The Chain(54)

“You need to tell me what’s happening!”

Rachel nods. She deserved that. “One of the families farther down The Chain is thinking about going to the police. We have to stop them. If they go to the police, we could all be in danger.”

“So where are you going?”

“Providence.”

“You’re going down there to tell them to pay the ransom and do everything you did?”

“Yes.”

“What if you…what if you don’t come back?”

“If we’re not back by morning, call your father to come and get you. Stay in this house. Don’t go home. When he gets here, tell him everything. Keep your phone turned off until then.”

Kylie nods solemnly. “What time in the morning?”

“If you haven’t heard from either of us by, say, eleven, it probably means we’ve been compromised,” Pete says.

“Dead?” Kylie asks, her lip trembling.

“Not necessarily. Just that something’s going wrong,” Rachel says, although she thinks dead is the most likely scenario.

Kylie hugs her mom and Pete. “I’ll be OK,” she says. “And I’ll keep an eye on her.”

Her daughter is now co-opted into a kidnapping scheme. Rachel feels mortified and angry. But she can’t indulge these feelings for very long. The clock is ticking. She wipes the tears from her cheeks. “Let’s get this show on the road, then,” she says to Pete. “I’ll drive.”





39

Sunday, 11:27 p.m.



Swamp to the left, marsh to the right. High beam on the headlights. Smell of gun oil, sweat, fear. Nobody talking. Rachel driving. Pete literally riding shotgun.

Beverly, Mass.

Old wooden houses. Oak trees. The occasional apartment building. Quiet. Blue light from TVs and burglar alarms.

Suburban-nighttime ennui. Which is good. Fewer busybodies on the sidewalks.

Poseidon Street.

The lights are off in the Dunleavy house.

“Drive around the block,” Pete says. “Don’t stop.”

Rachel does and then parks one street over.

Quiet town. No one around. Only one question: Why won’t Helen Dunleavy answer her goddamn phone?

Rachel has an image of the entire family tied to chairs in the kitchen with their throats cut.

“We can go in through those little scrubby woods next door to their house,” Pete says. “And then in through the back door.”

“How?” Rachel asks.

Pete holds up a wrench and a lock-pick kit. “If we’re definitely going to do this,” he says.

“Yeah. We’re pot committed,” she replies.

Pot committed is the polite way of putting it. She’s going to have to go full-on Lady Macbeth now. Act it. Believe it. Be it. For Pete, for herself, for Kylie—the lives of her family are at stake.

“I’ve got an EM-pulse kit to baffle the alarm system if there is an alarm system. Once we’re in, we use handguns,” he says, handing her his glove-compartment .38 revolver. He’s also got a .45 and a 9-millimeter.

The guns. The scrubby wood.

Pete struggles to get over the Dunleavys’ north fence. Rachel stares at him. What is the matter with him? She wonders again if he’s on something or if he’s had an injury he hasn’t told her about. She needs him to be 100 percent.

“Are you OK, Pete?” she says severely.

“Yeah! I’m fine. Are you OK?”

She glares at him in the darkness.

“We should probably get moving, right?” he says.

“Sure.”

The Dunleavys’ backyard. Toys, lawn furniture, a swing. The back door, which leads to the kitchen.

“Come on,” Rachel says.

Flashlights on. EM-pulse kit on.

Pete fiddles with the lock. There’s a little tremor in his right hand.

“Can you get it?”

“Yeah. Done this before. It will not resist my attentions for long, trust me,” he says.

Three minutes. Four minutes.

“Are you sure?”

The door finally unlocks. Pete turns the handle. There is no safety chain. No burglar alarm goes off.

“Are we OK?” Rachel asks.

“Yeah.”

They put on their ski masks and enter the kitchen. Rachel darts her flashlight around the room.

No dead bodies. No assassins.

“Do we know where we’re going?” Rachel whispers.

“Yes,” Pete says. “Follow me.”

She follows Pete upstairs.

Carpet on floor. Pictures on wall. A big clock at the top of the steps. A mirror that scares her for a sec when she sees a person with a gun in it.

“First bedroom on the left,” Pete hisses.

Through the bedroom door. Body odor. Smell of booze. A woman snoring on the bed. Flashlight into the corners. No one else there. Pete tiptoes to the bed, kneels beside the woman, and puts his hand over her mouth. She yelps under Pete’s hand and he holds her down.

Rachel checks the en suite bathroom while Pete smothers her cries with his big paw.

“It’s clear,” Rachel says.

“Are you Helen Dunleavy?” Pete asks. “Just nod your response.”

She nods.