Hell and Gone

This isn’t going to have a happy ending.

—Morgan Freeman, Se7en

Philadelphia—Now

Of all the shocks Kendra Hardie had endured over the past few hours—the dropped call from her son, the chilling messages on the alarm keypad, the thudding footfalls on the roof, the wrenching sounds in the very guts of her house, the missing gun, and the awful realization of how quickly her situation had become hopeless—none of that compared to the shock of hearing that voice on the other end of the phone line:

“It’s me.”

Kendra’s mind froze. There was a moment of temporal dislocation, distant memory colliding with the present.

Me.

Could that really be…you?

It sounds like you, but…

No.

Can’t be you.

But then how do I know, deep in my soul, that it is you?

“Are you there? Listen to me, Kendra, I know this is going to sound crazy, but you have to listen to me. You and the boy are in serious danger. You need to get out of the house now and just start driving. Drive anywhere. Don’t tell me where, because they’re definitely listening, but just go, go as fast as you fucking can. I’ll find you guys when it’s safe.”

Kendra swallowed hard, looked at the face of the satellite receiver. 3:13 a.m. A little more than four hours since she had stepped into her own home and into a living nightmare. Eighteen hours since she had last seen her son. And almost eight years since she’d last heard her ex-husband’s voice. Yet there it was on the line, at the very nexus of the nightmare.

“Kendra? Are you there? Can you hear me?”

“I’m here, Charlie. But I can’t leave.”

“You have to leave, Kendra, please just trust me on this…”

“I can’t leave because they’ve already called and told me I can’t leave.”

Earlier in the evening Kendra had been out with a friend downtown, at a Cuban restaurant on Second Street in Old City, but found that she wasn’t really into the food, didn’t want to finish her mojito, and was tired of hearing about her friend’s first-world problems, such as problems with interior decorators and the headache of maintaining three vacation homes on the Delaware shore. Kendra excused herself and just…left. Paid for half of the tab and split, handed the valet her stub, and drove back to the northern suburbs, leaving poor Derek to complain to somebody else about having too much money. Maybe one of the Cuban-exile waiters would give a shit.

It had been that kind of listless, annoyance-filled week, and Kendra now felt foolish for thinking that a night of moderate drinking and inane conversation could turn that around.

During the drive home her son, CJ, had called. He told her he was just calling to check in—which was just about as unusual as the president of the United States dropping you an e-mail just to see how everything was going. CJ didn’t check in, ever. As CJ grew to manhood, he became increasingly like his father, with the delightful ability to cut off all emotional circuitry with the flick of an invisible switch. All the abuse her son had been dishing out over the years had hardened her into exactly the kind of mother she’d vowed never to become. The kind of mother who said things like,

“Cut the shit, CJ. What happened?”

“Nothing, Mom. I just…”

Mom. Oooh, that was another red flag. CJ hadn’t called her Mom in…months? CJ barely spoke to her, and when he did, it was little more than a grunt.

A tiny ball of worry had begun to form in Kendra’s stomach. Was he hurt? Was he calling from a hospital or a police station? Her body tensed, and she prepared to change direction and gun the accelerator.

“Where are you?”

“I’m at home, everything’s fine. Look, Mom, I know this is going to sound weird, but…what did you do with Dad’s old stuff?”

“What? Why are you asking me about that?”

First “Mom,” now…Dad? For the past seven years CJ hadn’t referred to his father as anything but “asshole” or “cocksucker” or “psycho.” Before Kendra had a chance to hear CJ’s answer, the phone beeped and went dead. NO SERVICE.

Kendra continued in the same direction but gunned the accelerator just the same, all the way up the Schuylkill Expressway, then through the endless traffic lights up Broad Street, and finally along the hills and curves of Old York Road out to the fringes of Abington Township. Home. She didn’t bother pulling the car into the garage, leaving it parked out on the street. Something in CJ’s voice…no, everything about CJ’s voice was completely wrong. Dad’s old stuff? What was that about? Why did he suddenly want to see the few possessions his father had left behind? The thought that CJ might be drinking again crossed Kendra’s mind, but his voice wasn’t slurred. If anything, it was completely clear and focused, in stark contrast to the moody grunts she usually received.

And whenever CJ did go on a binge, his heart filled with raw hate for his father, not fuzzy nostalgia.

“CJ?”

The alarm unit on the wall to the left of the door beeped insistently until Kendra keyed in the code. She closed the door behind her, locked it, then reengaged the system. It beeped again. All set.

“CJ, answer me!”

And then began the nightmare.

No CJ, not anywhere. No trace of him in his room, no telltale glasses or dishes in the sink. The house was exactly as Kendra had left it when she left for Old City earlier in the evening. Had CJ even called from home? The call had come from his cell, so he could be anywhere right now.

Not knowing what else to do, Kendra tried him again on her phone, but still—NO SERVICE. What was that about? She could understand a dropped call when speeding down the Schuylkill, as if a guardian angel had tweaked the signal to prevent you from sparking a twelve-car pileup on the most dangerous road in Philadelphia. But in her own home?

Maybe she could get a better signal outside. Kendra went back to the front door and keyed in the code. Two digits in, however, her finger stopped and hung in midair before the 6 key.

The digital readout, which usually delivered straightforward messages such as SYSTEM ENGAGED or PLEASE ENTER ACCESS CODE, now told her something else:

STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE.

“The fuck?” Kendra muttered, then lowered her finger for a second before blinking hard and stabbing the 6 button anyway, followed by the 2. Which should have disengaged the system. This time, however, there was no reassuring beep. There was nothing at all, except:

KENDRA, THAT WON’T HELP.

Then:

DON’T MAKE A SOUND.

DON’T MOVE.

NOT UNTIL WE CALL YOU.

And Kendra, much to her own disgust, did exactly as she was told, staying perfectly still and silent…

…for about two seconds before realizing Fuck this and grabbing the handle of her front door. She twisted the knob, pulled. The door didn’t move, as if it had been cemented in place. What? She hadn’t engaged the deadbolts when she’d come in just a minute ago…

The phone in her hand buzzed to life. There was SERVICE, suddenly. The name on the display: INCOMING CALL / CJ.

Oh, thank God. She thumbed the accept button, expecting to hear her son’s voice, maybe even hoping he’d call her Mom again.

But instead, it had been someone else.

Now, four agonizing hours later, during which Kendra had heard the sounds of her own house being turned against her…she was listening to the voice of her ex-husband—an accused murderer long thought to be dead. And he had the audacity to be grilling her!

“Who told you that? Who told you you were dead?”

“They called me and said if I left the house I was dead.”

“Fuck. Did you call the police? Anyone at all?”

“They told me not to call anyone or do anything else except wait.”

“Wait for what?”

There was a burst of static on the line, and then another voice came on. The one who’d called four hours earlier, from CJ’s phone.

The evil icy-voiced bitch queen who had her son, and who claimed to have the house surrounded.

“Hey, Charlie! It’s your old pal Mann here. So good to hear your voice after all this time. Well, that magical day has finally arrived. In about thirty seconds we’re going to kill the phones, and the power, and everything else in your wife’s house. We’ve got her surrounded; I know every square inch of every house in a five-block radius. You of all people know how thorough we are.”

Charlie ignored the other voice.

“Kendra, where’s the boy?”

“Shhhh now, Charlie. It’s rude to interrupt. You’re wasting precious seconds. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to tell me that if I touch one hair on your family’s head, you’ll rip me apart one limb at a time…or maybe some other colorful metaphor? Well, you know, that’s just not gonna happen. Because you lost this one, Chuck. There’s not going to be any cavalry rushing in, no last-minute saves, no magic escapes. And you know what’s going to happen next?”

What should have been going through Kendra’s mind at this moment was something along the lines of:

Charlie, where the hell have you been and why have you surfaced now? The last time we spoke it was a stupid and petty conversation about a late credit card bill, and I think the last word I spoke to you before disconnecting was whatever.

Or maybe:

Charlie, why didn’t you call me before tonight? Do you how many late nights I stared at the ceiling, trying to actually physically will you to call me? Not to change anything or explain anything, but to just to tell me what happened? Do you know how hard the not knowing was? How much it consumed me over the years, digging in deep, way past the regret and guilt and into the very core of me?

But instead Kendra thought:

Goddamn you, Charlie.

Goddamn you for doing this to us.

“What’s going to happen next is,” the ice bitch queen continued, “your family’s going to die. And there’s not a fucking thing you can do to stop me.”

If Kendra had any doubts about the voice on the other end of the line belonging to her husband, they vanished when he spoke again. Because his words were infused with a rock-hard defiance that had once been familiar to her, over a decade ago.

Charlie Hardie told the ice bitch queen,

“I can stop you.”