My first time walking into a prison. Putting my phone and change and car keys into a locker. Walking through the metal detector. Being brought to the place where you talked to inmates through the glass using a couple of phone handsets.

And now I was sitting in the chair, waiting for Trixie to be brought in. The door on the other side of the glass opened, and Trixie, in jeans and a pullover shirt, was ushered in. The female guard retreated to the other side of the door to give Trixie some privacy.

She sat down opposite me, picked up the phone.

“Zack, Jesus, what are you doing here?”

“Hi, Trixie.”

“I get this message, my lawyer’s setting up a meeting with you, very urgent. What’s going on?”

I took a breath. “I have some things to tell you, but I need you to remain cool when I do.”

“What?”

“Are you listening? You have to stay calm and listen to what I have to say.”

Her eyes danced momentarily. “Okay. What is it?”

“It’s bad,” I said, lowering my voice as I spoke into the receiver. “They’ve got her.”

Trixie’s mouth opened slowly in a silent scream. I didn’t have to say anything else, at least not yet. She had to know who “they” were. And I had no doubt she knew whom I was referring to when I said “her.”

She looked as though she’d lost the ability to breathe. She closed her eyes a moment, closed her mouth, breathed in through her nose. When her eyes opened, she asked, “Is she okay? Have they hurt her?”

“She’s not hurt,” I said. “Right now, she’s with Leo. Gary’s parked outside the prison, in his truck, waiting for me to come back.”

Trixie looked at me with eyes that were losing hope. “Claire? And Don?”

The Bennets.

I shook my head from side to side, no more than a sixteenth of an inch each way. Just enough to convey the message.

“Oh my God,” Trixie whispered. “Oh my God.”

I couldn’t help myself—it’s the way my mind works—but I thought of that scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the remake with Donald Sutherland, when the real Brooke Adams, after she’s been taken over by her pod replacement, collapses like a withered corn husk.

She was crying, but trying not to attract attention to herself. Even in her grief, she knew that she didn’t want to draw the guard over. That might lead to questions. She found a tissue tucked up in her sleeve, dabbed her eyes.

“Trixie,” I said, “I need you to focus for me. I’m here—”

“I know why you’re here,” she said. A tear ran down her cheek. She sniffed, wiped her nose with the tissue. “He wants his money.”

“Yes.”

“And he’ll kill Katie if he doesn’t get it.”

“Yes.”