“Are you fucking crazy?” Art was fully awake. “Let me do it! Get back here!”
But Jo was already out the door and halfway down the hall. She peeked into the bathroom as she passed. It was empty, as was the guest bedroom. There was only one other room on the second floor—the one near the stairs at the end of the hall. The one with a poster of a K-pop boy band. The one where her eleven-year-old daughter was sleeping.
The door appeared closed, which told her she’d found the intruder. Lucy always slept with it open. But a sliver of space between the door and its jamb told Jo the latch hadn’t caught. She readied her arm—elbow bent, palm facing out. Then she slammed her hand into one of the wooden panels. The door flew backward into the wall, where it stuck, its knob embedded in the house’s thirty-year-old Sheetrock. Jo hurled herself over the threshold, expecting the element of surprise to work in her favor. In the split second in which the room was revealed, she saw her daughter on the bed, hands zip-tied, eyes bulging, the small stuffed pig she’d slept with since she was an infant crammed into her mouth. Jo’s brain registered Lucy’s hands frantically gesturing toward the left side of the door. Then Jo’s world went dark.
She woke with the right side of her face pressed into carpet, her head throbbing, and her hands bound. A large body lay blocking her view of the room. She recognized the familiar hole in the back of Art’s favorite Columbia T-shirt and wondered what the hell he was doing. Then the sound of duct tape being ripped from a roll brought her back to the bedroom, and Jo knew she didn’t have long to act. A self-defense instructor who’d offered weekly classes at the gym always showed new students how to break out of zip ties. Jo thought of it as a parlor trick with little practical use, but the three simple steps had lodged in her brain: Tighten the zip tie with your teeth. Raise your arms over your head. Swing your arms down and apart with as much force as possible. Rage, fear, and frustration swirled inside her as she began to bring her hands to her mouth. Her body was burning and her arms were slick with sweat. She smelled hot plastic as she bent her neck toward her wrists. Before she could clench the loose end of the strap between her teeth, the band holding her wrists stretched like a piece of chewed gum and fell away.
The man was busy wrapping Lucy’s ankles with a second strip of duct tape as Jo rose from the floor. She grabbed her daughter’s new tennis racket and positioned herself behind him. “Get your fucking hands off my kid,” she growled.
When he spun around, she caught him in the face with the edge of the racket. It wasn’t enough to take him down, and he came back at her with a fist to her temple. Jo’s knee rammed into his groin, and a kick to the abdomen sent him sailing into the bedroom wall. She was on him the second he hit the ground, with the handle of the tennis racket pressed against his throat. He was a large man, well over six feet, with a chest so broad she could barely straddle it. She took a good look at him, attempting to commit his appearance to memory. His most distinguishing feature seemed to be a lack of one. Even if she’d seen his face a thousand times, it wouldn’t have left an impression.
“Who are you?” she demanded as his entire head turned purple. When he couldn’t answer, she reluctantly lessened the pressure.
“Get the fuck off me.” Blood sprayed from the man’s mouth as he snarled, leaving a scarlet splatter pattern on Jo’s white T-shirt.
Jo added a knee to his groin and crouched over him like an animal. “If you don’t start talking now, I’m going to rip your head off.” She was going to. She could feel it. She imagined the tendons popping one by one as she separated his head from his neck. She was going to make him suffer.
“Jo.” It was Art’s voice. He’d regained consciousness. “Don’t kill him. Lucy needs you.”
She could hear the wail of sirens in the distance.
Jo didn’t need answers from the man. She knew everything. She could see it all, and felt it as keenly as though it had all come to pass. She knew who had sent him, and she knew why he was there. She lowered her face down toward the man’s. “Do you feel this?” The heat flowed through her arms like molten lava. She put her hand on his face and heard his skin sizzle. “I’m marking you. Because when they let you out—and I know they will—I’m going to find you and kill you,” Jo said. “And I want you to give Spencer Harding a message. I’m going to rip that motherfucker’s intestines out and shove them into his eye sockets and out through his mouth. Make sure you tell him. And remind him that I know where he lives, too.”
Then the police were inside. It took three of them to pull her off the man, whose face had been branded with a perfect print of her palm. Blisters would later form on the officers’ hands where they’d made contact with Jo’s skin.
Jo sat on the front steps with her bare arms wrapped tightly around Lucy. Inside, the house was a whirlwind of activity, with cops, technicians, and photographers studying the scene. The neighbors had come out to gawk from their lawns. But all Jo could see was her eleven-year-old daughter lying bound and gagged on the rainbow sheets she’d loved since kindergarten.
“Nothing like this will ever happen again. Do you hear me?” Jo said, putting the universe on notice.
“I know, Mama,” Lucy whispered. “I’ll be okay.”
Jo held her even closer. Though her child’s life was no longer in immediate danger, lasting damage had been done. The three of them would live with the memory of that night for the rest of their lives. With luck, Lucy’s recollections would grow hazier in time. But Jo knew she and Art would always be stalked by that image of their daughter—and the thought of what might have happened next. The men responsible would be punished. But Jo would never be able to forgive herself for leading Spencer Harding straight to her family.
Art appeared on the stairs with his old army surplus duffel in one hand and Lucy’s suitcase in the other. His eyes were bleary with exhaustion.
“Where are we going?” Lucy asked.
“Dad’s taking you somewhere safe,” Jo said.
Lucy’s eyes went wide and wild. “No, Mama! We can’t leave you here by yourself! Dad, she has to come, too!”
Art looked off into the darkness. “Your mother says she has to stay.”
For the first time in years, Lucy broke down sobbing, and Jo felt her heart breaking. It made no difference how strong Jo grew—Lucy would always be her kryptonite. That’s why they’d gone for her. They knew Jo’s child was her weak spot. If something happened to Lucy, it would destroy her. That had to be why superheroes never had children.
“Listen to me, sweetheart.” Jo kept her voice calm. She’d cry when they were gone. “You and Dad are just going on a quick trip. As soon as everything’s settled here, you’ll come right back, I swear.”