by Sarah Zettel
Jeannie pulled back and stared at her. Then she turned and stalked away into the kitchen. Dana trailed after her and found her staring at the inside of the freezer.
“Jesus.” Jeannie grabbed a box of toaster waffles and ripped the flaps open. She yanked out a plastic pack and struggled to tear it. Finally, she gave up and threw it down on the counter and just stared at it.
“How do I live with myself?” Jeannie demanded of the counter and the waffles and Dana, and maybe God. “Because I want to keep living. That’s how. I do what I have to do. Just like Todd does, and like your mother does, and like you will start doing if you’ve got a brain in your head!”
“But he’s gone! We can just walk out of here.”
“And get picked up by the cops ten minutes later?”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad,” whispered Dana.
Jeannie pulled a knife out of the block on the counter and stabbed it into the waffle pack. “Dana. Honey.” The words sounded like curses as she slit the bag, fast, right down the middle. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, okay?” She tossed the knife down and spread the plastic open like wings. Like skin. “You don’t know what the cops’ll do once they get hold of you. They’re already calling you names on the news and—”
“So we tell them Todd did it,” said Dana.
The words hung echoing in the air while Jeannie stared at her, her eyes wide and that one ragged bruise making her look all lopsided. Dana felt like she was looking in a weird horror-show mirror, finally seeing somebody else who had two different eyes.
But even as she stared at her wounded grandmother, Dana’s own words filled her with a slow warmth.
We can fix this! We can do it. Two birds with one fucking stone!
“We get our story together and we tell—whoever—that Todd killed Dad.” Dana was babbling now and she knew it, and she didn’t stop. “It wouldn’t be much of a stretch. I mean, he was right there.” She was missing something. She knew that too, but she ignored it. If she stopped talking, she might lose her nerve. “And so were you, and you can say you saw him. We’ve got that video proving how he beats you, and we know he was threatening Mom for money and all that. I can tell them how Dad came and found me and got me to go to that hotel and…” And blame Dad for getting killed. Dana felt suddenly sick, but she told herself it didn’t matter. He was dead. He couldn’t care.
The nausea did not go away.
Jeannie was looking at Dana like she had stopped speaking English. It wasn’t just confusion—it was disbelief and something more that Dana couldn’t put a name to.
But Dana didn’t let that stop her. “Then they arrest Todd, and we get bail or whatever, and…” And we go home. And Mom doesn’t have to take the blame to try to save me. “And he’s locked up, and if we still have to run away or anything, we do that. Mom’s had all that set up for fucking years.”
Because she was always afraid of you and what you might do when you came back.
“Dana,” said Jeannie slowly. “I keep trying to tell you. This isn’t some game. This is real life.”
“I know that!” Dana shouted. “Jesus! Where do you think I’ve been the past couple of days? You keep saying you want to leave, but…”
“We just need…”
“We need to get out of here, but you won’t go! That door is effing open! We don’t even have to leave! All we have to do is call the cops!”
“He’ll kill me!” Jeannie screamed.
“He’ll be in jail!”
Jeannie threw up one hand, shielding herself from Dana’s shout, and Dana immediately shrank backward, her resolve and her insides crumpling. Jeannie shook and blinked hard.
“Please, Grandma,” Dana said more gently this time. “Please. We can do this.”
But Jeannie was already turning away. She pressed her face into her hands and shook her head. Her whole body trembled.
“It won’t work,” she sobbed. “Nothing will stop him! Not until he’s dead.”
Dana laid a hand on Jeannie’s shoulders. She could feel every last one of her grandmother’s bones as they shifted beneath her shirt and her skin. “I know you’re scared. I do. But you’re not alone anymore. You’ve got me. You’ve got Mom.” Even now. Really. That thing Todd said—it wasn’t true. Mom wouldn’t…she couldn’t…
“You?” sneered Jeannie, and the contempt in that single word snatched what was left of Dana’s breath right out of her throat.
Jeannie lifted her head and let Dana see the tears streaming down her sunken cheeks. “I’ve got you? The only reason I’m in this fucking mess was because I wanted to help you! I could have gotten away on my own, but I wasn’t going to leave you with him. I just wanted to help keep my granddaughter safe…And now you’re gonna get me ki—”
Her words choked off and she doubled over, all her breath leaving her in a sharp hiss. “Oh shit.”
“Grandma?”
Jeannie shook her head and pressed her hands against her stomach. Her legs shook and buckled, and Jeannie sank to her knees.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, it hurts. It hurts!”
Grandma’s perfect fingernails dragged against the floorboards.
It was a seizure, a fit. It was the cancer or…whatever. Dana didn’t move. She just stood there and watched and felt how her mind turned so very cold as Jeannie panted and whimpered.
“I’m sorry,” breathed Jeannie to the floorboards. “I’m sorry. I tried. I didn’t want to hurt you too. I just…” She squeezed her eyes shut, and her body shuddered. “I just wanted to help.”
Dana felt strangely, starkly aware of each movement as she went to kneel beside her grandmother and took her by the shoulders.
“Come on,” Dana said harshly. “I’ll get you to bed.”
She held on to Jeannie’s shoulders and supported her up the stairs to the master bedroom. It was sunny and modern, and there were framed positive affirmations on all four walls. The bed was king-size, piled with pillows and a red striped duvet. Dana helped her grandmother climb in and covered her up.
Jeannie knotted her fingers into the pillow. “Pills,” she whispered. “I need my pills.”
There were three unlabeled amber bottles on the nightstand beside the clock. Dana went into the attached bathroom and filled a water glass.
She came back into the bedroom.
“Which one?” she asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” croaked Jeannie. “All the same.”
Dana shook out one pill into her hand.
“Three,” breathed Jeannie. “It’s too bad. I need three. Please, honey. It hurts.”
Dana added two more, just like she was told. “It hurts, but it’s not cancer, is it?”
“It’s cancer and pills and booze and fifty goddamn years of not being able to stop. I just want to stop,” she cried.
Jeannie lifted her head, and Dana held the glass to her lips so she could wash down the pills.
Jeannie fell back onto the pillow. Dana took the glass back to the bathroom.
“Dana?”
Dana, surprised at her own reluctance, returned to the bed’s side. Jeannie had stretched one hand out from under the cheerful duvet for Dana to take. “I’m sorry. I wish there was another way. I do,” Jeannie said.
“You rest, Grandma,” Dana said. “He’s going to be back soon.”
“Thank you, hon-bun. I do love you.” She looked up at Dana for a long time, and Dana wondered what she was seeing.
At last, Jeannie’s eyelids fluttered closed. Dana stayed there until she was sure her grandmother was really asleep.
Dana walked back down the stairs. On reflex, she went back into that nice kitchen. She stared at the waffles lying naked on the black counter. She looked out the windows into the perfectly groomed backyard. There was a squirrel sitting on top of the privacy fence.
I could just leave. Let the cops do whatever they’d do. Let the whole world know what I am. Let Chelsea and Kimi and everybody at Vine and Horn and Mom and the whole
rest of the world know…
Let Todd come back and find Jeannie all alone.
He’d beat on Jeannie for letting Dana go. He might even kill her.
She could still go. Now.
And let him.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Twice Beth thought she’d lost Todd.
The first time was when she had ducked across the street and around the corner. She gave herself a count of three and checked the reflection in the brewpub window but didn’t see him. She made herself keep breathing and keep watching. Finally, the light changed and the red delivery truck moved, and she spotted him again, standing across the street.
She took off before he could notice she was waiting for him.
The second time, she was afraid she’d gotten a little too clever. She cut through a corner Walgreens so it would look like she really was doing her best to throw him off. She lingered in the feminine hygiene aisle. When he didn’t appear, she assumed he was waiting outside. She bought a pack of gum and walked casually out the door, and he was gone.
Panic drove itself knife sharp through her exhausted brain. Beth looked wildly up and down the street, forgetting subtlety, forgetting everything. But she spotted him again. This time, he stood in the bus shelter, pretending to read the ads.
Beth bolted across the street, jaywalking to a chorus of horns.
Of course he saw. Of course he followed.
Thank God.
One reason for living right downtown despite the cost was that there was so much within walking distance. This included McKeirnan’s Secure Deposit Company.
Beth tapped her door code on McKeirnan’s PIN pad and waited for its light to blink green. The outer door buzzed and clicked. She ducked through, then pushed open the inner door. She immediately slid sideways to the corner of the lobby where she wouldn’t be easily seen.
Come on, Dad. You saw me go in here. You couldn’t miss me.
He didn’t. Through the glass doors, Beth watched Todd stroll up casually and try the handle. He looked up at the sign. He cupped his hand around his eyes and peered into the empty white-tiled lobby.
Beth held her breath and walked calmly but quickly across the lobby to the stairs that led down to the basement and her box.
Right across Todd’s line of sight.
Now, you just wait there a second, Dad.
McKeirnan’s lower level was a series of aisles tiled in the same speckled white as its lobby. Beth’s box was in aisle 4, a stark, silent corridor lined with identical metal doors, each about a foot square.
There were bigger doors on other levels for those who had more to hide.
Like the front door, the safe-deposit box had a keypad, this one with white buttons like tiny pills. She entered her combination and tugged the handle to slide the box open.
She pulled out the fake IDs she kept for Dana and stashed them in her purse. She removed her own cards from her wallet, dropped those into the box, and replaced them with the driver’s license, credit cards, and passport that had been made up in the name of Gretchen Murkowski.
She stowed the Glock and its box of ammunition in her go-bag, along with two unmarked envelopes, each of which held five thousand dollars.
Beth zipped the bag up and closed the box. Then she grabbed her phone and Detective Patel’s card.
There were only so many ways she could deal with the fact that her father was following her now. She could confront him. She could plead with him. She could try to lose him.
Or she could do the one thing he’d never expect.
The detective answered on the fourth ring. “Patel.”
“This is Beth Fraser,” Beth whispered. Just in case she’d missed the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Just in case there was somebody waiting around the corner she couldn’t hear.
“How can I help you, Ms. Fraser?”
Beth slid to the end of the hall and stared around her, looking for shadows on the floor or the walls. Nothing.
“I’m at McKeirnan’s Secure Deposit Company.” She added the street address. “There’s a man out front.” Please let him be out front. She tiptoed to the other end of the aisle. “About seventy years old, thin, wearing a white button-down shirt and jeans and carrying a black messenger bag.”
On the other end of the line, a pencil scraped and stabbed against a paper. “Yes?”
“He’s my father.”
Patel’s breath hissed sharply between her teeth. “You didn’t mention you had family in town.”
Beth ignored that. “His real name is Thomas James Jankowski. He uses the alias Todd Bowen.”
“That’s a surprise, Ms. Fraser.” Something was tapping on a desktop, nails or that pencil—Beth wasn’t sure which. “Neither of those names is listed with your information.”
“I know. But he was one of the people in Doug Hoyt’s hotel room last night, and he knows where Dana is.” She paused. “There’s security footage from Lumination’s building of him entering my office Sunday and audio of him making threats to me.”
“And you didn’t mention any of this before?”
“No.”
“But you’re sure he knows something about your daughter’s whereabouts?”
“Yes.”
Patel was silent for a long moment. “All right. We’ll call this a tip, and I can have some men come down and pick him up on suspicion. But, Ms. Fraser, this will all go a lot faster if you’d talk—”
Beth hung up, shut her phone down, and stuffed it back in her purse.
Mom wanted Dad dead. Well, she’d have to settle for arrested. Unless the cops wanted to do the dirty work for her.
While Dad was dealing with that, she’d head out to Schaumburg and get Dana back.
There was one other stairway out of the basement. It came up into an interior hallway instead of the lobby. There was a door to the pedestrian alley at one end. At the other was a door to another stairway and more vaults and offices and whatever the hell else McKeirnan’s kept for its people.
Beth had the hall to herself. No one needed anything this afternoon. No one but her.
Exactly halfway down the hall, a pair of old-school steel doors with square windows and push bars led to the lobby and the front doors.
Beth walked up to the seam between the nearest door and the wall. She clutched her bag and held her breath. She angled herself and craned her neck until she could just see out the window, across the lobby, and through the front doors to the sidewalk.
Until she could see Todd pacing back and forth out front with his phone pressed to his ear.
Relief burned as badly as hope. He moved out of her line of sight, then back in. Just another guy, talking to…whoever. It didn’t matter. He probably wasn’t talking to anybody. It was just an excuse to be standing there, in case anybody glanced his way.
What mattered was he was still there, waiting for her to come out.
She saw herself walking past him and leading him away down the pedestrian walk and into an alley. She saw herself offering him the ten thousand she had with her, if he’d just give her Dana back. Or she could just pull the gun. He’d never believe she’d shoot. She’d aim for the center of his body. Leave him bleeding his life out on the concrete for Detective Patel to find.
Beth moved quickly down the hall. The smaller door to the alley was unlocked from the inside at least. She pushed through into the sunshine.
She hoped Patel’s people were on their way. She hoped Dad gave them a fight. She needed time to get to Dana, and then more time after that to find out what really happened in that hotel room. She needed to know what she had to do next. If it was Dana who…
If it was Dana…
It wasn’t Dana. I will not let it be Dana.
“Jesus, Star. Why do you keep making things so hard on everybody?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Todd stood right at the building’s corner, all clean and casual. Just another midlevel businessman on the streets of Chicago.
I should have known, th
ought Beth.
Of course he’d spotted the side door. She’d given him plenty of time. If she’d thought about it, she would have realized the reason he was walking back and forth while making his fake phone call was so he could keep an eye on both exits.
“Hello, Dad,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Because she had to keep him calm.
She had to keep him here.
“Don’t you ‘hello, Dad’ me, young lady,” he said with a mocking frown. “Especially not when you’re getting ready to skip out on me. Damn.” He shook his head. “Your girl is going to be really disappointed.”
Beth’s ability to playact evaporated. “How is she? Is she okay?”
“As if you actually care. Leading me all over town like this instead of sitting down and working things out.”
Beth bit back her immediate answer. She was so tired. She was standing in the June sunlight, and her hands were still cold as ice. But all she could really feel was how very much she wanted this man dead.
He won’t stop. He won’t stop until he’s dead.
“What was I supposed to do?” she asked. “Sit home and wait for the phone to ring? I got cops looking for an excuse to arrest me.”
“Yeah, about that.” His quick, sly smile slid into place. “You do know your little girl did the deed, right?”
I don’t believe that. Not with that sick look in those eyes right in front of me.
But she did know there was exactly one way she could get him to stay and listen.
Beth made herself start shaking. It wasn’t hard. She was at the end of her strength. She just had to let go a little before her hands began to tremble, her knees, her voice. Her heart.
“Take me to her,” she begged. “Please, Dad. Let me see my daughter.”
He didn’t answer right away. Of course he wouldn’t. He wanted to savor the moment, here with his ungrateful daughter shaking and begging. “Now, why would I do that?”
She held up the gym bag. “Because I’ve got ten thousand dollars right here for you.”
