Falling(55)

Sam tried to shush the children but it only amplified their noise and increased the feel of chaos in the enclosed space. They had been pushed too far.

Resisting Carrie’s halfhearted attempts to stop him, Scott sat upright. There was a break in the noise just long enough for everyone to hear, “Mom?”

Scott stared at his mother’s lap, which was dark with wetness. He looked up, confused. Moms aren’t supposed to pee their pants.

Carrie felt his pity and saw his embarrassment. It was unbearable to witness so she turned away—directly into Sam’s stare.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said, without the energy to beg. “Let me have that dignity.” Her voice dropped. “Not in front of my children. Please…”

The children’s sobbing cut off anything else she tried to say. Sam looked from her wet lap to the snot that dripped from her nose. She laid her hand on his shirt sleeve, the one she had rolled, and he did not pull back. Her voice was barely a whisper.

“Sam. Please.”

His eyes rose and met hers, but only for a moment before she looked down in deference.

“Fine. Hold your sister,” Sam said to Scott. The boy took the baby awkwardly. Sam looked around the van and found a rope lying in the corner. “Move down. Here, hold this.”

He passed the phone to Carrie while Scott scooted down the metal floor with his sister in his lap. Together, the children moved to the far side of the van, away from the back door. Sam tied the rope around a column of the van’s internal metal siding and then tied the other end of the rope around Scott’s slender waist. The boy struggled to lift Elise up out of the way.

Sam tugged on the rope a few times. The knots only tightened.

“The van will be locked, so don’t try anything heroic,” he said quietly to Scott with a finger in his face. “If you do—I’ll shoot your mom in the head.”

The blood drained from the child’s face.

All this happened behind her while Carrie stared into the camera trying to figure out how to tell her husband what she couldn’t say out loud. On the other side, Bill paid her no attention, looking over her shoulder at the man who was tying up their children.

A memory tapped her on the shoulder.

Before their wedding. The couch, her old Bible. Her father’s handwriting.

So… everyone dies. And that isn’t fair?

Yes.

“Bill,” she said, as Sam was finishing with the children. Her voice tripped over the lump in her throat but her eyes were dry. “If you asked me to marry you? Right now? Even with all of this? I would say yes. Yes. Underlined deeply. In all capital, block letters.”

Bill frowned, turning his head slightly to the side.

As she watched him trying to piece the message together, memories surfaced. Sitting side by side at a movie, her hand accidentally brushing his. Catching him staring at her from across the party. Hearing him call her his girlfriend for the first time. She smiled to herself, feeling at peace with her decision, when on the other side of the screen, Bill blanched. She knew he understood.

The camera shook as he clutched at the sides of the laptop.

“Carrie, I can’t… I… dammit….” he stammered, also clearly trying to figure out how to say what he needed to say without saying it. He ran his hands through his hair, looking around the cockpit before he stopped and stared dead into the camera. He sat up straight, chin thrust forward, and spoke in a firm, steady tone.

“Marry me again, Carrie. I’m asking you now just like I did then—will you marry me? But don’t just say yes. Underlined. All caps. Not yet. Wait. Be patient. See if I prove myself worthy of you. I promise you I will. Carrie, I promise you. Don’t say yes until you believe I deserve you.”

Carrie smiled sadly. “You have alw—”

“All right, let’s go,” Sam said.

Taking the phone from her hands, he set it on the floor of the van. The camera lay stationary, angled up at the ceiling, showing nothing.



* * *



Bill stared unblinking at the screen, which was nothing but a fuzzy, dark gray, Scott’s heavy breathing the only indication the call was still connected. There was a sound of a key being inserted and turned.

The children were locked inside, tied up and alone, and Carrie was out of sight in the clutches of a lunatic. And he—their father, her husband—was thousands of miles away and moving farther away with each minute.

She’s going to do something, Bill thought.

Carrie is going to do something.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


THEO DROVE WITH THE LIGHTS flashing and sirens blaring as he made his way down Sepulveda Boulevard toward the airport. Cars parted to let him through, but the congestion around LAX made maneuvering nearly impossible. There wasn’t a moment of any given day that cars weren’t bottlenecked; the airport’s terrible positioning and layout were maddening under the best of circumstances. Theo tried to keep his road rage in check by tapping anxiously on the steering wheel. Today, the stakes were a lot higher than missing a flight.

His phone began to ring. DIRECTOR LIU. Theo declined the call and the screen went black.

Minutes ticked by. He tried to distract himself by calculating how far there was to go, but after realizing he hadn’t even reached Century Boulevard, he swore in frustration. This route would send him through the tunnel that went under the east end of the runways to connect to Imperial Highway before he would then have to make his way down the whole length of the far side of the airport, toward the main entrance to—