‘How did they …? Why did the handover go wrong?’ Lucy asks.
Simone takes a breath. She will tell her the truth in the most straightforward of terms, but nothing more. And then, after this, they must think this through; they must think about what it is they’re trying to do.
‘They said it wasn’t the right amount of drugs. I think one fell out when I was running … I heard sirens. In Mexico.’
And although Simone is explaining herself, she can’t help but think how foolish she has been. How she unthinkingly complied. Destroyed the flip phones. Put them in rubbish bins. Crossed the border. Should anything ever have gone wrong, the kidnapper was covered. Untraceable. Obviously, this was his entire plan.
‘Do you think we’re going to get away?’ Lucy asks, hervoice quiet, the question almost downbeat, rhetorical. Then: ‘Don’t answer that.’
She pauses. She gazes at the horizon, leaving Lucy to process her thoughts by herself, and she finally has some time to consider what they are trying to do. The ambulance will get to the body; will anyone connect it to them? Maybe not. Their DNA isn’t in a database. There’s no CCTV around there; the location no doubt deliberately chosen for that reason.
Nobody knows it was them. The 911 call was anonymous. Simone blinks, wondering whether she said anything that would give a clue to their identities, other than their British accents. They are suddenly on the run without meaning to be. The decision presented itself and they ran without thinking.
She doesn’t let up on the accelerator, though she is thinking perhaps she should. At what point are you running, and at what point are you on the run?
The only person who might know who they are is the kidnapper. And if he does, it’s all over for them. He could tell the police, even anonymously, that it was them.
But does he? Their passports were lying around in the lodge, but not disturbed, she thinks. The hire car was in her name, but would he be able to trace it, even if he saw the registration plate when watching her?
If they’re going to really try this, then they need to get home, now, as soon as possible, be free.
‘You don’t think he knows our names?’ Simone asks again.
‘No. Unless …’
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless the lodge was targeted. The door that wouldn’t lock …’ Lucy says, and Simone nods, her heart sinking. It can’t be a coincidence. Can it? But does that mean he knows their identities? Does it mean the police would know it’s them? Surely the kidnapper wouldn’t want to tell the police anything …
Simone guns the engine. ‘Do you think Dad understood the urgency to meet us at the airport?’
‘Yes,’ Lucy says. ‘Yes, I think so.’
She wishes Lucy could drive so she could pull over, concentrate on working everything through in her mind, but she can’t. Time is of the essence.
The road is black, bending and unspooling behind them like they’re on a spinning record. Canyons on the left, vast desert on the right, and Simone thinks about who the kidnapper might be, and what he might know about them, this man who executed every step of their downfall. Maybe she should have listened to Damien and told the police. The kidnapper was smarter than she was. She had no real idea she was destroying evidence, setting herself up.
But then she might not have got Lucy back.
‘You know when you decided to come,’ Lucy says, maybe thinking similar things to Simone, ‘did you ever think you might not? You do so much for me … I feel so bad.’
‘No,’ Simone says immediately and passionately. ‘I’d do anything.’
‘How did you decide?’
Simone reaches across the handbrake to touch Lucy, just gently, along her shoulders. ‘There was no decision. From the moment I got the text,’ she says, ‘I was coming.’
Simone looks at her daughter, and is glad Lucy doesn’t know what Damien thought, that there was any dispute at all. No child deserves to know there was indecision like that.
‘So you came armed, for the handover,’ Lucy says, and she nods, as though this were completely expected and normal, and Simone wonders if she might be traumatized, after all.
CHAPTER 28
They’re two hours from the airport when Lucy falls asleep, startling occasionally as she slides into dreams. She begins to mutter, just slightly, at one point. Saying, ‘I will take you,’ perhaps reliving the kidnapping. Simone isn’t sure.
It’s probably the first time Lucy has closed her eyes since she was taken, and something in Simone relaxes suddenly and satisfyingly like snapped elastic as her daughter’s breathing eventually steadies and the muttering stops. She lets out an exhale herself, her shoulders dropping, jaw unclenching, the tight ball of wool in her stomach tugged and unravelled. They’re far from danger, they’re far from free, and yet: they’re alive.
She grabs for the phone, shamefully not dropping her speed even a little, and sees that Damien is on his way to the airport, too, scant on details:Coming, he has written.Del Rio DRT. The precision of the airport code. Her reliable husband, her friend.
