Page 18 of The Chain

“I don’t know. I have to go.” Another call is coming in, from an Unknown Caller. “’Bye, Jenny, sick daughter, have to run,” Rachel says and answers the incoming call.

“I hope you’re working hard, Rachel. I’m relying on you. My boy won’t get released until you get someone to take his place,” the woman holding Kylie says.

“I’m doing my best,” Rachel tells her.

“They said they sent you a message and told you about the Williams family?”

“They did.”

“If you get out of this, you have to keep quiet or the blowback will get you like it got them.”

“I’ll keep quiet. I’m cooperating. I’m doing the best I can.”

“Keep going, Rachel. Remember, if they tell me you’re trouble, I won’t hesitate to kill Kylie!”

“Please don’t say that. I’m—”

But the woman has hung up.

Rachel looks at the phone. Her hands are shaking. The woman is clearly on edge. Kylie is in the hands of someone who sounds like she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

A young man gets out of a car in the row opposite. He looks at her strangely for a moment and then nods grimly at her.

Is he another one of The Chain’s agents?

Are they everywhere?

Suppressing a whimper, she puts the phone in her bag and hurries through the double doors of the mall.

The Safeway is open and already filled with people. She grabs a shopping basket, speeds past the displays of Thanksgiving merchandise, and finds the rack selling those inexpensive cell phones. She picks up one that looks good, an AT&T cheapo that can still do photos and video. It’s $14.95. She puts a dozen of them in the basket and then throws in two more. Fourteen. Will that be enough? There are only six phones left on the rack. Hell with it. She takes those too.

She turns to see Veronica Hart, her eccentric neighbor who lives five houses down from her on Plum Island. Oh God. The very reason she’d come up here was to get away from anybody who might possibly know her. If Veronica sees the phones, she’ll ask her if she’s prepping for the end of the world and then she’ll point out that come the apocalypse, zombies will tear down the cell-phone towers. It’ll be a whole thing. Rachel lurks behind the unsold Halloween merchandise until Veronica pays and leaves.

She scans the phones at the self-serve checkout counter. After that, she goes down to the Ace Hardware and buys rope, chains, a padlock, and two rolls of duct tape.

The cashier is a hipster with long Elvis sideburns and sunglasses. “Thirty-seven fifty,” he says.

She hands over two twenties.

“You’re supposed to say ‘It’s not what you think,’” the cashier says.

Rachel has no idea what he’s talking about. “What?”

“All this,” he says, loading the gear into two plastic bags. “It looks like aFifty Shades of Greystarter kit, but I’m sure there’s a more innocent explanation.”

The real explanation is much more terrifying. “Nope, that’s exactly what it is,” Rachel says and hurries out of the store.

12

Thursday, 11:59 a.m.

Kylie has no phone, so she has no idea what time it is, but she thinks it might still be morning. She can’t hear anything, but she can see light through the basement window.

She sits up in the sleeping bag. It’s so cold down there that frost has formed on the sides of the windows. Maybe running in place will help?

Kylie worms her way out of the sleeping bag and stands in her socks on the freezing concrete floor. She walks as far as the chain will let her, which isn’t very far. A small circle around the bed and back to the big old cast-iron stove. Is that thing as heavy as it looks? She goes to it and, with her back to the camera, gives it a shove. It doesn’t move. Not an inch. She scurries back to the sleeping bag and waits under the covers, straining to hear if the basement door is being opened, but no one comes.

They’re busy. They aren’t watching her through the camera. Or at leastnot continually. They’ve probably connected it to a laptop and occasionally check in on her. If she could move the stove, then what? She’d still be chained to the stupid thing and standing there at the bottom of the stairs with no way out.