Chapter 22 Species and Speciation
SPECIES AND SPECIATION
*Samantha*
It was a Wednesday and I sat in my office at the desk, deep in the groove where productivity meets intense focus and critical concentration.
And then someone knocked on my door.
I jumped up so fast I nearly upset my coffee. Tara, who had been sitting in the spare chair reading a battered paperback and not even pretending to be anything but bored, raised an eyebrow at me.
“It must be Dmitry,” I said, pressing a hand against my chest to calm my racing heart. “He messaged earlier. He has some news that can’t be sent via text message, so I told him to come over before lunch.”
Tara’s expression remained unchanged. She set down her book and crossed to the door.
A few months ago, I would have been self-conscious about being chaperoned by my own private security detail at work.
Not anymore. After the police reviewed security footage from the building—showing Henrik making multiple attempts to approach, shout at, and otherwise terrify me—they’d made it a point to recommend increased protection.
In an uncharacteristically generous move, my department gave Tara security clearance.
She could badge in and out, and tail me anywhere on campus.
The footage from the incident last year was especially damning.
Not that I needed confirmation. I’d lived it.
But knowing the authorities were taking it seriously, that they had finally started the process of seeking a warrant for his arrest, should have brought me comfort.
Instead, it left me jittery, the hairs on my arms permanently set to “goose bump.”
Just as Andreas had predicted a few days ago, Henrik was growing desperate.
Tara yanked the door open to reveal Dmitry, exactly as expected. Lab coat, scarf, and the faint smell of clove cigarettes that followed him everywhere.
“I have news,” Dmitry announced, repeating his earlier message.
“Come in,” Tara said, stepping aside to allow him entry.
He sauntered in, nodding once to Tara. “Hello, Sam’s doppelganger.”
Tara gave a two-fingered salute. She closed the door and leaned against it.
Dmitry settled himself on the edge of my desk and leveled me with his typical look of frankness. Except this time, there was a hint of sympathy about it. “I am here to tell you that James Nieminen has been suspended for suspected sexual misconduct.”
It should have been a relief, maybe even a vindication, but what I felt instead was a strange, hollow disappointment. In myself. Damn it.
I should’ve gone to HR. I should’ve told Dr. Hauser. If I’d stepped forward earlier, maybe none of this would’ve happened.
Yes. I know. This was a one-eighty from me.
I talked a good game about victim blaming and holding men responsible for their shitty behavior.
But at the end of the day, I hated that he’d harassed someone else after harassing me.
Maybe, if I’d been braver, or smarter, or more strategic, I could have stopped him . . .
“Are you okay?” Dmitry asked, his eyebrows lifting slightly.
Eventually, all I could think to say was, “That makes sense.”
“I didn’t think you would be surprised.” Dmitry gave me a once-over. “But I did want to be the one to tell you.”
I sensed that his interest in the topic and wanting to be the one to break the news had zero to do with gossip. Rather, he knew James had given me a hard time and this was Dmitry’s way of being a supportive work husband.
Tara, finally interested, uncrossed her arms and leaned forward. “Is that the creepy professor guy who jumped out from behind the column that one time and harassed you? Last December, right?”
“That’s the one,” I confirmed.
She nodded, as if this tied up a narrative thread that had been bothering her.
Dmitry continued, “Turns out, his new postdoc is the daughter of someone on the board of governors, but she didn’t disclose it when she applied for the position.
She wanted to get the job based on her merit instead of who her family was, go figure.
Lo and behold, Dr. Nieminen thought he could treat her like any of his other postdocs, and that’s when he found out who her mother was. ”
“Serves him right,” I said, but my heart wasn’t really in it.
Sure, it was nice to see karma work in real time, but it was also a reminder that only some women get to be believed.
For every postdoc with a board of governors parent, there were a hundred who just wanted to keep their jobs, who had to weigh the risk of speaking up against the certainty of retaliation.
And yet, I still hated myself a little for not speaking up. Tell me why this makes sense. Tell me why we do this to ourselves. I hadn’t been the one harassing women, so why did I feel such a deep sense of failure about it?
My phone buzzed on the desk. I ignored it, turning back to my bodyguard and confidant. “Should we go grab some lunch?” I felt like I needed cheering up. “It’s actually a nice day outside. We could walk somewhere.”
Another buzz. I studiously ignored it.
Tara frowned. “I’ll have to call your entourage. Now that you have five guards, it might be better to have something delivered rather than try to navigate the sidewalk.”
“Fine,” I said, reaching for my phone, “I’ll order something.”
I glanced down at the screen. Two missed calls, both from Martin. There was also a voicemail. My pulse kicked up a notch. Kaitlyn had been out of the hospital for weeks. She’d seemed fine the last time we spoke. But Martin only ever called me when there was something wrong with Kaitlyn.
I tapped the voicemail, my brain already compiling worst-case scenarios. I pressed it to my ear.
“Sam, call me back as soon as you get this,” Martin’s voice said, ragged with panic.
“This is an emergency, I’ve already called the police.
I have a phone call from Henrik Kristiansen and he says that he has Kaitlyn and Joey, and he wants to trade them for you.
I can’t get through to Kaitlyn and her phone is turned off, so I can’t track her location.
I’m on my way to your work now and I’m going to try calling you again.
If I don’t hear from you or can’t get in to see you, the police will be stopping by. Call me back ASAP.”
The message ended with a click, but the afterimage burned in my mind.
I must have gone very still, because Tara was watching me with the coiled readiness of a pit bull waiting for a command. Dmitry cocked his head, his smile fading.
“Sam?” Tara said. “Everything okay?”
I looked up at them both, my voice barely a strangled scrape. “He has Kaitlyn. And the baby. Henrik has them. And he wants to trade them for me.”
* * *
I’d always imagined that when someone says, “We have your loved ones, come alone or they die,” you’d go into this action-hero trance and become single-minded, invincible, incapable of panic. Instead, my body was so overloaded with cortisol that my gums were numb.
Stuck to the leather seat of Tara’s black Mercedes, I compulsively refreshed the GPS dot on my phone as if it could will my friend and her son safe.
It was nearly 12:30 PM by the time we left the campus parking structure.
The city outside the car was cartoonish and cruel, too-bright sunlight refracting through dirty windshield glass, people blurring by on their missions of grocery runs and gym check-ins, a dog in a bandana barking at nothing, completely unbothered that my best friend and her baby were being held hostage by a psycho with a grudge.
Tara gripped the wheel with a single hand, thumb drumming rapid fire on the steering column, her focus split evenly between the address I’d punched into the GPS and the black SUV trailing us at a discreet but definitely not subtle distance.
That would be the rest of the security team.
My security team. At this moment, they felt like a liability more than a comfort.
I tapped out a text to Andreas with both hands, only marginally aware of Tara side-eyeing my frantic thumbs:
Sam: Henrik has Kaitlyn and Joey. Martin will send you Henrik’s voicemail. I’m on my way to the address Martin sent. Talk to Martin before calling me. I love you.
There was nothing else I could say. I wouldn’t be able to say it out loud anyway. No read receipt. Good. The last thing I needed was a reply that might make me cry when I needed to be brave and strong.
My head was in a blender, every thought fighting for top billing. What if Henrik already killed them? What if I was wasting time with every second I spent not at the address? Was there a way to stall him? Could I trust the police to actually help?
Tara broke the silence. “We’re almost there. Two stoplights.” She shot a look at me over the top of her aviators, and her face, usually so open and expressive, was locked down and set to grim. “Are you sure you want to leave everyone else behind?”
I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I relived the last hour on a loop, as if by narrating it to myself I could make it turn out different the second time.
Martin had called me—no, not called, summoned—with an urgency that had sent every neuron in my skull into red alert. When I arrived downstairs outside the biology building with Tara, he’d greeted me with zero preamble, instead shoving his phone at me and saying, “You need to hear this.”
His voice was the scariest thing I’d ever heard. Not shaking, not frantic, just completely emptied out.
He hit play on his phone, and Henrik’s voice came through the tiny speaker, thick and menacing and, worse, giddy:
“I have your lovely wife and son with me. If you want to see them again, send Sam Jarlston on her own to the address I’ll be texting you shortly.
If she comes with anyone else or if you send the police, you’ll never see your wife and child again.
And that would be a shame, because your wife is very, very beautiful.
And if Ms. Jarlston isn’t here in . . . let’s say two hours, tell her not to bother coming at all. ”