The Husband

his pants. He was staring down the muzzle of a gun.
    Yet his eyes were steady, and full of calculation. A graveyard rat, having tunneled to make nests in a series of skulls, seemed now to occupy this living head, peering out with rat-quick cunning.
    "There's a floor safe in the kitchen," Anson said.

Chapter 48

     
    The lower cabinet to the left of the sink featured two roll-out shelves. They contained pots and pans.
    Mitch unloaded the shelves and detached them from the tracks in which they rolled, exposing the floor of the cabinet in perhaps one minute.
    In the four corners were what appeared to be small wooden angle braces. They were in fact pins holding the otherwise unsecured floor panel in place.
    He removed the pins, lifted the floor out of the cabinet, and exposed the concrete slab on which the house had been built. Sunk in the concrete was a floor safe.
    The combination that Anson had given him worked on the first try. The heavy lid hinged away from him.
    The fireproof box measured approximately two feet long, eighteen inches wide, and one foot deep. Inside were thick packets of hundred-dollar bills in kitchen plastic wrap sealed with clear tape.
    The safe also contained a manila envelope. According to Anson, it held bearer bonds issued by a Swiss bank. They were almost as liquid as the hundred-dollar bills but more compact and easier to transport across borders.
    Mitch transferred the treasure to the kitchen table and checked the contents of the envelope. He counted six bonds denominated in U.S. dollars, one hundred thousand each, payable to the bearer regardless of whether or not he had been the purchaser.
    Just a day previous, he would never have expected to be in possession of so much money; and he doubted that he would ever find himself with this much cash again in his life. Yet he experienced not even the briefest amazement or delight at the sight of such wealth.
    This was Holly's ransom, and he was grateful to have it. This money was also why she had been kidnapped, and for that reason, he regarded it with such antipathy that he was loath to touch it.
    The kitchen clock read 11:54.
    Six minutes until the call.
    He returned to the laundry, where he had left the door open and the light on.
    As self-involved as he was self-saturated, Anson sat in the wet chair but was somewhere else. He didn't come back to the moment until Mitch spoke to him.
    "Six hundred thousand in bonds. How much in cash?"
    "The rest of it," Anson said.
    "The rest of the two million? So there's a million four hundred thousand in cash?"
    "That's what I said. Isn't that what I said?"
    "I'm going to count it."
    "Go ahead."
    "If it's not all there, the deal is off. I don't turn you loose when I leave."
    In frustration, Anson rattled his handcuffs against the chair. "What're you trying to do to me?"
    "I'm just saying how it is. For me to keep the deal, you have to keep the deal. I'll start counting now."
    Mitch turned away from the door, toward the kitchen table, and Anson said, "There's eight hundred thousand in cash."
    "Not a million four?"
    "The whole bundle, cash and bonds, is a million four. I got confused."
    "Yeah. Confused. I need six hundred thousand more."
    "That's all there is. I don't have any more."
    "You said you didn't have this, either."
    "I don't always lie," Anson said.
    "Pirates don't bury everything they've got in one place."
    "Will you stop with this pirate crap?"
    "Why? Because it makes you feel like you've never grown up?" The clock showed 11:55.
    Inspiration struck Mitch, and he said, "Stop with the pirate crap because maybe I'll think of the yacht. You bought yourself a sailing yacht. How much do you have stashed aboard it?"
    "Nothing. I've got nothing on the boat. Haven't had time to fit it out with a safe."
    "If they kill Holly, I'll go through your records here," Mitch said. "I'll get the name of the boat, where it's moored. I'll go down to the harbor with an axe and a power drill."
    "Do what you have to do."
    "I'll rip it up bow to stern, and when I find the money and know you lied to me, I'll come back here and tape your mouth shut so you can't lie to me anymore."
    "I'm telling you the truth."
    "I'll close you here in the dark, no water, no food, close you in here to die of dehydration in your own filth. I'll sit right there in the kitchen, at your table, eating your food, listening to you die in the dark."
    Mitch didn't believe that he could kill anyone in such a cruel fashion, but to his own ear he sounded