On rubbery legs, he descended the staircase, clutching the hand rail in a tight grip to keep from falling.
He thought of calling someone. He didn’t know whom. Maybe the police. Maybe a friend. He didn’t know who could help him. Or if anyone could.
He staggered into the kitchen and dropped the gun onto the table.
That was when he saw the new cell phone standing near the napkin holder, nestled within the black coils of an AC adapter. A Post-it note was attached to it.
The handwritten text read simply: “Keep me on.”
He peeled away the note and carefully picked up the phone, as if it might detonate in his hands.
It was one of those inexpensive prepaid cell phones that you could buy at almost any retail store, the kind of phone that made it virtually impossible for the police to trace it to anyone because the purchaser bought air-time in blocks via calling cards, and didn’t need to supply a name or address to the wireless carrier.
The phone was already on.
Two or three breathless minutes later, it rang. The Caller ID display read Unknown Number, but Corey knew only one person could be calling.
“I’ve got your wifey and the munchkin,” Leon said. “Whether you ever see them again alive, old sport, depends entirely on you.”
17
Phone glued to his ear, Corey paced across the kitchen on legs so numb they felt disassociated from his body, as if they had been injected with a local anesthetic.
Whether you ever see them again alive, old sport, depends entirely on you.
A postcard photo of him and his family from last year’s holiday season was pinned by a magnet to the stainless steel refrigerator. The three of them sat on a love seat in front of the stocking-fringed fireplace wearing floppy Santa caps and cheesy grins. Corey hadn’t wanted to pose for the picture; he said they’d done it the year before and it was time for something new, but Simone and Jada had insisted, and as he often did when his ladies wanted something, he gave in-they both found the sight of him dressed up in anything absolutely hilarious.
A knot of anguish rose in his throat. He already missed the sound of their laughter.
“Why?” Corey asked thickly.
“Why?” Leon said, incredulous. “Why what? You sound woozy, kinda off-kilter, are you losing your grip already, have you flipped your lid? I always recalled you as having nerves of steel, the Iceman, taking care of business, standing and delivering, and I think you better dig deep down and rediscover those reserves of iron nerves again, keep it Ziploctight, ’cause things have only just begun, hear me?”
Corey stopped pacing and pressed his hand to his temple. His skin was greasy with cold sweat. His head pounded.
“I mean, why are you doing this? Kidnapping isn’t your style. You’re a thief.”
Leon released a ripple of manic laughter. “I’m broadening my horizons, expanding my repertoire, desperate times call for desperate measures. I have expensive tastes. I can’t realize Cristal dreams on a St. Ides income.”
“But I told you yesterday that I’d give you money! You didn’t have to do this!”
“You insulted moi yesterday with that insipid pin money offer, that was the coup de grace, I gave you a chance to do the right thing and you blew it. Screwed it up. Flunked out. Now you’ve gotta pay the piper, you’ve gotta do things my way or hit the highway, you dig, are we clear, huh?”
In the background on Leon’s line, Corey heard a rumbling engine. Leon was in a vehicle, he realized, presumably with Simone and Jada. Where was he taking them?
“Let me talk to my wife,” Corey said.
“Say the magic word, amigo.”
“Please.”
There was a lengthy silence filled with the sound of the grumbling vehicle and tires humming against pavement. . and then Simone’s thin voice crackled over the line.
“Honey. . I’m so sorry. . I tried to fight back. .”
“No.” Corey squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to hold back tears. “No, no, baby, I’m the one who needs to apologize. God, I should have known. .” He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. What good were his flimsy excuses now? “How are you, sweetheart? How is Jada?”
“She’s. . okay. . she’s with me. . but she doesn’t have her speech processor. . she can’t hear anything.”
“I know, I know. I found it in her room. I’m going to bring both of you home safely. I promise you. You’ve gotta believe me. Okay? Please believe me.”
A ragged sob escaped her. It tore into his heart like a filet knife.
Only an hour ago, he had been touching her in their bed, gazing into her beloved eyes. How had their lives been upended so abruptly and tragically?
She sniffled. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, baby, I love Jada with everything I’ve got. I. . I’m just so goddamn sorry this happened.” His knees folded, and he had to lean against the counter. “Can you tell me where you are?”
“No. . blindfolded. .”
“Okay, okay.” He pulled in a shaky breath. “I’m going to bring you home. One way or another, I just need you to stay strong for me, okay? Please, just believe me and stay strong.”
“She’s plenty strong, all right,” Leon said, on the phone once more. “She put up a fight that would’ve made Laila Ali proud, no lie.” He whistled lowly. “Tough as nails and sexy to boot, you know when I got into the house, she was in her drawers? Damn near made me forget what I was there for. You’re a lucky schmuck having a fine piece like her to come home to every night, slammin’ bod’ on her, and that sweet chocolate skin makes me want to take a bite out of her as if she were a Hershey’s bar, matter of fact, before this is all over I might have me a nibble or two or three.”
Corey pushed away from the counter, hand clenching into a fist. “Don’t you dare touch her, asshole.”
“And if you could only see how my partner’s been ogling your little munchkin, whoa, that boy sure do love him some chil’ren.” Leon cackled.
Corey remembered the leering giant from the gas station. The thought of that monster within five hundred feet of Jada made him ill.
“For God’s sake, she’s only nine, Leon,” Corey said. “She’s a child.”
“You never told me she was deaf. How’d you wind up fathering a kid like that. You squirting jacked-up chromosomes down the chute. Is there a glitch in the man milk factory?”
Corey grabbed the gun off the table. “If you or your pervert partner hurt my little girl, I’m going to fucking kill both of you.”
“You aren’t going to do shit, comprende? You’ve met your Waterloo. Let’s be clear. I’m the one running the show, I’m the chief, I’m the HNIC. If I wanted to shoot your lovely ladies in their pretty heads right now and dump their bodies in the Chattahoochee River, there’s not a damn thing you could do about it but start planning a closed casket memorial.”
Clutching the gun, Corey fell silent.
“That’s what I thought,” Leon said.
Corey had to force out his next words. “How much will it take to get them back?”
“Let’s cover the ground rules of this engagement,” Leon said. “Numero uno. No cops. If I see a cop on my tail, if I even suspect that you’ve involved them in this private business matter of ours, I’m going to kill your family, and I’m going to make it exquisitely painful, worse than anything you can imagine, I promise, I’ll have my way with your cutie pie wifey, and I’ll let my partner do whatever he likes to your little munchkin, whatever unspeakable acts he can devise in that mysterious big cerebellum of his, and then we’ll waste them both and leave you widowed and psychologically half-Nelsoned for life. Are we clear?”
Corey lowered his head. His voice was soft and tight. “We’re clear.”
“We should be,” Leon said. “Because we both know there’s another major reason why you don’t want to involve the police. If by some miracle they nab me over this, I’m going to have quite a story to tell them about how Mr. Corey Webb was intimately involved in a certain unsolved case that went down in Motown sixteen years ago, which begs the question, actually-have you told your wife what we did?”