The Firstborn (4 page)

Hannah listened intently. They’d done a good job of soundproofing the room, but there was only so much foam and mattresses could keep out. She held her breath, trying to hear more.

It had sounded like fighting. Shouting mostly, but things hit the walls, shaking the beams down to her shadowy basement.

There wasn’t much time for her, she supposed. They were getting desperate. What little she could make out from the tone of the shouting told her that. They weren’t going to keep her around much longer. That was certain.

What was the point? Two decades of living. She was nineteen years old and alone. A college freshman, living in the dorms, failing to adapt. Her roommate liked to drink and liked guys even more—Hannah had come home to find a “do not disturb” sign hanging from her own door at least once a week all semester, forcing her to sleep on a couch in the downstairs commons. The food in the dining halls was bad, the company worse. All she had wanted was to go home.

She didn’t want to be a college graduate with a career. All she wanted was to meet a nice man and love him, feed him, raise his children. It was an old-fashioned and naïve desire, all her professors and friends had told her that, but still it was the life she wanted.

She wanted peace and quiet and love and cookies made for her children—not an education or a life in the fast lane, but her grandfather had made her go, wanting her to get a degree in business so she could make the family business more profitable.

The sensation was in her temples this time—soft images blending one to another.

Her eighth birthday party.

She wore a cowgirl hat and boots.

A chocolate cake with sprinkles.

The number eight embedded in frosting, a single flame rising from the wick.

Her friends smiling.

Her childhood dog, Max, licking her face. Bees.

The stinging all over her.

Crying in her grandfather’s arms.

—her grandfather’s arms.

Hannah lifted her head. She wanted to live.

Snider dialed the phone.

“Yes?” his employer said across the line.

“It’s me.”

There was a pause. “What do you need?”

“Some guy started snooping around.”

Silence.

“I think it’s time you told me exactly why you hired us to kidnap the girl.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t—”

“I swear, we’ll kill her now.”

There was another pause.

“Are you watching the news?”

“Do you mean the murdered imam?”

“Yes.”

“Are you guys responsible for that?”

“We need control of our situation.”

“And the girl’s kidnapping provides you with that?”

“We’ll double your money.”

Snider sneered. “We’re now connected to a politically charged killing. You’ll triple our money, and you’ll have the rest of it for us tonight, because after that we’re sending her back in a garbage bag!”

Devin’s thoughts floated.

Confused—in the front seat of the car. The car hood breaking the ice, plunging into the water.

The windshield cracking—leaking. Breaking. Cold water spilling in.

Body seizing from the shock. Lungs filling with ice water.

Devin’s eyes opened—darkness everywhere. His whole world shook as his head slammed into something. How had he gotten here? On his back, in some dark, confined place.

His world shook again with a jarring slam as he heard the engine rev.

He was in the trunk of a car.

It smelled new or at least freshly detailed—like his rental car. He shivered in the chilled trunk as his mind put it all together. It was his rental car. He remembered what had flashed through his mind. They were going to send the car into a lake with him in it, make it look like an accident. But it wouldn’t look like an accident if he was in the trunk. He remembered what he’d seen—

They weren’t going to leave him in the trunk. How had they gotten him here in the first place?

Something had pinched him in the neck, hard. There had been some sort of ticking sound and—

They’d hit him with a Taser, an electrical stun gun. Police and military used them for restraint purposes. He’d had to use one himself on several occasions when he was with intelligence. They were available to private citizens too for self-defense, and he’d been hit with one of those.

They weren’t going to take any chances. They were going to stun him again for good measure, put him in the front seat, and send him into the lake. He wouldn’t even have to drown. The water was cold enough that the chill would get him first. The shock of it alone would be enough to suck the air from his lungs, cause his muscles to seize. The impact would batter his body, and the breaking glass would slash him to ribbons. The water would cut off his air, choking him to death.

And if he survived all that, his lungs would fill and burst.

Brett moved into the living room, his body still sore. The TV was on—the morning news—all about this murdered imam in Ohio.

Brett watched for a moment and thought.

They were going to have to get rid of the girl, no matter what Snider said. It was going to have to happen.

He looked on the ottoman.

The Beretta.

Devin fumbled in the dark. He couldn’t find what he was looking for.

Just the previous summer he’d been led to the trunk of an older-model car where a four-year-old boy had accidentally trapped himself on a sweltering day. He read up on it afterward. He’d learned of the eleven children who had died in the summer of 1998, trapped in the trunks of automobiles. As a result, new standards required the auto manufacturers to have interior release handles inside every trunk manufactured after 2000. Most glowed in the dark with pictographic instructions inscribed on them. Devin saw nothing.

He searched with his eyes and his fingertips. He couldn’t find the latch. This wasn’t right. The rental was a brand-new car with all the latest safety requirements. They must have removed the safety latch somehow in the fear that he might come to and search for it, exactly as he was doing now.

There was another option—he could kick out the backseat and find himself face-to-face with his captor, a fight he would have to win against a man who was almost certainly armed.

He turned back to the trunk latch, feeling with his fingertips.

Snider stood in the kitchen, touching his forehead. It all gave him a headache—the logistics of it all. It was supposed to be a simple job, not this. The news was playing in the background—some Muslim had been murdered. He rubbed his temples.

He trusted Jimmy, but it still bothered him to delegate something like ditching a body to him. Why hadn’t he done it himself? Why hadn’t he made sure it was flawless?

Because, he reminded himself, Brett was the biggest problem they had. Someone needed to keep an eye on that trigger-happy…

Where was Brett, anyway?

Snider stepped out of the kitchen and looked around. Then his eyes fell on the ottoman.

The pistol was gone.

Devin’s fingers glided across the plastic surface of the trunk’s latch cover and found the edges. He worked at the plastic, but his short, manicured fingernails couldn’t work their way underneath.

He traced the cover farther up. The cover was the size of his hand, roughly the shape of an egg, and at the top he felt two small indentations, one on each side of the release. His fingers worked their way in and the cover came loose. He felt blindly at the mechanism, working at it with his fingers.

Cold metal and a long, thick wire running the length of the mechanism.

That’s it
, he thought. He pulled. The trunk popped and white light exploded off of the snow, flooding Devin’s eyes.

An old country road. Trees streaming away on each side.

He hurled himself out into the snow, rolling with the impact.