CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ELIZABETH

I’m led upstairs and told to use the water in the container to wash my hands and flush the toilet. We’ll be on the road for some time and no pit stops. Obviously. The cold water stings the side of my head and I cry out. I’m hoping, now, that Tashya hears me. Submission is the best move on the board—Father will be pleased, assuming I survive—but the effort needed to suppress my rage surprises me.

There’s no food on the table when I return to the kitchen, no mac and cheese, no fried chicken. More punishment? Tashya rises and leads me to the door.

“Your foolishness has already killed one man,” she tells me. “Are more to come? Will one of these be you?” A hand on my back guides me through the door. Quentin is already outside, standing by the van. “Do not be more trouble than you are worth,” she tells me.

Ten million dollars is a lot of worth. That’s what I’m thinking, though I’m not foolish enough to speak the words aloud. Tashya’s eyes are as cold as ever and Quentin’s baby blues shift effortlessly from my breasts to my butt as I climb into the van. Tashya follows and Quentin slides behind the wheel and we’re off. I now have a part to play, one more (final?) contact, another touch of home base before the crucial moment. Money or no money, life or death. Because I don’t doubt Tashya’s simple explanation for how these things work, reward for compliance, punishment for any failure, but how do you know whether the victim’s family can’t or won’t, and why the fuck should it matter?

“I’m sorry,” I say. “For the cameras. It’s just hard . . .” My voice drops to a whisper. “You know, going to the bathroom with somebody watching.”

“This is trivial nothing from what others go through. They give me drugs to make me . . . enthusiastic. When you are addicted and your pimps control the supply, you will do whatever necessary to guarantee the next dose.”

Another poor-little-me lecture? I’m starting to believe that’s who she is beneath the lizard-eye facade, that’s how she explains herself to herself, always the victim.

When I don’t respond, Tashya continues. “Do you doubt your family will pay?”

Do I? There’s no payoff without Uncle Henry’s signature on the bottom line. I’m pretty sure he’ll go along-motivated by the family’s reputation if nothing else-but Uncle Henry is Father’s polar opposite. Foul of mouth and temper, he can transform a five-thousand-dollar suit into a rag lifted from a thrift-store rack inside of an hour. Uncle Henry claims that volatility is an asset in business, as is unpredictability, but I’ve long believed that both are ingrained in his nature. As I believe that my father’s cool control is how, as a child, he neutralized his older brother’s aggression.

“My family will pay,” I tell Tashya. “But timing could be a problem. As I’ve already told you, the Bradford fortune—and I won’t lie to you, it’s immense—is controlled by the Bradford Foundation and . . .”

Tashya’s already shaking her head. “Family can borrow emergency cash from their bankers.”

“That’s what I’m hoping. But there’s the Bitcoin too. Is it possible to purchase Bitcoin worth ten million dollars as easily as buying a book from Amazon?”

“No, is not as easy as using debit card in banks, but it can be done through online brokers. The FBI knows how.” She raises a finger, shutting me down. “You must trust that I am professional. You must trust that FBI is professional. This is how you survive.”

Yes, but for how long? Tashya hands me a piece of paper with my instructions printed out in large, emphatic letters. She illuminates the page with a tiny flashlight.

“Read carefully,” she tells me.

Tell parent you are UNHARMED!

Parent will be contacted ONCE more only.

Next contact will contain ALL instructions for delivery.

Bitcoin MUST be transferred within two hours!

You will be RELEASED one day after Bitcoin is received.

There will be NO further contact.

Use value, as Father might say. I still have use value. Okay, fine, but the part I don’t like is the last line about no further contact because uttering the words instantly transforms me from an asset to a liability.

We’re moving with traffic along a state road of some kind, two lanes in each direction, an occasional intersection, an occasional stoplight. There’s a crescent moon above, strong enough in a cloudless sky to reveal cornfields reduced to stubble by the harvester.

“You are very quiet,” Tashya says.

“I’m watching.”

“Watching what?”

“The world go by. This little world, anyway, maybe the last world I’ll ever see.”

Tashya takes my shoulder, gently, and turns me toward her. “You go through much, I understand this, and you are young, only fifteen. But I make this prediction: many years from now kidnapping will make you more interesting to your peers. You will tell your story again and again, adding this, subtracting that. So, yes, your peers will have diamonds and emeralds and wear designer gowns to galas, just like you, but they will not have a story of rubbing their shoulders with vicious kidnappers.”

Quentin can stand it no longer. “Give her to me for an hour and the bitch’ll beg to obey you. No more back talk. She’ll fuckin’ beg.”

Tashya smiles and shakes her head, but doesn’t correct him, only shifting back in her seat, allowing the darkness, cut by oncoming headlights, to settle in.

“When I speak to . . . to whoever answers the phone, am I supposed to read the message exactly?”

“No. Your parent must know that your voice is not recorded. That you are currently living. But do not stray from instructions. You will not be speaking to them again before you are exchanged.”

Quentin turns onto a two-lane county road and now there are only the shorn fields and the occasional farmhouse.

“Prepare yourself.” Tashya removes a pair of gloves from a box on the floor, dons them, finally produces a cell phone and hands it to me. “Now.”

A few seconds later, I’m talking, not to my father, but to Uncle Henry, his gruff, “Hank Bradford here,” a trademark. The man cannot step out of character no matter the situation.

“What are you doing there, Uncle Henry? Where’s my father?”

“Asleep.”

“Then my mother?”

“Right here. Now, listen, you tell those bastards we’re putting the money together and we intend to pay the ransom. But if they harm a hair on your head, I will track them down. I don’t care if I have to spend my last penny. I don’t care if they retreat to the ends of the earth.”

The phone’s on speaker, so I don’t have to relay the threat. I look at Tashya, but she only smiles and signals for me to go on.

“You need to stop being an asshole, Uncle Henry, for the first time in your fucking, battle-scarred life. This is not a war, it’s a kidnapping. A transaction. This for that, me for money. So, keep a civil tongue in your head. These people are professionals and once they get started, they never stop coming. Christ, it’s no wonder a judge granted your wife a divorce and all that money. They should have given her a medal for putting up with you.”

Nobody speaks to Uncle Henry this way. Most likely, nobody’s ever spoken to him this way. But I’m not waiting for him to explode. Time to get it over with.

“You’ll receive one final message. This final message will include the web address where the ransom needs to be sent. If you don’t send the ransom within two hours, they’ll kill me. If you do send the ransom, they’ll release me within twenty-four hours. But either way, there will be no further contact. It’s do or die.”

That’s enough for Tashya. She pulls the phone from my hand, shuts it off, rolls down the window and tosses it into the brush at the side of the road.

We’re done.

They don’t kill me on the spot, a contingency that hasn’t escaped my imagination, me lying in the stubble of a harvested cornfield, strangled, shot, stabbed. Father would pronounce these musings a product of my overactive adolescent hormones. But if I’m not to survive, if some unforeseen impediment prevents the ransom’s delivery, or if I wasn’t intended to live from the outset, my decomposing flesh will have to be put somewhere.

The drive back is uneventful except for an oncoming Sheriff’s car that rolls past as if I wasn’t there, didn’t exist, wasn’t a keystroke away from being murdered. I can’t take my eyes from the window, can’t get enough of the world, the moon’s reflected glow in a pond, a pair of dogs or coyotes far in the distance, a single cloud hanging on to the horizon as a drowning sailor might cling to a straw. A will to survive I didn’t know existed rises to meet a swelling despair. Tashya will be apologetic, this gives her no pleasure and she really, really wishes it could be otherwise, but Quentin must be protected. Obviously.

My dungeon’s been restored. The table and chair upright, the floor clean and dry, popcorn, jerky, chips, tablet, lantern, water, and paperbacks neatly arranged on the table. Someone’s been here in my absence, not Tashya and not Quentin, a third party unwilling to join Tashya in her third-world refuge.

Tashya allows the situation to speak for itself, closing the door behind me, sliding the bolt home, climbing the stairs. She doesn’t speak because there’s nothing more to be said, only the waiting. And me not knowing how long, I can’t sit still, neither food nor water, nor even the games on the little tablet, hold my attention. Some part of me I can’t recognize demands that I seek a way out, that I at least try, and not recklessly either.

What would Seamus do?

I finally take a drink of water—not too much, the bucket ever in mind—then begin a meticulous inspection of my dungeon. I’m looking for any security cameras in addition to the ones I destroyed. They haven’t been replaced and, after thirty minutes or so, I’m pretty sure there are no others. Except for my little niche, the room is apparently empty.

Confident that I’m unseen, I turn my attention to the windows, especially the one at the far end of the room. Even standing on the chair, I won’t be able to reach its top edge. The table would bring me closer, but if someone came down the stairs while I was standing on the table, I wouldn’t have time to return it to its original position.

I carry the chair to the far window and quickly test it. The wooden legs are tightly joined to the frame, round seat firmly set, stiles and splat solid. It will hold me. As predicted, I can’t reach the top of the window, but the chair does answer two important questions. Standing on the seat, I can shake the lower part of the plywood panel covering the window. It’s nailed into the window’s frame, which has to be wood. If that frame is as old as the house, and the wood has dried out and the nails are not too long, the panel might loosen. And I have to assume whoever put it up was in a hurry because it could have been screwed into the frame, in which case I’d be securely encaged for the duration.

I move the chair back to its original position and settle into a thoroughly unhealthy dinner, a bag of corn chips, two Slim Jims, a chocolate bar, and a bottle of berry-flavored water. Father would be appalled.

The last of the adrenaline finally out of my system, I fall asleep despite my aching head. I’m tired enough to sleep through the night, but when the dead bolt on the other side of the door snaps open, I’m instantly awake and alert. Then Tashya strolls into the room, fixing me with her dead blank eyes and my pulse skyrockets. She’s carrying a gun in her right hand.

“Come.”

I can’t move and yet I must, the muzzle of the gun trained on me, unwavering, the wand of a magician, the drum of a voodoo priestess. Tashya follows me up the stairs and I’m thinking, Turn on her, push her down the stairs, hope you land on top, hope the gun flies out of her hands.

In fact, seized as I am by an impulse-crushing fear, I simply obey. At the top of the stairs, Tashya again directs me with a single word, “Outside.”

Her hand finds my back as the door closes behind us, her touch as gentle as it is insistent, an irresistible force. She shuts down her little flashlight and she pushes me toward the forest without speaking. The moon’s gone, but the stars are bright enough in a cloudless sky to light our way. The trees and brush, even the forest floor, glow faintly, the whole as beautiful as it is eerie, no place for humans here, go back, go back. Only there’s no going back and the pressure of Tashya’s hand increases whenever I hesitate. We’re following a faint trail, no more than a shadow, deeper and deeper into the forest, skirting thickets, passing into and through a grove of pines, the forest floor barren beneath.

“Tashya . . .”

“Move.”

“Please. Give my parents a chance to pay the ransom. If they don’t, you might need me again.”

“Move.”

Now I can hear it, the solid thump of a shovel digging into the earth, the hiss of dirt sliding off the shovel’s blade. Then a shadow, moving, lifting, throwing. Finally, Quentin standing in a chest-deep hole, throwing down the shovel when he spots me, a triumphant smile on his face, he at last the victor after a life of losing. He lays a hand on the edge of the hole and vaults up and out, rising to his full height.

“About time,” he says an instant before Tashya pulls the trigger three times, the shots oddly truncated, the pop of a firecracker, short and sharp. All three bullets strike Quentin’s chest, producing three red dots that quickly expand. I watch him look down, watch the fingers of his right hand go to his wounds, watch them come away bloody. Does he finally get it? Does he realize that it wasn’t Elizabeth Bradford who became superfluous once the final call was placed? I half expect him to say something when he raises his head, but he merely falls backward, tumbling into a grave he’s dug for himself.