Chapter 10: Midnight Instructions
I locked the front door at 9:04 and left the porch light on on purpose.
The deputy had told me to do that. Keep everything lit, keep everything locked, make them come to the door if they came at all. My house had never felt small until that night. The living room suddenly showed every scuff on the baseboards, every place the rug didn't quite cover the floor. The girl sat on the couch with her legs tucked under her pink ruffled dress, her white shoes placed side by side on the mat because I'd asked her to take them off at the door. She'd listened without arguing. Her bow had slipped a little to the side and she kept touching it.
My phone was on speaker on the kitchen counter. Deputy Ellis's voice filled the room, calm and even the way people get when they're reading from a mental checklist.
"We don't chase them," he said. "We let them come to you. You stay inside. Doors locked, lights on. Girl stays in the back bedroom with Mrs. Alvarez and that door stays closed. You understand me?"
"I understand," I said.
"County unit will be at the end of Oak, past the church parking lot. Out of sight from your driveway. We don't park on you or they'll spook and circle. You see headlights turn in, you don't go out to meet them. You call 911. You say the address and you say non-custodial subjects attempting to take a minor with documents. That triggers us. We roll."
I looked through the front window at the driveway. The black SUV I'd left out there was still parked where it had been since that afternoon, chrome catching the porch light. It wasn't part of the plan, but Ellis had said leave it. Normalcy reads as non-confrontation.
"How long to get here?" I asked.
"Two minutes if we're at Oak. Maybe less. You do not open that door until you see lights behind them. You hear me? Do not open for knocking."
The girl was watching me. I nodded even though he couldn't see it.
Mrs. Alvarez arrived at 9:22. She lived two doors down and had watched my place when I'd had workers over last spring. Sixty, short gray hair, wore a cardigan even when it was warm. I'd called her because the deputy said I needed a second adult in the house who wasn't me, someone the girl could sit with who wouldn't be at the front door. She came in with a tote bag and a soft voice and didn't ask a lot of questions.
She crouched down to the girl's level the same way I had that afternoon on the pavement, which I hadn't taught her to do.
"I'm going to stay with you in the bedroom tonight, okay sweetheart?" she said. "We've got crayons and I brought my little radio."
The girl nodded. She looked at me to check if this was okay. I told her it was.
In the kitchen, I cleared the table. I took the cream envelope with the circular seal, now slit open at the top, and the payment receipt I'd gotten from her mom that afternoon, and laid them flat side by side. The receipt showed the $50,000 wire transfer and the signature line. The envelope showed the embossed seal that had nothing legal behind it. I'd put them in a clear gallon bag so the deputy said the oils from my hands wouldn't smudge anything else. It felt strange to treat them carefully after how carelessly they'd been made.
Ellis was still on speaker. "You keep those right there on the table. When I or Sheriff come in, you hand that bag over. Don't hand it to them at the door if they ask. It's not theirs. It's evidence. They get a copy from us if they get anything."
"Copy," I said.
I walked the girl to the back bedroom. It was the smallest room in the house, with a window that faced the side yard, not the driveway, and a bed that was made but rarely slept in. Mrs. Alvarez set her tote on the floor and pulled out a coloring book and a box of crayons. The girl climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged. Her dress pooled around her knees.
I knelt so my eyes were level with hers.
"Remember what we practiced?" I said quietly.
She swallowed. "Don't open doors."
"That's right. No doors. Not the front, not even this one unless I knock three times and say your name. If someone knocks and says they're here for you, what do you do?"
"Stay here with Mrs. Alvarez," she whispered. Her hands were tight around a pink crayon.
"And what do you say if a deputy asks you your name?"
"My real name," she said. "And that you believed me."
My chest tightened. I nodded. "You don't have to talk about anything else tonight. Just that. I'll do the rest."
She reached out and touched my wristwatch, the silver one on my left wrist that had caught the daylight that afternoon. Just a quick tap, like she was checking it was still there.
Ellis's voice came from the kitchen again. "Sir? You still with me?"
I stood and went back to the phone. Through the window, the driveway was empty except for the SUV and the circle of light from the porch. The house was lit room by room the way he'd told me. From the road, it would look like someone was home and awake and not hiding.
"We're set," I said.
"Good," he said. "We're in place at Oak. Lights out on our end. You call the second you see that vehicle. Not after they knock. When you see it turn in."
"I will."
"And sir— you did right keeping her inside county. Don't move her tonight for any reason."
I looked at the table where the bagged envelope waited, at the locked front door, at the hallway that led to the back bedroom where Mrs. Alvarez's low radio had started to play quietly and the girl's crayon scratched on paper.
May you like
"Understood," I said. "We wait here."
He said he'd check in at eleven-thirty. I hung up and double-checked the deadbolt. The clock above the stove said 9:41. A little more than two hours until the men her mom had taken money from were supposed to come, and the whole plan now was built on making them do exactly that.
