Expire

by Danielle Girard

  Again she thought of the water. Not yet.

  She took hold of the knob, surprised to feel it turn in her hand. It had been locked before—she was sure. Doubting herself now, she opened the door slowly and gazed into a narrow hallway. What she had initially assumed was a basement was actually a bedroom. The walls outside the room were made of horizontal logs, like something from Little House on the Prairie. A cabin—an actual log cabin.

  She shuddered in the doorway. Under different circumstances, the cabin might have been quaint. Above her, the track cut through a notch between the doorways, enabling her to exit the room. Tugging the cleat along the track, she stepped across the threshold cautiously, one hand holding the cable above her and the other braced against the wall.

  To her right was a small bathroom. A shower curtain that had once been white hung along a rusted bar. Above her head was another notch where the track continued into the bathroom. She stepped in and palmed the mirror over the sink, praying for the strong, sturdy feel of glass—something she could break and use to cut her collar. Or something she could use as a weapon.

  Like the water glass, the mirror was made of some sort of plastic. In its reflection, her face was gray and muted. Beside the sink lay a flimsy plastic toothbrush and a small container of Colgate toothpaste, unopened. She brushed her teeth without water and washed her face, holding her breath and sealing her lips to avoid getting the water in her mouth. She used the toilet. Uncertain when someone might come, she kept her movements quick and efficient.

  The small bathroom made her claustrophobic, the sensation of the collar more oppressive there, if that were possible. She experienced a measure of relief when she emerged to the hallway. The cabin was empty. No sounds from inside, not from anywhere. She reached the end of the hallway and studied the main room.

  The space was maybe ten by fifteen and had three windows, two of them flanking the door on the other side of the room. On instinct, she moved toward it before turning her eye to the ceiling and confirming her fears. The track did not reach the door—not even close. Even when she drew the cable out as far as it would go, she was still three or four feet from the door. Perhaps her kidnapper had measured the cord for her specifically. On a second glance, she realized that even if she were a foot taller, the cord wouldn’t be long enough to reach the door.

  Studying the ceiling, she realized the setup took planning. Meticulous planning, the kind she would expect from Spencer. Was someone else as diabolical as her ex-husband?

  Turning back, she worked the metal clip along the track to keep the cord from choking her as she moved to the kitchen. A counter stretched along the far wall, with a sink at its center. Above the counter were cabinets, and a single window over the sink let in the room’s only natural light. Beyond the counter was an ancient-looking stove at the far side of the room, maybe fourteen inches wide, with two spiral electric burners on top. She imagined starting a fire, burning the place down.

  But what then? Would the track come loose from the ceiling before she died of smoke inhalation or burned to death? Anthony DiMalio came to mind, a man she’d autopsied only a few months earlier. He’d died in his bed after falling asleep while smoking a cigarette. The smell of burned flesh had stuck in her nose for weeks.

  No. No fires.

  A small dining table dominated the center of the space. A stainless-steel band ran around the rounded outer edge of the tabletop. She tested the steel band with her nail, but it was tight. What would she do with a metal band?

  No. She had to think creatively.

  Check everything. Every single thing.

  The surface of the table inside the band was pale-pink linoleum, worn and scratched but clean. She pushed against the table, but it didn’t shift. The table legs were bolted into the wood floor.

  Two chairs sat at the table, dark-green and lightweight plastic, the kind that beach establishments left outside and that were sometimes carried off by a strong wind. She turned them upside down, searching for anything metal or sharp. Nothing. On the table, someone had placed a cup, a single bowl, and a plate made from the same indestructible plastic as the cup in the bedroom. Unsure what she was looking for exactly—a tool, a weapon—she moved on. In the cupboard beside the oven, she found a cast-iron fry pan with a wooden handle. Maybe six inches across and covered in a thick layer of rust, it was the first thing she’d found that might be used as a weapon. But it wouldn’t help her break the collar.

  She opened the cupboards around the sink, one at a time, and found them empty. Drawing the cord from the ceiling to create slack, she ducked to look under the sink and found a small container of dish soap, a sponge still in its plastic, and an unopened roll of paper towels. As though the cabin were an Airbnb she had rented instead of a prison.

  She continued searching cupboards and drawers. A drawer to the left of the refrigerator contained only a handful of plastic spoons, individually wrapped. No knives, no metal.

  Her legs trembled beneath her.

  Nothing she could use to cut or fight.

  The table had been bolted to the floor. The chairs were cheap and lightweight. The mirror was plastic.

  They had taken precautions. They had planned.

  Someone had planned for her stay.

  But for how long? And then what?

  7

  Monday, 9:47 a.m. EST

  Spencer MacDonald had been up since 4:30 a.m. Not that he’d slept much. He was not himself—timid, nervous. But this was it. He only had to endure this memorial, and then he was heading to the airport. His suitcase was in the trunk of his car. Too agitated to sleep in his own bed, he’d stayed in a hotel the night before. The security guy he’d hired to stay at his house looked enough like him to fool people from a distance. If someone came to the door, the man would say he was just looking in on the house, that Spencer was traveling for work.

  Which he was. Today.

  Spencer checked his phone for a message from Caleb, wondering if there had been an update on Scala’s activities regarding the letters.

  Nothing.

  Hackers were notorious for going dark just when you needed them. Spencer started to compose a text to remind Caleb how crucial Spencer’s role was but stopped halfway through to erase it. Caleb wouldn’t take the bait. He never did.

  Since the first message Spencer had received from Caleb, Spencer had been cautious about what he asked of Caleb. Caleb had been a faceless investor for all these years—one who always had tips, whose insights made them both a lot of money. And as they had gotten to know one another, Caleb had started to provide Spencer with access to his very unique skill set, most notably, access to Bella’s life.

  Spencer’s charm helped him raise money for Caleb’s special projects. He played the market well enough to go unnoticed by the SEC vultures. Lose a little, win a little. Play the smaller stocks—none of the big ones. Mostly foreign entities, companies Caleb could manipulate. Make a few dollars per share, across a few thousand shares in a hundred or so dummy accounts. Caleb handled the back-office paperwork, tax forms, and the IRS. As long as Caleb made money and Spencer showed his clients the returns they expected—or better ones—everyone was happy.

  As in all relationships, he preferred that the debt be in his favor, particularly when his partner was a cipher. He charged his normal rates, orchestrated the trades with aplomb, keeping Caleb’s greed in check to keep them both safe. But that was before Bella’s rejection. Before her unfortunate choice to attempt to frame him.

  By then Caleb needed him much more than Spencer needed Caleb. But slowly, Spencer spent through the goodwill that had built up in those first years. Over the past few months, he’d asked even more of his secretive partner. This past week, the debt had definitely shifted in Caleb’s favor.

  Caleb knew that Spencer was moving but little more. He wasn’t someone who asked questions, a commonality between the two men. For their joint venture to continue, Spencer had to be sure he wasn’t leaving any loose ends. Bryce Scala felt
like a loose end. When he’d asked Caleb to run a thorough check on the man, Spencer hadn’t explained why. Caleb’s full search on Bryce Scala revealed a limited online presence—a barely used Facebook account, an AOL email address—and no mention of Spencer anywhere. And aside from the call inviting Spencer to this service, there had been no other communication.

  You’re in the clear.

  He wanted to believe it. As he made the turn onto Saint Mary’s Court, he felt the familiar tension in his neck and shoulders. He tried to bring back the release he had felt with Mistress Keres’s neck in his hands, the pressure of her skin between his fingers. But even that joy could not overpower the trill of panic he felt as he pulled to the curb behind the churchyard.

  He scanned the headstones dotting the grass, eyed the Southern live oak with its skeletal fingers that stretched across the churchyard. How long since he’d been here? He’d promised himself he would never be back. The street where he’d grown up was a block away, three turns from the church. Mornings, Spencer and his father had walked together, past the church and west two blocks to the elementary and middle schools nestled in a cul-de-sac.

  While other children were shuttled to and from by mothers in station wagons smelling of biscuits and gravy or in big yellow buses rowdy with childish energy, Spencer had walked beside his silent father. Walked as he had been instructed—head up, eyes forward, alert and wordless. The closer the school grew, the more Spencer longed to abandon his father’s austerity and sprint toward the other children. But he never did. His mother might have encouraged those small rebellions that would grow a flame inside him, if she’d had the courage. Instead, she’d taught him to follow, to obey. Coward.

  And his father didn’t just walk to the end of the block and let him go on alone. He’d walked Spencer through the school grounds, down the hall, and to the door of his classroom, where he’d looked down his long, narrow nose at the other children and teachers alike. When he’d finally left Spencer alone, his father’s suffocating presence still remained, the severity of him like a black cloud, crackling with the threat of lightning, the boom of thunder. A storm that could brew in a single moment. In half a moment. Once his father left, Spencer worked every moment to charm them—his teachers and peers—to undo the impression his father left. He wanted to be a brilliant light that would blind people, blotting out the memory of his father.

  Beyond the church, the tower of Spencer’s office building rose from the skyline like a thin, distant flag. How he longed to be there now. The red-hot pride he felt in that office rushed through him, how he looked down on his father’s little church, on this street, on his past.

  From that window, he was immune to the deadening hate in this place.

  He checked his watch. His mother’s service was to start in fifteen minutes. He’d felt so much lighter after her death. Those moments in her room had been electric—the anger surging through him as he’d finally confronted her. All those years of tamping down the fury, of never speaking his mind, and he was finally free. Able to voice his rage at her spinelessness, her blind obedience to his father, and her own cold manner. He hoped his parents could see him from the depths of their hell, when he was in his home in Greece with his bride and his own son. They had failed to hold him back, to thwart him. He would have his castle, his triumph, despite and in spite of them.

  So soon, he would be the master of his domain.

  Reluctantly, he shifted his attention to the present, staring up at his father’s church. He hadn’t been inside since his father died. Church now was a way to show his face in the community, to see and be seen by clients, so when he attended three or four times a year, he went to the Baptist church close to his home in the wealthiest parish in Greenville. Baptist light, some of the parishioners called it, more palatable than many. Not that he noticed. He could sit in those pews and focus his attention like a laser on the outside of the minister’s left ear and never hear a word.

  That was the one thing he’d learned spending hours after school every day—and all day in the summer—inside the walls of that church. He learned to close off his mind from the words that echoed against the stained glass and the old stones and fill it with his own words. His own thoughts. Translate his father’s hate into a hate all his own.

  And he would do the same thing now.

  Play the role. His childhood had been ample preparation for pretending to be someone else—the charming banker, the country club boy, the gentleman. He attended fund-raisers and took women on dates—one or two dates but never a third—all with the pretense of being open for love to strike again. Which he was not. He wasn’t even certain it was love that had struck with Bella. Though what he felt now burned with a passion that some might compare to love, he knew better.

  What he felt was far more powerful than love.

  He still appeared on Greenville’s list of most eligible bachelors, though he’d been passed over during his imprisonment. Now, of course, the story only served to heighten his appeal. A good man wronged was a better story than a good man.

  He shut off the engine and smoothed his hair without checking in the mirror. As he cracked the door, he smelled the rot of old wood and wet, slick stones. This place was no different from any of the churches he’d visited in the last twenty years, he told himself. So what if it was the actual structure he’d entered in his youth? His father wouldn’t be there, nor his mother. Just a group of old people he hadn’t seen in years and a man he didn’t know. A man whose wife had kept letters from Spencer’s mother. Letters in which she’d confessed to having a son she thought might harbor evil.

  Is it possible for a child to be born of the love between two of God’s chosen people and still be wholly evil?

  It should have made him laugh—his mother and father as God’s chosen ones, that he was a product of love.

  When Bryce Scala had rang his doorbell about a week earlier, Spencer had been looking for things of value. Not garage sale value or sentimental value but real value. Were there clues that would give the detectives looking for Bella any hint of her whereabouts? Those had to be eliminated. Was there something that he might leverage to make his future more comfortable? He went through potential weapons, items that might help him create the ambience of home for Bella. Their new home.

  The survey of the living room had yielded nothing that warranted a second look. The last of the remaining valuables were in a safety deposit box at a branch of Wells Fargo that he never visited. Cash and bearer bonds—they would be the last things he would pick up on his way out of town.

  These were the final days. If nothing else, the daily search reminded him of how well he had planned for his own disappearance. How ready he was.

  From Greenville, he would be going to Dallas to meet the wealthy few individuals who planned to invest in Caleb’s project. Caleb himself was unable to make a personal appearance, so Spencer would be the face. With that completed, he would retrieve Bella and say good-bye to this country and this life.

  Spencer remembered how when the doorbell rang, a gray-haired man he didn’t recognize had looked at him through the small window. In his hands, the man held a bundle of folded papers, maybe three inches thick, secured with a rubber band. Like letters. No choice now, he’d opened the door.

  “Spencer MacDonald?”

  “Yes.”

  The man had smiled. “I’m Bryce Scala. I was friends with your father and mother.”

  Spencer had put out his hand. “So nice to meet you, Mr. Scala.” He hadn’t opened the door to invite Scala inside. He’d wanted the exchange to be brief.

  “I was so sorry to hear about your mother’s passing.”

  “Thank you,” Spencer had said, casting his eyes downward. “It is hard to imagine that she’s really gone.” Of course, he had seen it happen, so imagining it was unnecessary. He need only recollect the sensation of driving that needle into her ear, of watching her faculties fail. Her lips stumbling on words, her hands flopping around like fish tossed o
n land. And then the wonderful relief as she went silent. All of it was still fresh enough to relish in his mind.

  But then Scala had asked to come in. And Spencer had no choice but to comply. The two men had sat in the living room, Spencer noticing how sterile it seemed, how obvious that he was preparing to leave this place. Bryce Scala eyed the room and Spencer as he explained how his wife and Spencer’s mother had been wonderful friends—pen pals.

  “We were living in Asia at the time.” Scala had handed over the letters. “I thought these might be of interest,” the man had told him. But his voice had been measured, his gaze steely. Spencer knew, even before reading them, that the letters contained something that made Spencer vulnerable.

  “I’m hosting a memorial for your mother,” Scala had announced, the letters sitting on the empty coffee table between the two men. “Monday,” he’d said, as though telling Spencer was a courtesy and nothing more. “Hope to see you there.”

  Spencer should have said then that he’d be traveling. But he couldn’t. The old lessons of his childhood took over—honor your parents; respect your elders.

  He stood behind the church, as frozen now as he had been then, staring at the back entrance. He’d rarely come in the front as a child, always ushered through this entrance instead.

  As much as he resented the complication Bryce Scala’s arrival had imposed, Spencer knew it might have been worse if he hadn’t faced Scala in person. At the very least, Spencer had the opportunity to present the facade of the grieving son. He would have to sell it inside the church, pretend that, even as an adult, he had looked for guidance from his wise mother. Share a story or two in the company of a few of his parents’ friends, too distraught to speak but wanting to share what they had been to him.

  Spencer walked around the church to enter from the front steps. He ascended slowly, holding a serene and somber expression as he moved through the sea of people who’d congregated just outside the doors. Voices called his name. He shook hands, seeing nothing but dark suits and church dresses and the blurred circles of faces.