Chapter 5 — What They Made Me Say

“I’m not saying that.”

Derek adjusted the camera.

“You are.”

The other man stood behind it, checking the screen.

Up close, I could see a crack across his thumbnail and a faded tattoo disappearing beneath his jacket sleeve.

Derek.

The name mattered.

So did the camera. So did the fact that it used a removable card rather than a phone.

I made myself look.

Fear wanted me somewhere else. Back in the first room, in the first year, inside the conviction that if I waited quietly enough someone would come.

I couldn’t afford to go there.

“What happens after I read it?” I asked.

“You go home.”

“Then cut my hands loose.”

Derek leaned down until his face was inches from mine.

“You don’t negotiate.”

“I need to hold the paper.”

“You can read it from there.”

He stepped aside.

The camera’s red light came on.

“Name.”

I looked at the lens.

“Miles Bennett.”

“Read.”

The page trembled on the table whenever the smaller man shifted his weight.

I began.

“I arranged this because I wanted to punish my wife.”

The words tasted strange.

I stopped.

Derek hit me across the face.

The chair rocked.

“Keep going.”

I swallowed blood from where my teeth had caught the inside of my cheek.

“I asked men I knew to pretend to abduct me.”

“Names?” I said, looking away from the lens.

The smaller man frowned.

“What?”

“The script says men I knew. I don’t know what names you want.”

“Just read it.”

“If you want her to believe it, she’ll ask.”

Derek grabbed the page.

“You think we’re stupid?”

“No.”

“Then stop helping.”

He put it back down.

I looked at the camera again.

“I asked men I knew to pretend to abduct me. Nobody forced me to come here.”

A delivery horn sounded outside.

Two short bursts.

The smaller man turned his head toward the high window.

I kept reading, slower now.

“I wanted Audrey to believe she had lost me.”

Derek’s phone rang.

He stepped away.

I heard Tyler’s voice faintly through the speaker.

“How long?”

“He’s doing it.”

“Don’t let him talk about me.”

“I know.”

“Say my name again?” I asked loudly.

Derek turned.

“What?”

“For the apology. It doesn’t say who I’m apologizing to.”

He slapped the paper with his palm.

“Your wife. Who do you think?”

His phone was still in his hand.

Tyler said something I couldn’t hear.

But the camera was closer.

Its microphone pointed straight toward us.

I lowered my head so Derek wouldn’t see me looking at it.

He ended the call.

We started again.

On the second recording, I read most of what they wanted.

Near the end, I added a sentence.

“The porch light is working now.”

Derek frowned.

“That’s not on there.”

“It’s something between us. She’ll understand.”

“Leave it out.”

He told the other man to stop recording.

Then they argued over whether the first version was better.

I let them.

My hands had gone numb. When I moved my fingers, the restraints bit into my wrists. I could feel wetness beneath one cuff.

Near my left shoe, a small metal bracket protruded from the chair frame.

I tried to move my ankle against it.

Too far.

Derek noticed the movement.

“Bathroom?”

“Yes.”

“Hold it.”

“I’m going to be sick.”

He hesitated.

The smaller man looked at my face.

“Give him the bin. We need the clean version.”

They brought over an empty paint bucket.

Derek loosened the restraint holding my chest so I could bend forward.

I retched once.

Nothing came up.

He stepped away in disgust.

I used the slack to shift my weight, testing how far the chair would move.

An inch.

Then another.

Its rear leg caught the edge of a narrow floor drain.

I stopped.

Outside, something heavy rolled over broken pavement.

A truck.

Voices.

I raised my head.

The smaller man was putting the paper back on the table.

Derek checked his phone.

I rocked backward.

The chair struck the concrete.

“Hey.”

I rocked again.

This time, one leg dropped into the drain, tilting me sideways.

I hit the floor hard enough to knock the breath out of my chest.

The bucket clattered away.

I dragged air into my lungs.

Then I shouted.

“Help!”

Derek was on me immediately.

He kicked the bucket aside and pressed a hand over my mouth.

I bit it.

He yelled.

The smaller man grabbed my legs.

Somewhere outside, a voice called, “What was that?”

Derek went still.

I shouted again.

“Call the police!”

The smaller man ran toward the door.

Before he reached it, someone on the other side hammered against the metal.

“Police! Open the door!”

Derek’s hand left my face.

For one second, he looked at the camera.

Then at the table.

Then at the side passage behind the insulation panels.

He ran.

The smaller man stopped with both hands raised.

The door opened.

What followed came too fast to arrange into a clear memory.

Boots.

A command to get down.

Someone kneeling beside me.

A voice asking my name.

“Miles,” I said.

“Can you tell me your last name?”

“Bennett.”

“We’ve got you, Mr. Bennett. Stay still while we cut these.”

When my hands came free, pain flooded them.

I cried out.

The officer paused.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

He held my shoulder while someone else worked on my ankles.

Nobody told me to be calm.

They told me what they were doing.

It made all the difference.

Outside, Vivian stood beside a police car.

She moved toward me when she saw the paramedics.

Then stopped when an officer asked her to wait.

I lifted my hand.

It shook.

She put her own hand over her mouth.

Only later, in the ambulance, did I learn what had happened.

Rachel’s assistant had called when I failed to arrive.

At eleven, Vivian called me.

Then Rachel.

The location link showed my phone moving away from the attorney’s office before stopping near the waterfront.

Vivian called the police.

The driver who had come to collect me had also reported seeing two men force someone into a van. He had part of a license plate.

My phone was eventually found beside a service road.

Not inside the warehouse.

But close enough.

Officers checking the adjoining buildings heard a worker report a crash and someone shouting.

Vivian told me this at the hospital in pieces, between questions from a nurse.

She had followed the officers’ instructions and waited outside the search area.

When they found me, she was permitted to come closer.

“You had an appointment,” she said. “You wouldn’t just miss it.”

I looked at her.

“I’ve missed things.”

“Not without telling me.”

A nurse photographed my wrists.

An officer asked if I could describe the men.

I told him about Derek. The tattoo. The camera.

Then I told him about Tyler.

Saying it aloud made it real in a different way.

“And your wife was there?” the officer asked.

“Yes.”

“Did she know he was involved?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What happened when she left?”

“She took him.”

He waited.

“They made her choose.”

Vivian looked down at her hands.

The officer wrote something.

I gave him the exact words I remembered.

No additions.

No guesses.

My phone had been recovered, damaged but still working. They took it with my permission to preserve what might be useful.

I used Vivian’s to call Rachel.

Then I asked the officer to secure the recordings.

“All of them,” I said. “Even the ones where I read what they gave me.”

“We’ll document what we recover.”

“I edit film. They can make that look like anything.”

He nodded.

“I understand.”

After the examinations, I was discharged with instructions, photographs of my injuries, and a follow-up appointment.

Vivian brought the car around.

The hospital exit opened onto a ramp, not stairs, but halfway down my knees buckled.

She caught me beneath one arm.

“Easy.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re upright. That’s enough for now.”

I leaned against her while she opened the passenger door.

Across the street, a parked car rolled slowly forward.

I noticed it.

Then forgot it as another wave of nausea passed through me.

At Northlight, Vivian put me in a small guest room used by visiting crews.

Fresh sheets.

A lamp.

A door that locked from the inside.

She left food outside it and told me she would be in the office downstairs.

I had almost fallen asleep when she knocked.

“Miles.”

Something in her voice brought me upright.

She came in holding her phone.

A video played without sound.

Me beside her car.

My head lowered toward her shoulder.

Then a cut.

Me in the warehouse, facing the camera.

The captions told viewers I had staged an abduction to leave my wife for a wealthy producer.

The next cut showed Audrey helping Tyler through the warehouse door.

My recorded voice came through the speaker.

“Nobody forced me to come here.”

Vivian stopped the video.

“Tyler posted it.”

I held out my hand.

She gave me the phone.

He hadn’t posted the parts where I was struck.

Or the script.

Or the officers cutting me loose.

He had kept exactly eleven seconds of my voice.

I played them again.

Then I called Rachel.