She springs out of the Expedition and hits the ground running. In her mind she is already poring over the list of items he named, organizing them according to where they are in the house. She is good at this, in a sense it is what she has always done best-track, prioritize, multitask, always with one eye on the clock.
In the first sixty seconds she has her coat, gloves, boots, keys, and the flashlight all tucked into her pockets. She swings through the garage for the rope and sprints across the yard through the darkness to the garden shed, the one that Phillip built for them their first summer here in Concord, two years ago. It turned out to be their only summer together, but the tools he bought for her are all still here, many of them unused, each hanging neatly on its nail.
She takes down the shovel, turns, and aims the flashlight down in the corner but the sheet of canvas she keeps there to cover the flower beds is gone. There is a clean rectangle of cement where it normally lies, where she knows-flat-outknows- that it should be. But it is not there. And it is not there, of course, because the man on the phone took it when he came out here and inventoried her belongings, some hours or days or even weeks ago. Intuitively Sue senses this is because he wants her to know that he's been here, that he does not want to leave any doubt about it.
Time, she thinks, and runs back as fast as she can, bypassing the house entirely this time, which is a mistake. It is quite dark now, and the only light source in the backyard is the faint yellowish illumination bleeding from the kitchen window, just above the sink. When she rounds the side of the house she trips on something and goes flying, landing hard on the palms of her hands, hearing her own breath go out of her with a muffledguff. She hears her keys jingling somewhere beside her. She gropes the cold blades of grass in front of her in search of the flashlight, but that's gone too and for a moment she's skating wildly toward the edge of panic. She can hear the phone chirping inside the Expedition down in the driveway. It sounds hugely, massively, dreamily far away.
It hasn't been three minutes yet. It hasn't even been close.
Standing up, Sue spins around and catches the gleam of the flashlight in the grass and switches it on, splashing it over the yard in search of the keys. The phone is still ringing in the Expedition: the third ring dwindling away, a silence, and the fourth ring starting. She can see the flashlight beam trembling as her whole body shakes harder in the cadence of some accelerated pounding within. Her heart is a lunatic banging on a metal can. It is like swimming to the surface with her lungs bursting for air, kicking furiously, but the surface just keeps pulling farther away from her no matter how hard she struggles for it. Finally with an audible curse Sue gives up looking for the lost keys, wrenches herself forward, running for the Expedition, and diving inside to snatch the phone from the passenger seat where she'd abandoned it. She doesn't even have enough air in her lungs to speak, just gasps, trying not to pass out.
"You made it," he says, as if expecting nothing less.
"I don't," she says, and swallows dryly, "have my keys. I'm sorry. I tripped. I don't know where they went, I couldn't…"
Her voice trails off and the silence that follows it is endless, fathomless. When the voice speaks again there is a hollow darkness within it that chills her to her very soul.
"That's too bad, Susan. I guess we can't play after all."
"Wait."
"I gave you clear instructions. All you've done is disappoint me."
"Please-"
"Listen closely now, because you're about to hear me slit your baby's throat."
"No!"
"Too late, Susan."
"Stop it!" She jerks straight upright in the front seat, both hands clutching helplessly at the phone as if she could somehow reach through and rescue Veda, and her coat flap catches on her left sleeve. As the edge of the coat flips up, its outer pocket tips sideways and her keys spill out along with her gloves, bouncing off her knee and falling to the floor.
You put them in your pocket. That's where they were the whole time, stuffed between your gloves where you couldn't hear them jingling.
"Wait!" she shouts, ramming her hand down below her feet, fingers probing, encountering the little metal ridges hooked to the reassuring weight of the clicker, right there in her palm. "I have them! They were in my pocket! I have them!"
She slips the key into the ignition, the dashboard brightening obediently in front of her.
"Hello?" she says. "Are you there? Can you hear me?"
She listens. For an eternity, nothing. Then:
"Do you have everything else?" he asks.
She thinks of the canvas tarp, and the shovel for that matter, which ended up somewhere in the side yard when she fell on her face. But there is no margin for error, she judges, not now, perhaps not ever again. "Yes," she lies smoothly.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
There is a pause long enough that she has to wrestle to control her trembling for fear that he can hear it in her respiration. Despite the cold she can feel a droplet of sweat leaking from her right armpit down her ribs. "All right, then." He sounds convinced, or wants her to think that he is. Either way it is no longer of any consequence. "Start the car and head east toward Route 2. Get off on 23 and look for the sign for Everett Road. When you get there you're going to head north. I'll call you again when you get there. And remember, Susan."
"What?"
"You have a job to do. I'll be watching you. If you make any unauthorized stops to ask for help or use a pay phone, I will cut your little girl up and send you the pieces. Do you believe me?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Good. We'll be in touch."
"When will you-"
Click.He's gone.