Just the excruciatingly slow passage of time could make her talk. The unceasing agony. The relentless barrage of accusations. They were so angry, so hostile.
So barbaric.
She was going to die. Evelyn had known the minute she woke in the van that death was the only end to this. In the beginning, she thought it would be their death at her hands. She had quickly realized it was going to be the other way around. The only control she had over anything was her mouth. Through all of this, she had not once begged them to stop. She had not asked for mercy. She had not given them the power of knowing that they were so far into her head that every thought had a shadow lurking behind it.
But what if she told them the truth?
Evelyn had spent so many years hiding the secret that even thinking about unburdening herself brought her something akin to peace. These men were her torturers, not her confessors, but she was in no position to quibble. Perhaps her death would absolve her of her sins. Perhaps there would be a moment of relief when for the first time in a long while, Evelyn felt the weight of deceit finally lifting from her shoulders.
No. They would never believe her. She would have to tell them a lie. The truth was too disappointing. Too common.
It would have to be a believable lie, something so compelling that they would kill her without first waiting for verification. These men were hardened, but not experienced, criminals. They didn’t have the patience to keep around an old woman who had defied them for so long. They would see killing her as the ultimate proof of their manhood.
Her only regret was that she wouldn’t be there when they realized she’d tricked them. She hoped they heard her laughing at them from hell for the rest of their miserable, pathetic lives.
She laughed now, just to hear the sound, the desperation.
The door opened. A slash of light came under the blindfold. She heard men mumbling. They were talking about another TV show, another movie, that had a new technique they wanted to try out.
Evelyn inhaled deeply, even though her broken ribs stabbed into her lungs with every breath. She willed her heart to still. She prayed for strength to a God she’d stopped talking to the day her husband died.
The one with the putrid breath said, “You ready to talk, bitch?”
Evelyn braced herself. She couldn’t appear to give in too easily. She would have to let them beat her, make them think that they had finally won. It wasn’t the first time that she’d let a man think he had complete control over her, but it sure as hell would be the last.
He pressed his hand into her broken leg. “You ready to bring on the pain?”
This would work. This had to work. Evelyn would do her part, and her death would finish it, wash away her sins. Faith would never find out. Zeke would never know. Her children and grandchildren would be safe.
Safe but for one thing.
Evelyn closed her eyes and sent out a silent message to Roz Levy, praying that the old woman would keep her mouth shut.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FAITH’S EYES WERE CLOSED, BUT SHE COULDN’T SLEEP. WOULDN’T sleep. The night had passed in inches, dragging along like Death’s sickle being scraped across the floor. For hours, she had listened to every creak and groan of the house, straining to hear any movement downstairs that indicated Zeke was finally awake.
Her mother’s finger was hidden in a half-empty box of Band-Aids in Faith’s medicine cabinet. It was wrapped in a Ziploc bag she’d found in an old suitcase. Faith had debated about whether or not to put it on ice, but the thought of preserving her mother’s finger had made bile come to the back of her throat. Besides, she hadn’t wanted to go downstairs last night and face Zeke, or the detectives who were sitting at her kitchen table, or her son who would surely join them all if he heard his mother was up. Faith knew if she saw them, she would start crying, and if she started crying they would quickly figure out why.
Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.
She was doing exactly that, though the cop inside of her was screaming that following the kidnapper’s orders was an incredibly big mistake. You never gave them the upper hand. You never ceded to a request without getting something in return. Faith had coached families on these basic strategies dozens of times. She saw now that it was a different thing altogether when the threatened loved one was your own. If Evelyn’s abductors had told Faith to douse herself in gasoline and light a match, she would’ve done it. Logic went out the window when there existed the very real possibility that she might never see her mother again.
Still, the cop in her wanted details. There were tests that could be done to determine whether or not Evelyn was alive when the finger was removed. There were other tests that would prove definitively whether or not the digit belonged to Evelyn in the first place. It looked like a woman’s finger, but Faith had never spent much time studying her mother’s hands. There was no wedding ring; Evelyn had stopped wearing that a few years ago. It was one of those things Faith didn’t notice at first. Or maybe her mother was just a good liar. She’d laughed when Faith asked about her naked hand, saying, “Oh, I took that off ages ago.”
Was her mother a liar? That was the central question. Faith lied to Jeremy all the time, but it was about things all mothers should lie to their children about: her dating life, what was happening at work, how she was managing her health. Evelyn had lied about Zeke being transferred back to the U.S. But, that was to keep the peace, and probably to prevent Zeke’s disapproval from shadowing the happy occasion of Emma’s birth.
Those sorts of lies didn’t count. They were protective lies, not malignant lies that festered like a splinter under your skin. Had Evelyn lied to Faith in a way that counted? There was something bigger that Evelyn was hiding, something more than the obvious. Evelyn’s house told that story. The circumstances of her kidnapping delivered chapter and verse. She had something in her possession that some very bad men wanted. There was a drug connection. There was at least one gang involved. Her mother had worked narcotics. Had she been sitting on a pile of cash all this time? Was there a secret vault hidden somewhere? Would Faith and Zeke find out when Evelyn’s will was read that their mother was actually wealthy?
No, that wasn’t possible. Evelyn would know that her children would turn over any illicit cash, no matter how much easier it would make their lives. Mortgages. Car payments. Student loans. None of that would go away. Neither Zeke nor Faith would ever take dirty money. Evelyn had raised them better than that.
And she had raised Faith to be a better cop than to just sit around on her hands all night waiting for the sun to come up.
If Evelyn were here right now, what would she want Faith to do? The obvious answer was to call Amanda. The two women had always been close. “Thick as thieves,” Bill Mitchell had often said, and not with flattery. Even after Faith’s uncle Kenny had decided to make an ass of himself pursuing younger women on the beaches of South Florida, Evelyn had made it clear that she preferred to have Amanda at the family Christmas table rather than Kenny Mitchell. The two women shared a shorthand the way soldiers did when they came back from war.
But calling Amanda now was out of the question. She would come rushing in like a bull in a china shop. Faith’s house would be turned upside down. A SWAT team would be in place. The kidnappers would take one look at the show of force and decide it was easier to put a bullet in their victim’s head rather than negotiate with a woman who was hell-bent on revenge. Because that was exactly how Amanda would play it. She never went at anything quietly. It was always a hundred percent or nothing at all.