The Distraction Read online

  “When did she leave?”

  “At the beginning of The Little Mermaid.”

  Alec came to stand beside me, watching me closely. His mouth formed a thin, serious line.

  “Where are you in the movie?” I’d seen it at least a dozen times with them. I knew all the parts. If she could tell me what song they were at, I’d know how long Amy had been gone. It was possible that she’d just run out to her car, or stepped next door to get something from a neighbor.

  “Ariel just got her voice back.”

  Ariel the mermaid didn’t break the curse that had stolen her voice until nearly the end of the movie. Amy had been gone an hour, give or take.

  Where the hell was she?

  “Did your mommy say where she was going?”

  “Uh-uh.” Paisley’s voice was higher now. She was getting scared. “Jonathan came and got her and they left.”

  The world stopped—all except the fry baskets in the background that hissed as they hit the oil.

  Tonight was the night we were all supposed to go get pizza; I remembered that now. I was supposed to meet him for the first time. I had forgotten about it with everything that had happened

  “Paisley, is there anyone else at home with you right now?”

  My voice was low, unfamiliar. My hands began to shake. Alec gripped my elbows, already gathering himself to fight. We didn’t even know what the danger was yet.

  “No.”

  “What the hell are you . . .” Janelle tried to take the phone, but Alec stopped her with one hard look.

  “Okay, I want you to stay there,” I said. “I’m on my way.”

  The phone made a shushing noise against her cheek. “Can I have popcorn?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Hold on to the phone. Don’t hang up, all right?”

  When I heard the sound of the pantry door opening and the crinkle of plastic wrap, I covered the receiver.

  “Amy’s gone,” I said. “A guy she’s been seeing came to get her over an hour ago. Paisley’s there alone now.” I was already jogging toward the exit. Janelle was saying something behind us, but I couldn’t focus on it.

  Alec cut in front of me just before we reached the door and placed himself between Tenner and me.

  “Keys.” He held out his hand.

  Tenner smashed his cigarette into the ashtray. “Nice try, asshole.”

  The muggy night air outside felt thick, too heavy for Alec to move as fast as he did. Before I could blink, he had Tenner shoved up against the glass wall of the building, hands fisted in his collar. The agent bared his teeth, glaring at Alec through narrowed eyes. One hand gripped Alec’s wrist, the other reached behind his back, presumably for his weapon.

  “It’s still popping,” said Paisley, the microwave whirring in the background. “But I’m gonna take it out before it burns.”

  “G-good idea,” I stammered.

  “Remember last time you tried to stop me?” asked Alec. Broken ribs or not, he was just as dangerous as ever. The only evidence of his pain was the single bead of sweat that formed at his temple. A surge of affection rose up inside of me. He was supporting me without question, without explanation.

  And he was fantastic.

  “This isn’t our problem,” said Janelle. “I’m sorry about your friend’s luck, but this isn’t . . . ”

  I rounded on her, covering the speaker of the phone with my hand. “Reznik took me from the YMCA. I was there with Amy,” I said quickly. “He’s seen her. This isn’t a coincidence.”

  She muttered something under her breath.

  “Then what if it’s a setup?” she asked harshly. “Think, Alec. What does Stein want with some friend of Anna’s? He wants you. This is about you.”

  “Keys,” said Alec again. “Please. There, I asked nicely.”

  I shivered at the threat in his tone.

  “Are you coming yet?” asked the small voice on the line.

  “I’m on my way, Paisley,” I told her. “Hey Pais, I’ve got an idea. What if you take that popcorn to your bedroom?”

  “I’m not allowed to eat in my room.”

  I swallowed a deep breath. It took everything I had to say the next part.

  “I know,” I said. “But I’ll tell your mommy it’s okay. I want you to go in there and shut the door real tight, okay? And then I want you to hide under the bed.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. “Anna, where’s Mommy?”

  I forced myself to breathe.

  “It’ll be like hide-and-seek,” I said.

  But it wasn’t, of course. Because that was where Paisley had learned to go when her father hit her mother.

  “Janelle, this might be the last chance to catch Reznik before he disappears for good,” Alec said.

  She checked her watch, then stared out over the parking lot, scowling.

  I covered the receiver. “If he’s playing us, it worked. I can’t leave my best friend’s daughter alone.” I stared straight into her eyes. “He’ll be there.”

  Janelle glanced at Tenner, and after a long moment, nodded.

  “Agent Tenner will drive,” she said. “Both of you will stay in the car while we clear the area. Is that understood?”

  I nodded, just so we could hurry this up. Tenner smacked away Alec’s loosened grip and spat on the ground.

  We raced to the black Lincoln Navigator. Alec and I took the backseat, while Janelle sat in the front with Tenner. While Alec shot off the directions, I made Paisley tell me about what she’d done at school today.

  Janelle snatched a phone from Tenner’s pocket. He looked excited for about a quarter of a second until he realized what she was doing.

  “Hey,” he complained. She punched in a number.

  “Matt, change of plans. I need you to run a woman named . . .” Janelle reached behind the seat to snap her fingers in my face.

  “Amy Elgin,” I said. Janelle continued spouting orders to her other agent, still stationed back at the safe house. I caught only snippets of it between listening to the rustle of Paisley’s cheek against the phone, but “possibly abducted” and “hold off on calling it in” brought on a new wave of nausea.

  “What was she wearing? What does Jonathan look like?” Janelle asked.

  “Pais, do you remember what Mommy was wearing?”

  She thought about this for a moment. “Her gray pants.”

  I pictured Amy in her gray sweatpants. She wouldn’t have been caught dead going on a date in them, which further confirmed my suspicions that she’d been surprised.

  “Gray sweatpants,” I said loudly enough for Janelle to hear me. “What else? What color was her T-shirt?”

  “I don’t remember,” said Paisley.

  “Can you tell me what Jonathan looks like?”

  Paisley crunched a mouthful of popcorn. “He’s all right looking. That’s what Mommy says.”

  Not exactly the response she’d had to Mike.

  “What color is his hair?”

  “Yellow,” she said.

  “Yellow,” I repeated for Janelle’s benefit. “And is he tall, or short, or skinny, or fat?”

  “He’s sort of tall. Sort of skinny.”

  “Do you remember Alec?” When she said yes, I asked, “Is he as tall as Alec?”

  “No. Shorter. And skinnier.”

  “Shorter and skinnier,” I said, watching Janelle make a note on a pad of scratch paper.

  “Am I in trouble?” Paisley whispered.

  “What?” I asked. “No way. You’re in the opposite of trouble.”

  “I need that phone,” Alec told Janelle when she hung up.

  There was a short discussion about this before Janelle finally passed it back. Quickly, Alec punched in the numbers.

  “Mike, it’s me,” he said a moment later.
“Where are you?”

  “Is Mommy in trouble?” Paisley asked.

  I swallowed. “No, she’s all right. Are you under the bed, sweetie?”

  Alec put one hand on my knee and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Amy’s missing. Paisley’s at the apartment alone. We’re on our way, but . . . Yeah. Chloe’s with your mom?”

  “But if Mommy’s not in trouble, why am I hiding?”

  Alec’s voice cut through. “We don’t know where she is. Some guy picked her up.” He paused, looked at me. “No, doesn’t sound like it was her ex.”

  I shook my head. It had been a few years, but Paisley would have recognized her father. Jonathan—whoever he was—was someone else. I glanced at the window, watching the docks whip by through the tinted windows as we climbed onto the interstate. How long had Jonathan planned this? Did he work for Stein? Reznik? Had he played Amy to get to Alec and I, or was this some kind of cosmic misunderstanding?

  The dark fear in my belly told me it wasn’t.

  After a few more short words, Alec hung up the phone.

  “Mike’s on his way. If he gets there first, he’s going to take Paisley upstairs to his mom’s.”

  I mouthed a thank-you, and he nodded.

  “Paisley, remember Chloe’s daddy? He’s going to babysit you for a while if he gets there before us. Is that okay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You don’t come to the door unless it’s Mike or me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I wrapped my hand around Alec’s wrist.

  “Hang on, Paisley, we’ll be there soon.”

  Thirty-nine

  Every minute seemed to take ten, and by the time we’d reached Amy’s apartment complex my stomach was in knots and my scalp was damp with sweat. Paisley had stayed on the phone with me the entire time, though she hadn’t said much. I listened to the steady crunch of the popcorn, picturing her curled in a ball beneath her mattress, the way she’d been the day of the picnic.

  The complex was painted neutral colors—beige and white and brown—and every two-story building looked the same. If I hadn’t been here a hundred times, I would have been utterly lost. Muffling the receiver, I directed Tenner around the carports, over the twisty drive of speed bump after speed bump, until the glowing Christmas lights wrapped around Amy’s second-story porch came into view.

  She never took them down, despite what the neighbors said.

  “There,” I pointed. “Two forty-four B.”

  I unbuckled my seat belt.

  “Not until the area’s been cleared,” Janelle reiterated harshly.

  I shoved back in my seat. The floodlights overhead made yellow circles on the ground, and Tenner drove between them, until he was three buildings past Amy’s, and parked on the street in the dark.

  “How do you want to play this?” Tenner asked Janelle after putting the car in park. She took her cell phone back from Alec and stuck it in her pocket.

  “Ladies first,” she said. “I’ll clear the perimeter. You keep an eye on these two.” She tilted her head back to us.

  Tenner nodded, and in that moment, I was in awe of her authority. She looked so cool and dangerous, like she wasn’t afraid of anything. I almost envied her.

  “Maybe Tenner and I should go,” Alec offered.

  “That’s sweet.” She removed a gun from the shoulder harness within her black jacket. It was sleek and silver in the floodlights, as lethal as she was. “I guess chivalry isn’t dead after all.”

  Tenner snorted, checking the ammunition in his own weapon.

  “The kid’s name?” Janelle asked.

  “Paisley,” I said. Mike still hadn’t arrived, so we would get to her first.

  She opened the car door and walked across the road into the grass outside the nearest building. I tracked her position as long as I could before she was consumed by shadows.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Alec said, breaking the tense silence in the car.

  “It’s got to be all right,” I whispered through clenched teeth, holding the phone to my shoulder. “Paisley needs her mom.”

  His gaze locked on mine, deep with understanding. We both knew what it was like to grow up without a mother, or at least a good one. It couldn’t be that way for Paisley. I wouldn’t let it happen.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Alec repeated, the conviction clear in his tone.

  “Someone’s knocking,” Paisley said.

  I could hear it in the background. I stiffened, gripping Alec’s forearm. Janelle couldn’t have gotten there yet.

  “Don’t answer,” I told her. “Just wait.”

  Another knock. And then a muffled male’s voice.

  “It’s Chloe’s daddy,” she said. The phone rustled against her cheek again as she got out from under the bed. “I see him through the peephole.”

  “Is he alone?” I asked.

  Headlights appeared from the opposite direction. They jumped up and down as the car—a utility van—went over a speed bump.

  “Get down,” said Tenner. He relocked the doors.

  I ducked in my seat, Alec’s hard body stretching over mine.

  “Should I open the door?” asked Paisley.

  The van’s engine revved.

  “What the fuck . . .”

  Tenner didn’t finish. There was a crash, and the car rocked. The sound of crunching metal filled my ears. The utility van must have hit us. The driver hadn’t been going fast enough to hurt Alec and I, but the airbag had deployed, thrusting Tenner back against his seat.

  The next few moments happened so fast I could barely keep up.

  The driver’s door was ripped open and Tenner was dragged from his seat, out of view. A cry tore from my throat when I heard the grunt of pain and the dull thud of something solid coming down against his body. Through the window, I watched in horror as a shadowed figure raised what looked to be a crowbar.

  “Move, move, move,” Alec chanted, pushing me the opposite direction, toward the door. But when another man strode around the back, Alec shoved me down to the carpeted floor, pinning me beneath him with one knee. The rough upholstery raked my cheek as I fought him and tried to push up.

  Before he could get to the door, he froze.

  “Be very still,” he whispered.

  A tap came against the window, metal on glass, and then the door was yanked open. I tried to look up, but my hair covered my face. Still, I could hear Alec slide slowly out of the backseat.

  “Let’s go,” said a gritty, familiar voice.

  Reznik.

  Terror shot down my spine.

  “Both of you,” he said. “Hurry, or I put a bullet in her head.”

  “You don’t need . . .” Alec started.

  “A bullet,” said Reznik calmly. “In her head.”

  My breath came in hard rasps. I couldn’t hear anything on the other side of the car now. Was Tenner still alive? Was he coming with us?

  I tried to grab the cell phone that had fallen on the floor of the car beside me, but it was snatched away before my fingers could wrap around it.

  I was dragged out of the car by the hair, pinned against the door while my wrists were cuffed, and then hustled into the sliding door of the utility van behind Alec. Reznik jumped in after us while the driver returned to the front seat and exchanged his crowbar for a gun in the front of his belt.

  “Nice to see you two again,” he said as he tucked the keys to our cuffs in his hip pocket.

  “Fuck you,” Alec said.

  Reznik backhanded him with the barrel of his gun. I screamed, then stifled it in my shoulder. Chaotic thoughts whipped through my head as the driver backed away from the Navigator, and sped down the road, tires squealing. Paisley. Amy. Janelle. Stein—he’d caught us for real this time. We didn’t have a kill switch in this car,
or a weapon stored under the seat. We were at the mercy of two armed men, going God knows where.

  “Ouch,” said Alec flatly, spitting blood on Reznik’s boots. He leaned back on his cuffed arms against the wall of the nearly empty van. His legs stretched out before him like our captor was no more dangerous than a Girl Scout.

  I didn’t take my eyes off Reznik, even to see if they’d left Tenner outside on the ground. He crouched, and smoothed my hands over my hip pockets to check for weapons. Keeping the gun trained on Alec, he leaned closer, and slid a hand down my spine, taking longer than necessary to check both back pockets as I shifted away from his touch.

  He started to feel down my legs, but I kicked him, square in the shin. He grit his teeth.

  “Do I need to frisk you, too?” he asked Alec.

  Alec smiled, a cold, daunting look in his eyes. “Only if you really want to.”

  Reznik didn’t, and instead returned to sit on a box across from us, as if daring Alec to try something.

  “Where are we going?” I asked in a low voice. Alec’s arm brushed against mine, my only comfort in this chilly space.

  We hit another bump, everyone jostling. The barrel of the gun swung in a wide arc across my chest and I yelped.

  “To meet our mutual friend,” Reznik answered.

  Stein. Finally we would come face-to-face with him. A tidal wave of rage rose hard and fast inside of me. He’d hurt the people I cared about. He might still have Amy. I wanted to tear him limb from limb.

  “In that case,” I said. “Mind if I borrow your crowbar?”

  Reznik laughed.

  “She’s got fire, Alec.” His free hand stroked his beard. “She’ll fight when I hold her down. That’s very exciting for me.”

  “You’re a sick son of a bitch,” I said.

  Fear clawed in my belly, but I tightened my abdominals to trap it there. I wouldn’t let him screw with my mind. If he’d wanted me dead he would have already done it.

  Alec continued to stare down Reznik across the compartment.

  “Is that how you get women?” asked Alec nonchalantly. “I wondered.”

  Reznik’s grin faded.