The Doubt Factory

  Ask your father.

  That was what this was all about. 2.0—the one called Moses—had wanted her to ask Dad what all this was about. And Dad had said that it was probably something to do with a client, even though Moses had been adamant that it was about Dad.

  Payback, he’d called it.

  And I’m collateral damage.

  Alix began running possibilities through her mind. Maybe they were going to try to ransom her. Or use her to extort something from Dad. Maybe if he gave them what they wanted, they’d let her go—

  You’ve seen their faces.

  Alix felt ill. Kidnappers who planned on letting you go would probably hide their faces, right? So maybe they really were just going to leave her in the cage and let her die.

  Part of her wanted to panic at the thought, but mostly she was exhausted and angry at herself for walking right into a trap. Good-girl Alix, thinking she was busting loose. And Cynthia coaching her into the trap the whole way.

  Alix decided she hated Cynthia.

  Then she decided she hated herself. She’d been naive.

  You trusted Cynthia. You trusted Dad.

  He’d said it probably was just people who were confused and crazy. But these people were focused on him like laser sights. He was the target, and she was collateral damage, and she still didn’t understand why.

  What did you have to do to someone to make them want to destroy your entire life?

  Alix got up and tried to stretch her legs. It had to be morning, she thought. By now Mom and Dad had to suspect that she hadn’t just run off to a party. They’d be searching for her. Lisa would be searching for her.

  Death Barbie.

  If anyone was going to find her, it would be Lisa. Alix remembered the woman’s expression as she and Cynthia ditched. The fixed gaze of a single-minded hunter. That woman had almost caught a car on foot.

  Alix fantasized about Lisa blasting into the factory and saving her. Homing in on Alix’s phone and crashing through the door—except she’d ditched her cell, just like clever Cynthia had suggested.

  Alix found herself wishing she had a hidden phone. A secret one that they could track. Something that would let Death Barbie call in a drone strike. Send in the SWAT teams…

  Quit it, Alix. You’re on your own.

  For all she knew, she’d gotten Death Barbie fired. She’d ditched the lady, after all. Maybe Dad had canned her for being incompetent. Maybe Alix had helped get rid of the one person who had even a tiny chance of rescuing her.

  Alix huddled in the darkness. She could smell her urine. This wasn’t a movie. She was in a cage in a warehouse in the dark, and the reality was that they could do whatever they wanted to her.

  She wondered if she’d end up as a bunch of bones that someone would find in the woods in another decade. A mystery girl identified by DNA, the way she sometimes saw a discovered body reported in the news.

  Alix began to sob. She had never felt so miserable and hopeless. The darkness pressed down on her, and she sobbed.

  No one came.

  Nothing happened.

  She was alone.

  The door opened.

  Alix squinted in the sudden spike of light. Daylight? It was daylight. And the shadow walking toward her…

  Moses.

  Alix tried to dry her tears on her hands. To clean her face and hide her fear.

  You don’t get to see me cry, you asshole. You don’t get to see anything. You’re not going to see me crying.

  He had a paper plate in one hand and the lantern in the other. He set the lantern down and offered her the plate with a sandwich on it. She held out her hand, but he put the paper plate down just outside the bars.

  “Cheese sandwich,” he said.

  Alix glared at him. She decided she wasn’t going to eat the sandwich, just to show Moses that she didn’t need him.

  I’m not going to do anything you want me to.

  It was a small thing, but it was what she could do.

  “Suit yourself.” He sat down on the stool. He wrinkled his nose. “Did you piss yourself?”

  “What do you think?” Alix snapped.

  He picked up the lantern and circled the cage. Held it over the wet place where her urine had run and then soaked into concrete. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll get something for you.”

  “A chamber pot?” Alix challenged.

  “I don’t know.” He sat down again. “We’ll figure it out. If I could trust you, I’d just let you use the toilet.” He touched his forehead. “But, you know. You’re a fighter. I got a bite in my arm and a chipped tooth, and Kook says I should be glad I don’t have a concussion.” He touched his swollen brow, again, significantly. “Starting to think I can’t really risk letting you out. So…” He shrugged. “Here we are.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  He sighed. “Your dad didn’t tell you, did he?”

  “You’re animal rights activists or something, right? That’s why you did the thing with the lab rats.”

  “Is that what he told you?” He laughed. “Sucker even lies to his own daughter.”

  “He doesn’t lie to me.”

  “If you say so.”

  “You think I’m going to believe you?”

  Moses grinned abruptly. The same wild smile that Alix had seen before. The one that had urged her to open the door to her own house, for God’s sake.

  Alix wished she could punch the smile bloody.

  “Believe me?” Moses asked. “Believe me?” He started to laugh, shaking his head.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “‘Believe,’” he said again. “It’s a funny word. ‘Believe.’ ‘Believing.’”

  He got up and started to pace back and forth in front of her cage. “Do I expect you to believe me? No, I don’t. ‘Believing’ is for Santa Claus, right? It’s for Tooth Fairies. It’s for your boyfriend when he says he’s never met anyone like you and wants to feel you up. That’s believing. It’s for little kids. Belief. You believe in God?” he asked sharply.

  Alix was startled by the question. “I don’t know. I guess. Sure.”

  “I don’t. Used to, you know?” He shrugged. “Now I don’t.”

  He paused, seeming to pick his words. “The thing about belief—” He broke off, scowling. He sighed and shook his head, working over something in his mind. His frown deepened.

  Alix had the feeling that she was seeing some version of Moses that wasn’t exposed often. Not cool and relaxed, but frustrated and burdened. It made him more real to her. Not a captor. Not the merry prankster. She felt as if the darkness between them was charged with electricity.

  She almost had the feeling that if she could just find the right thing to say, he might even let her go. And if she said the wrong thing, not.

  Uncertain outcomes everywhere.

  Alix waited, watchful. Trying to get a feel for her captor. Trying to understand what made him spark.

  The silence between them lengthened.

  Finally, Alix prodded. “The thing about belief is…”

  Moses gave her a sharp look. “Seriously? You’re going to push on me?”

  Alix couldn’t help glaring. “Seriously? You put me in a cage. Now you want me to be polite?”

  He seemed to like that because he smirked. “Okay, girl. I’ll give you that.”

  Emboldened, she said, “My name is Alix.”

  “Okay, Alix. The thing about belief is that you can’t prove it. You have to ‘believe’ in God because, hey, the only way you’ll ever find out if you’re right or wrong is after you get cancer and die, right? If the feds shoot me”—he shrugged—“then I’ll know whether God exists. But until then? I’m just guessing.

  “With God, people can tell you all kinds of things. Preacher up in the pulpit says he’s real, but he doesn’t know. He’s never met God. So all you got is belief. You make a choice. You believe in God. Or you believe that there’s no God. You believe your mom and your dad when they say t
hey love you. Belief is what you can’t prove—one way or another. Your folks maybe say they love you—but you can’t get inside their heads, can you? You can’t know for sure. You’ve got a theory about them loving you, but you can’t test it.”

  “My parents love me.”

  “You believe that, huh?”

  “All parents love their children,” Alix said.

  Moses laughed sharply. “Tell that to Tank. He’s got a row of cigarette burns down his spine that says different.”

  Alix swallowed, horrified. “Tank’s the little one, right?”

  Moses’s expression softened at the mention of the kid. “Yeah. That’s right. The little one with the crappy lungs.”

  “Why’s he with you?”

  Moses glanced over, evaluating her. “Because sometimes, if you see something bad, you can’t let it stand. Sometimes you see something so bad you know that if you walk away, you’re just as bad.”

  The way he said it made Alix feel weirdly uncertain. As if anything she asked after would reveal how posh her life was and how little she understood of the world. As if she was too naive to even be talking about Tank’s life. Finally, she summoned her courage. “So what happened to him?”

  “Ask him sometime. He’ll tell you if he wants.”

  Whatever brief rapport she’d had with Moses was gone. His expression was back to brick wall.

  “Does this mean I’m going to be with you for a while?”

  “Depends on you, I guess.”

  “Come on. What’s this all about?” Alix asked. “Just tell me. My dad will give you what you want. Is this some kind of ransom thing? You want our money? We aren’t that rich, you know.”

  Moses laughed derisively. “Please don’t be one of those one percent kids who says they’re middle class.”

  Alix knew better to than to bite on that one. She kept silent.

  Moses sat down across from her, watching her speculatively. “You really believe your dad loves you?” he asked.

  Alix was about to answer, but then she hesitated. She knew what Moses was getting at, but she suspected that the question was a trap and that he’d twist her answer.

  If she said yes, then he’d make her give examples of all the things that were supposed to show that someone loved you, like they gave you candy or kissed you good night or paid your tuition to Seitz… but that didn’t really get to the heart of the question. It wasn’t like Dad had thrown himself in front of a bus for her or anything like that.

  So then Moses would force her to settle on the word that he’d already fixated on. Believe. Did she believe her father loved her?

  “Yes.”

  It felt good to say it firmly, to throw it in his face. She didn’t care. Dad loved her and he was out there, and he and Williams & Crowe and a hundred other people were working overtime to get her back—

  Alix suddenly realized what she needed to do. She wasn’t powerless. She might be stuck in a cage, but there was still one thing she could do.

  Play for time.

  She needed to drag this out as long as possible. She needed to give Dad and Lisa and the FBI and everyone else time. She needed to keep Moses talking.

  She didn’t need to win an argument or prove she was smarter than he was; she just needed to drag out the minutes on the clock. Slow Moses down, give Dad time to find her. That was the way she had to fight.

  “Yes,” she said again, stronger. “I know he does.”

  Instead of challenging her, Moses smiled. “Yeah. I think he loves you, too. And that’s why I believe this is going to work.”

  “You believe,” Alix taunted.

  Moses’s smile widened. “Bad choice of words, huh?”

  “You’re the one who’s so interested in language.”

  “Language is how we hack other people’s brains. It’s how we make them see things the way we want them to see them. Your dad should have taught you that, him being so good at PR and all.

  “But you’re right about believing things. I don’t actually believe in anything anymore. Belief is for suckers. You can believe the doctors when they say your dad is going to last longer than six months because he’s got new heart medicine.…” He shrugged. “I’m done with all that. I’m only interested in testing. Experimenting. You poke the rat, see what it does—”

  “Is that what I am, a rat?”

  He went on as if she hadn’t interrupted. “—you make a hypothesis. You build a theory, and then you poke the rat and test it. Poke it again, see if you’re right. Change the theory until you can predict what happens in the next experiment. Then you don’t believe something anymore. You know.

  “The truth is, I can’t tell whether your dad really loves you, but I’ve got a hypothesis about what he’ll do when you don’t show up at home.”

  So do I, Alix thought. So we’re going to have a nice, friendly, long conversation, and see who’s right.

  “He’s going to freak,” she said.

  “That’s what we’re hoping.”

  “And I’m just collateral damage,” Alix said. She reached through the bars for the sandwich on its paper plate.

  “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  “At least I know it’s not personal,” she said as she took a bite. She looked at the sandwich, then at Moses with surprise. “This is really good cheese.”

  “You thought I’d feed you Velveeta or something?”

  “Aged cheddar doesn’t really go with the decor.” She took another bite and then another. She wanted to control herself, but she couldn’t stop from wolfing down the sandwich. God, I’m starved.

  Moses watched her eat. “There’s more where that came from. We’ve got a fridge full of gourmet cheese—Spanish, French, English, German, goat, cow, sheep.…”

  “Seriously?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Alix tapped the bars of her cage meaningfully. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Let’s just say that some of the people in my crew have a soft spot for rats. Enjoy the food.” He made a move to get up. Alix rushed to find something more to talk about. Anything to keep him here and talking—

  “Why did you come to my house?” she blurted out. “That night. Why did you come to my house? You could have been caught.”

  “By Williams and Crowe?” He shook his head. “No way. Not there, at least. I know how they’re set up there.”

  “I could have gotten you caught, though. Why come to my house? Was there something that you were looking for? I saw you.…” Alix swallowed, remembering how he’d looked at her through the glass, smiling.…

  “Truce,” Moses murmured, and there was a tiny smile on his face as he remembered, too. He made the T with his hands.

  “Truce.” He shook his head, still smiling, and the way he said the word made Alix want it so badly. Some way to not be in conflict. Some way to be safe with him… some way to put down the fight for a little while.

  “Truce,” Alix said, and was surprised at how good the idea sounded to her. How much she wanted to find some way to get along with this stranger.

  Moses’s expression had softened. He was almost like a different person entirely. A kinder person. Someone who saw her not as a tool in his plans but as a human being. And with the softness of his expression, she thought she could see regret as well.

  “Why did you come over?” she asked again, softly.

  “Why did you open your door?”

  The words could have been a challenge, but they weren’t. Moses wasn’t trying to act tough anymore. The swagger was gone.

  “Maybe I wanted to talk to you,” Alix said.

  A whisper of a smile. “Maybe you wanted to go out for coffee.”

  “Did you?” she asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re a terrible stalker.”

  He laughed at that, and Alix was struck at how young he seemed. He wasn’t much older than she was, and she could see it in these moments. And yet, when he put on his mask of confidence, he came off as
so much older. So much harsher. But now there was a kindness.

  “Truce,” Alix whispered. She found herself reaching through the bars. Wanting to touch him. He started to reach out for her as well; then his face hardened.

  He drew back, scowling. “Nice try, girl. Real pro.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “You really are his daughter. Clever, conniving, manipulating…” Moses got to his feet and started pacing back and forth. “You get inside my head. You make me doubt. And I didn’t even see it coming. You know just how to make someone believe. It’s got to be genetic. You and your damn dad.”

  “That’s not true! I wasn’t manipulating you! I—”

  His voice turned mocking. “‘Hold out your hand, Moses.’ ‘Come back for a little more, Moses.’ ‘Go on and trust the nice girl, Moses.’” He shook his head. “You’re good. I’ll give you that. You’re damn good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I guess I shouldn’t blame you. It’s what you people do. It’s second nature. You lie. You manipulate. Your dad would be proud of you right now, Alix. For a minute you actually made me doubt myself.”

  “Why won’t you trust me?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Why should I trust you? I’m the one in the damn cage!”

  “That’s not personal.”

  “It’s pretty personal to me!”

  Moses slammed his hand against the bars. “You know what’s personal? Finding your dad dead on the bathroom floor. That’s personal!” He slammed his hand against the metal again, shaking the cage. “Watching your mom have a heart attack in the grocery store. That’s fucking personal!” His face was right between the bars, brimming with hate. “If I did half the things to your family that your dad did to mine, you’d be dead by now!”

  Alix shrank from his sudden fury, but she forced herself to rally. “If that’s true, why don’t you do it? Why don’t you just kill me already!”