CHAPTER 26 THE QUESTIONS THEY DON’T ASK
THE QUESTIONS THEY DON’T ASK
REESE
Ithought kidnapped civilians were supposed to be taken somewhere sketchy, like a cold warehouse by the docks or the back rooms of a run-down family fun center.
Not a house with a cheerful painting of spring-colored poppies above the couch.
It sends mixed messages. Especially considering the zip tie that is binding my wrists.
My purse is gone, my phone is gone, I have no idea what is going to happen to me, and no one knows where I am. My hands are shaking, and I can’t stop my leg from bouncing.
I give this abduction a 3/10. The abduction itself earns one star, and the other two are entirely for the decor.
The woman from the parking garage sits across from me at a dining table that looks like it came from a furniture showroom, and the man who helped drag me into the van stands near what looks like a pretty nice kitchen.
The woman has been asking questions. I’ve been noticing everything, because my inability to stop people-watching has finally become relevant to an actual crime.
And suddenly, I’m wondering if the woman moonlights as a realtor.
Maybe that’s why we’re in a furnished house that doesn’t appear lived in—she’s selling it.
Or maybe she moonlights as a person looking to buy a house, and she made sure to see what code the realtor was entering in the lockbox of this house.
Maybe the house is another clue. They brought me somewhere comfortable, have me sitting at a dining table, and there are only two of them. They don’t seem to think I’m dangerous. They must just think I’m a civilian who saw something she shouldn’t have.
I would very much like them to keep thinking that.
The woman leans forward again and asks a question she’s already asked twice, just using different wording. “Why were you at the aviation hangar two weeks ago?”
I take in a deep breath, trying to gather some patience. I am very afraid of this woman, but she’s also getting on my nerves. “I told you, my purse was missing. It has an AirTag in it. I followed the location.”
“And you expect me to believe you accidentally followed a tracking device to a private hangar?”
“No. I expect you to think it sounds ridiculous, because it does.”
The man by the kitchen glances up.
“Why was there an AirTag in your purse?”
I take another long breath, like I’m really trying to find my patience. “Because a few months ago, I asked a mannequin in a thrift store to hold my purse while I looked at a skirt, and left the store without it. My roommate decided technology needed to compensate for my forgetfulness.”
The man by the kitchen almost smiles.
“Who were you following?”
“My purse.”
Now the woman is trying to find her patience. “Who were you expecting to see at the hangar?”
“No one. I thought someone had taken my purse.”
Maybe the real key to interrogating a person is to keep asking the same questions in a loop, going over and over the same things to see if the person being interrogated will give up information just to get it to stop.
But that method relies on the interrogator having more patience than the interrogatee.
And I work with sixth, seventh, and eighth graders—I increase my patience endurance daily.
“What did you see in the hangar?”
“A meeting. And an airplane, some tool chests, those rolling metal stairs.”
“A meeting between whom?”
“I don’t know. Four people. I think only three of them were having the meeting, though.”
“Was one of them Maxwell Shaw?”
“I don’t know who Maxwell Shaw is, so how am I supposed to know if he was there?”
“And what did you hear?”
“I couldn’t hear all the words, but it sounded like a job interview. Why am I here? Why do you care if I saw part of a job interview?”
And then something clicks. They’ve asked why I was there, who I expected to see, what I saw, if I recognized anyone…
but they haven’t asked me anything about Miles Lancaster.
Not a single question. They’ve had two weeks to look into me and seem to know all about me, so they have to know who my friends are.
If they knew Miles was Maxwell Shaw, they wouldn’t be asking the questions they are.
They’d be asking me why my best friend was at the meeting, wearing a different face.
They don’t actually think I’m part of this at all.
My heart is pounding, but this time there’s something useful beneath the fear.
Their questions are telling me what they don’t know, like when Miles and I were people-watching and he noticed the man deliberately not looking at someone.
This isn’t quite the same—this woman isn’t avoiding the right question.
She just doesn’t know the right question exists.
“Because I want to know what relationship you have with Maxwell Shaw.”
I lean forward, meeting her eyes, like maybe my words will have more effect that way. “I do not have any kind of relationship with Maxwell Shaw at all.” Which is true. I don’t know Maxwell—I know Miles.
Miles, who is currently pretending to be Maxwell. Possibly while dealing with the same people who kidnapped me. The thought makes my stomach churn.
The man’s phone buzzes, and he checks it. His whole posture changes before his face does—his shoulders tighten, his jaw sets. His finger pauses over the screen.
“What?” the woman asks.
“Nothing.”
She looks at him, so he turns the screen toward her. Interesting. He doesn’t know enough to decide whether the message matters. They are not equals here.
I take a better look at the man. There’s a faint smear of glitter on the edge of his hand—the kind that doesn’t easily wash off.
I start coming up with his story as if Miles and I are people-watching.
He’s got a daughter. Elementary-school age.
She does crafts at the kitchen table. Probably missing at least one front tooth.
Maybe. For all I know, he could’ve robbed a craft store before kidnapping me. But I’m going with daughter.
The woman stands and tells the man to keep an eye on me as she leaves down a hallway.
“How long are you going to keep me here?” I call after her. “Because it’s a school night, and it’s past my bedtime.”
The man looks at me like I might be insane, but the woman pauses.
I add, “I’ve got seventh graders depending on me.”
The woman glances at me for a beat, then continues down the hallway.
Once she goes into a bedroom and closes the door, I turn to the man. “How old is your daughter?”
His gaze snaps to mine quickly enough that I know I’m right. Score one point for Reese.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I gesture with my bound hands to his. “You’ve got a bit of glitter on your hand. Also, you checked your phone like it might be a person instead of work.”
He looks down at his hand like the glitter betrayed him and rubs at it with his other thumb, but it does nothing to remove the glitter. “Stop talking.”
“Is she in elementary school?”
His jaw tightens.
“Second grade? Third?”
Nothing.
“Can I please go to the bathroom? I’ve had to go since you grabbed me in that parking garage, and we’ve been here a long time.”
“You can wait.”
“I really can’t. Listen. If someone kidnapped your daughter, would you want the person guarding her to let her use the little girl’s room?”
He closes his eyes. I think I must’ve hit close enough to the truth when it comes to his daughter, because he leads me to the bathroom. I can tell that the woman is on the phone, but I can’t hear anything that’s being said through the closed door.
I convince the man to remove my wrist restraint by informing him in great detail that certain bathroom functions are going to become logistically problematic if he doesn’t.
He checks the bathroom first, including the way-too-narrow window above the toilet, then cuts the zip tie and closes the door behind him.
The window is so small that the man barely gave it a glance.
But he underestimates my resolve if he thinks that will stop me.
It isn’t a cool secret passage, as they’d probably have in a murder mystery.
But I’ve seen enough shows where people leave out the bathroom window to know that this is my chance.
I turn on the fan and faucet for the noise, use the bathroom as quickly as humanly possible, because I really wasn’t lying about that part, then climb onto the toilet, push open the window, and attack the screen.
It doesn’t budge. I can’t get the frame of the screen to slide out, either. The man is going to get impatient soon. Think, Reese!
I grab the small metal trash can beside the toilet and shove its edge beneath the corner of the screen frame. It bends a bit. I push much harder. The screen pops loose, but the can rebounds and hits me in the face. Oof. That’s going to leave a black eye. But at least my face cushioned the noise.
I set the trash can down quietly, then shove my arms and head through the much-too-narrow window.
I twist sideways, then start wriggling. The bathroom doorknob turns, and I launch myself forward.
For one terrifying second, I am balanced on my stomach across the sill.
Then gravity chooses a side, and I tumble into a shrub just as the bathroom door bangs open.
Branches scrape my face and arms, and the bush decides to hold onto one of my shoes, but I am off and running.
I don’t run down the street because a) I don’t know where it goes, b) the man is taller than me, so he’s probably a faster runner, especially because he has both shoes on, and c) I don’t need somewhere to hide—I need people.
So, I run across the street toward a house I noticed when they brought me here. It has two bikes lying on their sides in the grass, sidewalk chalk on the driveway, and a minivan. My brain already built a family inside it. Please let me be right.
Behind me, I hear both the man and the woman shout.
Of course, they’re after me—it’s not like I made a particularly stealthy escape.
I run faster, my sock-covered foot and my shoe making alternating slapping sounds against cold pavement.
I finally reach the front door of the house and pound both fists against it. “Help! Call nine-one-one!”
They’ve got a dog inside, and it’s losing its mind. Lights come on. I turn to look back to see the man and woman are almost across the street, and terror freezes me.
Then, the porch light snaps on, and I can see that they have a doorbell camera.
A neighbor’s porch light turns on, too. As the man and woman are crossing the grass, almost to me, the front door opens, and a man in pajama pants stares at me.
His dog is at his feet, and he’s got one hand holding him back.
“Please,” I gasp. “I’ve been kidnapped. Call nine-one-one.”
His wife is behind him, a phone in her hand, already dialing.
I turn to see the woman who abducted me grabbing the arm of the man who’d been guarding me and pulling him away.
Between the camera, the open door, the dog barking, and the witnesses, they must’ve decided that dragging me, kicking and screaming, back to the house was a line even they preferred not to cross.
The man in pajamas pulls me inside and locks the door behind me.
My knees give out, and I fall to sitting on the floor. The woman with the phone is talking to 911. I’m shaking so badly that my teeth chatter. But I’m inside and away from them.
The man crouches and asks, “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
His gaze lands on what I assume is already becoming a black eye.
“Oh, yeah. That was self-inflicted.”
“What’s your name?”
“Reese.”
When the woman ends the call with 911, I ask if I can use her phone, and she hands it to me. Charlie’s number is one of the few I have memorized, so I dial it, and she answers on the first ring. “Hello?”
“It’s me.”
She’s silent for a small moment, then says, “Reese?” Her voice cracks on my name.
“I’m okay,” I say, and then I am crying. Apparently, my body decided to wait until I was safe to let me.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know. In the house of some very nice people.”
A sound comes out of Charlie that is half laugh, half sob. “Stay inside. Lock every door. I’m getting your location from the phone right now.”
Of course she is. I close my eyes. “Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell Miles I’m okay.”
There’s a beat of silence, then very carefully, she says, “He’s dark right now.”
My stomach tightens. The meeting. He’s being Maxwell. “Tell him the second you can.”
“I will.”
I look down at myself. I’ve got scratches on my arms and hands, a twig in my hair and another caught in the waistband of my pants, and a tear in my shirt. I start laughing. The kind you cannot control.
The couple both look very concerned, and Charlie asks, “Are you laughing?”
“I escaped an abduction wearing only one shoe.”
Charlie chuckles softly. “Somehow, that feels on-brand.”
And for the first time since the parking garage, I think I might actually be okay.