Nocturnal

Phone Home

THE HUBS: HONEY, NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU. URGENT. GET SOMEWHERE PRIVATE.

Amy Zou walked through the hospital parking lot toward her car. Jack never sent texts like that. Had his father finally passed away? Had something happened to the twins?

She reached her car and got in. She shut the door, took a deep breath, then dialed her husband’s cell phone.

It picked up on the second ring, but it wasn’t her husband who answered.

“Hello, Missus Zou.”

A boy. It sounded like a teenager, or someone just about to enter his teen years.

“Who is this?”

“I want to meet you,” the boy said. “I’ve already met your family.”

Amy closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. A knot of fear blossomed in her belly. Amy knew what it was to be afraid for herself — being afraid for her children was infinitely worse. This might be nothing; maybe Jack lost his phone and some kid thought this was funny. She had to stay calm.

“What’s your name?”

“Rex.”

That feeling in her belly swelled into her chest, her throat. “Rex … Deprovdechuk?”

“You already know me,” he said. “How nice.”

Rex, the boy who had strangled his own mother to death with a belt. The boy who was somehow mixed up with Marie’s Children, somehow connected with the deaths of Oscar Woody, Jay Parlar and Bobby Pigeon.

The boy her entire police force hadn’t been able to find.

“Rex, listen to me. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you need to turn yourself in.”

“I’m at your house,” he said. “My family came to visit your family. You have a very nice house, Missus Zou.”

He was at her house? Oh, God, what was going on? Amy had to keep control of this, make the boy understand he was in deep shit.

“That’s Chief Zou,” Amy said. “As in chief of police.”

“Yes, ma’am. Why else would I want to talk to you?”

“Good,” she said. “Then maybe you know how much power I have, and what I’m capable of if you do anything to my family.”

Rex laughed. “Come home right now, Missus Zou. Don’t call for backup. I have people watching your neighborhood. We see cop cars, even those unmarked ones, and your family is in a lot of trouble.”

Amy’s eyes squeezed shut. She forced them to open. “Let me talk to my husband.”

“Sure,” Rex said. “Hold on one sec.”

Amy waited, her heart hammering in her chest, every inch of her body crawling and churning. How could this have happened? How?

“Baby,” Jack said.

“Jack! The girls—”

“We’re all okay,” he said. “But … they’ll hurt the twins if you don’t do what they say. Oh my God, Amy, these things … they’re not human.”

Images of the shark-mouthed man flashed through Amy’s thoughts. She felt tears streaming down her face.

The boy spoke again. “Twenty minutes, Missus Zou. Then we start slicing.”

“If you hurt—”

A click from the other end cut off her threats.

She set the phone in the passenger seat. She jammed the keys in the ignition, started the car and shot out of her parking spot.