“Hello?” he says.
“Is everything OK?” she asks.
“She’s freaked, obviously. Scared. I’m saying that we’re friends of the family. She sort of believes it and sort of doesn’t.”
“Keep her safe, Pete. Keep her away from nuts. I don’t know how sensitive she is, but we have to err on the side of caution. Let’s not be the stupid babysitter in one of those movies.”
“We won’t be.”
“We have to read all the labels of everything we give to her and we’ll need to get an EpiPen.”
“We will. I’ll look into that. I think you can get them on eBay. Have you called the family yet?”
“Doing it now.”
“Use a different phone than this one. Drive away from the house to make the call.”
“Good idea. I will.”
She drives quickly to the parking lot by the ocean. She dials the Dunleavys’ number. “Hello?” a woman says anxiously.
“I’ve taken your daughter, Amelia. She’s been kidnapped. You are not to call the police. If you call the police or any law enforcement agency, I’ll kill her. Do you understand?”
Helen begins to scream.
Rachel calms her down by telling her that if she doesn’t calm down, she is going to put a bullet in her daughter’s brain.
The conversation takes ten minutes.
When it’s over, Rachel gets out of the car and throws up again and again until there’s nothing left.
She stares at the black ocean breaking on the shore.
She sits on the sand as a very cold, hard rain begins to fall.
Her head’s hurting. She feels as if her skull is going to explode.
She sits for five more minutes and then stands and stamps on the burner phone and throws the pieces into the sea. She tilts her face up into the downpour and begs the water to cleanse her. It doesn’t work.
She calls Pete on a new burner phone. “It’s done. Everything OK there?”
“Not so great. I put the handcuff on and chained her to the pillar. She didn’t mind that too much. And she’s not screaming or anything, but she’s crying and wants her mom and says she can’t stay here without Mr. Boo. He’s a bear, apparently. There’s plenty of other stuffed toys but only Mr. Boo will do.”
“I understand,” Rachel says.
She drives home and goes upstairs into Kylie’s room. She finds Marshmallow, Kylie’s pink stuffed bunny. How is Kylie able to sleep without Marshmallow or her cat?
She takes Marshmallow, puts on a hoodie, and runs through the rain to the Appenzellers’.
She taps on the back door and Pete lets her in. He’s on the phone. He looks worried.
“What’s the matter?” she whispers.
“AmEx is verifying the charge,” he says, putting his hand over the receiver.
“Visa did that with me too. If the money doesn’t go through tonight, they kill Kylie.”
“I know. I’ll take care of it,” he replies. Pete doesn’t look good; he’s twitchy, bug-eyed, sweating.
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll take care of it.”
Rachel puts on her ski mask and goes down to the basement.
Amelia is exhausted. She has cried and fought and cried some more and all she probably wants to do now is sleep but she can’t without Mr. Boo. She’s sitting on the sleeping bag on the mattress surrounded by Legos and games and the wrong stuffed animals.
Rachel sits next to her. “I know you’re scared, honey, but there’s nothing to be scared of. You’re safe here, I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“I want my mom,” Amelia says.
“I know. We’ll get you back to her soon. Look, I heard about Mr. Boo and although we don’t have Mr. Boo, this is my little girl’s special friend Marshmallow. She’s had it since the day she was born. He’s very, very special. He’s got thirteen years of love in him.”
Amelia looks at Marshmallow suspiciously. “I want Mr. Boo.”
“We don’t have Mr. Boo, but we have Marshmallow,” Rachel says. “Marshmallow is Mr. Boo’s friend.”
“Is he?”
“Oh yes, they’re very good friends.” Rachel passes him over and Amelia takes him hesitantly.
“Do you want me to tell you a story?” Rachel asks.
“OK, I guess.”
“Do you like milk and cookies?”
“Yes.”
“Wait here and I’ll see what I can do.”
She goes back upstairs. Pete is on the porch trying to convince American Express to put his charge through. If he doesn’t convince them, a crazy woman will murder her daughter in two hours.
She taps the kitchen door and Pete turns to look at her. “What do they say?” she asks.
“I’m still talking to them.”
Rachel reads the label on Lorna Doone cookies and Googles the ingredients just to be on the safe side. They are nut-free. She goes back downstairs with the milk and Lorna Doones.
She tells Amelia the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Amelia is happy because she knows that one.
She does “Hansel and Gretel” next and Amelia knows that one too.
Stories of kids surviving peril in the woods.
Poor little Amelia, vanished like that other Amelia all those years ago.
She’s a good kid. A smart kid. Rachel likes her. How could she not? And how could she possibly harm this child?
Half an hour later Pete appears at the top of the stairs. He gives Rachel the thumbs-up.
“The charge went through?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God for that.”
“How’s Amelia?”
“Come down and see.”
“She’s sleeping. How did you do that?” Pete whispers at the bottom of the basement steps.
“Milk, cookies, and Marshmallow, apparently.”
“What kind of cookies?”
“Lorna Doone. They’re OK. I checked them.”
“The EpiPen is on the way. I ordered it from eBay.”
“You’re not getting it sent here?”
“No. It’ll go to an eBay drop box in Newbury.”
“Good.”
“I’ll stay here tonight,” Pete says. “You go on home, you look beat.”
“I should stay.”
“No, go home, please.”
She doesn’t want to fight him. She is beat. Utterly defeated. She takes a picture of Amelia with one of the burner phones. “I’ll send this to them.”
“Get some sleep, Rachel.”
“I’m not tired,” she insists.
Pete is scratching his arm and sweating. He looks vacant, unwell.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asks.
“Me? Great. You go home, I’ll be fine here.”
She nods and goes up the basement steps. Down the porch. Along the beach. Home.
She’s glad for the freezing rain. She deserves discomfort and misery and pain. She stands in front of her house and calls the Dunleavys on a new burner phone.
“Yes?” Helen says between breathy gasps of panic.
“You better be working on the money and the target. I’m sending you a picture of Amelia. She’s sleeping, she’s OK.”
“Let me talk to her!”
“She’s sleeping. I’m sending you a picture.”
When the picture goes through, Rachel destroys the phone and walks into her house.
She makes a cup of coffee and begins monitoring the Dunleavys’ activities through their mirrored home PC. No e-mails or texts to the cops.
At midnight, Rachel’s iPhone rings. “Hello?”
“Rachel?” a voice whispers.
“Yes.”
“I’m not supposed to call you, but I want you to know that my boy was released an hour ago. He’s with us now!”
“You got your boy back?”
“Yes. I can’t believe it! I’m so happy! He’s safe and he’s back with us in the house. I was af
raid to hope but…he came back.”
“But…so…is there any way you can release Kylie now?”
“I can’t. You know I can’t. The Chain has to continue. You have to trust the process. If I break The Chain, the blowback will begin. I’ll be in danger, my boy will be in danger, and you and Kylie will be in danger.”
“Unless they’re bluffing about that.”
“They’re not the kind of people who bluff. I think they would enjoy it if it all went wrong and we started killing one another. You saw what happened to that family.”
“Yes.”
“They told me about one time years ago when someone defected, and the punishments went seven levels back along The Chain before it sorted itself out.”
“Shit!”
“But I want to let you know that you’re one step closer to getting Kylie back. It’ll be over soon, Rachel, it really will.”
“Oh God, I hope so.”
“It will.”
“How did you do it? How did you get through it all? How did you find the strength?”
“I don’t know, Rachel. I suppose you just have to imagine that moment when you’re together again with Kylie. Everything you do, every choice you make, is a means to that end, you know?”
“Yes.”
“There was an incident when we took Kylie, something terrible. Nothing happened to her, she’s fine. But I had to do something awful, and the old me would be in agony about what I did back there. But you know what I feel? I feel nothing. Nothing but relief. I did what I had to do and I got my son back. And that’s all there is to it.”
“I think I understand.”
“You just have to hold on a little bit longer.”
“I will.”
28
Saturday, 12:07 a.m.
Mike Dunleavy looks at his wife sobbing and curled up in a fetal position on the bathroom floor. He lies down beside her and he begins to cry too.
He puts the gun on the floor. There’s no reason now to be walking around the house with a loaded gun.
The gun is useless. There’s nobody to kill.
“How’s Toby?” Helen asks him, tears flowing down her face.
“He’s asleep. I told him Amelia was going to stay at a friend’s house for a few days.”
“Did he believe that?”
“He didn’t care. He just wanted to know where his archery stuff was. I told him it was safe.”
“Do you think it’s OK to pray for God’s help?” Helen wonders.
“Are we going to do this?”
“We have to.”
“We don’t have to. We could go to the police.”
“They’ll kill her if we go to the police. The woman who has her is a monster. I heard it in her voice. We’re the worst parents in America. You know those people who overdose in the front seats of their cars? We’re dumber than that.”
Helen begins weeping again. Great, big breathy sobs, like she’s dying. He looks at her face in the dim light coming through the bathroom window.
She seems frail and broken, utterly lost. He has no words.
“How can Amelia sleep without Mr. Boo?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll get her back, won’t we? Tell me we’ll get her back,” Helen says.
“We’ll get her back. We’ll do everything we can. If I have to kill every one of those scumbags, we’ll get her back.”
29
Saturday, 5:38 a.m.
It’s still dark out but perhaps it’s a little lighter in the east. Kylie can’t sleep. She hasn’t slept at all since she managed to get the wrench.
The adrenaline has been pumping all night and sleep was impossible. She’s going to get one shot at this and she’s going to have to take it.
The plan is simple. All the best plans are simple. Aren’t they?
Get in the boat, find the whale, kill it.
Get in the boat, find the shark, kill it.
The man or woman is going to come down the steps with a tray holding a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice. He or she is going to bend over to set down the tray. Then he or she is going to take the cereal bowl and orange juice off the tray.
That’s when Kylie is going to hit him or her with the wrench.
A blow as hard as she can on the top of the head. A two-handed blow that will render him or her unconscious.
That person will then be on the ground and down for the count. If she gets lucky, he or she will have the handcuff key. Kylie will uncuff herself, run up the steps, and head for the nearest road. If, however, there is no handcuff key, the gun will come into play. The gun is the crucial part of it. Without fail, every time they have come down here, they have been armed.
If there’s no key, Kylie will take the gun and wait until the man or woman wakes up and then she’ll point the gun at that person’s head and call for the other one and tell them both to give her the handcuff key or she’ll shoot.
If they don’t believe she’ll shoot, she’ll plug whoever she’s got in the kneecap. She’s gone shooting in the woods with her uncle Pete a couple of times. She knows how to fire a revolver. Safety off, check the chamber, pull the trigger. The partner will get the key and give it to her, but if either of them balks, she’ll make a deal with them: after she gets home to her mom, she’ll claim she can’t remember where she was held. She won’t remember for a full day. That will give them twenty-four hours to get out of the country.
Kylie is pleased with the plan. It’s logical and rational and she can’t see any reason why it won’t work. The hardest part will be the first step, and that will be over in a second. You can do it, Kyles, you really can do it, she tells herself. But she’s shaking with fear in the sleeping bag.
Shaking isn’t the right word. Convulsing might be closer to what’s going on. But courage runs in the family. She thinks about her mom going through all those chemo treatments. She thinks about her grandmother fighting NYU for all those years to stay in faculty housing after Grandpa ran off with one of his students. And she thinks about her great-grandmother Irina, the determined little girl who browbeat and bullied her family onto a donkey cart and drove them east with the retreating Red Army to a train that transported them to a strange domed city called Tashkent. Four years they’d spent there as penniless outcasts, and when they got back to the shtetl in Belarus in the fall of 1945, they discovered, of course, that every single person who had stayed there had been murdered by the Germans. But for her great-grandmother’s courage, Kylie wouldn’t be here today.
That’s what she needs now, the courage and determination of little Irina and her mom and her grandma. All the women, all the way back. She examines the wrench again. Heavy. Seven inches long. Someone probably left it there after fixing the boiler. More likely a workman than one of the house’s owners. They don’t seem like the boiler-fixing types. It isn’t the sort of wrench that will help break a chain, but it’s maybe big enough to break someone’s head.
She’ll soon find out.
30
Saturday, 6:11 a.m.
Rachel checks for Amber Alerts and police reports and breaking news about a missing child, and she keeps one eye always on the mirror of the Dunleavys’ home PC.
Wee hours. Robert Lowell’s Skunk Hour. So late. So tired.
Don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep…
She closes her eyes for the briefest of moments.
Void.
Sunlight.
Birdsong.
Shit.
What day is it?
The hours are like years and the days are decades. How many millennia into this goddamn nightmare is she?
Another morning. That feeling in her stomach, those butterflies of terror, of gut-churning horror. You’ve never experienced fear until something or someone puts your child in danger. Dying is not the worst thing that can happen to you. The worst thing that can happen to you is for something to happen to your kid. Having a child instantly turns you i
nto a grown-up. Absurdity is the ontological mismatch between the desire for meaning and the inability to find meaning in this world. Absurdity is a luxury parents of missing children can’t afford.
She sits at the living-room table. Eli the cat meows next to her. He hasn’t been fed in almost two days.
She fills his bowl, drinks a mug of cold coffee, and steps out onto the deck. Then she puts on a coat and walks along the basin trail to the Appenzellers’ house.
The sun comes up over the Atlantic and the big houses on the eastern side of the island. Her iPhone rings. Unknown Caller. Her stomach lurches. What now? “Hello?”
“I need you! Get over here!” Pete yells.
“I’m two minutes away.”
“Run! I need help.”
She sprints along the basin trail and onto Northern Boulevard. Heart pounding, she runs down the path onto the beach and up the back steps of the Appenzellers’.
Worryingly, the door is open.
She goes inside.
On the kitchen table there’s Pete’s .45 and a bag of what looks like drugs. What the hell? Is Pete a user? Her mind races.
Can he be trusted? Jesus, is he part of all this?
Rachel thinks she knows Pete, but can you ever really know anybody? He’s crazy about Kylie but there were those arrests a while back, and what has he been doing all these years since getting out of the Corps?
She shakes her head. No, it’s Pete, for heaven’s sake. This is the paranoia talking. The Chain has nothing to do with Tammy and it has nothing to do with Pete.
But drugs? This is serious. She’ll have to—
“Rachel! Down here! Put your mask on.”
She puts on her ski mask and runs down the basement stairs.
Pete is holding Amelia, who is wrapped in a towel, writhing and shaking. Cereal is spilled all over the floor.
“What happened?”
“Gave her the Rice Krispies. I thought it would be fine! I didn’t see the small print. It says that it might contain trace nuts.”
“My God!”
“The EpiPen won’t be here until later this morning,” Pete says in a complete panic.
Amelia’s lips have swollen and she’s deathly white. There are specks of foam at the corners of her mouth and her breaths are shallow and raspy.
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