THE VOICE ABOVE THEM

Derek turned Noah toward the nearest ceiling camera.

"Look up."

Noah kept his eyes on the floor.

Derek jerked his arm.

"I said look up."

The camera was a black half sphere above the lottery machine. Noah could see himself distorted in its surface: a small green shape held against a larger black one.

"You watching, Bennett?"

The name moved among the people on the floor. Somebody repeated it. Alan's mouth opened, then closed.

Sam stared at Derek.

"Bennett's dead."

Derek raised his voice.

"I've got your kid. You want to stop playing games?"

Noah's heart was beating so hard it hurt beneath his collar.

Twelve days ago, the little phone had buzzed while he was brushing his teeth at Rachel's. It was the phone his father had given him for emergencies, with four numbers saved and no games.

A message had shown him the inside of an old red toolbox. Beneath the tray was a folded paper bird Noah had made from his math homework. Nobody else knew it was there.

Under the photograph were three words.

Still here, buddy.

He had called. No answer. He had sent fourteen messages that first night, then fewer each day because unanswered messages began to feel like doing something wrong.

Today, a different number had told him where to go.

Now Derek was calling to the ceiling, and Noah was afraid to hope in front of him.

Sam paced toward the manager.

"Where's your back door?"

"Loading dock. But I can't open it from here."

"Then get up."

Derek tightened his hold on Noah.

"Leave him."

"We're locked in."

"We came for the safe."

"We came for cash."

Derek looked at him with such contempt that Sam stopped moving.

There was a click overhead.

The bright strips above the checkout lanes went out. A few customers cried out. Emergency lights took their place, leaving the far aisles pale and flat.

Noah felt Derek's breathing change against his head.

A voice came through the speakers.

"Take your hands off my son."

Noah's eyes closed.

Not a recording this time. Not three words on a screen.

His father had a slight roughness in his voice, especially late in the day. When Noah was little, he had thought that was what made a voice belong to a father.

He heard it now.

"Dad?"

Derek hauled him backward.

"There he is."

"Let Noah go, Derek."

Sam took two steps away from them.

"You said he was dead. You said you saw the car."

"Shut up."

"You said—"

Derek swung his gun toward him. Sam stopped.

The voice overhead remained low.

"Sam, put your weapon down. There are officers coming. You still have a choice about what happens before they arrive."

Sam looked at his own gun as if someone had pushed it into his hand without asking.

"I'm not shooting anybody."

"You brought a gun," Derek said.

"For the money."

"Then get the money."

"You just said a safe."

"There's no cash in that safe," Ethan said.

Derek shoved Noah closer to the camera.

"Open it, or I find out how much your son costs."

The woman with the baby made a small, terrible sound.

Noah looked at her instead of the gun. Her carrier had fallen sideways. One tiny sock lay on the tiles, impossibly clean beside the oil.

"He can't open it from up there," Noah said.

He didn't know whether that was true. He only wanted Derek to stop looking at the woman.

"You know where it is?"

Noah swallowed.

"Behind the offices."

Every grocery store had offices. He had seen the sign over the gray door.

"Noah," his father said at once. "Stay where you are."

Derek smiled under the mask.

"You heard the boy."

"Let them leave," Noah said. "If I show you."

Derek's smile disappeared.

"You don't make the deal."

"They don't know anything."

Sam looked toward the baby. His gun dipped.

"He's right. Let them out."

"You working for him now?"

"I'm saying there's a baby."

Derek released Noah with one hand and struck Sam across the mouth with the other.

Sam stumbled against a checkout. His gun struck the floor and slid under a rack of batteries.

Derek turned toward it.

For half a second the fingers around Noah's arm loosened.

Noah pulled free.

He did not run neatly. His left shoe slipped. He hit a cart, pushed away from it, and heard his father shout his name.

The shot was so loud that he thought something had burst inside his head.

A metal sign above the aisle jumped.

Noah fell behind a pallet of water bottles. His knees hit first, then his palms. Water shook inside the plastic beside his face.

He couldn't breathe.

He kept opening his mouth, and nothing seemed to come in.

Across the store, somebody sobbed, "Please don't."

Derek shouted at Sam. There was another impact, then silence.

Noah pressed both hands over his ears. He wanted his father. He wanted to be back in Rachel's kitchen, being told to wash his hands before dinner. He wanted never to have seen the little amber light.

"Noah."

The voice in the speakers was louder now. Frightened.

"Noah, don't move."

He tried to answer, but his mouth made no sound.

The emergency lamp above the gray door blinked.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Stay.

He remembered that one. His father had made him practice in a camping store when they were trying headlamps.

Three means don't come looking for me. I come to you.

Noah curled into the gap between the pallet and the wall.

Beyond the bottles, a dark shape moved across the aisle.

Derek was coming slowly, one shelf at a time.

Noah pulled his feet closer. The rubber sole of his shoe squeaked.

The footsteps stopped.

He could see one boot beneath the lowest shelf. A strip of wet trouser leg. The end of the gun pointing downward.

"Found a hiding place?"

Noah put his fist against his mouth.

The boot shifted nearer.

"Your father can't save you from a speaker."