The Chain(42)

The bag of drugs is gone but Pete left the .45.

Rachel takes it off the kitchen table and slips back out into the hall. This is one stupid woman out there. Even if Elaine were home, she wouldn’t want someone knocking on her door at six thirty in the morning.

“Uhh,” Amelia moans.

Heart in mouth, Rachel slithers down the basement stairs, almost slipping and breaking her goddamn neck. She runs to Amelia and puts her finger to her lips.

“Shhh,” she hisses.

“Elaine, are you in there or not?” the voice at the front door demands. “I thought I saw you moving around!”

Amelia moans louder and Rachel has no choice but to put her hand over the little girl’s mouth. Amelia can’t breathe properly through her nose. She begins thrashing against Rachel’s grip but she’s far too weak to put up any kind of resistance.

“Shhh,” Rachel whispers. “Take it easy. It’s OK, it’s OK.”

She holds her tight.

No more noise from upstairs.

Ten seconds go by.

Fifteen.

Twenty.

Thirty.

“I guess nobody’s home,” the voice outside says.

Rachel hears the woman walk down the porch steps, and a moment later she hears the heavy front gate swing closed. Rachel takes her hand away from Amelia’s mouth and the little girl gasps for air.

Rachel runs upstairs to the first-floor window. The busybody is an elderly lady in galoshes and a purple raincoat. “Wow,” Rachel says to herself.

Utterly exhausted, she sits on the floor and waits for the cops to show up.

When they don’t come, she goes back downstairs to Amelia.

She seems to be doing a little better. Or is that just wishful thinking?

She phones Pete but he doesn’t answer.

She waits two minutes and calls again. No answer.

Where is he? What the hell is he doing?

Were those drugs? Was he high? She knows he’s been in and out of the VA clinic in Worcester for the past year but she hasn’t asked what the problem is. Pete’s never been one to share and she didn’t want to push it.

Where is he?

Has he run out on them?

Amelia is lying on her side now, coughing.

Rachel tucks her in the sleeping bag and puts her arms around her the way a mother would. She strokes her forehead and rocks her.

“It’s going to be OK, baby,” she says gently. “Sweetie, I promise, in a couple of hours, you’ll feel fine.”

Rachel holds her and talks to her and she feels like the biggest dirtbag fraud in the world. Five minutes crawl by in slow motion. She’d been willing to let her die. Would have let her die. Still will let her die if— KNOCK.

KNOCK.

KNOCK.

Rachel creeps back up the basement steps again.

KNOCK.

KNOCK.

KNOCK.

She tiptoes up the stairs to the second-floor bedroom and looks out the window.

It’s a Newburyport Police officer.

The old lady looking for Elaine had called the frickin’ cops.

“Hello?” the policeman says, knocking again.

Rachel holds her breath. If Amelia somehow manages to scream, the cop will certainly hear.

“Anybody home?” the cop says.

He looks through the mail slot and examines the windows. Rachel flinches back behind the curtain. If he’s suspicious, he’ll break the door down. Then what?

If Rachel shoots him, it won’t solve the problem. More cops will come to investigate. And more. And the kidnapping will be compromised, and Kylie will be killed. But if he discovers Amelia, Rachel will be arrested and Kylie will die.

The cop takes a few steps back and looks at the side of the house. If he spots where the window has been recently boarded up— Rachel flies down the stairs.

Amelia is gurgling in the basement. A terrible choking noise.

She is maybe actually going into cardiac arrest now. Rachel runs through the kitchen, tucking the .45 into the back of her jeans. She has to stop the policeman. If the game is up, Kylie is dead. Simple as that.

Rachel sprints down the back porch and along the sandy path to the front of the house.

“Hello there!” she says from the street.

The cop turns to look at her. She recognizes him. She’s seen him at the ice-cream place in Ipswich a couple of times, and he’d given Marty a ticket once when they parked too close to the hydrant at the farm stand. He’s in his midtwenties. Kenny something.

“Hi,” he says.

“Are you out here ’cause I called you?” she asks.

“Did you call the police?”

“Elaine Appenzeller asked me to keep an eye on the house while she’s in Florida. I saw some kids playing around in here. I told them to scram or I would call the cops. And, well…”

“They didn’t scram?”

“No. They have now, obviously, now that you’re here. I’m sorry, did I do the wrong thing? I mean, they were trespassing. That’s against the law, right?”

“What did these kids look like?”

“Oh, no, we don’t have to make a federal case out of it. They were only about ten. Look, I’m sorry. I was just bluffing when I told them I would call the cops and then they were looking at me the way boys that age do, and I said, ‘I’m pressing the number,’ and I sort of pressed it.”