The Chain(47)

The Dunleavy ransom has been paid, the message says simply.

Rachel takes one of the powered-up burner phones and dials the Dunleavys.

“Hello?” Helen says.

“The ransom has been paid. You know what to do now.”

“How can we do that? It’s madness. It’s impossible,” Helen says.

There’s a brief scuffle and then someone says, “No.”

Mike Dunleavy comes on the line. “Now, look here—” he begins but Rachel cuts him off immediately.

“Put your wife back on the phone now or your daughter’s dead,” Rachel says.

“I want to know who—”

“Put your wife on the phone now, asshole! I’ve got a gun pointed at Amelia’s head!” she yells.

A second later Helen comes back on. “I’m sorry—”

“You will be sorry, you stupid bitch. Do what you’re supposed to or you’ll never see Amelia again. Once you have a list of targets, send it to the contact on Wickr for final approval,” Rachel snarls, and she hangs up.

She removes the SIM card and smashes it and the phone on the kitchen floor. She puts the broken phone in the garbage bag.

A few minutes later, she mirrors the Dunleavys’ home computer on Pete’s laptop and sees, sure enough, that they are trawling through Facebook feeds and Instagram accounts. Yup, that’s how you do it in this day and age.

Pete comes upstairs. “News?”

“They paid the ransom.”

“They could afford it. It’s the second part…”

“Yeah. How’s our girl?”

“She’s OK. Still watching Disney movies. I promised to play Operation with her later.”

Rachel nods absently.

“Look, Rach, you can go home, I’ll be OK here,” Pete says.

“No, I’m staying the night with Amelia,” Rachel insists.

“She asked me to stay tonight, not you,” he says gently.

“Why’s that?”

“She’s scared of you.”

“Oh.”

“It’s better if I stay. I’m used to roughing it. Sleeping bag on the floor is no problem.”

Rachel nods. “I guess that’s the way it is, then.”

“I guess.”

They stare at each other and say nothing. Rachel observes him. She knows that something is amiss but cannot put her finger on it. Something to do with that bag of what might have been drugs?

“You’re OK, aren’t you, Pete?” Rachel asks.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“I’m really relying on you,” she says.

“I’m fine. Trust me,” he says.

Pete knows that she knows. It’s time for him to cook up again. He needs it. His body craves it. He had thought he might use this experience as a way to force himself to quit, but it isn’t that simple. There’s a reason it’s called a fix.

Finally Rachel stands. “Call me,” she says.

“I will.”

She gives him a sad little wave goodbye and goes out.

The sea lashes the dunes, and a freezing, bitter wind is coming at Rachel from the north. A slantwise rain is falling, and lightning stabs at the Dry Salvages off Cape Ann.

Rachel goes home and takes a Sam Adams out of the fridge. The beer isn’t cutting it. She pours herself half a glass of vodka and tops it up with tonic. She thinks about the first unknown caller. That voice on the phone. That thing they said about the living being only a species of the dead. It was the kind of thing she’d said to her friends when she was a freshman. A young person’s idea of depth. As if whoever was behind The Chain was pretending to be a wise fifty-year-old but was really about her own age or younger.

Rachel would have thought it would take someone a lifetime to get this evil, but no. And what about you yourself, Rachel? A kidnapper, a torturer of children, an incompetent mom. All of the above. And you know in your heart that you would have let Amelia die. The intent was there and that’s what counts in moral philosophy, in law, and in life.

Your fall has been vertiginous and swift. You’re in the cage plummeting to hell. And it’s going to get worse. It always gets worse. First comes the cancer, then the divorce, then your daughter gets kidnapped, then you become the monster.





35

Sunday, 2:17 a.m.



Mike and Helen Dunleavy were everything Rachel hoped they would be. For all their procrastination and panic on Saturday morning, by Saturday afternoon they had really gotten their shit together.

They chose a kid from East Providence named Henry Hogg, a boy in a wheelchair whose father was a junior vice president of an oil company, so he could pay $150,000 without sneezing. On Saturday night, Henry’s father attended a Rotary Club dinner in Boston, and at nine o’clock, Henry’s stepmother picked Henry up from his friend’s house, three blocks away from theirs. She started wheeling him home alone through the streets of Providence.

The Dunleavys made sure he never got home.

Kylie doesn’t know about any of this, but a few hours after midnight on Sunday, the basement door opens and the woman—Heather—tells Kylie to get up.

Rachel doesn’t know about this until her phone rings at 2:17 on Sunday morning.