“I have a new plan already drawn up,” Marty replied. He knew the ramifications that would result from it and he closed his eyes.
“Then begin it,” the caller said, “starting tomorrow. Execute your job, Mashhur al-Bashir. The rest is already set.” The caller paused a second. “Shall we say, the planes are in the air.”
They hung up, the sounds of his family, laughing, returning from outside. Marty remained on the couch for a while.
All he knew and had grown used to was about to change.
He got up and stepped over to the window, accidentally kicking over his son’s Transformer, the Lego pieces flying about. “Damn.”
Tomorrow, the world would wake up, go to school, to work, laugh, love, eat with their family, everything seeming the same. But by day’s end there would be a change like the world had never seen.
He bent down and picked up his son’s broken Transformer, the brightly colored pieces all around.
“God, help us all,” Marty al-Bashir muttered in perfect English.
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
They entered the house through the sliding glass doors in the basement, which Becca, their fifteen-year-old, sometimes left ajar to sneak in friends at night.
Upstairs, April Glassman stirred in her bed. She always had an ear for noises late at night. The curse of having a teenager. Marc could go on snoozing forever, through fire alarms, she would joke, but April had a built-in antenna for the sounds of Becca tiptoeing in past curfew or Amos, their goldendoodle, on guard at the living room window, scratching at the glass over a late-night deer or squirrel.
The house was a large, red-brick Georgian at the end of a private drive off Cat Rock Road in backcountry Greenwich. Every bend in the wood seemed to magnify at night. She opened her eyes and checked the time on the TV cable box. Two thirteen A.M. She lay there for a few seconds, listening. She definitely heard something-creaks on the floorboards, muffled voices-in the foyer or on the stairs.
Suddenly Amos started barking.
“Marc…” She nudged her husband.
“Honey, what?” Marc Glassman groaned, mashing his pillow into a ball and rolling over.
She leaned over and shook his arm. “I heard something.”
“Probably just Amos. Maybe he spotted a deer. You know those bastards never decide to come out before two A.M.”
“No,” she said, alarmed. “I heard voices.”
“Okay, okay…” Marc exhaled, giving in. He opened his eyes and took a peek at the clock. “Grrr…I’m sure it’s just Becca…”
Their daughter now had a boyfriend at the high school, a junior on the wrestling team, who drove, introducing a whole new set of complications to their lives. Lately she’d been sneaking out after the two of them had gone to sleep, or on weekends, sneaking in her friends at all hours of the night.
“No. It’s a Sunday, Marc,” April replied, recalling how she had kissed her daughter good night hours ago and left her curled up in bed with Facebook going strong and a chemistry textbook on her lap.
“Not anymore…” Groggily, he sat up, rubbing a hand across his face, flicking on the light. “I was just gonna get up and check out the overnights anyway.”
As the chief equities trader at Wertheimer Grant, one of Wall Street’s oldest firms, it had been months since he slept a whole night through. Singapore opened at midnight, Australia an hour later. Europe and Russia got going at four. Six months ago he might’ve made it undisturbed till morning. But that seemed like a lifetime ago. Now the bottom had fallen out of the market. The whole subprime mess, Fannie and Freddie reeling, AIG. The banks teetering. Not to mention the company’s stock: a year ago it was over eighty and he and April could have gone off and planted tomatoes somewhere for the rest of their lives. Last Friday it had closed at twelve! It would take him another decade to recoup. Immediately flashing to his positions, his stomach wound into its usual two A.M. knot.
Now April was hearing voices…
“I’ll go take a look.”
In the last months, April had watched as her husband dropped ten pounds from the stress. She knew that something was wrong. She knew the firm was hurting and how much they were relying on him. How much he was expected to produce. Marc never shared much about his positions anymore. The pressure on him was crazy.
She leaned over and put her hand on his shoulder. “Honey, will this ever go back to normal?”
He threw off the covers and grabbed his robe. “This is the new normal.”
That’s when they both heard another noise.
A creak on the stairs. Marc put a finger to his lips for her to keep quiet.
Then another. Closer. A knife slicing through them.
Someone was coming up the stairs.
“Marc…” April caught his eyes. Her look was laden with worry. “Amos stopped barking…”
He nodded, feeling the same thing inside. “I know.”
The next creak seemed to come right from the upstairs landing. April’s heart skipped a beat. Her husband’s gaze was unmistakable.
Someone was in the house.
“Just stay there,” he said, nodding to the bed, raising a hand for her to stay silent.
They all knew about the recent rash of home break-ins going on in the backcountry. They were all just talking about it last Saturday night with the Rudenbachs at Mediterraneo. Marc listened closely at the door. They never put on the alarm. What the hell did they even have the damned thing for, he’d asked himself a hundred times. Just wasting all that stupid money. Truth was, he couldn’t even remember the damn code-or even where the panic button was.
“Marc…”
He turned. He stared at April’s freckled face, her soft, round eyes, hair raised in a nighttime ponytail. Except now, he saw only fear in it. And helplessness. “Becca, Evan…,” she whispered.
Their rooms were just down the hall.
He nodded firmly. “I’ll go check it out.”
He took a step, and suddenly the bedroom door flew open. Two men, wearing ski masks and plain blue work uniforms, pushed their way into their room.
April let out a scream.
“What the hell is going on? What are you doing in here?” Marc stepped up to them.
The first one in the overalls suddenly knocked him with a fist to his face back onto the bed.
“Marc!” April reached out to him.
Her husband removed his hand and stared at his fingers. There was blood on them.
“What the hell do you want?” he demanded.
“Shut up,” the first one said. The man was large, his voice husky. A tuft of red hair peeked out from behind his mask. He had a gun, accounting for the blood in Marc’s mouth. “Just shut the fuck up and you might just live.”
“Oh, God, Marc, please…,” April murmured, her heartbeat now accelerating wildly. Her thoughts flashed to her children sleeping down the hall. Just keep them away.
The second man shut the bedroom door behind him. The one with the gun came over and pulled April off the bed. “Get up. Put your hands behind your back.” His accomplice took out a roll of duct tape from his uniform and twisted April’s wrists behind her back, binding them tightly. She looked at her husband with fear in her eyes as he ran a second piece of tape across her mouth.
“What do you want with us?” Marc pleaded, helpless, watching his wife being bound. “Listen, I’ve got a safe downstairs. We’ve got some money…” He shot April a steadying look, as if he was trying to say, Hang in there, honey. It’ll be okay. That’s why they’re here. For the money.
This isn’t the first one. No one’s been hurt so far.
“Where?” the one with the gun demanded.
“Downstairs. In the study. I’ll show you. Look, we haven’t seen your faces. We don’t know who you are. Just take what you want and let us go, okay?”