I reach in and find a strap. I pull the bag up just as a muffled but unmistakable scream comes from the living room. I race out there. The woman has taken a few steps away from Bracken. She turns toward me and there’s a line of blood, not very wide, arcing up her body from her midriff, across her chest and neck and over her face. Bracken’s eyes are wide open and he’s staring down at his body, which is exactly how it ought to be—except for about ten centimeters of steel coming out the bottom of his stomach. The other ten centimeters of the blade is nowhere to be seen, but it’s obvious where it is.

“Shit,” I whisper.

“He moved,” she says.

“You didn’t have to—”

“Didn’t have to what?” she asks. “You said if he moves, then—”

“I know what I—”

“So that’s what I did.”

“Shit.”

She reaches forward and grabs the handle.

“Wait,” I say, dropping the bag, but it’s too late. She pulls the knife out. She gives it a distasteful glance before offering it to me. Blood is overlapping the edges of the wound. Lots of blood.

She drops the knife on the carpet and moves against the wall. She has that look about her that people get when they think they had a really great idea but it hasn’t turned out how they pictured; the thing she thought would make her happy is making her sick.

“He deserved it,” she says. “He was a piece of—”

“I don’t care,” I say. I hunt around for something but I don’t know what, then settle for the dish towel in his mouth.

“Oh God, oh God, oh Jesus,” he says. “Oh Jesus.”

I wad the dish towel up and push it against his stomach and he flinches back. I apply as much pressure as I can without jamming the dish towel right through his spine.

“Ah, ah fuck, ahhh!”

The blood keeps pouring out. He’s scared and tired all at the same time, and a whole lot paler than when he answered his door earlier.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry I took it,” Bracken says.

“I bet you are.”

“The guy, the guy was . . . was. Dead. I figured . . . it wouldn’t . . . Ah Jesus, hurt any . . . anybody.”

“It hurt me. It got my daughter kidnapped. It got people killed. Almost got Detective Schroder here killed too. And it got you stuck with a knife.”

“Oh Jesus, please, please, you have to help me.”

“I’m trying.”

“Call an ambulance.”

“I want my money,” the woman says, looking down at the bag.

“You said you were doing this for free.”

“That was before all this . . . blood.”

“Please, please, call an ambulance,” Bracken says, quieter now.

“Five thousand,” she says.

“You know who I am?” I ask her.

“What? Yeah, I guess. From the news.”

“You know what my father did, then, right?”

She nods.

“People think that kind of thing is in the blood. You want to test if they’re right?”

“Maybe I did say I’d do this for free.”

“Maybe you did.”

“Can I go now?”

“Make it quick.”

Before she can get out of the room, Schroder makes a low moan. He’s still casually leaning against the wall. He’s had a long day. His eyes half open, nothing fixed in his view yet, and then there I am, holding a dish towel on a dying man. He tries to say something but can’t.

“He did it,” the woman says, pointing at me. “He did it,” she repeats, and then she is gone.

The dish towel has soaked through with blood and I find another. It soaks through immediately too. I look at my watch. The hour is nearly up and I haven’t heard back about the meeting.

“An ambulance,” Bracken says, and his eyes are only half open now.

I take out the cell phone and start to call for help and then end the call. Instead I dial the number of the man who has my daughter. Bracken is suffering but it’s his own fault and my daughter comes first. It begins to ring.

Only it sounds weird, like it’s ringing in both ears, a continuous ringing.

It takes me another second to figure out why. I look at Bracken and he’s got his eyes locked on all the blood. He’s wishing he’d turned his cell phone off. Instead it’s ringing from his pants pocket. I hang up and Bracken’s phone stops. I dial it again and it starts back up. I hang up. Bracken’s phone stops ringing, and I put the phone away, and any chance of calling an ambulance goes with it.

chapter forty-four

Bracken doesn’t say a thing. Everything that seemed odd the moment I got here doesn’t seem odd anymore. He watches as I take the cell phone out of his pants. There are a thousand things all fighting to be said, but in this moment not one of them can be heard. This man took my daughter and he has her somewhere. His eyes are open all the way again. Blood is still draining out of the wound.

“Please, please,” he says, his words slurring slightly, “call am-ambulance.”

“Where’s my daughter?”

“Please . . .”

“Is she here?”

“Help me and I’ll tell you where she is.”

I slap him across his face. Hard. “That’s not how it works. You tell me where she is, then I help you.”

He clenches his eyes shut, his mouth in an open grimace, his teeth tight against each other, revealing an overbite that I’ll take the steak tenderizer to if he doesn’t talk. His entire face has caved in somewhat, as if he’s lost ten kilos in the last two minutes. Blood and now a mixture of urine too is pooling on the floor beneath him. It smells bad.

“Where is she?”

He doesn’t answer, just keeps the grimace and the tight facial features of a man going through something very intense. It’s pain and fear and maybe something spiritual too.

“Hey,” I say, and I slap his face again.

He shakes his head and a moment later he doesn’t seem to know where he is.

“Tell me where she is and I stop the bleeding. Schroder calls for an ambulance and you get fixed up. Quicker you talk, quicker I help you.”

His eyes focus on me. “Take the, take . . .”—he sucks in a deep breath—“take the handcuffs off the cop first. You free him then I talk.”

“You think he’ll protect you?”

“He won’t want to . . . but he has to.” His face turns into a grimace again as he rides another wave of pain.

“Are you the son of a bitch who shot my wife?”

“No.”

“Who, then? Give me a name. Is this the person who has my daughter?”

He doesn’t answer. The pool of blood is still spreading, but not as quickly now.

“Answer me, damn it. How do I get her back?”

“Help me,” he says, his voice low. His eyes focus on something above me before rolling into the back of his head. I slap his face and they roll back down and stare right at me.

“My daughter,” I say.

“My daughter,” he repeats, almost whispering now.

“Where’s Sam?”

“Sam,” he says, then he closes his eyes. I slap him but they don’t open back up. I check him for a pulse but there’s nothing.

“Wake up!” I slap him harder. “Please,” I say, grabbing his shoulders, “tell me where she is.”

The dead man doesn’t answer. I look over at Schroder before sitting on the floor and resting my head in my hands with no idea at all what to do next. I think about what Dad said, about having to learn to control the monster otherwise it would make me do things I didn’t want to do. Did the monster do this?

No. Of course not.

You knew she wanted to hurt him. Why leave her alone with him and a large knife? You knew it’d play out this way.

No. I didn’t.

Yeah? How else you think it was going to go?

I lean forward and remove Schroder’s gag.

“Listen to me, Edward,” he says. “I know how it must have gone down. You snapped, and you certainly didn’t mean to kill him. You were trying to get information, and you were right about Bracken, he knew where your daughter was. Let me help you.”

“I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me that cut him.”

“Then who? Who was that woman?”

“She was nobody.”