“That’s right, Amy, I’m not kidding,” Jim said. I pictured him grabbing the phone away from Moreland. “Do what your sorry excuse for a husband said to do. How could you leave a guy like Kip for a cowardly piece of shit like this guy? My respect for you has taken a nosedive. Oh, yeah, to prove to you I’m serious … ”
There was a brief pause, a gunshot, Peter Moreland screaming, then nothing. I handed the phone back to Amy.
“How long ago did you get that message?”
“Half an hour ago.”
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I said.
She didn’t move. “Is Renee-”
“Yes, the girl from the restaurant.”
“Do you think he killed Peter? It sounded like he-”
“No, not yet, but he will. He’s killed before.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to Peter on my account.”
“Too late, Amy. We need to try and make sure nothing else happens to him.”
“Kip, who are these people? What the hell is going on? What does Peter have to do with-”
“Jim, the guy who’s got Peter, was a student of mine. He and Renee were in the class when the other kid took us hostage. We got close after that. Jim got me back in shape, taught me how to shoot. It’s complicated. I thought he was harmless, but … ”
“Harmless! He has Peter and god knows what he’s done to him.”
“I know. I know. That’s why you’re here. He threatened you and I had Meg hire these guys.”
“They got me out of bed at four in the morning, knocking on my door, saying they were the fire department.”
“I had to do something to protect you.”
“You want to protect me? How about staying the fuck out of my life?”
“After today, I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Fine.”
“I have to get out of here, Amy.”
“I’m coming too.”
I knew better than to argue. “Just follow my lead,” I said.
We came out of the bedroom and found Tom McDonald still sitting at the table. He seemed surprised to see us and a bit wary.
“Everything all right?” he asked, getting to his feet.
“No, the guy, Jim, who’s after us, he just called me.”
McDonald tensed. “Yeah?”
“He says he’s got a rifle trained on the back of the house and I don’t think he’s lying. He described how far the shades were pulled down, their color and everything.”
“Did he mention the girl, Renee?”
“She’s there with him. She got on the phone after he was done talking.”
His hand went right to his holster. “There’s only the two of them, right?”
“Just Jim and Renee, that’s right,” I said.
“Okay, you and Amy get down low and stay here while I get Tony Dee up. Don’t move. You got me?”
“Clear as a bell.” Amy nodded in agreement.
As soon as McDonald tapped on the bedroom door and stuck his head inside to wake his partner, Amy and I took off. We had a little trouble with the front lock and that gave McDonald time to figure out what was going on. He screamed for us to stop and as we finally got outside, I heard his footsteps coming up behind us. The door closed in his face and that gave us the time we needed to get down the stairs and into Isaac’s car ahead of him. We were pulling away just as he reached us. I took a peek in the side view mirror. McDonald looked pretty pissed off.
I waited until we were nearly back to the highway before speaking. “Listen, Amy, Jim’s dangerous and he will do the things he says he will. He killed Haskell Brown.”
“Oh, my god!”
“None of this is about you, really. You and Peter are involved only because you are connected to me and Peter to you. Saving Renee is only part of why I’m going. Jim is my personal nightmare. I have to go. You don’t. I can go by myself. Maybe I can talk Jim down. He does have this worship and adoration thing about me and maybe-”
“Will he kill Peter if I don’t go?” she asked, her voice sharp as a razor. “The truth.”
“Maybe, but he might kill him anyway.”
“I’m coming.”
“Are you sure? All you need do is say the word and I’ll drop you off. You’ll be safe.”
“Of course I’m not sure. Who would be? But I’m coming just the same.”
The rain had let up and the traffic had thinned. I pulled onto the Whitestone Expressway and moved easily into the flow of traffic. It was probably the last easy thing I would ever do.
Fifty
It was around noon when I pulled off the main road and onto the thin strip of crumbled blacktop leading to the abandoned bungalow colony. Overgrown hedges, their leafless and twisted branches like tangles of natural barbed wire, scraped against both sides of the car. The approach was eerily similar to that of the old berry farm down in Brixton. I had a sense that whatever was about to happen would produce more damage than a concussion and wounded pride. Writers have a knack for the endgame. That’s how many of us begin our books, knowing the end. Then we write to it. There was no scenario I could envision that left any of us-Amy, Renee, Moreland, or me- alive, let alone unscathed. Jim had painted all of us into a corner, himself most of all.
Up to that point, we had done exactly as we’d been told. As we approached Stewart Airport-like Hardentine, an old Air Force base-Amy called her husband’s cell. It was Jim who answered, and Amy got hysterical when he refused to let her talk to Moreland. She had been okay during most of the ride, her fury directed at me keeping the bleakness of the situation at bay.
“Did you hurt Peter? Please don’t hurt him. Please! I’ll do anything,” she was screaming when I pulled to the shoulder and took the BlackBerry out of her hand.
“Jim, we’re not driving another inch until you tell me whether or not you killed Moreland.”
Amy gasped at the bluntness of my ultimatum. I could almost hear Jim thinking through the phone. I knew he hated to be bossed around, but we had leverage. He needed us and he had gone through too much trouble to ruin it now.
“I blew off two of his fingers. What a pussy. He cried like a baby. I had Renee wrap up the wound.” He then gave me directions to get onto Old Route 17 leading into the Catskill Mountains and another landmark from which to call. “After you get there and I give you that second set of instructions, toss your cell phones. You show up here and I hear a ring or a buzz, Moreland will lose more than a few fingers. And Kip,” he said, “no more threats.” Then there was a gunshot, more screams. I clicked off, hoping Amy hadn’t heard that last part.
I handed the BlackBerry back to her and told her that Peter was alive, but scared. I neglected to mention the gunshot and the screams. She was already wound so tight, I didn’t want to risk her completely unraveling. If there was any chance at all of us coming out the other end of this, we needed to hold it together as long as we could.
The sun had broken through the clouds by the time we made the second call and the temperature had to be around forty degrees. It was then, after Jim had given us the new set of directions, that I had a decision to make. I knew I still couldn’t risk calling the cops. They might get to where we were going before we could and that meant I would be sacrificing both Renee and Moreland. There was no doubt Jim would murder them before the cops got
