The Husband

an account of this hellish day.
    In case they were being monitored, he withheld only the story of his encounter with John Knox in the garage loft.
    Anson listened intently and interrupted only a few times to ask clarifying questions. When Mitch finished, his brother sat with eyes closed, ruminating on what he'd been told.
    Megan had the highest IQ of the Rafferty children, but Anson had always scored a close second to her. Holly's situation remained as dire now as it had been half an hour ago, but Mitch took comfort in the fact that his brother had joined the fight.
    He himself had done nearly as well as Anson on the tests. He felt somewhat cheered not because a higher intelligence had set to work on the problem, but because he was no longer alone.
    He had never been any good alone.
    Getting up from his chair, Anson said, "Sit tight, Mickey. I'll be right back," and left the kitchen.
    Mitch stared at the telephone. He wondered if he would recognize a listening device if he took the phone apart.
    He glanced at the clock—7:48. He had been given sixty hours to raise the money, and fifty-two were left.
    That didn't seem correct. The events that brought him here had left him feeling wrung out, pressed flat. He felt as if he'd already been through the entire sixty hours.
    Because he experienced no effect from what he'd thus far drunk, he finished the wine remaining in his glass.
    Anson returned, wearing a sports coat. "We have places to go. I'll tell you everything in the car. I'd rather you drove."
    "Give me a second to finish this wine," Mitch said, although his glass was empty.
    On the notepad, he printed one more message: THEY CAN TRACK MY CAR.
    Although no one had tailed him on his way to his parents' house, the kidnappers had known that he'd gone there. And later, when he had parked in the church lot to take the six-o'clock call, they had known his precise location.
    Is that the church you and your parents attended?
    If they had attached tracking devices to his truck and to the Honda, they had been able to follow him at a distance, out of sight, monitoring his whereabouts electronically.
    Although Mitch didn't know the practical details of how such technology worked, he did understand that the use of it meant Holly's abductors were even more sophisticated than he had initially thought. The extent of their resources—that is, their knowledge and their criminal experience—made it increasingly clear that any attempt at resistance would be unlikely to succeed.
    On the brighter side, the kidnappers' professionalism argued that any action they directed Mitch and Anson to undertake would have been well thought out and would be likely to succeed, whether robbery by proxy or another crime. With luck, the ransom would be raised.
    In response to the warning in the latest note, Anson switched off the flame under the pot of soup, and produced the keys to his SUV. "Let's take my Expedition. You drive."
    Mitch caught the keys when they were tossed to him, then quickly gathered the notes that he had printed, and threw them in the trash.
    He and his brother left by the kitchen door. Anson neither turned off any lights nor engaged the lock, perhaps recognizing that, in this tempest, he could not keep out those whom he wished to bar, only those who had no desire to enter.
    Softened by ferns and dwarf nandina, a brick courtyard separated the front and rear condos. The smaller back unit was above a pair of garages.
    Anson's two-stall garage contained the Expedition and a 1947 Buick Super Woody Wagon, which he himself had restored.
    Mitch got behind the wheel of the SUV. "What if they have tracking devices on your cars, too?"
    As he pulled shut the passenger's door, Anson said, "Doesn't matter. I'm going to do exactly what they want. If they're able to track us, they'll be reassured."
    Backing out of the garage, into the alley, Mitch said, "So what do they want, what have we got to do? Hit me with it."
    "They want two million bucks transferred to a numbered account in the Grand Cayman Islands."
    "Yeah, well, I guess that's better than having to give it to them in pennies, two hundred million damn pennies, but whose money do we have to rip off?"
    The violent light of a red sunset flooded the alleyway.
    Anson pressed the remote to close the garage door. He said, "We don't have to rip off anybody. It's my money, Mickey. They want my money, and for this they can have it."

Chapter 21

     
    The burning sky made radiant the alley, and a