I pinched out my cigarette and tossed it into a trashcan. I’d given up smoking a long time ago and didn’t want to start again.
My BlackBerry started ringing. I pulled it out, saw Marcus’s number. “Nick,” he said. “Oh, thank God.” There was panic in his voice.
“What is it?” I said.
“They have her-they-”
He broke off. Silence. I could hear him breathing.
“Marshall?”
“It’s my baby. My Lexie. They have her.”
“You got a ransom demand?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know-”
“It’s just an e-mail with a link to some-oh, please God, Nick, get out here now.”
I looked at my watch. Soon it would be rush hour. The drive to Manchester would take even longer than usual.
“Did you click on the link?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t open it until we get there.”
“Oh, Jesus, Nick, come out here now. Please.”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
25.
There was no day or night. There was no time. There was only the trickle of her sweat down her face and neck. Her rapid breathing, that agonizing shortness of breath, the cold terror that she could never again fill her lungs with air.
The blank nothingness in which her mind raced like a hamster on a wheel.
The wanting to die.
She’d decided she had to kill herself.
This was the first time in her seventeen years that the thought of suicide had ever seriously occurred to her. But now she knew that death was the only way out for her.
When you hyperventilate you will increase the carbon dioxide.
She began panting, breathing as deep and fast as she could. Trying to use up the limited supply of air inside the casket. Panting. She could feel her exhalations settling around her, a warm, humid blanket of carbon dioxide. Keep at it, and maybe she’d pass out.
She began to feel woozy, light-headed. Faint and dizzy.
It was working.
And then she felt something different. A cool ripple of air.
Fresh air. It smelled of pine forest, of distant fires, of diesel and wet leaves.
Seeping in from somewhere. Her right hand felt for the source of the air flow. It was coming from the bottom of the coffin, beneath the metal support bands under the mattress, down where the bottles of water and the protein bars were. She touched the floor of the casket, her fingers tracing the outline of a round perforated metal disc maybe an inch in diameter.
An air intake.
She could hear a distant hum. No, not a hum, really. The far-off sound of a… a garbage disposal? Then something that sounded like a car engine. The regular chugging of pistons pumping. Very fast, far away.
She didn’t know what it was, but she knew it had something to do with this new influx of air. A fan? But more mechanical and sort of bumpy than that.
Air was being circulated.
The Owl had been watching her pathetic efforts. Saw what she was trying to do. And was defeating her.
She couldn’t help herself: She gasped deeply, drank down the cool fresh air as gratefully as she’d swallowed the water from the bottle. The fresh air was keeping her alive.
She couldn’t asphyxiate herself. She couldn’t kill herself.
He’d deprived her of the only power she had.
26.
I picked up Dorothy at the office. We made better time than I expected and got to the security booth at the perimeter of Marcus’s property just before six.
“Whoa,” she said softly as we walked up the porch steps, goggle-eyed at the spread. “And I was just starting to be happy with my apartment.”
Marcus met us at the door. Ashen-faced, he thanked us somberly and showed us in. Belinda rushed up to me in the dimly lit hallway and threw her arms around me, a display of affection I’d never have expected. Her back was bony. I introduced Dorothy. Belinda thanked me profusely, and Marcus just nodded and led us to his study. His house slippers scuffed against the oak floor.
His study was a large, comfortable room, not at all showy. The shades were drawn. The only illumination was a circle of light cast by a banker’s lamp with a green glass shade. It sat in the middle of a massive refectory table that served as his desk, carved from ancient oak. The only other objects on the table were a large flat-screen computer monitor and a wireless keyboard, which looked out of place.
He sat in a high-backed tufted black leather chair and tapped a few keys. His hands were trembling. Belinda stood behind him. Dorothy and I stood on either side and watched him open an e-mail message.
“As soon as this came in, I told him to call you,” Belinda said. “I also told him not to do anything until y’all got here.”
“This is my personal e-mail account,” he said quietly. “Not many people have it. That’s the weird thing-how’d they get it?”
Dorothy, wearing red-framed reading glasses on an ornate beaded chain, noticed something else.
“They used a nym,” she said.
“A who?” I said.
“An anonymizer. A disposable anonymous e-mail address. Untraceable.”
The subject heading read “Your Daughter.” The message was brief:
Mr. Marcus:
If you want to see your daughter again, click here:
www.CamFriendz.com
Click on: Private Chat Rooms
Enter in search box: Alexa M.
User name: Marcus
Password: LiveOrDie?
Note: case-sensitive.
You may log in only from your home or office. No other location. We monitor everyone who signs in. If we detect any other incoming IP addresses, including any law enforcement agencies, local or national, all communications will be severed and your daughter will be terminated.
He turned around to look at us. There were deep hollows under his eyes. “Belinda wouldn’t let me click on the link.” He sounded depleted and resigned.
“What’s CamFriendz-dot-com?” Belinda said.
“It’s a live video site,” Dorothy said. “Social networking. Mostly for teens.”
Marcus said, “What should I do?”
“Don’t touch the keyboard,” Belinda said.
“Wait a minute,” Dorothy said. She took out her laptop and hooked in the back of his computer. “Okay.”
“What are you doing?” Belinda said.
“A couple things,” she said. “Screen-capture software so we can record anything they send you. Also, packet-sniffing software so I can log network activity remotely.”
“Are you mad?” Belinda cried. “They say if anyone else tries to look at this, they’re going to cut off all communication! Are you trying to get her killed?”
“No,” Dorothy said, patiently. “All I’m doing is setting up in effect a clone of this computer. I’m not logging in. No one’s going to detect it.”
“Well, you can just look at Marshall’s computer,” Belinda said. “I will not have you compromise Alexa’s safety in any way.”
“They have no way to know what I’m doing,” Dorothy said. I could see her patience was beginning to run out. “Also, we need to make sure they’re not trying to infect this computer with malicious code.”
“What’s the point of that?” Marshall said.
“To take control of your computer,” Dorothy said. “May I?” Her fingers were poised over his keyboard. He nodded, wheeled his chair back to let her at it.
“Don’t touch that!” Belinda said, alarmed.
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” I said to her, and I took her out into the hall. In a low voice, I continued, “I’m worried about your husband.”
“You are?”
“He’d be panicking by now if it weren’t for you. You’re his rock. You did the right thing by telling him to call me and by not letting him click on that link.”