The Chain Read online

  “She’s not. I’ve got her. I’ve kidnapped her.”

  “You’re not…it’s a joke.”

  “I’m deadly serious. We grabbed Kylie at the bus stop. I’m sending you a picture of her.”

  A photo of a girl wearing a blindfold and sitting in the back seat of a car comes through as an attachment. She is wearing the same black sweater and tan wool coat that Kylie put on when she left today. She has Kylie’s freckly pixie nose and brown hair with red highlights. It’s her, all right.

  Rachel feels sick. Her vision swims. She lets go of the steering wheel. Cars begin honking as the Volvo drifts out of its lane.

  The woman is still talking. “You have to remain calm and you have to listen carefully to everything I say. You have to do it exactly the way I’ve done it. You must write down all the rules and you cannot deviate from them. If you break the rules or call the police, you will be blamed and I will be blamed. Your daughter will be killed and my son will be killed. So write down everything that I am about to tell you.”

  Rachel rubs her eyes. There’s a roaring in her head that sounds like a giant wave about to break on top of her. About to smash her to smithereens. The worst thing in the world is really, actually happening. Has really happened.

  “I want to speak to Kylie, you bitch!” she screams and then grabs the steering wheel and rights the Volvo, avoiding an eighteen-wheeler by inches. She pulls the Volvo across the final lane of traffic onto the shoulder. She skids to a halt and kills the engine as scores of drivers honk and yell obscenities.

  “Kylie’s OK for now.”

  “I’m calling the cops!” Rachel cries.

  “No, you’re not. I need you to calm down, Rachel. I wouldn’t have picked you if I thought you were the type who would lose your cool. I’ve researched you. I know about Harvard and your recovery from cancer. I know about your new job. You’re an organized person and I know you’re not going to screw this up. Because if you do, it’s real simple: Kylie is going to die and my boy is going to die. Now, get a piece of paper and write this down.”

  Rachel takes a deep breath and grabs a datebook from her purse. “OK,” she says.

  “You’re in The Chain now, Rachel. We both are. And The Chain is going to protect itself. So, first thing is no cops. If you ever talk to a cop, the people who run The Chain will know and they’ll tell me to kill Kylie and pick a different target, and I will. They don’t care about you or your family; all they care about is the security of The Chain. Got that?”

  “No police,” Rachel says in a daze.

  “Second thing is burner phones. You need to buy anonymous burner phones that you use just once to make all your calls, like I’m doing now. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Third, you are going to need to download the Tor search engine, which will take you into the dark web. It’s tricky but you can do it. Use Tor to look for InfinityProjects. Are you writing this down?”

  “Yes.”

  “InfinityProjects is just a placeholder name. It doesn’t mean anything, but on the site, you’ll find a Bitcoin account. You can buy Bitcoin on Tor in half a dozen places by credit card or wire transfer. The transfer number for InfinityProjects is two-two-eight-nine-seven-four-four. Write that down. Once money has been wired through, it’s untraceable. What The Chain wants from you is twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars? How will I—”

  “I don’t care, Rachel. Loan shark, second mortgage, do a goddamn murder for hire. It doesn’t matter. Just get it. You pay the money and that’s part one. Part two is harder.”

  “What’s part two?” Rachel asks, alarmed.

  “I’m supposed to tell you that you are not the first and you are not the last. You are in The Chain and this is a process that goes back a long time. I kidnapped your daughter so that my boy will be released. He’s been kidnapped and is being held by a man and woman I don’t know. You must select a target and kidnap one of that person’s loved ones so The Chain will go on.”

  “What! Are you cra—”

  “You have to listen. This is important. You are going to kidnap someone to replace your daughter on The Chain.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You have to select a target and hold one of that person’s loved ones until the target pays the ransom and kidnaps someone in turn. You are going to have to make this exact phone call to whoever you select. What I’m doing to you is what you are going to do to your target. As soon as you carry out your kidnapping and pay the money, my son will be released. As soon as your target kidnaps someone and pays the ransom, your daughter will be released. It’s that simple. That’s how The Chain works and goes on forever.”

  “What? Who do I pick?” Rachel asks, utterly horrified.

  “Someone who will not break the rules. No cops, politicians, or journalists—those are deal-breakers. Someone who will commit a kidnapping and pay the money and keep their mouth shut and keep The Chain going.”

  “How do you know I’ll do all that?”

  “If you don’t, I’ll kill Kylie and start again with someone else. If I screw up they will kill my son and then me. Everything’s off the cliff already for us. Let me be very clear, Rachel: I will murder Kylie. I know now that I am capable of doing it.”

  “Please don’t do this. Let her go, please, I’m begging you. As one mother to another, please. She’s a wonderful child. She’s all I’ve got in this world. I love her so much.”

  “I’m counting on that. Do you understand what I’ve told you so far?”

  “Yes.”

  “Goodbye, Rachel.”

  “No! Wait!” Rachel cries but the woman has already hung up.

  4

  Thursday, 8:56 a.m.

  Rachel begins to shake. She feels sick, nauseated, untethered. Like on the treatment days when she allowed them to poison her and burn her in the hope that it would make her better.

  The traffic drums ceaselessly to her left and she sits there frozen like some long-dead explorer crashed on an alien world. Forty-five seconds have gone by since the woman hung up. It feels like forty-five years.

  The phone rings, startling her. “Hello?”

  “Rachel?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Dr. Reed. We were expecting you at nine, but you haven’t signed in yet downstairs.”

  “I’m running late. Traffic,” she says.

  “That’s OK. It’s always a horror show at this time. When can we expect you?”

  “What? Oh…I’m not coming in today. I can’t.”

  “Really? Oh, dear, well—would tomorrow suit you better?”

  “No. Not this week.”

  “Rachel, I need you to come in to discuss your blood work.”

  “I have to go,” Rachel says.

  “Look, I don’t like to talk about these things over the phone but what we’re seeing with your most recent test is very high levels of CA 15-3. We really need to talk—”

  “I can’t come in. Goodbye, Dr. Reed,” Rachel says and hangs up the phone as flashing lights appear in the rearview mirror. A big, dark-haired Massachusetts state trooper gets out of his vehicle and approaches the Volvo 240.

  She sits there, utterly adrift, tears drying on her face.

  The trooper taps her window and after a moment’s hesitation, she rolls it down. “Ma’am,” he begins and then sees that she has been crying. “Um, ma’am, is there a problem with your vehicle?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, ma’am, this shoulder is for emergency vehicles only.”

  Tell him, she thinks. Tell him everything. No, I can’t, they’ll kill her, they will. That woman will do it. “I know I shouldn’t be parked here. I was on the phone to my oncologist. It—it looks like my cancer has come back.”

  The trooper gets it. He nods slowly. “Ma’am, do you think you’re capable of continuing your journey at this juncture?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not goin
g to write you a moving violation, but I would ask you to proceed with your journey, please, ma’am. I’ll halt traffic until you get into the lane.”

  “Thank you, Officer.”

  She turns the key in the ignition and the old Volvo grumbles back to life. The trooper stops the vehicles in the slow lane and she pulls out without any difficulty. She drives for one mile until she hits the next exit and then gets off at the slip road. South is the hospital where they can maybe fix her but she doesn’t care about that now. That’s utterly irrelevant. Getting Kylie back is the sun and the stars and the entire universe.

  She takes I-95 northbound, pushing the Volvo harder than it has ever been pushed in its life.

  Into the slow lane, into the medium lane, into the fast lane.

  Sixty miles an hour, sixty-five miles an hour, seventy, seventy-five, seventy-eight, eighty.

  The engine is screaming but all Rachel can think is Go, go, go.

  Her business now is north. Get a bank loan. Get the burner phones. Get a gun and everything else she needs to get Kylie back.

  5

  Thursday, 9:01 a.m.

  It had all happened so fast. A gunshot and then they had driven off. Driven for how long? Kylie had lost track. Maybe seven or eight minutes before they had turned onto a smaller road, gone down a long driveway, and stopped. The woman had taken a picture of her and gotten out to make a phone call. Probably to her mom or dad.

  Kylie’s in the back seat of the car with the man. He is breathing hard, swearing under his breath, and making strange animal-like whimpering noises.

  Shooting the policeman was clearly not part of the plan and he isn’t handling it well.

  Kylie hears the woman come back to the car.

  “OK, it’s done. She understands everything and knows what she has to do,” the woman says. “Take this one down to the basement and I’ll hide the car.”

  “OK,” the man replies meekly. “You have to get out, Kylie. I’ll open the door for you.”

  “Where are we going?” Kylie asks.

  “We’ve set up a little room for you. Don’t be worried,” the man says. “You’ve done very well so far.”

  She feels the man reach over her and unclick her seat belt. His breath is acrid and repulsive. The door opens next to her.

  “Keep your blindfold on; I have a gun pointed at you,” the woman says.

  Kylie nods.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Move!” the woman says in a shrill, hysterical voice.

  Kylie swings her legs out of the car and starts to get up.

  “Watch your head, please,” the man mutters.

  She stands slowly, carefully. She listens for highway traffic or any other noise, but she doesn’t hear anything. No cars, no birds, no familiar Atlantic breakers. They are somewhere well inland.

  “This way,” the man says. “I’m going to take your arm and lead you downstairs. Don’t try anything. There’s nowhere you can go and we’re both prepared to shoot you, OK?”

  She nods.

  “Answer him,” the woman insists.

  “I won’t try anything,” she says.

  She hears a bolt being dragged back and a door being opened.

  “Careful, these stairs are old and sort of steep,” the man says.

  Kylie walks slowly down the wooden stairs while the man holds her by the elbow. When she gets to the bottom of the steps, she can feel that she’s standing on concrete. Her heart sinks. If it had been a crawl space like the one beneath her house, she would have had just dirt and sand underfoot. You could dig your way through dirt and sand. You couldn’t dig your way through concrete.

  “Here,” the man says and leads her across the room. It’s a basement, obviously. The basement of a house deep in the country, far from anyone.

  Kylie thinks about her mother and feels another sob welling up in her throat. Her poor mom! She’s supposed to be starting a new job soon. She’s just beginning to turn her life around after the cancer and the divorce. It isn’t fair.

  “Sit here,” the man says. “Sit all the way down. It’s a mattress on the floor.”

  Kylie sits on the mattress, which feels like it’s covered with a sheet and a sleeping bag.

  She hears the click of the woman taking a photo. “OK, I’m going to the house to send her this and check Wickr. I hope to God they’re not angry with us,” the woman says.

  “Don’t tell them anything went wrong. Tell them everything went according to plan,” the man says.

  “I know!” she snaps.

  “It’s going to be OK,” the man says unconvincingly.

  Kylie hears the woman run up the wooden steps and close the basement door. She’s alone with the man now and this scares her. He could do anything.

  “It’s OK,” he says. “You can take your blindfold off now.”

  “I don’t want to see your face,” Kylie replies.

  “It’s fine, I’ve got the ski mask on again.”

  She removes the blindfold. He’s standing near her, still holding the gun. He has taken his coat off. He’s wearing jeans, a black sweater, and loafers caked with clay and mud. A heavy man in his forties or fifties.

  The basement is rectangular, roughly twenty feet by thirty feet. There are two small square windows choked with leaves on one side. A concrete floor, a mattress, and an electric lamp next to the mattress. They’ve given her a sleeping bag, a bucket, toilet paper, a cardboard box, and two large bottles of water. The rest of the basement is empty but for an antique cast-iron stove against one of the walls and a boiler in the far corner.

  “You’re going to be staying here for the next few days. Until your mother pays the ransom and does the other stuff. We’re going to try to make you as comfortable as possible. You must be terrified. I can’t imagine…” he says and begins to choke up. “We’re not used to this, Kylie. We’re not people like this. All of this has been forced on us. You have to understand that.”

  “Why have you taken me?”

  “Your mother will explain everything when you get back to her. My wife doesn’t want me to talk to you about it.”

  “You seem nicer than her. Is there any way you could possibly let—”

  “No. We’ll—wow—kill you if you try to escape. I mean that. You know what we’re c—capable of. You were there. You heard. That poor man…oh my God. Put this on your left wrist,” he says, handing her a handcuff. “Tight enough so you can’t escape, not so tight so that it chafes you…that’s it. A little bit tighter. Let me see.”

  He takes her wrist and examines it and ratchets the handcuff tighter. Then he takes the other cuff, attaches it to a heavy metal chain, and attaches that to the iron stove with a padlock.

  “You’ve got about nine feet of chain, so you can move around a bit. Do you see that, over there by the stairs? That’s a camera. We’ll be keeping an eye on you even when we’re not down here. The fluorescent light will always be on so we can see what you’re doing. So don’t try anything, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “You’ve got a sleeping bag and a pillow. In that box there are toiletries and more toilet paper and graham crackers and books. Do you like the Harry Potter books?”

  “Yes.”

  “The whole series is in there. And some old stuff. Good stuff for girls your age. I know what I’m talking about. I’m an en…good stuff,” he says.

  “I’m an English teacher”? Was that what he was going to say? Kylie wonders. “Thank you,” she says. Be polite, Kylie, she tells herself. Be the good, scared, frightened girl who won’t cause them any trouble.

  The man squats down next to her, still keeping the gun pointed at her.

  “We’re in the woods here. At the end of our own dirt road. If you start screaming, no one will hear you. We’re on a big lot and the woods are all around. But if you do start yelling, I’ll see and hear you on the camera and I won’t be able to take any chances. I’ll have to come down and gag you. And so you can’t remove the gag, we’ll have to cuff
your hands behind your back. Do you understand?”

  Kylie nods.

  “Now, turn out your pockets and give me your shoes.”

  She turns out her pockets. She only has money in them anyway. No penknife or phone. The phone’s back there on the dirt road on Plum Island.

  The man stands and sways a little. “Sweet Jesus,” he says to himself and swallows hard. He goes up the stairs shaking his head, apparently in disbelief and amazement at what he has wrought.

  When the basement door closes, Kylie leans back on the mattress and exhales.

  She starts to cry again. She cries herself dry and then sits up and looks at the two bottles of water. Would they poison her? The seals on the water are intact and it’s Poland Spring. She drinks greedily and then stops herself.

  What if he doesn’t come back? What if she has to make this water last for several days or weeks?

  She looks in the big cardboard box. Two boxes of graham crackers, a Snickers bar, and a can of Pringles. Toothbrush, toothpaste, toilet paper, wipes, and about fifteen books. There’s also a drawing pad, two pencils, and playing cards. With her back to the camera she tries to use the pencil to pick the lock on the handcuff, but after ten seconds she gives up. You’d need a paper clip or something. She looks through the books. Harry Potter, J. D. Salinger, Harper Lee, Herman Melville, Jane Austen. Yeah, probably an English teacher.

  She takes another sip of water and unspools some of the toilet paper and dries the tears from her face.

  She lies down on the mattress. It’s cold. She gets into the sleeping bag and hunkers down under it where the camera can’t see her.

  She feels safer here.

  If they can’t see her, that’s something. That’s a Daffy Duck trick. If I can’t see you, you don’t exist.

  Were they telling the truth about not wanting to harm her? You believed people until they showed you how bad they really were.

  But they’d already done that, hadn’t they?

  That policeman. He was probably dead or dying. Oh God.

  Remembering that gunshot, she wants to scream now. To scream and get someone to come and help her.