Something big. Had she heard what that something big was? Nothing came to mind. She remembered her daughter saying that August was in Germany. He’s book hunting again, she griped. Grandma Rose would just laugh at her. She remembered a time when August’s exploits were a drug to her daughter, a love-inducing elixir that sustained her during the weeks that he was away. Grandma Rose had warned her that heartbreak was in her future, but she wouldn’t listen. She was young. And, for a genius, she wasn’t always the brightest when it came to real-life matters like love.

Grandma Rose heard a noise upstairs. The collapsible ladder to the attic dropped and hit the floor in Charlie’s room. The attic was Charlie’s favorite place to hide—a complicated maze of rotting boxes and forgotten junk. Grandma Rose wished it wasn’t. Once, when digging through a pile of old clothes, she’d found a dead rat. She showed the grisly find to Charlie and warned him to stop poking around the attic unless he wanted to get rabies. A week later, she caught him trying to sneak leftovers from the kitchen to feed the little beasts.

Grandma Rose struggled against the ropes, her neck burning as the cords rubbed against her windpipe. She pushed harder. The ropes wouldn’t budge. She stopped to catch her breath and to listen. Quiet swallowed the house.

Four

four

Everyone was talking. Cheery voices discussed the usual topics: politics, family, weather. It really didn’t matter what the subject was. The passengers simply needed their minds diverted from the fact that they were soaring high above the earth in a hollow tube, probably en route to another storm, possibly en route to their own demise. It was not an easy thing to ignore, but they managed.

August envied them. He wished it were merely his own life on the line, and not Charlie’s. “How do I know he’s okay?”

“Because I’m telling you he is,” said Xandria. She stared at the laptop she’d set up on her tray, her long, light fingers like feathers dusting the keyboard. The satellite signal allowed her to log in to an e-mail account and download a large batch of files waiting for her. She stopped the mouse clicking for a moment. “If I say he’s okay, then he’s okay. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

“Trust the woman holding my child hostage. I don’t think so,” August whispered.

Xandria didn’t bother turning from the computer. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

August grimaced. The situation was already worse than Xandria knew. The check waiting for him in New York was going to do more than just make him rich; it was going to lift him out of the deep pit he’d dug for himself.