“Andrew’s hidden a gun,” I told Victoria as I tried to locate her wrists with my back to her and my own mobility limited. “If I find the gun first, I win. If he finds it first, he’s going to kill us. I’m supposed to visit my father’s soul on the spiritual superhighway and ask him for the weapon. While I’m there, I need to save Sheriff Wayne’s soul. Sadly, I don’t believe in spiritual interplanes, though I’m pretty certain Andrew’s mad as a hatter.”

I finally located Victoria’s hands. I stabbed her twice, myself three or four times. My fingers grew slippery with blood. I heard Victoria whimper once in pain. Just when I thought I was going to scream in frustration, I felt the jaws of the scissors slide around the plastic tie. I squeezed the handles, sawing the blades back and forth, back and forth…. The tie snapped. One of us was freed.

How much time left? Six minutes?

“Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl!” Andrew sang again, megavoice warbling down the hall.

His voice was all wrong. Too gleeful. My father hadn’t sung like that.

As he stood in the glow of the hallway light, his hand raising the gun. Pointing it at me, pointing it at me …

“Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl!”

“Put the gun down. Joe. Wayne. Stop it. Not like this. This isn’t what I wanted.”

My head hurt. I had that feeling again—like my family was standing right beside me. If I concentrated hard enough, I could see them, maybe even reach out and touch them.

I dropped the scissors on the bed. Victoria sat up, shaking out her hands. Then she cut my bindings, as well as the ones around her ankles.

We stood side by side, two women armed with one pair of scissors in a darkened master bedroom.

“Evan,” she said.

I heard him, still muttering gibberish down the hall. Then I glanced at the bedside clock. Three minutes left, give or take.

“Evan can’t help us,” I told her.

“He can’t help me,” Victoria agreed. Then, after a heartbeat of silence: “But I think he can help you.”

Chapter Forty-Three

CHAPTER
FORTY-THREE

VICTORIA

I remember a story Michael and I once saw on the news: Two men in ski masks had broken into an upscale Boston townhouse and killed the entire family before fleeing with a jewelry box. Evan was nine months old at the time. As a new mom, I was appalled by the violence, shaken by the ruthless unfairness of it.

Michael had turned to me during the commercial break. “Anything happens in our house,” he said, “you get Evan and get out. Don’t worry about me. Save Evan.”

So here I am, under siege in my own home, and the stranger I just met is going to find my son, while I search for Michael.