The flickering lightbulb on the door opener times out, plunging the garage into blackness. Both kids let out a frightened wail. I let go of Beatrix just long enough to feel along the wall for the light switch, and there’s movement all around. The kids flailing. The soft breeze of bodies lurching in the darkness. My bag dragging on an arm.
My fingers find the switch, and the lights pop on, a row of ceiling mounts that fills the space with bright, white light. I blink into the sudden light and—
My lungs fill with a scream.
The man has Beatrix. He squeezes her to his chest with one beefy arm. Beatrix hangs there like a rag doll, her little Converse dangling two feet off the ground. She’s lost her case in the shuffle. A shoe has come untied, the laces long and dirty and frayed on one end, but all of that bleeds away because there’s a gun, the stubby black barrel shoved into a fluffy cloud of Beatrix’s hair. Pressed against her temple.
I hold up both shaking hands, reaching for her until the man’s glare stops me. He shakes his head and my feet stick to the floor. “Please. I’ll do anything. Just…please.”
Beatrix stares at me in shock, in horror, her silent tears quivering with reflected light.
The man tips his head at the door. “Get us inside without screaming or making a run for it, and—” he glances down at Beatrix “—what’s your name, little lady?”
Beatrix gives me a pleading look that pierces me straight through the heart.
“It’s Beatrix,” I say. “Her name is Beatrix.”
“Okay, Beatrix. It’s up to your mama now. Tell her to be good, and I’ll put you back down as soon as she lets us inside.”
His implicit threat, my daughter in a strange man’s arms, a gun against her temple—it lights a fire under me. I dig my keys out of my bag, heave it onto a shoulder and Baxter onto a hip, and hurry out the door.
The breezeway is short, nine or ten yards at the most, and I don’t bother with so much as a furtive glance at the neighbors’ backyards. When we moved in a year ago, Cam overplanted for privacy. The hedges are thick and evergreen and, according to our lawn service, more fit for a forest than a backyard. Even if there were a neighbor home on the other side of all that greenery, which there’s probably not, they wouldn’t be able to see me, scampering down the concrete sidewalk to the back door with a masked man at my back, and I don’t dare call out to whoever’s within hearing distance—not with a gun pressed to my daughter’s head. There goes that plan.
Baxter clings to me, burying his face in my shoulder. His weight and my shaking hands are making things difficult. I fumble with the key, stabbing the doorknob multiple times before the thing slides into the lock. I twist my wrist and press the knob down with a hip, and the latch releases. The door swings open.
He rushes us into the mudroom and shuts the door.
From the alarm pad on the wall comes a long, shrill beep. I slide Baxter down a leg, and he darts behind me while I tap in the code—the real one, the only one I know for certain will disarm the system. I’m rewarded with three short beeps, the light on the pad switches from red to green, and then…silence.
The man flips the lock on the back door and points to the pad. “Good girl. Now arm it to Stay.”
“What?” I hear the man’s words, I acknowledge them, but all I can think of is Beatrix, crying silent tears against his chest. I hold out a hand to her, and the man sets her on the ground. She darts around my legs to her brother, both of them using me as a human shield.
“Set the alarm to Stay,” he says again. “That way, I’ll know if anybody tries to escape.”
Shit. If I reset the alarm, that means only two exits, the front door and this mudroom door, that don’t immediately trip the alarm. Forget sneaking out the side door or climbing out a window. Either would result in the alarm wailing and bullets flying. Shit.
I drop my bag onto the built-in seat above the shoe cubbies, wiping one eye and then the other, buying myself some time, trying to remember if Cam and I ever got around to changing the duress code. I know we talked about it. I know I asked him to. He said he needed a manual, and I asked him if I looked like Google. He laughed and said I was the sexiest Google he ever did see, but did he ever do it? Did he change the damn duress code?
I don’t fucking know.
“I wouldn’t try it if I were you,” the man says, reading my mind. His gaze flicks between me and the pad. “Same as you did just now, 2-9-2-1. If the cops show up in the next five to seven minutes, the kids are first, then you.”