“Owen knew it before he asked me to marry him and raised Luke like he was his own. Never said a negative word about it.”
Jack looked out the kitchen window and then back at her.
“Why didn’t you have more kids?”
“I couldn’t,” Kate said.
“Why not?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Look at it from my point of view,” Jack said. “It’s hard to believe.”
“That’s because you don’t want to believe it,” Kate said. “Then you’d have to admit responsibility and you’ve always had trouble with that.”
“Whatever,” Jack said.
Jack went outside and stood on the gravel drive, thinking about the bomb Kate just dropped on him. He never wanted a kid and didn’t want one now. Why’d she tell him? So he’d make sure nothing happened to him? Nothing was going to anyway.
DeJuan suggested the kidnapping, although it had been stewing in the back of his brain too. Jack liked the idea ’cause it sounded easy and it solved a major problem. He could get Teddy and DeJuan off his back and make some money and cruise for a while. Kate was rich-it wasn’t going to change her life one way or the other.
The plan: they’d split the take, return Luke to his mother and go their separate ways. Kate would never even know he was involved. They were going to grab Luke at the house the day he left: Teddy and Celeste would go in, get him after school, bring him to Teddy’s place in Clawson, keep him in the basement till Kate got the money.
Jack’s job was to keep Kate away from the house, then keep her calm, make sure she got the money and didn’t call the police. He also had to tell them when and where to find Luke. Without him, it wouldn’t have happened.
Luke taking off threw a wrench in the works for a couple days, but definitely made it easier in the long run. The remote location turned out to be an advantage too.
Now things were a little more complicated, but still workable. He’d get his share of the money and take off just like he planned. He didn’t see that changing.
DeJuan was expecting the phone to ring and it did, but still surprised him. Heard 5 °Cent doing “Candy Shop,” his ring tone:
Give it to me baby, nice and slow
Climb on top, ride like you in the rodeo
DeJuan recognized Jack’s number, said, “Yo-got the money, I hope is why you calling. Going to be right over with it.”
Jack said, “There’s been a change in the plan.”
“What’s that mean?”
“We get the money when she gets Luke.”
DeJuan said, “Don’t sound like you got control of the situation. I hope there be no more surprises.” He didn’t like the sound of this. They were telling her how it was going to be. She wasn’t telling them.
Kate watched him from the kitchen window. He took his cell phone out and made a call, his face animated like he was arguing with the person he was talking to. After a couple minutes he closed the phone and put it in his pocket and just stood there, looking out at the woods.
TWENTY — FOUR
“They’re here,” Jack said, coming in the kitchen.
She heard them drive in the yard and looked out the kitchen window. There were two cars, an old Z28 Camaro and another one she could only identify as a customized mid-eighties Chevy. It had a custom paint job and rims and a landau top.
“Don’t go out there with a gun,” Jack said. “They might get the wrong idea. Give it to me or put it on the counter. Let’s not have any trouble, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay,” Kate said. She walked past him and moved through the main room and out the front door.
She watched Luke being lifted from the trunk of the Camaro and it made her mad, made her want to raise the gun and shoot them. She was conscious of the black guy who held a shotgun across his body like he was getting ready to shoot skeet. He was on her left about thirty feet away. Jack was to her right, half that distance, and Mullet, Luke and the girl straight ahead on the gravel drive.
Luke’s hands were cuffed behind his back like a criminal. They looked at each other, made eye contact and he tried to come toward her, but Mullet held him in place with a chain that was looped around the cuffs. She could see his face was bruised and he looked thin and weak standing there. “Luke, honey, are you okay?”
The girl aimed her pistol at Luke. She said, “He ain’t going to be, you don’t drop the automatic. I’ll shoot the little asshole and wouldn’t that be a shame after we’ve been so patient?”
They all looked familiar. Kate remembered Mullet, the creep from the bar, sitting across the table from her with his greasy hair and confident grin. She remembered him saying they’d probably see each other again because he knew they would, the kidnapping had been planned by then.
She remembered the girl too, thinking she and Mullet didn’t go together. It seemed even more apparent now, as Kate studied her in her black pointed-toe pumps and bootleg jeans, sweater hanging below her tweed fitted jacket, the outfit displaying a mix of fabrics embellished with beads-like she just walked out of an Anthropologie catalog.
The black guy looked familiar too. She remembered the cornrow hair and the gold warm-up and the letter D hanging from a heavy chain around his neck-anodized bling. She’d seen him somewhere before, she was sure of it. But where? It was his gold metalflake Chevy that jogged her memory. She remembered it from the gas station in Grayling. He was filling up next to her. Asked her for directions, which seemed odd now, if he was following her. She remembered seeing him at the house, too. He was the DTE man dressed in a blue uniform, checking the meter in the backyard.
Mullet said, “Jack, you tell your girl what we talked about, what we decided?”
Kate said, “No, Jack, I don’t believe you did.” She thought Jack would take charge of the situation, but he stood there looking like he wasn’t sure what to do or who he was siding with.
Jack said to Kate, “There’s only one way out of this, you’ve got to give me your gun.”
Jack stepped toward her and she raised the Beretta and aimed it at him.
He put his hands up and said, “Take it easy.”
The black guy said, “Yo, Jack, where the money at?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “She hid it somewhere.”
The black guy said, “He got one job to do, can’t even do that.”
Mullet said to Jack, “You better tell her what to do, or I will.” Mullet grinned at Kate, the grin mocking her- and in a flashback she saw the face of the skinny cop in Guatemala-looking at her the same way, underestimating her.
Kate held the Beretta at arm’s length down her right side. She’d shoot the black guy with the twelve-gauge first. Then go for the girl. She’d never get Mullet, though, with Luke standing in front of him. She said, “Let him go.”
“We let him go, you put the gun down,” the black guy said. “We cool? You give us something, we give you something-everybody happy.”
“What’re you asking her for?” the girl said. “You tell her.”
“Back nuba, simba,” the black guy said. “We negotiating.”
“Why don’t I just shoot her,” the girl said, “put an end to all this?” She extended her arm, aiming her gun at
