“As soon as I leave, you can go,” he said.
He went up to the office and she heard him opening drawers and cabinets. A hammer blow, a breaking of glass, the sound of a power drill. She had lived so long in fear of the Herreras, in the habit of loyalty to them, in the habit of fear of the police, that she could not make herself leave when George said she couldn’t. It was as if something physical was stopping her.
She heard his phone ring. She climbed the stairs to listen to George talking, and looked into the office.
George dropped the phone to his side. “He’s dead.”
Her heart pounded. Oscar. “Who?”
“Raúl.”
Maria didn’t know what to say to that. She had thought Raúl was indestructible. “How?”
“Car accident.”
“And the children?”
“I don’t know.”
She slumped down on the stairs.
George seemed dazed. He went to his bedroom and came out with a duffel bag. Then he stepped around her. “Good luck, Maria,” he said. “You should get out of here, too. The police will come.”
“My phone!” she said.
“Sorry. No.”
He was downstairs and out the door. She collected her handbag and a few small things of her own. She left poor Consuelo alone in the entryway, and Sancho in the dog kennel, and the white horse in the stables. The police would come, and someone would look after them all. She locked the door when she left, out of habit.
She eased her car down the driveway and out the gate, as tired as she had ever felt. She could not think of where to go except home.
34.
LIV HAD SAT hunched over her phone in the club room, looking for suspicious Instagram posts, trying different hashtags while her coffee went cold. Now she forked an English muffin into halves. Crumbs dropped onto the table in front of the toaster. That was her, she reflected: soft, white, torn, crumbling. The karmic bus had mowed her down. She was being punished for living in a false world, spongy and insulated from the reality around her. For living in a house with an alarm system, in a neighborhood where the only Latinos were gardeners and day laborers. For sending her kids to a private school that was almost entirely white in a city that wasn’t.
She told herself that she wasn’t being rational, she was being self-aggrandizing. The universe didn’t care what she did. But their life was obscene. Her kids didn’t see anyone except kids like themselves, and kids who were richer.
And now her kids were where? Seeing what? With Sebastian so fragile and dependent on first-world medicine. Sebastian, who, if he was in Treasure Island, would run home when the first scary thing happened. The thought nearly buckled Liv’s knees and sent her to the floor in the middle of the club room.
She waited for the toaster. The kitchen had no reason to change up the food, because most people didn’t stay this long. Tourists were here overnight before going somewhere beautiful. Business people stayed for a meeting. If you stayed long enough to notice that the breakfast-makings never changed, something was deeply wrong.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from Kenji, at the embassy: On my way to hotel with news. You there?
Liv’s hand started to shake, holding the phone. She hit the microphone and dictated a text. “Good or bad news—question mark.” She waited for his answer, and it popped up: Gather the others?
Fuck you, Kenji, she thought. “GOOD OR BAD?” she wrote, with one thumb.
The three little gray dots appeared, pulsing on the screen. She waited. Then the reply: Good I think.
The English muffin popped out of the toaster. She left it there and texted the others.
They gathered in the empty club room, and Benjamin took her hand. Raymond sat opposite them, clearly jittery. Nora stood, with that Icelandic saga air. Gunther, so outsized and jovial a week ago, seemed to be shrinking, his spine compressing day by day, his face graven with lines.
Kenji Kirby arrived, polished and hale. He sat in a leather chair and clasped his hands together. The parents mirrored him instinctively, clasping their own hands, leaning forward on the couches. They were praying, in their way.
“They’ve narrowed down the Facebook login to one area,” Kenji said.
“Why is it taking so long?” Camila asked.
“The computer had good security.”
“Also the police are incompetent,” Gunther said, his voice startlingly loud. Liv wondered if he was drunk.
Kenji ignored him. “The police have also been tracking down the contacts of Luis Bola?os. Bola?os is the dead Colombian man who was found—”
“We know,” Gunther said.
“The Herrera family lives in the right area for the login and had contact with Bola?os,” Kenji said. “That’s a house they thought they’d ruled out, but now a tactical team is going back with a search warrant.”
“Wait, like a raid?” Liv said.
“Something like that.”
“And you think our kids are there?”
“We certainly hope so.”
Benjamin said, “Couldn’t a raid put them in danger?”
“Not more danger than they’re already in,” Kenji said. “In the official estimation.”
“When’s the raid happening?” Benjamin asked.
Kenji looked at his watch. “Right now.”
“Oh fuck,” Nora said.
“Now?” Liv said. “No one thought to consult us about this? What if the kids become hostages, or—or human shields?”
“You’ve been urging speed and action all week,” Kenji said. “And now you’ve got it.”
“But we thought you’d let us know!”
“Can we go to the house?” Raymond asked.
“It’s too dangerous,” Kenji said.
“Our children are there.”
“The team will keep us apprised.”
Liv leaned into her husband’s side, and he locked his arms around her. She tried not to think about Penny and Sebastian seeing men with masks and guns and bulletproof vests rushing into a house. Or about the lengths to which desperate kidnappers might be driven. How did hostages ever survive? It seemed unlikely, impossible.
“This took a lot of work on a lot of people’s part,” Kenji said, sounding peevish.
“You might have told us,” Camila said.
“That’s what I’m doing, right now.”
They glared at him and sat in silence.
Kenji’s phone rang, and Liv jumped. He turned away for privacy, but they all watched him. He spoke in monosyllables, in Spanish, and hung up. Then he stared around at the parents as if he didn’t quite see them. “The children weren’t there,” he said.
“What does that mean?” Liv asked.
“I don’t know.” Kenji looked stunned.
“Who was there?” Raymond asked.
“No one.” This wasn’t the outcome he’d expected.
Liv wondered if Kenji had imagined himself some kind of action hero, directing his armored team to the villain’s lair to rescue the adorable children, who would be huddled in a room full of toys, frightened but unscathed.
“Was there evidence that the kids were there?” Benjamin asked.
“I don’t know.” He looked down at his phone.
“Find out,” Raymond said.
“Okay,” Kenji said, backing out of the room. “I will.”
35.
EVERY TIME PENNY closed her eyes, she saw herself running for the train, tripping over rocks, stumbling in flip-flops, losing the insulin, the paper bag disappearing behind her. Then she opened her eyes again. The train rumbled along.
“I’m hungry,” Sebastian said.
“We don’t have any food,” she said.
“Can I have a new cartridge, for when there is food?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because your sister lost them,” Isabel said, from across the train car.
Penny glared at her. “Shut up, Isabel.”
Sebastian looked up. “Is it true?”
“I was running for the train,” Penny said. “They fell out of my pocket.”
There was a mortified silence.
Marcus asked, “Why didn’t you let Oscar carry them in the backpack?”
“Because we don’t even know him.”
Oscar had his eyes closed and seemed to be pretending they weren’t there.
“You let him hang your butt out the train door,” June said.
“I had to pee!”
“That’s crazy!” June said.