The Last Minute

15

Henderson, Nevada

Leonie opened her eyes, then blinked. She’d fallen asleep at the desk and her cheek felt mashed and drool-stained. Charming, she thought, wiping at her face with her fingers. The computer kept playing music from Rent, turned low, set on repeat. She preferred songs with a story these days. She’d filled her iTunes library with musicals and movie soundtracks. She hit the space bar and the rising voices, imploring her to live for today, went silent. She blinked again in the sudden quiet, forcing herself to stay awake.

My God, what happened to me? Fourth or fifth time she’d fallen asleep while working this week. It was getting to be a bad habit. She’d had an early morning.

She glanced at the clock. She’d fallen asleep after putting the baby down. It was close to 10 p.m. Exhaustion had caught up with her. She was still in T-shirt and jeans and got up from the desk in the corner of her bedroom, shucked her clothes, put on thin cotton pajamas. She brushed her teeth, wiped the sleep from her eyes. Now she’d probably have trouble going back to sleep, and the baby would sleep straight through the night. Oh well, she could get some work done. Leonie had decided early on that they called it single motherhood because you had to make every single second work to your advantage.

‘Honey,’ her well-meaning octogenarian neighbor, Mrs Craft, would say, ‘why don’t you hire a nanny? I’m sure you can afford it.’ And Mrs Craft would look around at the granite countertops, the vaulted ceilings, the plush Persian rug over the immaculate hardwoods.

‘I don’t like having strangers in the house,’ Leonie said.

‘A nanny, once you get to know her, she’s no stranger.’

And Leonie had just shrugged instead of saying what was in her heart: I can’t take the security risk. I can’t have a nanny finding out what I do. The load of long, solitary working hours and taking care of Taylor was endurable. Taylor was worth every sleepless night.

Leonie brewed a pot of hazelnut decaf and switched to the Chicago soundtrack on her iPod, connected to a small set of speakers. The saucy strains filtered out quietly over the bedroom. She opened her laptop and checked her emails; she kept several anonymous accounts to stay in touch with clients.

Nothing from Gunnar. She heaved a sigh of relief. As clients went, Gunnar was being rather difficult. Kept changing his mind on what he wanted. First he wanted to relocate to New Orleans; no, he decided it was too close to Atlanta, he would see someone he knew, in the bars of the French Quarter. Too likely he’d be found. Then he wanted Canada. No, he realized actual winters, with actual snow, took place in Montreal. Now he wanted Panama but had started making noises about there being nothing to do in Panama, as though the entire country lacked nightclubs or movie theaters, beaches or bookstores. She couldn’t start creating his fake life without him choosing where to hide.

She wanted to say: when you leave your old life behind, you leave it behind, and not soon enough for me, and you have to decide. But you had to avoid getting too snotty with Gunnar, or any desperate client. She knew that too well. Handle him with care, get him set up where he could never bother her, and his life would start again. Panama. She would tell him that was the solution to keep him safe. She was the expert, after all; he would simply have to listen to her. He couldn’t continue to waffle.

Once a person had made the conscious decision to vanish, and contacted her for help, then indecision was a nightmare. It made exposure much more likely. A slip of the tongue, time spent on a traceable computer researching locales and such: any of those mistakes could return to haunt you. If you had ever looked in your browser at Seattle or Vancouver or Paris, then you needed to cut them from your vanish list. Fine. Decision made. She would create him bank accounts in Panama, find him a suitable house in Managua, in a good neighborhood where he would not attract interest. Get him a private Spanish tutor, one who could be trusted. Make him a New Zealander. She could get the right kind of paper for that passport, and the watermarks, within two days. She would rely on her network to cobble together a new name, and a new world for him. Best to get started now.

She got her coffee, ignored the thirst for a cigarette (six months now no smoking), and then she heard the traffic noise outside, a car rushing past, a rise of night breeze. And then a flap of curtain.

The sound seemed much louder than it should. She paused Chicago ’s singing murderers in the middle of the cell block tango. Listened again. She heard a hard gust of wind.

There was a window open somewhere.

A cold itch wriggled between her shoulder blades. She got up from the computer and went down the hall. She stopped at the nursery door, eased it open. The door faced the window, which looked out onto the backyard. The window stood open, the Pooh Bear drapes dancing in the gust.

Her heart shuddered to stone.

She hurried forward in the dark. The moonlight gleam showed her the crib was empty. Her baby was gone. She screamed, short and sharp, picking up the wadded-up yellow blanket as if Taylor might have shrunken and fallen into its maze of folds. Her scream turned molten in her throat.

She stumbled through the house. Be here, be here, be here, she said to herself.

But the rest of the house was empty, and the fear and the shock juddered through her like a hammer hitting bone.

The phone. Stunned, she stumbled to it. Picked it up. Pressed the 9, then the 1. Then she stopped.

What was she going to tell them? My child is gone. Questions would be asked. Who are you, ma’am? Who is the father? How long have you lived here, who might take your baby from you? What if their questions pierced the truth, that she lived here under a false name, that she wasn’t who she said she was.

She hung up the phone. She had to think before she called the police. She had been so careful. She had hidden so well. No one knew where to find her. Except…

The phone rang in her hand and she nearly dropped it as though the sound could turn to heat, scald her skin. She stared at the screen. The number, blocked.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello, Leonie. How are you?’ A woman’s voice, gentle, and known to her. Anna Tremaine.

‘Where? Where?’ she sobbed into the phone.

‘Oh, are you missing someone? Young mothers can be so forgetful.’

‘Where is my baby?’ she screamed. Now the fear was gone. Snap, vanish. Just a fury in its place.

Anna’s voice was calm. ‘Let me assure you your child is safe.’

A ragged moan escaped Leonie’s throat.

‘Are you listening, Leonie?’ Anna said. ‘It will be tiresome if I have to repeat myself.’

‘Why have you done this? Why?’

‘Because, Leonie, you are going to do something very important for me, and you’re going to do it right away, no argument.’

Leonie forced herself toward calm. ‘What do you want?’

‘You’re so good at hiding people for us, darling, but can you do it in reverse? Can you find someone who’s hiding?’

‘Yes,’ Leonie said. It was inconceivable to give any other answer. She’d do anything for Taylor.

‘All right. If you have another client right now, get rid of him.’

She thought of Gunnar. He needed to be hidden. Okay, whatever, he couldn’t decide what he was doing or where he wanted to go, screw him for eternity. He would have to wait. ‘Okay. Please don’t hurt Taylor. Please. Please.’

‘Get a hold of yourself. I need you to be calm.’

‘You could have just asked! You could have just asked me for help! You know I would, I already… ’

The woman’s voice was a slow purr. ‘I needed an assurance you would act.’

‘I’ll do whatever you want.’

‘You’re going to work with a gentleman. He, like you, is very motivated to do a good job for us.’

‘I don’t work with other people.’

‘You will now, Leonie. Unless you’re willing to pull the trigger on a gun yourself and kill a man in cold blood. Your job is easy. All you have to do is find a target. This man will then kill the target. And then you get Taylor back. Easy.’

Panic churned her guts. She sank down onto the couch. Okay, she thought, this is the reality of the moment. Deep breath and deal. ‘Um, who is this man I’m supposed to find and who is it I’m working with?’

‘I love the smell of cooperation in the morning,’ Anna Tremaine said. ‘You’re very good at making last-minute travel arrangements, darling. I’ll let you meet him at the airport. His name is Sam Capra. He can tell you the details.’

‘Anna, is Taylor all right?’

‘Perfectly fine. Asleep on a blanket.’

Leonie felt fear like ice pierce her skin. She forced herself to listen intently. Anna, or one of her people, must have taken the baby in the past couple of hours, while she was absorbed in her work, or dozing at her desk. Which meant that Anna might still be in Las Vegas, or was in a car. She tried to hear the hiss of tire against road on Anna’s side of the phone. She heard nothing. If Anna was pulled over, then there might be traffic as the background noise. A clue that would tell her where Anna was. The rumble of an eighteen-wheeler, a whine of engine passing Anna’s car. She heard nothing. She cursed herself for not listening sooner. But shock had frozen her. She tried to manipulate her memory: force herself into replaying every word of the conversation again. Every nuance. Because if she did what was asked, and her child wasn’t return ed, the person she would be finding and killing was Anna Tremaine.

‘You know not a hair on the head will be hurt,’ Anna said in a babyish sing-song. ‘Haven’t I always been nice to you? Check the email address we used in the past. Details will be there, and final instructions. Pack a bag for a few days. Be at your smartest. Be brave. Do a good job, Leonie. For your child’s sake.’ Then the phone went dead in her hand.

Final instructions? Leonie got up and ran toward the laptop.