“Austin.” He waited a moment. “But good try.”
There was silence, long and protracted.
Then Laura said, “Hurting me won’t get you what you need.”
“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to scare the shit out of you.”
Andy felt her eyelids start to flutter again. It was the way he said it—with conviction, almost with glee.
“Is that so?” Laura forced out a fake-sounding laugh. “You think I can be scared?”
“Depends on how much you love your daughter.”
Suddenly, Andy was standing in the middle of her old bedroom. Teeth chattering. Eyes weeping. She couldn’t remember how she had gotten there. Her breath was huffing out of her lungs. Her heart had stopped beating, or maybe it was beating so fast that she couldn’t feel it anymore.
Her mother’s phone would be in the kitchen. She always left it to charge overnight.
Leave the house. Run for help. Don’t put yourself in danger.
Andy’s legs were shaky as she walked down the hall toward the back of the house. Involuntarily, her hand reached out, grabbed onto the doorjamb to Laura’s bedroom, but Andy compelled herself to continue toward the kitchen.
Laura’s phone was at the end of the counter, the section that was closest to her office, the part that was catching a triangle of light from the partially open door.
They had stopped talking. Why had they stopped talking?
Depends on how much you love your daughter.
Andy swung around, expecting to see Hoodie, finding nothing but the open doorway to her mother’s bedroom.
She could run. She could justify leaving because her mother would want her to leave, to be safe, to get away. That’s all Laura had wanted in the diner. That’s all that she would want now.
Andy turned back toward the kitchen. She was inside of her body but somehow outside of it at the same time. She saw herself walking toward the phone at the end of the counter. The cold tile cupped her bare feet. Water was on the floor by the side entrance, probably from Hoodie. Andy’s vision tunneled on her mother’s cell phone. She gritted her teeth to keep them from clicking. If Hoodie was still sitting in the chair, all that separated him from Andy was three feet and a thin wooden door. She reached for the phone. Gently pulled out the charging cord. Slowly walked backward into the shadows.
“Tell me,” Hoodie said, his voice carrying into the kitchen. “Have you ever had one of those dreams where you’re being buried alive?” He waited. “Like you’re suffocating?”
Andy’s mouth was spitless. The pneumonia. The collapsed lung. The horrible wheezing sounds. The panicked attempts to breathe. Her mother had been terrified of suffocating. She was so obsessed with the fear of choking to death on the fluids from her lungs that the doctors had to give her Valium to make her sleep.
Hoodie said, “What I’m going to do is, I’m going to put this bag over your head for twenty seconds. You’re going to feel like you’re dying, but you’re not.” He added, “Yet.”
Andy’s finger trembled as she pressed the home button on her mother’s phone. Both of their fingerprints were stored. Touching the button was supposed to unlock the screen, but nothing happened.
Hoodie said, “It’s like dry waterboarding. Very effective.”
“Please …” Laura choked on the word. “You don’t have to do this.”
Andy wiped her finger on the wall, trying to dry it.
“Stop!” her mother shouted so loudly that Andy almost dropped the phone. “Just listen to me. Just for a moment. Just listen to me.”
Andy pressed home again.
Hoodie said, “I’m listening.”
The screen unlocked.
“You don’t have to do this. We can work something out. I have money.”
“Money’s not what I want from you.”
“You’ll never get it out of me. What you’re looking for. I’ll never—”
“We’ll see.”
Andy tapped the text icon. Belle Isle dispatch had adopted the Text-to-911 system six months ago. The alerts flashed at the top of their monitors.
“Twenty seconds,” the man said. “You want me to count them for you?”
Andy’s fingers worked furiously across the keyboard:
419 Seaborne Ave armed man imminent danger pls hurry
“The street’s deserted,” Hoodie said. “You can scream as loud as you need to.”
Andy tapped the arrow to send.
“Stop—” Laura’s voice rose in panic. “Please.” She had started to cry. Her sobs were muffled like she was holding something to her mouth. “Please,” she begged. “Oh, God, plea—”
Silence.
Andy strained to hear.
Nothing.
Not a cry or a gasp or even more pleading.
The quiet was deafening.
“One,” Hoodie counted. “Two.” He paused. “Three.”
Clank. The heavy glass on the coffee table. Her mother was obviously kicking. Something thumped onto the carpet. Laura only had one hand free. She could barely lift a shopping bag.
“Four,” Hoodie said. “Try not to wet yourself.”
Andy opened her mouth wide, as if she could breathe for her mother.
“Five.” Hoodie was clearly enjoying this. “Six. Almost halfway there.”
Andy heard a desperate, high-pitched wheezing, the exact same sound her mother had made in the hospital when the pneumonia had collapsed her lung.
She grabbed the first heavy object she could find. The cast iron frying pan made a loud screech as she lifted it off the stove. There was no chance of surprising Hoodie now, no going back. Andy kicked open the door. Hoodie was standing over Laura. His hands were wrapped around her neck. He wasn’t choking her. His fingers were sealing the clear plastic bag that encased her mother’s head.
Hoodie turned, startled.
Andy swung the frying pan like a bat.
In the cartoons, the flat bottom of the pan always hit the coyote’s head like the clapper on a bell, rendering him stunned.
In real life, Andy had the pan turned sideways. The cast iron edge wedged into the man’s skull with a nauseatingly loud crack.
Not a ringing, but like the sound a tree limb makes when it breaks off.
The reverberations were so strong that Andy couldn’t hold onto the handle.
The frying pan banged to the floor.
At first, Hoodie didn’t respond. He didn’t fall. He didn’t rage. He didn’t strike out. He just looked at Andy, seemingly confused.
She looked back.
Blood slowly flushed into the white of his left eye, moving through the capillaries like smoke, curling around the cornea. His lips moved wordlessly. His hand was steady as he reached up to touch his head. The temple was crushed at a sharp angle, a perfect match to the edge of the frying pan. He looked at his fingers.
No blood.
Andy’s hand went to her throat. She felt like she had swallowed glass.
Was