“Now you.” The scratchy male voice comes with another stab of the muzzle.
“Now me, what?”
“What the hell do you think? Call for your daughter. Tell her to come out of hiding. She’ll listen to you.”
Doubtful. There’s no way my voice is going to coax Beatrix out of hiding, not with a masked man standing right here, holding me and her brother at gunpoint. Beatrix may only be nine, but she’s not stupid, and nobody has ever accused her of being overly obedient. Just ask any of her teachers.
And then there’s also the fact that I don’t want my daughter to be found. I want her to stay hidden until seven, until Cam arrives with his big bag of cash and this man does whatever it is he came here to do.
My mind is finally coming around to what I’ve known in my gut for almost an hour now—this is no textbook ransom plot. Yes, this man held a gun to my head while I assured Cam our lives would be spared, as long as he brought home the money on time.
But he’s already proven he is a liar.
“Do it,” the man says, digging the gun into my ribs. “Tell your daughter to get out here.”
I turn, calling into the darkness. “Beatrix, sweetie. If you’re down here, I need you to come out now. It’s time for you to come out.”
My voice trembles, a combination of fear and red-hot fury. Now I know how the circus lions feel, why they sometimes lose it and chomp off their tamer’s whip-snapping arm. If I didn’t have two children to protect, I’d go for this man’s blood, too.
The only sound is Baxter breathing into my shoulder.
The man gives another thrust to the gun, jabbing it deeper into my bone. “Tell her it’s safe.”
“I don’t think she’s down here.”
The pressure between my ribs releases, the pain dulling to a low throb. My muscles release until I realize the gun isn’t gone; it’s just moved. The muzzle is pressed into Baxter’s thigh.
“Say it.” The mask casts purple shadows on his face, making him look like a monster. His teeth, the golden flecks in his eyes—they flash yellow in the darkness, standing out like ugly headlights.
“Beatrix, sweetie, it’s safe for you to come out. I’ll show you how to play the Partita no. 2. You said you wanted to try a piece in C minor.”
The partita reference, I’m hoping, is a tip-off. Partitas are known for their difficulty, and this one from Johann Bach is long, and it’s fiendish, and it’s in D minor, not C. It’s the piece every violinist aspires to, one of the most difficult ever written, a good fifteen minutes of pure, uninterrupted hell. Me referring to it now is a secret message buried in what sounds like an ordinary sentence.
Come out means stay hidden. It’s safe is a warning of danger.
Without warning, Baxter pitches with all his weight to the left. “Mommy, there.” He stabs a finger into the darkness, at the spot where a bulky HVAC unit cloaks the concrete in ragged shadow.
The man whips his gun to the unit, and I stumble in that direction, too, mostly to hold on to Baxter. It’s like last summer biking on Hilton Head, when he leaned so far out of his seat I almost steered us into the bushes. Now he comes close to tumbling out of my arms, his weight dragging me with him.
“Good job, Baxter,” the man says, grinning. He keeps his eyes and the gun trained on the spot. “We got you, Beatrix. You can come out now. Tag, you’re it.”
“Not Beatrix. My bouncy ball with the stars on it and the dinosaurs. I thought I lost it.”
I let out a hoarse laugh, then swallow it when the gun swings back our way.
But now that Baxter’s seen the ball, there’s no ignoring it. I crouch down and pick it up, my gaze sweeping the concrete for a box cutter, a nail, something sharp and deadly. A weapon would be a game changer. But my hand comes away with nothing but rubber and dust.
I push to a stand, brush the ball off on my shirt and place it in Baxter’s sticky palm.
“Keep moving,” the man says, glaring because I’m taking too long. “You better hope she shows up soon.”
What I really hope is that Beatrix is upstairs right now, throwing open the front door and sprinting down the driveway, arms flailing at whoever happens to be jogging past, hollering for them to call the police. With us deep in the bowels of the basement, now would be her chance. We wouldn’t hear the alarm pad’s warning beep from where we’re standing, not until the sixty seconds were up and the sirens started wailing. By then she’d be far from the house. I might die here in this dusty basement, but at least Beatrix wouldn’t. With any luck, she’ll live to be a hundred.