A car started. She heard wheels on gravel. Heard a door slam. The house door. One in the house, one going somewhere. She eased her head up, watched the taillights weave away.
Maybe she should wait until they were both in the house again, but she was too afraid and, teeth gritted, went after the nail again.
It popped out, flew up, then hit the floor with a click that sounded to her ears like an explosion. She jumped back on the bed, fought to lie still, to breathe deep, but she couldn’t stop shaking.
No one came, and tears of relief spilled out.
Her hands had gone sweaty again, but she set to work prying out the second nail. She put it in her pocket, wiped her sweaty, hurting fingers. She managed to turn the lock on the window. As she opened it a crack, it sounded so loud. But no one came, not even when she opened it more, opened it enough to stick her head out and feel the cool night air.
Too high, too high to jump.
She listened, listened, for sounds of the ocean, of cars, of people, but heard nothing but the breeze, the call of a coyote, the call of an owl.
No trees close enough to reach, no ledge or trellis or anything to help her climb down. But she had to climb down, then run. She had to get away and get help.
She started with the sheets. At first she tried to tear them, but they wouldn’t tear. So she tied them together as tight as she could, then added the pillowcases.
The only thing to tie them to in the room was one of the bedposts. It would be like Rapunzel, she thought, except sheets instead of hair. She’d climb out of the tower.
Nerves made her need to pee again, but she held it, set her jaw as she worked to tie the knot around the post.
Then she heard the car coming back, felt the knots in her stomach pull tighter than any she could tie with sheets. If one of them checked on her now, they’d see. She should have waited.
Trapped, she could do nothing but sit on the floor, imagining the door opening. The masks. The gun. Her fingers breaking.
Rolling herself into a ball, she squeezed her eyes shut.
She heard the voices again, carrying through the window. If they looked up, would they see she’d opened it?
One said—the wolf voice: “Jesus, asshole, you think this is the time to get high?”
The clown laughed. “Damn straight. They getting the money?”
“Smooth as silk, especially once they heard the recording,” the wolf responded, and the voices trailed off. The door slammed.
Too scared to worry about quiet, she dragged the makeshift rope to the window, tossed it out. Too short, she could see that right away, and thought of the towels in the bathroom.
But they might come in, any minute, so she wiggled out the window, gripped the sheets. Her hands slid helplessly a few inches, and she had to bite back a scream. But she gripped hard, slowed the slide.
She saw light—windows below her. If they looked out, saw the sheets, saw her, they’d catch her. Maybe just shoot her. She didn’t want to die.
“Please, please, please.”
Instinct had her wrapping her legs around the sheet, easing herself down until she reached the end. She could see right into the house, a big kitchen—stainless steel, counters like dark brown stone, green walls, not bright but light.
She closed her eyes, let go, let herself fall.
It hurt. She had to hold back another cry when she hit the ground. Her ankle turned, her elbow banged, but she didn’t stop.
She ran toward the trees, believing with all her heart they wouldn’t find her if she got to the trees.
When she did, she kept running.
Aidan slipped into the bedroom he shared with Charlotte. Exhausted, sick down to his soul, he walked to the windows. His Catey was out there, somewhere. Frightened, alone. Dear God, don’t let them hurt her.
“I’m not asleep,” Charlotte murmured, and shifted to sit up. “I only took half a pill, just to calm down. I’m so sorry, Aidan. Being hysterical didn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help our baby. But I’m so scared.”
He walked to the bed, sat, took her hand. “He called again.”
She sucked in a breath, gripped hard. “Caitlyn.”
He wouldn’t tell her he’d demanded to speak to her daughter, to be certain she was all right. He wouldn’t tell her he’d heard his child scream and sob she wanted her daddy.
“They have no reason to hurt her, every reason not to.” Ten million reasons, he thought.
“What did they say? Are they going to let her go? Are we getting the money?”
“He wants the money by midnight tomorrow. He won’t say where yet. He’ll call again. Dad and Nan are arranging it. He says when he gets the money, he’ll tell us where we’ll find Cate.”
“We’re getting her back, Aidan.” She wrapped around him, rocked. “And then we’re never letting her go again. When she’s safe, with us again, home again, we’re never coming back to this house.”
“Charlotte—”
“No! We’re never coming back to this house where this could happen. I want Nina fired. I want her gone.” She pulled back, eyes filled with tears and fury. “I’ve been lying here, sick, scared, picturing my daughter trapped somewhere, crying for me. Nina? At best she was negligent, but at worst? She could be part of this, Hugh.”
“Oh, Charlotte, Nina loves Cate. Listen now, listen. We think it must be one of the catering or event staff, or someone who got through posing as one of them. They had to have a car or truck or van to get her away. They had to have it planned out.”
Tears sheened over the arctic blue of Charlotte’s eyes, spilled down her pale cheeks. “It could’ve been someone in the family, a friend. She’d have gone with someone she knew.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“I don’t care about that.” Charlotte brushed it away. “I only want her back. I don’t care about anything else.”
“It’s important we find out who and how. If we contacted the police—”
“No. No. No! Is the money more important to you than Caitlyn, than our baby?”
He’d forgive her for that, he told himself. She looked ravaged, looked ill, so he’d forgive her for that eventually.
“You know better. I don’t give a damn how upset you are, don’t you say such a thing to me.”
“Then stop talking to me about police when calling them could get her killed! I want my baby home, I want her safe. She’s not safe here. She’s not safe with Nina.”
Heading toward hysterical again—he recognized the signs. He couldn’t find it in him to blame her.
“All right, Charlotte, we’ll talk about all this later.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right, but I’m terrified, Hugh. I’m letting myself get wound up again because I can’t stand thinking about our baby, alone and afraid. Oh God, Aidan.” She dropped her head on his shoulder. “Where is our baby?”
CHAPTER THREE
Running, until she couldn’t run any more, until she had to sit on the ground, shivering, shaking. She’d tripped a couple of times when the trees blocked out the moonlight and now her hands bled a little, and she’d torn her jeans. Her knee hurt, and her ankle, her elbow, but she couldn’t stop too long.
She couldn’t see the lights anymore from wherever she’d been, and that was good. How could they find her when they couldn’t see her?
The bad? She didn’t know where she was. It was so dark, and she was so cold.
She heard coyotes off and on, and other things that rustled. She tried not to think about bears or wildcats. She didn’t think she was high enough in the hills for that—Grandpa told her they lived higher, and stayed away from people—but she didn’t know.
She’d never been in the woods, alone in the dark before.
All she knew, for certain, was that she had to keep going in the same direction. Away. But she wasn’t even sure of that because at first she’d been so scared she hadn’t paid attention.
Instead of running, now she walked. She could hear b
etter when her own breath wasn’t whistling in her ears. She could hear if someone—or something—came after her.
Tired, so tired, she wanted to curl up and sleep. But something might eat her if she did. Or worse, she thought, worse, she might wake up back in that room.
Where they’d break her fingers and shoot her.
Her stomach hurt from hunger, and her throat clicked from thirst. When her teeth chattered, she didn’t know if it was from fear or cold.
Maybe she could sleep, just for a little while. She could climb a tree, sleep in the branches. It was so hard to think when she was so tired, so cold.
She stopped, leaned against a tree, laid her cheek on the bark. If she climbed a tree, slept, maybe when the sun came up, she could see where she was. She knew the sun came up in the east, knew the ocean was west. So if she saw the ocean, she’d know . . .
What? She still wouldn’t know where she was because she didn’t know where she’d been.
And they could find her when the sun came up.
She trudged on, head drooping with fatigue, feet shuffling as she just couldn’t lift them anymore.
Half dreaming, she walked. And smiled a little at a sound. Then shook herself awake, listened.
Was that the ocean? She thought, maybe . . . And something else.
She rubbed her tired eyes, stared ahead. A light. She saw a light. She kept her eyes on it, walked on.
The ocean, she thought again, getting louder, closer. What if she missed a step and fell over a cliff? But the light, it was closer, too.
The trees opened up. She saw a field in the moonlight. Wide and grassy. And . . . cows. The light, well beyond the edge of the woods, the edge of the field, came from a house.
She nearly walked into the barbed wire that kept the cows inside.
She cut herself a little getting through it, ripped her new sweater. She remembered from making the movie in Ireland that cows grew a lot bigger for real than they looked in books or from a distance.
She stepped in cow poop, and said “Gak,” with a ten-year-old girl’s disgust. From there, after swiping her sneaker on the grass, she tried to watch her step.
A house, she saw now, that faced the ocean, with decks up and down, with a light through the lower windows. Barns and stuff that meant ranch.
She navigated the barbed wire again—more successfully.
She saw a truck, a car, smelled manure and animals.
After stumbling again, she started to run toward the house. Someone to help, someone who’d take her home. Then stopped herself.
They could be bad people, too. How could she know? Maybe they were even friends with the people who locked her in the room. She needed to be careful.
It had to be late, so they’d be asleep. She only had to get inside, find a phone, and call nine-one-one. Then she could hide until the police came.
She crept toward the house, onto the wide porch in front. Though she expected to find it locked, she tried the front door, nearly dropped with relief when the knob turned.
She eased inside.
The lamp in the window burned low, but it burned. She could see a big room, furniture, a big fireplace, stairs leading up.
She didn’t see a phone, so she walked back toward a kitchen with green things growing in red pots on a wide windowsill, a table with four chairs, and a bowl of fruit.
She grabbed an apple, shining green, bit in. As it crunched between her teeth, as juice hit her tongue, her throat, she knew she’d never tasted anything so good. She saw the handset on the counter beside a toaster.
Then she heard footsteps.
Because the kitchen offered no place to hide, she rushed into the dining room open to it. Clutching the apple, more juice dribbling down her hand, she squeezed herself into a dark corner beside a bulky buffet.
When the kitchen lights flashed on, she tried to make herself smaller.
She caught a glimpse of him as he walked straight to the refrigerator. A boy, not a man, though he looked older than she, taller. He had a shaggy mop of dark blond hair, and wore only boxers.
If she hadn’t been so terrified, the sight of a mostly naked boy who wasn’t a cousin would have mortified and fascinated her.
He was pretty skinny, she noted, as he grabbed a drumstick out of the fridge, gnawed it while dragging out a jug—not like a store carton—of milk.
He chugged milk right from the jug, set it on the counter. He sang to himself, or hummed, or made ba-da-ba-dum! noises while he pulled a cloth off what looked like some kind of pie.
That’s when he turned, still ba-da-daing, pulled open a drawer. And saw her.
“Whoa!” When shock had him jolting back, she had an instant to run. But before she gathered herself, he tipped his head to the side. “Hey. You lost or something?”
He took a few steps toward her; she cringed back.
In what would seem like a thousand years later, she would think back and remember exactly what he said, how he said it, how he looked.
He smiled at her, spoke easily, like they’d met in some park or ice-cream shop. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Hey, are you hungry? My gram makes totally excellent fried chicken. We got leftovers.” He wagged the drumstick he still held to prove it.
“I’m Dillon. Dillon Cooper. This is our ranch. Me and Gram and Mom.”
He took another couple of steps as he spoke, then crouched down. When he did, his eyes changed. Green eyes, she could see now, but softer, quieter than Grandda’s.
“You’re bleeding. How’d you get hurt?”
She started to shake again, but she wasn’t afraid of him. Maybe she trembled because she wasn’t afraid of him. “I fell down, and then there were sharp things where the cows are.”
“We can fix you up, okay? You should come sit down in the kitchen. We have stuff to fix you up. What’s your name? I’m Dillon, remember?”
“Caitlyn. Cate—with a C.”
“You should come sit in the kitchen, Cate, and we can fix you up. I need to get my mom. She’s cool,” he said quickly. “Seriously.”
“I need to call nine-one-one. I need the phone to call nine-one-one, so I came inside. The door wasn’t locked.”
“Okay, just let me get my mom first. Man, she’d freak if the cops came when she was asleep. It would scare her.”
Her jaw wobbled. “Can I call my daddy, too?”
“Sure, sure. How about you come sit down first? Maybe finish your apple, let me get Mom.”
“There were bad guys,” she whispered, and his eyes widened.
“No shit? Don’t tell Mom I said ‘shit.’ ” When he reached out a hand, she took it. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Man, don’t cry. It’s going to be okay now. You just sit down, let me get Mom. Don’t run off, okay? Because we’ll help you. I promise.”
Believing him, she lowered her head, nodded.
Dillon wanted his mom more than anything and anyone, and ran for the back stairs. Finding a kid hiding in the house during a fridge raid was cool—or would’ve been if she hadn’t had cuts and bruises. And looked scared enough to pee her pants.
Then it turned cool again because she wanted the cops, and the bad guys, more cool. Except she was just a kid, and somebody hurt her.
He dashed into his mother’s room without knocking, shook her shoulder. “Mom, Mom, wake up.”
“Oh God, Dillon, what?”
She might’ve brushed him off, rolled over, but he shook her again. “You gotta get up. There’s a kid downstairs, a girl kid, and she’s hurt. She said she wants to call the cops because of bad guys.”
Julia Cooper opened one bleary eye. “Dillon, you’re dreaming again.”
“Nuh-uh. Swear to God. I have to get back down to the kitchen because she’s scared, and she’ll maybe run. You have to come. She’s bleeding a little.”
Now fully awake, Julia shot up in bed, shoved her long blond hair back from her face. “Bleeding?”
/> “Hurry, okay? Jeez, I have to get some pants.”
He bolted into his room, grabbed the jeans and sweatshirt he’d tossed on the floor—even though he wasn’t supposed to. On the run, he stuck a leg inside of his jeans, hopped along, shot in the other. His bare feet slapped the wood stairs as he dragged on the shirt.
She still sat at the table, which had him letting out a whoosh of relief. “Mom’s coming. I’m going to get the first-aid kit out of the pantry. Then she’ll know what to do. You can eat that drumstick if you want.” He gestured to the one he’d dropped on the table. “I only had one bite.”
But she hunched her shoulders together as someone came down the stairs.
“It’s just Mom.”
“Dillon James Cooper, I swear if you . . .” She stopped when she saw the girl, and the sleepy irritation dropped away from her face. Like her son, Julia knew how to approach the hurt and frightened.
“I’m Julia, honey, Dillon’s mom. I need to take a look at you. Dillon, get the first aid kit.”
“I am already,” he muttered, and took it from a shelf in the big pantry.
“Now a clean cloth and a bowl of warm water. And a blanket. Light the fire in the kitchen hearth.”
He rolled his eyes behind her back, but obeyed.
“What’s your name, sweetie?”
“Caitlyn.”
“Caitlyn, that’s pretty. I’m going to clean this cut on your arm first. I don’t think it needs stitches.” She smiled as she spoke.
Her eyes had a lot of gold in them, but there was green, too, like the boy’s. Like Dillon’s, Cate remembered.
“While I’m fixing you up, why don’t you tell me what happened. Dillon, pour Caitlyn a glass of that milk before you put it away.”
“I don’t want milk. They tried to give me milk but it was wrong. I don’t want milk.”
“All right. How about—”
She broke off as Cate jolted. And Maggie Hudson came down the stairs. Maggie took one look at Cate, tipped her head. “I wondered what all this noise was. Looks like we’ve got company.”
She had blond hair, too, but lighter than Dillon’s and his mom’s. Blue streaked through it on its way to her shoulders.
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