11:12 a.m.

Andrew watched Charlie in the rearview mirror. He couldn’t help thinking the kid looked like a puppy dog waiting and watching for his master’s return. The gun stayed on the seat next to his thigh, exactly where Jared had left it. Charlie’s hand, palm flat against the leather seat, was beside it as if he didn’t want to touch the gun but wanted to be ready if he needed to.

Andrew tried to size him up, almost like a character profile for one of his books. He was streetwise but otherwise not so smart. There was an innocence, a sort of childlike quality about him that didn’t jive with being street-smart. At first Andrew had thought it might be a ploy, a manipulation, part of an act the kid did to get what he wanted. He was a good-looking kid in a geeky sort of way, with an easy, carefree manner, as if he didn’t think any of this was wrong. Almost as if he thought it was a game. Or maybe it was all an act.

Charlie met Andrew’s gaze in the mirror, but Andrew didn’t flinch. Charlie looked away first.

“You and Jared been friends for a long time?” Andrew asked as if making polite conversation.

“Friends?” Charlie looked as if the question required thought. “Jared’s my uncle.”

So that was the tie. Andrew had wondered if there was a romantic connection between Jared and Melanie, but this made more sense. Now he knew.

He checked the door to the house and then the garage. Nothing. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered a tidbit about kidnappers having a difficult time hurting their hostages if they started to think of them as real people. Hopefully that’s what was going on inside, but the longer it took Jared to get the keys from the farmer, the more Andrew got nervous about him agreeing to let Andrew just drive off and be his decoy. Whatever Jared ended up doing inside that house could determine Andrew’s fate.

“He seems like a nice guy if I had a chance to know him,” he said, glancing at Charlie in the mirror again.

“Oh, yeah, Jared’s cool.” He nodded. “He knows a lot,” he added as an afterthought.

“He’s kind of hard on your mom sometimes, isn’t he?” Andrew tested the water. Where exactly did this kid’s loyalty lie?

“Whadya mean?” But the topic wasn’t enough to draw his attention away from his vigil out the window.

“I don’t know,” Andrew said, keeping it casual, as though it were only an observation. “He yells at her a lot.”

“Oh, that.” Charlie snickered under his breath.

Andrew waited for an explanation, but none came. Evidently, it wasn’t something Charlie thought deserved a response.

Suddenly the garage door opened and a blue Chevy Impala backed out. Andrew saw Charlie grab the gun, but his hold loosened when he recognized Jared behind the wheel, Melanie beside him in the passenger seat. They pulled up alongside the Saab so that Andrew wouldn’t be able to open his car door. Jared rolled down his window and indicated for Andrew to do the same.

“Charlie, transfer our stuff.”

The kid practically jumped out of the car. Andrew popped the trunk and Charlie filled his long arms. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner Andrew could be free of them. He felt Jared staring at him, and he didn’t like the prickle at the back of his neck that his scrutiny produced. Was he sizing Andrew up, deciding whether he could trust him? Or was he trying to decide what to do with Andrew’s body?

Jared reached out his hand. “Give me the keys, Andrew.”

He didn’t hesitate, pulling them out of the ignition and handing them over. Okay, so what if Jared wanted to play games? He waited, expecting him to toss them into the gravel, so Andrew would have to search for them on hands and knees, slowing him down and maybe humiliating him one last time. But Jared didn’t toss them. Instead, he called Charlie over, said something to him and gave him the keys in exchange for the gun.

Andrew’s panic returned, an immediate banging in his chest. Christ! Was this guy crazy? Why had Andrew ever thought Jared would leave him alive? But he’d believed it, and now it was too late for a backup plan. Andrew’s eyes darted back to the house, though he knew if the farmer weren’t dead, he wouldn’t be coming to the rescue. Jared wouldn’t have left him without, at least, locking him in a closet or tying him up.

Jared inched the Chevy forward, enough that Jared was free to open his car door but so Andrew’s door was still blocked by the bumper of the Chevy. Jared got out and looked at him, his eyes never leaving Andrew’s as he came around to the passenger side and opened the door.

“Come on, Andrew.”

Terror paralyzed him. Not only was Jared going to kill him but he wanted to humiliate him by making him crawl out of his own car.

“Why don’t you just do it right here?” he managed to say.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“If you’re going to shoot me, just do it. Do it right here. Right now.” He couldn’t believe the words actually made it over the gathering lump in his throat. He grabbed the steering wheel with his one good hand as if in a last defiant move. Why not here? Why not die in his brand-new car, the fucking car that was to symbolize his success, his new beginning?

“Andrew, get the fuck out of the car. We don’t have all day.”

When he still didn’t move, Jared started to laugh.

“If you don’t get out of the fucking car, man, I am gonna shoot you, you asshole. Come on. You’re driving. Hell, when you drive this fucking Chevy after being spoiled by your Saab, you’ll probably wish I had shot you!”

Slowly, reluctantly, Andrew crawled out of the car, banging his shoulder as he tried to protect his head wound.

In a matter of minutes they were ready to go, waiting while Charlie parked the Saab in the garage. Andrew watched it disappear behind the descending door and with it went any sense of hope he had left.

Andrew was just about to pull out, when Jared suddenly said, “Wait a minute. I forgot something.”

Andrew didn’t think anything of it until he saw Melanie’s face, her wide eyes watching Jared run up the porch steps, her lower lip between her teeth again.

“What do you suppose he forgot?” he asked her. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t look as if she even heard him.

Then, just as sudden as her panic had been, so was her relief when she saw Jared come out the front door, jumping off the steps and jogging back to the car, too quickly to have done what she must have feared he would do. Andrew watched her entire body relax into the fabric of the seat and there was a hint of a smile. It had only been the farmer’s red baseball cap that Jared had forgotten. He slung it on in an exaggerated gesture, making Charlie laugh.

Andrew, however, felt his entire body stiffen. It couldn’t be. No, he was being paranoid. In his latest novel Andrew’s killer goes back to take a victim’s fedora, only it’s in the dead of winter and the killer needs it for warmth, thinking to himself why not take it, the dead guy’s not gonna need it anymore.

He watched Jared, smiling at the others as he climbed into the back seat. How ridiculous. How could he even be thinking about his stupid book? Except that Jared had commented about it, mentioning specifically about Andrew’s fictional killer taking one of his victim’s thumbs. Jared had paid attention and seemed fascinated by the book. But he was in and out of the house so quickly. And there hadn’t been a gunshot. Christ! Things were bad enough, he didn’t need to make them worse in his mind.

“So, Andrew,” Jared said as Andrew started back down the long driveway, the gravel sounding like bullets firing against the metal. “We have matching caps now. I thought I’d help myself since I know for a fact that farmer’s not gonna need it anymore.”

Andrew met Jared’s eyes in the rearview mirror, those dark, smiling, hollow eyes, and he knew. And Jared wanted him to know that this was his way of making him a part of all this, a part of his evil.