We Can See You

by Simon Kernick

  ‘Why didn’t you call me back?’ she asked him, trying to keep the anger out of her voice. ‘I left a message for you almost an hour ago. I said it was urgent.’

  He didn’t even look at her as he pulled off one of his boots. ‘I only picked it up a few minutes ago. Anyways, what’s the problem?’

  ‘Go into the kitchen. Read the note and look in the box.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Just do it, Logan.’

  He looked at her strangely, then pulled off the other boot and, with a shake of his head, stalked off to the kitchen. Brook followed a little way behind. She’d put the box on the island next to the phone and the note, and she watched as Logan read the note first, then carefully opened it, his back to her.

  She heard his sharp intake of breath and watched his shoulders sag. Logan Harris was a big man, close to six four and built like a bear, but he seemed to shrink in front of her and, when he turned around, his face had turned a sickly grey.

  ‘Jesus!’ he whispered. ‘Have you called the police?’

  Brook shook her head. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I was waiting for you. What do you think they want?’

  He looked confused. ‘I don’t know. Money? It has to be that. Why else would they take her and leave a note for us?’

  ‘We’re not that rich.’

  ‘You’re a celebrity, Brook. You’ve written bestselling books. You’re on TV. Look at this place.’ He gazed around him with an expression of disgust, as if his whole life was toxic. ‘Look at what we’ve got.’

  We, she thought bitterly. Me, more like. Logan was a semi-retired, bit-part actor and semi-pro tennis player turned coach. When they’d met, he’d been experiencing what he’d described as ‘cashflow’ problems, a situation that hadn’t improved much since. ‘Listen, Logan. There are probably a hundred people richer than us, just in Carmel – some much, much richer – but you never hear about their children getting taken like this.’ It made Brook feel sick, saying the words aloud.

  ‘Well, maybe it’s because they pay a ransom.’

  ‘No way,’ she said emphatically. ‘Something like that would get out. Look at what they did to Rosa, for Christ’s sakes.’ She pointed to the box on the island that the kidnappers had left. Inside was the freshly severed little finger of Rosa’s right hand, still wearing the silver ring that Brook had given her the previous Christmas.

  When Brook had first set eyes on it, it had been like receiving an electric shock. The finger looked like some sort of horror-film prop, but one that was a little bit too realistic. The flesh was torn and shredded where the finger had been sawn off, and blood smeared the soft paper inside. There was even a piece of protruding white bone, and Brook had felt sick at the sadism of whoever had done this to an innocent woman – someone she really cared about – and with fear of what they’d do to her child. ‘This is personal, Logan,’ she said. ‘No one goes to this much trouble just for money.’

  ‘How do you know? Are you an expert now?’

  Brook let out a long breath. ‘Because it’s logical. People don’t kidnap children for ransom any more. When was the last time you heard of it? So my question to you is: have you been pissing off the wrong people?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t,’ he said, but she immediately spotted the hint of uncertainty in his expression. The thing was, she didn’t trust Logan. She hadn’t for a long time. He had dark, brooding good looks and an air of the celebrity about him, even though his acting career had been nothing to write home about, and the older he grew, the better-looking he seemed to get. Brook’s girlfriends always said how lucky she was to have him. At least, to her face. But that was the problem. Women loved Logan, and he loved them right back. Far too much.

  ‘Look, if you’ve done something wrong – something you’re ashamed of – let’s talk about it now, because frankly, I don’t care. I just want to find our daughter.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ he snapped, his voice loud in the room. ‘What about you? Have you done anything you’re ashamed of, Brook?’

  It was, she thought, the typical response of the guilty. Deflecting blame.

  ‘I’ve never done anything I’m ashamed of,’ she said firmly, only vaguely aware that this wasn’t true. ‘And I don’t have any enemies.’

  ‘It could be one of your crackpot clients. Have you thought of that?’

  ‘I life-coach people – people with money. I help them achieve their goals. I don’t deal with the criminally insane.’ She walked back out of the kitchen, putting some distance between her and the argument, and stood in the spacious hallway, looking around at the house they’d bought together only three years ago. The place that was going to be their family home. Now violated. ‘They must have come when Paige was asleep, because her bed’s been slept in,’ she said almost to herself, suddenly thinking of something. ‘And they must have come in and left by car, so they’ll have been recorded by the camera on the front gate.’

  Like most people living in a large, detached home, she and Logan were security-conscious. Their property was in a quiet development in the hills above Carmel, backing onto woodland and surrounded by a high brick wall. The only way in with a car was through security gates covered by a surveillance camera. They’d thought about installing more cameras at the rear of the house, in case anyone came over the back wall, but as most of the houses round there didn’t even have front gates, it seemed like overkill. As Logan had pointed out, they weren’t exactly living in a high-crime area.

  However, the camera covering the front gate automatically began filming when the sensors underneath the tarmac detected movement, and automatically sent footage into the Cloud, which both Brook and Logan could access from apps on their cells. She pulled out her cell now and checked the app, as Logan came up beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. He smelled of Creed Aventus aftershave. His favourite, and definitely not something you put on for a couple of drinks with the boys.

  ‘Did the camera pick up anything?’ he asked.

  Brook’s initial excitement faded as she opened the app and stared down at the screen. ‘There’s nothing,’ she said quietly. ‘It says the camera’s offline. It didn’t even record you or me coming in. They must have switched it off, or cut the cable. But how did they even know about it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Logan, his face crumpled in confusion.

  Brook put the cell back in her pocket and, for the first time since she’d read the note, she felt like crying. She was terrified for Paige, who would be scared out of her wits, and who might even have witnessed the terrible thing that had happened to Rosa.

  It was now becoming clear that these people were far cleverer than just simple criminals. But that’s what they’d said in the ransom note, wasn’t it? We can see you. What if they’d planted cameras in here and were watching them right now?

  As if on cue, the sound of an old-fashioned sing-song ringtone came from the kitchen.

  She and Logan looked at each other, and it was Logan who hurried into the kitchen and picked up the cell. He didn’t speak and it was clear he was listening to instructions from the other end, but he had his back to her and she couldn’t hear what was being said.

  After what seemed like a long time, he said the word ‘Understood’ and placed the cell back on the kitchen top.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked him. ‘What did they say?’

  Logan took a deep breath. ‘It was a man. He says they want two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for Paige’s safe return.’ He paused, steadying himself on the worktop. ‘We’ve got until tomorrow night at ten p.m. to get it. We’ll hear from them again then. And they only want to talk to me. Not you.’

  Brook frowned. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know, he didn’t say. And there’s something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They knew it was me, even before I picked up the phone. They’ve got cameras everywhere. They’re watchin
g us.’ He looked around the room, his expression that of a hunted animal, before fixing his gaze on Brook. ‘I haven’t got that kind of money. Can you get a quarter of a million dollars by tomorrow?’

  But alarm bells were already sounding for Brook. She couldn’t believe the kidnappers had only asked for such a relatively small sum of money. They’d mutilated Rosa and probably couldn’t afford to let her go now, meaning she was likely to be dead. Surely they wouldn’t murder a woman, kidnap a child and risk ending up on death row, all for a quarter of a million dollars? Potentially split more than one way.

  It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense.

  But for the benefit of any camera that might be in the room, she nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can get the money by tomorrow.’

  4

  How can you sleep when you’ve just found out that your five-year-old daughter’s been abducted by strangers who’ve already shown their ruthlessness by sawing off her nanny’s finger?

  After the phone call from the kidnappers, Brook got Logan to put the box containing the finger in the freezer, so it was out of sight, but still available in case it was needed as evidence at a later date. She then paced the house like a caged animal, unable to settle, while Logan sat hunched silently in his den, with only a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and his thoughts for company, the kidnappers’ phone on the table in front of him. Brook had been tempted to tell him that now was not the time to be drinking, but in the end she’d decided it wasn’t worth it. As long as one of them remained sober, it didn’t matter. She was desperate for a drink herself, if only to take the edge off everything, but it would have been a show of weakness and she couldn’t allow herself that now.

  Eventually, at 2 a.m., Logan staggered up to bed and, when exhaustion set in half an hour later, Brook headed up, too.

  Logan was already asleep when she slipped under the sheets, still fully clothed in case the kidnappers had a camera here and were watching.

  We can see you. It was a phrase that made her skin crawl.

  She looked down at Logan, wondering how he could manage to sleep with his daughter in danger, but then she also knew from her work how easily some men can detach themselves emotionally from situations. She’d once had a number of one-to-one coaching sessions with a high-ranking San Francisco executive who was trying to improve his interactions with his staff. He’d come across as a nice guy, but it had turned out that he hadn’t seen the two children of his first marriage for close on ten years, having left their mother when they were still at kindergarten age. He hadn’t financially supported them, either. It was as if they no longer existed for him. Brook had tried numerous exercises to cultivate empathy within him, but eventually gave up when it was clear he was never going to feel any and dumped him as a client. Having lost her own family, she simply couldn’t understand how someone could be so blasé about voluntarily leaving theirs behind. Unlike a lot of people, she was fussy about who she worked with.

  Worryingly, she was also certain that Logan was capable of that kind of behaviour, and not for the first time that night, a nagging thought crossed her mind. Could her husband be involved somehow? Their marriage had been going badly for months now, maybe even longer, and he always needed money. They’d always had their own bank accounts and, although she covered all the household expenses, she no longer gave him any handouts, and she knew he resented the fact that she was the breadwinner and that she kept a tight lid on the finances. Maybe this whole kidnapping was some warped money making scheme of his. She’d also noted that when he’d been on the phone to the kidnappers earlier, he hadn’t begged for his daughter to be returned home safely or demanded proof that she was alive, like they did in the movies. He’d simply listened and then put down the phone. Was that the behaviour of an innocent man? It wasn’t something she would have done.

  Yet it was what had happened to Rosa that made her dismiss his involvement. Logan was many things, and he could shout and scream with the best of them, but he wasn’t a violent man and would never have countenanced hurting Rosa, and he did genuinely love Paige. Brook had seen the way he was with her, and you couldn’t put that on.

  Yet still he managed to sleep, and he looked peaceful, too, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Brook shut her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. She had a whole chapter in her first book containing different exercises to relieve stress, but the kind of stress she was feeling now – the abject fear for the safety of her daughter – wasn’t something that any exercise was going to alleviate, and she tossed and turned in the bed, her sweat cold on the sheets, until finally she fell into a shallow, fitful and terrified sleep, where the nightmares that she’d suppressed for so long rose up out of the darkness of her unconscious to plague her once again.

  A thin shaft of daylight was coming through the gap in the curtains when Brook woke with a start.

  She’d seen the old lady in her nightmare – the one she used to dream about as a child. There was nothing pleasant about this old lady. She looked like the witch in Snow White, with a long, hooked nose and bulbous, staring eyes, and in the dreams she would always appear at the edge of a forest, wearing a black dress and beckoning Brook inside with an eerie smile. Although Brook always tried to stop herself, something would always drag her towards the forest, as if she was under some kind of spell, even though deep down she knew that the old lady meant her harm. The dream would then go one of several ways. Either the spell would be broken and Brook would turn and run towards freedom – sometimes chased by the old lady, sometimes not. Or she would take the old lady’s hand, powerless to resist as she was led further and further into the forest, until all around her was darkness, and she knew this was the place where she would die.

  In the dream this time, Brook had been unable to resist the old lady’s coaxing. But the old lady hadn’t taken her into the forest. Instead she’d guided her down a quiet residential street of pretty, well-kept houses with neat front lawns and picket fences, until they came to a parked car. The day was gloriously sunny, and Brook had even begun to relax a little as the old lady opened the car door and helped her inside.

  And then, as she sat down, all the doors suddenly locked and at the same time night fell and the world was transformed into a cold, dark, terrifying place. The old lady climbed in beside her, and Brook saw the cruel, sadistic look in her deep-red eyes as she repeated the same phrase over and over again: ‘You’re mine now.’

  For several seconds Brook felt an overwhelming relief that she was no longer trapped inside the nightmare. And then the reality of her situation hit her with a sickening inevitability and she felt like crying. She looked at the bedside clock: 6.55 a.m. Logan, incredibly, was still asleep beside her, although she’d felt him move about restlessly in the night, as if he too had been haunted by his dreams.

  She got out of bed and went into the bathroom, spending the next five minutes searching around for hidden cameras. According to Logan, the kidnappers had warned them both not to look for, or disable, any of the cameras that they claimed had been planted all over the house, but there was no way Brook was going to be watched while she was in the bathroom. She couldn’t find anything out of place and concluded that they hadn’t planted one in here. In fact, the more she thought about it, she more she was convinced they could only have planted one or two cameras at most. They wouldn’t have had a lot of time in the house the previous night, and much of it would have been spent neutralizing Rosa, cutting off her finger and then getting her and Paige into the car and out of the property, while also at some point disabling the security camera covering the front gate.

  Unless, of course, they had inside help.

  She threw off her clothes and stepped in the shower, letting the hot water flow over her, her mind already trying to make sense of why they’d been targeted, because it couldn’t be purely about money. Maybe if the kidnappers had asked for two and a half million, she’d understand (not that she had that kind of cash). But two hundred and fif
ty simply wasn’t worth the hassle. No, this was personal. Brook wondered briefly if it might be someone jealous of her success, but in the end she wasn’t that famous. Yes, she’d done well for herself, having written a self-help book that had sold half a million copies, and she had her own segment on a TV show. But a lot of writers sold more than half a million copies, and the TV show was a local one on cable, with a regular viewing audience of fewer than a hundred thousand. She wasn’t exactly Oprah.

  And it wasn’t anything in her personal life, either. Brook was proud of the fact that she’d never knowingly made enemies and always tried to do the right thing.

  But Logan … he was another matter. He was the key to this, Brook was sure of it. And she hadn’t liked the fact that, when she’d asked him if he’d pissed off the wrong people, he’d hesitated for half a second before answering her, as if it had just occurred to him at that moment that maybe he had.

  But if Logan had been doing anything bad, she was going to know about it. She’d already taken steps in that department. Perhaps it was time to get some feedback.

  She got out of the shower, dried herself and, with the towel still covering her, went back into the bedroom.

  Logan was awake now and sitting up in the bed. He stared at her, his face crumpled and defeated, his eyes bloodshot. ‘I thought it was a nightmare,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry, honey, we’re going to get through it,’ she replied, kneeling on the bed and pulling him close to her. ‘Meet me at the summerhouse in ten minutes,’ she whispered, conscious that he still smelled of alcohol and expensive aftershave, before pulling away from his grip and throwing on some clothes.