'Good-bye, Mitch. You'll be all right. It's not long now. You might even doze on the way.'
Flanking Mitch, each holding him by one arm, the gunmen walked him across the library to the French doors. The man with the pitted face, on his right, pressed the muzzle of a pistol into his side, not cruelly, only as a reminder.
Just before stepping across the threshold, Mitch glanced back and saw Campbell reviewing the titles on a shelf of books. He stood with the hipshot grace of a loitering ballet dancer.
He appeared to be choosing a book to take to bed. Or maybe not to bed. A spider does not sleep; neither does history.
Terrace to steps, descending to another terrace, the gunmen expertly conveyed Mitch.
The moon lay drowned in the swimming pool, as pale and undulant as an apparition.
Along garden pathways where hidden toads sang, across a broad lawn, through a copse of tall lacy silver sheens shimmering like the scales of schooling fish, by a roundabout route, they
came to a large but elegant building encircled by a romantically lighted loggia.
The gunmen's vigilance never wavered during the walk.
Night-blooming jasmine twined the columns of the loggia and festooned the eaves.
Mitch drew slow deep breaths. The heavy fragrance was so sweet as to be almost narcoleptic.
A slow-moving black long-horned beetle crossed the floor of the loggia. The gunmen guided Mitch around the insect.
The pavilion contained exquisitely restored cars from the 1930s and 1940s — Buicks, Lincolns, Packards, Cadillacs, Pontiacs, Fords, Chevrolets, Kaizers, Studebakers, even a Tucker Torpedo. They were displayed like jewels under precisely focused arrays of pin lights.
Estate vehicles in daily use were not kept here. Evidently, by taking him to the main garage, they would have risked encountering members of the household staff.
The gunman with the pitted face fished from his pocket a set of keys and opened the trunk of a midnight- blue Chrysler Windsor from the late 1940s. 'Get in.'
For the same reason they had not shot him in the library, they would not shoot him here. Besides, they wouldn't want to risk doing damage to the car.
The trunk was roomier than those of contemporary cars. Mitch lay on his side, in the fetal position.
'You can't unlock it from the inside,' the scarred man said. 'They had no child-safety awareness in those days.'
His partner said, 'We'll be on back roads where no one will hear you. So if you make a lot of noise, it won't do you any good.'
Mitch said nothing.
The scarred man said, 'It'll just piss us off. Then we'll be harder on you at the other end than we have to be.'
'I don't want that.'
'No. You don't want that.'
Mitch said, 'I wish we didn't have to do this.'
'Well,' said the one with smooth skin, 'that's how it is.'
Backlighted by the pin spots, their faces hung over Mitch like two shadowed moons, one with an expression of bland indifference, the other tight and cratered with contempt.
They slammed the lid, and the darkness was absolute.
Chapter 28
Holly lies in darkness, praying that Mitch will live. She fears less for herself than for him. Her captors at all times wear ski masks in her presence, and she assumes they would not bother to conceal their faces if they intended to kill her.
They aren't just wearing them as a fashion statement. No one looks good in a ski mask.
If you were hideously disfigured, like the Phantom of the Opera, maybe you would want to wear a ski mask. But it defied reason that all four of these men would be hideously disfigured.
Of course, even if they hoped not to harm her, something could go awry with their plans. In a moment of crisis, she might be shot accidentally. Or events could change the kidnappers' intentions toward her.
Always an optimist, having believed since childhood that every life has meaning and that hers will not pass before she finds its purpose, Holly does not dwell on what might go wrong, but envisions herself released, unharmed.
She believes envisioning the future helps shape it. Not that she could become a famous actress merely by envisioning herself accepting an Academy Award. Hard work, not wishes, builds careers.
Anyway, she doesn't want to be a famous actress. She would have to spend a lot of time with famous actors, and most of the current crop creep her out.
Free again, she will eat marzipan and chocolate peanut-butter ice cream and potato chips until she either embarrasses herself or makes herself sick. She hasn't thrown up since childhood, but even vomiting is an affirmation of life.
Free, she will celebrate by going to Baby Style, that store in the mall, and buying the huge stuffed bear she saw in their window when she passed by recently. It was fluffy and white and so cute.
Even as a teenage girl, she liked teddy bears. Now she needs one anyway.
Free, she will make love to Mitch. When she is done with him, he'll feel as if he's been hit by a train.
Well, that isn't a particularly satisfying romantic image. It's not the kind of thing that sells millions of Nicholas Sparks novels.
She made love to him with every fiber of her being, body and soul, and when at last their passion passed, he was splattered all over the room as if he had thrown himself in front of a locomotive.
Envisioning herself as a best-selling novelist would be a waste of effort. Fortunately, her goal is to be a real-estate agent.
So she prays that her beautiful husband will live through this terror. He is physically beautiful, but the most beautiful thing about him is his gentle heart.
Holly loves him for his gentle heart, for his sweetness, but she worries that certain aspects of his gentleness, such as his tendency toward passive acceptance, will get him killed.
He possesses a deep and quiet strength, too, a spine of steel, which is revealed in subtle ways. Without that, he would have been broken by his freak-show parents. Without that, Holly would not have led him on a chase all the way to the altar.
So she prays for him to stay strong, to stay alive.
During her prayers, during her ruminations about kidnappers' fashions and gluttony and vomiting and big fluffy teddy bears, she works steadily at the nail in the floorboard. She has always been an excellent multitasker.
The wood floor is rough. She suspects that the planks are thick enough to have required heavier than usual flooring nails.
The nail that interests her has a large flat head. The size of the head suggests that this nail may be large enough to qualify as a spike.
In a crisis, a spike might serve as a weapon.
The flat head of the nail is not snug to the wood. It is raised maybe a sixteenth of an inch. This gap gives her a little leverage, a grip with which to work the nail back and forth.
Though the nail isn't loose, one of her virtues is perseverance. She will keep working at the nail, and she will envision it loose, and eventually she will extract it from the plank.
She wishes she had acrylic fingernails. They look nice; and when she's a real-estate agent, she'll certainly need to have them.
Good acrylic fingernails might give her an advantage with the spike.
On the other hand, they might break and split easier than her real fingernails. If she had them, they might
