I hoist myself onto a stool.
“Stay.”
I don’t move.
Good dog.
He moves around the counter into the kitchen, settling the gun onto the island. “Now, let’s try this again. Where is Beatrix?”
With any luck, she’s in one of those boxes downstairs, or in a dark corner of the attic, or shimmying down a drainpipe and bolting for the neighbors.
“I don’t know.”
The man rolls his eyes, grabbing a kitchen towel and yanking open the freezer. While he fills the towel with ice cubes, I take in the damage I did with Cam’s screwdriver through the twelve-inch tear in his shirt. Underneath, almost as long, a seeping cut is slashed through the pasty skin between his collarbones, like a bloody ditch sliced through raw chicken. It leaks a red curtain down his back. Beneath it, all the way down to his waistline, the fabric is stuck to his skin.
My skin tingles with a triumphant shiver. I didn’t kill him, but I made him bleed. I maimed him. That’s going to leave a nasty scar.
“If you know where she’s hiding, you might as well just tell me now. Because I’m going to find her.”
“I already told you. I don’t know.”
He ties the four ends of the towel around the ice, picks up his gun and carries both across the kitchen. He stares at me, and my heart gives an ominous thud. “Here.” He stretches out an arm, the ice rattling in his hand. “This will slow down the swelling.”
I take the makeshift compress and hold it to my cheek, hissing when it hits the skin.
“Is it broken, you think?”
I don’t respond. I’ve never broken a cheekbone before so I have no idea, and even if I did, I don’t know what the appropriate answer is here. Does he want it to be broken? Better to say nothing at all.
“Where haven’t we looked?”
“Upstairs. It’s the only place left.”
And it’s possible. Maybe she snuck back up while we were searching the basement. Maybe she was going for the upstairs windows because she knows they’re the only ones in the house without sensors, so opening one wouldn’t have tripped the alarm. If she climbed out the playroom window, she could have crawled out onto a patch of roof that’s only gently pitched, the overhang right above the patio. From there, a drop to the terrace tiles below wouldn’t have broken any bones. Probably.
Or no—Beatrix is smarter than that. Maybe she escaped when Tanya dropped by, and the alarm was unarmed. She could have slipped out the door in the master, or the back door by the garage. Either one would have dumped her in the backyard, with only a six-foot fence between her and freedom.
Without thinking, I lean over the back of my chair for a better look out the back window. The ice shifts against my cheek.
“What are you looking at?” He raises the gun, following my gaze out the window, pointing it at empty air. “I don’t see anything. Is somebody out there?”
I turn back, press my lips together and stare at the counter. No telling what he’d do if he thinks Beatrix might have escaped this place. I just pray she made it outside without breaking a bone. I pray she got out and ran like hell.
A chirp, one I don’t recognize, sounds from deep inside the man’s pocket. He digs out a battered Android and swipes at the screen with a thumb.
Frowns.
I study his face for clues, but that damn mask is like a shroud. He stares at the floor, his mouth a straight line, and I have no idea what he’s thinking. Worry? Anger? His expression gives nothing away.
Pride swells in my chest. My daughter has clearly caught this guy off guard. First escaping her bindings and now disappearing without a trace. Brave little Beatrix getting under this man’s skin.
He taps at the screen and presses it to his ear. “Hey…Yeah, I know. We’re looking for her now.”
There’s a long stretch of silence, and my mind whirs, searching for meaning. He’s talking about Beatrix, he must be, which means the person on the other end of the phone knows about the home invasion.
How? And who? A conspirator of some kind?
I stare across the kitchen at his phone, straining to hear, to understand.
“No, she’s got to be here somewhere. Give me a minute and I’ll find her.” A pause. “Yes, I know what time it is, but the longer I stand here, talking to you, the longer I’m not looking for her.”
I sit positively still, my mind buzzing. What is happening here?
He sighs. “Just tell me how it’s going there. What’s the latest?”
I take in his cryptic words, imagining some stranger stalking Cam around town the way the man-bunned man did me, taking note of his bag of cash, watching it grow fatter and fatter after each visit to a restaurant safe or the bank, reporting back on his progress. I think of all the preparation a home invasion plot like this would take, all the scouting and scheming. This operation would have demanded weeks of planning, sketching out every possibility, thinking through every potential consequence. And even the best quarterbacks have a deep bench of players and coaches to support them. Whoever’s on the other end of that phone call must be one of them.