“It’s not exactly a pound for each day,” Ned said. “There’s a doubling thing involved.”
“What do you mean, a doubling thing?”
“Well, it’s a pound for the first day, then doubled for every day after that,” Ned explained. “You know—she gets a pound for day one of our marriage, two pounds for day two, four pounds on day three, eight pounds on day four—”
Jethro Hawthorpe cut him off. “You didn’t agree to it, did you?”
“Of course,” Ned said.
“Are you completely crazy? Did you even bother to work it out?”
“No, but don’t worry, she only wants it for the first month of our marriage.”
“The only thing I’m worried about is how I raised such an imbecile! You could end up owing her millions!”
The door to the study opened, then slammed shut. I heard Jethro Hawthorpe stride past the library door, his footsteps loud and angry. I stayed where I was, in case Ned decided to go after him. But there was a crash, the sound of something smashing against the wall.
“BITCH! FUCKING BITCH!”
I recoiled, ran from the room. In my bedroom, I paced up and down, seething at the way Ned had used me. There was no last-minute trip to Vegas, he had planned our marriage before we left. He had found my Achilles’ heel and used it to protect himself from the fallout of his assault on Justine. In the eyes of the world, if Ned and I had been in a secret relationship for the last few months, if he’d been about to propose to me, would he really have assaulted one of his employees the day before we left?
I thought for a moment, then crept downstairs to the kitchen and took a knife with a long, pointed blade from the drawer. I ran back to my room, closing the door behind me. It was almost dark. I waited for Ned to remember that he hadn’t locked me in, but he didn’t come. Good. Soon, he would go to bed, and once he was asleep, I would find his bedroom, I would hold the knife to his throat, I would take his phone and call the police. And if he so much as moved, well, I would kill him. I would kill him for Justine and Lina, and for Hunter.
But before I could do any of those things, I was kidnapped.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
PRESENT
I walk to the bathroom, trailing the blanket behind me. When will they come for me? Since Ned was taken from the room downstairs, there have been strange noises, sounds of things being moved around, furniture perhaps. It’s put me on edge, this change from static to fluid.
I lock the door, activate the light. It jars my eyes, and I hold onto the wall a moment. I stoop to open the cupboard, take the nail from the toiletry bag, and gouge a final line on the wall. And below the line, I scrape 9/14, the date at which our kidnapping has come to end, exactly four weeks from the day we were taken.
I return to my mattress. I don’t have to wait long before I hear the door opening.
“It’s time,” a man’s voice says.
It isn’t the usual man, it’s the other.
I stand up. He puts the hood over my head, but maybe because I’m holding my blanket, he doesn’t tie my hands, but leads me from the room with his hands on my shoulders.
He takes me down the hallway, I know we’re going past the double doors, toward the front of the house, and I imagine a car waiting to take me somewhere safe. But he stops, guides me into a room on the right, it will be the kitchen with the long table and the French windows at the end. He makes me sit. I smell coffee and my mouth waters.
“I want you to listen carefully,” he says. His voice comes from behind me. “I’m going to take off the hood and put sunglasses on you so that your eyes get accustomed to the light. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Close your eyes.”
I do as he says and the hood comes off. The light pierces my closed lids and I drop my head in reflex. Sunglasses are put on me. I raise my head, open my eyes a little, close them again.
“I’ll be back soon,” he says. “Don’t move. Stay exactly where you are.”
The door closes. Muted sounds come to me, of hammering, of things being put down, picked up. While my eyes adjust to the light—I open them slightly behind my sunglasses for a couple of seconds, then close them again, gradually increasing the time of exposure—I wonder where my captor is. He must have left with Ned. Is Ned with his father now, does the world know that he’s been rescued, that I’m apparently dead?
The man comes back, moves behind me.
“Don’t turn around,” he says. “On the table in front of you, you’ll find a letter with instructions for you to follow. You’ll need to read it at least three times, maybe more, but however strange the instructions seem, you must comply with them. Your help is in exchange for your life.” He pauses, giving time for his words to sink in. “Do you understand?”