My Wife Is Missing(46)

“People will need a way to get in touch with you immediately, right?” Harvey had said in that commanding voice of his. The subtext there: this is my daughter and it’s not up for debate.

Michael’s initial reaction was a hard “No,” but he was diminished from fatigue, and relented. Still, he had a good notion of the potential consequences of reaching out to the general public with his phone number on display. Last he checked, there were a hundred fifteen shares of Lucinda’s post. There were a lot more eyeballs on the post than shares, so chances were a wide net would catch a few crazies along with those thoughts and prayers.

Michael spoke again.

“Hello, is this about Natalie?”

More breathing.

“Hello? Who is this?” Michael demanded. “I’m going to hang up if you don’t answer me.”

“You hang up and she’s dead. Your kids, too.”

A gravelly voice, low and menacing, issued the threat with little emotion. Michael felt a clamp around his heart like a cold hand squeezing inside his chest.

“Who are you?”

All Michael heard was more breathing, heavy and slow, each breath long and drawn out.

“I have them, all of them, your beautiful wife and two precious kids. They’re in the back of a truck and I’m going to do terrible things to them if you don’t do as I say. You listening, Mike?”

The man spoke quickly in a clipped voice, almost like he was reading from a script.

“I’m listening.”

Michael gripped the kitchen counter for balance. Terror surged through him as he thought of those terrible things.

“You and I are going to make a little transaction, otherwise it’s gonna be the bad things. Don’t make me, okay?”

This was his worst nightmare coming to fruition—his family out on their own, him not around to protect them, and now they’ve become prey. As if to add an exclamation mark to his blossoming fear, Michael heard in the background a blood-chilling scream.

“Help me!” The raw and primal voice overpowered his phone’s tiny speaker. “Please help!” While the speaker distorted the words, he could still make out what was said. He tried to match the scream to Natalie’s voice, but his mind was racing, thoughts scattered like shrapnel. Michael couldn’t tell. He’d never heard his wife scream with such terror, so he had no point of reference.

“Listen to me carefully,” said the man. “We have Natalie, Addie, and Bryce.”

No, you have their names that I put out on the internet for all to see, Michael thought as he considered the possibility this could be a scam.

“You’re going to pay us a ransom or we’re going to cut off Natalie’s toes using pruning shears. Strong shears. We’ll do it toe by toe, slowly, painfully, until you pay us what we want. Do you hear me, Michael?”

What Michael heard was an accent he couldn’t quite place. Had Natalie gone south, or maybe toward Miami? He could only speculate. His phone buzzed in his hand. He was getting another call. Of course, he’d let this one go to voicemail.

“Don’t hang up on me,” the kidnapper instructed, as if he knew about that incoming call. “We have to do this quickly or else.”

A second scream, this one more chilling than the first, demanded he comply.

“You’re going to wire fifteen hundred dollars to an account. I’ll give you the number.”

Fifteen hundred? Michael thought. Why so low?

“Got a pen? You write this down. I’m staying on the line with you until we get the money.”

“Let me talk to my family first,” Michael said, feeling emboldened. “I want to hear from Natalie. I need to know she’s okay.”

The man scoffed. “Hey, who’s in charge here, me or you? You know what, fuck it. Cut her. Take the little toe.”

A moment later, another scream tore through the speaker and Michael’s heart at the same time.

What if this isn’t a scam?

He thought: fifteen hundred dollars is a small price to pay for security.

Usually it was Natalie who let her imagination get the better of her, always concocting worst-case scenarios, mostly about the children. But now it was Michael doing the imagining, seeing Natalie and the kids locked up in the back of some sweltering box truck in the middle of God knows where. The mind-movie was back, and this time the feature film playing in his head showed a deranged man holding a pair of pruning shears. The man’s body rippled with muscle, arms adorned in tattoos, his grimy T-shirt soaked through because the truck had no air circulation. He saw Natalie thrashing about as another man held her down. The blades of the shears slipped between her toes. A dark, twisted look entered Muscle Man’s eyes. He closed the shears with one strong thrust. And then came the scream.

At that exact moment, Michael heard another sound, this one a doorbell—his, to be precise. He raced to the door to tell whoever it was to go away, but to his utter astonishment he saw, of all people, Detective Sergeant Amos Kennett from the New York City Police Department. Kennett had come dressed casually in a rumpled blue shirt and jeans. He stood with hands on his hips, looking slightly impatient.

Michael whipped open the door, pointing wildly at his phone, mouthing the word “Kidnapped!” over and over so that Kennett would understand. To his bewilderment, the detective did not act overly concerned.