceable dollars have come through the Bitcoin laundry.

  That’s good in one way, but when they came up with the money this quickly, it meant that they could have paid a lot more. This is her mistake. She set the ransom amount. She looked at Rachel’s bank account and income and thought twenty-five thousand would be pushing it. I mean, come on, she was working as an Uber driver until a few weeks ago and there’s no family money.

  The philosophy isn’t to soak people for all they have but to keep the sums manageable. It’s not about the money, blah-blah-blah.

  Still…

  She mirrors Rachel’s computer on her phone, but Rachel hasn’t turned on the Mac since last night. She’s evidently using a different computer now. This is a hint that Rachel isn’t a total idiot.

  She looks out the window at the rain falling pointlessly into Boston Harbor. Is Rachel trying to outsmart her? That would be a terrible mistake for her to make.

  She opens the Wickr app and sends Rachel a message: Are you ready to proceed with your target, Toby Dunleavy?

  There’s a five-minute pause before Rachel replies: Yes. We’re doing it tonight if we can and Sunday night if tonight doesn’t work.

  Why not tomorrow night? Or tomorrow morning? she types.

  The boy takes archery lessons and walks home from there. Archery is tonight and Sunday night, Rachel replies.

  She doesn’t like Rachel’s tone. It isn’t scared enough. It isn’t humble enough. Rachel doesn’t realize that she’s the gamma bitch talking to the alpha.

  I can exterminate you, Rachel, she thinks. Just snap my fingers and you’re dead as a D Street crack whore.

  Message me on Wickr as soon as you get the boy, she texts. And I will make the first call to the family. You will call them five minutes later. The first thing you will say is “You must remember that you are not the first or the last. It is not about the money, it’s about The Chain.” Do you understand?

  Yes, Rachel texts.

  Again, it seems curt and confident. She does not like that.

  She closes the message thread and thinks things over for a few minutes.

  Olly is always telling her not to let things get into the realm of the personal. Like he’s older and wiser. Yes, older by fifteen minutes. It is true that there is no need to do any of this hastily. It isn’t about speed. All that matters is that it keeps going.

  According to Olly’s modeling, the more people that are added to The Chain, the more likely it is that there will be a major defection. That’s why fear is so important. That’s the whole mental component.

  Human beings are creatures whose lives are governed by deep instincts. They are like mice, these people, mice in the hay fields, and she’s the peregrine swooping over them, seeing every little thing they do.

  She thinks about Noah Lippman. She’d been serious about Noah, but he had broken up with her and moved to New Mexico with a new girlfriend. The Chain, however, had somehow stretched its tentacles way out there to the high desert. In Taos, his life had taken several disastrous turns. His girlfriend had been killed in a hit-and-run, he had been fired from his hospital job, and he had been mugged and badly beaten, and now he’s a poorly paid and overworked nurse in a Santa Fe hospice. Gray hairs Noah has now, and he’s walked with a limp since his assault.

  The Chain didn’t always have to be a bad thing, she supposes. Sometimes it helped people. Helped people focus on what was really important. And in a way, she’s doing these mice
in the hay field a favor. I mean, she thinks, now you know what your purpose is, don’t you, Rachel? Now you know what you have to do if you want to see sweet little Kylie again. That blind panic that you’re feeling? That adrenaline rush? That call to action? The Chain gave you that. The Chain has set you free.

  She closes the laptop.

  Don’t interfere, Olly says, leave it alone.

  But sometimes one can have a little fun.

  She clicks on the Wickr app again and messages Heather Porter: The ransom for Rachel to pay has doubled to fifty thousand dollars. The balance must be paid today. Inform her immediately. Furthermore, she must complete part 2 of the process today. If she doesn’t pay the new ransom and complete her kidnapping by midnight, you must kill Kylie O’Neill and search for a new target.

  Yes, that will fix things, she thinks with some measure of satisfaction.

  26

  Friday, 3:57 p.m.

  Rachel stands under the shower. She scalds herself and freezes herself, but the water doesn’t help—she’s still inside the bad dream. Other people lose their kids, people who don’t pay close enough attention. People who let thirteen-year-olds walk home from lonely bus stops in Mississippi or Alabama. This kind of thing doesn’t take place in urbane, civilized, safe northern Massachusetts.

  She steps out onto the chilly bathroom floor and shakes her head. That’s the sort of complacency and snobbery that allowed them to kidnap her daughter in the first place. Her head is light. Her left breast hurts. She’s utterly unmoored. She imagines her face again in the nonexistent bathroom mirror. That gaunt, hollow, ugly, un–Jennifer Connelly stupid face. Getting rid of the mirrors—what a joke that was. Just hiding the truth. All those smashed mirrors in the town dump. All that bad luck circling back to her.

  Camus said, “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

  What bullshit.

  All she feels is pain and fear and misery. Fear above all. And, yes, this is the depth of winter, all right. This is the middle of the Ice Age at the sunless North Pole. My daughter has been kidnapped and to get her back I’m going to have to grab a sweet little boy off the street and threaten him and threaten his family and mean it. Mean it when I say I’m going to kill him, because if I don’t I’ll never see Kylie again.

  She pulls on a T-shirt, her red sweater, and jeans and walks into the living room.

  Pete looks up from his computer.

  He can’t know about the torment within her. He can’t know about the fear and the doubts. He doesn’t want to do it. He’s a good man. A veteran. She needs to Lady Macbeth it. “Right, so we’re all set, then,” she says coldly.

  Pete nods. He has just come back from the Appenzellers’.

  “How does the house look?” she asks.

  “Perfect. Super-quiet down in the basement. A bucket to pee in. I got the kid some comic books so he won’t get bored. Few stuffed animals and games as well. Some candy.”

  “Latest weather?”

  “Still drizzle. Not heavy rain.”

  “What is the family doing right now?” Rachel asks.

  “Mike’s still at work. Rest of the family is home. Helen Dunleavy is currently writing a lengthy Facebook post about the fig tree in her backyard. Oh, and Toby definitely does not have the peanut allergy.”

  “Good. I was on a plane once with a woman who was allergic to peanuts, and she had a meltdown just from the smell of someone’s peanut-butter sandwich. Nightmare,” she says and lets out a huge sigh. “Thank you for coming, Pete. You’re a rock. I couldn’t get through this without you.”

  Pete looks at her and swallows. His mouth opens and closes. He has two things to tell her. He has to tell her about the heroin and he has to tell her about the Camp Bastion incident. He’s not a rock. He’s unreliable. He’s a failure. He would have been court-martialed if he hadn’t resigned first. “There’s something you should know…” he begins.

  Rachel’s iPhone rings: Unknown Caller.

  She answers it on speaker so Pete can hear. “Yes?” she says.

  “There’s been a change of plan,” the woman holding Kylie says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are required to deposit an additional twenty-five thousand dollars into the InfinityProjects account.”

  “We already paid the ransom. It’s—”

  “It’s been changed. Sometimes they change things. You need to pay another twenty-five thousand. Furthermore, you need to complete part two of the process today. Do you understand? If you don’t do these things today, I’m supposed to kill Kylie.”

  “No, please! I’ve done everything you’ve said. I’m cooperating!”

  “I know you are. They just messaged me. We have to do what they say, Rachel. Another twenty-five thousand by midnight and part two done by midnight. If you don’t do it, I have to kill Kylie. And if I don’t do that, they’ll kill my son, so I have to do it.”

  “No, that’s crazy. We’re cooperating, we’re doing—”

  “Do you understand what I’ve told you, Rachel?”

  “Yes, I—”

  The line goes dead.

  Another twenty-five thousand today? How?

  “Car coming!” Pete says, looking through the living-room window.

  “It’s coming here?”

  “It’s coming here,” Pete says. “Two occupants. A man and a woman. Parking next to my truck. What does Marty drive now?”

  Rachel sprints to the kitchen window. The car is a white Mercedes; the man in the driver’s seat is Marty, and she’s sure that the woman next to him is Tammy. Rachel’s met Tammy only once, at one of the Kylie handovers, but Tammy is a leggy blonde with a cute bob haircut and Marty’s passenger certainly has the haircut.

  “It is Marty!”

  Pete runs to the kitchen window. “Jesus, you’re right. What is he doing here? I thought you said he was in Georgia.”

  Rachel groans. “It’s Friday evening. He’s come to take Kylie for the weekend.”

  “We’re on the clock here; we need to get rid of them.”

  “I know!”

  Marty waves to her through the window. Rachel remains standing, aghast, at the kitchen sink and watches as Marty and Tammy come up the outside steps. Marty opens the kitchen door, smiles at her, leans forward, and kisses her on the cheek. He looks good. Very handsome. Movie-star handsome. He’s lost a little weight, there’s color to his cheeks, and he’s finally gone to a barber who knows how to cut his thick, wavy hair. His green eyes are twinkling, but his heavy eyebrows are knit together with concern when he looks at her.

  She fights the weak, atavistic urge to collapse onto Marty’s chest, throw her arms around his neck, and weep. She sniffs and pulls herself together and smiles.

  “Well, you’re looking terrific.” Marty lies like a frickin’ trouper. There’s a little clearing of the throat from behind him and he brings Tammy forward. “Of course you remember Tam,” he says.

  Tammy is tall and pretty with boring blue eyes. “Rachel!” Tammy declares and gives her a hug. “How are you doing?” she asks.

  “I’m OK,” Rachel says and takes a deep breath.

  Now that she’s over the shock of seeing them, she has only two objectives: get them out as quickly as possible and without raising any suspicions about Kylie’s absence.

  “Pete, what are you doing here?” Marty asks.

  Pete marches across the room and gives his brother a hug. “Hey, Marty.”

  “Pete, Jesus, it’s great to see you. Wow, you are as brown as a berry. Look at you. Tammy, this is my big brother, Pete,” Marty says.

  “Nice to finally meet you in the flesh,” she says and kisses him on the cheek.

  “I think it’s obvious that I got the looks and the brains in the family,” Marty quips. “What brought you up here, big brother?”

  Rachel can see the cogs turning in Pete’s brain as he tries to think of something. “I called Pete to help me with the roof,�
� she says.

  “Yeah, the roof,” Pete agrees. “I took care of it.”

  “Sorry about that, honey,” Marty says, chagrined. “You sounded really upset on the phone.”

  “It’s fine now,” Rachel replies, glancing at the clock.

  “So where’s my golden girl? Are we a little early?” Marty says, evidently relieved to have avoided a gigantic fight about the leaky roof. He looks around for Kylie.

  “Are you taking Kylie somewhere?” Pete asks, trying too hard to sound casual.

  “Taking Kylie for a little daddy time and a little crazy-auntie time. I’m the crazy auntie in this setup,” Tammy says.

  “Kylie!” Marty shouts upstairs.

  “Oh, I nearly forgot, this is for you,” Tammy says. She reaches into a shopping bag and gives Rachel a bottle of champagne. “It’s your one-year anniversary coming up soon.”

  “One year?” Rachel wonders out loud. “We’ve only been divorced since February.”

  “Not that. It’s about a year since your last chemo. That’s what Marty said. It’s been a year and it hasn’t come back.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. Is it a year? Jesus, how time flies, huh?” Rachel says, still furious at herself for forgetting that Marty was coming.

  “A year of full remission. That’s something,” Marty says. “You should celebrate. You’ve got the rest of the weekend off. Treat yourself. Go to that Max Richter concert you could never drag me to!”

  Rachel puts the now-riddled-with-irony champagne bottle on the countertop. The polite thing would be to offer them a drink, but that would eat up more precious minutes. Her mind is racing. How is she going to explain this? She can’t say Kylie is sick. Marty would insist on seeing her.

  “So, um, Augusta?” Pete asks hesitantly, not wanting to initiate a conversation but trying to buy some thinking time.

  “Why did you mention that?” Tammy says and mimes hanging herself.

  “Oh, man, yeah, Augusta National is just beautiful and—” Marty begins.

  “Where’s Kylie? Is she getting ready?” Tammy wonders. She takes Rachel’s hand, gives her a big smile, and checks a ping on her phone.