“Yeah. Came along no trouble at all.”
“You couldn’t,” Jane said. “He wouldn’t. The camp knows I never pick him up before five. Anyway, you’re not on the list. They’d never release him to you.”
That’s right, Lauren thought. That had to be right. In these days of custody disputes and paranoid parents, schools and camps had to take precautions. Even on Dare Island.
“Didn’t ask them, did I? Boy was standing around while the rest of them played ball. I called his name, told him you were expecting him.”
“Aidan knows not to go with strangers.”
But Lauren knew that to a six-year-old, “stranger” meant something different, someone scary, like a villain in a cartoon. If Travis smiled and called the child by name...
Travis grinned. “I’m not a stranger, am I? Anyway, he told me he gets rides all the time. You shouldn’t have raised him to be so trusting, Janey.”
Lauren’s lungs emptied.
“Aidan!” Jane bolted for the door.
Travis grabbed her arm, wrenching a sound of pain from her throat.
Lauren couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. The scene took on the flat, bright, jerky motion of a gif, playing over and over on her computer screen.
“I’m sick and tired of living out of my damn truck,” Travis said. “You’ve got a house. You’ve got a business. Well, now, I’ve got our kid. What’s he worth to you?”
“Anything. Everything,” Jane said. “Just don’t take Aidan.”
Travis pushed her behind the counter. “I need cash.”
Do something, Lauren thought. But her feet were glued to the floor, her mind frozen in fear. And maybe it would be all right, maybe he didn’t have Aidan after all, maybe...
Jack. His name hit her brain like a jolt of pure oxygen.
Jack would know what to do.
Her phone was in her purse under the counter, out of reach.Crap. “This is obviously a family discussion,” she said, slinking back toward the kitchen. “I’ll just...”
“Cash,” Travis snapped to Jane.
Jane fumbled with the register, her hands shaking. Lauren slid between the stainless counters of the work aisle toward the back door.
“Hey, you! Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
Lauren gasped and smacked her palm on the panic button of the alarm panel by the back door. There was a moment’s silence, while her lungs seized and her blood drummed in her ears.
Then the alarm erupted.
“Fuck!” Travis screamed. “What the fuck did you do, bitch?”
The door. Lauren grabbed for the doorknob. The sirens blared.Run, run...
But Jane cried out behind her and she stopped, jerked back like a marionette by its strings.
“Get back here,” Travis ordered.
Slowly, Lauren turned. Travis was holding Jane’s arm in one hand, a stack of bills in the other.
He scowled. “All the way back. In here.”
Lauren sidled forward, keeping out of his reach, out of his way.
