“That was the weirdest thing about all of it.” She scratches her jaw. “He had all these words, and then he just . . . lost them.”
I lean forward, stretching across the table. “What do you mean, lost them?”
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head in bewilderment. “I was so young, but he used to talk. He had all these words to say, and then one day he didn’t. He just lost all his words.”
TWENTY-FOUR
GENEVIEVE HILL
I step back, sick and dizzy; my knees go weak. I press the phone back up to my ear. “How dare you bring up my husband?” My voice shakes. So do my insides. “You don’t know anything about him. Or me. Us. Nothing. You don’t know anything.”
He lets out a laugh. “Oh, I think I know plenty. I’ve seen you at your finest. I know exactly who you are and the things you’ve done. To the people you’re supposed to care about, no less.”
“What are you talking about?” I sink into the couch, grateful it’s there to hold me up, because I’m not sure I can stand. This has nothing to do with John. It can’t. There’s no way. I hold all the secrets, and I’ve never told anyone. That’s the only way to keep secrets—never tell. What does he think he knows? My hand goes to my chest.
“I bet you’re sitting there trying to wrap your pretty little brain around a lot of stuff right now, but I’m just going to help you out so we can save all of us some time. How’s that?” He snorts. The air pulses around me, thick. So heavy I can’t breathe. “Your husband sent me the video. I’ve seen it.” Another deep chuckle, rough like a smoker’s. “In fact, it’s right here on my phone, and I can watch it whenever I decide I might like to do that. I can send it to anyone I want too.”
His words echo inside a tunnel in my brain. Their sounds meld into a big blur, thrumming around me. Inside me. Everywhere. There’s quicksand underneath my feet trying to pull me under. Dear Jesus.
“I don’t want to talk about that.” I force myself to speak, trying to sound stronger than I feel.
“You don’t want to talk about your husband. You don’t want to talk about what happened down at the creek with Simon. What do you want to talk about, Mrs. Hill?”
I hate the way he says my name. “I want to talk about you staying away from me and my family. That’s what I want.”
“And I told you what’s got to take place for that to happen.” His breath is heavy on the phone. “You pay me what I want, and everything goes away. That’s how this works.”
“What about the truth?”
“The truth doesn’t matter.”
The truth always matters. You can’t trust people who lie, but I don’t have a choice.
“I have no clue how I’d get that kind of money in cash, but let’s just say for a second that I could—how do I know you’re going to follow through with things on your side? That everything goes away? What’s my assurance?” I can’t believe I’m even considering this. You can’t negotiate with a madman, but I’m not sure there’s another option. “You could just skip town. Leave me hanging with Simon lurking around. Never knowing if he’s going to decide he wants to bash my head in like he did Annabelle’s. And what about the video? How do I know you’ve deleted it? Or that you didn’t send it to someone else before you did?”
“You’re just going to have to trust me.”
I burst out laughing. “Are you serious? You can’t be serious.” Look what happened to the last criminal I blindly trusted. Fool me once . . . we all know that ditty. “How stupid do you think I am?”
“Stupid enough to pay someone like Simon to do all your dirty work.”
“Annabelle was never supposed to die, and you know that.” None of this would be happening if he’d just done what he was supposed to. Taken care of things the right way.
“Well, Mrs. Hill. I don’t know what you want me to tell you about that. Sometimes criminals go rogue. They can be a hard bunch to control.”
“Exactly!” I shriek. “How do I know that this is where it ends? How do I have any insurance everything disappears and I don’t have to run around looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life?”
“Like I said, you’re just going to have to take my word for it.”
“Your word isn’t good enough,” I snap. “I need more than that. I mean, how does this work? You think you’re just going to tell Simon to leave me alone and he’s going to go away? Do what he’s told?” This time I’m the one to laugh. “Look how well he takes directions.”
“I’m not worried about Simon. He knows the consequences of what happens if he goes against me.”
“I want him dead.” It comes out of me without thought, but I don’t take it back. I let my words hang in the air. Waiting to see if he’ll catch them. What he’ll do with them. The seconds drag and blur together. The silence is maddening. I can’t take it. “It’s the only way I’ll know I’m safe.”
“That’s not in my line of work.”
“Really? I’m having a hard time believing that’s true.”
“I already told you the truth doesn’t matter.”
“And I told you what I want. I want some kind of insurance that this is over if I give you the money. No Simon. No video.” What part of that doesn’t he understand? He’s got nothing to lose, and I have everything.
“This isn’t up for negotiation, Mrs. Hill. You can either pay and trust me to make all this go away, or I’ll send Simon down to the station to tell them everything. And when I say everything, I mean all the people’s lives you’ve destroyed.”
“What kind of a threat is that? You don’t know anything about me. Who do you think you are? I—”
He cuts me off. “This isn’t up for discussion. There are only two choices. Pick one.”
The call ends.
TWENTY-FIVE
CASEY WALKER
I’ve spent the last twenty minutes digging into my french toast and listening to Savannah describe a boy very different from the one in all those reports and the one who sat across from me a few days ago in my office. She tells stories about a boy who loved playing sports and digging in the sandbox with his trucks. One who liked to paint and loved to read. The reading part blew me away. Mason hadn’t been able to do anything close to reading during our testing session.
“And you can’t think of anything that happened that might have triggered his regression? Did he ever fall? Have an accident where he hit his head?” This is the second time I’ve asked her, but I can’t let it go. Kids don’t just go from fine to impaired overnight.
“He did get really sick once, and I’m pretty sure it was around that time, but I could be wrong. Everything’s filtered through my little-girl memory, so it’s hard to say, but I remember him getting really sick. Like, one of those god-awful stomach bugs where it’s coming out both ends?” She wrinkles her nose at the memory. “So gross, and it lasted for days. Or maybe it just seemed like it lasted for days because I was so young and wanted it to be over?” She shrugs, trying hard to give me something to explain his symptoms.