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Tanya turns to him with a held-out hand. “I was thinking about pizza for dinner. How does that sound?”
Bax looks at me for confirmation, and I nod. Pizza is his favorite, and normally it wouldn’t take him long to decide. Now, though, he stands there, uncertain.
“What about my shoes?” He looks down at his bare feet, sticking out from the Batman pajamas.
“You don’t need ’em,” Tanya says, coaxing him with a smile. “I already told the kids we’re eating in.”
Baxter frowns, his gaze bouncing between us, and I pray he doesn’t say anything about the man hidden behind the wall. I pray he goes back to ignoring the man with the gun, to playacting like this is an ordinary afternoon, and we’re not being held captive in our own house. On the way down the driveway, he can tell Tanya all about the masked man, just not now. Not yet.
Baxter shrugs, tosses the mic to the couch. “I guess.”
Now that she’s caved, Tanya seems anxious to get across the road. She plucks Baxter’s hand from the air and drags him toward the door. “Okay, well, call us on your way home, and clean up that glass before somebody gets hurt.”
I try to think of what to say—Take care of my baby, wait, don’t go—but come up empty. Instead, I stare at their retreating backs, the way her shirt is gathered around her hips, how it’s snagged up on one side by something in her back pocket.
At the door, Baxter turns to wave, and I blow him a kiss.
“And thanks again for helping out with the auction, Jade. You and I are going to raise so much money for my sweet niece. I’ll see you when you get back.” She turns to holler over her shoulder, “Good luck at the dentist’s, Beatrix.”
And then, just like that, the door swishes shut, closing with a sharp click.
I take a shaky step into the living room, just far enough to watch Tanya lead my son down the hill, and tears sting my eyes, but I manage to hold my shit together because Baxter is safe and Beatrix is hidden and I can’t cry, not now. Not until Cam shows up with a big bag of money he trades for me and the kids, not until the cops kick down the door and slap some handcuffs on the maniac at the other end of the hall, not until after they rip off that mask and I know who’s under there and why he chose this house out of all the bigger, nicer ones on the street. Not until Cam and I have both kids safe in our arms, a Lasky family sandwich. Then, and only then, will I allow myself to cry.
From behind me comes a tightly controlled voice. “You’re going to pay for that.”
J A D E
5:46 p.m.
“What do you think, that I’m stupid?”
The voice comes from directly behind me, as low and threatening as when he stepped out of the shadows in the garage. I flinch, half expecting his gloved hands to wrap around my throat and squeeze, or the cold sting of the gun pressing into the back of my head—but there’s nothing but hot breath in one of my ears.
“I don’t think you’re stupid.”
I say the words, the desperate questions cycling through my mind. Did Tanya pick up on my clues? Will Baxter tell her about the masked man? Will she run home and call the police? Maybe...just maybe she thought to alert the neighbor on East Brookhaven. I can’t remember his name, but Tanya will, and she’ll know he’s a former navy SEAL turned real-estate investor who would know how to defuse the situation until the police can get here. My gaze sweeps the windows to the patio and backyard beyond, searching for a muscular body creeping through the trees, but there’s nothing out there but squirrels.
“Nice try, getting rid of Baxter, but I could have sworn I told you to get rid ofher. Did I not just tell you to get rid ofher?” He puffs a disappointed sigh, his breath stirring up my hair, tickling my neck with the strands.
In my head I’m doing the math. Sixty seconds for Tanya and Baxter to walk down the hill and across the road. That’s a whole minute for him to tell her, for her to piece the clues together. The brother that doesn’t exist. My obvious desperation for her to stay. My silent pleas, two of them, for help. Surely,surelyshe knows by now. Surely she’s speed-walking across the road, hurrying home to her phone.
I just pray the police know to come without sirens.
“It was the easiest thing in the world,” he says. “Sorry, Tanya, I’m really busy. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. That’s all you had to say.”
Now, finally, I dare to turn around. “I never ask her to leave, and you heard what a talker she is. That’s probably the shortest she’s ever been in my house. She would have gotten suspicious.”
He licks his lips. “Maybe, but what about the Sancerre?” He leans into his Southern accent as he says it:San-cerrrrr. “What about giving her your son? If he tells her about me, if she picks up the phone and calls the police, you know what’s going to happen, right?” He points the gun at my head, closes one eye in aim and mouths a single word:Pow.“And Beatrix is here somewhere. She’ll get one, too.”
I take in the distance, two feet at most, the gun clutched in a fist, and something occurs to me. A memory from four, maybe five years ago, when my girlfriends and I took a self-defense class. An hour-long, hands-on workshop on the best way to survive an attacker. The beefy instructor told us to defy our instincts and move in rather than dodge. To strike instead of flee. The best defense isn’t a defense at all, he said, but a full-throttle attack. You might get hurt, but it’s your best chance to walk away alive.
And now, with Baxter safe with my neighbor and my hands free, it’s the best time.
I rehearse the moves in my mind. A quarter turn so he won’t see me slide the screwdriver out of my sleeve, or the flash of steel when I grip it in a fist. I’ll have to make sure it stays hidden while I stay within striking distance, and then I wait. The second he looks away or twists his body just so, I will come at him from behind.
“So here’s what we’re going to do. You are going to walk over to the front door, slowly and calmly, and flip the locks. I will be listening for the dead bolt to slide into place, so I will know if you try anything. And if you do, I want you to know it’s not you I’m going to punish. It’s the little girl hiding somewhere in this house. Do you understand?”
I nod.