The Choice. Alex Lake

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СКАЧАТЬ meant it wasn’t a random car thief at all. If they had his number, they must have been targeting him – and his kids – specifically. But who the hell would do that?

      He had no idea, but he did know one thing. This was planned. Someone had been watching, waiting for this opportunity.

      The panic thickened, and his legs weakened. He let out a low groan. If this was planned, that meant there was a reason. Someone wanted his kids.

      But the kids weren’t all they wanted, or the person behind it would not have sent him a message. They would just have disappeared.

      So there was something else. But what? Was someone trying to punish him? He thought through all the areas of his life: family, friends, the law firm where he was a partner, any parents of the kids’ friends or classmates that they had fallen out with. Was there someone he had slighted? Or who the kids had upset?

      It was possible, but he couldn’t think of anything, and surely anything sufficient to provoke this would have been obvious.

      So what the fuck was going on?

      In his hand, his phone buzzed.

       I have his kids and his car. Easy to steal. Especially when you have the key. His spare, taken from the jar above the fridge in his kitchen, one day last summer when they were off on their family holiday. Too easy.

       It’s time to let him know what’s happening.

       Time to tear up everything he thought he knew and send him into a world of pain and confusion and fear.

       I can’t wait. He’s had it coming for a long time.

       I can’t use the same phone, though. Hopefully he’s not foolish enough to call the police, but there are no guarantees. The fucking idiot left his kids in an unlocked car, after all.

       He assumed, like people do, that the world is safe. He assumed that what he sees around him every day – polite people, organized into nice little groups at work or at home, following the rules, saying please and thank you and worrying they might have upset someone – he assumed that this is how things are.

       And he’s right. Most people are like that.

      But not all. Some of us see the truth. Some of us see that other people are mere tools to be used to get what you want. The idea you might deny yourself something because it could hurt someone’s feelings is absurd. Why would you care about feelings? You either get what you want or you don’t. To let other people’s arbitrary emotional states obstruct you is foolishness. Worse, it is weakness.

       And I am not weak. I was, once, and I learned my lesson. I suffered at the hands of someone who took what they wanted from me without a thought for what it did to me.

       It made me who I am. Showed me the way I should live my life. I made sure to explain that to them before they died.

       I also learned from them that you have to be careful. You cannot let people know you think of them as nothing but ways and means to get what you want. You have to learn to resemble them. Most of the time a smile and a question and an interested look is all it takes.

      It’s ironic: people love me. They think I’m kind and helpful, because that’s what I want them to think. They trust me.

       Which is very useful. Once you have earned somebody’s trust it is the easiest thing in the world to abuse it.

       Occasionally someone figures it out. My mother did, when she realized what I had done. Poor woman. It broke her heart.

      I know what you are, she said, her eyes wide with shock. I’ve known it all along. I just didn’t admit it to myself.

       So I was putting her out of her misery, I suppose. It didn’t have to be such a painful death, but there had to be something in it for me, didn’t there?

       Anyway, it’s time to give Matt the next piece of the puzzle. It’ll answer a few of his questions, inform him about the situation he’s in, clear some things up.

       But it won’t help. Soon he will realize that for every question answered, more have been asked.

       But first, the phone needs to be thrown away. The Bridgewater canal – oldest in the country, apparently – will be a fine place for it. No problem to pull over his dirty Land Rover Discovery and get out. The kids are unconscious. Hopefully the dose was correct. Not too strong. Not yet.

       Pull the phone battery out, then two splashes as the phone and battery drop into the dark, oily water.

       A new phone, booted up.

       Type in his number – memorized, of course – and send the message.

       Four words.

       Four shocking words.

       Watch sixty seconds tick by. One turn of the dial for the second hand. Analogue. No Apple Watch or Fitbit. Those things are a pain. Constantly buzzing and beeping. Measuring where you are and reporting it to some server. No, I don’t want that.

       Then the rest of the messages, followed by two more splashes.

       Better safe than sorry.

       Words Matt Westbrook should have paid more attention to.

       Matt

      Matt looked down at his phone and read the text message.

      It was just four words.

      Four shocking words.

      This is a kidnapping.

      He stared at the screen and read them again.

      This is a kidnapping.

      He slumped on the bench. His legs were shaking. Norman, Keith and Molly, the three people at the centre of his life, the three people he and Annabelle had built everything around, had been kidnapped.

      He was sure, in that moment, that he’d never see them again. Something would go wrong and they would be gone forever.

      He started to shake with sobs. They were his life now, for sure, but they were also his future. They were supposed to go to high school then university, to fall in love and get married, to have children. Or do something else. Become astronauts. Cure cancer. Form a rock band. Whatever. It didn’t matter.

      As long as they were there, in his and Annabelle’s lives.

      His phone buzzed again, and he turned to look at it. There was another message.

      The ransom demand will follow.

      Ransom? They were being held for ransom?

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