Meanwhile, I can sense he was thinking the same thing about me. Trying to work out how I could have done it to my own kids. Each of us mistrusting the other again, which might have been exactly the point.
Who else? Who else besides Sam? I don’t think my kids would have let Kezia Claremont in, despite the fact they’d liked her and she had a badge. Detective Prester? Maybe.
And then it comes to me in a cold, horrible, skin-tightening rush. I’ve forgotten someone. Someone they trusted. Someone they would let in without a second thought because he’d been trusted by me to stay with them before. Javier Esparza. Javier, who’d disappeared after delivering my ammo.
His truck had been gone from the range’s parking lot when I’d left.
He might know the code to the alarm system. He would have seen me arm and disarm, and seen the kids do it, too. Javier Esparza was a trained soldier. He’d know how to abduct people, and do it quietly.
I try to say that, and I can’t. I can’t get sound to my mouth. My lungs hurt, and I pull in air in a rush to soothe them, and the plastic of Connor’s game controller feels warm in my hands, like skin, and I think, Connor’s skin might be cold now, he might be . . . but my brain protects itself, it won’t tell me the rest of it. Javier, who would have had easy access to a shotgun from the range, or from the back window of his truck. Javier, whom I trusted enough to watch my kids. Who was trusted enough by them to be allowed inside, have the alarm turned off for him. Who could have easily gotten the code from the kids and reset it on the way out.
You’re forgetting something, Mel’s voice whispers to me. I flinch, because I don’t want it, don’t want his voice in my head, I don’t, but he’s right, too. I am forgetting something . . .
“I’m going to call the security company,” Kez says. “Going to need you to give them clearance to talk to me, okay? They should have records of when the alarm went off and came on—”
“Cameras!” I blurt. I lunge away, to where I’d left the tablet plugged in to charge. The cameras are streaming to the device. I can see exactly what happened.
But the tablet is gone. The cord is still there, dangling limp.
I take the end of it, as if I can’t believe it’s not connected, and I look wordlessly at Kezia, as if she can somehow solve this for me. She’s frowning. “You have cameras? Are they built into the security system?”
“No,” I say. “No, separate, there was a tablet—” I don’t know what makes my brain jump from one idea to the next; it happens so fast it’s a blur of thought, something about watching my kids to keeping them safe to safe, and then I realize what I’ve really forgotten.
The safe room.
I come bolt upright and charge around the kitchen bar toward the wall, while the other two look at me in baffled surprise.
The safe room of this house, the one that the old, wealthy owners built in, is hidden behind a piece of hinged paneling in the corner of the kitchen area, near the breakfast table. I shove the table hard, nearly sending it crashing into Kezia as she approaches, and push frantically at the paneling. It’s supposed to spring free, but it stays put. I have a strange out-of-body feeling, as if I’ve imagined the very existence of the room, as if reality has shifted around me into an insane funhouse version of my life and the safe room has vanished along with my children. I push again, again, again, and finally, the far corner springs up with a click. I grab it and yank it open. Beyond it is a heavy steel door, and a keypad inset beside it.
There’s blood smeared on the numbers. I stop breathing when I see that, but at the same time it means they’re inside, they’re okay. There’s no other option.
I type in the password, but my fingers are trembling hard, and I get it wrong. I take a breath and force myself to slow down. Six digits. I get it right this time, and the tone trills and a green light flashes. I turn the handle, and I’m shouting “Connor! Lanny!” even before the seal breaks.
Inside, the panic room is wrecked. Bottled water is scattered across the floor, knocked from a shelf, and a box of emergency high-protein supplies has been knocked over and spilled packages across the floor. Some are crushed from a struggle.
There’s blood. Drops. Long strings that show motion. A small pool of it near the corner, under a yellow sign that reads CAUTION: ZOMBIES HERE. Connor’s sign.
There’s still a crossbow broken on the floor. Also my son’s, because he adores the guy who carries one on that zombie show. The phone, with its hard line, has been ripped out of the wall and thrown broken in the opposite direction.
I keep looking at the blood. It’s fresh. Fresh and red.
My kids are not here.
I am so certain that I stand there for a moment, staring without comprehending; they have to be here, nothing else makes sense. This is their sanctuary, their safe place. Their escape. No one could get to them here.
But someone has. They were in here. They fought here. They bled here.
And they’re gone.
I lunge forward to the only possible cover in the room, the small toilet closet. It’s only got a frosted-glass door, and I can already see that nobody’s in it, but I yank it open anyway and gag on my own terror when I see the clean, empty stall.
I stand there, totally still, and the silence of the room soaks into me like cold. The absence of my children is an open wound, and the blood is so red, fresh, so bright it’s blinding.
Kezia puts her hand on my shoulder. The warmth of it feels shocking, radiating against my face. I’ve gotten very chilled, I realize. Shock. I’m shivering without really feeling it. “Come on,” she tells me. “They’re not here. Come on out.”
I don’t want to. I feel that leaving this strange, chilly sanctuary is admitting something huge. Something I want to hide from, like a child pulling covers over my head.
Irrationally, insanely, I suddenly want Mel. It horrifies me, but I want someone to turn to, someone who might share this feeling of emptiness. Maybe I don’t want Mel. Maybe I want the idea of him. Someone who shares my grief, my fear, our children. I want his arms around me. I want Mel to tell me it’ll be all right, even though that Mel is a lie, was always a lie. Even then.
Kezia pulls me out. We leave the secret room open, and I sink down in one of the kitchen chairs—the one Lanny sat in at breakfast. Everything has a memory attached to it—the fingerprints on the wood of the table, the mostly empty salt shaker that I asked Connor to refill but he forgot.
One of Lanny’s skull-themed hair clips lies discarded on the floor under the chair, a single, silky strand still caught in the hinge. I pick it up and hold it loose in my hand, and when I lift it to my nose, I can smell the scent of her hair. It brings tears to my eyes.
Sam’s sitting next to me now, and his hand is lying limply close to mine. I don’t know when he sat down; it’s as if he’s just appeared, like time jumped. Reality collapsing again. Everything feels distant now, but the warmth of his skin radiates into me like sunlight, even half an inch away.
“Gwen,” he says. After a short delay to process that yes, that’s my name, I’ve taught myself to believe it’s my name, I raise my head and meet his gaze. Something in it steadies me. Brings me an inch or two up from the darkness, into something that’s at least faintly hopeful. “Gwen, we’re going to find them, okay? We’re going to find the kids. Do you have any idea—”
He’s interrupted by the ringing of my cell phone. I grab for it with frantic, clawing hands, slap it down on the table, and answer the call on speakerphone without even glancing at the caller ID. “Lanny? Connor?”