“What?” I said around my toothbrush.
“He was in a car race with Mickey, and he cheated!” This was clearly a felony of the highest order.
“Oh, no! What did he do?”
“He tried to take a shortcut that wasn’t part of the racetrack!”
“Did Mickey catch him?”
“Yeah. Donald got his car stuck in quicksand, and Mickey helped get him out.”
“That’s because Mickey’s a good friend.”
“Yeah, and Donald said he was sorry for cheating.”
“That’s good. We always do the right thing, right?”
“Yup!” Big smile, making his daddy proud.
I smiled and gave him a hug. “Go tell Mommy you’re ready for bed, bud.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
If they die, it’s because of you.
The neighborhood was as I remembered. It had always been my favorite thing about the house, the reason we never considered moving even as our tiny family began to outgrow what was supposed to be our starter home but wound up looking more and more like our forever home.
It was quiet. The homes were well-kept and filled with the kind of people that cared about maintaining that appearance. The streets were tree-lined and free of utility poles because all the electrical wiring was buried underground. It was an idyllic slice of suburbia when I left and not much had changed.
Robert pulled into the expanded driveway next to an SUV I assumed belonged to Denise. I pulled up at the curb by the mailbox. When I got out, the nostalgia swept over me despite the circumstances.
How many times had I pulled up after dark, tired from a long day at work? Listened to my shoes scrape the cracked pavement in the driveway? Seen the light on in the front window and knew the warmth of home was waiting for me?
Except there was no light in the front window. Other than the porch light, the house was dark. Robert pulled a key ring from his jeans pocket and started toward the house. I looked around but couldn’t see Joey’s Honda Accord anywhere. That by itself wasn’t odd—he would have parked it out of sight with the police presence camped out front—but it didn’t make me feel any better about him not answering the phone earlier.
I grabbed Robert’s arm.
“Where’s the security detail?” I whispered. The police presence that I’d assumed had chased away Joey was nowhere to be seen.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back. Hopefully I wasn’t wrong in assuming Trish couldn’t or wouldn’t get to a couple of patrolmen halfway around the world, but them disappearing didn’t fill me with confidence.
“Shouldn’t you call it in?”
“He said no cops. If I radio the station and report that they’re missing, they might send backup even if I tell them not to, assuming I’m in danger and can’t talk freely. Do you want to find out what happens if they do that?”
I did not.
We climbed the steps, passing Maggie’s basketball hoop. The plexiglass backboard had turned green and opaque after years outside, but it still stood in the same spot on the driveway where I’d set it up. Robert unlocked the door, and I suddenly found myself standing in a foyer I never thought I’d see again. The layout hadn’t changed—it was still the open floor plan Denise and I fell in love with all those years ago, with the kitchen, dining room, front living room and rear rec room all bleeding into one another—but everything else was different. Even in the dark, I could tell. The furniture, the paint on the walls, the tile on the kitchen floor, the carpet, the curtains—it was as if Denise had spent the last decade scrubbing away as much of our life together as she could.
And who could blame her? Because of me, in addition to the new furniture and new carpet, Denise was also in the front room. On her knees, her hands tied behind her head with a scarf that probably belonged to her. It was wrapped over her mouth, so also served as a gag. On her left was Ethan, though he looked even bigger than the pictures I’d seen on Facebook. On her right was Maggie. The little girl afraid to sleep in her new toddler bed was gone. She was a young woman now, except for her eyes. They were as frightened as that little girl’s had been when she swore she heard something move in her closet late at night.
There had been no monsters in her room then, but there was one here now. When she saw me, some of the fear in her eyes instinctively faded, and that broke my heart. The little girl in her thought Daddy had come to chase the monster away. Little did she know that I was the one who’d set him upon her.
“Dad?” she said through her gag, her voice breaking with an agonizing mix of confusion and hopefulness.
“Hey, Peanut,” I said.
The figure standing next to her put his finger to his lips and the tip of the silencer screwed into the barrel of his gun next to her head. She bit down on her gag, holding in a scream, and squeezed her eyes shut tight. In the moonlight through the front window, I could see the tears roll down her face.
“No talking,” Ghost said.
I’d forgotten how ordinary he was. He had a receding hairline and a slight build, with the beginnings of a middle-aged belly pressing against his black shirt. He wore a black suit jacket over the black shirt, to match his black gloves, black pants, and black shoes. Under different circumstances, he would be just another guy you passed on your way to work. You’d only notice him if you bumped into him, never knowing that he’d killed more people than some diseases.
Unfortunately for our plan, I also noticed that he was standing in the worst possible place for Erica to get off a clean shot. He was just out of sight of the front window, and at the wrong angle to be seen through either the kitchen window or the front door, which I had left open to help her out.
“Guns,” Ghost said. Slowly, Robert removed his from its holster, checked the safety, and tossed it on the overstuffed recliner in the corner of the room closest to us.
“You too, Rick,” Ghost said. I hated hearing my name in his mouth.
“Good,” he said, after I tossed my gun next to Robert’s. Then he took a phone from his pocket, dialed a number, and held it to his ear. In the quiet, the person on the other end could be heard loud and clear. All he said was, “Hello,” but it was a gut punch for two reasons:
I recognized the voice.
It was coming from upstairs. Based on how close he sounded in relation to the steps, he was in the master bedroom, standing by the window.
“Anything?” Ghost asked into the phone.
