Chapter Sixty-One
Haze
Fox rang Jenny on loudspeaker. I didn’t know how he was able to drive. It was taking everything I had to not scream, and keep screaming until my daughter was back in my arms.
“We’re both here now, Jen.” Fox kept his eyes on the road.
“I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I should—”
Fox cut her off. “Jenny, stop. You know who we’re dealing with. If he decided he wanted Bibi, he was going to get her, no matter what.”
If Jenny had happened to come across him taking her, he was a professional. He would’ve left with Bibi regardless; Jenny wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“Tell us again what happened.”
Jenny’s voice was low but steady. She’d cried it all out too.
The steely focus was back. “I last checked on Bibi an hour ago. She was in her bed, asleep. I went down to the kitchen. I was on my laptop at the kitchen table. A dog started barking, then howling. Loudly. I thought maybe there was an injured dog in the garden. The sound was so loud. I went to the back door and looked out. There was nothing there. I then—”
“That’s when he would’ve exited through the front door with her.”
“Agreed. I’ve already checked and the Ring doorbell is disconnected. No footage can be recovered.”
Fox and I looked at each other. A well-organized kidnapping plan.
“I wasn’t sure she hadn’t just decided to get up and go find you, or to give me a scare with a game of hide-and-seek.
But then I found a Bluetooth speaker hidden in the garden.
There was no injured dog—just a recording of one.
If I was looking out of the back door, he knew I’d have my back to the front door. ”
I turned the scene over in my head. Something didn’t make sense. And then it hit me.
“Sausage! She didn’t bark at the sound of the dog?”
“No.” Jenny paused. “She’s been asleep all evening.” Our minds went to the same place, and before I could ask, Jenny cut in. “I’m holding her now. She’s very floppy and tired, but she’s fine.”
There was no doubt Sausage would’ve heard or smelled a stranger in the house. The kidnapper had drugged her.
He had taken my child and fucked with my dog.
There weren’t enough superlatives to describe the level of pain I was going to put him through.
I got out my phone and tried to get my fingers to stop shaking enough to tap out a message.
What the fuck have you done? Why have you taken her? What do you want?
A ping came back immediately: undeliverable. He’d blocked me. He’d taken what he wanted, and he’d blocked me.
All the texting to make me feel we were building a rapport.
All bullshit.
A thought hit me. “Are her school shoes there?” I asked. “Or her school trainers?”
Jenny switched to FaceTime as she approached our front door. The shoe rack came into sight. Bibi’s black school shoes and blue school trainers were both there. Her pink trainers were missing.
“Fuck! He took the one pair that didn’t have a tracker in.” He wasn’t just prepared, he was immaculately prepared. I slumped back in the passenger seat.
Fox looked at me. “If The Chameleon took Bibi for leverage, why hasn’t he contacted us with his demands?”
It was the same question I’d been wrestling with.
The Chameleon had tried to kill us once and failed. And now he’d taken our child. If he wanted to do something worse than killing us, then that would be hurting our child. Did he know that? Was that his plan? Did he know that hurting us was nothing compared to how crushed we’d be if he hurt Bibi?
“The call will come. Maybe he’s waiting until you’re back home.” Jenny tried to sound reassuring.
None of us wanted to think about what it would mean if the call didn’t come. None of us could entertain the idea that taking Bibi and hurting her was the end plan.
I shook my head to myself.
He was a professional. This wasn’t vindictive. He didn’t have an issue with us; his bosses did.
Then it all became horribly clear.
I spoke calmly. “I know what he’s going to say. He’ll want us to surrender ourselves to him, in exchange for Bibi. He wants to hand us over to The Corporation.”
We were his final hurrah. His last job. This was his grand finish—the two of us delivered to the gang who wanted us dead.
No fuss, no mess, no bloody shootout that would capture the attention of the authorities.
The Corporation were discreet. That was their reputation.
They didn’t want the drama, the news headlines.
The Chameleon had planned to take us quietly in Ivrea.
If I hadn’t escaped, if I hadn’t come for Fox, he would’ve succeeded.
The Chameleon had planned this to perfection.
We would go quietly. We would do anything he asked. Because he had our child.
It was our fault.
We’d been too distracted. If we’d come closer together after Ivrea, and not spent the last year disagreeing over how best to handle Fox’s trauma, we could’ve protected our children. We should’ve seen this coming.
Fox reached over and squeezed my hand as Jenny spoke again.
“I’ve been looking at the traffic cams and CCTV of the street, and I’ve got a car leaving your street two minutes after the dog barking got me out of eyeline of the front door. The timing fits to be our guy.”
“What kind of car?” asked Fox.
“Just zooming in, I think I can…Got it. A gray Ford Fiesta.” Jenny groaned.
“What? Why’s that bad?”
“The gray Ford Fiesta is one of the most popular cars in the UK. I won’t find one—I’ll find ten. And then we’ll need to work out which one is right.”
Our child was out there alone. We didn’t know where and we didn’t know with who. We had failed her.
“Do we know it’s definitely The Chameleon?” Fox said.
I turned to look at him. “Who else would it be? Who else would take our child to spite us?”
“I just mean, do we have anything directly linking him to this?” Fox was clearly in shock and not thinking properly.
“You mean, apart from a convoluted plan to make sure we attended an event over an hour away from our children, enabling him to take one of them?”
“Yes, it has to be him.” Jenny sounded as confused as I was. “Mum is on her way to come get Reggie. We thought it’d be safest for him to be at theirs?”
Fox and I looked at each other. Every instinct made me want to strap Reggie to me and not let him out of my sight. I wanted to keep him safe so much it ached.
But what we were going to do to get Bibi back was not exactly going to be baby-friendly. The safest place for Reggie was with Sandy, in a house for which The Chameleon hopefully did not have the address.
I nodded at Fox.
“Yes, that makes sense,” he said. “We’ll be home soon.” He clicked off.
We were both silent the rest of the drive back.
Should I be grateful The Chameleon had only taken Bibi, and not Reggie too? Our baby son was still safely at home.
Why?
Was it that he didn’t have the balls to handle two kids at once? Or was he scared that Reggie’s cries at a stranger holding him would’ve given him away?
He had been here in our house. Standing outside their bedroom doors.
Our children had been in danger, and we weren’t there for them.
These last few months, we’d been struggling. Desperate to have it all. Trying to pretend we could. But look at us!
We’d had it all—and we’d lost it. We’d lost Bibi. We were kidding ourselves to think we could continue with this life and keep our children safe.