To calm myself, I fill my head with thoughts of my son. Specifically, that very special day when Ted and I first met the unnamed baby who would fill our lives with joy, and changed us from two to three. The baby who became Tommy the Wonder Boy was six months old at the time. We’d been through the usual adoption wringer. Opened our home to social workers, filed financial statements, divulged our bank accounts and tax returns, been interviewed together and separately. We had been investigated, stamped and stapled. Put on waiting lists. Promised babies who were not delivered. Told to wait. We paid through the nose, lawyers and agency fees, and were told to wait some more. It got to the point I refused to even look at a picture of a prospective baby. It was too painful to moon over a photograph, only to have the mother change her mind, or give her child to someone else, someone more worthy.
It was so horribly painful, and it made me feel so guilty about not being able to have a baby of my own, that I finally opted out of the whole process. Left it up to Ted. Who knew exactly what I was going through. Bless the man, one day he came home with a certain look in his eye and said, “Get in the car.” And so I did, with my heart hammering like a heavy-metal drummer, and we drove north for an endless hour or two, barely speaking because we were both so nervous, and then Ted was taking me into a room and a smiling woman put a bundle into my arms and that was Tommy.
Once on a talk show I saw a panel of mothers who had problems bonding with their kids. How sad. Lucky for me, I had a problem with the fertility part, not the bonding part. Happened the instant he was placed in my arms. Wham! I was in love with the baby, body and soul, from the very first moment. Love welled from my heart, my mind, my body. I was too embarrassed even to tell Ted (who would have understood), but for the first few weeks my breasts actually ached, as if they wanted to lactate. My head swam with a love so intense it almost frightened me. For several months I had terrible, anxious nightmares about someone snatching him away, and in those dreams, losing him was like dying.
A social worker later told me it wasn’t unusual for an adoptive mother to suffer from prospective-loss anxiety. After all, in a surprising number of cases, it actually happened. Adoptive mothers bonded with infants, only to have them taken away by the courts and returned to drug-addict birth mothers, or to relatives, or held in foster homes until the courts sorted it out, which might take years. The folks from the adoption agency assured me this couldn’t happen with Tommy—both of his young parents had been killed in a taxi accident in Puerto Rico—but I couldn’t help it, I worried. The nightmares and the anxiety gradually faded away as I settled into the new life of mothering a helpless infant, but the worry part never quite left me. Which is fine. Mothers are supposed to worry, it’s part of our job.
Now the old nightmare thing is actually happening, in wide-awake real time, and the losing-him-is-like-dying part is real, too. I have to get Tommy back or die trying, that’s all there is to it.
When I pull back the curtain, there’s a clean towel and a pile of neatly folded clothing waiting on the toilet-seat lid. And I wasn’t even aware the man in the ski mask had come into the bathroom, let alone laid out my clothing. Yet another scary thing about him—he moves like a shadow. And there he is, sitting on the stairs outside the open door, staring at me from the holes in his mask.
“Nice wardrobe,” he says. “You’ve got taste. I picked out the Donna Karan ensemble. Black for banking.”
I’ve got the towel around me, dressing underneath it, face averted. Ashamed of my humiliation. The creep has stripped your life bare, does it really matter if he sees you naked? Apparently it does. Because I’m blushing furiously as I wriggle into underwear, black pants, silk blouse.
Finally I drop the towel and emerge fully dressed, more or less. No shoes yet. He hasn’t picked out shoes.
“Your hair,” he says. “Fix it.”
A glance in the mirror reveals that my hair needs attention. I keep it short so I can always blow-and-go, but a night on the bathroom floor has left me looking damaged. I bang out the dents with a brush, use the blow-dryer and my fingers, and in ten minutes I actually look presentable.
“Kitchen,” he says, gesturing with the pistol.
I walk ahead of him into the kitchen, thinking about knives. I have quite a collection. Boning knives so sharp you’re bleeding before you realize you’ve been cut. I can’t imagine plunging a knife into a fellow human being, but the man in the mask isn’t human. On the other hand, if I kill the bastard I may never see my son again. A thought that never leaves my mind, even for an instant.
The air is redolent of freshly brewed coffee.
“It’s going to be a big, busy day, so I made a pot,” he explains. “Take a seat.”
I sit on a stool at my own counter. Miss Obedience. Having noticed that my knives seem to have vanished from the counter. Did he check all the drawers, too? Of course he did. He had hours and hours to get things right while I was unconscious. He’s been over the whole house, checked everywhere. If I had a gun, which I don’t, he’d already know about it. The man may be a monster, but he’s an intelligent monster, and therefore even more dangerous.
Careful, girl. Don’t lose your focus. Tommy is the focus. Do only that which will bring you closer to your son.
“You’ve had seven calls,” he says. “Six left messages. Five are work related—you’re a very busy girl, Kate, congratulations—and one was for your kid. Some girl. He’s a good-looking kid, the girls must be all over him, huh? Anyhow, you can respond to the calls when we finish up our business at the bank. Go on, have your breakfast.”
He slides a bowl of cereal across the counter. Milk has been added. Tommy’s Rice Krispies are talking to me, reminding me of all our breakfasts in this room. Did this vile bastard know what this would do to me, hearing my son’s cereal?
It takes all my will not to fly across the counter and slap that sneering smile off his ski-masked face.
“This is the schedule of events,” he’s saying. “First we have a light breakfast, then we call your kid, then we go to the bank. We’ll return here to await confirmation of the wire transfer, and then I will leave. If all goes according to plan—if we follow the method and do not deviate—your son should be back in this house by, say, three in the afternoon, at the latest.”
The rational part of me knows he could be lying—all he wants is money—but I can’t prevent a flood of hope so strong, so deeply felt it almost makes me giddy.
“You’re not eating,” he points out.
I push the cereal bowl away. Check the mug of coffee he set out. Could I scald him? No, the coffee is lukewarm. He’s anticipated the scalding thing. Or maybe some other victim threw a cup in his face and he’s learned from experience.
“The method. That’s what gets your kid home,” he says. “See, I’ve made a study. Stupid kidnappers take the child, then call the parent. Ask ’em to get the money, meet them somewhere. What’s the first thing the parent does? Calls the feds. Under the mistaken impression that’s the smart thing to do. FBI, they screw it up nine times out of ten. Nobody gets paid off, the kid gets wasted. With this method, we take control of the parent as well as the child. Stick with the parent until the money is safely transferred. It’s just common sense, that’s all. Strategic positioning.”
All the time he’s speaking, bragging about his so-called method, he’s aiming the gun at my heart. Five feet away, can’t miss. He likes that pistol almost as much as he likes talking. Gives the impression he’d like to use it, given an excuse.
“You’ve got just under five hundred grand in a money market account. Four hundred and ninety-six thousand and change. That’s what attracted our attention in the first place. Guess you must be leery of the stock market, huh? Can’t say I blame you. And bonds don’t pay enough to make a difference, do they? Thing is, you having all that cash just sitting there, it makes things easier for me.”