“What can I help you with, Ms. Harmon?”
Abby hesitated. “I’m in the process of getting divorced,” she said, feeling the need to say it again. “Cody’s father has supervised visitation,” Abby went on. “He’s not supposed to see him alone. So if he were to show up here …” Abby trailed off, trying to suppress the Lifetime movie images conjured up by that scenario.
The teacher took in Abby’s story. “Don’t worry, Ms. Harmon. The only name or names that go on Cody’s pickup card will be ones you approve. And no one who isn’t on that card is getting access to one of my kids.”
She seemed duly focused, intent as she said it, but also very young to Abby.
Worry must’ve continued to reflect on her face, because the teacher went on. “One other person you might want to reach out to?”
Abby nodded quickly.
“The school bus driver. I can keep my eyes on things in here. But that still leaves two hours a day when your son is in transit and not in our care.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Liz snatched up the doll from the ground and ran. The temperature was momentarily forgotten, although Liz sensed its effect in the ragged thump of her heart. But she wouldn’t be slowed, even though she was soon gasping for breath.
She kept to the path where Izzy had been found, then began to mount a hill. The slope was steep: black, porous-looking stone capped by a coral reef of lichen, and Liz tripped, the palms of her hands skidding painfully. But she rose and kept going until she reached a ridge of trees at the top. She was breathing even harder now, so slick with sweat that her feet slid inside her sandals. A low, orchestral thrum of insects filled the air.
Liz peered down. She’d been clutching Izzy in one hand; now she wedged the doll into her pocket. The other side of the hill was just as sharply pitched. Liz turned around, trying to get a sense of her bearings. No hint of the farmhouse. Even the inland sea of corn seemed far off. There was no direction that looked more promising than over this edge.
She was soon slipping, bracing herself with one hand to try and keep from careening out of control, when the sun struck something silver. Liz rotated slightly, turning toward it, as she kept on maneuvering vertically. She lost sight of whatever metallic glimmer had been exposed, and ground to a halt, letting out a grunt of frustration as she held herself in place. What had she seen? She scoured the earth around her, willing it to give up its secrets. There was some sort of cleft over there in the ground. Liz half slid, half scooted over to it, before getting to her feet. The soil here was too even, as if it had been smoothed into place. She began kicking clods of dirt away until it hit her that she was standing on something solid.
A plane of steel so thick that it didn’t shift when she stamped on it. Liz dropped to her knees, banging with both fists and screaming.
“Ally! Reid! Where are you?”
Only the concert of sounds from the woods. Nothing human answered.
“Paul! Damn you! Paul!”
Someone caught her from behind and yanked her to her feet.
It was her father-in-law, his face red and shiny.
“What is this place?” Liz cried. “Open it. Please. Let me inside!”
“They’re not here,” Matthew said. “I wasn’t lying about that.”
“No,” Liz said, withdrawing Izzy and wielding her like a weapon. “You were just lying about everything else.”
If Matthew had the grace to flush, it wasn’t detectable. “I don’t lie,” he intoned. “I have no idea how that toy got here.”
“I don’t care if you do or don’t,” Liz said roughly. “All I care about is where Paul and the kids went from here.” Suddenly she seized his arm. “Please tell me. Are the children all right?”
Matthew stared at her wordlessly.
“Did something happen? Why would Ally leave Izzy behind?”
At last her father-in-law seemed to take pity on her. “I told you, I didn’t see them. Maybe they were chased off by that cop calling.”
But the babysitting cop’s friend hadn’t even come until yesterday afternoon. Where had her children spent the night before last, if not here at the farmhouse? Matthew’s suggestion diminished clarity instead of adding it.
Liz’s skin prickled with dirt and evaporating sweat. She felt desperate, unable to reach this implacable man. “Smart move with the rows,” she said, speaking into the oppressive heat and silence. “The spacing. Be hard to find this spot without some sort of sign. But you wouldn’t want to flag it.”
Her father-in-law looked at her with faint surprise.
“I’m surprised Pervadon let you do it. Challenge to their uniformity.”
“That section is mine.”
“Oh, right,” Liz said cruelly. “You’re renting back some of your own land.”
Matthew crushed his hand into a fist. “You think you’re pretty smart, hah? How many people lived off what you grew last year?” He barked a laugh. “Or did they just have some condiments for their sandwiches?”
Touché, Liz thought. She touched the square of paper she’d put into her pocket. “What did Paul do that required forgiveness?”
Her father-in-law studied her for a moment. Pearls of perspiration had collected on his temples; now they began to dissolve and trickle down.
“I would think you’d know that,” he said.
Liz searched her memory, but it was hard to find even the mildest reports of indiscretion. Paul thought that he knew the best way, the right way, to live. He kept a stranglehold on virtue. He’d even been reluctant to join in on frat-boy pranks, although he’d once stolen the rival fraternity’s pig. That used to make them joke that Reid came by his talent genetically.
Reid. And Ally. None of this was getting her any closer to her kids.
“No,” she said in a small voice. “I have no idea. Please tell me.”
“That isn’t my place,” Matthew said with such a note of finality in his voice that Liz knew even hysterical begging would get her nowhere.
She kicked at the roof of the bunker that lay belowground. “Seems like you’re preparing for a war out here.”
“A war’s coming,” Matthew responded, studying her with brute disregard. “And if most folks are too ignorant to notice, I don’t see why I should have to sacrifice my grandkids to their stupidity.”
“Your grandkids?” Liz shot back. “The ones you’ve seen three times in their lives?”
Again Matthew subsided into silence, but it seemed less concession than obstruction.
“So that’s what this is about?” Liz said. “Paul thinks he has to take the kids and—what, build a bunker of his own somewhere? This one wasn’t good enough?” She let out a sharp peal of laughter, and a rattle of birds disturbed the high canopy of leaves.
Matthew looked away.
“I think my kids are in there,” Liz said. “I think you’re lying to me now.”
Her father-in-law let out a huff of breath. He walked the length of dirt, which shrouded metal beneath. When he came to the end of the run, he kicked aside some sticks, pulled up hard on a handle, and disappeared into the ground. After a few seconds—too little time to have done anything beneath—Matthew hoisted himself back up, indicating the inside of the cavity with a gesture whose gallantry looked misplaced.
Liz walked to the edge and squatted down. She leaned over, trying to peer into the depths. The capsule appeared to go on for a while underground. The buried breadth was daunting, and Liz felt her chest clutch.
“Go on,” Matthew said. “See for yourself.”
Liz sat, then lowered her legs over the side.
“Feel for the steps,” Matthew instructed. “They’re built in.”
Liz’s shoe caught the lip. Bracing her hands against smooth steel walls, Liz strained for the next step, before getting the idea and turning her body around, climbing down as if she were on a ladder.
It was blessedly cool below; she took a second to bask in the sensation. How much warmer this place would be come
wintertime, insulated by its many feet of dirt. Liz registered dimly how Matthew had fitted the place out—rows of canned goods, a rack of guns, a pipeline that must lead to a spring—but the only really important thing she sensed was that the capsule indeed appeared to be empty, devoid of human life.
She began walking its length.
Then the lid swung down.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A caul of panic descended along with the roof.
She was in a steel trap, caught as surely as if metal claws had sunk into one of her limbs. It was utterly lightless. Liz’s eyes blinked crazily, trying to adjust, but she couldn’t see a thing, not even herself. The dark was as thick as paste, filling her eye sockets, her lungs. She fought for a breath, but couldn’t get any air.
She leaned over, feeling for her knees, some sense of tactile connection to keep from passing out. Her voice rose and teetered, but at first she couldn’t form coherent words. Then her shout drilled up to the ceiling, to the stolen sky.
“Matthew! Matthew! Let me out!”
Was her father-in-law still up there? Had this happened by accident? Or had he purposely locked her in while he went off to—what? Locate her children and usher them yet farther away?
“Matthew! Matthew, please!”
Her voice was ragged now, hoarse. Soon it wouldn’t work at all.
Darkness straitjacketed her and she fought against it, flinging her hands out in the hopes of touching something, anything to hold on to. But her fingers located nothing besides empty air, and Liz realized she was in a blind spin.
She bent down again, disoriented. A completely futile hope, near-delusional in quality, assailed her. Paul was in here too, hidden away in some compartment she hadn’t yet come to. If she could only find him, he would tell her what to do.
She crouched down farther, not entirely sure when it was that she fell to her knees. The darkness no longer felt so oppressive. Instead it was comforting, like a blanket.
“Paul?” she called out, her voice the only sign of life in the hollow space. “Are you here? Oh, Paul, where are our babies?”
The dark seemed friendlier now, a hand reaching blindly for her, and she began crawling toward it. She realized that for the first time in days she felt cold, but it wasn’t a bad feeling; in fact, the relief of it made her want to lie down and stay put.
Her knee barked against something in the dark, and Liz felt for her leg, rubbing without being able to see.
If she did find Paul again, she would never be able to listen to what he had to say, and the loss of her reliance on him weighed as heavily as the dark.
You’re smart, Jill used to say. You can figure out whether or not to give the kids a Big Mac without Paul telling you the percentage of soy in the feed.
How much of a puppet, a mouthpiece had she been for her husband’s beliefs?
Liz forced her breathing to slow.
First light. Then the opening would be easy to find. The lid had to lift from the inside, requiring strength perhaps, but adrenaline would lend her that. She could feel it streaking through her like an electrical current, her heart pinging its beat. As if she were floating, Liz turned and began to feel for a wall.
The lid of the capsule swung open, and sunlight lit like a flare.
“Paul?” she shouted, voice crazed with reprieve.
“Elizabeth.” It was Matthew’s staid tone. “Get up here. I’m sorry. The hinges stick when they haven’t been used in a while.” He paused. “I told you, nobody’s beneath.”
He reached down, his hand a white, waving flag.
Liz refused it, climbing laboriously out on her own.
Aboveground, the temperature was like an assault.
But it didn’t rob her of breath, not like that suffocating dark. When her voice emerged, it was steady. “You really don’t know where they are?”
“I don’t,” Matthew said. “But it wouldn’t matter if I did.”
Liz hadn’t let go of Izzy in the whole time she’d been sealed underground. She began stroking the doll’s head, winding yarn hair around her fingers until they pulsed with constriction.
“Of course it would,” she said. “If you knew what Paul was planning to do—”
Her father-in-law was shaking his head. “Whatever Paul is planning, he clearly has no intention of letting anyone else in on it.”
Liz stared at him.
Matthew mopped his brow with his forearm, regarding her with what looked like a genuine sense of sorrow. It was the first spark of human connection she’d felt from her father-in-law, who seemed less man than monolith, something carved out of the hard, oaken land.
“Trust me, Elizabeth. I know all about losing a child.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The car gave off a plume of heat as soon as she unlocked it. Liz welcomed the burn when she sat down inside. Sweat sizzled on her thighs, but she didn’t turn on the engine. She deserved this punishment, this pain. She had lost her children.
Liz wrapped her hands around the steering wheel, letting the circle brand them.
From inside her purse, her cell phone let out a bleat of missed calls.
Liz’s mother had left a message, and Jill had left three. It must’ve been Jill who sounded the alarm, since it was still days away from her mother’s usual perfunctory check-in. Liz felt wisps of both gratitude and irritation at her friend.
A slip of paper tucked into her cell phone case snagged her attention. The babysitting cop’s card.
He answered with, “This is Grayson,” and Liz realized that in those desperate, frenetic eight hours at the hotel, she had never learned his name.
“This is Liz Daniels,” she said. “I wanted to thank you—thank your friend—for going up to check the farm.”
“I’m sorry it didn’t lead to anything,” Grayson said.
If only Grayson’s friend had gotten there a little sooner.
“My children were there,” she said. “I found—” She had to break off.
Grayson’s reply was instant. “You found your kids?”
“They were gone by the time I arrived,” Liz said. “But I found Ally’s doll.” She reached down to her pocket to touch it, the most tangible link she had to her children now.
Grayson didn’t say anything.
“Can the Junction Bridge police do anything else?”
“I can’t see that there’s anything to do,” Grayson replied. “There’s the nature of the matter, for one thing. This is a family concern.” As if sensing the understatement contained in that assessment, he went on. “Also, as you say, your kids are no longer there.”
He was right. Liz stared out the windshield, which was coated with bug splatter and dust. The view to wherever her children might be seemed just as occluded.
“It seems almost cruel,” Grayson said.
The word hit her like a hammer.
“Not only for your husband to plan some happy, jolly family trip in order to make off with your children. But also for him to have stuck around all morning. Stupid, too—we could easily have detained him.” Grayson paused. “As a cop—if this were my case—I’d be asking why he did that. Because it might give you some idea where he wound up.”
Liz felt baffled. Grayson was right, of course; those were bizarre moves on Paul’s part. But she had no idea how to uncover their justification.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said after a moment.
“Sure, go ahead,” Grayson said.
“How did you figure it out? That my husband …”
She didn’t have to finish.
“Two things,” Grayson said. “One took place that day, one a little later. First, when your husband went to check on the children’s belongings—”
It was Liz’s turn to break in. “He lied. He did take their things with him.”
Of course he would have. Paul hated waste. Especially when the items to be squandered had been made by what he called overseas slave labor. Clothes so cheap they were painless to replac
e when outgrown or lost or their wearer just took a sudden dislike.
“No.” Grayson spoke over the voice in her head. “He was smart enough not to do that. Everything was pretty much left intact, except the doll.” He paused, as if aware that his words would cause pain. “It was that your husband didn’t check in an authentic way. At least that’s how it looked to the officer we sent to watch him. Your husband looked like he knew what he’d find before he went rifling through it.”
Liz realized she hadn’t blinked. The light blinded her, bringing on a sting of tears, and she forced herself to shut her eyes. “What was the other thing?”
Grayson hesitated. “An eyewitness came forward. Kind of a strange man; there was a delay before he reported what he’d seen. According to the hotel, he doesn’t speak much outside of his required duties. But he observed your husband escorting the children out in the middle of the night.”
“What?” Sunlight broke over her, a million flashing pieces. “Who did?”
Grayson’s breath emerged audibly. “We’ve already checked him out, Mrs. Daniels. An employee of the hotel who was working the night shift.”
Liz didn’t have to speak; the pressure of her question ballooned in the air between them.
Grayson paused, checking his notes or maybe the report.
“His name is Larry Arnold,” he said at last. “He’s a bellhop.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
How stupid Paul had been to flip that lock on the top of the door. Liz had been thinking of the mistake as just an unthinking, automatic gesture, the act of a man who spent much of his life in books and research, in his head, rather than staging crime scenes. Or else it had been some kind of telltale-heart tic, an admission to the world of his guilt. But now she wondered if her husband hadn’t in fact made several errors out of naiveté and lack of cunning, and if one of them might actually help her.
She started the car. The temperature inside had climbed to a broil during her conversation, and Liz’s skin felt slick, her shirt wetted through. Praying she could find her way back along the tangle of roads, she left Matthew and Mary’s farm behind in a yellow storm cloud of dust.
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