For my mother, Mary C. Eidson
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following people for their help and encouragement: Donna Eidson, Bill Eidson, Sr., Catherine Sinkys, Frank Robinson, Richard Parks, David Hartwell, Tad Dembinski, Paul DiPaolo, Rick Berry, and Steve Bentley.
Chapter 1
You’re sure you want to wear that beret?” Greg said to his daughter as they walked into the convenience store.
A bell jingled over the door, and Greg nodded to the owner, a round-faced man wearing a white apron who smiled back.
“Yup,” Janine said, hopping up to look at her reflection in a sunglasses display mirror. “Looks good.”
Behind them, Beth laughed quietly. “Give it up, Greg. You know your brother gave it to her.”
Greg went along with it. “Oh, well, if Ross gave it to you, I wouldn’t expect you to part with it at least until … high school. How about then?”
Janine giggled, shaking her head. She was nine. “College. Maybe.”
He reached under the beret and mussed her hair, and she leaned back into him and elbowed him lightly in the belly. “Stop.”
The two of them headed toward the ice-cream freezer in the back while Beth went for milk and bread. Janine immediately pulled open the freezer door and started pointing to different flavors: “Chocolate Supreme … no, Heath Bar Crunch …”
“Keep the door closed until you decide.” Greg thought to himself that so much of raising his daughter involved saying the same kinds of things at similar times: “Are you hungry?” “Are you too hot?” “Too cold?” “Put your sweater on.”
“Close the door,” he repeated.
Greg felt the slightest twinge of jealousy over how she’d taken to his younger brother, now that he was back. Ross was definitely the exciting new man in her life, while Greg was just Dad.
Comfortable.
That’s how he envisioned she saw him. He didn’t feel that way himself, God knows, with his worries about his business and money.
Greg watched his daughter’s lips move slightly as she read the different flavors, her eyes flickering from label to label. He felt the warmth that was already there intensify and trickle through him like balm. Knowing that she was about to turn … which she did, right then.
“Rocky Road.” She nodded, decision made. Janine had her mother’s dark hair and blue eyes.
Greg was faintly aware of the bell jingling again behind him.
“You’re sure?”
Janine’s eyes widened, and she looked past him.
Greg turned around, and felt like he’d just been punched in the stomach.
Two men with guns had just walked in the store.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” the man at the counter was saying. “Don’t do this. You don’t need to do this—”
“Shut up!” the bigger of the two yelled. They were both wearing ski masks, green flak jackets. The smaller one was wearing tight black jeans, and Greg realized abstractedly that it was a woman. Greg stood in front of his daughter. His thinking became very clear. He told himself that all they wanted was money and what he had to do was keep his family out of it.
Out of it.
Beth. He looked up the end of the aisle to his left and saw her standing there, frozen, too. She was pale, and nodded to him slightly. She raised her finger to her lips, for Janine.
Greg felt an incremental amount better. They were in sync. Shut up and let this pass.
“The register. Now, you fat fuck.” The man’s voice was hoarse.
Greg saw the man’s arm out of his sleeve was white. He was wearing cotton gloves. High leather boots, steel toes. No insignia on the flak jacket.
“We’ve got snoops, here,” the woman said, and Greg realized with dismay she was looking right at him. Their ski masks were the same: screaming red faces on black.
“No,” Greg said. “Just go. We didn’t see anything.”
“Shit!” The gunman marched down the aisle, his sawed-off shotgun at hip level. “You nosy bastard, I’ll chop you into hamburger.”
“Let them alone, please!” the store owner called. “Just take the money and go!”
The gunman was big, easily as tall as Greg. He shifted so he could see Janine. Greg felt her press against his back.
“It’s a whole goddamn brood, here.” The gunman jabbed Greg in the chest. “What the hell are you looking at?”
“No. No, I didn’t see anything.” Greg’s voice sounded amazingly calm to himself. “Look, please leave us alone. You can have what money I’ve got. You can take my car. But just leave us alone.”
The gunman jabbed the barrel into Greg’s mouth, splitting his lip. “Shut up! I know what I can take, and what I can’t. All of you, up front. Take your wallets out and put them on the counter.”
He backed up the aisle and Beth and Greg followed, Janine between them. Greg looked down at her once they got to the front of the store and saw she was looking at his split lip, at the blood on his shirt. A rage swept through him. How dare they scare his daughter like that?
She was trying not to make any noise. He patted her head. “We’ll be all right, sweetheart.” Greg laid his wallet on the counter and Beth did the same. He laid his keys beside them, and as a final gesture, he slid off his watch, a gift from Beth.
The gunman held the sawed-off on his hip, then picked up the car keys. He glanced outside. “So that BMW is yours, huh?” He turned toward the woman. “I always wanted a BMW. How about you?”
“I always wanted a BMW,” she repeated, her voice dead.
The man ran through Greg’s wallet with one hand quickly and pulled out the cash and the driver’s license. He whistled as he slid the license into his back pocket. “You live in Lincoln, huh? Nice town. Nice-looking wife there. Nice kid. You must be rich, huh?”
“No.”
“Oh, yeah, you must be. You must be so rich, you forgot.” He placed the gun back against Greg’s chest and leaned into it, looking down at Janine. “How about you, little girl? Do you know what rich is?”
Greg felt himself grow cold. He said, “Take the stuff and go.”
The man ignored him, and continued on with Janine. “Maybe you can show me. Maybe you can help me.”
Greg could feel her pressing up against him more tightly, and could feel his wife’s eyes. He pushed Janine back gently and tried to catch the man’s eyes through that mask. “Leave her alone.”
The man took his time, cocking his head slightly, so he could see Janine cowering behind Greg. Then he looked back up, slowly. “I don’t want to.”
Greg went for the gun.
He didn’t think he was a hero. He didn’t think he was brave. He didn’t think at all. Down to his very fiber, Greg simply knew he needed to get that gun away.
But Janine had grabbed at his legs again, and he stumbled. The gunman delivered two powerful blows with the shortened stock, one to Greg’s mouth, the other right over his ear. And then the gunman whirled and shot the store owner in the face.
Beth screamed as Greg fell onto his back. And though he fought to get to his feet, to drag himself up against the counter, his arms and legs seemed without bone. He was distantly aware that the woman had sagged against the counter, too, her gun turned away from them. The gunman stepped over and hit Beth as she tried to help her husband.
Janine was left standing. She couldn’t get her breath in to cry; she was too shocked.
“Take her,” the gunman said, and the woman came back to life. She scooped Janine up and started for the door.
“No!” Beth grabbed at her daughter’s foot. The woman kicked Beth away, and the gunman bent down and punched her in the stomach, knocking the breath out of her. He turned to Greg and cracked him across the face. “Pay attention, you. This is all you’re gonna get, so you better listen.”
“Please—”
“Shut up! I’ve got your address. I’ve got your daughter. You try to follow us, I’ll kill her. You call the police, I’ll kill her. You do what I say, I’ll return her safe. So, what you do now is you count to fifteen after I leave, and then walk out of the store, and drive home. There’s no witnesses to screw you up. I’ll call sometime soon with a nice round number.”
Greg shook his head, trying to clear the momentary paralysis, get past the horror of the words coming through the gap in the black cloth, the moving yellow teeth. The man tossed Greg’s keys and wallet onto the countertop. “This has been my lucky day. Tomorrow can be your little girl’s if you do what I tell you.”
Chapter 2
Ross figured he would spend the night inside the house for a change. He’d passed the last couple on the beach, wrapped in an old blanket. The sand in his hair and the stiffness of his back was a small price to pay for the ability to look up anytime, two, three in the morning, and see the stars.
Not that he saw his destiny there, or even spent much time contemplating his personal significance in the scheme of things, or lack thereof. He was just happy not to see Crockett’s leg hanging out of the top bunk, his sock half off his foot. Happy not to breathe the humid, pent-up air of too many people in too small a space. Not to wake up to the reality of being a screwup of the worst kind … a prison inmate.
No, as Ross tacked the top rail of the deck with a couple of finishing nails, he figured he was ready for the old place, and it was reasonably ready for him. Under the glow of his battery- powered work light, he put the level on the railing and was pleased to see the bubble neatly between the lines.
It was a small accomplishment, but it made him smile. Perhaps it was the location, too, standing on the deck again, smelling the salt air. He switched off the work light. Fifty feet below, the crashing waves reflected white in the moonlight. The house was positioned on the northern tip of the deepwater cove. The moon was big and fat that night, making the cove alive with light.
Two months out, Ross still wasn’t used to having this kind of view available to him alone. He felt drunk on it, more so than he had on the bottle of cognac he’d found in the cupboard the night before. He’d downed almost half the bottle just for the sake of being able to do it.
He saw the open bottle on the living room table next to the kerosene lantern, and made a mental note to put the liquor away. He didn’t want Beth looking at him with that slightly worried expression he seemed to inspire.
He looked around the beach house critically. She and Greg would be pleased. Ross had freshly painted the interior and almost finished rewiring the house. The smoke-damaged furniture hadn’t been salvageable, and he’d tossed it all. And he’d finished shingling the roof, had the blisters to prove it. The deck floorboards were entirely new—that’s where the fire had started.
Apparently, some beach kids must’ve found the stone fireplace inside the house too inconvenient or constraining. The fire marshal had told Greg they were lucky the whole place hadn’t been gutted.
Ross thought back to when he was a teenager and tried to remember if he would have done that. Certainly, he’d had more than his share of late-night races with a series of fast cars. He hadn’t been what he’d call a responsible kid. But he had never set a house on fire for fun.
Ross shivered suddenly. The night was still warm, but, unaccountably, some of his euphoria began to tick away. He looked down the water crashing against the rocks below and found himself thinking about the changes since those days, the wrong turns. Married and divorced by twenty-four, imprisoned a year after that. Hell of a record by his thirtieth birthday. There was a core of melancholy always beneath the surface, knowing that five years had been permanently stripped out of his life. The stigma of being seen as a drug smuggler.
And now he and Greg were thinking about breaking at least half the cove into four smaller parcels to sell off for private homes. Ross looked back in the direction of the beach and inhaled deeply. He told himself the tang of the salt air would still be as sharp. That they were committed to doing the job right, to not overselling the place. That they would still be retaining the best of the place for Janine … and his own kids, if he ever got his life together enough to get married again and have them.
Still, it didn’t feel entirely right.
The house was a smallish Victorian. It had a widow’s walk and a beautiful view of their cove. The cove itself was a deep cut into the mainland; high, rocky walls rose out of the water and led back to a pristine sandy beach. And it was for that beach he and his brother had named the place, simply enough, the Sands. The house had been set where Ross’s great-grandfather could watch his fleet come in. The old man had made his money on shipping, and the cove had been his private working port. Back when the name Stearns had meant something.
Now the family was down to two brothers who loved each other but had to work at getting along. And the cove, ten acres in all, was still beautiful and gave the appearance of privacy. But it was surrounded by encroaching industrial sites on every side.
Ross figured replacing the dock and doing the remaining work on the house would take him through the summer, and then he’d have to get a real job right after Labor Day. He intended to live there until the other parcels sold. Then, after he paid Greg back for the legal fees, Ross figured he’d get himself another boat. Get his life fully back on track.
Ross put the level on the lower rail and found that it, too, was fine. Some of the satisfaction returned, and he smiled, thinking once again that just being out on his own meant his life was already back on track. Thoughts of the upcoming vacation with his brother’s family suffused him with a steady pulse right under his breastbone that he recognized as happiness.
He was telling himself that he’d even indulge Greg and listen to his advice when his cell phone rang. Ross jogged out to the truck to get the bad news about his godchild.
Chapter 3
Greg’s BMW and a Volkswagen with roof racks were in the driveway of his house. Allie Pearson’s car.
Ross let himself in.
Beth made it into the foyer first. Her face was pale, and he could read the disappointment on her face; he read instantly that the very sound of the door opening must’ve given her the hope that somehow, some way, her daughter would be walking through. She’d clearly been crying.
Greg was right behind her. “You told no one, right?”
“That’s right.” Ross held Beth briefly, felt the rigidness of her back.
She pulled away to look at him, her dark blue eyes intent. “Please. Anything you can tell us about someone who’d do this, anything… .”
Ross simply nodded, masking his reaction to her assumption that he knew more about people who robbed stores than they did. Because, of course, he now did. And he also knew there had been stories at Concord Prison about families of inmates being harassed for money, sometimes worse.
Ross squeezed Greg’s arm. He had a large bruise over his left eye and his lip was puffed and split. Greg said, “Allie called me tonight, and I told her what had happened, and to come right away. We’re going to have to raise some money fast.”
Allie joined them and waited impatiently. She was their attorney, a striking woman with dark auburn hair and green eyes. And a month ago, she’d been Ross’s lover for all of about two weeks.
“I’m glad you’re here, Ross,” she said. “Tell them this is crazy. Tell them we need the police.”
“No,” Greg said. “We want Janine back fast, and I don’t want to screw around with experts who’ve got their own ax to grind. This guy wants money, and he’s going to get it.”
“Have you heard from them yet?” Ross asked.
“No.”
“How long has it been?”
“Four and a half hours.” Beth’s voice was barely audible.
Ross walked them back into the dining room. The telephone rested at the head of the table, and Ross found himself looking at it as Greg talked, as if it were a fifth person.
Greg went through the robbery and abduction quickly, starting with when the gunman walked through the door.
“You didn’t see anyone following you in the car beforehand?” Ross asked. “Any strange phone calls the week before? Or anybody you didn’t know show up at your door?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Beth?”
She looked off to the side, then turned back. “No one out of the ordinary. The mailman, the boy who cuts the grass, the pool guy. All people we know.”
“Describe how the guy behaved again.”
“Excited,” Greg said. “Not quite angry, but pumped up. Seemed to be enjoying himself.” Greg touched the bruise on his temple.
“Not scared? A lot of guys go in there shaking as bad as the people behind the counter.”
“Not that I could tell. But he had a mask on.”
“But what’s your impression? Was he in control? Or totally off?”
“Somewhere in between.”
“Was he skinny or heavy?”
“Skinny.”
Ross found himself relax slightly. A guy he’d had problems with got paroled around the same time he had. But no one would have ever described Teague as skinny. Teague was a moonfaced biker, with a scraggly goatee and shaved head. Ross asked, “How did this guy smell, like he hadn’t bathed recently?”
“Smell?” Beth asked.
“He’s trying to figure out if the guy was a junkie,” Allie said.
“I didn’t notice a bad smell particularly,” Greg said. “But the guy certainly seemed wired enough. He could be a junkie.”
“Why’d you jump him?”
Ross asked the question without accusation, but Greg flushed angrily. “Goddamn it, Ross. He was going to take her.”
“He said that? ‘I’m going to take her’?”
Allie raked her hair back angrily. “Look, Ross, if we were crossing the Atlantic, I’d listen to your advice. But being an ex-con doesn’t make you a kidnapping expert. We need the police.”
Out in the open, Ross thought.
Allie had broken up with him after it became apparent his long-range plans involved a sailboat and a distant destination. Not that different from his ex-wife’s disenchantment with him, he’d realized. But Allie had come from an entirely different angle. Whereas Cynthia had been drifting herself in many ways, Allie was an extremely motivated woman. Maybe it was because she had been an assistant district attorney, or maybe it was her tough upbringing in upstate Maine, or maybe it was just a fundamental difference between her and Ross, as deep as their blood cells. She had no patience with drifting. And that’s the way she saw his sailing to the Caribbean.
“I think you’re right,” Ross said.
Allie looked surprised but said nothing.
“The two of you, listen to me,” Greg said. “I don’t need arguments. I need your help getting me a buyer, getting me that cash.”
Allie’s tone with Greg was gentler. “Greg, the odds are slightly better if you involve the police, the FBI actually. It’d be the FBI that’d run it, being a kidnapping. They know so much more about it. They can put wiretaps in, bring all sorts of trained personnel.”
“Greg?” Beth leaned forward.
Greg rubbed his face, then abruptly shoved away from the table. “Don’t talk statistics at me. Don’t tell me what on average should be done, and how federal personnel are going to make it all better. I don’t need some guy in a nice suit telling me, ‘sorry, we found your daughter’s body with our dogs and ‘personnel. I had the kidnapper tell me to my face that he would let her go if I did what he said. He was wearing a mask; she shouldn’t be able to identify him. Beth and I sure can’t identify him. What’s he got to lose? I give him the cash; he gives me my girl.… I’m wishing the guy well. I’m wishing the guy a goddamn vacation for the rest of his life, on me. I want Janine back, and I will play ball with this bastard to get it. So if either of you decide you know what’s best and trip me up on this, I will break you in half.”
“Greg, I—” Ross started to say.
“I mean it!” Greg hit the table with his fist. “You owe me, Ross. I need you to stand behind me.”
Ross’s blood quickened, but he kept his mouth shut. He was willing to argue with his brother—if he knew the right answer. But he really didn’t. When it was all said and done, Greg had listened to the guy, and he hadn’t.
Finally, he said, “Whatever you want.”
“I only want to do the right thing by Janine,” Allie said. “You know that.”
“So get us a buyer,” Beth said quietly.
Allie turned to Ross. “It’s your land, too. You’ll sign, won’t you?”
“Sure, we already made that decision. But that’s not going to be the quickest way.”
“Hell of a time to be cash-poor,” Greg said hoarsely. “I could scrape up five, maybe ten thousand in cash. Maybe up to fifty if I throw myself on some friends … but they’d end up talking to the cops, someone would.”
“Your business is that bad?”
“It’s that bad. We’re staving off bankruptcy. There’s simply no lump for me to get my hands on, not if this guy comes back looking for any sizable amount of money. I’ve got the house mortgaged to the hilt, and you know we’ve had no luck selling it. I’d never get a loan of any size.”
“How about if we just put the Sands up as collateral on a loan?” Ross asked. “That might be faster.”
“I can’t imagine a banker not calling the police on this,” Greg said. “What do you think, Allie?”
She nodded reluctantly. “It would be the rare banker who could leave the police out of it.”
Greg continued. “Maybe I could sell the car fast, but it’s got over fifty thousand miles on it, I’d be lucky to get fifteen or twenty grand.”
“Jesus.” Ross knew the business hadn’t been doing that well, but nothing like this. Greg had based his computer reseller business on two manufacturers who were both having serious problems. Consequently, his own sales had gone south. And Ross still owed him over fifty thousand dollars for legal fees. “You think we can find a buyer to move that fast?” Ross asked.
“You know how many offers we’ve had.”
“Yes, but to move so fast? And what if the kidnapper insists on more than the parcels we had in mind? Total, it’s assessed at, what, a little over five million?”
“What are you going to say if the guy calls insisting on more than we can do?” Beth asked.
Greg shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Chapter 4
The night before, the woman had put her coat over Janine’s head and told to her stay on the floor of the car.
Janine had buried her face in the dirty carpet and squeezed her eyes shut. Without quite thinking it through, she’d known it would be bad to see the man, to really see his face.
He talked fast. Swearing. “Goddamn, goddamn. We’re making it big with this one, babe.”
He yelled things to the woman. “Don’t use my name. Got it?” Or, “We’re gonna be cold on this, babe. Fucking ice water.”
“Did you have to shoot that man?” the woman said, once, quietly.
“Hey, I did what I had to do. I can do it with the little chick, too.”
Then he talked to Janine. “Tell me about your house. How big is it? How many rooms? You got a swimming pool? Huh? You’re a smart kid, how much money does your daddy make?”
Janine didn’t answer.
She didn’t think he really wanted her to. Sometimes adults did that, asked questions but didn’t really expect her to talk.
But this time, the woman nudged her. “Tell him, sweetie. You got a pool?”
Janine nodded her head.
“Yes, she’s got a pool,” the woman said. “Now, sweetie, how about your dad? You know how much money he makes?” The woman rested her hand on Janine’s head, and, after a second, Janine shook it no.
“No, she doesn’t.”
“Bullshit!” The front seat thumped near where Janine’s head was and she cried out. “You want me to stop this car?” The man’s voice had kind of a laugh in it that terrified Janine all the more. She tried to dig deeper into the floor. “You want me to stop this car and come back there?”
The woman said, “I don’t think she knows, really. Did you know what your dad made when you were a kid?” Her voice then got closer to Janine’s ear. “How old are you, kid?”
Janine didn’t said anything. Couldn’t speak.
The woman rested her hand on Janine’s head again. “Seven? Eight? Nine?”
Janine nodded.
“Nine,” the woman said. Her hand remained on Janine’s head for a second longer. “Nine,” she repeated, and then said to the man, “Did you know what your dad made when you were nine?”
“Yeah. Diddly-shit. And that he drank and pissed away.” The seat thumped near Janine’s ear again. “Better hope your daddy didn’t piss it all away on pools and BMWs. Better hope he’s got some left over for you.”
After a while, the car stopped and Janine could hear the man get out for a second. Then the car moved again, and she could hear a slamming sound. Like a garage door being closed. They shoved her up a lot of stairs and finally into a room, with the coat still over her head. Janine wondered if they were still wearing the masks and shuddered. Black-and-red faces. She could only see the floor; that’s all, a wooden gray floor.
Janine kept seeing her mom being kicked. Her dad on the floor, his face bleeding.
She kept coming back to him patting her on the head before, telling her, “We’ll be all right, sweetheart.”
That man hitting them. Talking to Daddy in such an ugly way.
The storekeeper.
That was a scene of noise, and red, and she wouldn’t let herself think about that directly. She hadn’t been friends with the storekeeper, or anything. But she and her mom had gone there before.
One time, he had been whistling as she and her mother walked up to the counter. He had said, “Hi, beautiful.” Talking to her. Janine had remembered turning her head away, embarrassed. Her mother had smiled for her. That had been early in the year. March, maybe.
She wondered immediately if he had a little girl, too. He was old. But the way he had smiled at Janine, she bet he did. And what if that little girl had seen him that way …?
Janine let out a low keening sound.
“Shut her up! Here, I’ve got a roll of that duct tape.”
“Get me some of those paper towels,” the woman had said.
“Why?”
“Put the paper over her eyes, then do the tape.”
“Fuck that. Just do the tape.”
“It’ll be easier on her later, taking it off.”
“Who cares?”
“Look, I’ll do it. Just get yourself a beer.”
“Little mama, you can’t keep her. Hell, I may have to put her in a bag and drown her if her old man doesn’t come through.”
The woman didn’t say anything.
Janine started to cry again. She couldn’t keep the sounds from coming out. She had to pee, too, but couldn’t imagine asking if she could go to the bathroom.
The woman had reached under the coat with paper towel and pressed it against Janine’s eyes. Janine felt the coat pulled away and the ripping sound of tape being pulled off the roll. The woman put it on quickly and tightly; the tape pulled at Janine’s hair. “Shssh,” the woman said into her ear. “Don’t make a fuss. It’ll go bad for you if you do.”
Janine nodded.
“You gotta pee?” the woman asked. “I’ll walk you into the bathroom.”
Janine heard the man talking. It didn’t sound like it was to her, and then she heard her dad’s name, and she realized the man was on the phone.
“Yeah, a Greg Stearns. Ridge Road, Lincoln.”
The phone clattered.
“OK, got his number,” the man said. There was the sound of paper rustling, and she heard him chuckle. “What’d I tell you? Look at the prices of these houses in Lincoln. A million four. A million eight-fifty. Three million, for Christ’s sake… .”
The floorboards creaked in front of Janine, and she pressed back against the woman’s body.
Janine felt a hard finger under her chin. “I’m going to think up a nice number, then me and your dad are going to talk. Now tell me something—let’s see; how does it go—tell me something that just you and your mom and dad know.”
Janine couldn’t speak. She felt herself trembling so hard.
“Come on, come on.”
She couldn’t. Her mind had gone blank. Couldn’t think of what he wanted. She said, “Mama.”
He shoved her. “Goddamn it! Tell me something only you and your mama know. Just saying, ‘Mama,’ doesn’t do shit for me!
“Oh, Christ, she peed on the floor!” the man yelled, and Janine realized with terror that she had. Her leg was warm.
Suddenly she felt herself lifted up and she cried out before realizing it was the woman. The woman called out in a loud voice, “Drink your beer! I’ll clean up in a second. And I’ll get what you want out of her.” The woman’s voice was hard and not very friendly, but Janine hugged her with all of her strength.
She heard the door close behind them, and then the woman said in a mean voice, “Listen, I’m not always going to be able to get in between him and you like I just did. So when he asks you something, you answer him fast. You got that? Now talk to me. You got any brothers or sisters?”
Janine shook her head.
“OK, let’s see.… What did you have for breakfast this morning?”
Janine tried to think, but her mind was jammed with only what had happened in the past few hours, and she’d have been hard pressed to say her name in that moment.
The woman’s voice was impatient. “Well, what do you usually like? Pancakes? Cereal?”
“Bagel,” Janine said softly.
“What?”
“Bagel. I like a bagel with peanut butter and banana mashed up on top of it.”
The woman laughed. “Kids,” she said. Janine didn’t know why what she said was funny and didn’t like it that the woman could laugh when all she felt like doing was crying and being held by her mama, and having her dad sitting beside them, his hand on her back… .
“OK, bagel with peanut butter and banana. Let’s see if that and your old man can get you out of here.”
The woman brushed Janine’s hair with her hand for a moment. That made Janine feel a little better, and she worked up her courage to say, “Take me home, please?”
“Shut up.” The woman had taken her hand away abruptly. Janine heard the sound of the tape being pulled off the roll again, and the woman taped Janine’s mouth and tied her hands and feet to the bed.
And left her.
Chapter 5
The phone finally rang at 3:43 in the morning.
Greg and Beth reached for it at the same time, and then Beth pulled her hand away. “You do it.”
Ross sat beside Greg and nodded over at Allie, who quickly rolled off the couch and pushed back her tousled hair. Beth shoved the pad and pen over to Greg as he picked up the phone.
Ross put his ear beside his brother’s and held his hand lightly over his mouth so whoever was on the phone would only hear one man breathing.
“Yes?” Greg said.
“Guess who, Mr. Lincoln,” a rough voice said. Ross closed his eyes, listening hard.
“Let me speak to my daughter, please.”
“Shut up. She’s not with me. I’m in a phone booth, and I’m gonna say this once. A million-five. Tonight. I’ll get back to you on when and where.”
Greg said, carefully, “Please listen to me. You’ve got to understand that I don’t have that kind of cash sitting in the bank.”
The man hung up.
“Jesus.” Greg looked up wonderingly at Beth. “Oh my God, that’s it?”
“He’s probably just thinking about a trace,” Ross said. “He doesn’t want to talk that long, that’s all.”
“You’re right,” Allie said. “That’s probably all it is.”
Beth’s lower lip trembled, and she stared at Greg. “Why’d you tell him it would be hard?” A flush swept up her face and she suddenly shouted, “Why did you say that? Why didn’t you’d tell him we’d do anything to get her back?”
“Honey, he didn’t give me—”
The phone rang again, and Greg snatched it up.
“I don’t got to understand anything,” the man said. “Your girl is crying for her mama. Ma-ma. It’s up to you to get her back. Now, I’m a big reader of the real estate pages, the Globe, the Herald, the Phoenix. Guy like me learns things, like who’s getting ready to move, who’s gonna let me walk through on an open house and shop for my next hit, you know what I mean? So when I see Lincoln, I know your house costs somewhere over a million bucks, maybe three times that. So I’ve got to ask myself, Is this guy’s kid worth a house?”
“The bank owns the place!” Greg cried. “We don’t have that—”
“She’s safe until tonight,” the man interrupted. “And then she’s dead. You’ve already seen the last of your girl if you’re planning on fucking with me.”
“Please take care of her.” Greg fought to keep his voice calm. “We’ll do anything to get her back. We don’t care about the money—it’s just a matter of raising it. Give me something to know she’s alive.”
“Yeah, yeah. She likes bagels and bananas, she says. With peanut butter.”
Greg’s laugh was just a short bark. “That’s true. She does. But how …” He licked his lips.
“But how do you know I didn’t ask her that right before killing her? You don’t. But here’s what’s going to happen—I’m going to call you tonight around eight. That’s sixteen hours from now. You have the money, and I’ll have her on the phone. And if you’re sitting there with the cash, you can ask her what she wants for dinner and then I’ll tell you where to go pick her up. You’ll have her back in time to make the little doll whatever she wants.”
The man’s voice continued. “But if you’ve got some lame story for me about how you couldn’t raise the cash, how you need me to give you a few days, then I’m gonna figure you’re jerking me around. I’m gonna figure you’re sitting there with the FBI. And then I’m gonna treat you to the sound of me blowing her away, right while you’re talking to her. You got that?”
He hung up.
Beth’s hands shook as she fished through the top kitchen drawer for a pack of cigarettes. Her voice was bright and high, on the verge of hysteria. “Here’s a deep dark secret, Greg. I still smoke.” She fumbled with the little propane lighter, lit the cigarette, and said, “How in God’s name are we going to raise that much in a day?”
“Half a million dollars.” Greg’s expression was blank, stunned. “Doesn’t he understand no one has that kind of money lying around?”
“No,” said Ross. “Guys who’re willing to go into stores with guns have a very simple view of the world.”
“He’s right,” Allie said. “Don’t assume this guy is operating from anything you know. He’s from another planet.” She switched tacks. “We need to get somebody to buy the whole property, the whole cove. Someone with a business.”
Greg nodded. “There was that developer. Geiler. He was pretty interested. Even sent somebody to talk to you inside, didn’t he?”
Ross nodded, remembering the meeting through the glass with Geiler’s attorney, a man by the name of Bradford. The attorney had pushed hard.
“You didn’t burn any bridges with them, did you?” Greg asked worriedly.
“Nothing irreparable. I just told the guy we definitely weren’t selling the whole thing. Nothing worse than that.”
“That’s what I said.” Greg turned his attention back to Allie. Just talking over the specifics of selling the Sands had focused him. “We’re going to need a letter of agreement, because we’d never be able to actually close in one day. We’ll start with Geiler, and let’s work out whoever else is a possibility. Let’s go for CableTech Systems, that wire-extruding company that’s right up against our property line. And any other company in the industrial park. Let’s do a list. Maybe one of them needs to expand. Let’s get going.”
The three of them began making calls at 7:30 A.M.
Ross wandered about the house as they did. Five years of being inside prison had left him feeling clumsy and out of place with even normal business practices. Greg was in control now, and approaching the sale of the land as logically as could be expected under the circumstances.
Ross hesitated outside Greg and Beth’s bedroom, then went in.
Sure enough, he found his father’s gun along with the cleaning kit and bullets on the top shelf of Greg’s bedroom closet. Right where their father had kept it.
Ross felt a hand squeeze his heart, just taking the thing out of the box. His parole officer, Bernise Liotta, and the judge would be myopic about it. Ex-con with a gun, that’s a violation, don’t tell me about your niece, don’t tell me how hard it is to sell real estate in one day, next case file, please.
Ross took the revolver up to the attic and pulled up a chair to a rickety table and started cleaning the thing. It was an old Smith & Wesson .38 with a black handle grip. The gun hadn’t been oiled in a long time. Ross wondered if it would blow up in his hand.
To his knowledge, the gun had never been fired. His father had just thought a man needed a gun in his house. Or more likely, he had thought that was how a man should think.
It had been the hardest lesson of Ross’s life to accept that his father was a weak man. But he’d done it one afternoon not long after his thirteenth birthday, when his father had cracked him across the face for flushing a vial of cocaine down the toilet.
Greg hadn’t wanted to hear it. “Shut up,” he’d said. “Goddamn it, Ross, he’s got a problem. He misses Mom. You’re too young to understand.”
“Brody is an addict,” Ross had said.
Greg had shoved him into the bedroom. “Don’t call him by his name. He’s Dad to you and me.”
Ross hadn’t pushed his brother back, even though he was already faster and almost as strong. After all, Greg was older. Greg remembered better days. He would talk about how much fun it had all been when their mother was alive, going to concerts, traveling the country in an old Volkswagen van. That they had been lucky to have parents who weren’t boring.
She’d died in a car crash when Ross had been eight, and Greg, ten. Their father had been driving.
Ross remembered the days before only vaguely, and that had troubled him a lot at first. He remembered his mother as warm, and her hair blond. That she smelled good, and held him and Greg easily, and she kept things OK even when their dad was tense and angry. That she’d call impromptu picnics, just her and the two boys, up overlooking the cove. She’d make light of their father’s “grumpiness.”
Ross shared his father’s dark hair and regular features. Greg had their mother’s coloring, high cheekbones, and fair skin.
There had been a time when Ross had hung on his father’s every word, a time when he’d swelled with pride when people said he looked just like his father. Maybe it was that earlier bond that let Ross see even more clearly what his father had become—a man who couldn’t leave the house without taking something before going off to work. Pills, sometimes. Coke, if he could get it. Something to make him preen, check his mustache in the mirror, smooth his long hair. Apparently oblivious to the fact that alcohol had bloated his features.