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“Go away,” Sienna commands. Her voice trembles, so that she doesn’t sound like herself, who is usually so defiant, so sure. There is no mistaking her fear. “Leave me alone,” she demands, crying now. Sienna falters on the words, her voice cracking, so that the execution doesn’t carry the same weight as the words themselves.
Sienna is terrified and so am I.
“Sienna baby!” I shriek. There is the sound of commotion, of muffled noises in the background—this man, I imagine, subduing Sienna, forcing a gag into her mouth so that she can’t speak or scream, and Sienna fighting back from the sound of it, resisting him.
I realize that I’m not blinking. I’m not breathing.
Tears sting my eyes. “What are you doing to her? Who is this?” I demand of this man, screaming into the phone so that everyone in the store stops what they’re doing to look at me, to stare, some gasping and pressing hands to their own mouths in shock, as if this nightmare is somehow collective. “What have you done with my daughter? What do you want from me?”
“Listen to me,” the man says back, his modulated voice unshaken and sedate, unlike mine. I still hear Sienna’s desperate cry in the background, a keening, weeping wail, though it’s stilted. The sound of it is enough to bring me to my knees, and yet I don’t know what’s worse: the sound of Sienna’s cry or the sound of it as it grows distant and then fades completely away.
“Where is she? What have you done to her? Why can’t I hear her anymore?”
“You need to do exactly as I say. Exactly. Do you understand?”
“I want to talk to my daughter. Let me talk to my daughter. I need to know that she’s okay. What have you done to her?”
“I have nothing to lose,” the man says. “You’re the only one with something to lose, Ms. Michaels. Now you need to shut up and listen to me because I don’t care one way or the other if your daughter lives or dies. What happens to her is entirely up to you. Now,” he says, and I know in my heart that this is Declan. This is an act of vengeance for my having had Nat, for harboring her, for turning her against him.
Panic grips me. “What?” I beg. “I’ll do anything. Just give me my daughter back.”
“I need you to wire ten thousand dollars to this account.”
My heart all but slips right out of me. Ten thousand dollars. A ransom demand.
He doesn’t wait or ask if I’m ready. In the next breath, he fires off bank account and routing numbers and I race, desperate, to the woman who stands open-mouthed behind the cash register, motioning like a mime for paper and a pen. She searches the counter for them, but it’s another woman, standing to the side, a customer in line, who goes inside her purse and finds them for me.
“I... I didn’t get it. Please, say them again,” I plead, and he does.
“You have five minutes to wire the money.”
“Or what?” I ask, panic in my voice. “I... I can’t do that. I need more time. I can’t do this in five minutes.”
“Five minutes,” he says again, “and then she dies.”
The line goes dead. When I pull the phone away from my ear, Sienna’s number is gone. Vanished. It feels predictive, prophetic. I moan. It’s primitive, animal like. My hand goes to my mouth, my knees buckle beneath me so that I would collapse if not for a stranger’s hand on my back, propping me up.
I don’t have time to go to pieces.
In five minutes, Sienna might die.
There is a hand on my shoulder, which I shrug off. People are talking. Asking me questions. Incessant questions, while others stand quietly aside, their mouths agape. Is everything okay? Ma’am? Ma’am? What do you need? Should we call the police?
Four minutes and forty seconds.
I step away, finding space. I pull up the bank’s app on my phone, my fingers pushing the wrong buttons in my haste. If it wasn’t for my grandmother’s inheritance, I wouldn’t have this kind of money and I thank God for it because I don’t know what would happen if I didn’t.
Would Sienna die?
Four minutes and twenty seconds.
There is no time to think it though. There is no time to call the police. I picture Sienna bound and gagged. This man is a monster; there is nothing he won’t do. I won’t risk it. A call to the police would take precious time that I don’t have, and for what? They would never find Sienna in that time.
Three minutes and fifty-five seconds.
My heart palpitates. The pounding in my chest is almost too much to bear.
I enter the recipient’s information and select where I would like to wire the money from, which is my savings account, where my grandmother’s inheritance sits collecting minimal interest because I haven’t invested it yet. I select the amount to send, and then I schedule the wire and hope it sends, watching the time pass by on my watch.
