For reasons I don’t entirely understand, my gaze settles on the phone, peeking out from under the lounger. It’s still on the carpet where it fell out of Josh’s pocket, half-hidden behind the bourbon bottle and Josh’s empty glass. I think about the AJC reporter sniffing around the Marietta deal, the surprise visit from the FBI with a warrant and all those boxes. Josh just accused me of being the mole, and yet he’s the one with the mysterious-looking cell phone.
I glance to my left, to the two red-faced men still holding a pissing contest about some Huntington scandal that happened long before either of them was born. They’re consumed with their stupid argument, neither of them looking my way. I fetch the phone from under the lounger and carry it into the kitchen.
I lean a hip on the island and try to remember how to navigate a phone so rudimentary. No retina HD display. No touch screen with a million apps. Just a tiny black-and-white screen, an up/down button and a numerical keyboard. I push the down button with a thumb, and a menu appears on the screen. Contacts, none. Voice mails, empty. Calls logged, a couple dozen at best. Most are to a 478 area code number, which I’m pretty certain is the same one for Josh’s sister, or to a 770 number I’d bet my every last penny leads to the reporter.
I’m about to call it when my gaze lands on a third number. It leaps out from the list like it’s strung up with strobe lights.
It’s the number for my cell.
I receive calls from numbers I don’t recognize all the time. Telemarketers, salespeople from the stores I visit, an occasional wrong number. I almost never pick up. Maybe this call was one of those times I hit Ignore and went on with my day, but why would Josh do that? Why wouldn’t he call me from his fancy, government-issued iPhone?
I scroll to my number and hit Call. Two seconds later, my cell phone buzzes in my other hand. One word pops onto my screen.
Unknown.
Goose bumps break out on my arms. “Sam?”
Sam doesn’t hear me over the argument, still raging in full force in the next room. Something crashes to the floor, smashing into pieces with a loud thud, and I don’t even flinch. With shaking hands, I hit Ignore on my phone and drop it onto the marble. On Josh’s phone, I scroll back to the call log and check the time on the original call. May 21, 10:02 a.m. Duration: six minutes and forty-three seconds.
The realization is like static, like something pressing down on me and singeing my skin with heat. Josh is the caller. The person behind the almost kidnapping of our son, the one who took Ethan instead.
“Oh my God. Sam. Sam.”
I don’t know if it’s my volume or the panic swirling in my screech, but I whirl around and there he is. Shiny-faced, his chest puffing with fury, his concerned gaze on me. “What’s wrong?”
As usual, Josh is right behind him, lurking in his shadow. I stare across the kitchen at him, trying to reconcile the man who held a sleeping Sammy in the hospital with the monster capable of kidnapping an eight-year-old child, but I can’t. He still looks like Josh.
“What?” Josh says, taking in my expression, his phone in my hand.
And then he lunges.
KAT
58 hours, 27 minutes missing
The one-lane dirt road ends in a clearing just big enough for the house at its edge, a wonky, wooden structure pressed up against a forest thick as a storm cloud. The windows are filthy, the roof is sagging, and the yard is littered with junk—bald tires, broken lawn chairs, discarded Coke cans and beer bottles. What was once the front door, a simple slab of wood, is now in splinters. One good chunk of it still hangs from an upper hinge.
“Holy shit,” Lucas says, leaning his head between Mac and me. “What are the feds doing here?”
They’re everywhere, dozens of them in jeans and matching navy jackets, hoisting shovels and what looks to be a metal detector. They trample around the clearing like an army of worker ants, traipsing in and out of the open front door.
“Feds, GBI...and those guys are APD airport zone.” Mac points to a cluster of uniformed officers dressed like all the others, four men and two women with dark guns and darker expressions. He swings the car to the right, aiming it at an empty spot at the edge of the yard.
“Is that standard protocol, to send in the airport zone for something like this?” Lucas says.
“No. They’re here for a reason. I just don’t know what.” Mac shoves the gear in Park and kills the engine. “Don’t say anything. I’ll do the talking.”
We scramble out of the car, right as a jet lumbers by overhead, piercing my eardrums and sucking up all the sound. I look up, watching as the belly of the plane slides by, low and slow, its wheels locked for landing. Is this why airport zone is here, because they were the closest unit?
“Who’s in charge here?” Mac flashes his badge at the cop closest to us, an older man with hair white as snow.
“Last I heard, they were still duking it out.” The cop pokes a finger across the yard at another man in uniform, currently getting an earful from a plainclothes woman who looks both annoyed by the intrusion and excited to be at the center of it. I’m guessing she’s the owner. “You might want to talk to Major Coombs. He’s from—”
“Thanks,” Mac says, cutting the man off midword.
We turn and hurry across the dirt.
“...can’t just bust into a house like that,” the woman is saying, pointing a nail slathered in bright orange paint at his face. She’s wearing an Atlanta Braves T-shirt that fit her forty pounds ago. “Y’all ’bout gave me a heart attack. Do you understand what I’m telling you? I could’ve dropped dead right there on the floor, and who’s paying for that door? Not me, that’s for goddamn sure. You break it, you buy it.” She spits out the last sentence like a threat.
Major Coombs looks over, relieved at the interruption. He shakes Mac’s hand like they’re old friends. “Hey, Mac. Been wondering when you’d get here.”
“Hey, Kurt, what’s the update?”
Major Coombs—Kurt—looks over with a polite nod. “This is where the ISP pointed us, but there’s no sign of him. House was empty other than Miss Mona Webster here. No Xbox, either. Only an ancient laptop too slow to be doing any game streaming. Dispatch is double-checking with the ISP, but looks like a false alarm.”
There’s that term again. It hits me just as hard, harder maybe, than the first time.
Mona takes me in with a side-eye. “I’m sorry about your son, lady, but he ain’t here. No offense, but I don’t even like kids all that much.”
Mac ignores her, directing his question at Major Coombs. “So where’s the car?”
“What car?”
“The vehicle Ethan was transported in. A black Ford Explorer with a dented fender and Alabama plate.” When Major Coombs doesn’t answer, Mac adds, “Ethan sent an Xbox message with the description and license plate number. I was under the impression the vehicle led to this address.”
But Major Coombs is still frowning. “No, the ISP led to this address, not the vehicle. Who’d you say it belonged to again?”
“Charlie.” Mona says it like she’s announcing the weather or an item from her grocery list, lackadaisical and without emotion. Our gazes whip to hers, and her spine straightens from the attention. “She’s a neighbor. Not a very neighborly one, by the way. A real a-hole, if you know what I mean, always blaring her TV at all hours and dumping her trash everywhere. She lives that way.” She points a finger across the yard, but all I see is trees.
“How far?” Mac says.
“Not far enough.” She hesitates, waiting for us to laugh at her joke.
“How far?”
Mona’s face falls. “Just on the other side of the creek.”
What happens next, happens in a blur. Mac shoves me in Lucas’s arms and orders him to keep me out of the way. He shouts out some names, gathering a hasty team and holds a quick huddle at the other
end of the yard. Another plane slides by overhead, the engines drowning out his voice and the birds and my heart pounding in my ears.
“Watch out for Charlie’s dog,” Mona calls out once the scream of the engines has faded. “That thing is one mean son of a bitch.”
Without even a glance in my direction, Mac leads his men into the woods.
STEF
58 hours, 29 minutes missing
For a man with half a bottle of bourbon in his system, Josh is surprisingly fast. He lunges for the phone in my palm before Sam can stop him, snatching it with one hand and shoving me aside with the other. I skid along the island and stumble backward, falling to the floor with a thud that resonates deep inside a hip. My cell phone hits the ground next, pinwheeling away across the polished wood floor.
Sam hauls Josh back by the scruff of his shirt and swings him back around. “What the hell are you doing? Get your hands off my wife.”
“Sam, it’s him.” I scramble to a shaky stand, the words bursting out of me before I can bite down on them. “Josh is the one who called me. He’s the kidnapper.”
Hurling blame before I’ve warned Sam or called for Diego and Gary as backup is reckless. Any man who would steal a child from a cabin would be capable of doing much worse to me, but I am consumed with fury, with hatred for this man.
Sam freezes. He stares at Josh, then at me. “Stef, what are you talking about?”
I want to fly across the room, to slap and claw and bite, to kick him in the balls and wrap my hands around his throat until his eyes bug. I want to kill him. “He’s the one who called me, and with that phone. I saw it on the call log. The date and time matches. When I called my phone with it, my screen said ‘Unknown.’ Sam, it was him.”
It doesn’t take Sam long to catch up, and when he does, he doesn’t look sad or incredulous or even surprised. He doesn’t ask why. He just steps around the island and plucks the cordless from the charger, and I know what he’s doing—calling the chief of police, a number he knows by heart.
“Put it down,” Josh says.
Sam ignores him, punching at the screen with a thumb.
“Sam.” Josh’s voice is louder now, more persistent. He pulls the cell from his pocket and flips it open. “Put the goddamn phone down or I will give the kill order. That boy will be dead before you can say the first word.”
“You’re bluffing.”
Josh hits a button on the phone, and it gives an electronic beep. “Try me.”
Sam stares at his cousin across the kitchen, and I can’t breathe. Can’t move or think straight. So Ethan’s alive? Is Josh lying or just completely out of his mind? And who’s he calling? Which number on that phone? The 770 number I didn’t recognize, or the one for his sister, Charlie? I used to think I knew this man, but now I can’t tell.
A tinny voice sounds through the cordless speaker.
Sam debates for less than a split second. “False alarm,” he says, then hits End and settles it onto the island, facedown.
He braces both palms on the counter. “So walk me through how this is supposed to go, now that Stef and I know. Because two armed guards are standing right outside, and when you walk out of here covered in our blood, I’m pretty sure they’re smart enough to put two and two together.”
The cell is still in Josh’s hand, his thumb still hovering above the button. “Shut up, I’m thinking.”
Sam lifts his hands, conceding. “Okay, but you should probably also take into consideration what I told you before—the accountant will find whatever land mines you planted in the city’s business. The way I see it, your only leverage here is Ethan. What do you want in order to make the trade? To take the fall for your crimes? Ethan’s life for mine? Tell me what you want here.”
Josh doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move. If it weren’t for his face, red and waxy like an apple, I’d wonder if his heart was still beating.
“Seems to me you’ve painted yourself into the proverbial corner,” Sam says. “You’ll spend the rest of your life in jail, and what about Charlie? Who’s going to pay her way when—”
“Shut up.”
“If you’re lucky, you won’t get the death penalty...though Georgia doesn’t look too kindly on people who bring harm to innocent children—”
“Shutupshutupshutup.”
“Typical Murrill behavior, really, not thinking this through. You should have spent more time on your Plan B, should have learned from your grandpa Ned’s mistakes. But y’all always were a bunch of losers.”
At that last word—loser—Josh lets out a primal scream and tackles Sam from the side. Sam wasn’t expecting it, and he doesn’t have time to brace. The move lifts him off his feet and lurches his body across the kitchen, Josh clinging to his middle like a monkey. They hit the hardwood, their bodies writhing like snakes, and the phone skids across the floor and disappears under the stove. Their legs connect with the bar stools and they scatter, toppling over and clacking against the wooden floor.
I race to my cell, shoving aside chair legs to pluck it off the carpet under the table. I flip it over and the screen is shattered, the apps underneath indecipherable. Shit. I hold down the home button with my thumb. “Siri, call 9-1-1.”
Her familiar voice answers. “Calling Emergency Services in five seconds.”
I wait for the call to connect, debating my next move. My first instinct is to run upstairs, to Mom and Sammy and safety, or maybe call for one of the guards, oblivious to the commotion thanks to Eco Villa’s shell of concrete and double glass.
The men tussle across the floor, trading blows like a couple of kids on a playground, but this fight is unfair. Sam is much stronger, and Josh’s movements soupy. It’s only a matter of time before Sam gets a good punch in, right to the center of Josh’s nose. His face explodes blood, splashing up Sam’s white sleeve.
“Motherfucker.” Josh plants a heel into the floor, flips them and hauls back an arm. At the very last second, Sam jerks out of the way, and Josh’s fist slams into the floor. He screams, the sound feral and frightening.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Sam shouts. By now he’s bleeding, too, a bright red stain at the corner of an eye, and the right side of his bottom lip is swollen. He shoves Josh off and springs to a stand. “This isn’t about you and me. This is about a little boy. An innocent, impartial child. What kind of monster are you?”
Josh grabs on to the counter and drags himself upright. He spits on the floor, swipes a sleeve across his mouth, but none of it helps. His nose is still streaming blood, coating everything below it in a shiny red, including his teeth.
Sam shakes his head, the gesture both of disbelief and disappointment. “This is over, Josh. You’re done. Hear those sirens? The police are on the way.”
I listen, and Sam is right. Sirens wail in the distance. Relief hits me like a wave at the swirling sound, almost pushing me off balance. I pray Josh wasn’t lying before, that Ethan really is still alive. I pray it’s not too late.
Josh hears the sirens, too, and he responds the same way he did before, with furious desperation. He balls his hands into fists and sucks a breath, gearing up for another full-body tackle.
Only, instead of charging, Josh surprises both of us. He reaches across the island, whips a knife from the block and aims it at Sam’s face. Josh smiles, an oily, self-satisfied smile.
I freeze, but Sam seems the opposite of intimidated. “You’ve got to be shitting me.” He’s always been a natural athlete, his body strong from decades of football and weight lifting and track, while Josh is the type who prefers to drink beer from the bleachers.
Josh waves the blade closer. Twelve more inches—one more lunge—and he’ll draw blood. “Does this look like a joke?”
Sam snorts. “No, but you do. You look like Hannibal Lecter after he took a bite out of that liver. Put the knife down.”
�
��I know you think you’re the king of Atlanta and all, but for now,” Josh jabs with the knife, and he would have stabbed Sam in the ribs if he hadn’t jumped back at the very last second, “I’m gonna need you to call Sammy down.”
KAT
58 hours, 37 minutes missing
“Where the hell is he?” I say, pacing at the edge of Mona’s sorry excuse for a yard. I check my watch for what must be the thousandth time. Mac and his men disappeared into the woods more than seven minutes ago. “What’s taking them so long?”
I point an ear to the woods, listening for a struggle, a grunt, a scream. My muscles are twitchy, ready to snap.
Lucas and Andrew are planted by a giant pine tree, arms folded across their chests. I know Lucas, and I know if given a choice, he would be out there with Mac and the others, storming through the woods, busting down Charlie’s door, sweeping the place room by room in search of Ethan. His body is tense and jittery, his muscles coiled up tight like a runner in the starting blocks.
Not far enough, Mona said of Charlie’s house, just on the other side of the creek. But how far is the creek? And how long can it take to run across it, grab Ethan and run back? Not seven minutes, not unless something went wrong and Charlie put up a fight. I lean into the trees, straining to pick out any sounds of struggle from the birds and swaying trees, but then another plane slides by overhead and all I hear are the engines.
Without warning, Lucas slaps the phone out of Andrew’s hand.
“What the hell was that for?”
Lucas ignores him, fishing the phone from a clump of ferns. He picks it up and starts punching at the screen.
“Hey, asshole, what do you think you’re doing? Give it back.” Andrew’s smart enough to not go after it himself. Lucas would put Andrew in a headlock before he knew what was happening.
“Just making sure you weren’t warning Charlie we were on the way.”
Three Days Missing Page 26
