The Guardian Read Free

through the door.
    “You didn’t see anyone following you in the car beforehand?” Ross asked. “Any strange phone calls the week before? Or anybody you didn’t know show up at your door?”
    “No. Nothing like that.”
    “Beth?”
    She looked off to the side, then turned back. “No one out of the ordinary. The mailman, the boy who cuts the grass, the pool guy. All people we know.”
    “Describe how the guy behaved again.”
    “Excited,” Greg said. “Not quite angry, but pumped up. Seemed to be enjoying himself.” Greg touched the bruise on his temple.
    “Not scared? A lot of guys go in there shaking as bad as the people behind the counter.”
    “Not that I could tell. But he had a mask on.”
    “But what’s your impression? Was he in control? Or totally off?”
    “Somewhere in between.”
    “Was he skinny or heavy?”
    “Skinny.”
    Ross found himself relax slightly. A guy he’d had problems with got paroled around the same time he had. But no one would have ever described Teague as skinny. Teague was a moonfaced biker, with a scraggly goatee and shaved head. Ross asked, “How did this guy smell, like he hadn’t bathed recently?”
    “Smell?” Beth asked.
    “He’s trying to figure out if the guy was a junkie,” Allie said.
    “I didn’t notice a bad smell particularly,” Greg said. “But the guy certainly seemed wired enough. He could be a junkie.”
    “Why’d you jump him?”
    Ross asked the question without accusation, but Greg flushed angrily. “Goddamn it, Ross. He was going to take her.”
    “He said that? ‘I’m going to take her’?”
    Allie raked her hair back angrily. “Look, Ross, if we were crossing the Atlantic, I’d listen to your advice. But being an ex-con doesn’t make you a kidnapping expert. We need the police.”
    Out in the open, Ross thought.
    Allie had broken up with him after it became apparent his long-range plans involved a sailboat and a distant destination. Not that different from his ex-wife’s disenchantment with him, he’d realized. But Allie had come from an entirely different angle. Whereas Cynthia had been drifting herself in many ways, Allie was an extremely motivated woman. Maybe it was because she had been an assistant district attorney, or maybe it was her tough upbringing in upstate Maine, or maybe it was just a fundamental difference between her and Ross, as deep as their blood cells. She had no patience with drifting. And that’s the way she saw his sailing to the Caribbean.
    “I think you’re right,” Ross said.
    Allie looked surprised but said nothing.
    “The two of you, listen to me,” Greg said. “I don’t need arguments. I need your help getting me a buyer, getting me that cash.”
    Allie’s tone with Greg was gentler. “Greg, the odds are slightly better if you involve the police, the FBI actually. It’d be the FBI that’d run it, being a kidnapping. They know so much more about it. They can put wiretaps in, bring all sorts of trained personnel.”
    “Greg?” Beth leaned forward.
    Greg rubbed his face, then abruptly shoved away from the table. “Don’t talk statistics at me. Don’t tell me what on average should be done, and how federal personnel are going to make it all better. I don’t need some guy in a nice suit telling me, ‘sorry, we found your daughter’s body with our dogs and ‘personnel. I had the kidnapper tell me to my face that he would let her go if I did what he said. He was wearing a mask; she shouldn’t be able to identify him. Beth and I sure can’t identify him. What’s he got to lose? I give him the cash; he gives me my girl.… I’m wishing the guy well. I’m wishing the guy a goddamn vacation for the rest of his life, on me. I want Janine back, and I will play ball with this bastard to get it. So if either of you decide you know what’s best and trip me up on this, I will break you in half.”
    “Greg, I—” Ross started to say.
    “I mean it!” Greg hit the table with his fist. “You