I had no idea how well hidden his little insurance policy would turn out to be.
69
I run every red light on the way back and almost crash twice. A gray Volvo is parked on the drive when I get home, pulled up close to the porch.
The front door is ajar, the house silent. I grab the gray backpack from the passenger seat of my car and race up the stairs two at a time, resisting the urge to call out to my wife.
The first-floor landing is empty.
Halting for a second to catch my breath, I realize the house is notquitesilent. Up here, I can hear something above me, a steady mechanical hum that is too vague to make out.
The phone buzzes in my pocket again. But I’m here now and I know what I have to do.
I run up the second staircase into the smallest of the three bedrooms on the top floor, the place where all of this started. Still a mess of boxes and bags and old broken furniture, a desk pushed hard up against the hidden door. I haul it away and wrench the door open, smashing it back on its hinges, a wall of heat hitting me as I step over the threshold into the small, enclosed space.
Jess…
She’s there, lying sideways in the dark, in her work clothes but with no shoes, her bare feet tied with thin rope. Her wrists are bound in front of her.
Her eyes are shut, skin beaded with sweat.
The noise is coming from a portable diesel-powered heater in the corner of the room. It looks ancient, paint flaking with rust as it chugs away, pouring hot air into the enclosed space.
Not only hot air.
I reach over and snap off the generator, then grab the pull-cord for the overhead light. Nothing happens—and I realize why as shards of the broken bulb crunch beneath my feet. My wife is breathing but only just, her pulse weak and fluttery. She needs air, she needs oxygen, she needs to be anywhere but in this room with these toxic fumes.
“Jess?” I carry her unconscious body out through the doorway, before laying her down as gently as I can and patting her cheek. “Can you hear me? Wake up, love.Pleasewake up.”
I take out my phone to call for an ambulance and see there are now two missed calls and two picture messages from Maxine’s number.
I dial 999 and minimize the screen as I wait for the call to connect, selecting the first of the picture messages. The text below it is only three words.
Charlie found this.
The screen fills with what looks like a photo of a photo.
It’s a group of teenage boys and girls in skiing jackets and overalls. They’re on the balcony of a restaurant, against a backdrop of snow-covered mountains and a perfectly blue Alpine sky. An elaborate school crest on the cardboard mount features a Latin motto and a gold-embossed heading that reads “Trent High School, Chatel, 1992.”
The phone continues to ring.
Two faces on the photo have been circled in red. The first one I recognize instantly: in the center of the group, as if surrounded by adoring acolytes, is the movie-star handsome face of eighteen-year-old Peter Flack. He reclines in his chair like a king, tanned, relaxed, a predatory smile full of toxic confidence. The very definition of an alpha male.
The 999 call is still ringing. I put it on speaker with an impotent shout.
“Come on!”
The other face circled in red is on the periphery of the group, the edge of the picture, turned slightly toward Flack as if they can’t take their eyes off him even for a second.
I pinch the image with my fingers to zoom in closer.
It looks like…
Oh, shit.
Finally, my 999 call connects.
“Operator,” a young female voice says. “Which service do you require?”
