Vega pushed the numbers into the keypad on the wall, and she heard the mechanism of the lock ticking and snapping. She opened the door.
The first thing that hit her was the smell.
—
Cap raced through stoplights and signs down dark roads, one hand on the wheel, the other scrolling and dialing—Traynor, Junior, his neighbor Bosch. It would take too long to explain to 911 dispatch, who would send the fire department first. He left frantic short messages for them all and then he remembered—Em was at the station, fifteen minutes from Cap’s house if you obeyed traffic laws.
“Cap?” said Em, picking up right away.
“Em,” said Cap, swinging around a turn. “The man who took Kylie Brandt is at my house with Nell and he’s armed. I can’t explain—I’m five minutes out. Get some backup and meet me there.”
He couldn’t control his breathing or the register of his voice, felt like the words were being choked from his throat.
“I’m coming,” said Em, panting, running. And then, “She’s gonna be fine, Cap. Let’s get her. Drive.”
Em hung up, and Cap drove, finally reaching his neighborhood, past the playground where he’d taken Nell after being up all night on third shift. Higher, higher, higher, she’d say on the big-girl swing, legs pumping to spike the velocity. His arms would seize every time she went up, as he imagined her hands losing hold of the chains and her falling to the ground, smashing her nose and breaking bones, her screams echoing through his ears though they hadn’t even happened.
Then he heard Jules’s criticism: “Just push her higher, Max. She’s not glass.”
No, he thought now. More fragile than glass. Skin thin as newsprint.
He slowed on his block and parked across the street from his house. He got out of the car and ran to his lawn. There were no lights on inside, but the front door was open, not wide. As he approached he saw the broken frame, splintered. He drew the Sig from his belt and went around to his office entrance.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside. Closed the door quietly and slid his shoes off. He padded through his office, the street light coming through the blinds, making fat stripes across the floor and furniture. The door connecting his office to the rest of his house was open, the way he’d left it.
He came into the living room, dark, quiet, the strip over the dishwasher the only light.
Likeliest scenario, thought Cap. Linsom breaks the front doorframe, maybe muffles the nose of the gun and shoots the lock to keep it quiet. Nell doesn’t hear it anyway because of the headphones she wears to fall asleep, listening to the rat-a-tat of snare drumlines because she said it got the more difficult cadences into her subconscious. So Linsom finds her in her room asleep and what? She’s too old for his taste in terms of sexual assault, but would that stop him?
Would he just kill her?
No, said Vega in Cap’s head. Too much still to lose.
He went up the stairs, skipping over the creaky step. Then he was in the hallway, and he heard Nell’s voice, hushed, talking.
He covered his mouth so as not to gasp audibly with relief. He couldn’t make out the words and couldn’t guess at the situation—did Linsom have the gun on her? Was he restraining her? There was no way to know.
All Cap had was surprise. The only thing he could do was come in fast and keep his aim steady.
He put his back against the wall and moved sideways, Sig pointed toward Nell’s open door. He knew he just had to do it—swing around and if the shot was clear, take it.
“So should we try that, Press?” he heard Nell say.
Cap pivoted into the room, leading with the Sig, arms straight. There was Nell in her desk chair, not tied up or visibly injured, and Press Linsom, standing, hovering close to her, a .45 in his right hand, hanging at his side until he saw Cap.
“Dad!” yelled Nell.
Linsom jumped and put his arm around Nell’s neck, stuck the .45 against her cheek.
Cap felt every nerve ending in his body catch fire as he huffed breath through his nose. Linsom looked tired and shocked, his hands shaking.
Nell’s eyes were huge as they hunted Cap’s, trying to tell him things. She gripped the arms of the chair; her lips curled as she spoke.
“It’s okay, Dad,” she said, her voice eerily calm. “Press and I have been talking. Right, Press?”
Linsom didn’t answer her, kept staring at Cap.
“He doesn’t want to hurt me,” said Nell, her voice cracking only a little. “He just wants to make sure his family’s okay.”
Cap kept the Sig pointed at Linsom’s chest. Could he take the shot?
“That’s good,” said Cap. “Mr. Linsom, if you put the gun down right now, I can help you and your family. If you don’t, I can’t. It’s just as plain as that.”
It was difficult to tell if Linsom heard him. His hand still shook, the nose of the gun slipping around on Nell’s cheek. Nell watched Cap but didn’t flinch. Cap could not look at her. If he looked at her, he would make a bad decision.
“Why don’t you tell him, Press,” said Nell, sounding like a proud parent at the science fair. “Tell my dad how far you and I came in two hours, all the stuff we talked about.”
Linsom shook his head quickly.
“You tell him,” he whispered.
“Okay,” said Nell, swallowing air. “Okay, well, Press came in pretty upset when he woke me up, but then we got to talking. We all want the same thing….”
She trailed off. Cap had to look at her. There were the streams of tears, one from each eye, following the bell shape of her cheekbones. Her eyes remained open and fierce, staring at Cap with a strangely familiar insistence. Don’t fuck this up, Dad.
“To feel safe,” she said, like the air had been pulled out of her. “Not to be safe,” she added. “To feel safe.”
Cap could not begin to think of how a sixteen-year-old had talked a psychopath out of killing her, but then again, this was Nell. And suddenly the true loss of them all—Ashley Cahill, Sydney McKenna, Kylie Brandt—hit him with the force of all the anthracite stuck underneath the foundation of his house. They would never get to be like Nell. They would never get to thrill and amaze and undo every stereotype of Teenage Girl for their parents. Or they would never get to torture and exhaust them, break curfew and drive drunk. But it didn’t matter—both outcomes were the tragedy.
Cap felt the tears load up in his eyes but he didn’t dare blink. And then he didn’t think he moved but he must have, his elbow must have bent, the Sig must have moved an inch left or right, because Linsom saw it, his face lit up with panic as he took the gun off Nell and fired at Cap, a wild pitch.
Nell screamed; Cap heard the round sail past his ears, cut into the wall behind him, and Linsom came toward him, waving the gun. Cap fired and got his shoulder. Linsom reared back, in shock.