And Mack would be in no position to stop this from happening, because he and Hailey would be incarcerated, right from the word go. The money they’d taken would see to that: the voice had promised terrorism and human trafficking, it knew all about the account in Liberia and who else its account holder might have paid out to—drug dealers, arms dealers, people smugglers. Mack was pretty sure that he believed it; he had no reason not to.Police raids,the voice had said.Swift and decisive action, let me tell you.
How and why had this voice found them?
Hailey had a slightly different spin on a similar thought: “I told you to change your number,” was the first thing she said to Mack once they’d absorbed the shock of the call. “Passwords aren’t enough. This ishacking; we need to start all over. New devices, new phone numbers. Itoldyou. God I wish Dennis would call me back. I’m sure he’d say that too.”
“So now it’s my fault? And you don’t think this guy would have found some other way to tell us what he wants?”Of courseHailey had changed her number, had literally just taken possession of a new phone via UPS. Mack had refused; his compromised messages and emails were the least of his worries. Or they had been, until now.
All around him the machinery of Christmas was cranking on. In a repeat of Thanksgiving, Hailey wouldn’t cancel her parents, which to Mack was pure craziness—Pam and Eddie would be walking into a war zone tomorrow, as far as he was concerned. But when the morning of the twenty-fourth dawned after another endless, sleepless night, he understood: Hailey had adopted a siege mentality, and their house was the Alamo, fortified with piles of wrapping paper and a hastily bought hunk of roast beef that looked way too small for the six of them.
“I told my dad to bring us a gun,” she said to Mack quietly, while Mabel and Gigi, still in their pj’s, were busy pressing sprinkles on a flaccid, uncut roll of store-bought cookie dough. “I told him about the break-in, and he’s happy to do it.”
“Did you tell him about the phone call?”
“No.”
“What about the girls? We said we’d never let guns around the girls.” But the words were empty; he wanted the gun as much as Hailey did. Maybe more. He wondered if Eddie would teach him how to fire it, or whether he would show Hailey instead.
It had snowed more overnight, and Mack found himself staring out windows, coffee cup in hand, looking for footprints around the house. (There weren’t any, though he did notice that two of the window frames on the first floor were cracking, as were the walls around them. But let Simeon worry about that.)
Maybe Hailey had the right idea: If they were all barricaded in here, with new locks and agun, how could anyone get to them? Then they could reassess, once Christmas had passed—and the twenty-sixth too. Then they could see where they stood, once they had disobeyed instructions, because there was no way, Mack realized, that this person was going to hunt down all their friends and family. It just wasn’t possible; he’d never heard of such a thing, and he’d read a lot of crime novels. Hell, hetaughta lot of them.
“Are you just going to stand around drinking coffee, or are you going to help me?” Hailey was trying to get rid of the concrete dust that had filtered through the air-conditioning vents; it coated the floors and the furniture in a fine white powder.
“I’m thinking,” Mack told her. “And does a little dust really matter now? Who cares if the house is clean?”
He’d known before he opened his mouth that this would be a red flag to a bull; Hailey had not been happy about letting the cleaner go, even though she knew they couldn’t afford it, even though Mack had promised to take over housekeeping duties since he wasn’t working.
“It matters to me,” she snapped. “I don’t want my parents and my kids breathing this in. I think we have enough problems, don’t you?”
You’re reckless!is what she meant—Mack could read between the lines. He could sense the shift; she’d decided now that everything was his fault, when in reality they had no idea who was doing this to them, or why.
His phone rang, as if to chastise them for fighting. It was an Ohio number, but it wasn’t in Mack’s contacts. He said hello and then held his breath.
The voice was normal. A man’s.
“Oh hey,” it said. “I’m looking for Mrs. Evans, actually, but her number seems to be disconnected.”
“Who’s this?” Mack’s words came out harsher than he’d intended, and the voice was taken aback.
“It’s Ben Stales. Simeon gave me this number. I’m calling about the concrete sample.”
“On Christmas Eve?”
“I don’t know about you, buddy,” said Ben Stales, his voice thick with contempt. “But it’s a workday for me.”
“Right. Sorry. Here’s Hailey.” Mack passed her his phone, and he did not wait around to hear the bad news. Instead, he went down to his stuffy, suffocating office.
Gulliver was in there, stretched out and frosted with cement particles. The door hadn’t been closed, and the dust was still thick in the air. Mack clicked on his computer, and saw a new message from Sandy Hollow, from Tilda:Can you talk today?It was from two days ago.
Shit! He had forgotten to call his mother! For the second week in a row!
Are you working tomorrow?Mack wrote back.I could call her then, or on your first day back? Sorry, it’s been wild around here.
He didn’t know why he was apologizing to Tilda; it was his mother, and she had no idea he was calling anyway.
He brushed the dust from his desk with his hand, shook it from the yellowed picture of his ancestors and from the envelope with his father’s death certificate, which had arrived from Florida, confirming what Mack already knew: Warner T. Evers (aka Warner T. Evans) had died in Daytona Beach, of natural causes.
He heard a rustle in the furnace room and followed Gulliver out to investigate. It was Hailey, crouching over the big hole in the floor by the drain, inspecting the pipes in the glare of the bare light bulb.
