The Couple Next Door

“I doubt I’ll be able to sleep, but I’ll try. Where are you going?”

“I’m going to pop into the office and check on a few things. I haven’t been there since . . . since Cora was taken.”

“Okay.”

Marco puts his arms around Anne and gives her a hug. “I can’t wait to see her again, Anne,” he whispers.

She nods against his shoulder. He lets her go.

Marco watches her walk up the stairs. Then he grabs his car keys from the bowl on the table in the front hall and heads out.

? ? ?

Anne intends to lie down. She’s too keyed up, though—almost daring to hope she might get her baby back soon, yet still terrified that it might all go horribly wrong. As her father said, they have no proof that Cora is even still alive.

But she refuses to believe that Cora is dead.

She carries the green onesie with her, holding it to her face and breathing in the scent of her baby. She misses her so much it physically hurts. Her breasts ache. In the upstairs hall, she stops, leans against the wall, and slides down to the floor outside the baby’s room. If she closes her eyes and presses the onesie to her face, she can pretend that Cora is still here, in the house, just across the hall. For a few moments, she lets herself pretend. But then she opens her eyes.

Whoever sent them the onesie has demanded five million dollars. Whoever it is knows that their little girl is worth five million dollars to them and obviously has a pretty good idea that Anne and Marco can get the money.

Perhaps it is someone they know, if only slightly. She gets to her feet slowly, pauses on her way into their bedroom. Perhaps it is even someone they know fairly well, someone who knows they have access to money.

When this is all over, she thinks, after they get Cora back, she will devote her life to her child—and to finding the person who took her. Maybe she will never stop looking at people they know, wondering if that person is the one who took their baby—or knows who did.

She suddenly realizes she probably shouldn’t be handling the onesie like this. If it all goes wrong and they don’t get Cora back, they will have to turn the onesie—and the note—over to the police, as evidence and to convince them of their innocence. Surely the police will no longer suspect them now. But any evidence that the outfit might have offered up has probably been ruined by the way she has been touching it and breathing on it and even wiping her tears with it. She puts it down on her dresser in the bedroom and lays it flat. She looks at it, forlorn, on the dresser. She leaves it there, with the note pinned to it containing their instructions. They cannot afford to make a mistake.

It’s the first time she’s been alone in the house, she realizes, since midnight on the night Cora was taken. If only she could go back in time. The last few days have been a blur, of fear and grief and horror and despair—and betrayal. She told the police that she trusted Marco, but she lied. She doesn’t trust him with Cynthia. She thinks that he might have other secrets from her. After all, she has secrets from him.

She wanders from her dresser over to Marco’s and pulls open the top drawer. Aimlessly, she rummages through his socks and underwear. When she has finished with the top drawer, she opens the second. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but she’ll know when she finds it.

SEVENTEEN

Marco gets into the Audi and drives. But not to the office. Instead he takes the nearest exit and drives out of the city. He weaves in and around traffic; the Audi is responsive to his touch. After about twenty minutes, he turns off onto a smaller highway. Soon he reaches a familiar dirt road that leads to a fairly secluded lake.

He pulls in to a graveled parking area in front of the lake. There is a small, stony beach with some old, weathered picnic tables, which he has rarely seen anyone use. A long dock projects out into the lake, but no one launches boats from here anymore. Marco has been coming here for years. He comes here alone, whenever he needs to think.

He parks the car under the shade of a tree, facing the lake, and gets out. It’s hot and sunny, but there’s a breeze coming off the lake. He sits on the hood of the car and looks out at the water. There is no one else here; the place is deserted.

He tells himself that everything will be all right. Cora is fine; she has to be. Anne’s parents will get the money. His father-in-law would never pass up an opportunity to be a hero or a big shot, even if it cost him a small fortune. Especially if it looks like he’s bailing Marco out. They won’t even miss the money, Marco thinks.

He takes a deep breath of the lake air and expels it, trying to calm himself. He can smell dead fish, but no matter. He has to get air into his lungs. The last few days have been a living hell. Marco isn’t made for this. His nerves are shot.

He has regrets now, but it will all be worth it. When he gets Cora back and he has the money, everything will be okay. They’ll have their daughter. And he’ll have two and a half million dollars to get his business on track again. The thought of taking money from his father-in-law makes Marco smile. He hates the bastard.

With this money he’ll be able to sort out his cash-flow problems and take his business to the next level. It will have to be funneled into the business through a silent, anonymous investor, by way of Bermuda. No one will ever know. His accomplice, Bruce Neeland, will get his half share, go away, and keep his mouth shut.

Marco almost hadn’t gone through with it. When the babysitter canceled at the last minute, he’d panicked. He’d almost called the whole thing off. He knew Katerina always fell asleep with her earbuds in when she was babysitting. Twice they’d come home before midnight and surprised her dead to the world on the living-room sofa. She wasn’t that easy to wake up either. Anne didn’t like it. She thought Katerina wasn’t a very good babysitter, but it was hard to get a sitter at all, since there were so many young children in the neighborhood.

The plan had been for Marco to go out for a smoke at twelve thirty, let himself into the house quietly, grab the sleeping baby, and take her out through the back while Katerina slept. If she’d woken up and seen him come in, he would have told her he’d come to check on the baby, since they were just next door. If she’d woken up and seen him carrying the baby out, he would have told her he was going to take Cora next door for a minute to show her off. In either case he would have aborted the whole thing.

If he’d pulled it off, the story would have been about a child abducted from her bedroom while the babysitter was downstairs.

But then she canceled. Marco was desperate, so he’d had to improvise. He persuaded Anne to leave Cora at home with the proviso that they’d check on her every half hour. It wouldn’t have been possible if the video on the baby monitor had still been working, but with just the audio, he thought it would be all right. He would take Cora out the back to the waiting car when he checked on her. He knew it would make him and Anne look bad, leaving the baby home alone, but he thought it could work.

Had he felt there was any actual risk to Cora at all, he never would have done it. Not for any amount of money.

It’s been brutally hard these last few days, not seeing his daughter. Not being able to hold her, to kiss the top of her head, to smell her skin. Not being able to call and check on her and make sure she’s all right.

Not knowing what the hell is going on.