Chapter 36
Marin
David says yes.
Not the full yes. Not the welcome back, corner office, here’s your roster yes.
The conditional yes. The I’ll hear your pitch but I need you in the room yes.
Which means New York. Which means a flight.
Which means leaving Charles strapped to a bed in a farmhouse in Texas with no one to feed him, medicate him, or stop him from screaming loud enough for Mrs. Mather to hear.
“Tuesday work?” David asks.
“Tuesday’s perfect,” I say, because what else can you say when opportunity calls? You sure as hell don’t say I’ll have to check with my hostage’s feeding schedule.
I hang up. Set the phone on the counter. Stare at it.
Tuesday. Four days from now. A two-hour flight.
One meeting. Maybe two if David introduces me to his partners, which he will, because David doesn’t take meetings that aren’t worth multiplying.
I could be there and back in thirty-six hours.
Forty-eight if things go well. Forty-eight hours away from this house.
Forty-eight hours where Charles is alone.
I can’t leave him alone. That’s not a moral position—it’s a logistical one.
Charles without supervision is Charles working the cuffs, Charles banging on the floor, Charles finding a way to make noise that the acres and the soundproofing and the gag can’t contain.
Despite his behavior this morning, he’s been fairly cooperative lately—movie nights, thank yous, the kind smile—but cooperative Charles is still Charles.
I give him forty-eight unsupervised hours and he’ll have the bedframe disassembled and a smoke signal going from the roof.
I need someone in this house.
I need someone who already knows what’s upstairs.
I need someone who won’t call the police.
The list is short. The list is one person.
I hear his boots on the floor above me. Luke. Upstairs. Where he shouldn’t be—the railing is outside, Luke, the railing—but I’ll deal with that later because right now my brain is doing what it does best. It’s finding the angle. It’s seeing the play.
If Luke is in this house while I’m gone, Charles isn’t alone. The cover story holds. Mrs. Mather sees a man—a handyman, a family friend, someone helping out while the wife ties up loose ends in the city. It works. It all works.
I just need a reason to ask him. A reason that isn’t please babysit the man I kidnapped while I fly to New York to resurrect my career.
I hear Luke move from one side of the room to the other. There’s no reason for him to be up there and we both know it.
But that’s not really my concern at the moment. It isn’t Charles. It isn’t the experiment or the relationship or the reset.
It’s Tuesday.
It’s who watches Charles while I’m in New York.
And how I’m going to get Luke to agree.