Karin Slaughter - Fractured

No one seemed to notice the phone was ringing until Abigail Campano cried, "It's Kayla! It's Kayla's cell phone calling!"

The woman was holding the telephone in her hand, eyes glued to the caller ID.

Both Will and Paul scrambled to stand. Hamish ran to his computer. He held up a finger, telling Abigail to wait while he pressed the keys. Will slipped on the extra set of headphones as Hamish donned his own pair. He nodded, and Abigail answered the phone, holding the receiver so that Paul could listen in.

"Hello?"

There was static, then a garbled voice that was electronically altered to a menacing monotone. "Is this the mother?"

Abigail's mouth opened, but she wasn't speaking. She stared at Hamish for a cue. He nodded, writing something on a dry erase board in front of him.

"Y-yes," she stuttered. "This is Emma's mother. Is Emma all right? Can I talk to Emma?"

Hamish must have coached her to use her daughter's name as much as she could. It was harder to kill somebody who had a name.

The voice said, "I have your daughter."

Hamish wrote something down, and Abigail nodded as she said, "What do you want? Tell me how to get Emma back."

There was more static. The voice had no inflection, no accent. "I want one million dollars."

"Okay," she agreed. Hamish started furiously writing on the board. "When? Where?" She begged, "Just tell me what you want."

"I will call you tomorrow at ten-thirty a.m. with details."

"No-wait," she cried. "How do I know she's alive? How do I know Emma's alive?"

Will pressed his fingers into the earphones, his ears straining to hear past the static. He heard clicking, but didn't know if that was from Hamish pressing keys on his computer or something else. They all startled in unison as the sound jumped up several levels. "Daddy…" a girl's voice said. Tired, terrified. "Daddy…please help me…"

"Baby!" Paul screamed. "Baby, it's me!"

There was another click, then the line went dead.

"Emma?" Abigail yelled. "Hello?"

Hamish tapped the keys on his computer, working furiously to keep the line engaged. He shook his head at Will. Nothing.

"What do we do now?" Abigail begged, fear pitching her voice up almost as high as her daughter's. "What do we do?"

"We pay the bastard." Paul glared at Will. "I want you out of my house. Take him with you."

Hamish looked startled, but Will shook his head, indicating that the man should stay put. He told Paul, "You can't negotiate with the kidnapper on your own."

"What the fuck do I need you for? You can't even trace the fucking call."

"Paul-" Abigail tried, but he cut her off.

"Get out of my fucking house. Now." When Will did not move, Paul stepped forward, crowding the space. "Don't think I won't beat your ass again."

"Why do you want me to leave?" Will asked. "So you can call your private security firm and they can tell you what to do?" You didn't have to be able to read to see the answer in Paul's eyes. "The more people you get involved in this, the more people who try to control it, the more likely it's going to be that something bad happens to Emma."

"You think I'm going to trust my daughter's life to you?"

"I think you need to stop for just a minute and realize that I am the only person you've got who knows how to keep her safe right now."

"Then I'm fucked, ain't I?" Paul's lips drew into a sneer. "You stupid piece of shit. Get the fuck out of my house."

"Please," Abigail murmured.

Paul persisted, "Get out of my God damn house."

"It's my house, too," Abigail countered, her voice stronger. "I want them to stay."

Paul told her, "You don't know-"

"I know that they're the police, Paul. They know what they're doing. They deal with this kind of thing all the…" Her voice started to tremble again. She clutched her hands in front of her, nervously gripping the phone that had just brought her daughter's voice back to her life. "He said he'll call back tomorrow. We need their help. We need them to tell us what to do when he calls."

Paul shook his head. "Stay out of this, Abby."

"She's my daughter, too!"

"Just let me take care of this," he pleaded, though it was obvious his wife's mind was already made up. "I can handle this."

"The same way you handle everything else?"

The room went silent. Even the fan on Hamish's computer stopped spinning.

Abigail did not seem concerned that she had an audience. "Where were you, Paul? How did you handle it when Emma started hanging around Kayla?"

"That's not-"

"You said she was just acting out, that she was just being a teenager. To leave her alone. Look where leaving her alone got her. She sure as hell is alone now."

Paul was wholly unconvincing when he mumbled, "She was just being a kid."

"She was?" Abigail repeated. "You're still spouting that same parental wisdom? ‘Just let her figure things out on her own,' you said. ‘Just let her sow some wild oats.' Just like you did at that age. Only, look at you now-you're just a pathetic, needy bastard who can't even keep his daughter safe."

"I know you're upset," Paul said, sounding like the reasonable one. "Let's just talk about this later."

"That's exactly what you told me," she insisted. "Time and time again, you said we'd just talk about it later. Emma skipped school? We'll talk about it later. Emma's failing English? Talk about it later. Later, later, later. It's later!" She threw the phone across the room, smashing it into pieces against the wall. "It's later, Paul. Do you want to talk about it now? Do you want to tell me how I'm overreacting, how I'm the crazy one, I'm the overprotective one, how I just need to calm down and let kids be kids?" Her voice caught. "Are you calm, Paul? Are you calm while you're thinking about what that man, that animal, is doing to our daughter?"

All of the color drained from Paul's face. "Don't say that."

"You know what he's doing to her," she hissed. "You always said she was your beautiful girl. Do you think you're the only man who thinks that? Do you think you're the only man who can't control himself around hot young blondes?"

Paul glanced at Will nervously, telling him, "Get out."

"Don't," Abigail told Will. "I want you to hear this. I want you to know how my loving and devoted husband screws every twenty-year-old who crosses his path." She indicated her face, her body. "It's the car salesman in him. Every time one model gets out of date, he trades up to the newer one."

"Abigail, this isn't the time."

"When is the time?" she demanded. "When is it time for you to fucking grow up and admit that you were wrong ?" Her fury heightened with each word. "I trusted you! I trusted you to keep us safe. I looked the other way because I knew that at the end of the day, you would always come back home to me."

"I did. I do." He was trying to soothe her, but Will could see it only made her angrier. "Abby-"

"Don't say my name!" she screamed, throwing her fists into the air. "Don't speak to me. Don't look at me. Don't say a God damn word to me until my daughter is home."

She ran toward the front door, slamming it behind her. Will heard her footsteps as she ran down the steps. When he looked out the window, he could see her on her knees in the grass, bending over at the waist as she keened.

"Get out," Paul said. His chest was heaving up and down as if the wind had been knocked out of him. "Please-just for now. Both of you. Just please get out."

FAITH STOOD OUTSIDE the morgue, her finger pressed into one ear to block out the noise as she talked to Ruth Donner on her cell phone. Tracking down Kayla Alexander's former nemesis had been somewhat easier than speaking in front of a group of terrified teenagers. In retrospect, Olivia McFaden's relieving her of the podium had been somewhat reminiscent of Travis and Old Yeller in the woodshed.