“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“It was a panel van, for sure. And it was old. Kind of rusty. But I’m not sure if it was blue or black.”
“Did you catch the license plate?”
Connor tried to remember. “No.”
“Did you happen to notice what state it was from?”
“No.” Connor put the key back in the fake rock and put the rock back in the bushes.
A uniformed officer stepped out of the door. “Detective?”
Olivia turned her attention to him. “Yes?”
He held up a cellphone, and the movement lit up the screen. There was a picture of a cat playing poker on it. “Found this under the sofa.”
She looked at Connor. “You recognize that?”
“It’s my dad’s,” Connor said. So the intruder hadn’t come back for his father’s cellphone. That meant it had to have been his. Dammit. If he had bothered to look toward the front door when he exited the stairwell, he would have seen it. Even if he had thought it was his dad’s at the time, went for it only to call 911, he would have realized what he had as soon as he picked it up. It would have been all the evidence the police needed to find the intruder. He could have slipped out the back door, run to a neighbor’s. If he had just paid attention to his surroundings, everything would have been different.
“Okay,” the officer said, and walked back into the house.
“Wait. What’s he doing?” Connor asked.
“The tech guys are going to install some monitoring software on it that will let us listen in, in case the kidnapper calls. You’ll just have to activate it. Privacy concerns, and all that. Speaking of which . . .” Olivia held out her hand.
Connor gave her his phone, and Olivia gave it to another officer who was on his way into the house.
“Set this one up, too,” she told him.
The officer nodded but didn’t stop.
“Do you know anybody who would have had a bone to pick with your parents? Either one of them?”
He considered that. “Not that I can think of.”
“Both parents work?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“My dad works for Leewood Construction, and my mom’s a surgeon in the William Marks ER.”
Olivia nodded, made a note. Then she paused, as if deciding where she wanted to go next with her questions, before simply asking, “Can you think of anything else that might be important?”
Well, there’s the money, Connor thought. But he wasn’t going to mention that.
CHAPTER 4
The money Connor was thinking about was a stack of loose bills in a plain white envelope. He had found it on the dining room table after the intruder had left and before the cops had arrived. He hadn’t mentioned it because he didn’t know for sure whether the intruder had left it. That money might have belonged to his parents. (Although it wasn’t like them to carry around stacks of cash. Especially not stacks of hundred-dollar bills.) And if the intruder had left it, then that would only lead to questions he couldn’t answer. It might look to the police like he was involved.
No, thank you. That was not a complication he needed to introduce into the investigation. Best to keep that information to himself. At least for now.
Olivia stayed until the crime scene investigators had finished their work and, on her way out the door, told Connor to keep both his and his father’s phone on him. (They hadn’t found his mother’s.) “Sooner or later, somebody’s going to call,” she said confidently.
Connor, though, had his doubts. Why would you leave an envelope of cash and then call with demands? “What if they don’t?” he asked.
“They will, and when they do, we’ll be listening.” Olivia held out a hand to shake Connor’s and he obliged. “I’ll be in touch.”
He watched her trek across the front yard, straight over the tread marks left behind by the intruder’s vehicle. When she was halfway to her car, she turned around and said, “You got anybody you can stay with?”
Perhaps because he hadn’t been alone for more than a few minutes since the abduction, Connor hadn’t given any thought to what it would be like once the police left. Now facing a night by himself in a house that, as familiar as it was, seemed foreign to him, he wished he had. Then again, what difference would it have made? He had a few friends at Stanford he could stay with if this had happened on the West Coast. But here he had no one he was close to. He had grown apart from his high school friends, and good riddance, as far as he’d been concerned at the time. “I’ll be fine.”
Olivia shrugged and continued on her way.
Connor went inside, closed the door. Locked it twice, just to be sure, and latched the chain. He walked from room to room surveying the mess. In the living room, whole shelves of stuff—books, knickknacks, photos—had been knocked off the built-in bookshelves that lined the wall on each side of the fireplace. Some of those items, like an antique plate handed down from parent to child for God-knows-how-many generations, were broken. Others, like the angel made from Swarovski crystal, had shattered. The sofas were askew, the coffee table turned over.
The dining room and formal living room were almost as bad, but the kitchen had gotten the worst of it. No surprise, since Kim had used stacks of dishes to defend herself.
Each room connected to the next, and Connor was able to survey the entire floor without backtracking. When he was done, he dug the envelope of cash out of his waistband and sat down on the sofa to count it.
He made his way through the stack of hundreds. At nearly six thousand dollars, he lost interest. He felt numb and broken and scared, and at that moment the money just didn’t have any meaning to him. With just a glance at the stack of bills remaining to be counted, he estimated the total came in somewhere around twenty thousand.
He shoved the money back into the envelope and placed it on the mantel over the fireplace. It was the only flat surface that didn’t need to be cleaned. And he had to clean. As strange as it seemed, even to him, he had to bring order to this mess. It was almost as if by doing so, by returning the house to some semblance of normalcy, he might be able to bring his parents back.
Connor started with the big things, pushing the furniture into place and righting the chairs. Then he got the broom, swept up the broken dishes. Operating on a sort of autopilot, he carried one bag of trash after another to the bin outside. By the time he had filled his third bag, he had cleaned up most of the mess and, he realized, overfilled the bin as well.
He stood there in the dark looking at that last bag—half-in, half-out, the bin’s lid resting on top of it—and felt defeated. The zombie-like state that had carried him through the last several hours finally crumbled, and the torrent of emotions it had been keeping in check flooded out.
Connor screamed and slammed his fist on the bin’s lid. Over and over, he hit it. He used all of his weight to try to force it closed. When nothing worked, he pushed it over, let the damn bag of trash roll out, and stormed back inside.
THREE WEEKS LATER
CHAPTER 5
Mark Wilson didn’t care much for the city. He only came into town to catch a Broadway show with his wife once in a while. Tonight, they had come to see Wicked. His wife called it a “spectacle” on the way out. She meant it in a good way. He would have called it a spectacle, too, if she had asked. He wouldn’t have meant it in a good way. They didn’t agree on a lot. But that was what made their relationship work.
Hillary had gotten pregnant not long after they’d started dating, and originally they had stayed together for the child. Twenty years later, with their son at Princeton, they now stayed together because they loved each other. He couldn’t say for sure when their love had taken on the depth it had now, but he was sure those differences had been a part of making that happen.
On the way home, Hillary found a playlist of the musical’s songs on Spotify and put it on. By the time they reached their house in Westchester, they were both si
nging at the top of their lungs and laughing at how bad they were.
A rusty blue panel van was parked along the curb across the street. Mark looked at it and grunted. “Looks like the Sizemore kid got herself a new ride.”
“She should park that thing in the driveway,” Hillary said. “It’s such an eyesore.”
“Her parents probably don’t want to look at it any more than we do.”
“Yeah, well, she’s their kid.”
Mark pulled into his garage. “I’ll talk to them in the morning.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Luck?” he asked, then leaned in and put on an accent. “I don’t need no stinkin’ luck.”
Hillary laughed as he kissed her neck. She opened the car door. “Take that to the bedroom.”
They entered the house through an adjoining door. Mark turned off the alarm and Hillary headed straight for the stairs. She would expect him to follow, and he did.
Or he started to, anyway.
He was halfway up the stairs when a knock on the door caused him to stop. The small hairs on his arms jumped to attention. It was too late for visitors. He should probably just ignore it.
The visitor knocked again, louder this time, and rang the doorbell.
“What’s going on down there, honey?” Hillary shouted. “Who’s at the door?”
“I don’t know,” Mark called back. “Maybe the Sizemore kid heard us talking about her.”
“Well, it’s too late for visitors. Just ignore it. Whoever it is, they’ll go away.”
Exactly what I was thinking.
Mark started up the stairs again, this time reaching the bedroom. He came up behind Hillary, kissed her neck. She leaned into it.
Then that damn knocking was back. And the doorbell. Ring. Ring. Ring.
“Son of a . . . !” Mark charged down the stairs. His wife again encouraged him to ignore the visitor, but he couldn’t. This was going to stop now.
Mark turned the deadbolt, yanked open the door. “Listen. I don’t know who you think . . .” Although his words trailed off when he saw the man on the patio, the thought finished playing itself out in his head: . . . you are, banging on my door like that. What’s the matter with you?
It was as if his mind needed time to finish processing the reality before him. This man—this stranger—was dressed all in black. Scuffed black work boots, black jeans, black turtleneck (despite the fact that it was the kind of sticky hot tonight that made Mark want to strip naked and stand in front of a fan). Even a black ski mask. Were it not for the brown leather gloves with holes on the knuckles, he’d look like a living shadow.
Mark tried to slam the door shut, but the man in the ski mask stepped forward, pushed his weight against the door, and shoved.
Mark stumbled back several steps. “Call the police!”
“What?” Hillary shouted as she came out of the bedroom. “Honey, who is it? You can’t shout at me from downstairs. I can’t hear you.” Then she, too, saw the intruder and was likewise stunned into silence.
The intruder lunged at Mark, his right hand held out in front of him. It wasn’t until then Mark realized the man was armed with a Taser. He heard the crackle of electricity as the intruder activated it. He tried to move out of the way, but he wasn’t fast enough. The current shot through his body, scrambling his thoughts and sending his muscles into spasms. He fell to the floor. If he could have thought at all, he would have thought he smelled his flesh burning. Then he felt a white-hot wave of pain wash over him as the intruder whacked him on the side of the head.
Hillary was frozen with fear. She saw the intruder hit her husband square in the chest with the Taser. She could tell Mark had tried to get out of the way but was unable. She watched in horror as her husband collapsed to the floor. The intruder looked up at her, then walked deeper into the house and, as such, out of sight.
She thought about running down to Mark to see if he was all right. She thought about returning to the bedroom to get her phone so she could call the police. Both choices felt wrong. How could she leave her husband alone down there while she went to call the police? But wasn’t calling the police exactly what she should do?
Hillary tried to think through her own chaotic emotions.
Call the police, she told herself. Do it now.
She was just about to follow her own instructions when the intruder returned with a wrought-iron candlestick. Hillary recognized it as one of two from their dining room table.
Call the police!
The intruder swung the candlestick at Mark’s temple. There was a sickening thud when it connected, and Hillary screamed again. Finally, she ran. Back to the bedroom. She looked around frantically. Where was her phone? Not on the side table. She grabbed her purse off the bed, shook everything out of it. Makeup, her wallet, a bunch of receipts, a Snickers bar she’d forgotten about . . . and her phone.
Hillary could hear the intruder charging up the stairs as she dialed 911. She ran into the master bathroom, pushed the button on the doorknob to lock it. That wasn’t going to hold long, but, God willing, it would hold long enough.
She leaned against the door just to make it that much harder for him to get inside and held the phone up to her ear.
An operator was already on the line. “Hello? Can you hear me? This is nine-one-one. Hello?”
“There’s someone in my house.” She sounded out of breath, terrified, and hearing herself that way only made her more scared. “You’ve got to get someone out here.”
“Ma’am, are you all right?”
The intruder slammed into the door on the other side. Hillary felt the wood shake and screamed. “Please, hurry. My husband . . . Right now . . . I don’t know.”
The intruder slammed into the door again.
“What’s the address, ma’am?”
“Don’t you have that?” she shouted.
“Ma’am—”
Hillary cut in, rattled off her address. Then the intruder hit the door hard enough for the lock to give way. The door swung inward, knocking Hillary off balance. She dropped the phone, felt all fifty thousand volts the Taser delivered pump through her system.
CHAPTER 6
Connor had made only one call the night his parents were abducted, and that was to his uncle, Henry Snider. He had decided Olivia was right—he shouldn’t be alone. Henry was his mother’s brother and was, of course, horrified. He had caught a plane that night to LaGuardia and arrived at Connor’s house just after three a.m.
Connor, who couldn’t sleep anyway, didn’t mind the late hour. In fact, he appreciated Henry coming as quickly as he did.
Henry was a big man, taller than average and, as Connor’s mom politely put it, well fed. He had lost most of his hair a few years back and, upon his wife’s advice, shaved the rest of it off. It did not make him look as cool as he thought it did.
His pressed gray shirt was tucked neatly into a pair of black slacks. When he entered the house, he loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt. Connor wasn’t sure why Henry always made a point of dressing up. It seemed unnecessary, especially on a night like this.
Then again, he had rushed straight to the airport. Perhaps these were simply the clothes he had worn to the office.
That first night, they had stayed up until dawn, drinking coffee and watching the cellphones that sat on the kitchen table between them. There were a lot of questions from both of them. Why would someone do this? What did they want? Were Kim and Frank all right? And there was the one question Connor suspected they were both thinking but neither said: Were Kim and Frank still alive?
There were no answers.
Connor didn’t tell Henry about the money because he hadn’t told Olivia. Eventually, he figured, he would have to tell somebody. But he needed some time to think it all through first. Two very long days later, though, during which Connor and Henry did nothing but putter around the house hoping for a call, he still hadn’t figured out what it meant and realized it would be even ha
rder to bring up then. Because now Connor wouldn’t just be faced with the question of what the money meant but also why he hadn’t told anybody about it sooner.
Olivia checked in a couple of times. When Connor asked if she had any leads, she said they had one, but not to get his hopes up. A patient had recently died on Kim’s table, the hospital staff had told her. Olivia hadn’t been able to reach the family yet. According to the neighbors, they were out of town. Once she could, she was going to talk to them to rule it out. That sort of thing happened from time to time, she explained, and as far as motives went, it was weak.
Three weeks after the abduction, Henry told Connor he had to go home. “You should come with me,” he said. “I hate the thought of you being here by yourself.” He was, by chance, wearing the same gray shirt and black slacks he had arrived in, although they did not look as fresh as they had.
Henry delivered the news over breakfast. Bacon and eggs. It was the only time their morning meal had consisted of anything more than black coffee and Wheaties. Often it hadn’t even been that much.
Connor shook his head. “I can’t do that. I need to be here. Just in case.”
“Just in case what? I’m as worried about them as you are. But it’s been three weeks. If anyone was going to call, we would have heard something by now. I hate to say it . . .” Henry’s gaze fell from Connor to his coffee cup. “We need to start thinking about what you’re going to do . . . next.”
“Next?”
“Jesus, Connor, don’t make me say it.”
Connor slid the plate of food away. He had appreciated the hot meal when he had come downstairs. Now he saw it for what it was. A way to soften the one-two punch. Henry was leaving. His parents were dead. Enjoy your eggs.
“Kim made Sarah and me your godparents.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like there was anyone else.”
A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trust Page 2