Ransom (33 page)

It was easy talking to her. Easier than he wanted it to be, as they sped north toward her younger son. “Shirley and I almost split up when the kids were small. We talked about it for a while, and decided it was a bad idea.” He found it strangely easy to confide in her.

“It probably was. It's nice that you stayed together.” She admired him for it, and his wife.

“Maybe so. We're good friends.”

“I hope so after twenty-eight years.” He had told her that several days before. He was forty-seven years old, and had been married to his wife since he was nineteen. Fernanda was impressed by that. It seemed like a long time to her, and a powerful bond.

And then he volunteered something she hadn't expected to hear from him. “We outgrew each other a long time ago. I didn't really see it till a few years ago. I just woke up one day, and realized that whatever it used to be was over. I guess what we have instead is all right. We're friends.”

“Is that enough?” she asked him with a strange expression. These were like deathbed confidences, she just hoped that the deathbed wouldn't be her son's. She couldn't bear thinking of it, where they were going, or why. It was easier talking about him than talking about Sam at this point.

“Sometimes,” he said honestly, thinking about Shirley again, and what they did and didn't share, and never had. “Sometimes it's nice coming home to a friend. Sometimes it's not enough. We don't talk much anymore. She has her own life. So do I.”

“Then why do you stay together, Ted?” Rick Holmquist had been asking him the same thing for years.

“Lazy, tired, lonely. Too scared to move on. Too old.”

“That you're not. What about loyal? And decent? And maybe more in love with her than you think. You don't give yourself much credit for why you stayed. Or why she wants you to. She probably loves you more than you think too,” Fernanda said generously.

“I don't think so,” he said, shaking his head, as he thought about what she'd said.

“I think we've stayed because everyone expected us to. Her parents, mine. Our kids. I'm not even sure our kids would care anymore. They're all grown up and gone. In a funny way, she's like my family now. I feel like I'm living with my sister sometimes. It's comfortable, I guess.” Fernanda nodded. It didn't sound so bad to her. She couldn't even imagine going out and finding someone else now. After seventeen years, she was so used to Allan, she couldn't imagine sleeping with another man. Although she knew that one day she might. But no time soon. “What about you? What are you going to do now?” The conversation was on dangerous ground, but she knew it wouldn't go anywhere it shouldn't. He wasn't that kind of man. In all the days he had been in her house, he had been nothing but respectful and kind.

“I don't know. I feel like I'm going to be married to Allan forever, whether he's here or not.”

“Last time I looked,” Ted said gently, “it was ‘not.’”

“Yeah, I know. That's what my daughter says. She reminds me regularly that I should be going out. It's the last thing on my mind. I've been too busy, worrying about paying Allan's debts. That's going to take a long time. Unless I get a terrific price for the house. Our lawyer is going to declare bankruptcy to clean up his business debts. When I first realized what he'd done, I nearly died.”

“It's a shame he couldn't have hung on to some of it,” Ted said, and she nodded, but she seemed remarkably philosophical about it.

“I was never really comfortable with the money he made.” She smiled at what she said then. “It sounds crazy, but I always thought it was too much. It didn't seem right.” And then she shrugged. “It was fun for a while.” She told him about the two Impressionist paintings she had bought, and he was suitably impressed.

“It must be amazing to own something like that.”

“It was. For a couple of years. They were bought by a museum in Belgium. Maybe I'll visit them one day.” She didn't seem unhappy to have given them up, which seemed noble of her, to him. All she seemed to care about with real passion were her kids. More than anything, he was impressed by what a good mother she was. And she had probably been a good wife to Allan too, more than he deserved, as far as Ted was concerned. But he didn't say that to her. He didn't think it was appropriate for him to do so.

They rode in silence again for a while, and when they passed Ikeda's restaurant and grocery store, he asked her if she wanted to stop and get something to eat, but she said she didn't. She'd hardly eaten all week.

“Where are you going to move when you sell the house?” He wondered if, after something like this, she would leave town. He wouldn't have blamed her if she did.

“Maybe Marin. I'm not going far. The kids won't want to leave their friends.” He felt foolish, but hearing her say it, he was relieved.

“I'm glad,” he said, glancing at her, and she seemed surprised.

“You'll have to come and have dinner with me and the kids sometime.” She was grateful to him for all he'd done. But as far as he was concerned, he hadn't done it yet. And he knew that if things went badly in Tahoe, and Sam was killed, more than likely she'd never want to see him again. He would be part of the memory of a nightmarish time. And perhaps already was. But he knew that if he never saw her again, he'd be sad. He liked talking to her, and the gentle, easy way she handled things, the kindness she showed his men. Even in the midst of the kidnapping, she'd been thoughtful and considerate to all of them. Whatever money her husband had made had never gone to her head, even if it had to his. And Ted had the distinct feeling she was anxious to leave their house. It was time.

They passed Auburn a little while later, and for the rest of the ride, she didn't say much to him. All she could think of was Sam.

“It's going to be all right,” he said softly as they drove over the Donner Pass, and she turned to him looking worried.

“How can you be sure?” The truth was, he couldn't, and they both knew it.

“I can't. But I'm going to do my damnedest to see to it,” he promised her. But she knew that anyway. He had been committed to protecting them since it all began.

At the house in Tahoe, the men were getting restless. They had been arguing with each other all day. Stark wanted to call Fernanda back that afternoon and threaten her. Waters said they should wait till that night. And Peter cautiously suggested that they give her one last day to get the money together, and call tomorrow. Jim Free didn't seem to care, all he wanted to do was get his money and get the hell out. It was a hot day, and they all drank a lot of beer, except Peter, who was trying to keep a clear head, and slipped away regularly to check on Sam.

Peter had no way of checking without the others knowing, but he was wondering when Ted's men were going to make their move. He knew that when it happened it would be fast and furious, and all he could do was his best to save Sam.

The others were all drunk by late that afternoon. Even Waters. And by six o'clock they were all asleep in the living room. Peter sat watching them, and then went to the back of the house to Sam's room. He said nothing to the boy, lay on the bed next to him, and fell asleep with his arms around him, dreaming of his daughters.

Chapter 19

When Ted and Fernanda got to Tahoe,
the local police had taken over a small motel for the entire task force. It was run-down and ramshackle, and had been empty for the most part, even during the summer season. The few guests staying there had been content to leave with a small stipend paid to get them out. And two of the cops were bringing food in from a nearby fast-food place by the vanload. Everything was set up. The FBI had sent eight commandos trained in hostage release and kidnappings, and a SWAT team that had come up from the city was similarly trained. The local cops were swarming, but had not yet been advised of exactly what was happening. There were more than fifty men waiting when Ted got out of the car and looked around. They were going to have to handpick who went in and how they did it. A local captain was handling equipment, road blocks, and local officers. And Rick was in charge of the entire operation, and had set up shop in a room next to the motel office, which he had left for the local captain. There was an entire fleet of communication trucks, and Ted saw Rick come out of one of them, as Fernanda followed him from the car. The organized chaos around them was both terrifying and reassuring at the same time.

“How's it going?” Ted asked Rick, and both men looked tired. Ted hadn't had more than two hours' sleep consecutively in days, and Rick had been up since the night before. Sam was becoming a sacred cause to those who knew about him, which was a comfort to his mother. And Ted had asked one of the officers to set up a room for her.

“We're almost there,” Rick said, glancing at her, and she nodded with a tired smile. She looked like she was holding up, but barely. This was beyond stressful for her, although talking to Ted about other things on the drive up had helped for a brief time.

Ted went to get her settled. There were a psychologist from the SWAT team and a female officer waiting in the room for her. And when he had left her with them, Ted came back to Rick in the room he was using as the command post. They had a mountain of sandwiches and boxed salads on a table along the wall, and a diagram of the house and a map of the area taped to the wall above it. The food provided was unusually wholesome, as neither the FBI commandos nor the SWAT team ate fatty foods, sugar, or caffeine, as it slowed them down after the initial high, and they were meticulous about what they ate. The local police captain was sitting in with them, and the head of the SWAT team had just walked out of the room to see his men. It looked like the invasion of Normandy to Ted as he grabbed a sandwich and sat down in a chair, while Rick stood next to him. It looked like they were planning a war. It was a major rescue mission, and the combined brain- and manpower was impressive. The house they were setting their sights on was less than two miles down the road. They were putting out nothing over the radios, in case the kidnappers had any kind of monitoring devices, and so the press wouldn't pick it up and blow it for them. They were taking every precaution they could to keep the operation sterile, but in spite of that, Rick looked worried as he glanced at the diagram with Ted. They had gone to the local surveyor's office to get the map of the house, and had blown it up to an enormous size.

“Your informant says the kid is at the back of the house,” Rick said, pointing to a room at the back, not far from the property line. “We can get him out, but there's a cliff right behind them, it's straight up from there. I can get four guys down the rock face, but I can't get them back up fast enough, and if they've got the kid with them, they'll be too exposed.” He pointed to the front of the house then. “And we've got a driveway the length of a football field on the way out. I can't get in with a chopper or they'll hear us. And if we blow up the house, we're liable to kill the boy.”

The head of the SWAT team and the FBI commandos had been conferring for the past two hours, and they hadn't solved the problem yet. But Ted knew they would. They had no way of contacting Peter Morgan to set up a plan with him. They were going to have to make all their decisions on their own, for better or worse. Ted was relieved that Fernanda wasn't in the room with them to listen to the dangers they were outlining. It would have driven her over the edge. They were brainstorming out loud, and so far everything they'd come up with had a high likelihood of killing the boy.

Ted wasn't convinced that wouldn't have happened anyway. With no ransom forthcoming, it was almost certain that they were planning to kill Sam. Even with the ransom successfully delivered, there had been that risk. Sam was old enough to identify them, which made it risky to let him go, even if they got their money. Addison had been aware of that as well, which was why he had sent Peter to Tahoe to keep an eye on the others. In the end, it would have been easier for them to kill him than to return him alive. And with no ransom paid, they had every reason to kill him and dispose of him when they left. Rick and the others in the room with him were verbalizing their many fears. And after another hour of doing so, Rick turned to Ted.

“You realize what the chances are of our getting him out of there alive, don't you? Slim to none. With the emphasis on none.” He was being honest with his friend. There was a high probability that Sam was going to die, if he wasn't already dead.

“Then get more guys up here,” Ted said tersely, looking angrily at Rick. They hadn't come this far in order to lose the kid. Although they all knew they could. But Ted was on a mission to save him, as was Rick and everyone in the room, and outside. Sam was their mission.

“We have a small army here,” Rick bellowed at him. “For chrissake, did you look at how many are outside? We don't need more guys, we need a fucking miracle,” Rick said between clenched teeth. Sometimes when they got angry at each other, they did their best work.

“Then get one, make it happen. Get smarter guys in here. You can't just throw up your hands and let them kill this kid,” Ted said, looking anguished.

“Does that look like what's happening to you, you asshole?” Rick shouted at him, and there were so many other people talking in the room, you couldn't even hear him yell, or Ted yell back. They were going at it like two angry army sergeants, when the head of the SWAT team came up with another plan, but they all agreed it wouldn't work. It would leave the rescuers vulnerable to open fire from the house. Peter had picked the perfect place. It was damn near impossible to get the boy out of the house and off the property, and one thing Rick already knew, and Ted was coming to understand, a lot of men were liable to die that night, rescuing one boy. But that was what they had to do. The others knew it too.

“I can't just walk my guys into a slaughter,” the head of the SWAT team said unhappily to Ted. “We've got to give them a halfway decent chance to get the kid, and get out again.”

“I know,” Ted said, looking miserable. It wasn't going well, and he was glad Fernanda wasn't in the room to hear it. At nine o'clock that night, he and Rick walked outside. They still didn't have a plan that worked, and he was beginning to fear they never would, or not in time. They had all agreed hours earlier they had to get Sam out by dawn. Once the kidnappers were awake on the following morning, the risk would be too great, and from everything they knew, they didn't have another day. They were planning to call Fernanda sometime the next day for the final word. This was it. Dawn was in nine hours, and time was running out. “Shit, I hate this,” Ted said, looking at Rick, as he leaned against a tree. No one had come up with anything that worked. They were sending the plane up for reconnaissance in another hour, using infrared and heat-seeking devices, neither of which would work inside the house. One of the communications trucks was devoted entirely to them.