hair was much longer, but Emma recognized her. And it was all she could do to keep the recognition from being obvious. “Yes, hello,” she’d said.
“Jason says you’re settling in well.”
The woman had looked hard at her, Emma thinking it must be written all over her face: that mixture of shock and surprise, hatred, and rank, outright fear. Like seeing a ghost.
Afterward, she had tried to tell herself that she might simply have been wrong. Maybe she was projecting. After all, it was so many years ago. They were both different then, the context so different.
Yet she found herself worrying, wanting to know, and her thoughts went to Shelley, her special forces. She wondered about getting a picture of the woman and texting it to him, realizing that she could still recall his number. (Would he have the same number?) She could remember him making her recite it every morning. He’d made it into a game.
They were the good times, she had thought wistfully. Happy times. But then there had been the kidnap attempt, and Shelley had left, and the man who replaced him was never the same. Oh, he’d tried, bless him. He’d done his best to be jolly, friendly, and warm, but he was like an embarrassing uncle, and Emma had seen right through him. She had wanted Shelley back. She had pined for him like other girls pined for boyfriends.
Well, anyway.
Emma spent twenty-four hours too scared to get in touch with Shelley. And of course if she had managed to screw up the courage and call then it might have saved her life, because she was at work one night and about to go to her room, when she saw the door at the end open and in came a Russian-looking man.
Behind him, Karen.
They had both seen her, and Karen smiled. “Hello, love,” she’d said, and right then Emma knew that she knew. And she knew that Karen knew that she knew.
She let herself into her room, heart hammering. She took out her phone and tried him at last, but there was no answer. It went to voice mail. Not even his voice.
She had opened her mouth, about to leave him a message, when there came a knock at the door.
CHAPTER 47
SUSIE SAT ON the deck chair in her new prison cell, also known as the machine shop, wondering what happened now and knowing that in reality the answer was nothing—nothing happened now apart from waiting.
All those years ago, David had sat her and Emma down and told them that if the unthinkable happened and they were taken and found themselves captive then they should do their best to be as amenable and open as possible with their captors.
The idea was that their captors should see them as human beings rather than just negotiating tools. Doing that would make them more difficult to hurt and ultimately more difficult to kill.
At the same time Susie tried to recall films she’d seen involving kidnap situations. Then again, maybe not; they never seemed to end well. So in the meantime she just took a seat and let her mind wander, waiting but not really waiting.
The door rattled. She sat up straight as it began to open, had second thoughts, and stood up to greet her visitor instead.
It was Karen. She wore the same clothes she had earlier, and Susie guessed it was her usual attire: black boots that stopped just below the knee, expensive and showy, black jeans, and a knitted turtleneck in the same color. The only thing missing from the ensemble was the belted woolen overcoat she’d had on, and Susie, dressed in her gym outfit of leggings, tight white base layer, and zip-up hooded top, was in the rare position of feeling underdressed in the other woman’s presence.
Karen stood by the door, motioning for Susie to step back against the far wall. When Susie was in place, Karen turned and was handed a small tray.
She caught Susie looking at her arm. “It’s never repaired. Permanent nerve damage. I have restricted movement, limited mobility, no grip, numbness, and tingling. Most days I wish that they could have just taken the whole fucking thing off.”
She placed the tray down on the school desk. Next she winced as though something was bothering her, and then reached to her waist and took out a gun that she placed on the tabletop, doing the whole thing quite casually, almost absentmindedly.
Karen indicated for Susie to take a seat.
“Some food for you,” she said,