“What do you think, that I’m stupid?”
The voice comes from directly behind me, as low and threatening as when he stepped out of the shadows in the garage. I flinch, half expecting his gloved hands to wrap around my throat and squeeze, or the cold sting of the gun pressing into the back of my head—but there’s nothing but hot breath in one of my ears.
“I don’t think you’re stupid.”
I say the words, the desperate questions cycling through my mind. Did Tanya pick up on my clues? Will Baxter tell her about the masked man? Will she run home and call the police? Maybe…just maybe she thought to alert the neighbor on East Brookhaven. I can’t remember his name, but Tanya will, and she’ll know he’s a former navy SEAL turned real-estate investor who would know how to defuse the situation until the police can get here. My gaze sweeps the windows to the patio and backyard beyond, searching for a muscular body creeping through the trees, but there’s nothing out there but squirrels.
“Nice try, getting rid of Baxter, but I could have sworn I told you to get rid of her. Did I not just tell you to get rid of her?” He puffs a disappointed sigh, his breath stirring up my hair, tickling my neck with the strands.
In my head I’m doing the math. Sixty seconds for Tanya and Baxter to walk down the hill and across the road. That’s a whole minute for him to tell her, for her to piece the clues together. The brother that doesn’t exist. My obvious desperation for her to stay. My silent pleas, two of them, for help. Surely, surely she knows by now. Surely she’s speed-walking across the road, hurrying home to her phone.
I just pray the police know to come without sirens.
“It was the easiest thing in the world,” he says. “Sorry, Tanya, I’m really busy. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. That’s all you had to say.”
Now, finally, I dare to turn around. “I never ask her to leave, and you heard what a talker she is. That’s probably the shortest she’s ever been in my house. She would have gotten suspicious.”
He licks his lips. “Maybe, but what about the Sancerre?” He leans into his Southern accent as he says it: San-cerrrrr. “What about giving her your son? If he tells her about me, if she picks up the phone and calls the police, you know what’s going to happen, right?” He points the gun at my head, closes one eye in aim and mouths a single word: Pow. “And Beatrix is here somewhere. She’ll get one, too.”
I take in the distance, two feet at most, the gun clutched in a fist, and something occurs to me. A memory from four, maybe five years ago, when my girlfriends and I took a self-defense class. An hour-long, hands-on workshop on the best way to survive an attacker. The beefy instructor told us to defy our instincts and move in rather than dodge. To strike instead of flee. The best defense isn’t a defense at all, he said, but a full-throttle attack. You might get hurt, but it’s your best chance to walk away alive.
And now, with Baxter safe with my neighbor and my hands free, it’s the best time.
I rehearse the moves in my mind. A quarter turn so he won’t see me slide the screwdriver out of my sleeve, or the flash of steel when I grip it in a fist. I’ll have to make sure it stays hidden while I stay within striking distance, and then I wait. The second he looks away or twists his body just so, I will come at him from behind.
“So here’s what we’re going to do. You are going to walk over to the front door, slowly and calmly, and flip the locks. I will be listening for the dead bolt to slide into place, so I will know if you try anything. And if you do, I want you to know it’s not you I’m going to punish. It’s the little girl hiding somewhere in this house. Do you understand?”
I nod.
“But first we need to set the alarm. And here’s the deal. Before the nosy neighbor lady, I might have trusted you enough to leave you here for a few seconds while I did it, but that’s over and done. You just showed me I can’t trust you, which means you’re just going to have to come with.”
He grabs a handful of my shirt and tugs hard, and I lurch forward into the hallway, almost slipping on the glass. By the time I’m upright, he’s behind me, the gun aimed at my torso, and we march single file to the alarm pad in the bedroom, where I tick in the code.
“Just 2-9-2-1,” he says from over my shoulder. “No funny business.”
When I’m done, he tips his head in the direction of the wall and beyond to the front door. “Now go.”
On my way, I pause to peek into the rooms on either side of the foyer, searching for signs of Beatrix.