“Nothing tasteless. We just want to get a few key shots to sprinkle in during the interview. Now, the van, when it pulled up—how long did it take the guy to get inside the house?”
“Seconds, I think.”
“He had a key?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So the door was unlocked?”
“It must have been.” Connor remembered answering similar questions for the police.
“The police report said he was wearing a ski mask. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
Two men entered carrying collapsible lights. “Where do you want them, boss?” asked one.
The director waved the men off. “Just put them down for now.”
The men shrugged and all but dropped them on the wood floor. Connor winced.
Then another man walked up. He was dressed in black jeans and a black turtleneck. “How do I look?”
“Fine, fine. Actually, Connor, how does he look?” Then, to the actor: “Put the mask on.”
Even though Connor knew the man before him was an actor, and even though he watched the man put the ski mask on, his heart still began to race.
“What do you think?” the director asked again. “How does he look?”
Connor tried to hold himself together. He licked his lips, nodded. Once he found his voice, he said, “Good.”
“Nothing’s missing?”
Connor looked at the actor’s hands. “Gloves. The intruder was wearing gloves.”
The actor whipped a pair of black leather gloves out of his back pocket and held them up.
“No. Not like that,” Connor said. “They were driving gloves. The kind that are open on the knuckles. And they were brown.”
“Shit.” The director glanced around. Connor couldn’t imagine what he might be looking for. It’s not as if a pair of driving gloves would magically appear. “Helen!”
A mousy woman holding a clipboard scurried up to him. “Yes?”
“See if you can find a pair of driving gloves, will you? Brown, if possible. And tell everyone to set up outside. We’re going to shoot the intruder coming in through the front door.”
Then she was gone.
“If she doesn’t find a pair of driving gloves by the time everyone’s ready, we’ll go with what we have,” the director told the actor.
The actor pulled off the ski mask. “Sounds good,” he said briskly, and walked away.
At that same moment, a crash from the living room drew Connor’s attention. He saw one of the cameras the crew had brought on the floor and a man standing over it, staring down.
“What the hell, Dave?” the director shouted.
Dave immediately moved to pick it up.
“I’ll be right back,” the director said to Connor. Then he made his way over to Dave, waving his hands in the air dramatically and telling him to be more careful.
Connor went into the half-bath off the hall for a minute of quiet. His heart was still pounding, and he felt like he was on the verge of a panic attack. He took a deep breath, told himself the man was just an actor, and wondered if this was what PTSD felt like. Sooner or later, he might need to talk to a professional if these attacks kept up.
Right now, though, he had a more immediate concern. After taking several more deep breaths to calm down, he pulled his father’s iPhone out of his pocket. Since the abduction, Frank had received only one call from someone he knew—his boss at Leewood Construction. He had demanded to know where Frank was, and then apologized profusely when Connor told him what had happened. “You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, okay?” he’d said before he hung up.
And that lone call was one more than the number of texts he had received.
But just because his father hadn’t received any texts recently didn’t mean he had never sent any.
Connor opened the messaging app. Most of the texts Frank had sent were to Kim. There was one, though, that got Connor’s attention. It was as covert as the email he had received from Roland, addressed simply to a phone number, and dated the day of the abduction: Deerfield Park. Noon.
He knew that park, had been there a bunch of times with his dad when he was little.
He did a quick reverse lookup and confirmed his suspicion. The phone number was Roland’s.
With that, he realized he had everything he needed to make contact.
His thumbs hovered over the phone’s two-dimensional keyboard. What should he say? Would Roland even show up? If Roland had been involved in the abduction, probably not. Especially if Connor pretended to be Frank in the text. But what other choice did he have? He couldn’t very well pretend to be a cop. To hell with it. Frank it was. If Roland didn’t show up, then Connor would know he was on the right track. If he did, then perhaps Connor could find out more about the nature of their meeting. Either way, it didn’t seem like there was anything to lose.
Need to talk. Urgent, he typed. Same place.
He was trying to settle on a time when someone banged on the bathroom door. “Don’t hog the throne!”
It startled Connor, brought him back to reality. “Almost done,” he responded, before adding to the text: Same time. Tomorrow.
Connor hesitated again before pressing Send and closed his eyes when he did. “Here’s hoping,” he mumbled. He watched the screen for thirty seconds or so for a response. When none came, he slid the phone back into his pocket, flushed the toilet, and ran the tap.
As he stepped out of the bathroom, a bearded, heavyset man hurried in with his hands already working his belt free. He slammed the door behind him.
The crew filmed the intruder entering the house, a cheesy-looking chase scene, and approximations of the actual attacks on his parents. Connor had done his best to answer the director’s questions, since he wanted the scenes to be as accurate as possible, but hid out in his attic bedroom during the filming (just like he had during the actual break-in). He didn’t want to watch another masked man attack anyone in his house, even if the
