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All is dark.
My phone rings.
“Go inside.”
“Where’s my daughter?”
“Go inside.”
I unlock the door, and everything is exactly like we’d left it the last time we were here. It is spotless, and without a family in it, it is lifeless.
“Go sit on the couch in front of the windows,” the voice tells me. “Look out at the lake.”
I look across the water, and a couple hundred yards out, there is a boat. I can see the light bobbing on the waves.
“Your daughter is out here with me.”
“Prove it.”
There is another photo. This time, someone’s watch is in the frame, and someone’s hand is holding a knife to my daughter’s sleeping neck. The watch reads the current time.
“Don’t hurt her,” I tell them. “What do you want me to do? Do you want money?”
He laughs. “Not right now. Right now, I want you to open that box.”
The syringe.
My gut tightens. “No. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
“That’s not what I want right now,” the voice says. “Right now, I want you to take out that syringe, and pump it into your vein. All of it.”
“Why?” It doesn’t make any sense. Unless it is laced with something to kill me. Or perhaps to infect me with something terrible.
“It isn’t for you to question me,” the voice says. “I hold the cards.”
“How do I know you haven’t infected the needle with something?” I ask, but I’m already pulling it out. I don’t have a choice. My daughter has a knife to her throat.
“You don’t. Inject it.”
I don’t hesitate. I roll up my sleeve, and pierce my skin with the needle. The heroin floods into my blood, and I feel the sting, and the warmth, and it is all very familiar, and lord help me, it feels good. Familiar. Comforting. Warm.
“Better now?”
“Now what?” I manage to say, even though my tongue is thick, and I look around for the camera. There must be a camera here. He’s watching me.
“Now, go into your bedroom. There are instructions. Leave your cellphone on the couch.”
I am wooden as I enter my room, and frozen as I turn on a lamp. True to his word, there are boxes with notes on the bed. At least thirty boxes. Each note says USE ME, with a time stamped beneath it.
I open the first box. Its instructions say to use it at one am.
It’s a small vial of cocaine, and a mirror with a straw taped to the edge.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
I spin around to go back out to the couch, and the door is now locked.
He’s inside the house with me.
