Chapter Thirteen

 

The little speaker in her ear crackles a little bit with electro-magnetic interference in the microphone on the other side. They're supposed to be up pretty high, and pretty far away.

She doesn't turn to look. If she does, maybe someone will see. Maybe the wrong sort of person. So she just holds the suitcase and sits on the bench and waits for someone to come along who looks like they're signaling her.

She waits a long time. The first minute or two, she thought that she would be seeing something any second. Then she thought, any minute now.

Thirty minutes later, she doesn't see a convincing-looking black sedan, with dark-colored windows. They're late. They're past late, and now she's started worrying.

Worrying was normal for Anna, but worrying this much isn't pleasant. It's past the normal. She does her breathing exercises as best she can. In, one two three, out, two three four. In, two two three, out, two three four.

Nothing. Nobody's coming. Is she in the wrong place? Did she screw something up already? What could she have gotten wrong?

"We've got something." A woman's voice says into her ear. Just quiet enough to hear. They look like a pair of iPhone headphones. "Coming your way, Anna. Headphones off. We see you. You're clear. Wait for the signal."

Anna pulls the headphones out and slips them into the pocket of her dress. The car slows down and stops. Dark windows. Dark car. The front passenger-side window rolls down slowly.

"Anna Witt?" The voice inside isn't one she recognizes. He's got an unremarkable voice. One that's neither high-pitched nor low, one without a remarkable accent. Midwestern, she figures. Maybe from upstate.

She pushes herself up from the bench.

"Am I supposed to give you—"

The guy inside has dark glasses on, and a ski mask. She can't make out anything except for glimpses of the color of his skin. It's not overly pale. Definitely white, or possibly a very light-skinned Latino.

"Shh—Open up the door, and slide the suitcase on the seat. You aren't here with anyone, are you?"

Anna stands up and looks around. "I don't think so."

"Good. Now do what I said. Open the door, slide the suitcase onto the seat, and close the door again. Real easy."

She does so. The car door opens easily. It's not locked. She picks up the suitcase. She'd expected it to be heavy, as full as it was, but she can lift it easily if she uses two hands. With some difficulty if she only uses one. It slides comfortably onto the seat.

"Like that? Am I doing this right?"

"Shut up," he says. His voice sounds hard now. Angry.

"Okay, sorry. Just close the door, and then you'll call Mitch and tell him where Ava is?"

"Stop asking questions, bitch. Close the door. Quit stalling."

She closed the door. She hadn't meant to stall. But it was just so hard to be sure that she was doing everything right. She'd never been in a situation like this one before, where it was all on her shoulders.

The weight that's been on her chest since last night doesn't pull off just yet. It won't until Mitchell's phone rings and they've got Ava back safe.

She watches the car pull away, until she loses him in traffic. That was all she could do. There's nothing else she can do now but wait and hope that she didn't screw something up.

She walks back to her bench and sits down. She slips the ear-phone back in.

"Did I do alright?"

The woman's voice is soothing. "You did great, sweetheart. Great job. You're a pro."

Anna's chest tightens. They're being too nice. Whatever comes next, they're trying to soften it for her, so that she won't get too upset when they tell her where she screwed up. That's how it always goes.

"What do I do now?"

"Nothing at all, honey. Come on up, we'll take the equipment back, and we'll all go back to the estate to wait for that call that will let you get your beautiful baby girl back."

Anna likes that thought. For a moment, she almost feels better. When Ava's back, it will be like all of this was just a bad dream.

Waking up to find that empty crib had been a shock, but she was never going to let anything happen to Ava, not ever again. If she had to live inside a fallout shelter to keep her safe, then that was what she'd do.

Part of Anna wishes that Detective Meadows had been there, had been the one talking her through all that. She plays back in her head the memory of his explanation why he couldn't do it, though.

They had to be in several places at once, and she'd love Sherry. The woman had talked people through stuff like this a hundred times. She was easy to talk to, she was a total pro, and she was going to make sure nothing went wrong.

That had made her feel at least a little bit better. Which, in the end, was probably enough. After all, she'd felt almost like she could do this. Almost. She just had to hope that she hadn't made that guy angry when she was asking all those questions.

She was just so stupid. Always thinking too much. Asking too many questions. She should have known better, but her nerves were getting to her, and it was hard to remember how she was supposed to act.

As long as it didn't end up hurting Ava, though, it didn't matter what she screwed up. As long as it didn't hurt Ava.

She finally turns and looks up at the apartment that they've set up their little field office in. If she doesn't miss her guess, it's the fourth window up, around the middle of the building. It looks the same as every other window. The blinds are down, but so are most of them.

Anna makes her way across. Nothing is going to go wrong, she repeats to herself. Everything went fine. Everything went just fine. There's nothing that's going to go wrong, and she's going to have Ava back by the end of the day.

Then, she can go back to her life. She'll have her baby, she'll have her parents right across the hall. She'll have the weekly meetings. She won't have the sexy detective any more, but to call it a 'fair trade' wouldn't be even close to accurate.

If it means she can have Ava back, then she'll give up everything else. She just wants her daughter back. Anything else is a distraction, and if this is how bad things can go, then she'll ignore every one of those distractions.

Sherry's there at the door to greet her when she comes back in. A big, tight hug. Anna feels like she's being suffocated, in a good way.

"You did great. No mistakes."

"He got mad that I was asking questions."

"We heard. Don't worry about that. Nobody's perfect. If he wanted someone who would do it perfectly, then he would've asked for a lawyer. You're just a regular person. Regular people get confused, okay? Don't get down on yourself about any of that."

The words come out of Sherry's mouth sounding nice. She seems like she means them. None of it helps to convince Anna. She probably screwed something up. Now she just has to hope that she didn't screw it up real bad. As long as everything's fine, and she's got everything under control, it doesn't matter.

But if she's just trying to congratulate herself on a job well done after she screwed up bad enough that it's going to come back on Ava…

Anna doesn't know what she'd do with herself. She's not going to think about it. Because that's a situation that she couldn't live with, not in a million years.

She'd rather not imagine it. When Sherry guides her to the car, Anna keeps her head down. There's nothing to worry about, right? Because she did everything that they said. They wouldn't do anything to Ava after she did everything they said.

That was why they'd paid all that money, right? So they wouldn't do anything to Ava. And no matter how many questions she'd asked, it was all going to be fine.

Right?