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JAMIE PACED BACK AND forth in the kitchen, phone pressed against her ear. Her hands were getting sweaty. And she was still on hold. She kept stepping over the mess that Markie’s broken bowl and cereal had left behind. She couldn’t think straight, she couldn’t get herself to clean it. The milk had dried into a yellow patch on the tiles, the serial crunching underneath her shoes. The shards of glass made her uneasy, making her think about the dining room window.
Dammit! How long was this going to take?
Once Jamie had managed to steady herself, she had tried to phone Alex. He hadn’t answered his phone, no matter how many times Jamie had tried. She didn’t have time to wait for him to notice all the missed calls and phone her back. She needed to talk to him right now.
Because she was terrified. She didn’t know what was going to happen next, when this person was going to strike again.
The attack had been at their home, it had been an intrusion into their personal lives. The call had been one thing, just a number and heavy breathing. The photo of Alex on her car – knowing who he was and what she drove – had been more personal.
But the brick? It was crossing a definite line. And Jamie was terrified that something else would go wrong, that whoever was doing this would use the time that Alex didn’t know what was going on to do something else, to do something terrible.
Jamie needed to speak to him right away. But he hadn’t been answering his phone, so she had phoned his receptionist. She had told Jamie that Alex was in an important meeting. Jamie had demanded that the receptionist pull him out of the meeting immediately, and that was what she was waiting for.
But how long was it going to take? Why did the receptionist not insist that it was extremely important? Alex would understand. He would drop everything if it was about Jamie and her safety, the safety of their kids.
“Hello? Jamie?” Alex’s voice finally sounded over the line and Jamie’s knees felt weak. “Oh, Alex, thank goodness,” Jamie said. “That took forever.”
“What’s wrong?” Alex asked. He sounded concerned, his voice dripping with worry.
“I don’t know,” Jamie said and her voice cracked.
“Tell me what happened,” Alex said gently.
“Someone threw a brick through our window,” Jamie said.
“What!?”
Jamie cleared her throat and started from the beginning. Maybe the worst of it wasn’t a good place to start. But she didn’t know how else to do this – it was all very bad, wasn’t it?
After she had told him everything, about the calls and the photo and the brick, Alex made an uneasy sound at the back of his throat.
“We’ll take care of this, Jamie,” he said. “I’m coming home right away. Call the police. As soon as we hang up, do you hear me? I’ll meet you at the house.”
“Alex, I’m scared,” Jamie said.
“I know. But I’ll be there in no time and we can fill out a report, get a case opened. We can do something about this.”
Jamie felt a lump rising in her throat, wishing Alex was already with her and not on the other end of a phone line.
“I can’t do this again,” she said hoarsely. “I can’t go through this another time, this can’t be happening all over again.”
“Listen here, babe, we’ve got this. It won’t be like last time. I’ll stop and pick the kids up on my way home.”
“Thank you,” Jamie said and she was barely keeping it together. “Please, hurry.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. In the meantime, make sure every door and every window is locked. Doublecheck them.”
Jamie nodded. She had planned on doing exactly that. Since Markie had been taken, they had had a new security system installed. Hopefully, it was enough. Jamie would rely on that to keep them safe.
After getting off the phone with Alex, she made a call to the police. She explained what had happened and they told her they would dispatch a police cruiser immediately.
After that, Jamie moved through the house. She checked all the doors and windows, making sure they were locked. And she switched on the perimeter beams, even though it was daytime and she was home. She just didn’t want anyone to have the opportunity to move around the property without her knowledge. When the police arrived, she would deactivate the alarms again, but until then, she didn’t want to take any chances.
As Jamie was locking up the doors, she thought about the new security system they had installed. It was a state of the art system, doing more than they needed. It helped them all feel safe.
She suddenly remembered that there were CCTV cameras all over the property, and that the cameras would have caught whoever had gotten close enough to the window to hurl a brick through it.
She hurried to Alex’s office, taking Rosie with her in the carrier. She didn’t want to take any chances with leaving her baby alone. Not even for a moment.
She set Rosie down in the corner, cuddled her, and then she powered up the computer. She accessed the CCTV the way Alex had shown her and moved to the timeframe that the brick had flown through the window.
There, she saw movement. Someone wearing dark red. Moving across the property carefully. Who was it?
The footage was grainy and it was difficult to make out any distinct features with the way the person kept his head. It was as if he knew where the cameras were, turning away from them so that his face would not be recognized.
Jamie let out a groan of frustration.
Rosie started whimpering and moaning, kicking her feet and swinging her arms.
Jamie ignored it for a short while, but then she turned her attention to her daughter.
“I know, honey. I’m sorry I’m so distracted. Let me feed you.”
She cradled Rosie on her lap, feeding her while she studied the footage. No matter how many times she went over it, she couldn’t make out who it was. Not even by body language, stance, anything like that. After all, Jamie wasn’t an expert.
There was absolutely no knowing who it was. Except that the person looked relatively small. But that was debatable, too. Jamie just didn’t know.
Still, she would show the police this footage when they arrived and see if maybe they could make something of it.
The longer it took for Alex to return, the more anxious Jamie became. She knew that it took a while for him to get home from the office, since he worked downtown and they lived in the suburbs, and he was picking up the kids, too. But with every passing minute that didn’t deliver him to her, Jamie became more and more anxious and scared. She tried her best not to run every terrible scenario through her head, imagining what might have happened to her family. Car accidents because Alex was speeding, worried, not paying attention. The kids not being at school because someone had already gotten to them. Her mind was a constant nightmare and Jamie had to force herself to relax and not overthink this.
As soon as Alex arrived, she would be able to relax. And when the police were there, she would be able to find out more. That was what they needed; her overthinking wasn’t necessary. In fact, it was making things worse.
Jamie’s thoughts wandered back to that awful day when Markie had been taken. How could all of this be happening again? It seemed incredible that one family could go through so much anguish.
Jamie started wondering if it was all connected. Surely their luck wasn’t so bad that this was just randomly happening to them. This had something to do with the kidnapping from before. It had to.
As she was thinking about it, rolling it over in her mind, her phone rang. The shrill sound made Jamie jump and snapped Rosie out of the sleepy dose she had fallen into after she’d eaten. Jamie snatched up the phone and answered it without looking at the caller ID. Her anxiety was in control now.
“Alex? Where are you?” she asked, her voice strained with panic.
There was no answer. Instead, heavy breathing filled the line. Again? What was going on?
“Who is this?” Jamie demanded, anger replacing her anxiety for a while. “Tell me who this is right now.”
There was no answer. Jamie had half expected someone to say something, but that was ridiculous.
Jamie lowered her tone, speaking evenly, and her fear was suddenly replaced with fury. It burned in her chest. “Listen. You’re messing with the wrong family. Do you hear me? You coward. We are going to—”
Before Jamie could finish her sentence, the line went dead.
Jamie was furious. She slammed her phone down on the desk and let out a groan of frustration and anger.
Rosie started crying after Jamie’s little outburst and Jamie cuddled her to her chest. She tried to speak softly, in gentle tones. But it was difficult to console the crying baby when Jamie was so filled with rage. She hated that her family had been put in this position again. She hated feeling so helpless. And she hated that her children were still so young and innocent, new to the big wide world, and they were in danger.
It was crazy that these things were happening to them! It was only supposed to happen in movies. Or to people who were a real threat, or something like that. Not to them, when they were just living their lives, minding their own business.
Once she managed to swallow down most of her anger, Jamie lifted up her phone again to check if she had cracked her screen. She had slammed her phone down very hard.
Luckily, it wasn’t cracked. Everything was fine.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose. She let it out again through her mouth.
The sensors beeped, letting Jamie know that someone was on the property. She froze, the terror creeping back where the anger had left her. It was such a rollercoaster of emotions, she had no idea how she was going to get through the day. What if whoever was here was going to hurt them?
She looked at the CCTV cameras’ footage. They were all up on the screen and running live.
But there wasn’t anyone in the yard, not at the front of the house or at the back by the pool. In fact, it was just the main gate opening and Alex driving in.
Jamie let out a sigh of relief and switched off the beeping, deactivating the perimeter sensors. On the screen, she watched the police cruiser pull in behind Alex and she was grateful that they had come.
She stood up from the office and, Rosie still held against her chest, made her way to the front of the house. Here, she waited for Alex and the kids to come to the door. She was worried about going outside, even with everyone already there. Because someone had been in the yard. Someone had come right up to the house.
Someone had done something to harm them. What if Jamie had been in the dining room? What if one of the kids had been there? Jamie shuddered just thinking about it.
But, no, she had been alone. Luckily. And she hadn’t been in the dining room. They were all safe.
And with Alex and the police there to help, they were all going to make sure that it stayed that way – everyone was going to be safe, it wasn’t going to be a repeat of the past.
Because Jamie was pretty sure that she wouldn’t be able to handle it if it was.
