“Gina,” he says. “Look at me.” The tone’s almost gentle. “I’m sorry it has to be like this, in front of the cameras. I didn’t want that for you. I wanted it to be just you and me. But Absalom wanted to get paid back for what they’ve done for me. And what they’re going to do.”
“You’re apologizing?” I can’t help it. I let out a bitter, barking laugh. “God, what next. What’s Absalom going to do for you, do you think? Get you out of the country? Set you up somewhere with new victims? They’re using you, you idiot. When they get what they want, they’ll kill you, too.”
“Don’t call me an idiot,” he says, and the gentleness melts out of his voice and leaves it flat and cold. “Don’t ever do that. I played you, Gina. All the way down.” His chin lowers, and his eyes almost seem to shutter. There’s no humanity in them now. Just the monster. “Brady’s been calling me. Did you know that?”
It hits me under the shield I’m holding up, and all my wonderful, freeing anger gutters out in an instant. I stop trying to get free. I don’t want to give him an inch, but I can’t stop myself from asking, “What are you talking about?”
“Our son. Brady.” Melvin sits down on the edge of the bed. “I arranged for him to be given a phone when our friend Lancel had him—remember that? That phone was Brady’s lifeline, if he needed it. Turns out he did. First you abandoned him. Then he discovered you lied to him. Just enough doubt to exploit, to get him talking. It almost worked.” There’s a terrible, bitter disgust in the twist of his mouth now. “But you made him a weak, sad little rag doll, our son. You did that to him. He’s worthless to me the way he is. I’m going to have to toughen him up now.”
This is not the calm, polite Melvin that other people knew. It’s not even the Melvin I knew, back in Wichita; he never would have said these things, not about his own son. This is the toxic sludge at the bottom of a black lake spilling out of his mouth. Hearing him talk about my son this way makes me sick, and it also makes me terrified.
“You’re lying. You couldn’t have been talking to him,” I say, because that’s the only thing I can cling to. “He would have told me.”
“He didn’t use the phone right away—you kept him on a tight enough leash. But once he started, he just couldn’t stop.” Another cold smile. “Like father, like son, I suppose.”
I remember suddenly who found that awful video. Connor. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t Absalom. Melvin did that to our son. He did it deliberately. “You son of a bitch.”
“It’s not my fault you left him with strangers,” Melvin says. “You made him vulnerable. Easy to break, and I broke him. I was planning to have him here with us. I think that would have been fitting, for him to see you break, and then I could take him with me and teach him how to be strong. But it didn’t work. Instead of Brady, we got Lily.”
It’s coming too fast, and it’s too much. I don’t have time to feel the shocks. I’m drowning in them. “You mean Lanny?” I’ve said her name, and I wish I hadn’t, because he can see the cracks now. The fear. He feeds on it. “You don’t have her.”
“You’re right. I don’t. She got in the way when Absalom’s transport man went to get our son. By now she’s up in the hills, at another of our . . . special places.” He shrugs. “I told them to make some use out of her, one way or another. She’s not as marketable as she would have been younger, but—”
“Shut up!” I scream, and the raw edge to it surprises me. I feel heavy and cold, like my body is already giving up. I want my rage back. The fear is too hard. Too heavy. Lanny, oh my sweet precious girl, where are you, what’s he done . . .
I remind myself, somehow, that Melvin Royal is a liar. A deceiver. A manipulator. And he knows where my undefended weaknesses lie. My children are how he hurts me. I have to believe they’re safe. I have to.
“You’re a very bad mother,” he says into the weighted silence. “I’m going to get my son and make him mine again. I’ve already got your daughter. You think about that until I’m ready for you.”
He knows when to strike and retreat. He stands up and goes to the door, and for the first time I realize that this bedroom has other furniture in it—an old, leaning dresser, some framed prints half-eaten by mold. A cracked mirror that shows the world in two badly reflected pieces.
In it, I’m torn in half, as if he’s already started destroying me.
I know I should get myself free. I know I should fight. I have to fight.
But all I can do, as Melvin leaves me, is lie there, shuddering. I claw the sheet over me, because the cold seems so intense, despite the thick, tepid air. I need my anger back.
I wonder if anyone knows where I am. If Sam might be looking, or if he even cares to try.
Maybe this is how I end.
Maybe, before he destroys me completely, I’ll buy my children’s safety with my blood.
That’s all I can wish for now.
26
SAM
It costs Rivard three broken fingers, but he finally agrees to call the airfield and has them ready his private plane for us. That gets around the impossible tangle of canceled flights out of the commercial lines, but it throws us another curve: it takes time to get the plane fueled and ready, and when we board, we find that the pilot’s not there yet. He’s going to be another hour coming in.
I tell the flight attendant to take the day off with pay. We aren’t going to need drinks and dinner. She seems surprised, but nobody ever argues against an unexpected bonus, and her quick departure leaves us on the aircraft, alone.
Mike’s watching me as I check the time. It’s already eight o’clock central time. Flight time to Baton Rouge is about an hour and a half, but the weather between us means diverting around it, and that adds at least another half an hour. If we’re not wheels up until nine, that’s eleven on the ground, and no time to get to where Gwen’s being held. We should have tried having Rivard call it off. But I knew he’d screw us on that. It would be his only sure revenge.
Every second we waste now is blood in the water. “I’m taking the plane,” I tell him. He nods; he’s been expecting that. He knows I can fly it, and it’s fueled and ready. “Lock it up and let’s get in the air.”
I slide into the pilot’s chair and start preflight checks. The cockpit’s different—sleeker and more automated than most—but I’ve driven enough birds that everything’s clear at a glance. Tens of thousands of hours behind me. This plane’s a piece of cake. I plot the course and lock it in, and the onboard computer automatically loads the weather stats and adjusts. I was right. Two hours’ flight time.
I know how to clear the plane for takeoff, and I’m not surprised that the tower doesn’t notice the pilot change; small airfields like these, they thrive on people knowing their own business. I get on the com and tell Mike to take a seat, then taxi the plane out. Focusing on the work keeps the jitters at bay, and the images of what’s happening to Gwen a distance, at least for now.