Chapter 9
Chapter 9
Brrrr-iiiiiing!
The piercing trill of the telephone nearly makes Jane come out of her skin. Even though they’d all been standing there with the sole expectation of it ringing, it’s been at least ten minutes, which was just long enough to be lulled into the sense that perhaps Otto wasn’t going to call back at all. Vaughn certainly was convinced he wouldn’t. “He’s in a meeting near San Francisco,” she had said to Brick as they waited, her voice shaking. “He’s not going to check his messages.”
Does anyone? Jane thought. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually checked her voicemail.
“He will call,” Brick said, confident, as though he knew Vaughn’s husband better than she did.
For the next few minutes, Jane had waffled. She had so many questions, and though she typically had no problem speaking up, she had never found herself in quite so intimidating a situation. And while Brick’s demeanor seemed genial in the dining room, his mood had definitely shifted to a more serious tone. More intense. Who knew what would set him off? She dug deep for courage and finally uttered her one pertinent question out loud—albeit in a very tiny, timid voice: “Why Otto?” She cleared her throat in an attempt to free the shake from it.
Brick leaned against the wall, his gun resting on his chest, the barrel pointed up toward the ceiling, and she fully expected him to ignore her. She wasn’t even quite sure she’d said her question out loud until he cut his eyes to her and said: “He’s a billionaire.”
Something clicked in her brain: the most recent thing Otto had been in the news for, aside from the electric auto-piloted helicopter fiasco and the Ottobyte cryptocurrency—something about pledging to make his company carbon-neutral by a certain date. “Yeah, but…isn’t he one of the good ones?”
Brick barked one loud “Ha!” His lips curled into a genuine smile. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“That you think any of them are good.”
“Oh,” Jane breathed. She offered an apologetic glance to Vaughn and Paisley, as if she had insulted their husband and father. She half expected them to jump to his defense, but Vaughn just scowled and Paisley continued looking—understandably—fearful.
Jane wasn’t sure what to say next, but she wanted to keep him talking. Isn’t that what people who are kidnapped or held hostage are supposed to do? Attempt to befriend their captor? Make them see you as a fellow human, so they are less likely to hurt you.
“I have children,” she blurted out.
“I’m so happy for you,” he said. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think he was teasing her.
“I’m just saying—can’t you let the rest of us go? We’re innocent.” It wasn’t until the words left her mouth that she realized she was parroting her own hostages in her book.
“I could,” he said. “But then only one of us would get what we wanted.”
Jane cocked her head as the words struck her. Narrowed her eyes. It made sense for her to echo her book. She’d written it. It did not make sense that Brick’s response was the exact same line the captor in her book gave. This time word for word. She remembered writing that line specifically, because she thought it was so clever.
She could tell Brick thought it was clever, too, the way he was grinning.
There were only two possibilities she could think of: 1) Her line wasn’t really as unique and clever as she thought, if Brick had thought of it, too. 2) Brick was somehow one of the three hundred people in the world who had actually read her book, and the lines had wormed their way into his subconscious memory (which is honestly the basis of her greatest fear when writing—that a line she has read has stuck in her brain and she will plagiarize it without even knowing she’s plagiarized).
She opened her mouth to speak. Closed it. Opened it again. “Do you read often?”
It was his turn to tilt his head at her, and she could tell the question genuinely caught him off guard. He frowned and then straightened his back. “Enough talking,” he said gruffly.
Now Brick stares at the ringing phone, a college boy playing a mind game with a girl he likes. Or maybe he just wants the time to bask in the fact that he was right when he said with such confidence that Otto would return the call. On the fourth ring, Brick lifts the receiver.
“Hello,” he says. And then his face changes, confused at first before slowly morphing into anger. He slams the receiver onto its base, triggering a faint ringing sound to echo in Jane’s ears.
“What happened? What did he say?” Vaughn asks.
“Nothing,” Brick says. “Wrong number. Let’s go.” He takes off down the hall. Jane and Vaughn look at each other and then take off after him, Paisley trailing. When he enters the dining room, he starts barking orders.
“Bring me the cell phones!” he says. “Tink, the booster.”
As Lyle rushes over with the silver ice bucket, Jane scans the wall of hostages for Dan. He must still be in the kitchen. She locks eyes with Javier and his brows raise in question. Jane gives her head a quick shake.
Brick takes the bucket and shoves it toward Vaughn. “Find yours,” he instructs. Jane’s eyes widen—she can see her cell phone! It’s at the top of the bucket and is now just a foot or two from her hands.
The woman with the blond G.I. Jane haircut, whose name is apparently Tink, walks over to the table Brick is standing near and rapid-fires questions at Brick.
—“What do you need the booster for?”
—“Is Otto coming?”
He turns to look at her, and Jane seizes the moment, inching closer to Vaughn. Her cell phone is right there . At the top.
“Brick, what’s the plan here? I don’t think it’s safe to stay for too much longer,” Tink says, and though Brick ignored the first two questions, at this third one, he replies: “Then leave.”
Tink stares back at him defiantly for a beat and then takes her book bag off and slings it onto the table. As she unzips it, she continues talking, low. Her voice is even more muffled by her gaiter. Jane leans in to hear. “We’ve got a problem. The chef? He needs a doctor. A real doctor. In a hospital.”
Without thinking of the consequences, Jane shoves her hand in the bucket and grabs her phone. Vaughn eyes her but doesn’t say anything.
The relief Jane feels when she palms her cell phone is brief—overtaken by sheer panic when she realizes she has nowhere to put it. God, why doesn’t every dress come with pockets? She stares at the back of Brick’s head and considers dropping her phone back in the bucket before she gets caught, but at the last second slips it down the neck of her dress and into her bra, where she hopes the hard angles don’t protrude in too suspect a manner. Her heart is thudding against her rib cage so hard, she’s worried it’s more noticeable than the outline of the phone.
Jane takes a deep breath to steady herself. She has her cell phone. Now to figure out how to use it without getting caught.
“Where is the bullet wound?”
“Shoulder. The bleeding has slowed, but the doctor guy said he could lose the use of his arm.”
Jane realizes the doctor guy is Dan.
“Dammit,” Brick says, and while the concern seems genuine, Jane wonders if he’s concerned about the chef or if he’s just annoyed about another unexpected kink in his plans.
Vaughn, holding a phone up in her hand, says: “This one’s mine.”
Brick cuts his eyes to her as if he almost forgot she was there. Then he grabs the booster Tink produced from the innards of her book bag. He plugs it into the nearest wall outlet.
After about thirty seconds, the ice bucket full of cell phones starts dinging and buzzing, coming alive with text messages and notifications that have been missed since the customers set foot on the property.
Jane feels hers buzz against her breast and tenses, her face turning red, sure Brick is going to notice any second that her chest is vibrating, but he doesn’t even look at her. Relieved, she longs to fish her phone out and see whom her messages are from. What if Sissy tried to call? Or Josh. She misses her kids with the intensity of a parent who thinks they might never see them again. Why did she have to fight with Sissy this evening? Why does every conversation of theirs turn into a fight? Jane swears to herself if she gets out of this, she’ll be more patient with Sissy. With both of her children. More present.
“Now,” Brick says, nodding to the phone in Vaughn’s hand. “Call him.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Find out when he plans to arrive,” he says. “And make sure he’s flying his helicopter.”
“Of course he is. Driving would take too long.”
“Make sure,” Brick growls, and then adds: “And act normal—no funny business, understood?”
Vaughn’s face goes steely. “Or what?” she says. Jane’s eyebrows pop in surprise, and she notices Vaughn’s do a little, too, as if she is also surprised by her words. Jane glances at Brick, who closes his eyes and sighs loudly. When he opens his eyes, Jane can see the actual shift in his countenance. With one hand, he takes Paisley’s arm and pulls her off her mother. “No!” Vaughn shouts, trying to keep hold of her daughter’s arm, but Brick’s strength wins out.
He holds the girl tight to his chest in the crook of his right arm and moves the barrel of his gun toward her face until it’s scraping her cheek.
Jane yelps, but the sound is overtaken by Vaughn’s own.
Jane doesn’t blame her. One slip of Brick’s finger and Vaughn’s child will die right before her eyes. Jane wishes she could do something. Intervene. She feels helpless. And nearly as terrified at the prospect of seeing Paisley’s brain matter spray out of her head as she’s sure Vaughn is.
Paisley whimpers.
“Or you will regret it,” Brick says. “Understood?”
Vaughn nods weakly. She holds up her phone and, fingers shaking, scrolls through the screen until she gets to “OTTO CELL.” With her thumb, she presses his name and then puts the phone up to her ear. The room is so quiet, Jane can hear the ringing emanating from the earpiece of Vaughn’s phone and then the tinny voice of a man answering.
“Otto!” Vaughn says, her voice cheerily fake. “Is your meeting through?”
She listens, her eyes growing wide. “Oh! Right, yes, the emergency.” She chuckles, staring at Brick. “Hold on one second, darling.”
She covers the receiver with her hand and hisses. “He listened to his messages. He wants to know what the emergency is.”
Brick stares at her. “I thought you said he never listened to his voicemail.”
“He doesn’t! What do I say?”
Brick blinks, seeming unsure of himself for the first time in the evening.
“Tell him there was an accident,” Jane says. They both swivel their heads and look at her. Her mind races as she does the one thing she’s always been good at: making up a story. “A car accident on the road that leads up here. Oh! And that’s why he has to fly his helicopter. The road’s blocked with emergency vehicles.”
If Brick is surprised at Jane’s outburst, he doesn’t show it. He stares at her for a beat and then nods deeply. He shifts his gaze to Vaughn. “Tell him that.”
Vaughn puts the phone back to her ear. “Sorry, the waiter was…asking me a question. Yes, everything’s fine, but there was apparently a fender bender—” Jane shakes her head and mouths Worse . “A terrible car accident,” Vaughn amends, raising her eyebrows at Jane, and Jane nods encouragingly. “On the road leading up here, and I just wanted to make sure you were coming in your helicopter and not driving.”
She pauses as Otto speaks. “Yes, so sorry to alarm you. We’re fine. How long until you think you’ll be here?” Pause . “Ninety minutes?” She raises her brow at Brick this time, and he presses his lips into a firm line. “OK, well, do hurry up if you can; we’ll hold dessert for you.”
She hangs up and immediately says: “I did it. Let her go.”
“Phone back in the bucket,” Brick says. Vaughn tosses her cell on top of the others, and Brick releases Paisley, who collapses into her mother’s arms.
Jane lets out a breath as if it was her own daughter being held at gunpoint. She lets up a silent prayer of gratitude that at least her kids are safe.
“Unplug the booster,” Brick says to Tink. “And tie them back up.”
Dammit , Jane thinks, eyeing the device. She needs it to stay plugged in if she has any hope of using her phone, but Tink yanks the plug with force and then hisses through her teeth. “Brick, what are you doing? This isn’t what we agreed on. We don’t have time for him to fly here. We’re all going to get caught.”
“Then we get caught.”
“What?”
Division in the ranks, Jane thinks as Lyle comes over to lead the three of them back to the wall. This should excite Jane. If this were a novel, it would represent her opportunity, an opening, to somehow get free. But this is real life, and it only scares her further. Things are not going according to plan, which means people are getting desperate. Or, more specifically, Brick seems desperate. And she’s no expert, but she thinks it best when people who are holding guns do not feel desperate.
“We came here for a purpose,” he says. “You are either in this or you are not in this. What good is it to be halfway committed? Who wants to leave?” Brick bellows to the room as loud as a lion’s roar. “You want to go?”
Ever the good girl, Jane urgently wants to raise her hand, as if it could be that easy. I would like to leave, please, sir! I would no longer like to be a hostage, thank you.
But, of course, Brick is talking to his fellow gun-wielding gang members.
“Otto is on his way here. I am waiting for him. You do not have to stay. You can go back to your meaningless lives, waiting until it is the right time to do something, waiting until everything goes perfectly according to plan, or you can do what we came here to do. So tell me now: Do you want to leave?”
Jane has to admit: it’s a rousing speech. Not the words, necessarily, but the conviction with which he says them. Brick waits, boring his gaze into one captor and then the next, daring them to speak up, to move, to leave. No one does.
“Bring the others in here! I want everyone in one room where we can see them.”
“Even the chef? I don’t know if we should move—”
“ALL OF THEM,” Brick thunders.
Lyle leads Jane and Vaughn and Paisley back to the wall to sit down, this time together, which Jane is somehow comforted by, and she supposes it’s only natural that she should feel a bond with the women, even if the bond is through experiencing the same paralyzing fear together.
As Lyle re-zip-ties Jane’s ankles, Jane notices her own body is trembling and wonders how long it’s been doing so. Her teeth start chattering, the molars clacking together like one of those dental windup toys, and she knows it’s her body’s reaction to not only the fear of seeing Brick put a gun to a child’s temple, but the exhaustion of the countless conflicting emotions she’s experienced in such a short amount of time.
Lyle looks at her. “I’ll see if I can find some blankets,” he says—not kindly, but not unkindly either. Jane’s impressed that someone so young—he can’t be more than nineteen—would be so caring. She starts to tell him she’s not cold, but then she thinks a blanket would be nice, and why would the underlying reason matter at all?
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Javier says from his place, now many people down from Jane. They catch eyes, and Jane wants to tell him the door is locked, but maybe she just tried the wrong one. Maybe Javier will have better luck.
Lyle looks around and his gaze falls on Caden. “Caden—take him to the bathroom.” Caden nods and hops down from his perch.
“Could we get some ice?” a voice emerges from down the line. It’s Ayanna, her voice as soft as the carefully pressed shiny black waves in her hair. “In a plastic bag? He has a real knot on his head.”
Lyle nods and stands, then he looks at Jane once more, his eyes dropping to her breast—where her cell phone is. Everything stops—her heartbeat, her breath; her mind goes blank, and then Lyle’s eyes meet hers again. His left eye winks and he turns toward the kitchen. Jane stares after him. Wait, did he really just wink at her? Or no, he must have had something in his eye. Or it was a trick of the light. Jane leans her head back on the glass.
Maybe she really is cracking up.
It wouldn’t be the first time.