“I know he’s a good kid.” The kitchen is behind me. Could I get there before him? Grab a knife? Unlikely. I eye the staircase.
“She tried to get to me by turning my kid against me. How sick is that?” His face moves so close to mine that I can see a large droplet of sweat on his upper lip, threatening to drip.
I jerk my head back. “Who? You mean Tori Price?”
“She tried to seduce me, and when I rebuffed her, when I said no, she went psycho.” He laughs a little and makes a swirling motion near his temple with his finger. “Nutso. She went after my kid. You’re a mom, Caren. Can you imagine if someone went after your Zach?”
I lean even farther back, as far as my spine will allow me, trying to get away from him. I stretch one foot out behind me searching for the bottom step of the staircase. Maybe I can run up the stairs, lock myself in the kids’ bathroom, call someone.
“She filled his head with crazy ideas! He was refusing to go to college! He said he wanted to be a fisherman! After everything we’ve done, after everything we have sacrificed. But these kids, our kids, they don’t know, right?” He stares at me beseechingly, as though he expects me to confirm his doubts about “our kids.”
“They don’t know how easy it is to slip down the ladder,” he continues. “They’re so sure they can only go up, up, up. The sky’s the limit.”
“What do you want from me, Daniel?” I slowly back up another stairstep.
Daniel frowns at me. “Where are you going? Why won’t you listen to me?”
“I’m listening, I am. But you need to catch your flight.”
“You have to drop it, Caren. Drop all the questions. Okay?” He smiles, a sickening grin. “Tell me you’re not going to cause any more problems.”
The storm door opens, and Yumi enters, shutting it behind her. Relief floods me.
“Yumi.” The words come out of my mouth in a burst of breath. “Thank God. Call the police, now.”
But Yumi doesn’t move.Why isn’t she moving? What is going on?“Yumi, please.”
“She won’t listen to me,” Daniel says to her without taking his eyes off me. “I tried talking to her like you said, but I don’t think she’s going to drop it. You said this wouldn’t happen. That she would drop it.”
A strange numbness spreads across my face and neck. That earlier relief is replaced by a sinking feeling in my gut. Yumi and Daniel have been talking about me, planning, conspiring. “What’s happening here? Yumi? Tell me, please.”
“I never meant for you to get hurt,” he says. “You have to believe me.”
I turn and run for it. I almost make it to the top of the stairs when I feel him grab my ankle and pull me. I fall on my face, my chin hitting the floorboard hard, pain cracking through my jaw. He yanks me back down a few stairs as I clutch at the balusters in vain. He’s too strong.
“Caren. Oh, Caren. I didn’t want it to be like this.”
“Don’t hurt her!” Yumi calls. But I can’t tell if it’s the fearful cry of a friend, or the practical advice of an accomplice. I don’t know if Yumi is here to help me or Daniel, and that hurts almost as much as the ache in my jaw.
“Why didn’t you just leave it alone?” Daniel asks. “Because you’re a Karen.” He chuckles at his own joke. “Interfering. Can’t mind your own damn business.”
Through the wooden balusters, I can see Yumi in the foyer looking up at me.Yumi, help me, I open my mouth to yell, but no sound comes out. My head pounds. This can’t be happening.
“Daniel,” Yumi says, her voice robotic and flat. “Remember what we talked about. This isn’t how we decided to fix the problem.”
The problem. Am I the problem?
Daniel twists to look down at Yumi. “You got a better idea?”
She raises her right arm, and something that looks like a toy gun, yellow and black, in her outstretched hand. I suck in my breath and close my eyes. All I can do is steady myself for what happens next.
The sound of electric zaps fills the air, and Daniel lets out a guttural howl. I open my eyes and see wires in the back of Daniel’s leg, emanating from the device that Yumi’s holding. Daniel releases his hold on me, and I turn in time to see him pivot, screaming as he falls down the stairs, arms stiff by his side.
“Hurry! Get duct tape!” Yumi yells. “Or zip ties.”
I am up and running down the stairs in seconds. I step over Daniel, who is moaning, and rush into the kitchen, where I find the duct tape in a cabinet, in one of my plastic boxes markedTAPE—right where it should be. Back in the foyer, Yumi holds his feet together and I tape them. Then we bring his hands together behind his back, and I tape those too. Two little metal rods stick out of his back, attached to wires that run from the muzzle of the gun Yumi was holding.
“I didn’t know you owned a Taser.”