Page 52 of The Chain

“Good.”

“I’ll stay here tonight,” Pete says. “You go on home, you look beat.”

“I should stay.”

“No, go home, please.”

She doesn’t want to fight him. Sheisbeat. Utterly defeated. She takes a picture of Amelia with one of the burner phones. “I’ll send this to them.”

“Get some sleep, Rachel.”

“I’m not tired,” she insists.

Pete is scratching his arm and sweating. He looks vacant, unwell.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asks.

“Me? Great. You go home, I’ll be fine here.”

She nods and goes up the basement steps. Down the porch. Along the beach. Home.

She’s glad for the freezing rain. She deserves discomfort and misery and pain. She stands in front of her house and calls the Dunleavys on a new burner phone.

“Yes?” Helen says between breathy gasps of panic.

“You better be working on the money and the target. I’m sending you a picture of Amelia. She’s sleeping, she’s OK.”

“Let me talk to her!”

“She’s sleeping. I’m sending you a picture.”

When the picture goes through, Rachel destroys the phone and walks into her house.

She makes a cup of coffee and begins monitoring the Dunleavys’ activities through their mirrored home PC. No e-mails or texts to the cops.

At midnight, Rachel’s iPhone rings. “Hello?”

“Rachel?” a voice whispers.

“Yes.”

“I’m not supposed to call you, but I want you to know that my boy was released an hour ago. He’s with us now!”

“You got your boy back?”

“Yes. I can’t believe it! I’m so happy! He’s safe and he’s back with us in the house. I was afraid to hope but…he came back.”

“But…so…is there any way you can release Kylie now?”

“I can’t. You know I can’t. The Chain has to continue. You have to trust the process. If I break The Chain, the blowback will begin. I’ll be in danger, my boy will be in danger, and you and Kylie will be in danger.”

“Unless they’re bluffing about that.”

“They’re not the kind of people who bluff. I think they would enjoy it if it all went wrong and we started killing one another. You saw what happened to that family.”

“Yes.”

“They told me about one time years ago when someone defected, and the punishments went seven levels back along The Chain before it sorted itself out.”