The Chain(32)

According to Olly’s modeling, the more people that are added to The Chain, the more likely it is that there will be a major defection. That’s why fear is so important. That’s the whole mental component.

Human beings are creatures whose lives are governed by deep instincts. They are like mice, these people, mice in the hay fields, and she’s the peregrine swooping over them, seeing every little thing they do.

She thinks about Noah Lippman. She’d been serious about Noah, but he had broken up with her and moved to New Mexico with a new girlfriend. The Chain, however, had somehow stretched its tentacles way out there to the high desert. In Taos, his life had taken several disastrous turns. His girlfriend had been killed in a hit-and-run, he had been fired from his hospital job, and he had been mugged and badly beaten, and now he’s a poorly paid and overworked nurse in a Santa Fe hospice. Gray hairs Noah has now, and he’s walked with a limp since his assault.

The Chain didn’t always have to be a bad thing, she supposes. Sometimes it helped people. Helped people focus on what was really important. And in a way, she’s doing these mice in the hay field a favor. I mean, she thinks, now you know what your purpose is, don’t you, Rachel? Now you know what you have to do if you want to see sweet little Kylie again. That blind panic that you’re feeling? That adrenaline rush? That call to action? The Chain gave you that. The Chain has set you free.

She closes the laptop.

Don’t interfere, Olly says, leave it alone.

But sometimes one can have a little fun.

She clicks on the Wickr app again and messages Heather Porter: The ransom for Rachel to pay has doubled to fifty thousand dollars. The balance must be paid today. Inform her immediately. Furthermore, she must complete part 2 of the process today. If she doesn’t pay the new ransom and complete her kidnapping by midnight, you must kill Kylie O’Neill and search for a new target.

Yes, that will fix things, she thinks with some measure of satisfaction.





26

Friday, 3:57 p.m.



Rachel stands under the shower. She scalds herself and freezes herself, but the water doesn’t help—she’s still inside the bad dream. Other people lose their kids, people who don’t pay close enough attention. People who let thirteen-year-olds walk home from lonely bus stops in Mississippi or Alabama. This kind of thing doesn’t take place in urbane, civilized, safe northern Massachusetts.

She steps out onto the chilly bathroom floor and shakes her head. That’s the sort of complacency and snobbery that allowed them to kidnap her daughter in the first place. Her head is light. Her left breast hurts. She’s utterly unmoored. She imagines her face again in the nonexistent bathroom mirror. That gaunt, hollow, ugly, un–Jennifer Connelly stupid face. Getting rid of the mirrors—what a joke that was. Just hiding the truth. All those smashed mirrors in the town dump. All that bad luck circling back to her.

Camus said, “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

What bullshit.

All she feels is pain and fear and misery. Fear above all. And, yes, this is the depth of winter, all right. This is the middle of the Ice Age at the sunless North Pole. My daughter has been kidnapped and to get her back I’m going to have to grab a sweet little boy off the street and threaten him and threaten his family and mean it. Mean it when I say I’m going to kill him, because if I don’t I’ll never see Kylie again.

She pulls on a T-shirt, her red sweater, and jeans and walks into the living room.

Pete looks up from his computer.

He can’t know about the torment within her. He can’t know about the fear and the doubts. He doesn’t want to do it. He’s a good man. A veteran. She needs to Lady Macbeth it. “Right, so we’re all set, then,” she says coldly.

Pete nods. He has just come back from the Appenzellers’.

“How does the house look?” she asks.

“Perfect. Super-quiet down in the basement. A bucket to pee in. I got the kid some comic books so he won’t get bored. Few stuffed animals and games as well. Some candy.”

“Latest weather?”

“Still drizzle. Not heavy rain.”

“What is the family doing right now?” Rachel asks.

“Mike’s still at work. Rest of the family is home. Helen Dunleavy is currently writing a lengthy Facebook post about the fig tree in her backyard. Oh, and Toby definitely does not have the peanut allergy.”

“Good. I was on a plane once with a woman who was allergic to peanuts, and she had a meltdown just from the smell of someone’s peanut-butter sandwich. Nightmare,” she says and lets out a huge sigh. “Thank you for coming, Pete. You’re a rock. I couldn’t get through this without you.”

Pete looks at her and swallows. His mouth opens and closes. He has two things to tell her. He has to tell her about the heroin and he has to tell her about the Camp Bastion incident. He’s not a rock. He’s unreliable. He’s a failure. He would have been court-martialed if he hadn’t resigned first. “There’s something you should know…” he begins.

Rachel’s iPhone rings: Unknown Caller.

She answers it on speaker so Pete can hear. “Yes?” she says.

“There’s been a change of plan,” the woman holding Kylie says.