“What is it?”
I don’t answer. It’s a link to some kind of live feed, which I open and watch.
“No...” I say this one word again, louder, as the image registers.
A school playground. Recess. Kids on swings and monkey bars and climbing towers, throwing balls and kicking balls and standing in small groups, talking. Running, chasing each other in games of tag. I’ve been in this scene. Recess at my girls’ school. The video plays in real time because it’s after lunch and that’s when they go out. I’ve been there on enough visiting days to know what I’m seeing.
I search the bodies for Fran’s yellow sweater and Amy’s black skirt. For flying curls and a long ponytail. For Mitch’s eyes and my nose.
And then my search is assisted by a zoomed focus—first on Fran running across a stretch of grass, then Amy with two girls just beyond the basketball hoop. In and out the camera takes me. To my children.
My children being watched by Wade.
“The school,” I say. I don’t even look at Rowan. I just tell him. “Go to the school!”
Rowan puts on the lights and the siren and steps on the gas.
I hold the phone in my hand and stare at the feed, which zooms out again. My eyes dart between different pieces of Wade’s show, following Fran, checking back on Amy.
Rowan calls the school. It goes to the automated system, then a prompt, and I say the extension with a trembling voice. We’re transferred to the principal’s office, where a woman named Marjorie answers. Every parent knows Marjorie. She’s the one to call if your child is sick or didn’t finish her homework or needs an extra day for vacation. She’s the one who now asks what’s wrong when she hears the sirens. She asks with great alarm, and I take a moment to think this through.
I grab Rowan’s phone from the dashboard mount and take it off the speaker, and he calls in for backup on the radio for any cars that might be closer to the school. He tells them to proceed cautiously. No lights or sirens.
“Sorry about that,” I tell Marjorie. “It’s Elise Sutton.”
She asks me if something is happening, and I know she’s thinking back to that shocking day when everyone within ten miles of Nichols heard sirens as responders raced to the scene.
I tell her there’s nothing to worry about, a fender bender on the highway, some units dispatched to deal with traffic, and that’s not why I’m calling.
I ask her to give my girls a message, tell them that I will pick them up today so they shouldn’t get on the bus.
“I think they have recess now,” I say, and she says, “Oh, yes, of course. I’ll get the message to them.”
I need her to go outside and call my children to one place. I need her eyes on my babies.
Even as my voice trembles, we say polite goodbyes, and I keep watching until we pull up on the street across from the playground. When we do, the video cuts off.
“Look for the truck!” I tell Rowan. He drives around the perimeter of the school. We don’t veer off because the children are still outside. Luring cops from an active scene to chase after a suspect is one of the things I used to teach in my classes.
Wade knows. He knows because he’s accessed my online materials, which means he’s inside my head.
There’s always a way to get around the police.I can see the words as I typed them into a case study about a kidnapping.
I make Rowan park across from the playground where I can watch. I see my girls now, in the flesh. Marjorie is there speaking with their teachers, giving them the message, and then the teachers find them and pass it along, and then recess is called to an end and the kids meander slowly back to the side entrance of the school.
When they close the door, I lose it. Everything I’m holding in pours out.
“I’m going to find him, and I’m going to kill him.” The words come between heaves of breath and streams of tears. I pound my fist into the dashboard. “I will kill him!”
Rowan doesn’t react except to reach for my phone.
“Is it still there?”
He pulls up the message, but the link has expired.
“Maybe they captured something at the station,” he thinks out loud.
But I know they didn’t. Wade wouldn’t take that chance.
