Ransom

by Danielle Steel

  “I get it,” Waters said, looking irritated. “No one's going to pay a hundred million bucks for three dead kids. Or even one.” He got the point.

  “Presumably, she'll pay the ransom quickly. She lost her husband, she won't want to lose her kids. It may take her a week or two to free up the money, but it shouldn't take too long. Not for her kids.”

  “I like the fact that it's a woman,” Waters commented, thinking about it. “She's not going to make us sweat it for six months. She'll want those kids.” Waters stood up then, and looked down at Peter, still sitting on the bench. He'd heard enough, and he wanted to get back to the house. He had enough to think about for now. “I'll think about it, and let you know. How do I find you?” Peter handed him a slip of paper with his cell phone on it. He'd written it down while he was waiting on the porch.

  “If you do it, can you find the other guys?” Peter asked, as he stood up.

  “Yeah. It's gotta be guys I can trust. Anyone can nab someone, but can they keep their mouth shut afterward? Our asses are going to be on the line after that. I want to make sure mine won't rot in prison.” He had a point, and Peter agreed with him.

  “He wants us to make a move in July. He'll be out of the country then, and he wants it over by the time he comes back.” They had just over a month to set it up, find the men, and watch her. And take the kids.

  “That shouldn't be a problem,” Waters said, and after that they walked along in silence, while Peter wondered what he was thinking and when he'd hear from him. Waters didn't even look at him when they reached the halfway house. He just started up the steps and then turned around to look at him. And in a voice no one could hear but Peter, he mouthed the words “I'm in.” And with that, he walked onto the porch and into the house. Peter stood staring after him, and the screen door slammed. Twenty minutes later, Peter was back on the bus and heading home.

  Chapter 10

  Peter heard from Carlton Waters on his cell phone later that week. He had the two other guys they needed. Malcolm Stark and Jim Free. He said he was sure they could do the job, and keep their mouths shut. The three of them had decided they would go to South America via Canada or Mexico after they did it. They wanted their five million dollars each in accounts in South America, where they could access it. Between themselves, they had talked about getting into the drug business, but they didn't have to figure that out yet. Waters knew people who could get them passports, and run them into Mexico. And from there, they could go anywhere. All they wanted was to do the job, get their money, and get the hell out. None of them had serious attachments, or were married. The girl in the coffee shop hadn't panned out for Jim Free. It turned out she had a boyfriend, and wasn't interested in Jim after all. She was just flirting with him.

  There was a whole new life waiting for them in South America. All they needed now was a place to stay while they waited for the ransom, once they'd kidnapped the Barnes children. Peter said he'd take care of it. And Waters agreed to start watching them that weekend. Next, they had to get a car. Peter said he'd buy one for him and Waters to use for surveillance, something ordinary and innocuous that wouldn't attract attention. And they needed a van to do the job. Waters agreed to meet Peter at his hotel on Saturday. Carl could cover it from nine A.M. till six o'clock on weekends. Peter would follow them during the week, and on weekend nights. They were covered. Peter had a feeling she didn't go out much anyway, if she was alone with three kids. And it was only for a month. For ten million bucks, he could sit in a car all day, and cover nights. He reported in to Addison and told him they had the guys. Addison sounded pleased and said he was willing to pay for both the van and the car. They could dump both a month later, after the job was done.

  Peter bought a Ford station wagon that afternoon. It was five years old and had a lot of mileage on it, and conveniently, it was black. He bought an old van at a different lot the next day and rented a space for it in a public garage. At six o'clock that night, he was parked outside Fernanda's house. He recognized her and the children from the photograph in Phillip's file, and remembered their names. They were emblazoned on his mind.

  He saw Fernanda come in with Ashley, and then go out again, and he followed her. She drove erratically, and ran through two red lights. He wondered if she drank. He parked within three cars of her near the playing field in the Presidio and watched her get out. She sat in the bleachers watching Will play lacrosse, and as he walked back to the car with her afterward, Peter saw them hug before they got back in the car. Something about the way they did it made his heart ache, and he wasn't sure why. She was beautiful and blond and very small, and when they got to the house again, the boy was laughing when he got out of the car. He was in good spirits. They had won. Peter watched them walk up the steps to the house arm in arm. Seeing them made him want to be next to them, and he felt left out in an odd way when they went inside and shut the door. And as she went in, he watched her through the window to see if she was setting the alarm, which was important information for him. She didn't. She walked straight into the kitchen.

  Peter saw the lights go on in the kitchen, and he imagined her cooking dinner for them. He had seen both Ashley and Will by then, but hadn't seen Sam yet. He remembered him from the photograph as being a smiling, redheaded little boy. Late that night, he saw her standing by the window in her bedroom. He watched her with binoculars, and saw that she was crying. She just stood there with tears rolling down her cheeks in her nightgown, and then she turned and walked away. It was a strange feeling, watching her like that. He kept getting glimpses into their life. The girl in the ballet leotard, the boy she hugged after he won his lacrosse game, and the tears running down her cheeks as she stood in her bedroom window, crying for her husband probably. It was two in the morning when Peter drove away. The house was dark, and had been for three hours. He realized now he didn't need to stay that late, but these were all things he needed to learn about them.

  He was back the next morning at seven o'clock. Nothing happened until nearly eight. He couldn't see any activity in the kitchen, because he couldn't tell if she'd turned the lights on. That side of the house was lit by morning sun, and at ten to eight she came flying out. She turned to talk to someone in the hallway behind her, and the ballerina came out dragging a heavy bag. The lacrosse player helped her with it, and then walked to the garage for his own car. The door to the house was still standing open, and Fernanda was looking impatiently toward it, and finally the youngest one came out. And as Peter sat watching him, he couldn't suppress a smile. Sam was wearing a bright red T-shirt with a fire engine on his back, with navy corduroy pants and red high-top sneakers, and he was singing at the top of his lungs, while his mother laughed and waved him to the car. He got into the back seat, because his sister was in the front seat, with the bag on her lap. And when they got to school, with Peter in the traffic behind them, Fernanda helped her out. He couldn't imagine what was in the bag as she dragged it up the steps. Sam bounced into school behind her like a puppy, and turned with a grin to wave at his mom, as she stood there for a minute, blew him a kiss, waved, and got back in the car. She waited until he'd gone inside before she drove away.

  She drove to Laurel Village to the grocery store then, and pushed a cart around for a while, reading labels, and checking produce before she put it in the cart. She bought a lot of kid food, cereals and cookies and snacks, half a dozen steaks, and at the counter where they sold flowers, she stopped and looked at them, as though tempted to buy them, and then rolled past, looking sad. Peter could have stayed in the car, but he had decided to follow her, to get a better sense of who she was. And as he watched her, he found himself fascinated by her. She was the epitome of the perfect mom, in his eyes. All she did and all she thought about and all she bought seemed to be about and for her kids. He stood behind her in the check-out line as she picked up a magazine, glanced at it, and put it back. He was impressed by how simply dressed she was. No one would have thought for a minute that her husband had left her half
a billion dollars. She was wearing a pink T-shirt, jeans, and clogs, and she looked like a kid herself. She turned to look at him, as they both waited, and unexpectedly she smiled at him. He looked immaculate in a new blue button-down shirt, loafers, and khaki pants. He looked like all the men she'd grown up with, or friends of Allan's. He was tall and good-looking and blond, and he knew from things he'd read about her now that he was only six months younger than she. They were virtually the same age. They had both gone to good colleges. She had gone to Stanford, and he had gone to Duke. He had gone to graduate school, while she married and had babies. And their kids were almost the same age. Sam was six, and Isabelle and Heather were eight and nine. She looked a little like Janet, but prettier, and more than he realized, he looked like Allan with blond hair. She had noticed it when she put back the magazine, and then stared at him. And when she dropped a roll of paper towels, while putting them on the check-out stand, he picked them up and handed them to her.

  “Thanks,” she said pleasantly, and he noticed her wedding band. She was still wearing it, and he found it a loving gesture. He liked everything about her, and listened to her chatting with the man adding up her groceries, who seemed to know her well. She said the kids were doing okay, and Will was going to camp to play lacrosse. Peter had to remind himself of what his mission was, and wondered when the boy was going to camp. It might mean, if it was in July, that Waters and his buddies would only be able to get two of the kids. And as he thought of it, he felt sick. This woman was so obviously decent, so loyal to her husband, and so devoted to her kids, that what they were about to do to her seemed more than ever like a heinous thing to him. They were going to make her pay a hundred million dollars just to keep all that she had and cherished now.

  The thought of it weighed on him, as he watched her go through two more red lights and a stop sign on California Street on the way home. Her driving stank. He wondered what she was thinking about when she cruised through the red lights. And he was puzzled by what he saw when he got back to the house. He expected a housekeeper, or even a fleet of them to come out and unload the car. Instead she opened the front door, left it standing open, and carried the groceries in herself, bag by bag. He wondered if it was the maid's day off. After that, he didn't see her again till noon. She came back out for something she had forgotten in the car, and dropped the roll of paper towels again, but this time he didn't pick them up as he had in the store. He didn't move. He couldn't let her see him. He just watched.

  She looked slightly disheveled when she came out in a rush at three o'clock. She jumped in her station wagon and drove off toward school, driving too fast, and nearly hit a bus. Just watching her for a day, he already knew that the woman was a menace on the road. She drove too fast, she went through lights, she changed lanes without signaling, and nearly hit pedestrians in crosswalks twice. She was obviously distracted, and she came to a rapid stop outside the two younger kids' school. Ashley was on the street waiting for her, talking to friends and laughing, and Sam bounced out carrying an enormous papier-mâché airplane five minutes later with a huge grin and a hug for his mom. Just watching them made Peter want to cry. Not for what he and Waters were going to do to them, but for all that he himself had missed as a child. Suddenly, he realized what life could have been like, if he hadn't screwed up, and were still with Janet and their kids. They'd be hugging him. And he'd have a loving wife like this pretty blond. It made him feel lonely thinking of all he didn't have, and never had.

  They stopped at the hardware store on the way home, where she bought lightbulbs and a new broom, and a lunch pail for Sam to use at day camp. She dropped him off at the house, said something to Will when he came to the door for his brother, and then drove Ashley to ballet. And that afternoon, after she picked Ashley up, she went to another one of Will's games. Her entire life seemed to revolve around them. By the end of the week, Peter had seen her do nothing except drive them to and from school, take Ashley to ballet, and go to Will's games. She did nothing else. And when he checked in with Addison, he mentioned that they had no domestic staff, which seemed odd to him for someone with their means.

  “What difference does it make?” Addison said, sounding annoyed. “Maybe she's cheap.”

  “Maybe she's broke,” Peter said, ever more curious about her. She looked like a serious person, and when she was alone, she looked sad. But when she was with the kids, she smiled and laughed and hugged them a lot. And he saw her crying in her bedroom window every night. It made him want to hold her in his arms, the way she did her kids. She needed that, and had no one to do it for her.

  “No one can spend half a billion dollars in a year,” Phillip answered, sounding unconcerned.

  “No, but you can sure as hell blow that and more on bad investments, especially with the bottom falling out of the market the way it has.” Phillip knew that only too well. But what he had lost, he assumed would have been a drop in the bucket to Allan Barnes.

  “I haven't read anywhere about any of Barnes's deals going sour. Believe me, Morgan, they've got it. Or he did and she does now. She probably just doesn't like to spend it. Are you keeping track of her?” Addison asked, pleased with the way things were going. Peter had put the team in place quickly, and he said he was going to Tahoe over the weekend to find a house. He wanted to find a cabin somewhere in an isolated area where they could keep the kids for as long as it took for her to come up with the ransom. As far as Addison was concerned, this was just business. For him, there was nothing personal or sentimental about it. Peter was feeling more intense, after watching her drop off, pick up, and constantly hug and kiss her children. Not to mention the nightly tears in her bedroom window.

  “Yes, I'm keeping track of her,” Peter said tersely. “She doesn't do anything except drive her kids around and go through red lights.”

  “Great. Let's hope she doesn't kill them before we get them. Does she drink?”

  “I don't know. She doesn't look it. I think she's distracted or upset.” The day before, he had watched her nearly hit a woman in yet another crosswalk. Everyone had honked at her, and she had jumped out of the car and apologized profusely, and when she did, he saw that she was crying. Fernanda was driving him crazy. She was all he could think of now, not only because of what they had in store for her, but because of what he wished he could say to her, and the time he wished he could spend with her, if things were different. In other circumstances, he would have liked to get to know her. In his mind, she had become the perfect woman. Seeing her with her children, he had come to admire her so much. He loved watching her, and wondered what she'd been like when Barnes married her. Thinking of her as a young girl nearly drove him insane.

  Why hadn't he met her then? Why was life so cruel? While he had been busy screwing up his life, and his ex-wife's, Fernanda had been married to a lucky guy, and building a family. She was spectacularly beautiful. And Sam had won his heart the first day he saw him. Ashley was a beauty. Will looked like the kind of son every man wanted. Whatever else Allan Barnes had done, and the name he had made for himself in the business world, it was obvious to Peter Morgan that he had left the perfect family behind. Peter felt like a Peeping Tom watching her, and when he went back to his hotel to sleep at night, invariably he found himself dreaming of her, and couldn't wait to go back in the morning to see her again. She had begun to haunt him like an old friend, or a lost love. In fact, for him, she was like a reminder of a lost world. A world he had always wanted to be part of, and had been for a time, but seeing her reminded him of the life and opportunities he had blown. She was everything he had always wanted and would never have again.

  He hated to turn her over to Carlton Waters on Saturday, when he gave him the car, and used the van to go to Tahoe. He had a listing of houses to rent he'd gotten on the Internet. He didn't want to work with a realtor. But as long as no one saw Carl and his boys, there was no problem. If anything happened, Peter could always say that the men had broken in and used the house while he was in San Fran
cisco. They were all making painstaking efforts to keep all of the various elements separate, and so far, there had been no problems. No one in Modesto, other than Stark and Free, knew that Carl was in the city. He was going to be back by curfew.

  No one was going to follow Fernanda after six o'clock that night, until Peter got back from Tahoe sometime around ten. And if she followed her usual pattern, she'd be home with her children long before that. The only time she went out at night was to drop off Will or Ashley at friends' houses, or pick them up after a party. She didn't like Will driving at night, although as he told her frequently, and Peter could have verified, her driving was far worse than his was. From everything Peter had seen, she was a total menace.

  “What's she liable to do today?” Carl asked Peter when he picked up the car keys. He was wearing a baseball cap that shielded his face, and changed his looks, and dark glasses. When Peter followed her, he looked as he always did, and if there were too many people on the street, he drove around the block a few times, and came back again. But so far he didn't have the feeling anyone had spotted him, least of all Fernanda.

  “She'll probably take the older boy to a game, maybe in Marin. Or the girl to ballet. She usually has the little one with her on Saturdays. They don't seem to do much, probably even on weekends.” The weather had been great, but she didn't seem to go out much. In fact, almost never. “You'll get a good look at the kids. She's with them pretty much all the time, and the little guy never leaves her.” Peter had a sense of betraying them, and Waters nodded. Carl wasn't interested in making friends with them. This was a reconnaissance mission for him, and nothing more than that. To him, this was business. To Peter, it was becoming an obsession. But Carlton Waters didn't know that. He took the keys, got in the car, and drove to the address Morgan had given him. It was ten o'clock on a brilliantly sunny Saturday in May as Peter left for Tahoe.