Page 30 of The Chain

He has other priorities now.

Never going to get another opportunity like this one.

Torch it. Ride the pain. Get Kylie back.

Two roads. Yellow wood. All that shit.

He stands there.

Hesitating.

Thinking.

He shakes his head, puts the plastic bag in his jacket pocket, closes the locker, exits the storage yard, and heads for the highway.

21

Thursday, 8:30 p.m.

Rachel has researched the Dunleavy family until her eyes are tearing and her head is spinning. She knows them better than they know themselves.

She’s read every blog and Facebook feed and Instagram post. Every tweet and retweet. She knows that Toby took up archery because he was inspired by a Danish speed archer in a YouTube video, not his father’s bow-hunting proclivities. She knows that Amelia Dunleavy has a peanut allergy and that her elementary school has banned peanuts because of it.

She’s read all of Mike’s newish bow-hunting blog and his food blog all the way back to his very first post, in 2012, a recipe for a chocolate Bundt cake.

She knows that Helen wanted to return to work full-time but was worried she didn’t have the energy required to be a fifth-grade teacher. Tons of stuff like that. Some of it helpful to Rachel; most of it not.

She closes the files on her computer and looks at her notes. She’s printed out a map of Beverly and drawn the possible routes back from the archery club to the Dunleavy house. It’ll have to be researched on the ground. She has prepared a B target and a C target, but she knows little Toby Dunleavy is going to be the one.

Full dark now on the basin. The boats are in for the night.

Clothes are everywhere, the cat’s litter box is unemptied, the breakfast dishes are still there—the house is a goddamn Tracey Emin piece of modern art commemorating a more innocent time that is never coming back.

Rachel examines her left breast. It doesn’t feel any different, but the doctor is probably right to be concerned—there could well be something malignant growing in there again. If she does nothing, the malignant entity will kill her, erase her from existence. How pleasant that would be.

She stares through the window. The clarity of the light has faded and the agitated sky has turned dark blue and black.

The drizzle has become rain.

She hears what sounds like a pickup truck coming down the lane.

She sprints outside.

Pete gets out of the cab and she runs to him and he put his arms around her and they stand there in the downpour saying nothing for fifteen seconds. Pete helps her back inside and they sit at the living-room table.

“Tell me the whole story from the beginning,” Pete says.

Rachel tells Pete everything that happened since that first phone call, including everything she has done: paid the ransom, gotten the phones, gotten a gun, broken into the Appenzellers’ house, tried to figure out exactly whom to kidnap. She doesn’t tell him about the renewed concerns of her oncologist—that’s between her and death.

Pete listens but says nothing. He lets her talk.

He tries to take it all in.

It’s incredible.

He has seen evil up close in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he wasn’t expecting something this clinical and diabolical in America. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine a malevolent force like this coming near his family. This is some serious organized-crime or cartel shit.

“What do you think?” Rachel asks when she’s done.