The Red Hunter(45)

“Why doesn’t he steal it himself?”

“Because it’s guarded,” Chad said. “And he’s a fucking coward.”

Paul rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “This is just a theoretical conversation, right? Philosophical? Because I know you’re not really thinking about doing this.”

“Sure,” Chad said. He was a little disappointed, because part of him thought Paul might be, might be interested in what he had to say. Because he hadn’t always been Mister Let’s Play by the Rules. It was a low-risk, high-yield proposition. And Chad didn’t know a cop who didn’t—now and then—choke on how unfair it all seemed. “Theoretically, if you were going to do it, how would you go about it?”

Paul dipped his head, drained the last of his beer, signaled to Peg for two more.





fifteen


He threw me to the floor in front of my father’s feet. Blood, warm and sticky, sluiced down my neck.

“Daddy?” The word was a wretch, a wail in my throat.

“Zoey.”

He started to thrash, the chair he was bound to rocking, his head tossing. It was mind-bending. A horror movie.

“There’s no money here—there just isn’t,” he said. I’d never heard him sound like that, voice wobbling with fear. “You’ve made a terrible mistake. Please. Just let my family go. They don’t know who you are and neither do I.”

The world warped and pulled into nightmarish unreality. My blood was smeared on the floor, my back screaming. The man, the one who’d pulled me through the window had an iron grip, was on his knees holding my arms behind my back as I thrashed. The knife, I kept thinking. The knife is in his pocket. If I can get to it, I can save us. But my arms were butterfly wings, useless, pinned. The other man stood over my father.

“This can be over,” said the other man. He glanced in my direction. He wasn’t big. My father was bigger. But the muscles on his arms strained against his shirt, and his neck was thick and his thighs looked like jackhammers. “You just have to tell us where it is and we can go. No hard feelings, right?”

My mother moaned on the floor, shifted, blood pooling. I watched the black-red puddle spread, and I think part of me went to another place. That was the first time I went to the place of the watcher. I had no choice. What small amount of power I had as a person had been stripped from me. A part of me rose up, an impartial observer, and drifted above the scene. I was blissfully separate for a moment.

“Mom.”

“Shh,” she said, her voice gurgling and strange. She was about two feet from me. “Shh, baby.”

“Your wife is going to die,” said the standing man. Through the balaclava, I could only see his lips and the dark stubble around them, two flat dark eyes. I started to thrash. “If you tell us where it is, we’ll go. You can still save her.”

“Dad,” I begged, my voice a whisper, no air in my lungs. “Tell them.”

“I swear to Christ,” he said. He was weeping now. “There’s nothing in this house. I would give you anything I owned. You can have our wallets. Take me to an ATM; I will give you everything I have in my accounts. My wife’s rings, all her jewelry. Take it.”

“That’s not what we’re talking about, Officer,” said the man on top of me. “And you. Fucking. Know it. You’re beat, okay. You’re not going to save your family and get away with that money. Tell us where it is.”

My father bowed his head, released a broken sob. “There’s—no—money.”

In the watcher mind, I saw it all: my mother was dying, the blood slowly spilling from her, motionless now, silent, my father was helpless. What they thought he had, he obviously did not have. The men here, the boy shaking by the door, they were killers, criminals. They were going to kill us all.

“I know where it is,” I said.

The standing man lifted his hands. “Finally,” he said. “Someone in this family with half a fucking brain.”

He strode over to me, leaned down close. His breath stank of cigarettes. “Okay, sweetie, tell the nice men. Where the fuck is it?”

“It’s in the basement.”

“Zoey,” said my father. “What are you doing? She’s lying. Don’t you touch her.”

That’s when the man on top of me dragged me into the basement, down the steps, pulling me by arms. Air in my lungs again, I screamed and screamed, my limbs knocking against the stairs, the wall, the hard concrete ground, my arms feeling like he might pull them right out of the sockets. Then a cold, hard crack to the jaw.

“Shut up,” he growled, his voice taut with anger and frustration. “For fuck’s sake, just shut up.”

I lay there among a field of stars, my ears ringing. I couldn’t move from the pain, from the shock. On my side I curled up, waiting for breath, for strength, for some idea that would save us. The other man dragged my father down next, threw him to the ground, his arms bound. They tied my arms behind my back, pulled at me savagely.

“Okay,” said the older man. That voice, gravel and glass, it imprinted itself in my psyche. For the rest of my life I would hear it in my dreams. “Little girl, where is it?”

“It’s back there,” I said, nodding toward the far corner. “All the way in the back, in a trunk.”