“I guess I can’t ask if that’s too tight around your wrists,” he said. Then he laughed, since he didn’t give a shit anyway. He hoped it was good and tight, hoped it cut off the blood and made her miserable. It’d give her a taste of what she had to look forward to.
He was almost done when his cell phone rang. His wife had flown off to meet her sister in New York City so they could see a Broadway musical and spend the night at a hotel in the theater district. So what the hell was she doing calling him in the middle of the night?
He hesitated, wondering if he should answer it. If he were asleep, he wouldn’t answer it. So he let it go to voicemail. Then he checked to see if she’d left a message.
“What the hell’s going on?” she cried. “Chelsea just called me crying. She said she’s sick. That she’s throwing up, and you aren’t anywhere to be found.”
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered and hurried up the hill to where he’d left the car so that he could get a better signal before calling her back. He’d given the girls some cough medicine that was supposed to help them sleep. He’d expected them to be knocked out until morning. So what was Chelsea doing up? He couldn’t have given her too much. He’d been careful about the dosage. But maybe she was allergic to it.
Hillary answered on the first ring. “Andy? Where are you?” she asked. “You told me you’d watch the kids so that I could have this little trip with my sister!”
“I am watching the kids,” he said. “I just ran to the store to get some Pepto Bismal. I’ve been sick, too. Haven’t been able to keep anything down.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
He stared up at the clouds moving over the moon. “Because I didn’t want to bother you, didn’t want to ruin your trip. And what can you do about it?”
“So you left the kids alone?”
“For like fifteen minutes! They were both sleeping soundly. I checked on them before I left. And I knew I wouldn’t be gone long.”
“You realize child protective services could take them away from us if we were to get reported, don’t you? Miranda’s eight and Chelsea’s only six! What if you were to get in a car accident? What if you couldn’t get back to them?”
“Stop freaking out!” he snapped. “I’ll be with them in a minute. Don’t you even give a shit that I’ve been puking my guts out?”
There was a long pause. “I do. I’m sorry. I just...I was so scared there for a minute. I couldn’t imagine what you could be doing this late at night.”
He thought of the car and the fact that he was going to have to tell her he’d been in an accident. That wouldn’t fly now. He’d have to leave the car right where it was, walk a few miles to reach a more populated area and call a cab. It’d be better, for everyone’s sake, if he woke up in the morning and pretended it’d been stolen after he returned from the store. He couldn’t risk having anyone notice that the paint scratches matched those on Evelyn’s car, anyway, not after the police had already been around once to ask about his vehicle.
“Don’t worry about anything,” he said. “I’m going to be fine, and I’m taking good care of the kids.”
She sniffed but seemed to be calming down. “Okay. That’s nice to hear. Will you...will you call me when you get home? The kids aren’t answering now.”
And once he called them and instructed them to leave the phone off the hook, under the guise that he wanted to be able to hear how they were doing, they wouldn’t be able to answer later, either—not until after he could get home. “Just go to bed. I’ve got everything handled. We’ll check in come morning.”
“Okay,” she said, but he knew she’d be checking back regularly. He had to get his ass home as soon as possible, and that was going to take some time, especially now that he had to stop by an all-night drugstore.
“Damn kids,” he muttered after he disconnected. Someday, he was going to kill them too.
Chapter 15
The birds were chirping so loudly that at first Evelyn thought she was sleeping outdoors. The smell of fecund earth seemed to indicate the same thing. She was close to trees and water and... nothing else that she could determine. Was she in the country?
No matter how intently she listened, she couldn’t hear any cars or people or activity. What was going on?
It wasn’t until she managed to lift her heavy eyelids and look around, to see the sunlight peeking through the boards of the roof overhead, that she realized where she was. Then her heart jumped into her throat, nearly choking her, as if whatever had been stuffed into her mouth wasn’t enough to contend with.
She was back in the shack! Back where she’d nearly been killed!
Automatically, her hands tried to come up, to see if she was bleeding out. Had he cut her throat? She was too numb with fear to be able to feel the pain, if it was there, but she couldn’t check. Although she had her clothes on, she was tied, spread-eagle to an iron bed frame.