Ransom (37 page)

It was an easy, uneventful drive home. The paramedics and the doctors at the hospital had found Sam to be in surprisingly good shape, considering the ordeal he'd been through. He'd lost some weight, and he was starving all the way home. Ted stopped at Ikeda and got him a cheeseburger, french fries, a milkshake, and four boxes of cookies. And by the time they pulled up in front of her house, Sam was sound asleep. Fernanda was sitting in the front seat with Ted, and she was almost too tired to get out.

“Don't wake him. I'll carry him in,” Ted said easily, as he turned off the ignition. It was a very different trip than the ride up had been, which had been fraught with tension and fears that they might lose him. The past weeks had been filled with terror.

“What do I say to thank you?” Fernanda said, looking at him. They had become friends in the past weeks, and she would never forget it.

“You don't have to. This is what they pay me to do,” he said, looking at her, but they both knew it had been more than that. Much more than that. He had lived every moment of the nightmare with her, and would have sacrificed his life for Sam at any moment. It was who he was, and had been all his life. Fernanda leaned toward him then, and kissed his cheek. The moment hung in midair between them. “I'm going to need to spend some time with him, to ask him some questions for the investigation. I'll call you before I come over.” He knew Rick would want to question him too. Fernanda nodded.

“Come anytime you want,” she said softly, and with that he got out of the car, opened the back door, scooped the sleeping child up in his arms, and she followed him to the front door. It was opened by two policemen with guns in shoulder holsters, and Will was standing just behind them, and looked suddenly panicked.

“Oh my God, is he hurt?” His eyes darted from Ted to his mother. “You didn't tell me.”

“It's okay, sweetheart.” She put her arms around him gently. He was still a child too, even at sixteen. “He's sleeping.” They both cried as they held each other then. It was going to be a long time before they stopped worrying. Disaster had become a way of life all too quickly. Nothing had been normal for so long that they had forgotten what it felt like.

Ted carried Sam up to his room, and laid him gently on the bed, as Fernanda took off his sneakers. He made a gentle snuffling sound, and turned over on his side, without waking, as Ted and Fernanda stood looking down at him. He was a lovely sight, in his bed at home, with his head on the pillow.

“I'll call you in the morning,” Ted said to her downstairs, as he stood in the doorway. The two policemen had just left, after Fernanda thanked them.

“We're not going anywhere,” she promised him. She wasn't even sure she felt safe leaving the house yet. It was going to be very odd being on their own again, wondering if there were people out there somewhere, plotting against them. Hopefully, nothing like it would ever happen again. She had called Jack Waterman from Tahoe too. And they both agreed, some public announcement had to be made about the disappearance of Allan's fortune. Otherwise, she and the children would remain targets forever. She had learned that lesson.

“Get some rest,” Ted admonished her, and she nodded. It was silly of her, she knew, but she hated to see him go. She had gotten used to talking to him late at night, knowing she would find him there at any hour, and sleeping on the floor next to him, when she could sleep nowhere else. She always felt safe near him. She realized that now. “I'll call you,” he promised again, as she closed the door, wondering how she would ever thank him.

The house seemed empty when she walked upstairs. There were no sounds, no men, no guns, no cell phones ringing in every corner of the house, no negotiator listening on her lines. Thank God. Will was waiting for her in her room, and he looked as though he had grown up overnight.

“You okay, Mom?”

“Yeah,” she said cautiously. “I am.” She felt as though she had been dropped off a building, and was feeling her soul for bruises. There were many, but they would all heal now. Sam was back. “How about you?”

“I don't know. It was scary. It's hard not to think about it now.” She nodded at him. He was right. They would all think about it, and remember it, for a long, long time.

As Fernanda got into the shower, and Will went to bed, Ted drove home to his house in the Sunset. There was no one home when he got in. There never was anymore. Shirley was never home. She was either at work, or out with her friends, most of whom he didn't know. There was a deafening silence in the house, and for the first time in a long time, he felt agonizingly lonely. He missed seeing Ashley and Will, Fernanda coming to talk to him, the familiar ease of being surrounded by his men, on a stakeout. It had reminded him of his youth in the department. But he didn't just miss the men, he missed Fernanda.

He sat down on a chair and stared into space, thinking about calling her. He wanted to. He had heard everything Rick had said. But that was Rick, and this was him. And he just couldn't do it.

Chapter 21

Ted talked to Rick
the next day, and asked him what he had done about Addison. The state was going to bring charges against him too, and serve him with a warrant for conspiracy to commit kidnap, as soon as he got back to the city. Ted assumed he would. The judge had assured Rick, over his federal charges, that Phillip Addison was not a flight risk. And Ted hoped he was right.

“He's winging his way home as we speak,” Rick told Ted over the phone, grinning.

“That was quick. I thought he was supposed to be gone all month.”

“He was. I called Interpol yesterday, and the FBI office in Paris. They sent his surveillance guys in to pick him up. We booked him on conspiracy to commit kidnap. And one of my favorite informants called me today. Apparently, our little friend is scientifically oriented, so to speak, and he's been running a hefty business in crystal meth for quite a while. We're going to have fun with this one, Ted.”

“He must have had a shit fit when they showed up.” Ted laughed at the thought of it, although there was nothing laughable about what he'd done. But he was so pretentious about being “social,” from all Ted had heard, that it served him right to be cut down to size.

“His wife damn near had a heart attack apparently. She slapped him and the agent.”

“That must have been fun.” Ted smiled. He was still tired.

“I doubt it.”

“You were right about the car bombing too, by the way. Jim Free told us Waters did it. They weren't in on it, but he admitted it to them in Tahoe one night when he got drunk. I thought you'd like to know.”

“At least the captain will know I'm not nuts.”

Ted told him then that they had recovered most of the money Addison had paid Stark, Free, and Waters in advance, in suitcases in lockers in the Modesto bus station. It was going to be damning evidence against him. Free had told them where it was.

And then Rick changed the subject radically, as he often did, and got right to the point. “So did you say anything to her when you dropped her off?” They both knew he meant Fernanda.

“About what?” Ted played dumb.

“Don't give me that, you moron. You know what I mean.”

Ted sighed. “No, I didn't. I thought about calling her last night, but there's no point, Rick. I can't do that to Shirley.”

“She would. And you're doing it to yourself. And to Fernanda. She needs you, Ted.”

“Maybe I need her too. But I already have one.”

“The one you've got is a lemon,” he said bluntly, which wasn't fair either, and Ted knew it. Shirley was a good woman, she was just the wrong one for him, and had been for years. She knew it too. She was just as disappointed in Ted. “I hope you get smart one of these days, before it's too late,” Rick said with fervor. “Which reminds me, there's something I want to talk to you about. Let's have dinner next week.”

“What about?” Ted was intrigued, and wondered if it was about his upcoming marriage, not that he was any authority on the subject. On the contrary. But they were best friends, and always would be.

“Believe it or not, I want your advice.”

“Happy to give it. When are you going out to see Sam, by the way?”

“I'll let you do it first. You know him better. I don't want to scare him, and you may get everything I need.”

“I'll let you know.”

They agreed to talk again in a few days. And the following day, Ted went to visit Sam. Fernanda was there with Jack Waterman. They looked like they'd been talking business, and Jack left shortly after Ted arrived. He spent all of his time with Sam. Fernanda looked distracted and busy, and Ted couldn't help wondering if something was up with her and Jack. It seemed reasonable to him, and would have been the right fit. He could tell Jack thought so too.

The following day there was a grim article in the newspapers about the financially disastrous end of Allan Barnes's career. The only thing they left out was Allan's presumed suicide. But Ted had the feeling, reading it, that Fernanda had had a hand in it. And he wondered if that was what she had been doing with Jack, and why she looked somewhat upset. He didn't blame her, but it was better to get the word out. So far they had managed to keep everything about the kidnap out of the press. Ted assumed that it would come out eventually, during the trial. But no date had been set, and wouldn't be for a while. Both Stark and Free were already back in prison, after their parole was revoked when they were apprehended.

Sam was remarkably cooperative with Ted. It was amazing what he remembered, in spite of the traumatic circumstances, and what he had observed. He was going to make an excellent witness, despite his age.

After that, things moved quickly for Fernanda and her children. She turned forty shortly after, and the kids took her to International House of Pancakes on her birthday. It wasn't the birthday she would have anticipated a year before, but it was all she wanted this year. To be with her children. Shortly after that, she told them they had to sell the house. Ashley and Will were shocked, and Sam wasn't. He already knew, as he had confessed to her, from eavesdropping on her conversations. Their life had a transitional quality to it, once she made the announcement to them. Ash said it was humiliating for her now at school, once everyone knew her father had lost all his money, and there were girls who no longer wanted to be friends with her, which Will said was disgusting. He was a senior that year. And none of them had shared that they had been targets of a kidnapping attempt that summer. The story was so horrifying that it didn't qualify for school assignments that covered “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.” They only talked about it among themselves. The police had warned them to keep quiet to avoid “copycats” and the press. And one of the potential buyers who visited the house gasped when she saw the kitchen.

“My Lord, why didn't you ever finish it? A house like this ought to have a fabulous kitchen!” She looked down her nose at the realtor and Fernanda, and Fernanda had an overwhelming desire to slap her, but didn't.

“It used to,” she said simply. “We had an accident here last summer.”

“What kind of accident?” the woman asked nervously, and for a moment, Fernanda was tempted to tell her that two FBI agents and two San Francisco policemen were gunned down in her kitchen. But she resisted the urge and said nothing.

“Nothing serious. But I decided to take out the granite.” Because it was bloodstained beyond repair, she thought to herself in silence.

The kidnapping still had a quality of unreality to it, for all of them. Sam told his best friend in school, and the boy didn't believe him. The teacher gave him a serious lecture about lying after that, and inventing things, and Sam came home crying.

“She didn't believe me!” he complained to his mother. Who would? She didn't believe it herself sometimes. It was so horrifying she still couldn't absorb it, and when she thought about it, it still frightened her so much, and made her so anxious, that she had to force herself to think about something else.

She had taken the children to a psychiatrist who specialized in trauma after it happened, and the woman was impressed with how well they'd come through it, although now and then, Sam still had nightmares, as did his mother.

Ted continued to visit Sam well into September, to gather evidence and testimony, and by October he had finished. He didn't call them after that, and Fernanda thought of him often, and meant to call him. She was showing the house, trying to find a smaller one, and looking for a job. She was nearly out of money, and trying not to panic. But late at night, she often did, and Will saw it. He offered to get a job after school, to try and help her. She was worrying about college for him. Fortunately, he had good grades and qualified for the University of California system, although she knew she'd still have to scare up enough to pay for the dorm. It was hard to believe sometimes that Allan had had hundreds of millions of dollars, although not for very long. She had never been as broke as she was at that moment. And it scared her.

Jack took her to lunch one day, and tried to talk to her about it. He said he hadn't wanted to approach her too soon, or offend her right after Allan died, and then there was the kidnapping, and all of them had been so upset, understandably. But he said he had been thinking about it for months, and had made a decision. He paused, as though expecting a drumroll, and Fernanda never saw it coming.

“What kind of decision?” she said blindly.

“I think we ought to get married.” She stared at him across the lunch table, and for a minute she thought he was kidding, but saw he wasn't.

“You just decided that? Without asking me, or talking to me about it? What about what I think?”

“Fernanda, you're broke. You can't keep your kids in private schools. Will is going to college in the fall. And you have no marketable job skills,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Are you offering to hire me, or marry me?” she asked, suddenly angry. He wanted to dispose of her life, without having consulted her. And most important, he had never mentioned love. What he said sounded like a job offer, not a proposal of marriage, which offended Fernanda. There was something very condescending about the way he'd asked.