The Guardian (7 page)

“Which one was the cop?”

“The wiry one. I was starting my little speech about how this would be my one and only time when cops with guns burst into the room.”

“They could’ve given you a break on that.”

Ross had been silent for a moment and then said, “Not the way it turned out. The dealer had a gun and he went for it. The cops yelled for him to put it down, but he wouldn’t. I’d grabbed Giselle and put my back to the guy, to the dealer, but I felt this tearing along my side. Then the undercover cop fired. I remember looking back at the dealer and seeing that he was dead, and then realizing that Giselle was hanging in my arms. She was dead, too. The dealer had gotten one shot off, and the bullet that had grazed my side had gone on to her heart.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“And it was eight kilos of coke, and this was the year that Jackie Kale overdosed. You know, the Boston College athlete?”

“Who was the cop?”

“Detective Byrne.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know him. How about the judge?”

“Palmer.”

She winced. “And the ADA?”

“Guy by the name of Ryan.”

“Bad luck. He’s good.”

She’d checked the bottle of wine then. “This one’s gone. If I have another, I won’t be able to drive home.”

Ross had realized he’d talked way too much. “I’ll shut up.”

“Don’t.” She’d put her hand on the back of his neck. Her fingers were cool on the surface, but he could feel her heat beneath the skin. “I still haven’t heard about that ex-wife of yours yet.”

Just as she had those two months ago, Allie withdrew her hand as Greg joined them.

He didn’t seem to notice, saying, “Beth’s asleep. First time since this started.” He poured himself some coffee and sat with them at the table and said, simply enough, “Did you take the gun, Ross?”

Ross pulled it from his belt and laid it on the table.

Allie paled. “How long have you had that on you?”

“All day.”

“Jesus Christ. That’s a parole violation right there, enough to send you back.”

The connection Allie and Ross had made was gone. Her armor was up, and Ross could see he had returned to the dangerously unreliable status.

“This situation’s a little different,” Greg said.

“Explain that to a judge,” she said.

Greg met Ross’s eyes. “You didn’t do anything extreme, did you? Anything we need to know about now?”

“Not a thing.”

Greg held his gaze for a moment, then shook his head. “You must be slipping. The brother I grew up with would’ve robbed a bank by now.”

Chapter 9

Beth found him in the garage.

Greg was at the workbench, Janine’s bicycle locked into the vise. The socket wrench set was laid out, glittering and clean on the well-swept bench.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He started slightly before turning back to the bicycle. “I can’t believe I let it get like this,” he said. “The back brakes are gone, the fronts are grabbing, the cables are way out of adjustment. It looks like she tried to fix it herself: the nuts are all stripped.”

Beth rubbed his shoulders. The tension in his back made his muscles hard as bone. “The two of us tried to fix it with a pair of pliers,” she said. “Switched the pads.”

“Could’ve asked me.”

“You’ve had a bit on your mind, lately.”

He turned around. Put his arms around her. She held herself against him, felt that the beating of his heart was faster than usual. She could also feel his trembling, and knew he must feel the same in her. She pressed her face against his chest, trying to close out the light. She was buzzing. She felt as if her life had turned into some kind of documentary, as if she were following the view of some handheld camera showing how the mother of a kidnap victim made it through the day. Going through the house, straightening, doing the equivalent of tuning the bicycle. Seeing her daughter in every room: Janine, looking up from the dinner table, Janine with her new beret, talking in a silly French accent, “Bon-jour, monsieur.” Saying it, “Miss-sure.”

Beth kept envisioning the end of the documentary, where, with Janine in her arms, she could say into the camera how awful it had been. That she’d been terrified, but always had faith her daughter would make it home alive.

She’d be lying at that part.

Truth was, at one moment she’d believe this whole thing would be over soon. Swap the money for her daughter, simple. The next, she’d imagine how it could go wrong, how that man could make what was simple complicated, and her daughter would be dead.

And that image would just freeze her, stop her at whatever she was doing, leave her in a blind panic. Then she’d kick herself back into the logic; she’d think if only the man knew how she felt about her daughter, if only she could explain so he really understood what Janine meant to her.

If only she could explain to him that she didn’t always know she wanted to be a mother. That at first she’d thought she and Greg were enough. Two years into their marriage, she’d just sold her first short story, her first real sale. During the celebratory champagne that night, she’d pushed her glass aside reluctantly; it had tasted terrible. The next morning she had been sick. Another day passed before the doctor confirmed what she already knew—she was pregnant.

And then it had been a difficult delivery. Afterward, Beth had gone through a period of depression. It was just the body drugs, the doctor had told her, the hormones. And Beth had believed him, largely. But what she’d thought about during those depressions was how tired she was, and how she just didn’t have the energy to sit down at the keyboard.

Even during the time when Janine had started to smile and become a beautiful child that her friends wanted to hold and kiss, Beth had felt a distance toward her. And that distance was Beth’s personal shame; she’d felt guilty and disgusted with herself. Could she really be so shallow as to resent her baby? She’d tortured herself with the idea that her daughter would grow up to see herself as not loved. Greg had pitched in every way he could and lavished more affection than ever on Janine. Even that had made Beth feel guilty.

Beth still remembered the day it had changed for her. It was a nothing-special day, just one morning at home after Greg had gone to work. Janine had taken Beth’s forefinger in her pudgy little fist and grinned delightedly as she pulled herself up to stand. She’d squealed, “Mama, mama, mama!”

Beth’s eyes had filled with the kind of joy of which she’d thought herself incapable.
I got away with it,
she’d thought, scooping Janine up into her arms.
Thank God, I got away with it.

And now she was thinking maybe she hadn’t. Maybe this was some awful atonement that she’d brought down on all of them.

She looked up at Greg. “Make him understand what she means to us.”

“It’s all I think about,” Greg said. “But the more desperate we are for her, the more it strengthens his position.”

Beth looked away from her husband’s face. She knew he was right, intellectually. But the talk of position, of negotiation, made her want to scream. She had come down to find him and Ross in the kitchen talking things through. Her fair husband and his dark brother, heads close together, trying to make it all fit into some game plan. Greg was concerned that the man might not be willing to turn Janine over directly, that the kidnapper would expect them to leave the money someplace and then just hope Janine would be set free.

And Ross was different than he had been before. He was more sober. On one level, Beth felt he was even more frightened than they. She could see the doubt in his eyes, and that sickened her. Because he knew the kind of person who’d do this. She’d found it hard to be around him for the past day; she’d leave the room when he came in.

She felt bad about that but couldn’t help it. He was doing everything he could, and Beth knew he loved all of them dearly. But he’d said it himself: The kidnapper was from what had become his kind of world.

She closed her eyes now and pulled Greg tight.

The man just didn’t understand.

And that’s what they needed to let him know. This was her daughter, and she’d come to love her daughter more than any words could explain. And she would pay, no matter what the cost.

She looked up at her husband and saw the man she loved. Saw what was good and solid and right about him and wondered if he had what they needed. She let her fingernails sink into his back. “You let that man know what she means to us. There must be some way to way to make it count to him, too. So he’s got a reason to let her come home.”

Chapter 10

Janine bit back her question because the man started talking again.

“We’re going to do it in the cash,” he said to the woman. “You and me, right on a big pile of it.”

“I like that,” the woman said, laughing. Then she must’ve turned to Janine, because her voice became clearer. “Hey, close your ears, honey.”

The tape around Janine’s eyes kept her sightless.

“It’ll be compliments of your daddy, girl,” the man said. To the woman, he said, “Here, these two lines are yours.”

In Janine’s direction, again, he said, “Now, if your daddy doesn’t come through, maybe we’ll just do it on top of you.”

“Stop!” The woman’s voice was sharp and then she laughed again, but Janine could tell she was scared, too.

Janine didn’t say anything. She just sat on the hard chair and kept very still. She’d think sometimes if she just didn’t move, they’d forget about her and walk away. And so the longer she sat silent, the better her chances. Her back, arms, and legs were stiff from the night and day she’d passed tied down first on the bed and then in the chair.

Time had passed more slowly than anything she could ever remember, worse than any day home sick, any math class, any morning in church. She thought of those times, those boring hours that she had thought would kill her, and wished she could be there now, kicking her feet against the pew on Sunday, her mom and dad telling her to hush.

But she didn’t complain. She thought how funny that was, in a way. That she could just tell herself to shut up, don’t be a sissy, and she could.

They’d fed her. She’d had a doughnut ages ago, then a hamburger a long time later, and just now they’d given her another. McDonald’s or Burger King’s.

So she’d been through the day.

The woman had said they’d let her go that night.

The question had been building.

She licked her lips. Thought about it and started to form the words, then waited. She let a long time pass, and finally said it. “Is it time yet? Is it time for my daddy to pick me up?”

“Is it time yet?” the man immediately copied her, making his voice ugly and screeching. “Is it time?”

She heard him stand up, and the woman said, “Don’t.”

Suddenly he picked Janine and the chair up. Janine shrieked. He put his hand over her mouth, and she almost bit his hand but stopped herself somehow. She cried out behind his hand and could barely get enough breath in, it was so tight against her mouth and nose. “OK, little girl. You want to rush your daddy, that’s OK with me. What the hell, if he doesn’t have the money now, he’s not going to have it later, right? Let’s go call him, find out if he really loves you or not.”

“Leave her alone,” the woman snapped.

“You telling me what to do now?”

Janine felt herself lifted higher, maybe over his head. She said, “No, please, no!”

“Put her down!”

The man dropped the chair.

“Lee!” the woman cried out.

Janine screamed as she fell forward, struggling to get her arms free to protect her face.

But the woman was there. Janine’s head hit the woman’s body hard, and together they fell to the floor. The woman cried out again, and Janine could feel the dull thud through the woman’s body and realized the man was hitting or kicking her. “You said my name!” He was raging. “You stupid bitch, you said my name!”

It was over suddenly.

Janine could hear him walk away, heard him say, “Shit! It’s on your head.”

“No,” the woman said. “Not again.”

“Shut up about that! Your head, you got that?”

“I won’t take that.”

“You will if I say you will. Now get her ready.”

The woman said in Janine’s ear, “Shush. Just be quiet.” The woman cut away the tape binding Janine’s arms and legs and led her away. A door closed behind them, and the woman was crying as she got Janine ready. She told Janine she was putting dark glasses over the tape and giving her a hooded sweatshirt to wear. The woman’s hands were shaking, and that made Janine cry more, the tears stinging her eyes inside the tape.

The woman said, “Listen to me; listen to me. I don’t know if you heard his name, but never say it if you did. If he asks you what it was, just play dumb. Say you don’t know what he means. Cry, do anything, but if you heard it, never say it. Do you understand?”