‘Yes.’ Lucy nods, and Simone is glad: neither of them is a monster. They are victims, forced into circumstances by this man lying before them who chose to take a woman and send a ransom.
‘OK,’ Simone says, her breathing quick. She can feel her nostrils flaring with the effort. Panic – quelled by finding Lucy – begins to rise again. ‘We need to call 911.’
CHAPTER 25
The phones are in Simone’s car, and she starts walking back towards them. ‘Use that,’ Lucy says, indicating the grey payphone with the bright yellow handle, the one withSOSwritten above it. It’s right there, waiting for them, a clear signal, no money needed, and Simone lifts the handset hastily, wondering if they will be too late to save him. She didn’t want to kill him. She only wanted her daughter back.
The buttons have fingertip-shaped recesses. She touches their smooth divots as she dials 911 –finally– and then the call connects.
‘911, what’s your emergency?’ a woman says. Her accent is Southern American, vowels bending and stretching.
‘We … I … there’s a man who’s been injured by the side of the road,’ Simone tells her. ‘There’s been an accident.’ Even dimly, here in this surreal place, Simone recognizes the passive language she’s using, defensive language.
The call handler steps into action with a proactive and loud ‘OK. Is he breathing? What was the nature of the accident?’
‘He was – he was shot,’ Simone says. As she says the words, her own accent sounding clipped and remote next to the American drawl, she can’t believe that they’re true. But they must be. Maybe it’s still four o’clock in the morning, she finds herself thinking. Or maybe she’s about to wake, two days ago, for their holiday.
‘And where’s the shooter now?’
Simone hesitates. She meets Lucy’s gaze but she gives nothing away. The marks are still on her wrists. Her eyes are wet. She’s trembling, just slightly. You have to really look for it, but you can see it once you notice: loose strands of her hair vibrating, her lower lip chattering like she’s cold, a blurring around the edges of her body. Simone can only think of this, despite the magnitude of the question being posed to her.
Then, infinitesimally, Lucy shakes her head, and Simone has a reaction to this. One she can’t name, but it’s a strong one. Simone isn’t dishonest, and neither is she a coward. She plays a straight bat. She dealt directly with a kidnapper. And now she must deal directly with the law, not hide from it, not lie to it. She takes the stinging nettle from her past, let down by paperwork and people not doing their jobs passionately enough, and grasps it.
‘It was me,’ Simone says, and, next to her, Lucy’s eyes widen. ‘He took my daughter – he kidnapped her. We – it was a handover,’ she says.
‘Is your daughter there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she safe?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK – please get down level with the man. Is he breathing, can you tell me?’
Simone gestures frantically to Lucy, but she steps back, waving her hands at Simone; she doesn’t want to be near to him. ‘Just come,’ Simone says to the operator, tears gathering in her throat. She’s done this to him.
‘I’ll dispatch an EMS. Emergency Medical Services.’
She leaves the phone hanging, rolls the kidnapper on to his back and begins to check his airways, leaning her ear down by his mouth as instructed.
There’s too much blood.
Lucy grabs the phone. ‘Please, please send them quickly,’ she says into the handset. Then she listens intently, for just a second, while Simone tries to stem the bleeding, to try and find a pulse. She thinks she can feel one, a faint, dull heartbeat.
‘Well,’ Lucy says, then adds: ‘Hang on.’ She gestures to Simone with it. ‘They want you back on.’
‘Huh?’ Simone takes the phone.
‘Let me transfer you to the sheriff now,’ the operator is saying, ‘who deals with dispatching the local police.’
Simone blinks. Everything works differently here. The roads are different, the cars are different and so, too, are the police.
The line goes dead, then clicks, rings twice, and a male voice answers while Simone surveys the body. The man. The body. ‘Emergency dispatch.’
Simone tells him the exact same thing she told the handler. ‘Who’s there now?’ he asks.
‘The man, the kidnapper. And me and my daughter.’
