Simone felt as if her heart had been clawed out of her chest. Jada sounded so frightened, so alone. She had to do something to let her child know that she was near, that everything would soon be okay.
“I’m here, baby!” Simone shouted to the ceiling, hoping beyond reason that Jada would hear her. She screamed as loud as she could, throat raw: “Mommy’s right here!”
“Mom! Daddy!”
“Right here!” Simone yelled. She spun blindly around the dark room, looking for some means to communicate with Jada.
She heard, faintly, a pounding noise, as if Jada were beating against a door.
Simone balled her cuffed hands into fists, raised them, and slammed them repeatedly against the wall as if striking a gong. She prayed Jada would feel the vibrations through the walls and floor, and would be comforted that she wasn’t alone, that her mother was close by.
But Jada fell silent.
Simone pounded the wall a few more times, the percussion reverberating through the house, pain barking through her hands and arms with each strike. But she feared the clattering rain was deadening the vibrations.
“Baby?” She struck the wall. “Mommy’s here!”
Silence.
“Honey!” She hit the wall again. “Mommy’s down here!”
Only the pattering rain answered her.
Breathing hard, hands tingling, Simone turned away from the wall. She charged the door, and, shouting, kicked it with as much power as she could muster. The door twanged in the frame, but the impact threw her off balance. She slammed to the hardwood on her shoulder, fresh pain sizzling through her muscles.
Meanwhile, Jada hadn’t called out again.
Simone pulled in a hitching breath. I can’t take this any more, damn it. I can’t take it, I can’t wait. I have to get out of here!
She rose on limp legs. Lifting her sore arms, she wrapped the chain that linked the handcuffs around the doorknob. She jerked, once, and the knob rattled slightly.
Emboldened, she braced her left foot against the door and pulled so savagely it felt as if her arms would tear from their sockets.
Come on, come on, come on!
The chain slipped free of the knob, and she tumbled backward and fell hard on her tailbone, an accordion of pain spreading across her lower back.
The doorknob was still in place, as impregnable as ever.
She sniffled, wiped tears out of her eyes. All of the assorted wounds and aches she had suffered that day suddenly intensified, as if a button had been pushed in her brain: her jaw from the slaps to the face; her abdomen from the punch; the back of her head from the vase smashed against it; the spot on her forearm from the burning cigarette butt; her wrists from the tightly cinched cuffs; her fists from banging the wall; her shoulders and tailbone from falling. Every tender point of pain throbbed in agonizing sync with the others, and she decided to sit there for a while, immobile, for she worried that if she moved again, she would black out.
A strange, guttural scream came from outside, somewhere near the back of the house. It sounded like some sort of wild animal, perhaps a bear.
A chill dripped down her spine. What the hell was that?
She hesitated. Then she got up, the movement making her head spin.
Woozy, she lurched into the bathroom. She peered through the slats on the window near the vanity, but she did not see anything of interest, no animal or person. There was only the wall of forest, the trees quivering in the downpour.
But something-or someone-had been out there.
She cocked her head to the glass and listened, but heard only the rain.
She questioned whether she had heard anything at all. What if she was beginning to hallucinate? From her studies, she knew the effects that extreme stress and isolation could produce. Even the most tightly wrapped individual, when subjected to enough pressure, could crack like an egg.
No. She shook her head firmly. She had spent perhaps seven or eight hours in this room, and though they had been the most harrowing hours of her life, she had not reached her breaking point. Not yet. She could handle much worse than this.
Soon, she got an opportunity to test her resilience. Leon came back, and he looked mad enough to kill her.
37
Speeding away from the shopping mall on Buckhead’s mazelike residential roads, straining to see through sheets of rain, Corey was vigilant for government-issue sedans and marked police cruisers. He’d seen none yet, but the possibility of one lurking just around the corner kept him on edge.
He was still stunned at how the drop-off had turned into a complete fiasco.
By then, the agents would’ve found the briefcase he had left in the bookstore. They would’ve counted the cash. They would be cooking up a compelling theory-in their minds-as to exactly why he had left fifty thousand dollars hidden in a public place, when as recently as yesterday he had been spotted having a beer with a fugitive who had asked him for money.
Thinking about it curdled his stomach.
He couldn’t figure out what had prompted Falco and her partner to follow him. Had they been tailing him since that morning? Or had they flagged his bank accounts, been tipped off by the large withdrawal earlier that day, and then decided to track him?
It had to be one or the other.
He’d sensed after their conversation that Falco had found his story dubious. In her eyes, he had just confirmed her doubts in the worst way.
In her eyes, he was aiding and abetting a known felon.
Windshield wipers ticking, he braked at a STOP sign. He checked both ways for suspicious vehicles, found none, and arbitrarily made a right, which carried him deeper into a labyrinth of tree-lined streets, the oaks and pines as blurry as watercolor images in the storm.
Worse than his situation with the Feds was his predicament with Leon. Now Leon would think he had betrayed him. What would he do to Simone and Jada in retaliation?
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. .
Tension twitched like a live wire across his shoulder blades, down his arms, and into his hands. He wanted to scream.
Peering through the rain-smeared windshield, he recognized that he was in a familiar area: a neighborhood that featured some of Buckhead’s swankiest residences, behemoth houses that stood on rambling parcels of land behind wrought-iron gates and tall fences. In the early days of their marriage, when they were living hand-to-mouth in a one-bedroom apartment in Marietta, he and Simone had used to cruise this neighborhood on sunny Sunday afternoons and imagine someday building a dream home of their own.
That day had since come for them. He wondered if, after what had happened in the past twenty-four hours, it had also passed.
It was only a quarter to five, but the purple-black storm clouds had awakened the street lamps. He pulled into a cul-de-sac near the gated drive of French-chateau style estate and parked at the edge of a pool of light.
He would have called Leon and pleaded his case, but whenever Leon had called him on the prepaid cell, his number was blocked. He would have to sit tight and pray that Leon didn’t go nuts-always a strong possibility, since the guy already teetered on the edge.
He cracked a knuckle. He just couldn’t think about it.
In the meantime, he took out his BlackBerry and called Todd’s cell.
The phone rang three times before Todd picked up. “I’m afraid this is a bad time, sir.”
Todd’s voice was stiff, tense. What was going on?
“Listen, man, we’ve gotta talk,” Corey said. “The drop-off was a disaster, the Feds tracked me there, and I ran away from them before Leon got the money-”