Page 88 of The Chain

Seamus Hogg has been thoroughly educated. He gets it now. He makes a plan and executes it rapidly. Apparently, he’s a quick study in the child-abduction business. He drives to Enfield, Connecticut, and waits outside a football field for a fourteen-year-old boy named Gary Bishop who plays defensive tackle.

Rachel doesn’t know much about football, but she knows that defensive tackles are big. That worries her, but the target has been approved by the Wickr contact. How carefully do they vet these things? Do they even care if it all goes wrong? Do they occasionally long for it all to go wrong? What is the psychology of a monster?

She looks at the clock above the tide marker.

It says 6:01 p.m.

She goes outside to wait on the deck.

Kylie’s in the living room doing her homework. Pretending everything is normal, sitting there doing her math but letting out little whimpers. Rachel wants to sit with her, but Kylie says no. Rachel watches her through the glass. An OK day at school, she said. She looked terrible and had no trouble convincing anyone that she had been ill.

Pete is over at the Appenzellers’ house with Amelia. Amelia is in her princess tent playing Operation by herself now. Amelia hates Rachel. She told Pete that. “Don’t want the lady. I hate her.”

Rachel doesn’t blame her in the slightest.

Rachel looks at her phone and the burner phone next to it on the deck: 7:15.

If it all gets screwed up again, could the Dunleavys be trusted to kill Henry Hogg and wipe the slate clean?

If they can’t, will she have to kill little Amelia over there at the Appenzellers’? Kill that terrified, sad, lovely little girl in the tent? The .38 revolver is in the pocket of her robe. It’ll have to be her. Letting Pete do it would be a cop-out. Pete had, she knew, actually shot people. Possibly killed people. In Afghanistan he had been in several firefights, and in Iraq he’d been in too many to count.

But she had brought him in. So it had to be her. No choice.

She’d ask Pete to wait in the kitchen and she’d go down the basement steps in her socks. Amelia wouldn’t hear her approach across the concrete floor. She’d shoot Amelia in the back of the head while she played. Amelia would never know what happened. Existence to nonexistence just like that.

Killing a child—the worst thing anyone could ever do.

But better that than have Kylie sucked back into the void.

Rachel begins to cry. Great waves of anguish and anger. Did this make them smile? Forcing virtuous people to do terrible things? Every human being walking this earth can be forced to violate his or her deepest beliefs and principles. Isn’t that hilarious?

She waits until 7:25 before phoning the Dunleavys. “Well?”

“We’ve just called Seamus Hogg. The kidnap was successful. The kid was almost no trouble at all. He got him.”

“That’s great.”

“How’s Amelia?”

“Amelia’s fine. Playing Operation again. Safe.” Rachel hangs up.

She walks to her bedroom and sits on the edge of the bed.

She puts the .38 on the dresser, lets the hammer down gently, puts the safety back on, unclicks the cylinder, removes the bullets, puts them in the dresser drawer, and breathes.

An hour later the Wickr app on Rachel’s phone chimes. Her contact informs her that she can release Amelia Dunleavy.

With only a slight hiccup, The Chain is marching on its merry way.

Rachel calls Helen Dunleavy on a burner phone.

“Hello?”

“We’re going to release Amelia in the next thirty minutes. Will call with instructions,” Rachel says and hangs up.

She goes to the Appenzellers’ house and puts on her ski mask, and she and Pete unchain little Amelia and get her out of the basement. They put on gloves and Rachel dresses her in a brand-new fingerprint-free pair of jeans and a sweater. When the coast is clear, they drape a towel over her head and move her to the back seat of Pete’s pickup.

They drive her to the playground at Rowley Common and get her out of the car. They tell her to keep the towel on for a count of sixty and then play on the swings until her mom comes to pick her up. They leave her with a wiped-down Mr. Boo and a toy octopus she has become particularly fond of.

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