Page 4 of The Chain

Canadians do Thanksgiving on a different day, she remembers. Dr. Reed must want her to come in because the test results don’t look good. “No,” she says out loud and shakes her head. She’s not going to fall into that old spiral of negative thinking. She’s moving forward. And even if she still has a passport to the Kingdom of the Sick, that won’t define her. That’s behind her, along with the waitressing and the Uber driving and falling for Marty’s lines.

She’s using her full potential at last. She’s a teacher now. She thinks about her opening lecture. Maybe Schopenhauer is going to be too heavy for everyone. Maybe she should begin the class with that joke about Sartre and the waitress at the Deux—

Her phone rings, startling her.

Unknown Caller,it says.

She answers with the speakerphone: “Hello?”

“Two things you must remember,” a voice says through some kind of speech-distortion machine. “Number one: you are not the first and you will certainly not be the last. Number two: remember, it’s not about the money—it’s about The Chain.”

This has to be some sort of prank,one part of her brain is saying. But other, deeper, more ancient structures in her cerebellum are beginning to react with what can only be described as pure animal terror.

“I think you must have the wrong number,” she suggests.

The voice continues obliviously: “In five minutes, Rachel, you will be getting the most important phone call of your life. You are going to need to pull your car over to the shoulder. You’re going to need to have your wits about you. You will be getting detailed instructions. Make sure your phone is fully charged and make sure also that you have a pen and paper to write down these instructions. I am not going to pretend that things are going to be easy for you. The coming days will be very difficult, but The Chain will get you through.”

Rachel feels very cold. Her mouth tastes of old pennies. Her head is light. “I’m going to have to call the police or—”

“No police. No law enforcement of any kind. You will do just fine, Rachel. You would not have been selected if we thought you were the sort of person who would go to pieces on us. What is being asked of you may seem impossible now but it is entirely within your capabilities.”

A splinter of ice runs down her spine. A leak of the future into the present. A terrifying future that, evidently, will manifest itself in just a few minutes.

“Who are you?” she asks.

“Pray that you never find out who we are and what we are capable of.”

The line goes dead.

She checks the caller ID again but the number is still not there. That voice, though. Mechanically disguised and deliberate; assured, chilly, arrogant. What can this person mean about getting the most important phone call of her life? She checks her rearview mirror and moves the Volvo out of the fast lane and into the middle lane just in case another call really is coming in.

She picks nervously at a line of thread that’s coming off her red sweater just as the iPhone rings again.

Another Unknown Caller.

She stabs at the green answer key. “Hello?”

“Is this Rachel O’Neill?” a voice asks. A different voice. A woman. A woman who sounds very upset.

Rachel wants to sayNo;she wants to ward off the impending disaster by saying that actually she has started using her maiden name again—Rachel Klein—but she knows there’s no point. Nothing she can say or do is going to stop this woman from telling her that the worst has happened.

“Yes,” she says.

“I’m so sorry, Rachel, I’ve got some terrible news for you. Have you got the pen and paper for the instructions?”

“What’s happened?” she asks, really scared now.

“I’ve kidnapped your daughter.”

3

Thursday, 8:42 a.m.

The sky is falling. The sky is coming down. She can’t breathe. She doesn’t want to breathe. Her baby girl. No. It isn’t true. Nobody has taken Kylie. This woman doesn’t sound like a kidnapper. It’s a lie. “Kylie’s in school,” Rachel says.

“She’s not. I’ve got her. I’ve kidnapped her.”

“You’re not…it’s a joke.”