There were footsteps in the room above. The boards directly over her head squeaked as they flexed. She was right beneath them and she could hear them so clearly that she knew they would hear any sound that she made when she she tried her escape. And, if they became suspicious, they would have plenty of time to find her. This would be no quick dash to freedom. What Emily was looking at was a slow, exhausting process of wiggling through a narrow channel, making sure to keep her weight on the metal framework and off the fragile tiles. Even though the light seemed to be only thirty feet away, she had to figure at least fifteen minutes to make the passage. She would have to wait until they had locked her up for the night and gone up to their bedroom. She eased the tile back into position and stepped down carefully.
The eggs were dry and the coffee muddy, but Emily gobbled it down quickly. She wanted to be sitting in the bed in a nonthreatening pose when the woman came down for the dishes so that there would be no reason for her to refasten the handcuffs. She took the newspaper and pulled the blanket up to her waist.
Angela Hilliard sat in the first-class lounge, her laptop computer open on the desk and her morning coffee raised in her hands. She was connected over a telephone line to the bank’s local area network and was going through her mailbox. In a moment, she would download the files she needed for her business trip down to Miami.
Generally, at least one day a week began like this. The limo would pull up at her front door and wait patiently while she packed a few things into an overnight bag. Then she would be whisked over the bridge to La Guardia Airport, sometimes to the marine terminal if she were riding on one of InterBank’s three executive jets, sometimes to an airline’s first-class lounge if she were flying commercial. Always, she would connect her laptop to a telephone line and then log into the bank’s internal information network. She would check her mail for anything that needed an immediate answer and respond in her terse, pull-no-punches style. Then she would download the complete data file on the bank client she was visiting, so she could review all the information that might affect her meeting.
She valued the trips on the company planes because she often found herself riding with important senior executives whom she never failed to impress. But she preferred the commercial flights where she could work without being interrupted by polite chitchat. She could simply ignore the person seated next to her, or if her fellow traveler kept trying to be friendly, call the attendant and asked to be moved. Usually there was no seat available, but even the most persistent talker would take the hint and leave her alone with her computer.
This time, she would have preferred the company plane. The mousy little guy with the wire-framed glasses had followed her right into the lounge. Apparently, he was going to stay with her all the way to Miami. He couldn’t have come aboard the executive jet and she certainly would have been able to spot anyone who tried to tag on to her when she left the private hangar in Miami. Since she was flying commercial, it was up to her to lose him.
He had appeared almost miraculously the instant that Walter had warned her that she was being watched. Probably he had been following her earlier and she hadn’t noticed him until she was alerted to look for him. But now he was easy to spot in the reflection of store windows whenever she stopped and racing to the taxi that had pulled in behind the one she had taken.
This morning, he had been sitting in an illegally parked car, a few hundred feet from the door. The car had pulled out behind the limousine and managed to remain behind her on the Triborough Bridge and all the way to the airport. At times it had been so close that she could recognize that her man was riding in the passenger seat with another man driving. He jumped out of the car at the terminal and followed her all the way to her airline’s departure area. Angela thought she had lost him when she ducked into the first-class lounge. But within a few minutes he entered the lounge, conspicuously without luggage, and brandishing a first-class boarding envelope.
So it had worked. By ordering her ticket through a different Internet service provider, she had disguised her destination. Andrew Hogan hadn’t found her travel plan in the InterBank computer and whoever had searched her apartment hadn’t found anything in her usual Internet files. They hadn’t anticipated her trip. The man had obviously called his office when he found himself entering the airport and had been instructed to stay with her no matter where she went.
Well, let him try to keep up with her. Angela wouldn’t be taking him where she was going.
* * *
Amanda had been waiting for Helen to arrive, anxious to do anything she could to help her mother, but it didn’t seem as if she could do much. She had learned less about her parents during her lifetime than Helen’s investigators had been able to piece together in just a few days.
She described her parents’ relationship as happy—at least as happy as any relationship involving her father could be. Her mother was totally loyal to her husband and children. Amanda had no inkling of Emily’s involvement with her tennis coach. Her father was a slave to his own straight-laced ambition. She couldn’t even imagine that he might be leading a double life with another woman. Helen listened to all this information and made notes as if Amanda were providing priceless gems. She never hinted that she had contradictory information from more reliable sources.
They were all aware that, because of her father’s position, she could become a target for kidnappers or terrorists. Walter had sat her and Alex down when they were still in high school. He had scared the daylights out of her, telling her that kidnapping the families of important business executives was a common occurrence overseas and there was nothing to keep it from happening here in the United States. He had gone into great detail on the global importance of his work, intimating that he ranked only slightly behind the president of the United States as a target for radical terrorists. His message was that they had to be on their guard at every minute.
“Then you have no doubt that your mother’s kidnapping is an attack on your father’s bank?” Helen asked.
“What else could it be?” Amanda answered. “Why else would anyone hurt my mother?
Helen probed carefully into the young woman’s opinion of her father. Her anger was obvious. Was there something wrong in his background?
“The bastards may have made a mistake in picking on my father,” Amanda said. “He may be the one man on earth who would sacrifice his own wife to his crazy devotion to duty. I always figured that if anyone kidnapped me, I was as good as dead. I didn’t have a prayer if he had to choose between me and his fucking bank.”
Helen tried to defend Walter Childs, pointing out that he was in a position of trust. His responsibilities at the bank had implications for entire nations, even regions of the globe. “Yeah?” Amanda challenged. “Well, he has no weighty responsibilities when it comes to how I choose to live my life. It’s just that he thinks everyone should live by his standards.”
Helen managed to keep a straight face.
’Times have changed since he was starting out,” Amanda continued. “And he won’t let anyone move with the times. Wayne and I have a… a relationship. But it doesn’t meet his moral standards, so I’m in the doghouse and Wayne is a non-person. My father won’t even use his name. Like it was a curse or something.”
“But Wayne isn’t his family,” Helen began.
Amanda cut her off. “But I am. And he’s thrown me over rather than compromise. That’s why I think he could let my mother die. I can hear the pompous bastard now. ‘Regrettable, but I have no choice. My duties at the bank…’ ”
“You can’t believe that,” Helen argued.
The daughter shook her head. “I suppose not. Last night he was trying to figure out how he could save her. I guess she’s more important to him than I am.”
Helen suggested a way that Amanda might help. She told her how everyone involved in the kidnapping seemed to have links with the Urban Shelter. Amanda was surprised, indicating that her father was involved only to the extent of lend
ing his name. “I’ll bet he couldn’t find the office,” she said. “Mom is the one who really put time into it.”
Helen thought that Emily might have kept records of her work in the household files or in the family computer. She asked Amanda to sift through the information, hoping to get names of people who might also be involved in her mother’s work. She didn’t mention that what she was really after would be references to Bill Leary, or to her father, or even to Andrew Hogan.
* * *
Walter Childs was shocked when Andrew Hogan outlined his plan.
“You know you’re gambling with Emily’s life,” he charged. “Even if this works—even if you catch them—there’s no reason to think that Emily will be released.”
“It’s a gamble no matter how we play it,” Hogan countered. “Even after we meet all their demands, there’s no guarantee that they’ll let her go.”
“But if we give them what they want…”
“Walter, there’s just no way that I can let you send a hundred million dollars to a private account in the Caymans. If you want, we can go to Mr. Hollcroft and explain the bind that you’re in. But we both know that the only thing the directors can do is follow policy to the letter. I think trapping these people is the only chance that Emily has. That’s what you asked me for—a chance.”
Walter nodded silently. Andrew had already gone way out on a limb by trying to investigate without involving the police. He couldn’t be expected to make himself a partner in a $100 million loss.
Hogan had explained that there were two ways of approaching the kidnappers and he was suggesting that they try both. Neither one looked terribly promising, but taken together, the odds were a bit more favorable.
The first was following up on the latest demand that had included Emily’s recorded plea. Hogan was convinced that caller had to be connected with the people holding Emily prisoner. Like the other members of the conspiracy, this guy was a rank amateur, Hogan felt, acting without the knowledge of the masterminds who had engineered the whole plan. It was pretty obvious that he was someone local because he used a local place for the payoff. Greenwood Lake wasn’t known anywhere, except in the small communities on the New York-New Jersey boarder. Southshore Drive was even more obscure and Randy’s wasn’t one of its more popular spots. The caller had to be familiar with the area.
“This guy will probably come for the money himself,” Hogan had explained. “And if he’s like the kidnappers, he won’t be very sophisticated about his methods. I think if we get him, we’ll have Emily back within an hour.”
Walter had swallowed hard. He could raise the $50,000 from his own brokerage accounts, and it seemed safer to pay the man and hope he would keep his part of the bargain. But Andrew had argued that the voice on the recorder probably didn’t have the authority to set Emily free. They would end up paying for nothing. “Look, Walter,” he had finally said in exasperation, “if it makes you feel better, put fifty thousand in the briefcase. But an empty briefcase will do you just as much good, because either way, we’ll only find Emily if we capture this guy and make him take us to her.”
Hogan’s second proposal was even more frightening. He wanted to transfer a minimum amount to the Folonari branch in the Caymans, probably $10,000, just enough to create an account that could be called for. “We’ll have a team of people down there. One inside the bank to watch for anyone who accesses the account and others outside to follow whoever it is. Either the pickup guy is in on the kidnapping or he’ll have to make contact with whoever sent him.”
“They’ll transfer the money electronically,” Walter had predicted.
“I don’t think so,” Hogan had fired back. “I’ve had my best people try this. No matter how they transfer it, they leave a trail.” He had explained several of the war games his people had played to test the InterBank safeguards. “At some point, all the tests concluded, they had to convert the funds into something nontraceable. Cash, usually in a foreign currency, or bearer bonds.”
The risks, Walter continued to argue, were enormous. But the list of alternatives was painfully short. He could simply refuse to transfer the funds, which was what would happen if Hogan took his information to Jack Hollcroft. In that case, if he believed the ransom note, Emily would vanish. Or, he could go ahead with his complex transfers of small amounts to a third account and then make the $100 million payoff as the kidnapper had ordered. But Hogan would spot it the moment it was moved to Folonari. He would have it tagged immediately as a fraud, probably even before the Cayman courier could pick it up. So, once again, the ransom would go unpaid. Gradually, he began to see that Hogan’s plan wasn’t much riskier than any of the alternatives open to him. Use the account to draw in someone connected with the kidnapping and pounce on that person before he could send up a warning. It was probably as safe for Emily, and it was clearly less destructive to his career at InterBank than giving away $100 million of their money.
“I don’t want anything to happen to her,” he told Andrew, once he had finally given in to the security director’s plan. He noticed Hogan’s eyebrows lift in surprise. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said getting up from his chair and walking to the office door.
Walter was stunned by the remark. The bastard thinks I don’t care, he realized, and he was about to call Hogan back. But there was no point to it. Hogan had already told him that he was a prime suspect. And why should anyone believe that Walter would care about Emily when he was in bed with another woman the day after his wife was taken away. One more day, he thought. One more day and then all this will be over.
He got up and closed the inside office door, an unspoken message to his secretary that he didn’t want to be disturbed. Then he took his worksheets out of his briefcase and spread them across his desk, next to his computer terminal. He began sweeping up $100 million from small balances and investments that InterBank had all over the world.
Andrew Hogan stepped through the front door of Randy’s, a dilapidated, wood-frame roadhouse pinched between South-shore Drive and Greenwood Lake. In the height of summer, it would be filled with high school and college students, some from family cottages along the shoreline, others groupies who were sharing a rental shack, and still other transient weekenders who would be sleeping in the backs of cars or out on the beach. But now, in the early spring, it was nearly deserted. In the restaurant area, the chairs were stacked on top of the tables. The outdoor tables were piled on the dance floor. At the huge island bar only one side was lighted, showing the bartender and two of the locals, a big guy in a baseball hat and hockey jersey and a small, slight character who seemed half-asleep.
Hogan ordered a draft beer, which caused the locals to raise their heads and the bartender to move away from his newspaper. He tossed down a five-dollar bill and walked back toward the men’s room, his eyes searching into every corner as he moved. There was the front entrance to the parking lot, a door into the kitchen and office, and several double doors along the back wall that led out to the porch. The only other doors were those into the rest rooms.
In the cavernous men’s room, there was a single window high on the back wall. Andrew made a mental note to check the outside. Presumably, there would be a matching window from the ladies’ room. He wandered past the double doors and glanced out at the deserted wooden porch. Below the porch was a dock with slips for a dozen small boats. That was something he hadn’t figured on. Whoever was planning on picking up the money might be arriving and leaving by boat.
“Nice view,” he announced when he returned to his waiting draft. The bartender, who had had gone back to his newspaper, managed a nod.
Andrew wiped the froth from his lip. “You get much boat traffic?”
“Some. In the summer. Not much now,” the bartender answered.
“Not much of anything now,” the smaller of the two regulars cackled. The bigger one nodded in agreement.
Outside, Hogan circled past the men’s room window and confirmed that the women’s rest room was la
id out in the same way. He went to the porch, pretending to be admiring the view, and noted that the double doors were locked. Even if they were open, one of Helen’s people stationed on the porch could cover both the exits and the dock. Another, in the parking lot, would be able to cover the front door. So, he wondered, why had the kidnapper picked this spot for the ransom drop? It was as unlikely a place as he could imagine. At this time of year, there probably wouldn’t be more than half a dozen cars in the lot. The car Walter Childs was supposed to leave with the briefcase visible would be easy to keep under surveillance. There was only one exit out onto Southshore Drive, which meant that there would be no problem in picking up a departing car and following it There was certainly no way that someone could disappear inside the building.
The one problem that Andrew could see was the dock on the lake. If someone left by boat, the only way he could be followed was by another boat or a helicopter. Both would be immediately obvious. So if the man who made the pickup came in a boat, they would have to take him as soon as he stepped out onto the porch. Then he would have to be persuaded to lead them to Emily Childs, which probably wouldn’t take more than a few minutes. The lake was still icy cold, and a few minutes was about as long as someone could stay in it submerged up to the chin. If they got him, they’d have Emily.
It was all too easy. One man in the woods on the lake side of the building. Another in the woods across from the parking lot exit. And then two cars on Southshore Drive, one headed in each direction. Maybe one more man in the bar, just for good measure. Someone dressed like one of the regulars.
Andrew took one last look around. The guy, he thought, was going to step into his own trap. He had to be dumber than the courier who had brought the ransom note, or the two clowns who had handled the kidnapping. “Amateurs,” he whispered as he started his car and pulled out of the lot.
The Trophy Wife Page 13
