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"Are they alive?"
"Absolutely. But since you showed up, I need to put you in there, too, for safekeeping. Really, it's just business. Don't take it personally."
"No," Tess said, backing away from him, making sure she was not within reach.
"Well, I guess it's a standoff, then." He flashed her a smile, then started to lower his hands.
"Don't," she said in her sternest voice.
He shrugged, backing up. Tess heard steps in the anteroom and pressed her back against the wall, so she had the best vantage point possible. Natalie appeared, hugging Isaac to one side and cradling a shoe box in the right hand. It was disorienting, seeing the human versions of the people Tess had been seeking, almost like meeting celebrities in the flesh.
"Good girl," Zeke crooned. "You found Isaac. Look, Isaac-I told you that your dad would be here."
He opened the door to his right, revealing Mark Rubin on the floor of a vault crowded with coats, the twins curled up in his lap, clutching him like little orangutans.
"Daddy!" Isaac threw himself at his father. Under different circumstances it would have been a touching reunion.
"Now I really need you to go in there, too," Zeke said to Tess.
"No."
"Do what he says." Natalie had dropped the shoe box to the floor and was now holding a gun on Tess. She didn't look particularly comfortable with it, but she seemed awfully determined.
"Good girl," Zeke said again. "Good, careful Natalie. You always have my back."
"I got nervous when I saw the strange car," she said, tossing her head like a teenager accepting a compliment. "I wasn't sure what was going on, so I thought I should get my gun."
"I'm afraid you're outnumbered," Zeke said to Tess with that same insistent, phony charm. "But it's really not so bad. You'll just be in there an hour or two, and then Lana will come to let you out. That's all. We just need a head start. Oh, and your cell phone. You do have one, right?"
When Tess hesitated, Zeke pointed his gun at Mark and the children. Tess threw him the phone with her left hand, keeping her gun steady in her right.
"I'd be more convinced of your good intentions if I didn't know you're a criminal who's already tried to kill your stepbrother at least once."
"That hurts my feelings, I admit. But at this point I can't really worry about what you think. Mark and the children are safe, as you can see. But if I have to kill you, then I'll have to kill them to keep from having witnesses. So please-" Again he gestured toward the vault.
"Let us go," Tess said. "Give us the head start. Mark is more trustworthy than you. He'll give you his word that we'll walk away and wait a day before we tell the cops what happened here."
"Mark lies, too. All Rubins lie. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Zeke looked at Natalie. "Right, honey? Like father, like son? Like father, like daughter, too, come to think of it."
Natalie's expression was pained. Did she not want to leave her children? Her husband? But she wouldn't even meet Mark's beseeching gaze.
"We're wasting time," Zeke said. "Please get into the motherfuckin' vault, or I'll kill you, then kill Mark, and take the children with us. How's that for incentive?"
Tess looked at Mark, desperate for guidance, but he was just staring at Natalie, as if she were an apparition, the embodiment of a dream he never really expected to come true. Isaac shook his father's shoulder, and Mark put an arm around his son, but he didn't seem to be focused on the events crashing around him.
"It's death either way, isn't it?" Tess demanded, wanting to force Zeke to state his intentions, in hopes it would jar Mark into action. There were two of them. If Mark rushed Zeke and she went after Natalie, they might have a chance, if only because no mother could be monstrous enough to risk shooting her own children. "You'll shoot us or leave us here to suffocate. Frankly, I'd rather be shot."
"No one's going to suffocate. These vaults are huge. It would take a day for the five of you to use up the oxygen in one, and I plan to send someone here within the hour. You're just being melodramatic."
"Then why," Isaac asked, "did you turn off the fan?"
All the adults turned to the little boy. His face was crumpled and creased, and there was a streak of dirt on one cheek, flaky bits of dry leaves in his dark hair.
"What are you talking about, partner?" Zeke was trying to sound jovial again but not quite pulling it off. "You'd freeze if I left the air on."
"We keep the vault at forty-five degrees," Isaac said, and the plural pronoun just about broke Tess's heart. "That's cold, but not so cold as to make people freeze. But there's a system that makes the air move in and out as well. It's off-I can't hear it humming. You don't want the air to circulate. You want us to die."
"Zeke?" It was Natalie's voice, perplexed yet hopeful, sure he could explain it.
"The little know-it-all is wrong, Nat. It's a cool night. I'm only thinking of them. It doesn't matter if the air is off for a few hours."
"But we're just going to be in here for an hour," Isaac persisted. "You said. And if we got cold, we could wrap ourselves in the coats. So why are you turning off the air?"
"Isaac's right, Natalie." Mark had finally spoken. "There's only one reason to turn the air off."
Her loyalties were still with the other man. "Zeke?"
"We're up against a wall, Natalie. Because of Ohio." He hummed the refrain of Neil Young's "Ohio," mystifying Tess. "We don't have a lot of options. But you have my word. I'll send Lana to get them as soon as we're over the state line."
"I don't know what Ohio has to do with this." Natalie's tone was bitter and petulant, the voice of a person who had been reminded once too often of some failing. "I need you to promise me right now that they'll be okay."
"Have I ever lied to you?"
Of course he has, Tess wanted to scream. He's a liar and a thief, and he's about to become a killer. But Natalie, after a few seconds of intense thought, just shrugged and motioned Tess into the vault. She didn't take Tess's gun, though. Perhaps it was an act of kindness. The five hostages might prefer to shoot themselves rather than claw for air in the final minutes of their lives.
"Mommy?" Isaac asked, and it was a dozen questions at once. The twins rubbed their eyes, mewling like kittens, but too floppy and boneless to stand.
"I love you all," Natalie said. "Never forget that. I love you more than life itself."
With that she closed the door on them.
Tess waited no more than thirty seconds, then pulled out her second cell phone, the one she carried for outgoing calls only. No signal-the vault was too well built. Foolishly, she had counted on the second phone to save them. If she had known it wouldn't work, she would have thrown herself at Natalie, taken the chance that she could overpower her before Zeke got a shot off. Too bad that Mark Rubin didn't have a little more gonif in him, hadn't tried to get by with a shoddier storage facility. A place as leaky and air-riddled as his father's might have saved their lives.
"Is there any way out?" she asked Mark.
He shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. It's pretty impenetrable. I used to be proud of that."
"Is there any reason someone-Paul, anyone-might come here before…?" She didn't want to be too explicit about their fate, not in front of the children, although Isaac clearly knew what was going on.
Another sad, mournful shake. "No. I made sure no one would know I was here. I'm sorry."
"Me, too."
She also was sorry that Vera and Lana hadn't stonewalled her longer. If she had been just a few minutes later, Natalie and Zeke would be gone, and she could have been the Rubin family's great rescuer.
"He told me he would give me the children in exchange for whatever cash I could raise. I couldn't imagine… I never thought… I mean, how could Natalie agree to such a thing?"