“Not close, but he’ll be safe enough. He may be mad before you get to him, but he won’t die. I’ll clip him in his car seat, and there’s a good strong door between him and any coyotes.” She said the last word with only two syllables. Ky-oats. My head shook, back and forth. No. I didn’t want Robert waiting for me, alone in some abandoned gas station or a backwoods shed or a soundproofed city basement. “If you come without your husband, if you send police instead, I’ll never tell where he is. He’ll stay there, crying for you, until thirst gets him. He’s in a place won’t nobody find him. Not fast enough. I’ll die knowing it’ll finish fair without me. Hard on the baby, though.”

I believed her. I could see it. It would be easier than putting him into the water. She wouldn’t have to do anything but keep silent and die. She could tell herself that Trey and I had made our choice.

Far away, in a secret place with a locked door, I could hear Robert stirring, making hungry peeps.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. Or not. It’s on you now.”

“Wait,” I said. “Please tell me. What did he do? What did they do?” I meant Trey. And Spence. And Geoff’s poor parents.

A pause, a breath, but she didn’t answer. “I won’t call again.”

“What did he do?” I insisted, but she was gone. I was talking to dead air.

11

Marshall knew that the old woman had made some mistakes during the conversation, though he couldn’t see them all clearly yet. He could feel them like little cracks, spidering and spreading in the veil that hid her from him.

She’d said too much. Why had she been so forthcoming?

Something was at work inside her, a strange tenderness aimed at Bree. Bree herself had a pretty serious case of Stockholm syndrome going, no doubt, but why was her softness being reciprocated? It made no sense.

Marshall scrubbed at his tired eyes, grateful that Cara was with Yvonne at the lake. She’d spend the day kayaking and swimming, hearing birdsong as sunlight sparked the blue water. How could the world be wide enough to hold that place and this one? Her live, young joy should not share a planet with what was happening here.

He’d been right there, too, in the building. Bree had even shown him the kidnapper, pointed at her through the greenroom window, agitated, and he hadn’t followed up. He’d been so busy trying to keep his distance.

Now she was crumpled into herself on the sofa, rocking faintly. Whenever he looked her way, he wanted to rip the world in half and pull the old woman out through the boiling center for her.