A Deadly Influence (Abby Mullen Thrillers #1)(11)

“Good. Is Nathan there?”

“No, he isn’t.” Rita’s voice shifted. Now it sounded like fake concern. Maybe it wasn’t really fake. Maybe Rita was just one of those people who sounded fake no matter what. “He isn’t home?”

“No . . . can you ask Mikey if he knows where he is?”

“Sure, hang on.”

Eden listened as Rita asked her son about Nathan. The words were garbled, swallowed by the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Finally, the woman said on the phone, “Mikey said he saw him get off the school bus but that he went home.”

“Oh okay. He’s probably at another friend’s house,” Eden muttered, wondering why she’d said it. As if she was trying to reassure the other woman that nothing was going on.

She hung up and tried Nathan’s other friends. She had a total of four phone numbers. As she ticked them off, her breathing became shorter, erratic. Her lungs wouldn’t compress all the way anymore because fear had settled inside them. After hanging up the last call, she held the phone, staring at it wide eyed, her fingers trembling. She had no idea what to do. She’d run out of life’s protocols, out of the plausible stories she could tell herself to feel better. New stories came to mind, stories laced with darkness.

She went upstairs to the bathroom and turned on the water. Grabbing the soap and the scouring pad, she began scrubbing her hands furiously. She scrubbed for three minutes, her skin becoming raw and painful, but the anxiety didn’t abate. In fact, it got worse.

Should she call the police? It seemed like a crazy thing to do. Nathan would show up in a minute, and it would turn out he’d been playing outside the entire time.

Then again, what if he wasn’t outside? What if something had happened? And she had wasted precious time scrubbing her hands, as if that were going to help.

She got out of the bathroom and looked for her phone. Where had she left it? Kitchen. She hurtled down the stairs and grabbed it, her heart pounding like crazy as she switched on the screen.

It came to life in her hands, ringing as if it had waited for her to pick it up. The caller ID was unknown.

“Hello?” Her voice was cracked, consumed by fear and worry.

“Eden Fletcher?”

“Yes, who—”

“We have your son.”

She was in one of those dreams in which she fell into an elevator shaft or a chasm. That sensation of dropping helplessly, a scream lodged in her throat. Except those always ended abruptly when she woke up.

There was no waking up from this phone call. “Is he okay?” Trembling, feeling faint. “Let me talk to him.”

“He’s fine. Sleeping.” The voice was wrong, warped, metallic. This was what evil sounded like. The voice of a man corrupted beyond hope.

“What do you want?”

“Five million dollars. Or your son dies.”

“You can’t be serious. I don’t have that kind of—”

“Better start finding it if you ever want to see your son again. We’re watching you. Five million dollars. We’ll talk soon.” The line went dead.

The phone tumbled from her petrified fingers and clattered on the kitchen tiles. She let out a guttural moan as she sank to the floor, leaning against the wall. Nathan. Her sweet, angelic boy, so full of life, always laughing, always curious. And these men had him. Where? Was he locked in some dark basement? Nathan was afraid of the dark; they couldn’t do that to him. She could already imagine his terrified cries begging them to let him out, to—

“Mom? Mom!” Gabrielle shook her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nathan,” she breathed. “They took Nathan.”

“What? Who took him? What are you talking about?” Gabrielle’s voice was angry, hysterical, shards of glass against Eden’s ears.

Eden curled into a fetal position and hid her face between her knees, hoping Gabrielle would leave her alone. There was nothing she could do right now. She couldn’t call the police. Couldn’t call anyone else—she had no one in her life who could help. And she couldn’t get $5 million. She should have never allowed Nathan to walk on his own from the bus stop. She’d demanded for years that the school bus add a stop closer to their house, but they’d never listened to her, thought she was hysterical. And now . . .

“Mom!” Gabrielle shook her violently. “Don’t do this now. Who took Nathan?”

“A man called me,” Eden said. “He wants five million dollars. Or they . . . or we never see Nathan again.”

“We need to call the police,” Gabrielle said.

“No! He said they were watching us. Five million dollars? I don’t have five million dollars.” She picked up the phone and tried to dial the number the man had called from. She had to talk to him, to explain they’d targeted the wrong family. There was no way in hell she could get even $1 million, not to mention $5 million.

The number was unavailable. She tried it again. Unavailable. She tried it a third time. Unavailable. Gabrielle said something, but she couldn’t understand what because there was roaring in her ears, and she couldn’t hear the words above the din.

She stumbled to her feet and made her way back to the bathroom. Turned on the water, washed her hands, scraping all the germs away. People didn’t understand; those germs were everywhere, and if you didn’t wash them away often, it caused all sorts of problems. Diseases, and suffering, and your son being kidnapped, and—