Page 66 of The Chain

“’Bye, honey! I love you!”

Rachel takes the phone and begins walking up the stairs. “As you can see, she’s safe and well. For now. You need to get moving with parts one and two.”

Rachel closes the basement door behind her and walks into the kitchen.

“I think we can transfer the money tonight,” Helen says.

“Do it now! And then get scouting for a target. We’ll kill Amelia if we have to. I want my daughter back and you are in my goddamn way,” Rachel says and then she breaks the phone in half. She takes the back off it, removes the SIM card, and stamps on it repeatedly until it’s broken in two. She puts the remains in the garbage bag Pete keeps in the kitchen.

She stands there, shaking with anger and frustration.

Horizontal lines of dust levitate in the beams of sunlight coming through the shuttered windows. She can hear the sea breaking on the beach a hundred yards in front of her, and downstairs the little girl is humming to herself.

She breathes in and out, in and out. Life is a cascade of nows falling on top of one another without meaning or purpose. Of all the philosophers, only Schopenhauer ever got that right.

“I’m going back home,” she shouts to Pete and when the coast is clear, she slips out the back and walks over the dunes. She feels like crying, but she’s all cried out. She is stone. The Rock of Gibraltar. And again that thought—the Rachel of yesterday is gone. She Lady Macbethed the tears out eons ago, and she is a different person now.

33

Saturday, 7:41 a.m.

The man is taking a few minutes to pull himself together.

Kylie stares at him in disbelief.

Her plan A is gone; her plan B is gone.

There is no plan C.

“I don’t understand—why didn’t you load the gun?” Kylie asks at last.

“You think I would ever point a loaded gun at a child? Me? When all my professional life has been about…ooh, my head. And not after that incident with the…after what happened when we got you. Wow. It’s still throbbing. You hit me twice? That was really something. Now, be a good girl and give me the wrench.”

Kylie hands him the wrench and he puts it on the breakfast tray.

“I must say, Kylie, I really admire you. You’re resourceful and you’re determined and brave. If this were any other situation, I would be rooting for you to succeed.”

“Then please let me—”

“But I don’t want you to think I’m a pushover or that I’m not serious. I’m deadly serious. We’re so close to the end now. And we’ve been through so much. So I’m afraid that I’m going to have to punish you so you don’t do anything like this again.”

“I won’t. I can’t.”

“It’s a little too late for you to give your word on that.”

He leans forward and slaps her so hard that the chain jerks taut and she twists and falls to the concrete floor.

A ringing in her head.

White spots before her eyes.

Darkness.

An ellipsis of time.

White spots again.

Pain.