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I didn’t like the tremor in my hand as I pulled the phone back down and checked the screen. There were three text messages waiting, all showing the number as unknown.
I felt sick to my stomach, suddenly distant from myself, as though I were a bystander to my own body, as I opened the messages. With my heart racing, I read through them all.
Is it done?
Respond immediately.
Plan B will be put into action.
The third text was sent just after ten this morning. That was hours ago now. Whoever was behind this clearly knew something had gone wrong, and they had a backup plan put in place. Cold fear laced through my heart. What was their backup plan? I was still here, and I was armed and ready for them, but I’d stupidly sent Nickie to school, thinking I’d already contained the threat.
X’s voice called from the cellar. “Well? What does it say?”
On shaky legs, I walked back down. I flipped the phone around so he could see, and his eyes flicked down the screen.
“Is it worth replying?” I asked. “I could just type, ‘done now.’ Or ask what plan B is.”
“They’re not stupid. They’ll know it’s you.”
I knew that, too, but I was grasping at straws.
Panicked urgency surged through me. “I need to check Nicole is safe.”
I ran back up the stairs and into my bedroom where I’d left my own cell phone on my bedside table. I checked it quickly for missed calls, though I didn’t know why I thought Nickie would suddenly start calling me—perhaps if she felt she was in danger. She never turned to me for anything else. The only other person who called me was Johnny from the bar, and that was only to get me to cover extra shifts or rearrange what was on the schedule.
But I had no missed calls.
Quickly, I pulled up Nickie’s number and called her.
Pick up, pick up, I willed as it rang. It would be just like her not to answer, purely because she didn’t want to speak to me, but I hoped this one time she did.
She didn’t answer.
“Call me, now,” I said into her voicemail. “It’s urgent.”
I hung up and then tried again. When she started to speak on the voicemail, I pressed end and called again.
The ringing cut off, and I heard her voice, “What?”
“Oh, thank God.” I dropped to the edge of my bed in relief. I didn’t care that she sounded snappish and put out—I was just happy to hear her voice, alive and well.
“I’m busy, Vee. What do you want?”
I pulled myself together, trying to focus. “I need you to come home. Something has happened and I think you might be in danger.”
“I’m always in danger. You must remember the last seventeen years of my life?”
“This is serious, Nickie. Someone came to the house. People know where we are.”
She paused and then said, “Someone came to the house? What did they say?”
I hesitated, unsure of what to say. I could hardly tell her that two of them were dead in the cellar, and another was taped to a chair.
“Nothing,” I said in the end. “I just saw them, that’s all.”
“And they’ve gone now?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
