My Darling Husband

by Kimberly Belle

  “I already told you, I don’t know. I don’t know where Beatrix is.”

  I say it with conviction because it is not a lie. Also, if he shoots me now, Bax will see. He will watch his mother be murdered. Pretty much number one on the list of how to mess up a six-year-old for life.

  “Beatrix didn’t come through here, I swear.”

  I say the words while in my head, I’m listening for the beeping of the alarm pad. If she’d left, out the window or one of the doors, the alarm would be wailing. There’s nothing but silence from downstairs. Wherever she is, Beatrix is still inside.

  The man stares at me through slitted eyes, his mouth going thin with realization. He’s done the same math. He knows Beatrix is still in the house, too.

  “Where, Jade?”

  “I don’t know. You were supposed to be watching her.”

  “I was dealing with your son’s shit.”

  At the last word, Baxter giggles, a high and teetering delight. For him there’s nothing merrier than when his father has to drop a dollar in the curse jar, because it’s money that belongs to the kids, split evenly down the middle. Every couple of months, we empty the jar at the bookstore—and they come home with armloads of books. A cook line is an animated place, where tempers flare hotter than the grill flames. Cam’s language has always been colorful.

  I can’t help but feel some sort of grim satisfaction. Dealing with someone else’s shit is never fun, even worse when it comes from a child who is not your own. I know it’s a tiny win, but I’m taking it.

  He jabs the gun hard into my forehead, metal on bone. “Where is she? Hiding in a closet? Under a bed? Did she go downstairs? She must have, because if she’d come the other way, I would have seen her.”

  I don’t dare move. I barely breathe. And I sure as hell don’t answer. No way I’m giving him any indication of where Beatrix might be. With any luck, she’ll stay there until Cam comes home and this is all over.

  Suddenly, the pressure is gone. He takes a couple of steps backward, parking his feet at the edge of the carpet. “You know what I think? I think you know exactly where she is. And I think you’re going to tell me.”

  He drops the gun into his pocket, exchanging it for a pocketknife he fishes out of another. No, not a pocketknife, a switchblade, the kind killers use. He presses the button with a thumb, and the blade, long and serrated and curved like a deadly claw, shoots out with a sharp click.

  A gun and a knife.

  I stare at the razor-edged tip. “I... I already told you, I don’t know where she went.”

  He stalks closer, and I push myself backward, even though there’s nowhere for me to go. I’m already deep in the seat’s stuffing. The chair squeaks but doesn’t budge.

  “You don’t know this, but a little while ago, your kids and I had a little talk, didn’t we, Bax?”

  From the doorway, Baxter gives a solemn nod.

  “I told them what would happen if one of them opened a door or a window and tripped the alarm.” He glances behind him, to Baxter sucking his thumb. “Want to tell her what I said, buddy?”

  Bax’s answer comes from behind a fist. “Nothing good.”

  “Exactly. Nothing good will happen. Only bad. So I’m asking you again, Jade, where is Beatrix? And please note that this is a question, but it’s also a warning. I want you to think long and hard before you answer, because if I find out later you’re lying, I’ll take out Beatrix first, and then Baxter. And I will make you watch.”

  Baxter plucks his thumb from his mouth with a soft pop. “Take us out where?”

  I stare into the man’s eyes, too afraid to blink mine. “I swear to you. I do not know.”

  “Take us where?” Baxter says again, frowning at the man’s back. He’s alert now, slowly becoming aware. Something is very wrong here.

  My brain races with panicked thoughts, trying to come up with one that will buy us some time. “What about the money?”

  The man cocks his head. The knife is fisted in a gloved hand—a threat and a promise at the same time. No prints, no DNA left behind. A backpack full of tape and rope and weapons. A sore knot ices over in my chest. This man has come prepared. He knows what he’s doing. Maybe he’s done this before.

  “What about it?” he says.

  “Cam isn’t stupid. He’s done hundreds of deals, and he’ll know to demand proof of life before he gives you anything. You won’t get a cent if all of us are dead.”

  Baxter’s eyes goggle at the last word, and he shoves his thumb back in his mouth and sucks hard enough to make his cheeks pucker. Our eyes meet, and I recognize that expression, the way one eyebrow squiggles up and the other down in a way that makes Cam laugh and call him Lord Farquaad.

  It means Baxter is a ticking time bomb, one single bad moment away from a meltdown.

  The man puffs a breathy laugh, sour meat and bitter coffee. “Cam’s not going to have much of a choice in the matter. Now come on.”

  I know I should be projecting calm. I should be stuffing down my own fears in order to protect my son’s emotional well-being. A child should never feel unsafe in his own home. I should be reassuring him everything is okay.

  But this is life and death. Literally. And everything is not okay.

  The man rushes me with the knife, and I throw myself backward, but there’s nowhere for me to go. My skull connects with the wall, setting off a burst of fireworks behind my eyes. The room spins with a wave of pain, of terror. I’m vaguely aware that I’m screaming.

  Baxter lets out an earsplitting, high-pitched howl, and I know I should console him. My screams are only escalating things, spiraling Bax higher and higher into a panic, like tossing kerosene on a fire.

  But I can’t make myself stop. All I see is the knife, streaking closer to my skin. I can’t look away and I can’t stop screaming.

  The man touches the tip of the blade to the flesh of my arm, and—

  “Baxter, go. Run.”

  —saws through the rope in two seconds flat. I suck in a shocked breath, watching him hook the blade under the knot I’d just spent forever twisting to the top of my wrist and give a good tug. The blade slices through the rope and suddenly, my arm is free.

  I fall silent, but not Baxter. His back is still flush to the wall, his eyes squeezed into tight slits, his mouth wide in one long, continuous wail.

  The man glares over his shoulder. “Baxter, that’s enough. Quiet.” He turns back, his gaze brushing over mine. “Either you shut him up, or I will.”

  “Shh, Baxie. Quiet, okay? I’m not hurt. See? Look at me, sweetie. I’m fine.”

  The blade is cool and hard where it touches my skin, but the pain isn’t sharp, just a solid pressure where he wriggles the knife between my other wrist and the looped strands of braided vinyl. My ankles are next. The pieces fall away one by one, fluttering to the floor in sloppy yellow coils. My limbs come free, my skin stays intact.

  Baxter is still bawling, his back pressed to the wall, but I don’t motion him closer. I don’t dare, not until the man folds the knife in two and drops it back into his pocket. He steps back, and I hold out a shaky arm.

  Baxter skitters in a wide arc around him, then launches himself into my lap. His crying stops almost immediately, but he curls into a tight ball and buries his face in my chest, squeezing his eyes shut. I wrap my arms around him and clutch him close, pressing kisses in his hair.

  The man watches from by the bed, his calves pressed against the mattress. He shakes his head. “We don’t have time for this. We need to find your devil daughter.”

  I plaster on my fiercest, most determined look, and this is where I make the silent vow: before this day is over, I will kill this man. I will steal his gun, cut his throat, smash his head, pummel him into a bloody, broken heap. Surprise him, hurt him, use his rope to hog-tie him, seal his mouth and nose off with his own duct tape.
I will do whatever I have to do, but this man will take his last breath today.

  And I will enjoy every second.

  “Fine.” He rolls his eyes, training the gun at my forehead. “The little guy can help us search, but next time he screams like that again, I’m locking him in a closet.”

  J A D E

  5:07 p.m.

  With Baxter on my hip, we search every inch of the ground floor.

  We start in the rooms where a man in a mask can move around freely without fear of being seen from the street: the master bedroom; the attached bathroom, after I’ve lowered the shades on the window looking out onto a neighbor’s guesthouse; the closet beyond with a long sheet of glass high up on a wall, a rectangular slice of trees and birds and sky. We check closets and peer under furniture, open chests and dump out drawers, shove clothing aside to poke a gun into the darkest corners. The whole time, I hold my breath and pray I won’t find my daughter.

  But everywhere we look, there’s no Beatrix.

  Which is more than a little surprising, since she’s never been the most original kid when it comes to hide-and-seek. The giggling lump behind a curtain or a half-closed door, or the body attached to the feet sticking out from under the bed. Wherever she is, she’s well hidden. I just pray to God she stays that way.

  “Baby, I can’t hold you much longer,” I whisper to Baxter as we’re moving through the front rooms—the study and the dining room, the galley butler’s pantry lined on one side with windows. “I’m going to have to put you down, just for a minute.”

  “Nooo.” Baxter clings tighter, wrapping his legs around me and clamping on with extraordinary strength. The kid’s always been an acrobat. He’s had a six-pack since he was two.

  We’re both all too aware of the man. He sticks close, never letting us wander more than ten feet away, jabbing the air between us with the butt of his gun, urging me from room to room.

  I jostle Baxter higher on my hip and keep moving.

  We come around to the back of the house, where I jiggle the last door handle and tug on the last window, even though the red light on the alarm pad said the system was still armed. That means Beatrix is still in the house somewhere.

  “These are locked, too,” I say. “Everything’s locked.”

  He stands at the edge of the room, on the far side of the wall separating the living space from the kitchen. Anyone on the front doorstep right now might see the toes of his shoes, the muzzle of his gun, but the rest of him is well out of sight. Everything about the way he’s standing is intentional. It’s chilling how familiar he is with our home.

  “Any other way out?”

  I shake my head. “Not without tripping the alarm, no.”

  “Does she know the code?”

  This gives me pause, even though my headshake is immediate. I don’t think Beatrix knows the code, but she pays attention. She hears things even when I think she’s not listening. It’s possible she knows the code, and it’s possible that in all the commotion upstairs we didn’t hear her disarm, then rearm the system and leave, but the doors are all locked. She couldn’t have done that, not without a key. I think about the spare in the kitchen drawer, or the one on a key chain in the bottom of my purse, but I don’t say a word.

  “What about the basement?”

  There’s no way Beatrix would have chosen the basement for a hiding spot, not without me or her father at her side. For the kids, the basement is a dark and hostile place, filled with spiderwebs and skeleton walls and dusty shapes looming in the darkness. They’re terrified of the place—which is a good part of why Cam and I have never considered finishing it.

  He juts his chin at the bookshelves behind me and beyond, the hallway that leads to the basement door. “Let’s go take a look.”

  Baxter wriggles deeper into my chest, clutching me tighter. “Mommy, I don’t wanna go downstairs.” My sweatshirt pulls on a shoulder from where it’s bunched in one of his tight fists.

  “It’s okay, sweetie. We won’t be down there long.”

  The man orders me to do a quick check of the street, then hustles us across the living room and down the hall, where I flip the dead bolt and pull open the door. A chilly draft rushes up from the darkness, and I shiver—not from the cold but with the beginning wisp of a plan.

  The basement is where Cam keeps his tools.

  I feel around the wall for the light switch, and a bare, dusty bulb flicks on, shining light on the steep wooden stairs, rickety and builder-assembled to pass code, but just barely. I follow them down, down, down into the darkness.

  The stairs dump us onto a concrete slab, and I blink into the pitch-black basement. The air is a good ten degrees cooler down here, and it smells of underground, of dirt and dust and creatures living and dying.

  I flip another switch, and it lights up the first room, an unfinished square tomb piled high with plastic boxes and furniture. A high chair, a crib, our old queen mattress and box springs, the plate rack that came with the antique buffet in the dining room but I found too fussy. Everything is neatly stacked, one on top of the other like giant blocks, then arranged against vertical studs waiting for drywall. Beyond it, the space that runs the length of the house is cloaked in blackness.

  The man calls out into the shadows, “Beatrix, if you’re down here, sweetie, now would be the time to make yourself known. Come out now and I promise not to hurt you.”

  No answer. Only the sound of Baxter’s shallow breaths against my shoulder. I cover my son’s head with a hand, his fine hair tangling in my fingers.

  “Are there any doors or windows?”

  I turn, gesturing to where dim light trickles like water from somewhere deep in the darkness, a window well concealed behind thick hedges. Even on sunny days, very little light makes it through.

  “Stay here while I check,” he says. “Move and both of you get a bullet.”

  While he’s gone, I shift Baxter to my opposite hip to give my bicep a break. He’s a deadweight, forty-two pounds of bone and muscle dragging on my shoulder, my back, my neck where his arms hang from it. My entire upper body is on fire, muscles shaking, joints throbbing. But I know what would happen if I put him down: he’d scream and wail and pitch a fit, and I need to save that for when I need a distraction.

  “Locked up tight.” He jabs me in the back with his pistol, a harsh gesture that means move it.

  I lurch forward with a hot burst of adrenaline. If I didn’t have Baxter hanging from me like a monkey, that would have been my chance. I could have lunged for him. I could have grabbed his wrist with one hand, the gun with the other, and wrestled it from his grip like some badass TV spy. I probably would’ve gotten shot, but maybe, just maybe, I could have knocked off his aim to somewhere it wouldn’t kill me. An arm, maybe, or a foot. Bloody and painful, but not fatal. And then I’d grab the gun and shoot him in the face.

  But I can’t fight back—I wouldn’t even dare try—not with Baxter clutched to my hip.

  That’s when it occurs to me: the most terrifying part of being a parent isn’t this monster holding the gun. It’s the idea that something I do or don’t do could get my children killed. That I could be to blame for their deaths. That they would die, and I would be both a witness and the cause. How would I ever live with myself?

  Then again, I probably wouldn’t have to.

  Beatrix first, and then Baxter. And I will make you watch.

  The third bullet in the gun pressing between my ribs would be for me.

  I think of what that would be like for Cam, walking in on three dead bodies, and my eyes go hot with tears. I should have told him I loved him. I should have led with those words before anything else. I should have started the call with the most important.

  The man shuffles us farther into the darkness, nudging me down a strip of concrete studded on either side—a future hallway lined with future rooms. He finds the
light switch and flips it on, two more dusty bulbs that cast a buttery yellow glow.

  “Yo, Beatrix. We know you’re down here, girlie. Might as well come out from whatever old box you’re hiding behind. I promise you nothing bad will happen. I won’t hurt you, but only if you show your face right now.”

  Still nothing. Just a long stretch of strangled silence while I listen for movement above our heads, footsteps or the squeak of a floorboard. Wherever Beatrix is in this house, she’s good and hunkered down.

  “Now you.” The scratchy male voice comes with another stab of the muzzle.

  “Now me, what?”

  “What the hell do you think? Call for your daughter. Tell her to come out of hiding. She’ll listen to you.”

  Doubtful. There’s no way my voice is going to coax Beatrix out of hiding, not with a masked man standing right here, holding me and her brother at gunpoint. Beatrix may only be nine, but she’s not stupid, and nobody has ever accused her of being overly obedient. Just ask any of her teachers.

  And then there’s also the fact that I don’t want my daughter to be found. I want her to stay hidden until seven, until Cam arrives with his big bag of cash and this man does whatever it is he came here to do.

  My mind is finally coming around to what I’ve known in my gut for almost an hour now—this is no textbook ransom plot. Yes, this man held a gun to my head while I assured Cam our lives would be spared, as long as he brought home the money on time.

  But he’s already proven he is a liar.

  “Do it,” the man says, digging the gun into my ribs. “Tell your daughter to get out here.”

  I turn, calling into the darkness. “Beatrix, sweetie. If you’re down here, I need you to come out now. It’s time for you to come out.”

  My voice trembles, a combination of fear and red-hot fury. Now I know how the circus lions feel, why they sometimes lose it and chomp off their tamer’s whip-snapping arm. If I didn’t have two children to protect, I’d go for this man’s blood, too.