Page 80

Questions fly through my mind. What’s going to happen once I’m tied down? How do I save my daughter when I’m strapped to a chair? I try to think of some way to frame the questions so Beatrix doesn’t understand, but the idea of being tied down and helpless to protect her has me too panicked to think straight.
Fifteen minutes. It feels like an eternity. There’s no way I can stall for that long.
He finds the edge of the tape and tears off a long strip. It rips off the roll with a harsh clatter.
“Mom—” Beatrix begins, but I stop her with a look.
“Please,” I say to Sebastian. “If you let me stay here, I’ll make sure she stays quiet and does as you say. We both will.”
He shakes his head, and my throat dries up like sandpaper. It’s a setup. Sebastian is a parent, which means he knows the agony I am feeling at the thought of being separated from my child. At being helpless to save her. He has to know what this is doing to me.
Sebastian lifts a brow—a silentWell?—and Cam was wrong about this man. He isnota good guy. Anyone who separates a mother from her child, who ties her to a chair and turns her defenseless is evil. Never, not once ever in my entire life, have I wanted to kill someone like I want to kill this man. He is amonster.
I look at my daughter, silent and strapped to the couch, and her expression makes my stomach hurt. “No. I won’t do it. You can’t make me.”
“Mom.”Beatrix widens her eyes, round and insistent. “Just go, okay? It’sfine.”
A hand reaches into my chest, seizes my heart in a fist and squeezes it in two. Beatrix is always doing this—acting mature beyond her years, assuming responsibility for matters a little girl shouldn’t have to assume responsibility for. An inflexible, type A perfectionist who carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. Now she sees my distress and wants to comfortme.
“It’snotfine.” I shake my head, and tears tumble down my face. I will not sit apart from her. I won’t.
“Come on, Jade, ticktock. Get moving, or I’ll drag you there myself.”
Thirteen minutes. All I have to do is hold on for thirteen more minutes.
My mind shuffles through the items around me, inventorying the ones that are heavy enough, sharp enough, solid enough. The fern in a ceramic pot, the footed bowl on the coffee table, the antique marble bust, the PlayStation guitar on the stand in the corner. These are the things that could bash in a head, but I’d never make it to any of them in time, not without getting shot in the back. He’s too strong for me to fight, too fast for me to outrun.
I grab on to the recliner, digging in with my entire backside until every part of me is flush to the chair. If he wants me on the other one, he’ll have to unglue me from this one first.
Sebastian cocks his head. “Hey, what do you think Cam meant when he said don’t listen to me?”
It takes a second or two for my mind to catch up to his sudden change of subject, and then another few seconds for the meaning to come to me in a slow drip. Cam told me not to listen to Sebastian. He said he was lying, that none of the stuff he told me was true.
Which also means that Cam heard our conversation. He remembered the nanny cams, he was listening and watching. He heard everything.
“What?”
“Cam, when he called just now. He said, Jade, don’t listen to him, referring to me. It was one of the first things he said after I put him on speakerphone. What do you think he meant by it?”
“I don’t...” My voice breaks, and I swallow. Force myself to breathe. “I don’t know. He probably figured you’d been telling me all sorts of awful things about him. Which is true, by the way. You have been.”
“Possible, but it seemed like he had ears in the room or something. Almost as if he’s been watching us the entire time. What, does he have ESP?”
I think of my phone on the side table next to the gun, the colorful cartoon image of a baby’s face among the apps on the third page, above the wordiSpy. Two little swipes of his finger, a couple of taps to the screen, and Sebastian would be staring at himself on the screen. He’d see me clinging to the recliner next to my strapped-down daughter. He’d hear my lame-ass lie, coming at him in stereo: “That’s impossible.”
Sebastian gives me a one-shouldered shrug. “Maybe, but Cam still knew. I mean okay, sure. Let’s say he had a hunch I’d gotten in your ear, but he sounded so certain about it. Not even the slightest hesitation or a question mark, just pure conviction right out of the gate. Doesn’t that seem kinda funny to you?”
“Not even a little bit.”
He regards me, silent, as the lights flicker on in the backyard outside, a golden glow that filters up to the window. They work on a timer, which means it’s dangerously close to seven.
“Right, right.” Sebastian’s shoulders relax under the black fabric of his shirt, and mine do, too. He goes back to his tape, and I blow out a silent breath while at the same time, my fingers tighten on the cushion.
He transfers the strip from his fingers to the side table, the stubborn tape not wanting to let go of his gloves. As soon as he frees one finger, the tape sticks to another, and he tucks the roll under a bicep so he can use both hands. When he’s free, he whirls to face me.
“But what if it was? I mean, you wouldn’t be the first parent to stick some spyware in a teddy bear so you know when the babysitter has fallen asleep on the job. What do they call those things? Nanny cams.” He looks around demonstratively, taking in the decor, his gaze finally landing on Baxter’s stuffed gorilla, sticking out from under the coffee table. He reaches down, wrangles it off the floor.
If Baxter were here, he’d be going ballistic. Gibson doesn’t like to be squeezed.