“No,” said Michael. “There was no call.”
A slight hitch sounded in Michael’s voice, and then, without warning, a pit opened up in him, a trapdoor of sorts, and down went his spirits, free-falling into some abyss.
“What the fuck,” Michael muttered to himself. “What the absolute fuck fuck fuck. Where are they?”
He gave the back of his hair a hard yank until it hurt, holding it so that a sharp pain radiated from his skull all the way down his leg. The brief flash of agony felt like a welcomed distraction from the other, far worse kind of suffering he was experiencing.
“Let’s try to stay calm,” said Ouyang. “Best for everyone. I know this is difficult. But we don’t know anything yet, not really. We don’t know what’s happened here. It’s possible it’s all a big miscommunication, right?”
Michael wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but something about the way Ouyang was eyeing him now made Michael more than a little uneasy.
“What else can I tell you?”
“Did you see someone following you?” asked Ouyang.
“No,” said Michael, offering a slight shake of his head. “I thought everything was fine. Normal.”
“So what makes you think they’ve been kidnapped?”
Ouyang had her notepad out, pen in hand ready to scribble.
“Because what other explanation is there?” Michael said, exasperated. “We’re here on vacation and suddenly they’re all gone. All their things, gone.”
“Sorry to say, but another explanation would be that she left you, willingly and willfully,” the detective replied with stinging authority.
“Why would she do that?” Michael asked. “Leave me when we made these plans. She was looking forward to this trip. She asked to come here.”
Michael locked eyes with Dan like he’d have the answer, which he of course didn’t.
“You tell me,” said Detective Ouyang, who pivoted to a slightly more menacing tone. “Did you two have a fight? Was she upset about something?”
“No … no, it’s nothing like that. We’ve been good. I mean, yeah, it’s been a struggle lately, but we’ve been okay.”
“Why a struggle?” Ouyang wanted to know.
Michael took some audible breaths, hoping to purge any lingering frustration or animosity he felt toward his wife. It had been a hard few months. Perhaps the hardest. “Natalie, my wife, suffers from insomnia, and it’s caused us some … difficulties.”
“What kind of difficulties?”
The glimmer in Ouyang’s eyes implied that she felt they were finally getting somewhere.
“She hasn’t exactly been herself of late,” Michael said. “Do you know the symptoms of insomnia? What it can do to a person?”
Ouyang’s mouth formed the hint of a smile.
“I’m a New York City police detective,” she said. “But why don’t you tell me anyway.”
“There’s depression, irritability, anxiety.”
But there’s more, Michael, whispered the devil. There’s so, so much more.
Ouyang’s eyes widened slightly as if she’d heard that voice in his head. “So your wife had been acting strangely, and now she’s vanished, with the kids. Is that about right?” The detective cocked her head slightly. “You see why I might not jump straight to kidnapping, don’t you?”
Michael swallowed hard. He saw all right.
“Do you have a family picture, Michael?” she asked. “I want to get it over to the station right away so we can issue a BOLO. That’s: be on the lookout in our parlance.”
“Right,” said Michael who then presented Ouyang with the same photo he had shown the hostess at Crossroads.
“Beautiful family,” Ouyang said, in a way that conveyed the subtext, and I hope you didn’t do anything to them. “Got another with your picture on it?”
So you can run me through some database, thought Michael. Use facial recognition software to see what you might dredge up on me.
He couldn’t deny the request, however, so he ended up AirDropping two pictures to Ouyang’s cell phone, one of which was a photo of the four Hart family members a kind stranger took at a rest stop on the drive to New York. Ouyang forwarded the pictures on to somewhere.
“What now?” Michael asked.
Now, the phone rang. Dan’s phone, to be precise.
“It’s security calling,” Dan said briskly. “There’s some footage we need to see. They’re emailing me a link.”
A short while later, Dan did some mouse clicking on a desktop computer, while Michael kept his eyes locked on Teddy. It was far easier to focus his attention on the stuffed bear than try to make small talk with the detective. Michael nervously drummed his fingers against the desk, tapping loudly enough to get Ouyang’s attention.
“Sorry, nervous habit,” Michael said, pulling his hand back onto his lap. “My wife hates it when I do that.”
My wife. It hurt even to say the words.
Dan spun his computer monitor around so everyone could have a good view.
“I had our security team use the photograph Mr. Hart provided, and they’ve been looking at our camera footage from around the time the Hart family checked in. Obviously we don’t have cameras in the rooms, but we do have a state-of-the-art system with coverage in the halls and front desk and such. But my team said this is the footage we’ll want to see first.”
The video playback showed the outside of the hotel, looking toward the main entrance from the other side of the carport. Thanks to the camera’s high vantage point, maybe the height of a basketball hoop, Michael could see the entirety of two single glass doors bracketing a revolving door. His gaze flickered to the date and time stamp in the lower left corner where a digital readout counted the hours, minutes, and seconds. Michael did some calculations of his own. He had been out getting pizza when this footage was taken.
In the foreground, cars and vans came and went with no discernible pattern. People who weren’t his family did the same. Then, in an utterly surreal moment, they appeared in the frame—Natalie, Bryce, and Addison. He couldn’t see them clearly, not their faces or their expressions, no way to infer a story in their eyes, but he knew their shapes so well that he recognized them even from a distance. They were leaving the hotel, carrying their luggage.
Michael searched the area behind his family for the man in the army jacket and the baseball hat—the one from his mind-movie, the kidnapper with a gun—but no one accompanied them. Natalie had two suitcases in her possession, one in each hand. Addie wheeled one bag, her own, a pink hard-shell case decorated with white polka dots. She pulled Bryce along with her free hand.