Chapter 21
Chapter 21
Every head in the room turns to Jane once more, Sissy included, all wide-eyed and disbelieving that her mother is embarrassingly interfering. It’s a look Jane is all too familiar with.
Brick’s countenance is more annoyed, as if he can’t believe he’s dealing with yet another outburst from Jane. He studies her for a beat and then, cocking his head like a parrot, he finally says: “Who are you?”
Indignant, Jane stiffens her back, and, still staring at Sissy, she opens her mouth to announce: “I’m her—” but stops herself before saying mother .
She remembers the point Dan made earlier—if she reveals Sissy’s identity, she’s revealing it to all the other people in the room. Witnesses . Who could then reveal it to the police—who are, apparently, halfway down the hill, having been stopped by the detonated bomb. But how else to respond to Brick’s question?
Tears prick her eyes as she realizes, despite her initial fumblings and resentment of the title, over the years motherhood wormed itself so deeply into the core of her identity, the fabric of her very being, that though her children are far too old and too big to be held, Jane catches herself swaying when she holds something in her arms—a watermelon in the grocery store, the neighbor’s cat.
And yet, as hard as she worked and worried and strived to succeed in the position, Jane has still failed at the most basic tenet of the job: to keep Sissy safe from harm.
“Well?” Brick says.
Jane blinks. “I’m…I’m Jane.”
“Yes, I gathered that from your husband shouting it at you. But you’re not…” He tilts his head and squints at her. “Are you…are you Jane Brooks ?”
Jane swallows. “Yes.”
“The author.”
Jane can’t help it. Despite the self-flagellating despair of her failure, a buzz of pride wells up in her chest. She’s dreamt of this moment—a stranger recognizing her in public—but somehow she never pictured it exactly this way. “I am.”
“What are you doing here?” he says.
“I was hoping to eat dinner,” she says dryly.
But he keeps muttering, mostly to himself. “There’s coincidence and then there’s…this.” His eyes dart around the room. “Well, no matter.” He shrugs and offers a sardonic grin. “I enjoyed your book.”
She tries to shoot him an annoyed look but is still too chuffed to make it believable. She knew it! She knew it. She wants so badly to turn to Dan and say SEE? I told you so , but instead she fixes her face and says measuredly to Brick: “I’ve noticed.” Then—it can’t be helped—she cuts her eyes to Dan with an I told you so look for good measure.
“Let’s just say it was inspiring,” he says. “But, as I’m sure you know, strychnine is very bitter. If I had any interest in poisoning Mr.St. Clair, I certainly wouldn’t put it in water.”
It’s true, which is why Jane concealed hers in tea in the book, but she’s not entirely convinced. “I don’t know anything about what you would or wouldn’t do.”
“Well, then I’ll tell you. This is a glass of water because Mr.St. Clair appears to have some blood on his face, and I thought he could use a rinse out.”
Isaac offers the glass to the billionaire once more. Otto eyes it warily, then purses his lips together and gives his head a quick shake.
Brick sighs. “Suit yourself.” He looks back at Jane with a quirked brow. “I never did understand why you bothered poisoning the CEO, instead of just letting him perish in the explosion. Don’t you think that was a bit of…overkill?”
Jane glares at him. It’s a fair criticism, but he’s just so smug about it and she wants to slap the look off his face. “No, I don’t. But I do know you’re not getting that money.”
It works. Brick’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”
“If you had done even the most basic research, you would know it takes up to three business days for credit card companies to transfer money into a merchant account, not fifteen minutes. Or did you plan to be here that long?”
Brick smiles, and it’s so disarming Jane thinks she imagined the brief flash of anger she saw in him. “Jane, Jane, Jane,” he says, slowly shaking his head. “If you had done your research, you would know Hyperion guarantees next-day funding to their A-list clients, so the transfer will take place at midnight.”
Jane frowns. Is that true? And even if it is, it’s not yet nine p.m. “That’s still three hours—”
“Eastern time. Hyperion is headquartered in New York.”
Jane’s jaw drops slightly. Her heist was actually completely plausible. Take that, Stephen with a ph ! And then her heart stops. The payment is going to go through. Tink is going to bounce it around the multiple accounts in various jurisdictions, and Sissy is going to be on the hook for collaborating to steal nine million dollars .
“You have certainly been a thorn in my side this evening,” Brick says, his face growing serious as he moves toward her. “What am I going to do with you?” Jane tenses, disliking how the playful tone of his voice belies the menace in his eyes. “Though I suppose it won’t be much longer now. You could stay for the ending. You did write it, after all.”
Jane shivers. The bomb. God, she hates being right all the time.
“No,” a voice says from across the room.
“No?” Brick and Jane turn to see who’s spoken up.
“She’s a liability and we can’t have any more…interruptions,” Lyle says. “Enough has gone wrong this evening.”
Jane stares at him, feeling betrayed and surprised she ever thought of him as innocent and kind.
Brick pauses, considering. “What do you suggest?”
“I don’t know—put them somewhere.”
“I’m not going anywhere ,” Jane says, mostly because it’s instinctual to go against the directives of the person holding you hostage, but also because she is a mother and she will absolutely not leave her daughter.
“Isaac,” Brick says, ignoring Jane.
Isaac jumps down from his perch on one of the tables where he’s been watching the entire exchange. “Where do you want ’em? The deep freeze?” His eagerness is unnerving to Jane. Like it would be pure joy to put humans in a freezer.
“What about the van?” Lyle says. “That way you can lock them in.”
“No! Absolutely not,” Jane shrieks as Isaac walks menacingly toward her. “I’m not leaving.” She glances past Isaac to her daughter. Surely she’ll say something. Do something. But she just drops her gaze to the floor.
Isaac reaches down to pull Jane to her feet, but she makes her body go limp, so that she’s 155 pounds of deadweight. “Lady, if you don’t cooperate,” Isaac growls, “I’ll be forced to make you.”
“What are you going to do, shoot me?” Jane says, echoing Otto. She knows she’s making a scene, but she doesn’t care. She’s not leaving her daughter.
“No,” he says, and takes a few steps to the left, lifting his gun straight up and out, the barrel pointed directly at Dan’s head. “I’m going to shoot him.”
Dan’s eyes go wide, and Jane remembers Isaac definitely has bullets in his gun—and thinks he’s just crazy enough to do it.
“OK! OK,” she says. “I’ll go.”
Isaac nods. “Someone cut his ankle ties?” he says, while Isaac snips Jane’s.
“Lyle, go with them,” Brick says, and in no time, Jane and Dan are marched single file through the dining room with Isaac and Lyle close behind, their path taking them right past Sissy.
She wants so badly to grab the girl, hold her tightly in her arms—or violently shake her within an inch of her life to knock some sense into her, Jane’s not quite sure which. She doesn’t trust herself to find out, so she keeps her arms down next to her sides and keeps walking through the swinging door to the kitchen.
They shuffle into the eerily quiet room, the counters a disarray of pots and pans and food detritus—indications that the chefs were stopped midcooking. A red-rust color on the floor and a swipe of it on the stainless steel fridge catch Jane’s eye. She’s never seen a crime scene in real life, and she shudders.
But something else grabs her attention—the huge pressure cooker sitting on the counter. Its metal sides gleam in the overhead fluorescent lights of the kitchen.
Then they’re through the kitchen and walking out the back door into the cool night air. Jane freezes, staring at the white van parked near the cliff, glowing in the moonlight, and she panics as she realizes they’ll be stuffed in there for who knows how long. A touch claustrophobic, she’s never been good with cramped spaces. Isaac pushes her in the back with the muzzle of his gun. “Move it,” he says, and she takes a step forward gingerly, her stockinged feet bracing for the sharp points of the gravel. She wishes she’d put her heels back on. She stumbles across the gravel, and as they get closer to the cliff and the black nothingness beyond, Jane’s heart feels like a bird about to take flight. She’s never been good with heights either. She doesn’t know how far it is to the bottom—a mile? More?—but she’s now positive she can hear the crashing of the surf below. And while that used to be a soothing sound, the susurration of waves methodically beating the rocky shoreline, now it reminds her only that if she fell, if anyone fell—she shudders; she doesn’t want to think about that. Her legs go weak and she stumbles backward into Lyle, who grabs her by the shoulders and steadies her.
“Please,” she says, turning her head up to him. “Don’t do this.”
But it’s Isaac who answers with a devilish grin. “Don’t worry. It will all be over soon enough.”
She ignores him and continues directing her words at Lyle. “Does your mother know you’re here?” Lyle blanches, and Jane knows she’s struck a chord. “Please,” she says, a dog with a bone. “Let us go. This isn’t going to end well.”
“Lady, I’ve had about enough of you,” Isaac says, and he pulls something out of one of the pockets in his cargo pants. The silver skin of duct tape flashes in the moonlight.
Jane shakes her head as he rips off a long piece and manages to stick it directly over her mouth, even as she moves her chin every which way to try to evade him. He does the same to Dan. Dan, resigned, doesn’t even make it hard for him.
“Get in,” Isaac says, opening the van doors. Given that she’s about six feet from the cliff and, if she listens carefully, can hear the surf crashing on what she imagines to be very sharp rocks below, Jane doesn’t have to be asked twice. She and Dan both turn, sit on their bottoms, and scoot into the van, their legs stretched out in front of them, their feet hanging off the edge. “Do their ankles,” Isaac says to Lyle.
Lyle grabs a zip tie from his bag and binds up Dan’s ankles. Then he goes back in his book bag and digs around it. He comes up empty. He pats his pockets down on his army pants.
“Shit,” he says. “I’m out of zip ties.”
Finally , Jane thinks. She thought they had a never-ending source of them. He looks at Isaac, who also pats down his pockets. “I don’t have any!”
“Go back in and find some,” Lyle says, and Jane is as surprised as Isaac appears to be at Lyle’s demand. For the evening, Lyle’s been on the receiving end of orders, not giving them. “Go!” Lyle says sharply. “I’ve got this.”
Isaac, looking slightly dazed, nods and takes off back into the restaurant. Lyle watches him go, and when the door is fully closed behind Isaac, he looks directly at Jane, pulls down his gaiter, and grins a weirdly friendly and boyish full-tooth forty-watt smile, as if they’re at a cocktail party and have not been in a hostage/terrorist situation for the past two hours. “Oh, thank God,” he says. “I thought he’d never leave.”
Jane’s eyebrows go skyward. She can’t say anything because her mouth is taped, but she doesn’t know what she’d say if it wasn’t.
Lyle stares at her a beat, still grinning, and then says: “Jane! It’s me !”