My Husband Dismissed Seven Ransom Calls as AI novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Block It

Janelle has her husband block the kidnapper's number, and his old voicemail plays in front of Elora: he did call her, and he agreed that she was punishing him; the kidnappers panic about the FBI, Elora throws herself out of the van into a cornfield and is hit by a truck, and the paramedic says to page Dr. Erickson.

At 9:14 the man in the gloves called the sixth time, and he was angry.

He kicked the empty chair next to mine and paced the unit.

"Your doctor is cold," he told me.

Ansel was in his second surgery. I could hear the monitor, and I could hear my playlist.

"She's bleeding," the man said into the phone. It was a lie. It wouldn't stay one for long.

I leaned toward the speaker and hummed through the rag.

The lullaby I wrote in March. All four bars, the beat Ansel taps back to our baby every night.

The app turned it into a buzz.

"Hear that?" Janelle said. "It's a machine humming, Ansel. They want you to walk out on a patient. Don't give them that."

He didn't even answer her. She ended the call.

I sat in the dark and shook.

Six calls, and every time Janelle had her reason ready before he could think of his own.

Every time, he took hers.

At 9:38 the man tried once more. "Money by midnight, or she bleeds out in a ditch."

I could hear Ansel's hands working. They never stopped.

"Whatever you do to her, the ambulance brings her to me," he said. "I'll see her then. This number goes to the FBI tonight. Janelle, report it. Then call our neighbor and have him check the house."

"On it," Janelle said.

I heard her shoes on the floor, a door and then a quiet hallway.

No ringing. No voice. Only her breathing, close to the phone, for half a minute.

Then the door again.

"Neighbor says her car's in the driveway," she told him. "Lights off. She's asleep."

My car was in the school lot with my shoes lying next to it.

She had called nobody. I had heard every second of that hallway.

"I'll file the FBI thing too," she said. Then, softer, just for him, though I heard every word: "And Ansel? She's home asleep, mad at you. This thing is laughing at you."

She laughed, high at the end.

"Want me to block it?"

I knew what she was looking at. The prepaid number, and under it, in small blue letters, the option to block the caller.

One beat went by, too long.

"...Block it," my husband said.

The line went dead.

I looked at the cheap phone in the gloved man's hand.

Across town, my husband had just erased me, and he had not even pressed the button himself.

He had let her do it, and that hurt more.

At 9:41 the man tried the number again. Nothing connected, because a blocked number never rings.

A flat recording said the person could not take his call.

The man hung up. He would never leave his voice anywhere, even a fake one.

"He blocked you, sweetheart," he said.

Then he took my phone out of his jacket and turned it on for the first time since the parking lot, to see whether anyone was looking for me.

One notification. A voicemail from Ansel, 8:13 p.m.

He played it on speaker so we could all hear.

"Hey." My husband's real voice, tired and warm. "The email says to call you directly, so I'm calling. Some scam used your name tonight and it got to me. I almost put my instruments down. I don't do that. Call me after rehearsal, okay? It's pouring. Don't drive. I'll come get you."

He didn't hang up right away.

In the background, closer than I expected, I heard Janelle.

"She's punishing you because of me," she said. "Because you keep me close."

A long pause.

"...Yeah," Ansel said quietly.

The message ended.

He never touched her. I believed that, even then. He just never sent her away.

That was the fight we'd had that morning.

I looked at the little gray bar on the screen. That was the one time he had checked.

My phone was off in a stranger's jacket, and he had let Janelle tell him why.

He thought I was at school, up on the risers, singing and ignoring him.

Rehearsal had been canceled at three because of the storm. I stayed late to tune the piano and never told him, because we were fighting and I was too proud to text first.

Tonight he had come close to leaving the table for me, and close was all it was.

The man in the gloves didn't care about any of it.

"FBI," he said. "That doctor called the feds."

"He said he would," the short one said. "He didn't say he did."

"She's worth nothing now. We dump her."

They argued in low voices by the door. The short one kept shaking his head.

He lost.

They pushed me into the back of a van, with a ribbed metal floor and no seats and the smell of gas.

The man in the gloves drove. I heard him say the word quarry.

My hands were tied in front of me, and my fingers could reach the door handle.

I waited until the van slowed. Through the windshield a red sign came up in the headlights.

Stop. County Road 12.

I pulled the handle and threw my weight against the side door.

It slid open, and I rolled out into the rain in my socks.

I hit the gravel with my shoulder, tore the rag down and ran, bent over my belly, across a field of broken cornstalks.

Behind me a man shouted.

Ahead of me were two headlights. A road. Someone.

I ran toward the light with my tied hands held out in front of me.

I heard a horn.

Then one loud sound, and everything went white.

When I could hear again, I was on my back with rain falling into my open mouth.

A man's voice was shaking above me. "She ran right out in front of my truck, her hands were tied, she's pregnant, somebody help me."

Then there were lights, and straps, and a voice close to my ear.

"Thirty-four weeks, pressure dropping," a paramedic said into a radio. "Ardmore's the only place in the county that can take this. Tell them to page Erickson."

They were taking me to my husband.

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