confidence, and by the way Parker’s face turned instantly neutral, he recognised that fact.
‘Do we know how this happened?’
He glanced across, not so much at me, but at Erik Landers, hovering discreetly across the far side of the room. Landers lived in north Brooklyn and had been first on scene after Dina’s abduction. He’d stayed at Caroline Willner’s side ever since. When I arrived, shortly afterwards, I’d been the one who’d talked to the staff and watched the CCTV footage, and pieced together what had taken place.
I’d been through it over and over, looking for the exact point when the day turned from clear to dark. And each time, I fought a sick dread that sat high under my ribcage.
What struck me most was the same sense of ruthless purpose that had characterised the ambush on me. I’d watched Dina sneak out onto the driveway, looking behind her as she came, furtive, eager. I’d seen the van pull up with its licence plate just beyond the reach of the cameras. Dina’s stride had faltered as she’d neared it and realised the unexpected danger. She’d begun to retreat – faster when two masked figures leapt from the van and came for her. One grabbed her immediately. The other stayed back, more warily. From the way he carried himself, I would guess he had to be the guy from the passenger seat of the Dodge.
The one I’d winged. The one I now suspected might be Lennon.
There was no audio on the house CCTV, but even without it I heard Dina start to scream. McGregor appeared so quickly from the direction of the house that I believed he’d already noticed her attempt at stealthy departure. He’d barely entered the picture when the man holding Dina yanked out a silvered semi-automatic and fired, three shots, as fast as the action would cycle.
McGregor went down on the second. It hit low in his body and his instinct was to clamp both hands to the wound. He’d managed to draw his own weapon, but had no clear shot. It dropped unfired onto the gravel as he collapsed, writhing.
With every repeat viewing, I willed him to move just that little bit faster, or the bad guy a little bit slower. The outcome was always the same.
But it had been good to have a purpose, because it stopped me thinking too hard about the fact that while Ross might not have taken part in this, I’d still had one of Dina’s erstwhile kidnappers in my hands, and had let him go. Now, I prayed it would not turn out to be one of the worst mistakes I’d ever made.
‘How did they lure her out of the house?’ Parker asked.
‘She got a text, apparently from Orlando, saying she was at the riding club when Raleigh arrived back with the horses,’ I said. ‘According to the message, Cerdo slipped coming out of the trailer and was injured, and she should come at once,’ I said. Nothing would be more guaranteed to make Dina throw caution to the winds.
‘You’ve checked, of course.’ It was a comment rather than a question.
I nodded anyway. ‘Raleigh says he hasn’t seen Orlando since the last time I was there with Dina, and the horses are fine.’
‘So, either Orlando’s complicit,’ Parker murmured, ‘or this was definitely a pro job.’
‘We know that whoever this guy Lennon’s hooked up with, he’s an expert when it comes to hacking technology – Dina’s email, the traffic light system, and Gleason’s comms network. I shouldn’t imagine Orlando’s cellphone would cause him much trouble.’
Parker raised his eyebrow, just a fraction. I’d already briefed him fully over the phone on my conversation with Ross, and the agreement we’d reached. He agreed, even with the benefit of hindsight, that handing the college kid over to the authorities would probably have got us nowhere – certainly not as far as recovering Dina was concerned. For better or worse, we had to trust him to deliver his end of the deal and lead us to his former friend. It was a calculated risk. I just hoped my calculations weren’t way off.
‘What will happen now?’ It was Caroline Willner who spoke, her voice hoarse with strain.
Parker turned back to her. ‘We wait, ma’am,’ he said. ‘No doubt they will be in contact with their demands. Until then, we just have to wait.’
She cleared her throat. ‘I would very much like for you to negotiate for my daughter’s release,’ she said, eyes sliding away from his. ‘I regret that, if they ask for a substantial amount, I … may not have the money to pay.’
‘You mentioned yesterday that you had kidnap insurance,’ I said. ‘What about that?’
Her face had hardened into a brittle mask, refusing to allow her fear and pain to break surface. ‘If I make a claim, and then it comes out – as it is bound to – that my daughter and her … friends were in any way responsible for their own predicament, I would likely face prosecution for fraud,’ she said, selecting her words with care. ‘Besides, Brandon Eisenberg was prepared to pay in full for his son’s life, and much good it did him.’
I heard the bitter thread, felt compelled to point out gently, ‘I know Dina told them she had changed her mind. Whatever’s happened to her now, it’s not of her choosing.’
Caroline Willner nodded, very slightly, grateful. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘And I pray that we both get the chance to ask forgiveness.’
We waited for the ransom demand most of the night.
Parker had connected a recorder to the house phone. As soon as the line rang out, caller ID was displayed on the screen of his laptop, allowing Caroline Willner to take the call if she recognised the number, or let Parker handle it.
There were a lot of rubberneckers, of one form or another. People who thought they might have heard a rumour and wanted to check it out. Caroline Willner rebuffed them all equally, telling them Dina had caught a chill and was resting in her room. They obviously came from a stratum of society where such a minor ailment was a viable excuse for bed rest. Either way, it seemed to satisfy them. If I hadn’t been able to see the sorrow in her face as she spoke, I would have believed her, too.
And when Manda called, just before midnight, pushing to speak with Dina, Caroline Willner dismissed the girl’s apparent concerns and told her, in a slightly obstreperous tone, that Dina was simply not available to come to the phone.
The kidnappers finally called a little after 6.00 a.m., no doubt aware of our sleepless night. Dina was twenty hours gone. Even though it wore the same mechanical disguise, I knew the voice belonged to the same man I’d spoken to, yesterday morning at the Eisenberg’s house.
And I knew, without a single shred of physical evidence to back it up, that this was also the same man who’d shot me.
Parker saw the unrecognised number and took the call. Caroline Willner had gone to lie down and rest in her own room, so he put it on speaker. The kidnapper did not seem surprised to find him on the other end of the line.
‘You want Dina back alive,’ the voice said flatly, ‘this time it’s going to cost you ten million dollars.’
‘Ten million?’ Parker allowed his incredulity to come through. He would have shown surprise regardless of the amount asked for, as a stalling technique. But this time there was little acting required. He paused, then pointed out calmly, ‘That’s double what you asked for Torquil Eisenberg.’
‘Yeah, and if his old man hadn’t tried to screw us over, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, but he did. Get over it.’
Parker’s eyes narrowed and his voice turned soft and deadly. ‘How, exactly, did Eisenberg screw you over?’
‘That worthless pile of coloured glass. How long did you think it would take us to spot you’d given us a replica of the Rainbow instead of the real thing?’
I sucked in a quiet breath, remembered Nicola Eisenberg’s certainty that her husband might not have her son’s best interests at heart. She had collapsed after the failed ransom drop, I recalled. Did she know what he’d tried to pull?
‘That’s a huge amount of money. The kind that can’t be raised overnight,’ Parker said. ‘Mrs Willner is not rich. She doesn’t have the same sway with banks—’
‘Not rich?’ the voice cut in, distortion or disgust making it screech. ‘She lives in that fucking great palace on the beach, with servants and horses and all the rest of that privileged shit, and you try to tell me she’s not
‘Having assets is not the same thing as having available cash,’ Parker said, and his tone stayed easy even as his eyes burnt cold. ‘Not the kind of available cash you’re talking about.’
‘Dina was going out with Eisenberg’s kid, so tap up his father. He’s rich enough and he owes us, big time. Either way, you got a day and a half to put it all together. We’ll call you 4.00 p.m. the day after tomorrow with when
