“Solipsism?”
“That’s what I thought was happening to me down there in the basement. I thought that I was starting not to exist because no one was thinking about me.”
Rachel hugs her tight. “All I did was think about you! Every minute of every second of every day.”
“And then there were times when I thought that maybe those two would just leave me there. Maybe if they thought they’d been discovered, they’d go, and the food would run out and the water would run out and I would just die.”
“I wouldn’t have let that happen,” Rachel says. “I wouldn’t. I would have found you no matter what.”
Kylie nods but Rachel sees that she doesn’t believe it. How would she have found her? She wouldn’t have found her. Her daughter would have been trapped down there forever.
Kylie walks to the screen door and looks out at the basin.
“Your flip-flops are onomatopoeia-ing,” Rachel says, trying to shift the mood.
Kylie turns to face her. “Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“They explained to me that they couldn’t release me until you continued The Chain.”
Rachel looks at the floor.
“Mom?”
Rachel swallows hard. She can’t lie about this—it would make everything worse. “That’s right,” she says.
“So, wait, did you…have you…” Kylie asks, horrified.
“I’m sorry. I, I, I had to.”
“You kidnapped someone?”
“I had to.”
“You still have them?”
“Yes. I can’t release them until The Chain continues.”
“Oh my God!” Kylie says, her eyes wide. “Where?”
“We found a…I found an empty house on the other side of the basin. A house with a basement.”
“They’re over there right now? Alone?”
“That’s where Pete is.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“The less you know, the better.”
“I want to know!”
“A girl,” Rachel says, feeling great waves of shame course through her.
A great river of shame as brown as shit.
“Can’t you just let her go?”
Rachel fights her gag reflex and the flight response and forces herself to confront the present reality. She looks Kylie in the eye and shakes her head.
“C—can’t we go to the FBI and have them hide us and give us new identities or something like that?” Kylie asks.
“It’s not so simple. We’ve—I’ve—actually kidnapped someone. They’ll send me to jail. And you won’t be safe. I believe them when they say that The Chain has never been successfully broken. I think they’ll find us wherever we go. I can’t take that risk.”
“Can I see the girl? Can I talk to her?”
Rachel shudders at the thought of dragging Kylie deeper into this. “No, you go back to school. We’ll handle this. Me and Pete.”
“What’s her name?”
“It’s best that you don’t know.”
“Does she have Marshmallow?”
“Yes.” Rachel tries to hug her, but Kylie pushes her away.
“Don’t touch me!” Kylie says.
“I can get Marshmallow back. I—”
“That’s not the point! It’s not about Marshmallow. It’s about what you’ve done. How could you kidnap someone, Mom? How could you do that?”
“I don’t know. I had to.”
“Did you hurt her?”
“No. Not really,” Rachel says, again swimming in that river of lies and shame.
“How could you do that, Mom?”
“I don’t know.”
Kylie takes a step back and then another until she bumps into the screen door.
Rachel looks at her grubby fingernails and catches a glimpse of herself in the glass. She’s like some skinny, deranged prophet trying to bring a suddenly clear-minded former follower back into the fold. No, she’s not. It’s worse than that. She’s a demon, dragging her daughter down with her into the pit. She’s the opposite of good and kind Demeter. She has made Kylie lie. She’s made her a party to a crime. This fissure between them will widen into a gulf. Nothing will ever be the same again.
She looks into Kylie’s betrayed, teary eyes.
Rachel imagines a sulfurous reek to the air. No, they are not yet escaped from hell. The escape will take months, perhaps years.
Kylie begins to sob. “You had to do it to get me back?”
“Yes.”
“You and Uncle Pete?”
“Yes.”
Kylie slides open the door, and a cold wind blows in from the basin.
“Can we go outside?” Kylie asks.
“It’s freezing.”
“We can wrap ourselves in the comforter. I don’t want to be inside.”
They go onto the deck.
“Can I hold you?” Rachel asks tentatively.
“Yes,” a meek Kylie responds.
Kylie sits on her mother’s lap in the Adirondack chair, wrapped in a blanket, the long tie of Rachel’s robe threaded around them like an umbilical. They don’t talk. They just sit there.
The day dwindles to an end in a line of reds and yellows along the Merrimack Valley. It grows dark, and when the stars come out, mother and daughter are swallowed up by the night. What is going to be a long, terrible night indeed.
37
Sunday, 10:45 p.m.
Her instinct’s right. The Chain is screwing up. Well, her instinct is partially right. The problem, however, is not Rachel Klein. And the problem is not Helen Dunleavy. The problem is Seamus Hogg. Using standard spyware tech, she has mirrored the Hoggs’ phones and read Seamus’s e-mails. Seamus e-mailed his uncle, a guy named Thomas Anderson Hogg, who lives in Stamford, Connecticut, and asked him if they could meet at a Starbucks in Stamford tomorrow morning at ten.
This is a big problem because Thomas Anderson Hogg is a retired U.S. marshal.
Seamus is going to rat.
And not even to the cops but to the goddamn U.S. Marshals Service.
She looks at the data on Rachel again. An uninteresting but surprisingly competent link so far. She has done everything right. Paid the ransom fast, paid the increased ransom fast, carried out a successful kidnap.
She is capable and good. Her ex-brother-in-law is helping her. Another interesting dude. Honorably discharged from the Marines but he had taken some heat for the September 2012 Camp Bastion incident. No pension. Only the minimum VA benefits. Arrested in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 2017 for possession of one gram of brown-tar heroin. Charges subsequently dropped. The mug shot is of a haunted, dour, prematurely middle-aged-looking man.
Is the ex-husband helping too?
She Googles Rachel’s ex-husband, Marty O’Neill.
Now, that’s a good-looking guy. A very good-looking guy indeed. She’s surprised she hasn’t come across him before. The pool of eligible bachelors in Boston is remarkably shallow. Harvard grad, lawyer, dating some drippy blonde. Born in Worcester, lives in Boston, is a partner at the white-shoe law firm of Banner and Witcoff. Yeah, he’s the brains of the family.
Well, let’s see how they collectively handle a little curveball.
She logs into the Wickr app and messages Rachel:
Seamus Hogg is defecting. He is going to rat. He e-mailed his uncle, a retired U.S. marshal, and he’s meeting him tomorrow at ten a.m. in Stamford, Connecticut. Obviously, this meeting cannot be allowed to take place. The Dunleavys have screwed up. They have picked an unreliable target. And their screwup is your screwup, Rachel. Kill your hostage and pick another target or stop this meeting and remind the Dunleavys and the Hoggs that they are part of The Chain. If you do neither of these things, the blowback will come for you and your family. We know where you live. There is nowhere you can go where we will not find you.
38
Sunday, 10:59 p.m.
Black Atlantic. Black sky. A dusting of drab stars. Rachel is sitting
on the deck smoking a cigarette when the Wickr app on her phone sounds an alert. A message for her.
She reads it, digests it, goes into panic mode, calms herself, gets a burner phone, calls Pete at the Appenzellers’, and reads him the message.
“Aren’t the Dunleavys supposed to take care of this?” he asks.
“The Chain bastards contacted me. This is the blowback they were talking about, Pete. If the Hoggs screw it all up, that means the Dunleavys have screwed up, and I’m supposed to kill Amelia and pick a new target or they’ll come for me.”
“Wait there. I’ll be right over,” Pete says. “Amelia’s asleep.”
Rachel dials Helen Dunleavy’s number but the phone rings and rings and eventually goes to voice mail. She dials again, but no one answers. She waits a minute and dials a third time, but still nothing—either the stupid bitch is dead or she’s turned her phone off.
Their PC is off too. There are no traces from any of their electronic devices. What’s happened to them? What the hell?
She signs into Wickr and sends a message to 2348383hudykdy2: Dunleavys not answering phone.
There’s an immediate response: That’s not our problem, Rachel. That’s your problem.
A minute later Pete arrives. “What did the Dunleavys say?” he asks.
“No answer. The stupid bastards have their phone turned off.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“I’m not going to kill Amelia and start again.”
“Of course not.”
Pete hopes that Rachel doesn’t notice his glazed eyes. He shot up about fifteen minutes earlier. He’d thought they were done for the night, and his body was craving opiates. He had to give in and shoot up in the Appenzellers’ kitchen.
“Pete?” Rachel says.
“I’m out of ideas,” he replies dully.
“We go down to the Dunleavys’ now, tonight, and we tell them they have to get their boy in line.”
“Call them up.”
“I’ve called them! They’re not answering. Aren’t you listening?”
“Who doesn’t leave the phone on when their daughter’s been kidnapped?” Pete wonders.
“Maybe they’re already dead. Maybe the blowback has killed them and we’re going to be next,” Rachel says.
“They might be coming for us right now.”
“We’ll bring Kylie to the Appenzellers’ house. Nobody knows about that place except us,” Rachel says.
“I’ll get things ready.”
Rachel goes to Kylie’s room. She’s still awake and on her iPad. “I’m sorry, honey, but it’s not safe for you to be here tonight. Something’s happening with The Chain.”
Kylie is terrified. “What? Are they coming for us?”
“No. Not yet. I have to sort something out. I’m going to take you over to the Appenzellers’. You’ll be safe there.”
“They’re coming back for me, aren’t they?”
“No. It’s not that. You’re safe. It’s fine. It’s just a precaution. Your uncle Pete and I are going to take care of everything. Come on, pack a bag.”
Rachel and Kylie drive over to the Appenzellers’ and slip in the back. Pete is waiting in the kitchen with his .45 and Rachel’s shotgun.
Kylie looks at the weapons, swallows, then gives Pete a hug.
“Is the little girl here?” Kylie asks.
Rachel nods.
“Where is she?”
“Basement. Asleep,” Pete says.
“Pete and I have to go out. Amelia probably won’t wake up, but if you need to go down there, put this on,” Rachel says, giving her a black ski mask.
“So she can’t identify me,” Kylie says, fascinated and appalled.
“I was praying you wouldn’t get further involved, but if Amelia starts to cry, I guess you’ll have to go down there and comfort her,” Rachel says. “We can’t have her making too much noise.”
“I think she’ll sleep until morning, though. I had her skipping rope for an hour,” Pete says.
“Where are you guys going to be?” Kylie asks her mom.
“Pete and I have to go deal with an emergency.”
“What sort of emergency?”
“It’s OK, honey, it’s not bad, but both of us have to go and you’ll have to stay here with Amelia.”
“You need to tell me what’s happening!”
Rachel nods. She deserved that. “One of the families farther down The Chain is thinking about going to the police. We have to stop them. If they go to the police, we could all be in danger.”
“So where are you going?”
“Providence.”
“You’re going down there to tell them to pay the ransom and do everything you did?”
“Yes.”
“What if you…what if you don’t come back?”
“If we’re not back by morning, call your father to come and get you. Stay in this house. Don’t go home. When he gets here, tell him everything. Keep your phone turned off until then.”
Kylie nods solemnly. “What time in the morning?”
“If you haven’t heard from either of us by, say, eleven, it probably means we’ve been compromised,” Pete says.
“Dead?” Kylie asks, her lip trembling.
“Not necessarily. Just that something’s going wrong,” Rachel says, although she thinks dead is the most likely scenario.
Kylie hugs her mom and Pete. “I’ll be OK,” she says. “And I’ll keep an eye on her.”
Her daughter is now co-opted into a kidnapping scheme. Rachel feels mortified and angry. But she can’t indulge these feelings for very long. The clock is ticking. She wipes the tears from her cheeks. “Let’s get this show on the road, then,” she says to Pete. “I’ll drive.”
39
Sunday, 11:27 p.m.
Swamp to the left, marsh to the right. High beam on the headlights. Smell of gun oil, sweat, fear. Nobody talking. Rachel driving. Pete literally riding shotgun.
Beverly, Mass.
Old wooden houses. Oak trees. The occasional apartment building. Quiet. Blue light from TVs and burglar alarms.
Suburban-nighttime ennui. Which is good. Fewer busybodies on the sidewalks.
Poseidon Street.
The lights are off in the Dunleavy house.
“Drive around the block,” Pete says. “Don’t stop.”
Rachel does and then parks one street over.
Quiet town. No one around. Only one question: Why won’t Helen Dunleavy answer her goddamn phone?
Rachel has an image of the entire family tied to chairs in the kitchen with their throats cut.
“We can go in through those little scrubby woods next door to their house,” Pete says. “And then in through the back door.”
“How?” Rachel asks.
Pete holds up a wrench and a lock-pick kit. “If we’re definitely going to do this,” he says.
“Yeah. We’re pot committed,” she replies.
Pot committed is the polite way of putting it. She’s going to have to go full-on Lady Macbeth now. Act it. Believe it. Be it. For Pete, for herself, for Kylie—the lives of her family are at stake.
“I’ve got an EM-pulse kit to baffle the alarm system if there is an alarm system. Once we’re in, we use handguns,” he says, handing her his glove-compartment .38 revolver. He’s also got a .45 and a 9-millimeter.
The guns. The scrubby wood.
Pete struggles to get over the Dunleavys’ north fence. Rachel stares at him. What is the matter with him? She wonders again if he’s on something or if he’s had an injury he hasn’t told her about. She needs him to be 100 percent.
“Are you OK, Pete?” she says severely.
“Yeah! I’m fine. Are you OK?”
She glares at him in the darkness.
“We should probably get moving, right?” he says.
“Sure.”
The Dunleavys’ backyard. Toys, lawn furniture, a swing. The back door, which leads to the kitchen.
“
Come on,” Rachel says.
Flashlights on. EM-pulse kit on.
Pete fiddles with the lock. There’s a little tremor in his right hand.
“Can you get it?”
“Yeah. Done this before. It will not resist my attentions for long, trust me,” he says.
Three minutes. Four minutes.
“Are you sure?”
The door finally unlocks. Pete turns the handle. There is no safety chain. No burglar alarm goes off.
“Are we OK?” Rachel asks.
“Yeah.”
They put on their ski masks and enter the kitchen. Rachel darts her flashlight around the room.
No dead bodies. No assassins.
“Do we know where we’re going?” Rachel whispers.
“Yes,” Pete says. “Follow me.”
She follows Pete upstairs.
Carpet on floor. Pictures on wall. A big clock at the top of the steps. A mirror that scares her for a sec when she sees a person with a gun in it.
“First bedroom on the left,” Pete hisses.
Through the bedroom door. Body odor. Smell of booze. A woman snoring on the bed. Flashlight into the corners. No one else there. Pete tiptoes to the bed, kneels beside the woman, and puts his hand over her mouth. She yelps under Pete’s hand and he holds her down.
Rachel checks the en suite bathroom while Pete smothers her cries with his big paw.
“It’s clear,” Rachel says.
“Are you Helen Dunleavy?” Pete asks. “Just nod your response.”
She nods.
“Where’s your husband?” Pete asks. “One-word answer. The name of a room. Whisper it. If you’re loud, you’re dead.”
“Basement,” Helen croaks.
“I tried to phone you. Do you recognize my voice?” Rachel asks.
“You’ve got Amelia,” Helen says and begins to cry.
“Where’s the kid? Henry Hogg?” Rachel asks.
“Basement.”
“With your husband?”
“We take turns to—”
Rachel glances at Pete. “Bring the husband up here. I’ll stay with this one.”
She switches on the bedroom light and points the .38 at Helen while Pete goes downstairs.
The Chain Page 16