The Chain(58)

With only a slight hiccup, The Chain is marching on its merry way.

Rachel calls Helen Dunleavy on a burner phone.

“Hello?”

“We’re going to release Amelia in the next thirty minutes. Will call with instructions,” Rachel says and hangs up.

She goes to the Appenzellers’ house and puts on her ski mask, and she and Pete unchain little Amelia and get her out of the basement. They put on gloves and Rachel dresses her in a brand-new fingerprint-free pair of jeans and a sweater. When the coast is clear, they drape a towel over her head and move her to the back seat of Pete’s pickup.

They drive her to the playground at Rowley Common and get her out of the car. They tell her to keep the towel on for a count of sixty and then play on the swings until her mom comes to pick her up. They leave her with a wiped-down Mr. Boo and a toy octopus she has become particularly fond of.

They park the Dodge across the street from the common and Pete watches Amelia through binoculars while Rachel calls the Dunleavys. She reminds them about The Chain and the blowback and the terrible consequences of releasing their victim early or of anybody talking. They have already been given this speech by the voice of The Chain, and they assure her that they will do the right thing.

Rachel tells them where their daughter is and hangs up.

She and Pete wait in the Dodge Ram.

A little girl left by herself on the swings in the gathering dark in early twenty-first-century America. How scary is that?

Five minutes go by.

Amelia gets bored.

She gets off the swings and walks to the edge of Route 1A. Cars are roaring by at fifty miles an hour.

“Damn it!” Pete says.

Rachel’s heart is in her mouth.

There are other people in the park now, a couple of teenage boys in hoodies. “She’s going to get herself killed,” Pete says.

“I’ll handle it,” Rachel replies. She puts her ski mask back on. She gets out of the car and runs over the road to Amelia. “Amelia, this road is dangerous. I told you to wait by the swings! Your mommy and daddy will be here in five minutes.”

“I don’t want to play on the swings,” Amelia says.

“If you don’t go over to the swings, Amelia, I’m going to tell your mommy and daddy you don’t want them to come for you, and they won’t come!”

“Would you really do that?” Amelia asks, suddenly frightened.

“Yes! I would,” Rachel says. “Now go play on the swings.”

“You are such a meanie! I hate you!”

Amelia turns and begins walking back to the playground.

Rachel sprints over the road before the teenagers register the ski mask and maybe begin wondering if something is wrong. When she’s sure they aren’t looking in her direction, she gets in the Dodge.

Amelia sits glumly on the swings by herself as the two teenagers go into the playhouse, apparently to light up a joint.

Time crawls by.

Finally the Dunleavys pull up in their car and run to their daughter and hug her and cry.

And it’s done.

The spotlight is off them and they can only hope that the people farther along The Chain don’t screw everything up and send it spiraling back toward them again.

They drive home to check on Kylie and then go straight to the Appenzellers’ to remove all traces of their presence there. They clean out the basement and take down the board over the basement window, return the mattress to the upstairs bedroom, scrub away the prints. They put the mechanism into the back door and lock it as best as they can. The Appenzellers will definitely notice that something is wrong with it when they return in the spring, but spring is a long way away.

They drive the garbage to a dump in Lowell. When they get back, it’s late, but Kylie is still awake.

“It’s over,” Rachel says. “The little girl is back with her parents.”

“Is it really over?” Kylie asks.

Rachel banishes all uncertainty from her voice and looks Kylie straight in her big brown eyes.

“Yes,” she says.

Kylie bursts into tears and Rachel hugs her.

They order pizza and Rachel lies next to Kylie until she falls asleep. When Kylie is finally down for the count, Rachel texts her oncologist that she’ll call her in the morning. She hopes she isn’t dying. That would be the kicker to all of this.

She goes downstairs. Pete’s outside in his sweats chopping firewood. There are now half a dozen stacks of wood, each about six feet high. Definitely enough firewood to get through the winter and a zombie apocalypse or two. He comes in with a bundle of wood and lights a fire in the grate.

Rachel gets him a Sam Adams and he pops it and sits with her on the sofa. Something stirred in her when she saw Pete chopping that wood. Something ridiculously silly and primal.

She’s never known Pete well enough to have a crush on him. He’s always been away somewhere. Iraq, Camp Lejeune, Okinawa, Afghanistan, or just traveling. He’s very different from Marty. Taller, leaner, darker, moodier, quieter. Marty is handsome from fifty paces; Pete is more of an acquired taste. They don’t look alike or act alike. Pete is introspective; Marty’s an extrovert. Marty is the life and soul of the party; Pete is the guy in the corner browsing the bookshelf, checking his watch to see if he can quietly slip away.

Pete finishes the beer in one gulp and gets another. She lights him a Marlboro from Marty’s emergency bar-exam carton. “And we have this,” she says, producing a bottle of twelve-year-old Bowmore. She pours them two fingers each.