4:47 p.m.
It happens so fast, if I blinked I would have missed it.
Beatrix in exaggerated tiptoe, slipping out the open doorway of the playroom into the hall. Back hunched, arms stretched out for balance, legs spread wide so the frilly cuffs of her shorts don’t brush together when she walks. It’s a Looney Tunes version of a tiptoe, skillful in its absolute silence, a careful and precise movement she’s clearly practiced. It makes me wonder how many times she’s done this while Cam and I were reading or watching TV downstairs, oblivious to our daughter sneaking about above our heads. Dozens, probably.
She swings her head to the right, peering down the long hallway that leads to the kids’ bedrooms. It’s the direction Baxter and the masked man just disappeared down, only a few seconds earlier. Baxter was moving fast, his face strained with hurry, one hand gripping his bottom in a way that typically means he’s going to need a change of pants. He was in too much of a panic to notice me sitting across the hall, strapped to a chair, and the man didn’t look over, either, though I didn’t miss his grimace.
I can hear them now, the low murmur of voices muffled by a door and two walls. Baxter’s bathroom, which is good news since it’s the farthest away. The last door at the end of the hallway, tucked around not one but two corners. Assuming the man is waiting just outside the bathroom door, there’s still a wall between him and Beatrix.
Beatrix turns for the stairs, and almost by accident, her gaze lands on mine.
She flinches so hard, her sneakers squeak on the hardwood floor. I wince at the sound, and my heart seizes, then trips into high gear. I hold my breath and listen for signs of someone coming.
Beatrix must be thinking the same thing, because she looks in the direction of the voices, and I watch her face for a reaction. My daughter is like me, an open book. Everything she ever thinks is telegraphed straight to her face, as easy to read as blinking neon letters. If the masked man is bearing down the hallway, coming for her, I’ll see it on Beatrix’s expression.
But her face doesn’t change. Her back slumps in a silent sigh of relief, and she looks back.
Heart pounding, I study my daughter from top to toe. I take in her dry eyes, count her fingers, search her skin for blood or bruises. The bow on the hem of her pink polka-dot shirt has come untied, and her shorts are rumpled at the crotch from sitting, but there’s no rips or bloodstains. Her hair is pillow-mussed, that cowlick I’m always trying to wrangle into submission pushing the hair high on the left side of her crown, but otherwise she looks fine. Frightened, but fine.
And then I notice the marks on her socks, and I wonder if she was tied to a chair, too. No, taped to the chair, one of the reclining theater seats in the playroom. That was the sound I heard before, the harsh creak of the duct tape ripping off leather so Baxter could race to the bathroom.
But it doesn’t explain how Beatrix managed to wriggle free.
Especially if her bindings were anything like mine, double and triple wrapped around my skin, as unforgiving as steel cuffs. Other than a slimy arm and a dull throbbing behind my front teeth, I’ve gotten nowhere with the knot at my wrist. Clearly, I am not one of those mothers who could lift a car to save her children, or bust out of chains like the female version of the Hulk. I strain against my bindings, but my arms and legs don’t budge.
I’m stuck.
Helpless.
But not Beatrix. She stands there and stares at me, her eyes big and wide and round.
Go, I mouth, but I don’t dare call out to her, not even a whisper. And honestly, go where? Not back to the playroom, certainly. The man will be back in what—thirty seconds? A minute? Not enough time for Beatrix to get very far. And as soon as she opens any of the doors downstairs, she’ll trip the alarm.
At the sound of the first siren I start shooting, and the first two bullets are for the kids.
If Beatrix is lucky, she might escape, but Baxter and I surely won’t. There are no good answers here.
Go.
Beatrix nods, but her feet don’t come unglued from the floor.
I hold my breath and listen to the noise coming from farther down the hall. Baxter is still chattering away, the occasional word piercing the low hum of water running through the pipes. Washing his hands at the sink, I’m guessing, which means he’s close to finishing up. The man is still silent, nearby but unaccounted for, which terrifies me. He could be waiting by the door. He could be halfway to the hall by now. What if he comes back to check on Beatrix?
I shake my head at her, but I don’t know what I mean by it. Don’t get caught? Don’t leave me here? Both, probably. My hands ball into tight, frustrated fists.
On the other end of the hall, a toilet flushes. A door creaks, followed by footsteps.
Go! I mouth the word again, stretching my lips around it so she understands, leaning forward and adding another: Run!
And this time—finally, thankfully—she does.
I first tried my hand at acting in middle school, mostly to escape from the dark cloud of misery hanging over our house—a silent father who spent his evenings dozing in front of a TV, a surly older sister eating her feelings and everything else in sight, rooms that without my mother’s touches had grown faded and dusty. I coped by cloaking myself in someone else’s skin—a lighthearted mermaid falling in love for the first time, or the dancing, singing, footloose daughter of a strict preacher father. Anyone but a sad and lonely eighth-grader longing for her mother.
It’s those old, sucky acting skills I call upon now when I hear noises at the end of the hall. I sit up straight as my body goes rock-hard, my fingers digging into the velvet armrests of the chair. I wipe my expression clean and force my muscles to relax, my face to look normal—or as normal as a mother’s face can be, tied to a forty-pound chair.
An animated Baxter comes first, his stuffed gorilla Gibson pinned under an arm, skipping like he’s headed for a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. He blathers on about the shows he wants to watch, the popcorn his mommy would let him have. I stare at him, gritting my teeth and trying to appear fearless, courageous. My son doesn’t so much as glance over.
The man follows behind. He comes into view, and my heart clenches.
Showtime.
I can’t quite see him from this angle, but I know the second he spots Beatrix’s empty chair. I hear his grunt of surprise, the stumble in his footsteps when he comes up on an empty room. He curses, a long string of expletives followed by Baxter’s high-pitched giggle.
“Beatrix! You get your butt back in here, missy. Right now.”
There’s a long stretch of silence while he waits for an answer. I hear the low volume on the TV, fast and heavy footsteps, breaths huffing with emotion, but nothing from Beatrix. Of course there’s not. By now she’s had a good thirty, maybe forty-five seconds to get wherever she’s going, and I already know her tiptoe skills are stealth. I picture her downstairs, sneaking from room to room, trying out all her normal hiding spots until she finds the best one.
The man stomps into the hall. “You better believe I’m going to find your scrawny little butt, so you might as well come out now. Come out and take your punishment like a girl.” He looks at me, eyes flashing. “Where is she? Where’d she go?”
I frown, blink my eyes in stage-managed confusion. “I thought she was with you.”
Jesus, that was bad. Overacted, leaned way too hard into the enunciation and my voice cracked on the last word.
“Bullshit. If she’d come this way, she would have run right past you. No way you didn’t see her, not unless she—” He lurches backward, one long leap from the hallway into the playroom. I clock his movements by sound, footsteps moving deeper into the playroom, solid furniture scraping across the floor, a door creaking open. The hidden hallway to the guest room bath. He knows about it, too.
“Beatrix, now’s the time to get out here, hon.” The man’s voice is muffled now, and it’s coming at me in stereo—from the playroom across the hall, louder from behind me, somewhere deep in the bathroom. Heavy footsteps come from that direction, too, elephant stomps moving closer. “Beatrix!”
Baxter steps into the hall in a fresh shirt and Batman pajama pants, and I choke on a sob. I hate that he’s seeing me like this. I hate that I can’t protect him.
He sees me and waves. “Hi, Mommy.”
It rolls over me like a hurricane—how helpless I am to help him, strapped to this chair. If I told Bax to run, he’d never make it far. If I told him to hide, his giggling would give him away. I can’t do anything to protect him because I am tied to a chair.
I suck down my tears. Push a smile up my cheeks so as not to frighten him. “Hey, big guy. How’re you doing?”
“Good.” He bounces his shoulders. “I had an accident, though.”
“That’s okay, baby. It hap—”
“Jade.”
He’s here now, coming in long, angry strides out of the bathroom. He pulls the gun from his cargo paints and aims at my head, not stopping until the metal makes contact with my forehead. I squeal and rear back until my head is flush against the wall.
“Did she come through here? Because if she did and you lie about it, you and I are going to have a big problem.”
“I already told you, I don’t know. I don’t know where Beatrix is.”
I say it with conviction because it is not a lie. Also, if he shoots me now, Bax will see. He will watch his mother be murdered. Pretty much number one on the list of how to mess up a six-year-old for life.
“Beatrix didn’t come through here, I swear.”
I say the words while in my head, I’m listening for the beeping of the alarm pad. If she’d left, out the window or one of the doors, the alarm would be wailing. There’s nothing but silence from downstairs. Wherever she is, Beatrix is still inside.
The man stares at me through slitted eyes, his mouth going thin with realization. He’s done the same math. He knows Beatrix is still in the house, too.
“Where, Jade?”
“I don’t know. You were supposed to be watching her.”
“I was dealing with your son’s shit.”
At the last word, Baxter giggles, a high and teetering delight. For him there’s nothing merrier than when his father has to drop a dollar in the curse jar, because it’s money that belongs to the kids, split evenly down the middle. Every couple of months, we empty the jar at the bookstore—and they come home with armloads of books. A cook line is an animated place, where tempers flare hotter than the grill flames. Cam’s language has always been colorful.
I can’t help but feel some sort of grim satisfaction. Dealing with someone else’s shit is never fun, even worse when it comes from a child who is not your own. I know it’s a tiny win, but I’m taking it.
He jabs the gun hard into my forehead, metal on bone. “Where is she? Hiding in a closet? Under a bed? Did she go downstairs? She must have, because if she’d come the other way, I would have seen her.”
I don’t dare move. I barely breathe. And I sure as hell don’t answer. No way I’m giving him any indication of where Beatrix might be. With any luck, she’ll stay there until Cam comes home and this is all over.
Suddenly, the pressure is gone. He takes a couple of steps backward, parking his feet at the edge of the carpet. “You know what I think? I think you know exactly where she is. And I think you’re going to tell me.”
He drops the gun into his pocket, exchanging it for a pocketknife he fishes out of another. No, not a pocketknife, a switchblade, the kind killers use. He presses the button with a thumb, and the blade, long and serrated and curved like a deadly claw, shoots out with a sharp click.
A gun and a knife.
I stare at the razor-edged tip. “I... I already told you, I don’t know where she went.”
He stalks closer, and I push myself backward, even though there’s nowhere for me to go. I’m already deep in the seat’s stuffing. The chair squeaks but doesn’t budge.
“You don’t know this, but a little while ago, your kids and I had a little talk, didn’t we, Bax?”
From the doorway, Baxter gives a solemn nod.
“I told them what would happen if one of them opened a door or a window and tripped the alarm.” He glances behind him, to Baxter sucking his thumb. “Want to tell her what I said, buddy?”
Bax’s answer comes from behind a fist. “Nothing good.”
“Exactly. Nothing good will happen. Only bad. So I’m asking you again, Jade, where is Beatrix? And please note that this is a question, but it’s also a warning. I want you to think long and hard before you answer, because if I find out later you’re lying, I’ll take out Beatrix first, and then Baxter. And I will make you watch.”
Baxter plucks his thumb from his mouth with a soft pop. “Take us out where?”
I stare into the man’s eyes, too afraid to blink mine. “I swear to you. I do not know.”
“Take us where?” Baxter says again, frowning at the man’s back. He’s alert now, slowly becoming aware. Something is very wrong here.
My brain races with panicked thoughts, trying to come up with one that will buy us some time. “What about the money?”
The man cocks his head. The knife is fisted in a gloved hand—a threat and a promise at the same time. No prints, no DNA left behind. A backpack full of tape and rope and weapons. A sore knot ices over in my chest. This man has come prepared. He knows what he’s doing. Maybe he’s done this before.
“What about it?” he says.
“Cam isn’t stupid. He’s done hundreds of deals, and he’ll know to demand proof of life before he gives you anything. You won’t get a cent if all of us are dead.”
Baxter’s eyes goggle at the last word, and he shoves his thumb back in his mouth and sucks hard enough to make his cheeks pucker. Our eyes meet, and I recognize that expression, the way one eyebrow squiggles up and the other down in a way that makes Cam laugh and call him Lord Farquaad.
It means Baxter is a ticking time bomb, one single bad moment away from a meltdown.
The man puffs a breathy laugh, sour meat and bitter coffee. “Cam’s not going to have much of a choice in the matter. Now come on.”
I know I should be projecting calm. I should be stuffing down my own fears in order to protect my son’s emotional well-being. A child should never feel unsafe in his own home. I should be reassuring him everything is okay.
But this is life and death. Literally. And everything is not okay.
The man rushes me with the knife, and I throw myself backward, but there’s nowhere for me to go. My skull connects with the wall, setting off a burst of fireworks behind my eyes. The room spins with a wave of pain, of terror. I’m vaguely aware that I’m screaming.
Baxter lets out an earsplitting, high-pitched howl, and I know I should console him. My screams are only escalating things, spiraling Bax higher and higher into a panic, like tossing kerosene on a fire.
But I can’t make myself stop. All I see is the knife, streaking closer to my skin. I can’t look away and I can’t stop screaming.
The man touches the tip of the blade to the flesh of my arm, and—
“Baxter, go. Run.”
—saws through the rope in two seconds flat. I suck in a shocked breath, watching him hook the blade under the knot I’d just spent forever twisting to the top of my wrist and give a good tug. The blade slices through the rope and suddenly, my arm is free.
I fall silent, but not Baxter. His back is still flush to the wall, his eyes squeezed into tight slits, his mouth wide in one long, continuous wail.
The man glares over his shoulder. “Baxter, that’s enough. Quiet.” He turns back, his gaze brushing over mine. “Either you shut him up, or I will.”
“Shh, Baxie. Quiet, okay? I’m not hurt. See? Look at me, sweetie. I’m fine.”
The blade is cool and hard where it touches my skin, but the pain isn’t sharp, just a solid pressure where he wriggles the knife between my other wrist and the looped strands of braided vinyl. My ankles are next. The pieces fall away one by one, fluttering to the floor in sloppy yellow coils. My limbs come free, my skin stays intact.
Baxter is still bawling, his back pressed to the wall, but I don’t motion him closer. I don’t dare, not until the man folds the knife in two and drops it back into his pocket. He steps back, and I hold out a shaky arm.
Baxter skitters in a wide arc around him, then launches himself into my lap. His crying stops almost immediately, but he curls into a tight ball and buries his face in my chest, squeezing his eyes shut. I wrap my arms around him and clutch him close, pressing kisses in his hair.
The man watches from by the bed, his calves pressed against the mattress. He shakes his head. “We don’t have time for this. We need to find your devil daughter.”
I plaster on my fiercest, most determined look, and this is where I make the silent vow: before this day is over, I will kill this man. I will steal his gun, cut his throat, smash his head, pummel him into a bloody, broken heap. Surprise him, hurt him, use his rope to hog-tie him, seal his mouth and nose off with his own duct tape. I will do whatever I have to do, but this man will take his last breath today.
And I will enjoy every second.
“Fine.” He rolls his eyes, training the gun at my forehead. “The little guy can help us search, but next time he screams like that again, I’m locking him in a closet.”