Baxter wriggles to be let down, and I slide him down my leg. We didn’t exactly have time to go over the rules here, but I’m guessing the man aiming a gun at my temple wants us to stay in his sights. As soon as his feet hit the floor, Baxter takes off toward the back of the house, to the TV room and the chest full of toys. I watch him go, bracing for some kind of payback. At least he’s out of shooting range.
“Did something break?”
I follow Tanya’s gaze to the floor behind me, where shards of glass sparkle like fallen snow on the hardwood.
“Oh, that,” I say, letting my gaze drift over the man. He’s pressed to the wall, his back to the living room, but all I see is his gun, mere feet away from my head. It’s like staring down a rabid animal. He lifts a gloved finger up to his lips. Shh.
I turn back to Tanya. “It was a picture. I accidentally bumped it off the wall.”
“Oh, well, better clean it up quick, then. If your kids are anything like mine, they don’t know where their shoes are half the time. If one of them runs through that mess, you’ll be digging glass out of their feet till Christmas.”
My lungs swell with breath, and the words come out before I can stop them. “Can I get you something to drink?”
Light. Casual. An Oscar-worthy performance, and it’s the polite thing to do, though I don’t have time to think through a game plan, and I definitely don’t want to consider the consequences. In my periphery, the man moves closer, the muzzle almost to the edge of the wall. The gesture is a warning, a promise of coming punishment.
Tanya shakes her head. “Thanks, but I can’t stay. I just ran over to—”
“Are you sure?” I flash her my most gracious smile, and then I do it. I step forward, shifting my body to the other side of the wall, putting me officially out of shooting range. “I’ve got a bottle of that Sancerre you like so much in the fridge.”
Last time she was here, she drank almost the whole thing by herself.
Her gaze wanders in the direction of the front door, where she has a view of her house across the street. “I’d love to, hon, but another time, okay? When I left there were seven kids jacked up on Sour Patch and Coca-Cola, and I gotta go wrangle those rascals off my chandeliers before they burn the place to the ground.”
Don’t leave. Take us with you. The words scream through my head, and then I think of my Beatrix, curled up somewhere in this house, and my skin goes slippery with fear. I can’t leave, not without both my kids.
But Baxter can. He can leave. If I can somehow get Tanya to take Baxter with her, to take him by the hand and lead him to safety across the street, he’ll have told her about the masked man who tied his mother to a chair before they step through her front door. I’m surprised he hasn’t already.
Probably because he was too focused on getting his hands on his big sister’s karaoke machine—in this house, it’s the root of the most vicious of sibling battles. Beatrix doesn’t allow her brother to touch so much as a dial, and now Bax is going to town with the disco lights. If that doesn’t smoke Beatrix out of her hole, nothing will.
Tanya is still talking. “…over the weekend sometime and we’ll do a walk-through of my house. I have a couple of rooms that could use some rearranging. I can get my cousin to come over and take some pictures. He’s not a professional photographer, but he’s pretty decent.”
Shit. She’s wrapping up. Adrenaline zings through my veins, and I blurt the first thing I can think of.
“Oh my God,” I gasp, and it sounds real—those old acting skills again, and this time they’re more convincing.
Her eyebrows shoot to the ceiling. “Oh my God, what?”
“I just realized I forgot to take Beatrix to her dentist’s appointment, and now we’re about to be late.”
“Now? I don’t know of any dentist in town who works past five.”
“This one’s open until six thirty.”
Beyond her in the den, Baxter’s figured out how to turn on the mic. Heavy breathing punctuated with an occasional and serious “testing testing one two three,” syrupy with synthetic echo.
Tanya waves her hand in a “who cares” gesture. “Don’t worry about it, then. They’re probably hours behind by now, which means you’ve got a good thirty, forty minutes of leeway.”
“Still. Would you mind taking Baxter for a bit? You know how Beatrix can be such a handful, and she’s terrified of the dentist. I promise I’ll swing by to get him as soon as we’re back. Shouldn’t take longer than an hour or so.”