The Couple Next Door(55)

And anger that he’s been caught. By her. She will show the police. She will show Anne. He is finished.

“Who else has seen this?” he asks. He’s surprised at how normal his voice sounds to him.

She ignores his question. “Did you kill her?” Cynthia asks, almost with her old playfulness.

He is sickened by her, by her morbid, unfeeling curiosity. He doesn’t answer. Does he want her to think he might be capable of killing? “Who else?” he demands, looking fiercely at her.

“No one,” she lies.

“Graham?”

“No, he hasn’t seen it,” Cynthia says. “I told him I checked the camera but the battery had died. He didn’t question it. He doesn’t know anything about this.” She adds, “You know Graham. He doesn’t take much of an interest.”

“So why are you showing this to me?” Marco asks. “Why didn’t you go straight to the police?”

“Why would I do that? We’re friends, aren’t we?” She gives him a coy smile.

“Cut the bullshit, Cynthia.”

“Fine.” The smile disappears. “If you want me to keep this to myself, it’s going to cost you.”

“Well, that’s a bit of a problem, Cynthia,” Marco says, his voice very controlled, “because I don’t have any money.”

“Oh, come on. You must have something.”

“I am stone broke,” he says coldly. “Why do you think I kidnapped my own child? For fun?”

He can see the disappointment in her face as she readjusts her expectations.

“You can mortgage your house, can’t you?”

“It’s already mortgaged.”

“Mortgage it some more.”

The cold bitch. “I can’t. Not without Anne knowing, obviously.”

“So maybe we need to show Anne the video, too.”

Marco takes a sudden step toward her. He doesn’t have to play the part of a desperate man—he is a desperate man. He could throttle her right now if he wanted to. But she doesn’t look scared, she looks excited. Her eyes glitter, and he can see her breasts rising and falling rapidly as she breathes. Perhaps it’s danger she wants, more than anything else. The thrill. Perhaps she wants him to throw her onto the bed they’re both standing beside. For a brief moment, he considers it. Would she not blackmail him then? Not likely.

“You’re not showing that video to anybody.”

She takes her time responding. She looks right in his eyes. Their faces are mere inches apart. “I would rather not show it to anybody, Marco. I would like this to be just between the two of us. But you’ve got to work with me here. You must be able to get some money.”

Marco thinks furiously. He doesn’t have any money. He doesn’t know how to get any. He will have to buy time. “Look, give me some time to figure things out. You know what a shit show my life is right now.”

“Things haven’t exactly turned out as you planned, have they?” she says. “I presume you expected to get the baby back?”

He wants to hit her, but he stops himself.

She looks at him appraisingly. “Fine. I’ll give you some time. I won’t show anyone the video—for now.”

“How much money are we talking about here?”

“Two hundred thousand.”

It’s less than he was expecting. He would have expected her to ask for more, an amount more in keeping with her flamboyant nature. But if he pays her, she’ll ask for more, and more—that’s the way it is with blackmailers. You never get out from under them. So the amount she’s naming now is meaningless. Even if he pays her and she destroys the video in front of him, he’ll never be certain there are no copies. His life is totally destroyed, on so many fronts.

“I think that’s fair,” she says.

“I’m leaving now. Stay away from Anne.”

“I will. But if I get impatient, if I don’t hear from you, I might call.”

Marco pushes past her out of the bedroom and goes down the stairs and out the sliding glass kitchen doors without looking back. He’s so angry he can’t think straight. Angry and scared. There’s proof. Proof that he took the baby. This changes everything. Anne will know. And he could go to jail for a very long time.

At that moment he doesn’t see how things can get any worse. He enters his own backyard through the gate from Cynthia’s patio. Anne is out there watering some plants.

Their eyes meet.





TWENTY-FIVE


Anne sees Marco come from Cynthia’s backyard, and her eyes go wide. She is shocked into perfect stillness, the watering can in her hand. Marco has been at Cynthia’s. Why? There’s only one reason he would be at Cynthia’s. Anne asks him anyway, from across the yard. “What were you doing over there?” Her voice is cold.

Marco’s got that deer-in-the-headlights look, when he’s caught red-handed and doesn’t know what to do. He’s never been good at improvising. She almost feels sorry for him. But she can’t feel sorry for him, because right now she hates him. She drops the watering can and runs past him and through the back door into the house.

He follows after her, calling desperately, “Anne! Wait!”