6:25 p.m.
“Sit down.”
I collapse onto the coffee table across from Beatrix, an emotional tug-of-war in my chest, vacillating between gratitude and confusion. I wasn’t expecting to stay here in the media room. I figured he’d march me across the hall and reattach me to the blue chair, but he didn’t. He’s letting me stick close to my daughter, at least for now, and I’m not about to argue.
He digs my iPhone from a cargo pocket, sinking back into the leather of the last recliner, the one Baxter was on. He unlocks the screen then pauses, his finger floating above the glass.
“Okay, here’s how it’s going to go. When Cam answers, you’re to ask where he is, how much of the money he’s got on his person and how long before he gets here. These are the only things you get to say to him, do you understand me? If he asks about the kids or anything else, direct him back to answers for those three questions. Got it?”
I nod, then shake my head. “Is Beatrix allowed to talk to him?”
He smiles. “Oh yeah. She can talk to him. In fact, missy, maybe you can tell him about how you almost got your mama killed. Special treats for anyone who can squeeze out some tears. Ready?”
Without waiting for our answer, he taps Call, then puts the phone on speaker. I stare at the phone, my heartbeat knocking against my ribs. Cam picks up on the first ring.
“Hello, Jade?”
Click. The man hangs up.
I stare at him, my mouth hanging open.
The man gives me a demented grin. “Just messing with you. Let’s do it again.”
He goes through the steps again, tapping the buttons on the screen. This time, the phone doesn’t even ring before Cam’s voice bursts through the speakers.
“Jade, are you there?”
His tone, desperate and plaintive, hits me like a sucker punch, an immediate and forceful blow that forces all the air from my lungs. Last night when he crawled into bed, I fussed at him for waking me up. Cam wanted to spoon, I wanted to sleep, and now I hate myself for it. Why couldn’t I have rolled over and told him how much I’d missed him? Why couldn’t I have shown him?
“I love you, Cam.” The words come out before I can stop them, and I know this wasn’t part of the script and I’ll probably get another broken bone or maybe worse for it, but I am beyond caring. I couldn’t stop these words even if I wanted to. These are words that have to be said. “I have since that time you came over in the middle of the night and planted all those purple tulips under my window. We’d been dating for what—three weeks?”
Twenty-three days. And on the morning of the twenty-fourth, when I pulled up the shades and saw hundreds of my favorite flowers swaying in the breeze, my heart flipped over in my chest. I didn’t tell him for another month, but I fell in love with Cam, right then and there.
“Babe. Don’t... Jesus, please don’t talk like that. Where are you? Are you okay? Are the kids?”
“You had me at tulips, Cam. I was a goner. I still am. I want you to know that what you and I have, it’s for real. The best thing I ever did was walk in your restaurant that day.” My face scrunches with tears, and a sharp and searing pain explodes in my cheek—a physical reminder of what’s coming after we wrap up this call. The man’s expression says it will be so much worse.
“Jade, I... I love you, too, but you’re scaring me. Tell me what’s happening there.”
I sniff, my gaze wandering to my daughter. A solemn-faced Beatrix, who’s trying her damnedest not to cry. “We’re in the playroom. Beatrix is duct-taped to the chair.”
“And Bax?”
“He’s with Tanya. She dropped by earlier and took him for pizza.” I think about telling him to call over there to check in, but I don’t. Every mention of Baxter is a reminder to the masked man that our son is safe across the street, and I’d rather keep his focus right here, in this room. Instead, I say, “Are you almost here?”
“I’m driving as fast as I can. Beatrix, baby, you there? I want to hear your voice, too.”
Beatrix heaves a petulant sigh. “I’m fine. He hurt Mommy, though.” She glares at the phone as she says it, and I know what she’s thinking. She’s pissed at being played like a puppet.
“What did he do to Mommy?”
“He hit her on the cheek.” Beatrix glares from her recliner at the masked man, who gives an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “It’s swollen and really, really purple.”
A long patch of motor and air. I picture Cam in his truck, white-knuckling the steering wheel, the three loud thumps that sound through the phone, Cam’s fist hitting something solid.
“Tell him I’m on my way. Say I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay? For sure by seven.”
Beatrix rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to tell him, because he’s sitting right here.”
“Sir, whoever you are, I want you to know that I meant what I said just now. I’m fighting traffic, but I’ll be there by seven. And I have the money.”
The man needles me with a finger to the shoulder, and I ask, “All of it?”
“Yes. All of it. I have $734,296 in a bag, headed your way.”
I almost faint with relief. Cam’s announcement feels like a shimmering oasis in a desert. I hear his words, I process them, but I don’t dare believe. Cam has the money. He’ll be here by the deadline.
The man nudges me again, and I search for meaning behind the mask. His earlier words echo through my mind like fragments of a nightmare I really wish I could forget. Ask where he is, how much of that money he’s got on him and how long before he gets here. These are the only things you get to say.
I frown.
He mouths a word that makes my blood turn cold. I know as soon as I say it, as soon as Cam gives me the answer, this conversation will be over. A masked finger is already hovering over the screen. I am not ready for this call to end.
“Hey, Cam?”
“I’m here, babe. I love you and I’m here.”
My heartbeat kicks up in my chest again, battering my ribs like a trapped animal. “When you get to the house, come up to the playroom. The alarm is on so make sure you come through the front doors, and turn it off before you come to the playroom. We’ll be upstairs, waiting for you in the playroom.”
Playroom. Playroom. Playroom. If I say it often enough, if I lean into the word hard enough, maybe something will click in Cam’s head. A memory of the cameras, all three of them, recording everything we say and do here. Beatrix’s escape. The yards and yards of duct tape. This very conversation. I need Cam to know what he’s up against, give him the only advantage we have left.
“Alarm. Playroom. Got it,” he says, but does he? Nervous energy crackles in my bones because I don’t think he does.
Come on, babe, remember. Pull up the app on your phone and look.
I get another finger in my shoulder, another prod urging me to say the word he mouths for a second time. If it’s so important, why doesn’t he just ask it himself?
And then something else occurs to me: this is twice now he’s gone silent while Cam is on the line. Why? Is he worried Cam will recognize his voice?
“Hey, Cam?”
“Still here.”
“I’m supposed to remind you, no police, okay? I need to know you didn’t call them.”
I don’t miss the gun of an engine, the way his voice dips with both warning and promise, how his answer isn’t really an answer at all: “Hang tight, Jade. Be there as soon as I can.”
“I can’t believe it. He’s got the money.” The man’s voice is incredulous. He hoists himself off the recliner, grinning down from behind the mask. “That worthless piece of shit husband of yours has actually got the money. He actually did the impossible.”
I press my lips together and say nothing. Not so worthless now, is he?
Outside the playroom windows, darkness is falling fast thanks to the thick cloud cover. Automatically, my gaze wanders to the clock on a far shelf, a fussy mantel model that looks out of place with the rest of the mid-century decor, its hands permanently stuck on ten past five. A tiny eye embedded in the base of the hour hand watches our every move.
I don’t dare glance at the other two cameras, a wall speaker with a sweeping view of the couch, and the dummy fire alarm above my head. Between the three of them, every inch of this room is covered by top-of-the-line, high-definition cameras with motion sensors and enhanced night vision, every movement and sound recorded and stored on the cloud for thirty days.
Whatever happens in this room, there will be proof. Indisputable, undeniable evidence. Three digital witnesses documenting every move.
He slides my phone back into his pocket and exchanges it for the Android, tapping a finger to the screen, pressing it to his ear. “You’re not going to believe this but—” A pause, and his grin widens. “See? I told you this was going to work. You thought I was wrong but we actually pulled it off. Dammit, we’re good.”
The same person he was talking to downstairs, I’m guessing. The coconspirator from the kitchen, the one checking the levels. Distracting enough for me to check in with my daughter.
I shift to the recliners, perching at the edge of the seat next to Beatrix. “You okay?”
She shakes her head. “How much longer? I really don’t like this.”
On the other side of the coffee table, the man’s phone call continues. “How are the numbers?”
“I know, baby.” I wrap a hand around the back of her head, leaning in to press a kiss to her temple. “Thanks for being my bravest girl. You’re the cleverest, most determined kid I know.”
Beatrix frowns. “What about Baxter?” My daughter is not the only person she holds to high standards. She’s always demanded perfection from everyone else, too, the responsible firstborn, the big sister taking up for her younger brother. She’s a kid who takes her job very seriously.
“He’s the sweetest and funniest. Of all the babies in the world, I got the two of you, and that makes me the luckiest, proudest mom ever.”
I’m fighting tears I hide with a nuzzle to Beatrix’s shoulder, looking up as the man says, “Shouldn’t be long now. Any chatter on the scanner?”
Beatrix stares at him, too, grabbing on to the cuff of my sleeve, gripping the fabric in a tight fist. She waits until he turns away to lean close and whisper, “She took my signs.”
It’s the same words she said to me earlier, when I was taping her hands to the chair. She took my signs, she said angrily, urgently, and I still don’t understand what she means. When I asked her who took them, our whispering caught the man’s attention. He demanded to know what we were talking about. When I lied—wait, I said, rather than who—he ordered us to be quiet.
Now, though, he’s staring out the window down the roofline and into the backyard. Too giddy with success and whatever this person is saying to hear me whisper the question again to Beatrix, “Who did?”
She shifts her weight, her gaze flitting behind us into the hallway. “Mrs. Lloyd.”
No. That doesn’t make sense. Mrs. Lloyd is Tanya. The nosy neighbor from across the street.
I still don’t understand. Tanya took Beatrix’s signs?
I glance at the man standing like a statue with the phone pressed to his ear. The outline of his gun presses up from one of his pockets. “How’s she doing?” Whomever she is, the answer is not good. It drops the smile right off his face. “That’s awful low. Is she acting okay? What did our cousin say?”
I wrap my arm around Beatrix and lean in for a hug, whispering, “What signs?”
She presses her lips into my hair, her breath hot on my ear. “I made signs asking for help and taped them to the window on the front door, but they’re gone. I think Mrs. Lloyd took them.”
Her message straightens my spine, and I unwind my arm and settle into the seat. Beatrix made signs for the door—which explains the mess on Cam’s desk. The markers, the paper she must have pulled from the printer, the tape she dug out of a drawer. I imagine her hasty scrawl, a quick and efficient SOS taped to the front windows.
Clever, clever girl.
And now she’s suggesting Tanya took them. I try to come up with some other explanation, but I can’t. Tanya is the only person other than us to be in the house this afternoon, and the timing is right. There’s no other possibility.
I have so many questions. Tons of them.
But one word rises to the top like curdled cream: Why?
Why would she march over here with her key, peel the signs from the glass and not say anything about it to me? Why would she spout off some bullshit story about a silent auction and not give me some kind of signal—a wink, a nod or a cocked brow? Why not agree to take Baxter right away when I begged her to; even more, why not volunteer to bring him across the road to safety? Why didn’t she see Beatrix’s SOS and call 9-1-1 right away? Why has no one come to save us? Why, why, why?
And then I think of something else, and the visual of her walking to the door flashes behind my eyes. The way her ponytail swished and the sweater stretched across her hips, how it was hitched up on one side like there was something in her back pocket—which I now know there was.
Beatrix’s signs.
The man turns away from the window, his gaze panning over my daughter and me, and my heart leaps up my throat. He caught us whispering again. My mind races, searching for another bullshit excuse when he looks away.
“Uh-huh,” he says, still frowning into the phone.
I take in the squint of his eyes, the thinning of his lips. Whatever the person on the other end of the line is saying, it’s not good news.
“All we have to do is keep her steady until tomorrow morning,” he says, aiming his frown at me. He gives me his back, turning to the window. “Tomorrow morning we’ll get everybody on board, and then we can finally move forward. Until then, all you’ve got to do is keep her stable.”
Whoever’s on the other end of that call cranks up the volume, yelling loud enough that he peels the phone from his ear. I can’t make out the words, but the voice is female, and her anger, her indignation comes across loud and clear.
“Okay, okay...calm down, will you? You know I didn’t mean it like that. I get that you’re worried, but so am I. I’m just as worried as you are.”
Worry—that is the emotion I spotted on his face, a worry I’m all too familiar with. The kind only another parent can have for his child.
That’s when all the pieces fall together in a perfectly clear line: I was right before; this man is a father. This person he keeps referring to is his daughter. His sick daughter.
I think back to the half of the conversation I overheard in the kitchen downstairs, and it all makes sense. Levels, numbers, all of them worrisome. Cancer? Something deadly, certainly.
So the money is for what—an operation? A life-saving treatment? It’s possible he doesn’t have insurance, or maybe it’s just that his insurance won’t pay because it’s a last-ditch effort, an expensive Hail Mary pass her doctors won’t sign off on.
But still.
What kind of parent would value his sick daughter’s life over the lives of my two healthy children? Who would hold a family hostage, threatening them with words and blows and a waved-around gun, in order to pry money out of their father? He thrust a loaded gun in our faces. He used it to pistol-whip me hard enough to crack a bone. Yes, I realize this man is desperate, but desperate enough to trade three, maybe four lives to save his ailing daughter’s? What kind of monster would do that?
He turns away from the window, his gaze landing on mine. “I’ve got to go. Cam’s on his way, and I need to get everyone ready.”