The Chain

by Adrian McKinty

  Rachel puts the back of her hand on Amelia’s forehead.

  Fever.

  She lifts Amelia’s shirt.

  Hives.

  Rachel opens Amelia’s mouth and looks inside. No obstruction. Her tongue isn’t swollen. Yet.

  “Are you having trouble breathing, Amelia?” Rachel asks. “Can you breathe? Answer me.”

  Amelia nods.

  “What does your mom do when you’re like this?”

  “Doctor.”

  She’s covered with sweat and her breathing is getting more labored.

  “We need to take her to a hospital,” Pete says.

  Rachel turns to face him. What the hell is he thinking? Hospital? There’s no way they can take her to the hospital. If they take her to the hospital the jig is up and Kylie’s dead.

  “No,” she says.

  “She’s having an allergic reaction,” Pete says.

  “I can see that.”

  “She has to see a doctor. We don’t have the EpiPen.”

  “No doctor,” Rachel insists. “I’ll hold her.”

  She takes the girl and Pete finally understands. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’ve made the decision.”

  A terrible decision, but one The Chain has forced on her.

  Either the little girl is going to die in her arms here and now or she’s somehow going to get better.

  “I’ll stay here with her. You get an EpiPen any way you can!”

  “How?”

  “Rob a goddamn pharmacy! I don’t know. Go!”

  Pete runs upstairs. “I’ll leave you the gun,” he says from the kitchen.

  “Fine. Just go!”

  She hears the back door slam.

  She holds Amelia.

  “Doctor,” Amelia says.

  “Yes, honey,” Rachel replies.

  There will be no doctors and no hospitals.

  If she dies, she and Pete will abandon the house and try again. The cops will find a dead little girl chained to a pillar, covered in spit and vomit, surrounded by dolls and toys and games. They will think it’s one of the most evil crime scenes they’ve ever laid eyes on.

  Amelia’s face is pale. Her eyes are glassy. She begins coughing.

  The hospital could save her.

  A paramedic unit from the Newburyport Fire Department could save her.

  But Rachel isn’t going to call the paramedics or a doctor or a hospital. That path will kill Kylie. If she has to choose between Amelia and Kylie, it’s going to be Kylie.

  Rachel starts to cry. “Try to breathe more slowly,” she says to Amelia. “Slow, easy, big breaths.”

  She feels Amelia’s pulse. It’s getting weaker. Amelia looks green. Her skin is soaking, as if she’s just had a bath. “Want Daddy,” Amelia moans.

  “Help’s coming, I promise.”

  Rachel rocks the little girl in her arms. She’s dying. Amelia is dying and there’s nothing Rachel can do.

  Maybe antihistamines would help? There might be some upstairs in the medicine cabinet.

  She picks up her phone and Googles peanut allergy and antihistamines. The very first article that comes up tells her not to give antihistamines to a child having a severe allergic reaction because antihistamines don’t treat anaphylaxis and might make things worse.

  “Come on, Pete,” Rachel says out loud. “Come on.”

  Amelia’s limp and hot and bubbles are frothing on her lips.

  “Mom,” she says and moans again.

  “It’s OK,” Rachel lies. “It’s OK.”

  She holds the little girl tightly against her.

  The minutes tick past. Amelia gets no better but no worse.

  The house is quiet.

  She can hear gulls, the sea, a rat-a-tat…

  Huh?

  She sits up on the mattress and listens.

  She hears the rat-a-tat again.

  What is that?

  “Elaine?” someone says.

  Someone is knocking at the front door.

  Someone is upstairs right now.

  A woman.

  She lays Amelia down on the mattress, quietly runs up the basement steps, and crawls into the corridor.

  Rat-a-tat again and then another “Elaine? Are you home?”

  Rachel flattens herself on the corridor floor.

  “Elaine? Is there anybody home?”

  Amelia’s little voice drifts up through the open basement door. “Mommy…”

  “Elaine? Are you guys there?”

  Rachel crawls along the hall and into the kitchen.

  The bag of drugs is gone but Pete left the .45.

  Rachel takes it off the kitchen table and slips back out into the hall. This is one stupid woman out there. Even if Elaine were home, she wouldn’t want someone knocking on her door at six thirty in the morning.

  “Uhh,” Amelia moans.

  Heart in mouth, Rachel slithers down the basement stairs, almost slipping and breaking her goddamn neck. She runs to Amelia and puts her finger to her lips.

  “Shhh,” she hisses.

  “Elaine, are you in there or not?” the voice at the front door demands. “I thought I saw you moving around!”

  Amelia moans louder and Rachel has no choice but to put her hand over the little girl’s mouth. Amelia can’t breathe properly through her nose. She begins thrashing against Rachel’s grip but she’s far too weak to put up any kind of resistance.

  “Shhh,” Rachel whispers. “Take it easy. It’s OK, it’s OK.”

  She holds her tight.

  No more noise from upstairs.

  Ten seconds go by.

  Fifteen.

  Twenty.

  Thirty.

  “I guess nobody’s home,” the voice outside says.

  Rachel hears the woman walk down the porch steps, and a moment later she hears the heavy front gate swing closed. Rachel takes her hand away from Amelia’s mouth and the little girl gasps for air.

  Rachel runs upstairs to the first-floor window. The busybody is an elderly lady in galoshes and a purple raincoat. “Wow,” Rachel says to herself.

  Utterly exhausted, she sits on the floor and waits for the cops to show up.

  When they don’t come, she goes back downstairs to Amelia.

  She seems to be doing a little better. Or is that just wishful thinking?

  She phones Pete but he doesn’t answer.

  She waits two minutes and calls again. No answer.

  Where is he? What the hell is he doing?

  Were those drugs? Was he high? She knows he’s been in and out of the VA clinic in Worcester for the past year but she hasn’t asked what the problem is. Pete’s never been one to share and she didn’t want to push it.

  Where is he?

  Has he run out on them?

  Amelia is lying on her side now, coughing.

  Rachel tucks her in the sleeping bag and puts her arms around her the way a mother would. She strokes her forehead and rocks her.

  “It’s going to be OK, baby,” she says gently. “Sweetie, I promise, in a couple of hours, you’ll feel fine.”

  Rachel holds her and talks to her and she feels like the biggest dirtbag fraud in the world. Five minutes crawl by in slow motion. She’d been willing to let her die. Would have let her die. Still will let her die if—

  KNOCK.

  KNOCK.

  KNOCK.

  Rachel creeps back up the basement steps again.

  KNOCK.

  KNOCK.

  KNOCK.

  She tiptoes up the stairs to the second-floor bedroom and looks out the window.

  It’s a Newburyport Police officer.

  The old lady looking for Elaine had called the frickin’ cops.

  “Hello?” the policeman says, knocking again.

  Rachel holds her breath. If Amelia somehow manages to scream, the cop will certainly hear.

  “Anybody home?” the cop says.

  He looks through the mail slot and examines the windows. Rachel f
linches back behind the curtain. If he’s suspicious, he’ll break the door down. Then what?

  If Rachel shoots him, it won’t solve the problem. More cops will come to investigate. And more. And the kidnapping will be compromised, and Kylie will be killed. But if he discovers Amelia, Rachel will be arrested and Kylie will die.

  The cop takes a few steps back and looks at the side of the house. If he spots where the window has been recently boarded up—

  Rachel flies down the stairs.

  Amelia is gurgling in the basement. A terrible choking noise.

  She is maybe actually going into cardiac arrest now. Rachel runs through the kitchen, tucking the .45 into the back of her jeans. She has to stop the policeman. If the game is up, Kylie is dead. Simple as that.

  Rachel sprints down the back porch and along the sandy path to the front of the house.

  “Hello there!” she says from the street.

  The cop turns to look at her. She recognizes him. She’s seen him at the ice-cream place in Ipswich a couple of times, and he’d given Marty a ticket once when they parked too close to the hydrant at the farm stand. He’s in his midtwenties. Kenny something.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Are you out here ’cause I called you?” she asks.

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Elaine Appenzeller asked me to keep an eye on the house while she’s in Florida. I saw some kids playing around in here. I told them to scram or I would call the cops. And, well…”

  “They didn’t scram?”

  “No. They have now, obviously, now that you’re here. I’m sorry, did I do the wrong thing? I mean, they were trespassing. That’s against the law, right?”

  “What did these kids look like?”

  “Oh, no, we don’t have to make a federal case out of it. They were only about ten. Look, I’m sorry. I was just bluffing when I told them I would call the cops and then they were looking at me the way boys that age do, and I said, ‘I’m pressing the number,’ and I sort of pressed it.”

  Kenny smiles. “You did the right thing, ma’am. I don’t know if we could prove aggravated criminal trespass on ten-year-olds, but if you don’t stop them young, the next step is breaking and entering. You’d be surprised how many of these big old empty summer houses get broken into in the off-season.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes. Kids usually, of course, very few actual burglaries, but quite often for recreational drug use or immoral purposes.”

  “Immoral purposes?”

  Kenny’s cheeks flush red. “Sex,” he says.

  “Oh.”

  They stare at each other.

  “Well, I’ll just check that the front and back doors are locked and then I’ll get going,” Kenny says.

  Rachel can’t allow that to happen. The back door will give the game away.

  She wonders if Amelia is still alive down in the basement. She wonders how the Rachel of today can think such a thing in so offhand and chilly a manner. The Rachel of yesterday would have been heartbroken. The Rachel of yesterday is dead and gone.

  She plucks at the loose red thread on her sweater and feels the .45 behind her back. His gun is holstered. She could march him into the house at gunpoint and execute him, take Amelia out of there, and move her to a different safe house.

  “Did I see you at the White Farms ice-cream stand in Ipswich a few times?” Rachel says.

  “Yeah, I’ve been there,” he replies.

  “I’m a butter-crunch girl. What’s your favorite flavor?”

  “Raspberry.”

  “I’ve never tried that one.”

  “It’s good.”

  “You know what flavor I’ve never tried but want to? The Outrageous. The one that has a bit of everything.”

  “Yeah, I know. Sounds weird.”

  “Perhaps if you’re not doing anything, I don’t know…” she says and smiles.

  Kenny is a bit slow on the uptake and Rachel guesses that it isn’t every day that a somewhat attractive older woman comes on to him, but eventually he begins to see that she’s making a pass at him. In fact, he probably thinks she made up the whole story about the kids in the yard just to manufacture this little encounter.

  “If you could give me your number, I—”

  “Yes,” Rachel says. “This week isn’t good, but next week if you’re not too busy…or we could go for a drink or something. You know, if it’s too cold for ice cream,” she adds, giving her winningest smile.

  Kenny smiles back.

  “Have you got a pen and paper?” she asks, noting that he doesn’t have them on him. “Back at your car?”

  She walks him back to the cop car, touching his arm a couple of times accidentally on purpose. She gives him her number and thanks him for coming out. “I’ll check the locks. I’m supposed to go in and feed the fish anyway,” Rachel says.

  “I can go with you,” Kenny offers.

  She shakes her head. “Nah, I’ll be OK, I have the heart of a lion…and a lifetime ban from the Boston zoo.”

  Kenny hasn’t heard that one before and he laughs. He gets in the police car and she smiles again and waves as he drives off.

  When he’s out of sight, she rushes to the back door, enters through the kitchen, and runs down the basement steps, putting on her ski mask as she goes. “Hang on, honey! Hang on!”

  Amelia is covered in hives and sweat but, incredibly, is still alive.

  Barely.

  “Oh my God, sweetie, hold on, just hold on.”

  Amelia is drooling and her breathing is getting shallower.

  Rachel pulls her out of the sleeping bag.

  She’s on fire. Her eyes flutter.

  Her breathing slows, slows, slows, and then stops completely.

  “Amelia?”

  She isn’t breathing. Oh my God! CPR! How do you—

  Rachel remembers what to do and begins giving her mouth-to-mouth.

  She inhales deeply and then breathes life back into Amelia. Once, twice.

  She changes position and pumps Amelia’s chest hard and fast, thirty times.

  The little girl is breathing again but she needs help, now. Rachel taps 911 into her phone but doesn’t press send.

  One call and the paramedics will come and save Amelia’s life.

  They’ll save Amelia and condemn her own daughter to death.

  She squeezes the iPhone so hard she thinks the glass is going to crack.

  Amelia’s face.

  Kylie’s face.

  No. She can’t do it. Sobbing on the concrete floor, she puts the phone down.

  31

  Saturday, 7:27 a.m.

  The door at the top of the basement steps opens.

  “Breakfast on time this morning,” the man says, coming down the stairs with a jug of orange juice, toast, and a bowl of cereal. Kylie looks for the gun and there it is, tucked in the front of his pants, something her uncle Pete says nobody should ever do with firearms.

  “Are you awake?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” Kylie says, sitting up in the sleeping bag.

  “That’s good. Do you like marmalade? I love it. I never had it before I went to London a few years ago. Had it on my toast at breakfast.”

  “Yes, I do like it. My mom gets it sometimes.”

  “Toast cut into triangles, Maine butter—from grass-fed cows, of course—Coco Pops, and OJ. That should keep you going for a while.”

  He sets the tray down on the ground.

  She has deliberately placed Moby-Dick on the floor, opened, facedown, two-fifths from the end. She knows he’ll pick it up, impressed.

  “My goodness, you’re doing well with this. You’re over halfway—”

  While he is bending over, Kylie clubs him on the head with the wrench. The fact that he’s wearing the ski mask makes it easier to do because she can pretend she’s not hitting a human at all. The man groans and she hits him again.

  He falls forward and lands with a sort of pathetic clump on the edge o
f the mattress.

  She has no idea where on the head she’s hit him but it has done the trick, all right. He’s out.

  Now she knows she’s in a race against time.

  She has to flip him over, get the handcuff key out of his pocket, uncuff herself, and run up the steps.

  Out in the yard, there could be a dog or the woman or anything. She’ll have the gun. She’ll have to shoot. If there’s no one there, she’ll have to run straight for the fence as fast as she can. If she’s in the part of New Hampshire she thinks she is, it’ll be marshy and boggy, but if she keeps going east, she’ll hit I-95 or Route 1 or the ocean. She’ll keep going even if they yell at her to stop.

  He’s a heavy man but she manages to roll him over onto his back, pushing on his sweaty chest and his armpits that smell like onions.

  She takes the gun out of his waistband and searches in all his pockets for the key to the handcuffs.

  No wallet, no ID, no nothing, but especially no key.

  She searches again just to be sure. He’s wearing old-fashioned brown slacks with deep pockets, but they’re totally empty. There are no rear pockets in the pants, but his shirt has a pocket at the front. It would be the perfect place to hide a handcuff key.

  Yes! she thinks, but there’s no key there either. Damn it.

  On to plan B. Kylie examines the gun. There are six bullets in the cylinder. OK, she thinks, all he has to do is wake up.

  A minute goes by.

  Two.

  Oh my God, has she killed him? All she did was hit him with a wrench. That didn’t kill people in the movies. She didn’t mean to kill—

  The man begins to stir.

  “Oh, my head,” he says, smiling weakly. “Right in the noggin. You got me good.”

  He groans, and after a few seconds he sits up and looks at her. She has the gun in her hand. The loaded gun.

  “What did you hit me with?” he asks. He puts his hands under the ski mask and rubs his eyes, moaning.

  “I found a wrench on the floor,” Kylie says.

  “What wrench?”

  Kylie holds up the wrench in her left hand.

  “Oh, wow. How did we miss that?”

  “It was under the boiler.”

  “Impossible! I checked this room.”

  “You had to be in a certain spot at a certain time. I remembered what Howard Carter said when he found King Tut’s tomb. You have to be looking, not just seeing.”

  The man nods. “I like that. You’re very smart, Kylie. All right, so what is supposed to happen next in your plan?”