“I didn’t lose the first one,” Dan muttered. “That was you, boy.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot. I fucked up again, right? That’s me, the family fuckup.”
“No one said—”
“Only this time things are different. This time maybe I’m not as dumb as you think. I got something you want to pay attention to.”
“What are you talking about?” Dan seemed impatient.
“Can I go downstairs?” Livvy pleaded. “I won’t try anything. You can just lock me back up.”
“That’s a great idea,” Dan grunted, but he didn’t move. “What the hell are you talking about, boy?”
Ryan held up his hands slowly, fingers spread wide. At first Livvy thought he was showing Dan the place where she’d bitten him, and then she figured it out:
No gloves.
“Where the hell are your gloves?” Dan demanded, reaching the same realization.
“Right here,” Ryan said calmly. He jammed his hand into his back pocket and came up with a pair, pulling them on with a snap of latex.
“Why’d you take them off? Are you out of your mind?”
“Relax. I only had them off for a minute. Before you so rudely interrupted us. Some things a man has to do skin to skin.”
The words made Livvy’s stomach heave, and Dan’s face only darkened with anger.
“We talked about this, Ryan. No taking chances. No taking stupid chances.”
Ryan shook his head like he felt sorry for Dan. “Now there’s that word again. Stupid. I feel like I’ve been called that a few times too often. But I got to say, I see it a little different. Maybe I’m not the one who’s stupid, right?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“What if I told you...” Ryan let his gaze stray over to Livvy, giving her a wink like they were in this together, like they were sharing some private joke. “What if I told you I brought along some insurance? Some personal insurance, just to make sure everyone gets treated fair?”
A subtle change came over Dan, and suddenly he looked afraid. He didn’t say anything, but his grip on Livvy’s arm loosened. She wondered if she should try to pull her arm away and run, but Dan had surprised her before by how fast he could move, for an old guy.
“What sort of insurance?” he said slowly.
“Well. Tell you what. I’ll give you one, for free. A show of faith. Come on down here.”
Ryan sauntered down the hallway to Livvy’s room and pushed the door open. Dan dragged her along, his grip like iron on her wrist.
She stood in the doorway to her room, but it didn’t seem like hers now. The bed was unmade, just like she’d left it, covers puddled on the floor. The T-shirt she slept in—Calumet Hornets Lacrosse ALL THE WAY 2013, with the hornet outline in purple—lay inside out on the pillow. The dried flowers were still on her bulletin board from the last father-daughter dance before she quit Cadets in middle school. There was the box from Nordstrom, the suede boots her mom had bought her, even though she’d been such a brat lately. It seemed like that was months ago.
“Come on in,” Ryan said, making an exaggerated bow. Livvy walked in ahead of Dan. Ryan shoved the door closed behind him, pressing his back against it to make the latch click. “Okay, you’re getting warmer. Let her go, Dan, no need for that.”
Dan stood in the middle of the room under the paper lantern light fixture hanging from the ceiling. Her mom had ordered it from PBteen as a surprise when Livvy showed it to her and said she liked it.
“Colder,” Ryan said.
“This isn’t some fucking game.” Dan glared at Ryan, and if Livvy had been Ryan she would have been scared. But Ryan just laughed.
“So serious all the time. Okay, fine. See that basket up on the shelf? There, by the pig...look in there.”
“I’m not gonna play, I’m telling you,” Dan said, but they all looked at the basket. It was white with a checkered pink-and-white fabric liner. It was from before they redid her room, but Livvy kept it for barrettes and headbands. Next to it was a ceramic piggy bank she’d painted years ago with her Girl Scout troop at Art From the Heart. An ugly thing with splotched green-and-red glaze that ran together to make brown.
“For God’s sake.” Ryan rolled his eyes and went to the shelves and pulled down the basket. “Do I have to do everything myself?”
He hooked a finger inside and pulled out a white rag, dangling it in front of him for them to see.
Not a rag, though...Livvy saw the dark band of elastic and knew what it was: underwear. Men’s underwear, the old-fashioned kind. They were wrinkled and dirty, with a racing-stripe stain that looked like it had been there through many washings, faded and gray.
Dan shot out a hand and snatched at the underwear. “What the hell?”
“They’re yours.”
“Yeah, I get it. What the fuck are they doing here?”
Ryan shrugged. “You ought to be more careful with your things. I found them under your bed last week. Didn’t look like you’d been under there in a while. Dust bunnies and shit all over the place.”
Dan glared at Ryan, and when he spoke again his voice was very quiet. “Why?”
“I think you know why.”
No one said anything for a minute. Livvy was confused and scared, the sick feeling rising again in her stomach. She couldn’t help looking under her own bed, wondering what she might find there, but all she saw was the corner of her sleeping bag sticking out, and a single pink flip-flop.
“It’s not just those, man,” Ryan finally said, now sounding bored. “There’s shit all over this house. And every bit of it’s got your fingerprints, your DNA, your everything. You’ll never find it all, I promise you.”
“You...” Dan lurched forward like he was going to grab hold of Ryan, but he stopped himself.
“Don’t worry, I kept a list, and I know where every last thing is. You won’t find ’em but I guarantee you, the cops will.”
The pieces came together loosely in Livvy’s mind. The cops, Dan’s underwear, with his DNA...Ryan was setting him up. The gloves they wore wouldn’t matter if they found other things, clues that led to Dan’s identity. Ryan had double-crossed him. Which meant he and Dan were now enemies, didn’t it? But why? They didn’t even have the money yet.
She moved closer to Dan, and walked through a cold current of air. Only then did she notice that someone had opened her window several inches. Outside, a few flecks of ice floated down from the sky.
“Here’s how it works,” Ryan continued. “This whole time you been talking about trust and shit, you think I didn’t know you were setting me up?”
“I wouldn’t set you up,” Dan said. His face was pale from disbelief.
“Yeah.” Ryan chuckled. “Just like you’d never set up my dad, right? Blood’s thicker than water, ain’t that right? Dad told me once you were the only person in the world he could count on. He was your brother, man.”
“Your dad and me... He never blamed me. I loved him. We had an arrangement.”
“An arrangement?” Ryan said it mockingly. “He went to jail. That don’t sound like much of a deal for him. Now he’s dead I guess it doesn’t matter. Anyway, tomorrow, you get back from the bank, you give me my money, I go on my little treasure hunt and I take all that shit back. Place’ll be clean as a whistle by the time we leave. Oh, and I’ll take the BMW. You go your way, and I’ll take my own chances.”
“You’re...you’re not coming with me?”
Ryan laughed again. “No, I’m not coming with you. You think I want to dick around on some beach with a bunch of old wetbacks for the rest of my life?”
“Ryan...”
“Look, man, it’s time for you to go. Me and Livvy, we need a little privacy.”
“You can’t—”
“I can
do whatever I want. Think. I got you here. I’m in charge now. I got your dick in a vise. Get it?”
Dan’s face went ashen and Livvy prayed hard that he wasn’t going to leave her here, but after a minute he turned without a word and let himself out the door. He closed it carefully, and she heard the soft click of the latch, and then his steps as he walked away.
And it was just her and Ryan.
“Get the light,” he said softly. “It’s too bright in here.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jen held the bottle up to Ted’s mouth, letting the water dribble in. “I got it,” he said, taking the bottle from her. He drank deeply, his eyes closed, and then sighed, exhaling slowly. The water had helped; he’d managed most of the bottle already. The fever seemed to recede a little and he had been able to sit up on his own.
“Are you all right?” Jen asked softly, her hand on his leg, not sure how to touch him without hurting him. How long had it been since she’d touched him at all? Of course, he wasn’t all right. Their son was missing, their daughter was upstairs with two criminals, and Ted had lost what seemed like gallons of blood. The fear and suspicion she’d felt earlier had ebbed as they struggled down the stairs, leaving in its wake an unexpected tenderness. He needed her, and that need brought echoes of other times, earlier times in their marriage when they’d relied on each other, when they’d been each other’s everything. But God, what was she supposed to say to him now? What was she supposed to do?
Jen heard someone upstairs, moving around. She tried to track the location and guess what they were doing. Probably taking all their valuables, now that the plan was falling apart. If they were smart, they’d take her jewelry. It was worth almost as much as the money market, between the diamond studs and the tennis bracelet and the anniversary rings. The silver, the electronics, the art—with two car trunks they’d be able to take all of it.
Abruptly Ted grunted and sat up straighter, pushing off the back of the couch with his good elbow. He set the empty water bottle on the coffee table, his hand steady. “I’m feeling a little better. I was thinking, can you get one of those extra sheets? Let’s see if we can make some sort of sling, or something. I feel like if we could just get my arm stable against my side here, I could move better.”
“You can’t move,” Jen protested. “We can’t risk making anything worse. We need to wait for a doctor to—”
“How can things get any worse?” Ted said, and it was the calm in his voice, the lack of panic, that got her moving. Yes. They should do something, anything. Taking care of Ted was better than just sitting here and watching him suffer. If they kept trying, then they weren’t giving up, even as it seemed like there was nothing they could do to reverse the course of events.
She went to the big cardboard box she’d opened earlier and sorted through pilled fleece blankets and mismatched pillowcases until she found an old twin sheet, pink with yellow daisies scattered across the fabric, part of a set Livvy had outgrown years ago. She tore the sheet into four long strips, and brought them to Ted.
“I figure it’ll be most stable if I bend my elbow so my hand’s up on my chest,” Ted said. He was definitely more alert, even if his arm didn’t look any better. “Then we secure it there and it’s out of the way.”
“Won’t it start bleeding again if you bend it?”
Ted shrugged. “I think it’s mostly quit bleeding for now, and if not, the sling’ll help keep it under control.”
Jen knew he was guessing, hoping, but she had no better ideas. “Where should I...” she said uncertainly.
“I think what’ll work best is if you move it into place. Like this.” He showed her with his good arm, splaying his fingers over his heart. His hand came away bloodied.
Jen touched his injured hand tentatively, and found it swollen and still much too warm.
“Honey, you’re going to have to do it,” Ted said apologetically. “Be brave, okay? No matter what.”
As he closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, his words echoed in Jen’s mind: be brave, be brave.
Jen nodded and picked up the strips of pink cotton. She worked them carefully behind his back, so that when she got his arm positioned right she could tie it tightly into place. The ends dangled behind him like colorful streamers.
When she was ready, Jen gritted her teeth and put one hand on Ted’s shoulder and laced her fingers through his and lifted the hand, the hand that no longer felt like her husband’s, and kept moving it while he moaned, the sound coming from him unlike a man at all, a raw howl like an animal’s. He began to tremble violently as she forced the hand up and against his chest. His elbow stood out inches from his side and Jen pushed her other hand at it, feeling the wet of blood and the sickening softness of the torn flesh and the sharp edge of bone as she pushed it hard against his body.
“Hold there.” She grabbed the strips of cloth and wrapped them tightly around his torso. She tied the first tightly, the knot at his knuckles. He panted while she worked, short sobbing breaths, his entire body shaking. She took more care with the second strip of fabric, laying it above the first, stretching it as wide as she could across his shoulder so that it would brace as tightly as possible. The last two strips crisscrossed to stabilize the makeshift splint.
When she was finished, Ted leaned back against the sofa, exhausted, his face drawn and chalky. Jen examined her handiwork: a bouquet of knots blooming on a spreading red stain, a bow on a gruesome package.
Without warning, they heard the sounds of the door opening at the top of the stairs, and Jen leaped off the couch, running to see.
“Livvy?”
“No.”
It was Dan, stepping heavily. When he got to the bottom of the stairs they faced each other, neither speaking. Jen searched his face and saw the fear written there.
“What?”
He merely shook his head, then walked past her to the little arrangement of furniture in the center of the room. The overhead bulb cast the room in a sickly pool of yellow light, and accentuated the shadows of his face, the deep circles under his eyes. His shoulders were slumped like an old man’s.
“What?” Jen repeated, grabbing Dan’s arm, digging her fingers into the cotton of her husband’s shirt.
Dan looked slowly from Ted to her, his eyes haunted and dark. “There’s a problem.”
“There’s a problem? There’s a problem?” Jen felt the stirrings of hysterical laughter in her throat, the horror too big, tipping her past sanity, past what she could bear. “What do you mean? Where’s Livvy? What have you done with her?”
Dan started to say something and stopped. He glanced up to the ceiling, and Jen knew it had to be worse than she’d let herself imagine.
“She’s with Ryan, isn’t she,” Jen gasped.
“Okay, look,” Dan said. “Ryan is...Ryan is a little unpredictable. He’s become a danger, a liability. He’s threatening to upset our whole plan here, and I—”
“He is with my daughter,” Jen said, her voice rising. She grabbed him by both arms and shook hard, and he tried to push her hands away, but she was stronger. “You go up there and you stop him, you—”
There was a commotion as Ted lurched off the sofa. He crashed into the coffee table, knocking over the water bottle, putting out his good hand to stop himself from falling. Grunting from the effort of gaining his balance, he took a staggering step toward them. A second step and he was standing upright, his good hand in a fist.
“Where is my daughter?”
Dan swallowed, his eyes skittering over Ted, the blood and the bandages, his useless arm like a folded wing. “She’s in her room. Ryan is with her.”
“You left that little fucker alone with my daughter?” Ted roared, and he came at Dan, picking up his feet with sheer determination and planting them hard.
Dan held up his hands in suppl
ication. “We’re gonna figure this out, buddy. We just have to—”
But Ted had closed his hand around Dan’s throat, shoving into him with all his weight, sending him staggering backward. Jen screamed as Dan reached for the gun in his waistband.
“Stop, just stop,” she cried, putting her hands on each man’s shoulder and trying to pry them apart.
But Ted wouldn’t stop, he brought up his foot and slammed it with all his weight onto Dan’s instep, and Jen felt the impact through the concrete floor and heard a snap. Then Dan was screaming, too, and Ted was yelling something, some muddled curse as he used his body weight to slam Dan against the support pillar near the stairs, the two of them locked in an embrace of flailing limbs. Ted was the bigger man, taller by a couple inches and honed by all that squash, all those early-morning runs along Glenn Road, but Jen knew it was the thought of their daughter that propelled him as he managed to get his knuckles into the hollow of Dan’s throat. He shoved hard, his face a contorted mask of rage and determination, grinding against Dan’s windpipe, and later Jen would realize that all she had to do was go for the gun, just two more steps and she would have had it, she could have taken it from Dan as easily as she took the remote from Teddy when his television hour was over.
But she didn’t. She stood rooted as her husband used the last of his strength to destroy the man who had attacked her family. Dan wrenched the gun from his pants and nearly dropped it. It teetered in his palm, and then he managed to get his grip and take a shot—
The sound echoed through the basement, a sound more like a popped balloon than an explosion. Her husband jerked and then slid, slowly, down to his knees. For a moment he swayed there, his hand scrabbling over Dan’s pant leg. He clutched his throat, trembling violently, and then Ted slipped the rest of the way down onto the floor. After that, the only part of him that moved was his eyes, rolling and searching until they found Jen and settled on her in apology.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ted was looking at his wife, and he tried to hold on, but almost immediately her face went blurry at the center and all he could see was her hair, swirling around her shoulders and glinting gold and red in the light that shone on her from above. That hair of hers. He’d once loved to hold it in his hands, heavy and silky. He wouldn’t have traded her hair for anything, not for gold, not for money. It was like that story, so long ago, he read it in high school, where the wife sells her hair to buy her husband a watch chain and he sells the watch to buy her a barrette. That story had touched him even then, before he’d ever met his wife, but he’d secretly hoped that he would meet a woman like her someday, beautiful and smart, a woman who loved him and smiled at him every time she saw him and held him deep in the night when he was afraid he didn’t really know who he was or what he was supposed to be doing.
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