5:46 p.m.
“What do you think, that I’m stupid?”
The voice comes from directly behind me, as low and threatening as when he stepped out of the shadows in the garage. I flinch, half expecting his gloved hands to wrap around my throat and squeeze, or the cold sting of the gun pressing into the back of my head—but there’s nothing but hot breath in one of my ears.
“I don’t think you’re stupid.”
I say the words, the desperate questions cycling through my mind. Did Tanya pick up on my clues? Will Baxter tell her about the masked man? Will she run home and call the police? Maybe...just maybe she thought to alert the neighbor on East Brookhaven. I can’t remember his name, but Tanya will, and she’ll know he’s a former navy SEAL turned real-estate investor who would know how to defuse the situation until the police can get here. My gaze sweeps the windows to the patio and backyard beyond, searching for a muscular body creeping through the trees, but there’s nothing out there but squirrels.
“Nice try, getting rid of Baxter, but I could have sworn I told you to get rid of her. Did I not just tell you to get rid of her?” He puffs a disappointed sigh, his breath stirring up my hair, tickling my neck with the strands.
In my head I’m doing the math. Sixty seconds for Tanya and Baxter to walk down the hill and across the road. That’s a whole minute for him to tell her, for her to piece the clues together. The brother that doesn’t exist. My obvious desperation for her to stay. My silent pleas, two of them, for help. Surely, surely she knows by now. Surely she’s speed-walking across the road, hurrying home to her phone.
I just pray the police know to come without sirens.
“It was the easiest thing in the world,” he says. “Sorry, Tanya, I’m really busy. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. That’s all you had to say.”
Now, finally, I dare to turn around. “I never ask her to leave, and you heard what a talker she is. That’s probably the shortest she’s ever been in my house. She would have gotten suspicious.”
He licks his lips. “Maybe, but what about the Sancerre?” He leans into his Southern accent as he says it: San-cerrrrr. “What about giving her your son? If he tells her about me, if she picks up the phone and calls the police, you know what’s going to happen, right?” He points the gun at my head, closes one eye in aim and mouths a single word: Pow. “And Beatrix is here somewhere. She’ll get one, too.”
I take in the distance, two feet at most, the gun clutched in a fist, and something occurs to me. A memory from four, maybe five years ago, when my girlfriends and I took a self-defense class. An hour-long, hands-on workshop on the best way to survive an attacker. The beefy instructor told us to defy our instincts and move in rather than dodge. To strike instead of flee. The best defense isn’t a defense at all, he said, but a full-throttle attack. You might get hurt, but it’s your best chance to walk away alive.
And now, with Baxter safe with my neighbor and my hands free, it’s the best time.
I rehearse the moves in my mind. A quarter turn so he won’t see me slide the screwdriver out of my sleeve, or the flash of steel when I grip it in a fist. I’ll have to make sure it stays hidden while I stay within striking distance, and then I wait. The second he looks away or twists his body just so, I will come at him from behind.
“So here’s what we’re going to do. You are going to walk over to the front door, slowly and calmly, and flip the locks. I will be listening for the dead bolt to slide into place, so I will know if you try anything. And if you do, I want you to know it’s not you I’m going to punish. It’s the little girl hiding somewhere in this house. Do you understand?”
I nod.
“But first we need to set the alarm. And here’s the deal. Before the nosy neighbor lady, I might have trusted you enough to leave you here for a few seconds while I did it, but that’s over and done. You just showed me I can’t trust you, which means you’re just going to have to come with.”
He grabs a handful of my shirt and tugs hard, and I lurch forward into the hallway, almost slipping on the glass. By the time I’m upright, he’s behind me, the gun aimed at my torso, and we march single file to the alarm pad in the bedroom, where I tick in the code.
“Just 2-9-2-1,” he says from over my shoulder. “No funny business.”
When I’m done, he tips his head in the direction of the wall and beyond to the front door. “Now go.”
On my way, I pause to peek into the rooms on either side of the foyer, searching for signs of Beatrix.
Nothing in the dining room, but there’s also no place to hide other than inside the antique buffet, which is jammed full of dishes we hardly ever use—the gold-rimmed wedding china that can’t go in the dishwasher and the hideous Christmas service Cam’s mother gave us as a wedding present. No way she could squeeze in there, not without making a racket.
I look to my left, in the study.
Many more places for her to choose from here—behind the doors of the built-in cabinets under the bookshelves, for example, or tucked inside one of the covered ottomans. I do a quick scan of the room, but the only sign either of the kids have been here is the mess spread across Cam’s desk, colored markers and tape and a messy stack of blank papers one of them pulled from the printer.
There’s movement at the bottom of the hill. A teenager being tugged down the road by a black Great Dane, who stops to sniff around the mailbox.
I glance behind me. The man is tucked out of sight, hidden behind the wall to the stairs. From his angle, he won’t be able to see how slow I’m moving, the way I’m shaking the screwdriver out of my sleeve while waving my free arm at the girl and her dog. I’m clearly in distress. Maybe this girl will see a panicked, frenzied woman freaking out inside her own front door and think to call for help.
Look up look up look up.
She doesn’t look up. The dog lifts its massive leg and squirts its scent all over my gardenia bush, but the girl is too absorbed by whatever is on her phone. She keeps her head down, scrolling with a thumb.
“Jade.” The voice is low and impatient, and it carries an unmistakable warning. “What’s taking so long?”
Down at the road, the beast gives a mighty tug, and the teenager lurches forward, her phone popping out of her hand. She catches it in midflight and doesn’t miss a beat. Walking and scrolling, walking and scrolling. For Christ’s sake, girl, look up. Not once does she lift her head.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
My ears ring with building pressure and the realization comes to me like a whisper. It’s up to me now. I clasp the screwdriver in a tight fist, testing the point on my palm. Good and sharp, but I’ll have to come at him hard. His neck, his temple, that soft spot between his shoulder blades. I’ll have to put all my weight and strength behind it. One chance, that’s all I get.
“You’re gambling with your life here, Jade. With your children’s lives. If you want tonight to have a happy ending, I suggest you stop playing around and lock the damn door.”
With one last hopeful gaze up the empty street, I steel myself to what happens next. No more waiting on the cops or some heroic neighbor. No more waiting for Cam to save us. Now is my chance. I’m not about to miss.
I fill my lungs with air and courage, then flip the dead bolt.