Taken (4 page)

C
utter uses a key and lets himself into the foyer of his boxy little house. Only five rooms, but then he’s never been a man who needed a lot of space. Hell, he practically lived in a Hummer once, for five very long weeks. Calmly but quickly he punches in the disable code to the security system—real state-of-the-art, unlike poor Mrs. Bickford’s pathetic excuse for a security system. An item he’d liberated from the depot at Fort Dix, last time he passed through. Actually on the way out the door.
Sorry to see you go, Captain Cutter. Here’s your hat, there’s the door.

Assholes. After all he’d done for the army, for the country, for the unit. Risking his life, time and again. Shedding blood for the so-called greater good. One small screwup and he was no longer wanted, no longer a valuable member of the team. Should have demanded a court martial instead of letting them shoo him away with an honorable discharge, but he’d had other things on his mind at the time.

“Lyla? I’m home.”

He hears her slippered feet shuffling on the linoleum as she wanders in from the kitchen, wringing her hands. Actually wringing her hands, as if trying to remove something from her skin. Invisible blood, perhaps, like Lady Macbeth?

The idea makes him shudder.

“Where’s Jesse?” she asks, her gorgeous gray eyes twitching. Not really focusing on her husband, but aware of his sudden presence in the house. “I looked in his bedroom. I looked in the basement. I looked everywhere. Where’s my son?”

“He’s away for a little while. You know that.”

Lyla hasn’t been eating lately and her weight, always petite, has dropped to less than a hundred and fifteen pounds, but her grip on his arm is unnaturally strong. Fierce with her anxiety. “Jesse needs his mother. How could you forget that?”

Cutter gently pries her fingers from his arm. “Go lie down,” he tells her. “Take your medication. Jesse is fine.”

Her big eyes suddenly lock onto his. “You’re lying! What have you done to our son? Where have you taken him?”

Times like this, Cutter isn’t sure if he wants to hold her in his arms or slap her beautiful, haunted face. Knock some sense into her. Not that he’s ever raised a hand to her. She can’t help it, and he knows that. He’s known for years that Lyla has what they both carefully refer to as her “bad spells”—intervals where she drifts into her own reality—but the desperate situation with their son, Jesse, seems to have completely unhinged her. She hasn’t eaten in days, hasn’t slept. Prowls the house like a ghost, searching for the boy, as if her will to mother him will make him reappear. It’s all very sad and pathetic, but Cutter hasn’t got time for it now. Once he has handled the situation, then it will be Lyla’s turn. Get her some professional help, but not until the boy is back at home, safe and sound.

More than a few army and civilian shrinks have probed and medicated Lyla over the years, but it’s too dangerous to call one in now. No telling what she would say, where it would lead. The wrong word from her, taken seriously by a credulous shrink, and the whole situation could unravel. His boy might not survive, and that is the only thing that matters. Not his own well-being, and not Lyla’s sanity. Just the boy.

Cutter takes his wife by the arm and leads her into their bedroom. She follows willingly, muttering almost silently, her eyes focused on some imagined distance. He seats her at her sewing table, where she sometimes works on her delicate brocades—works of art, really, as beautiful and delicate as she is. He searches for her medication, the most recent prescription. There it is on the bookcase, at eye level, right in front of him. She’s always hiding her meds in obvious places, as if the mere act of touching the bottle will render it invisible. He fills a glass with water, persuades her to swallow a pill.

“I’m not crazy,” she says. “You know that.”

“I know, Lyla.”

“I’ve been crazy in the past, but not now. Jesse really is gone. I’ve looked everywhere.”

“I know you have. You must try and get some sleep. Just let me handle everything, okay?”

She’s not listening to him, though. He can tell, the way her eyes drift, the way she cocks her head at an angle that seems slightly unnatural. “Maybe he ran away,” she says, conversing with herself alone. “Boys run away sometimes. They always come back eventually. They come back when they get hungry, or when they want their mother.”

“He’ll be back soon, Lyla. Jesse will be back with us, I promise.”

She turns away from him, crosses her spindly arms, hugging herself. “My husband is a liar,” she says in a kind of chanting singsong. “He lies and he lies and he lies. And he thinks I don’t know. That’s what’s making me crazy. All the lies. I can’t concentrate because of all the lies inside my head.”

Cutter hopes the pill will make his wife sleep, and that when she awakens she’ll be better. Not cured, but a little better. That’s the most he’ll let himself hope for. And this time it looks like the medication is having some effect. Her motions, previously jangled and abrupt, have become languid, as if she’s adrift in her own private sea.

When her eyes begin to flutter—a good sign—he turns to leave, intent on his own very pressing business.

“I’m going to call the police,” she suddenly announces, forcing her eyes open. “I’m going to report him missing. I found his uniform, you know. It has blood on it. So I’ll call the police and tell them.”

“Not now,” he says. “When you wake up.”

“You promise?”

“I promise,” he lies.

The telephone line has been disconnected. And when he leaves, as soon he must, the doors will be locked from the outside. Not that Lyla will attempt to leave. Among other things, she’s become agoraphobic, prone to debilitating anxiety attacks at the mere thought of crossing the threshold.

“You dropped something,” she says sleepily, pointing vaguely.

Cutter reaches down, picks up the black ski mask and slips it into a pocket, buttoning the flap.

W
aking up is like swimming through thick black ink. No, not swimming, exactly, more like drifting gradually upward. Expending no effort. Vague thoughts with no body attached, drifting, drifting. There comes a time when I’m aware of something cold on my face. Hmm, didn’t know I had a face. Right, of course, everybody has a face. And a body, and hands and arms and legs. I’d forgotten. Now vaguely aware of my limbs. And then I begin to feel something on my skin. Drip, drip, drip. Icy-cold. I don’t mind, what do I care? I’m asleep. Things happen when you’re asleep. Dream-things over which you have no control. Icy-cold things. Ignore them.

Tommy.

The thought hits me like an electric shock, and suddenly I’m wide-awake and aware of light penetrating the inky dark. My eyes snap open. My vision is blurred, but I can make out the shape of someone crouching very close to me. Looming.

“Kate? Hi there. Rise and shine—0700 hours. Seven o’clock for you civilians.”

I’m soaked. The man in the black ski mask has been dripping ice water on my neck and blouse. Using a spoon as a ladle, like basting a turkey. I’m the turkey. I’m shivering and I hate him. Hate waking up to fear. Hate the dread of worrying about my son. Hate the power this monster has over me.

Hate, hate, hate.

My arms swing of their own accord, connecting with his legs. He laughs and backs away. Do my legs work? Yes, as a matter of fact they do, and my feet start kicking, aiming between his legs. He dances easily away, avoiding any contact.

“You asked for it!” he announces gleefully.

A bucket of icy water smacks me full in the face, making me gasp, filling my nose and mouth. My limbs stop thrashing. Useless, anyhow. He anticipates my every move.

“You stink,” he says. “Take a shower, freshen up.”

I sit up, wiping my eyes. I’m already in the downstairs bath—he must have been dragged me in here when I was unconscious. What else did he do to me when I was out? It must have been, what, twelve hours? Twelve hours gone! My clothing seems to be in place, nothing hurts. Would I know?

“You’re still a virgin as far as I’m concerned,” he says, noting my self-assessment. “Now strip down, get in the shower. Use the soap, that’s a good little girl.”

“Fuck you.”

I’m checking him out, looking for the gun. He must have it nearby, can I reach it first? But the mouth in the mask grins, one hand snakes behind his back, and now he’s brandishing the pistol. “Don’t be shy,” he says. “Get in the shower. When you’re beautiful again, we’ll call your kid, say hi.”

He backs out of the door, into the hallway, giving me room. But the door remains open.

“Go on. Do it.”

I shake my head.

“I can knock you out and wash you myself. Is that what you want?”

The thought sickens me beyond anything else I might have to do while conscious. I turn my back, peel off my clothes. Every part of me is angry, but the thought of talking to Tommy, hearing his voice, it’s enough to keep me moving. Once in the stall, I yank the curtain closed and turn on the cold water. Trying to clear my still-foggy head, get my thoughts in order. Keep the anger at a manageable level, girl. Use it to make you strong. Nurture it until an opportunity arises.

To calm myself, I fill my head with thoughts of my son. Specifically, that very special day when Ted and I first met the unnamed baby who would fill our lives with joy, and changed us from two to three. The baby who became Tommy the Wonder Boy was six months old at the time. We’d been through the usual adoption wringer. Opened our home to social workers, filed financial statements, divulged our bank accounts and tax returns, been interviewed together and separately. We had been investigated, stamped and stapled. Put on waiting lists. Promised babies who were not delivered. Told to wait. We paid through the nose, lawyers and agency fees, and were told to wait some more. It got to the point I refused to even look at a picture of a prospective baby. It was too painful to moon over a photograph, only to have the mother change her mind, or give her child to someone else, someone more worthy.

It was so horribly painful, and it made me feel so guilty about not being able to have a baby of my own, that I finally opted out of the whole process. Left it up to Ted. Who knew exactly what I was going through. Bless the man, one day he came home with a certain look in his eye and said, “Get in the car.” And so I did, with my heart hammering like a heavy-metal drummer, and we drove north for an endless hour or two, barely speaking because we were both so nervous, and then Ted was taking me into a room and a smiling woman put a bundle into my arms and that was Tommy.

Once on a talk show I saw a panel of mothers who had problems bonding with their kids. How sad. Lucky for me, I had a problem with the fertility part, not the bonding part. Happened the instant he was placed in my arms. Wham! I was in love with the baby, body and soul, from the very first moment. Love welled from my heart, my mind, my body. I was too embarrassed even to tell Ted (who would have understood), but for the first few weeks my breasts actually ached, as if they wanted to lactate. My head swam with a love so intense it almost frightened me. For several months I had terrible, anxious nightmares about someone snatching him away, and in those dreams, losing him was like dying.

A social worker later told me it wasn’t unusual for an adoptive mother to suffer from prospective-loss anxiety. After all, in a surprising number of cases, it actually happened. Adoptive mothers bonded with infants, only to have them taken away by the courts and returned to drug-addict birth mothers, or to relatives, or held in foster homes until the courts sorted it out, which might take years. The folks from the adoption agency assured me this couldn’t happen with Tommy—both of his young parents had been killed in a taxi accident in Puerto Rico—but I couldn’t help it, I worried. The nightmares and the anxiety gradually faded away as I settled into the new life of mothering a helpless infant, but the worry part never quite left me. Which is fine. Mothers are supposed to worry, it’s part of our job.

Now the old nightmare thing is actually happening, in wide-awake real time, and the losing-him-is-like-dying part is real, too. I have to get Tommy back or die trying, that’s all there is to it.

When I pull back the curtain, there’s a clean towel and a pile of neatly folded clothing waiting on the toilet-seat lid. And I wasn’t even aware the man in the ski mask had come into the bathroom, let alone laid out my clothing. Yet another scary thing about him—he moves like a shadow. And there he is, sitting on the stairs outside the open door, staring at me from the holes in his mask.

“Nice wardrobe,” he says. “You’ve got taste. I picked out the Donna Karan ensemble. Black for banking.”

I’ve got the towel around me, dressing underneath it, face averted. Ashamed of my humiliation. The creep has stripped your life bare, does it really matter if he sees you naked? Apparently it does. Because I’m blushing furiously as I wriggle into underwear, black pants, silk blouse.

Finally I drop the towel and emerge fully dressed, more or less. No shoes yet. He hasn’t picked out shoes.

“Your hair,” he says. “Fix it.”

A glance in the mirror reveals that my hair needs attention. I keep it short so I can always blow-and-go, but a night on the bathroom floor has left me looking damaged. I bang out the dents with a brush, use the blow-dryer and my fingers, and in ten minutes I actually look presentable.

“Kitchen,” he says, gesturing with the pistol.

I walk ahead of him into the kitchen, thinking about knives. I have quite a collection. Boning knives so sharp you’re bleeding before you realize you’ve been cut. I can’t imagine plunging a knife into a fellow human being, but the man in the mask isn’t human. On the other hand, if I kill the bastard I may never see my son again. A thought that never leaves my mind, even for an instant.

The air is redolent of freshly brewed coffee.

“It’s going to be a big, busy day, so I made a pot,” he explains. “Take a seat.”

I sit on a stool at my own counter. Miss Obedience. Having noticed that my knives seem to have vanished from the counter. Did he check all the drawers, too? Of course he did. He had hours and hours to get things right while I was unconscious. He’s been over the whole house, checked everywhere. If I had a gun, which I don’t, he’d already know about it. The man may be a monster, but he’s an intelligent monster, and therefore even more dangerous.

Careful, girl. Don’t lose your focus. Tommy is the focus. Do only that which will bring you closer to your son.

“You’ve had seven calls,” he says. “Six left messages. Five are work related—you’re a very busy girl, Kate, congratulations—and one was for your kid. Some girl. He’s a good-looking kid, the girls must be all over him, huh? Anyhow, you can respond to the calls when we finish up our business at the bank. Go on, have your breakfast.”

He slides a bowl of cereal across the counter. Milk has been added. Tommy’s Rice Krispies are talking to me, reminding me of all our breakfasts in this room. Did this vile bastard know what this would do to me, hearing my son’s cereal?

It takes all my will not to fly across the counter and slap that sneering smile off his ski-masked face.

“This is the schedule of events,” he’s saying. “First we have a light breakfast, then we call your kid, then we go to the bank. We’ll return here to await confirmation of the wire transfer, and then I will leave. If all goes according to plan—if we follow the method and do not deviate—your son should be back in this house by, say, three in the afternoon, at the latest.”

The rational part of me knows he could be lying—all he wants is money—but I can’t prevent a flood of hope so strong, so deeply felt it almost makes me giddy.

“You’re not eating,” he points out.

I push the cereal bowl away. Check the mug of coffee he set out. Could I scald him? No, the coffee is lukewarm. He’s anticipated the scalding thing. Or maybe some other victim threw a cup in his face and he’s learned from experience.

“The method. That’s what gets your kid home,” he says. “See, I’ve made a study. Stupid kidnappers take the child, then call the parent. Ask ’em to get the money, meet them somewhere. What’s the first thing the parent does? Calls the feds. Under the mistaken impression that’s the smart thing to do. FBI, they screw it up nine times out of ten. Nobody gets paid off, the kid gets wasted. With this method, we take control of the parent as well as the child. Stick with the parent until the money is safely transferred. It’s just common sense, that’s all. Strategic positioning.”

All the time he’s speaking, bragging about his so-called method, he’s aiming the gun at my heart. Five feet away, can’t miss. He likes that pistol almost as much as he likes talking. Gives the impression he’d like to use it, given an excuse.

“You’ve got just under five hundred grand in a money market account. Four hundred and ninety-six thousand and change. That’s what attracted our attention in the first place. Guess you must be leery of the stock market, huh? Can’t say I blame you. And bonds don’t pay enough to make a difference, do they? Thing is, you having all that cash just sitting there, it makes things easier for me.”

It strikes me like a blow to the stomach that’s it’s my fault Tommy got taken. If I hadn’t kept the money from Ted’s life insurance in that account, if I’d put it in mutual funds like the financial managers had advised me, then I wouldn’t have been such an easy mark. But I hadn’t wanted to spend that money—Ted’s last gift to us—so for a time I borrowed against it, letting simple interest accrue over the years. Figuring one day, in the far distant future, Tommy will inherit a very nice sum, or maybe we’d use some of it for college, but whatever the case, it would be coming from his late father, not from me. For sentimental reasons. Reasons that now seem ridiculous, if not downright stupid. Talk about making myself a target! I’m getting the impression that the man in the mask browses through bank accounts like some people browse for books. And he must have picked me because I fit the abduction-for-profit profile: single parent with a large sum of readily accessible cash.

“If you’re finished with your breakfast—what’s the matter, no appetite?—we’ll proceed to step two. The kid call.”

He produces a cell phone from a vest pocket, hits one key, is connected almost instantly.

“Put him on,” he says, then nods to himself.

He slides the cell phone over the counter and indicates that I pick it up.

“Tommy!”

“Mom? Is that you?”

Tommy’s voice. He’s alive. Suddenly I’m weeping, blubbering, and my son is telling me not to cry. “I’m okay, Mom. I was at the game and then I don’t remember. They said they gave me stuff to make me sleep. It made me forget. Then they—”

Before my son can finish telling me what else they did, the phone goes dead. Not even a dial tone, just silence, horrible silence. I want to scream. The man in the black ski mask is studying me, and he seems very pleased with himself. I throw the cell phone at him. It bounces off his shoulder and lands on the floor, skittering.

“That was interesting,” he says after a moment. “I almost pulled the trigger.”

“Fuck you! I want my baby back!”

His teeth click together, chop chop. “End of the day, Kate. Provided you follow the method. Now put on some makeup. You want to look good for the bankers, don’t you? It isn’t every day you buy a new house.”

“What?”

The man in the mask sighs. “I told you yesterday. Why is it women never listen? You’re buying a house, Kate. A small villa in the Caymans. Isn’t that nice?”