The Husband

death us do part.
    The vows were his. He had made them. Nobody else had made them to Holly. Only he had made them to her. He was the husband.
    No one else would be so quick to kill for her, to die for her. To cherish means to hold dear and to treat as dear. To cherish means to do all you can for the welfare and the happiness of the one you cherish, to support and to comfort and to protect her.
    Perhaps the purpose of bringing him together here with Taggart was to warn him that he had reached the limits of his ability to protect Holly without backup, to encourage him to realize that he could not go any further alone.
    "Mitch, where is your wife?"
    "What do you think of me?"
    "In what sense?" Taggart asked.
    "In every sense. What's your take on me?"
    "People seem to think you're a stand-up guy."
    "I asked what you think."
    "I haven't known you until this. But inside you're all steel springs and ticking clocks."
    "I wasn't always."
    "No one could be. You'd blow up in a week. And you've changed."
    "You've only known me one day."
    "And you've changed."
    "I'm not a bad man. I guess all bad men say that."
    "Not so directly."
    In the sky, perhaps high enough to be above the wind, miles too high to cast a shadow on the alley, a sun-silvered jet caught his eye as it sailed north. The world seemed shrunken now to this car, to this moment of peril, but the world was not shrunken, and the possible routes between any place and any other place were nearly infinite.
    "Before I tell you where Holly is, I want a promise."
    "I'm just a cop. I can't make plea bargains."
    "So you think I've hurt her."
    "No. I'm just being level with you."
    "The thing is...we don't have much time. The promise I want is, when you hear the essence of it, you'll act fast, and not waste time picking at details."
    "The devil's in the details, Mitch."
    "When you hear this, you'll know where the devil is. But with so little time, I don't want to screw with police bureaucracies."
    "I'm one cop. All I can promise is—I'll do my best for you."
    Mitch took a deep breath. He blew it out. He said, "Holly has been kidnapped. She's being held for ransom."
    Taggart stared at him. "Am I missing something?"
    "They want two million dollars or they'll kill her."
    "You're a gardener."
    "Don't I know."
    "Where would you get two million bucks?"
    "They said I'd find a way. Then they shot Jason Osteen to impress on me how serious they are. I thought he was just a guy walking a dog, thought they shot some passerby to make a point."
    The detective's eyes were too sharp to read. His gaze filleted.
    "Jason thought they were going to shoot the dog. So they scared obedience into me and at the same time cut the eventual split from five ways to four."
    "Go on," Taggart said.
    "Once I got home and saw the scene they staged for me there, once they had me in knots, they sent me to my brother for the money."
    "For real? He's got that much?"
    "Anson once pulled some criminal operation with Jason Osteen, John Knox, Jimmy Null, and two others whose names I've never heard."
    "What was the operation?"
    "I don't know. I wasn't part of it. I didn't know Anson was into this crap. And even if I did know what the operation was, it's one of the details you don't need now."
    "All right."
    "The essence is...Anson cheated them on the split, and they only found out what the real take was a lot later."
    "Why snatch your wife?" Taggart asked. "Why not go after him?"
    "He's untouchable. He's too valuable to some very important and very hard people. So they went after him through his little brother. Me. They figured he wouldn't want to see me lose my wife."
    Mitch thought he had made a flat statement, but Taggart saw the hidden hills in it. "He wouldn't give you the money."
    "Worse. He turned me over to some people."
    "Some people?"
    "To be killed."
    "Your brother did?"
    "My brother."
    "Why didn't they kill you?"
    Mitch maintained eye contact. Everything was on the line now, and he could not hold back too much and expect cooperation. He said, "Some things went wrong for them."
    "Sweet Jesus, Mitch."
    "So I came back to see my brother."
    "Must've been some reunion."
    "No champagne, but he had second thoughts about helping me."
    "He gave you the money?"
    "He did."
    "Where is your brother now?"
    "Alive but restrained. The swap is at three o'clock, and I've got reason to believe one of the kidnappers popped the others. Jimmy Null. Now it's just him holding Holly."
    "How much have you left out?"
    "Most of it,"