The Chain Read online

Rachel shivers with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. How can she think about this sort of thing so glibly? Is that what trauma does to you?

  Yes.

  It reminds her again of the chemo days. The numbness. The feeling of plunging into the abyss and falling, falling, falling forever.

  She goes upstairs, leaves through the back door, closes it, shuts the screen door, and makes sure the coast is completely clear before going down the back steps onto the beach.

  She walks home again through the sea spray and drizzle.

  She opens her MacBook at the living-room table and begins checking the Facebook feeds on her list of potential targets.

  Selecting the right target is very important. You have to choose the right kind of victim with the right kind of family, people who won’t lose their shit and go to the cops and who have both the money to pay the ransom and the emotional wherewithal to carry out a kidnapping to get their child back.

  Again she wonders why she was singled out. She wouldn’t have picked herself. No way. She was going to pick someone much more together. A married couple, maybe, with money.

  She gets out her legal pad and comes up with some criteria so she can narrow down her long list. No one who knows her and might possibly recognize her voice. No one in Newburyport or Newbury or Plum Island. But also not someone who is too far away. No one in Vermont or Maine or south of Boston. People who have dough. People who look steady. No cops, journalists, or politicians.

  She scrolls through names and faces and again marvels at how willing people are to spill their intimate secrets on the web for anyone to see. Addresses, phone numbers, occupations, number of kids, where their kids go to school, all their hobbies and activities.

  A kid is probably the best bet. The most pliable. The least likely to struggle or escape and the most likely to pull at the heartstrings of loved ones. But kids are well watched in this day and age. It might be tricky to grab a child without being seen.

  “Except for my kid. Anybody can take my kid,” Rachel says and sniffs.

  She goes through Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and applies the criteria. She culls her long list down to five kids. She ranks the children in order of preference.

  1. Denny Patterson of Rowley, Mass.

  2. Toby Dunleavy of Beverly, Mass.

  3. Belinda Watson of Cambridge, Mass.

  4. Chandra Singh of Cambridge, Mass.

  5. Jack Fenton of Gloucester, Mass.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Rachel says to herself. Although, of course, she doesn’t have to do anything. She could go to the cops or the FBI.

  She takes time to consider it. To really think about it. The FBI are professionals, but the woman holding her daughter isn’t afraid of the criminal justice system; she’s afraid of The Chain. The person above her on The Chain has her son. And if Rachel is perceived as a defector, this woman’s instructions are to murder Kylie and select a new target. The woman is sounding increasingly on edge. Rachel has no doubt she will do anything to get her son back…

  No, no FBI. And furthermore, when she makes the phone call that the woman made to her, she’ll have to sound equally determined and dangerous.

  She looks at the notes she’s made on her various targets. Her number-one choice looks very good indeed: Denny Patterson. Twelve. Lives with his mom, Wendy, in Rowley. Single mom, dad out of the picture. She isn’t bankrupt. In fact, she seems to be quite well-off.

  Rachel considers that. What is it that the operators of The Chain want? The most important thing is that The Chain itself continues. Some of the people on it will be richer than others, but more crucial than their wealth is the fact that they have to be clever and discreet enough to add another link and keep the whole thing going. Each individual link in The Chain is precious. The targets have to have money but they also have to be competent and pliable and afraid. Like she is now. A strong link with a few hundred dollars in the bank is better than a weak link who is a millionaire.

  Kierkegaard said that boredom and fear lay at the root of all evil. The evil people behind The Chain want the money they collect, and what they fear is the individual who might bring the whole thing crashing to a halt.

  Rachel is not going to be that person.

  Back to Denny. Denny’s mom had a company that was bought by AOL back in the day. Loves her son, brags about him all the time. She seems tough and unlikely to go to pieces. Forty-five years old. Ran the Boston Marathon twice, in 2013 and again last year. Faster last year. Four hours, two minutes.

  Denny likes video games, Selena Gomez, and the movies, and the best thing—from Rachel’s point of view—is that he’s crazy about soccer. Goes to practice three times a week after school and often walks home.

  Walks home.

  Curly-haired, nice, normal kid. No allergies, no health problems, is not big for his age. In fact, he looks a little bit smaller than the average. Definitely not the goalkeeper for his team.

  The mom has one sister; she lives in Arizona. Dad not around. Lives in South Carolina. Remarried.

  No family cop or political connections.

  Wendy has embraced the digital future, Instagramming or tweeting her location and what she is up to practically every waking minute of the day. So if Rachel spies the kid at soccer practice, Wendy will let her know where the hell she is.

  Kid 1 sounds very promising. She looks now at Kid 2: Toby Dunleavy, also twelve, from Beverly. Has a little sister. Mother continually updating everything they do on Facebook.

  She pulls up Helen Dunleavy’s Facebook page. A smiling, pleasant-looking blonde about thirty-five. I’m not neurotic. I am too busy to be neurotic are the words under her photo. Helen lives in Beverly with her husband, Mike, and her son and daughter, Toby and Amelia. Mike is a management consultant in Boston with Standard Chartered. Helen is a part-time kindergarten teacher at North Salem Elementary School.

  Amelia is eight years old, four years younger than Toby. Rachel scrolls through the Facebook feed. Helen teaches kindergarten two mornings a week and the rest of the time she seems to spend updating her friends on Facebook about the family’s doings. Mike Dunleavy apparently works long hours in Boston and most nights doesn’t come home until late. Rachel knows this because Helen posts about what train Mike is coming back on and whether she is going to have the kids wait up for him or not.

  Rachel finds Mike’s résumé at LinkedIn. He’s thirty-nine, originally from London, and recently lived in New York. No political or police background, and he looks stable enough. He likes soccer, and he used to be an auctioneer before going into management consulting. His claim to fame is selling a can of Merda d’Artista by Piero Manzoni.

  Helen is one of three sisters. She’s the middle child. Both of her sisters are homemakers. One is married to a lawyer; one is divorced from a food scientist.

  The kids get picked up from school every day without fail, but what makes Toby attractive is the fact that he has just started archery. Goes twice a week to the Salem and District Archery Club.

  Archery is Toby’s big new passion. There’s a link on his Facebook page to an adorable YouTube video of him shooting at various archery targets to the music of Ini Kamoze’s “Here Comes the Hotstepper.” And the great thing is that he walks home from the archery club. All by himself. He’s a good boy. Kids should be doing more of that, Rachel thinks and then remembers that she is exactly the reason why helicopter/overprotective parents exist.

  Kid 1 and Kid 2 both look promising and she has three solid backups too.

  She closes the computer, gets her coat, and drives into town to visit the hardware store. In the car her phone begins to ring. “Hello?”

  “Hi, could I speak to Rachel O’Neill, please.”

  “This is she.”

  “Hi, Rachel, I’m Melanie, calling from the fraud department at Chase. I wanted to alert you to some unusual activity on your Visa card this morning.”

  “OK.”

  Melanie asks her some verification question
s and then gets to the point: “Apparently someone used your card to purchase ten thousand dollars’ worth of Bitcoin. Do you know anything about that?”

  “You didn’t stop the order from going through, did you?”

  “No, we didn’t. Um, but we were wondering—”

  “It was me. I did it. It’s all fine. It’s an investment I’m making with my husband. Look, I’m really in the middle of something, I have to go.”

  “So there’s been no unusual activity?”

  “Nope. Nothing unusual. All good here. But thank you for calling. I really have to go. Goodbye,” Rachel says and hangs up.

  At the hardware store she gets a board made for the Appenzellers’ basement window and when she’s on the way back home, Marty calls. Finally!

  She tries not to burst into tears at his always amiable and cheery “Hey, sweetie, what’s up?”

  For some reason, you can’t really hate Marty no matter how much you want to. Something about those green eyes and that dark wavy hair. Rachel’s mother had warned her that he was a rogue, but that kind of talk has always backfired on mothers.

  “Tammy said something about a leaky roof?” Marty inquires.

  “What?”

  “The roof. Tammy said rain was coming in?”

  “Where are you, Marty?” she asks and almost adds I need you.

  “I’m in Augusta. We’re down here for the retreat.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “I’ll be back Friday evening to take Kylie for the weekend, don’t worry.”

  Rachel stifles a sob. “Oh, Marty,” she whispers.

  “That’s tomorrow, hon. Hang in there.”

  “I will.”

  “This isn’t about the roof, is it? What’s happening, babe? Something’s wrong. Tell me.”

  Aside from the fact that I’m probably dying and our daughter’s been kidnapped? she very nearly says but doesn’t. Doesn’t because Marty would go straight to the police and wouldn’t understand.

  “Is it about money? I haven’t been good, I know that. I’ll do better. I promise. Have you got a contractor?”

  “No. I’ve got no help,” Rachel says in a monotone.

  “How badly is the roof leaking?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look, hon, I checked the weather. No roofer will come out in the rain tonight. Maybe Pete could help?”

  “Pete? Where is Pete?”

  “He’s in Worcester. I think.”

  “I’ll send him a text. I think I’ll be allowed to do that.”

  “What are you talking about? Allowed by whom?”

  “Nothing. No one. Yes, maybe I’ll ask Pete. I’ll think about that.”

  “All right, sweetie. I really have to go, OK?”

  “OK, Marty,” she says sadly.

  “’Bye,” he says and hangs up. Without his calming baritone, the car is chilly and silent once more.

  16

  Thursday, 2:44 p.m.

  Unless you are a bow hunter, a paraplegic, an ancient-firearms enthusiast, or under the age of eighteen, deer-hunting season in Massachusetts doesn’t begin until November 27.

  Pete, however, has never really bought into the logic of the Massachusetts hunting-season dates or, indeed, most laws, rules, and ordinances.

  He knows that if the rangers or a sheriff catches him, he could get fined or worse. But the rangers won’t catch him. Pete knows these woods west of Worcester the way other people know the bars outside Fenway or the rotation of the girls at Hurricane Betty’s. He’s been hunting these forests since he was a boy. Admittedly, his senses are dulled somewhat because of his current issues, but even so, no clumsy sheriff’s deputy or high-visibility-vest-wearing ranger is going to surprise him.

  He often thinks about moving to Alaska, where there would be even fewer rangers and deputies, but Kylie will keep him in the state at least until she’s off to college. Kylie is his only niece and he’s nuts about her. They text nearly every day and he always takes her to those movies her mom can’t sit through.

  Pete follows the big buck deeper into the birch forest. It has no idea it is being stalked. He’s upwind of it and he moves through the trees in utter silence. Pete is very good at this. In the Marines he had been an engineering officer, but after a couple of years of building bridges under mortar fire, he had taken a sabbatical to attend the basic recon course at Camp Pendleton. He finished near the top of his class. The brass had wanted him to transfer to a recon battalion but he’d done it only to test himself.

  He sights the old buck in his rifle and aims under the heart, but just as he is about to squeeze the trigger, his phone vibrates in his pocket. Should have turned it off, he thinks. Didn’t imagine there would be a signal out here.

  He looks at it. Two new messages, one from Rachel and one from Marty. Both asking the same question: Where are you?

  He tries to respond to Rachel, but the message won’t go through. He ignores Marty’s text. He doesn’t hate Marty but they have little in common. There’s six years between them, and by the time Marty was up walking and talking and starting to get interesting, Pete had been itching to get out of the house. And get out he had. At the age of twelve, he had “borrowed” a neighbor’s Chevy Impala and driven it all the way to East Franklin, Vermont. He’d been heading for Montreal, of all places, but he was stopped at the Canadian border and arrested.

  And nothing had happened. Nothing at all. The judge gave him the old blah-blah-blah and a finger-wagging. He’d stolen more cars after that but was more careful. No attempts to cross the border, no racing. He hooked up with a bad crowd in high school, but nobody cared as long as he maintained a high-B average, which he did. School bored him but he somehow managed to get accepted to Boston University to study civil engineering. At BU he just about maintained a C average. He spent most of his time playing with the new computer-aided design software, creating outrageous suspension bridges that could never be built and old-fashioned cantilever bridges that no one wanted. He graduated in May of 2000 with no plans for or ideas about his future.

  He moved to New York and attempted to make a living as a cybersecurity expert on the burgeoning World Wide Web. Everybody said that the internet was the new gold rush, but Pete must have been panning in the wrong virtual rivers. He barely made enough to keep up with the interest on his student loans.

  But then a year later: September 11.

  He went to Times Square the next morning. No one who was in New York then will ever forget that day after. It was a new world. At the recruiting booth, there was a line that stretched to Thirty-Fourth Street. Pete’s grandfather had been in the navy. With Pete’s engineering degree and background, the recruiters recommended the navy or the Marine Corps. Pete chose the Marines. And that was all she wrote for the next thirteen years. Officer Candidate School, the combat engineers, seven overseas tours, five to operational theaters. After the Marines, he’d traveled some and finally moved back to Worcester.

  Now that chapter of his life is closed. Now he’s just another unemployed forty-year-old who needs to take some free venison to make it through the winter.

  The stag lowers its big head to take a drink at a stream. There’s a scar that runs along its left flank. They’ve both been in the wars.

  Pete has a clear shot, but something tells him that the stag is going to have to wait. He has that feeling you get in the back of the neck: Something is up. Something is wrong.

  He looks at the texts again: Where are you?

  Is Rach in some kind of trouble? He puts the rifle over his shoulder and looks for some slightly higher ground to see if he can get a signal, but now his phone says that it’s got 1 percent charge.

  He climbs the little hill above the waterfall and tries texting from there but in the two minutes that that takes, of course his phone dies. The big stag turns to look at him. They stare at each other for three seconds.

  Spooked, it slips between the trees. Pete watches it vanish with regret. Food stamps go on
ly so far. He secures the rifle and heads back to his truck.

  And now his skin is starting to crawl. Is it that time already? He looks at the sky. It can’t be three o’clock. But evidently it is. He hikes through the autumnal wood and finds his pickup truck undisturbed in the firebreak. Unfortunately, he hasn’t brought his phone charger, so he will have to wait until he gets back to his apartment in Worcester to see what Rachel wants.

  17

  Thursday, 3:27 p.m.

  Kylie sits in the sleeping bag. She holds the toothpaste tube in one hand, her wrists aching from the effort of trying to pick the handcuff lock. She remembers a YouTube video Stuart wanted to show her about three ways to get out of handcuffs. Stuart loves that kind of thing—Houdini, magic, escapes. She hadn’t watched it; she’d been on her own phone scrolling for the video about a new secret chamber someone had found in the Great Pyramid.

  Next time she would pay attention.

  If there is a next time, she thinks with a rush of terror.

  She breathes deep and closes her eyes.

  She likes magic also.

  The Egyptians lived in a god-and-demon-infested world.

  There are demons here too, but they are human beings.

  She wonders if her mom is doing the things the kidnappers want her to do. She wonders if the kidnappers have mistaken her mom for someone else. Someone with access to a bank vault or government secrets…

  She takes a big breath, lets it out slowly, does it again.

  She’s calmer now. Not calm, but calmer.

  She listens to the nothing.

  No, not nothing. There’s always something. Crickets. A jet. A very distant river. Seconds tick past, then minutes. She wants the river to take her away from this place, these people, away from all of it. It doesn’t matter where. She wants to lie back and let the current float her down through the marshes to the Atlantic.

  No. That’s fake. A dream. This is real. This basement. These cuffs. Be in the now, the school counselor had said in that mindfulness class they had all mocked. Be present and see everything there is to see in the now.