55.

Kirsten had no recollection of how they got there, but she and Carlo and Polly Morelli were all in a room together. Carlo was tied to a chair, screaming and crying. Kirsten jolted him with the stun baton, over and over, laughing the whole time. Polly was laughing, too, and threatening to shoot her if she stopped. And behind it all her cell phone rang and rang.

She woke up with a start and turned on the light. Just past midnight. She fumbled with the phone and finally answered it.

“It’s me,” Dugan said. “I’m okay. Don’t worry about me and don’t do anything—” He stopped.

“Where are you?” He didn’t answer. “Where are you, Dugan?”

“He doesn’t know.” It was the same woman. “And anyway, he’s back in his box now.”

“I know who you are, dammit.”

“You know nothing. You—”

“I have Carlo,” Kirsten said.

“What?”

“Your brother. I have him.”

“He doesn’t even get—” She stopped, but too late. “What are you talking about? What brother?”

“He got out two days early. I have him.” By now she was at the car. “You can talk to him.” She opened the trunk and Carlo blinked up at her. “It’s Debra,” she said. “Talk to her.” Baton in hand, she held the phone to his ear.

He just stared at her, eyes wide,

“Tell her it’s you, God damn it.”

“It’s me,” he said, “Carlo.” He listened, then spoke again in that same harsh whisper. “No, dammit, it is.” He looked at Kirsten. “It’s my fucking voice. She can’t tell for sure if it’s me.”

Kirsten spoke into the phone. “It’s him, all right. I’ll have him tell you something only you and he could possibly know.” She put the phone back to his ear with her left hand, with the stun baton in her right. “Go on!”

He seemed to be thinking. Then he grinned—not a pleasant sight—and said, “Remember my twelfth birthday? That old mattress in the attic?” He stopped and listened, and the grin disappeared. “Hey, it’s not my fault. It was Uncle Polly’s guys.” Still the hoarse whisper, but whining now, too, like a small boy. “She tricked them. I tried to tell them, but they were too stupid to—” He stopped. “God damn it,” he said, “you should be happy. Polly’s fucking out of his mind. They told me he’d fucking cut my other leg off. He’s gonna kill me, for chrissake, and all you do is blame me, like you always do, for every—”

He didn’t finish, because Kirsten took the phone away and quietly closed the trunk lid.

“He’s back in his box now,” she said. “Anyway, he got out a couple of days early and I stole him away from Polly. Polly’s mad as hell about it. But … hey … I thought you’d be pleased.”

“You fucking—”

“Carlo says he can’t wait to see you and … oh, just a minute.” She paused, then went for it. “He says he wants you to know … he loves you.”

It was the right thing to say. She knew that, first by the silence that followed, and then by the sound of Debra’s voice when she finally answered. “If you hurt him,” she said, “this fucking husband of yours will—”

“Call me again in twenty-four hours. Don’t fail. Carlo is fine … until then. If you don’t call, or if I don’t get Dugan back healthy, I will hurt Carlo. And then I’ll deliver him back to Polly.”

“You—”

Kirsten switched off her phone. Her hands were shaking, but there’d be no more talk. Not for twenty-four hours.

*   *   *

She spent the rest of the night in the chair by the open door, nodding off from time to time, but never really sleeping.

In the morning the sun was shining, the temperature in the low sixties. She checked her voice mail and there’d been two calls, but each time the only thing recorded was a hang-up. She turned the phone off again, knowing it would infuriate Debra to have to follow orders. She uncuffed Carlo and got him out of the trunk and to the bathroom. He was so stiff he could hardly walk. He needed a shower, too, but she didn’t mention that.

When he came out she put him back in the trunk and cuffed him again. She wanted her own shower, but instead she went to the motel office and signed up for another night.

She drove to a McDonald’s for take-out breakfasts and a Saginaw newspaper, and from there to a mall. Neither the biggest store, a Target, nor anything else was open yet, and the huge parking lot was empty. She went to the far end and ate, and then removed the cuffs and let Carlo out so he could sit on the concrete curb and eat his breakfast. Then she took him for a walk along the edge of the lot, maybe fifty yards and back.

When she told him to get into the trunk he balked. “I don’t fucking have to do—”

She touched the baton to him. She hated doing that, but it was effective. When he recovered he got inside and she cuffed him again. She slammed the trunk lid and turned away, and warm food rose up in her throat without warning and she vomited her entire breakfast out onto the pavement.

*   *   *

According to the paper there were no clouds or rain in the forecast and they were in a full moon cycle, which meant there’d be several bright nights in a row. Both she and Debra were using cell phones, and neither knew where the other was calling from. Kirsten, though, knew where Debra lived.

She found the house again easily.

She approached from the west, so the house was on her left, on the north side of the gravel road. Everything looked about the same, with the chain still blocking entrance to the driveway. But now there was a full-size van—a Ford, she thought, maybe ten years old—parked in the backyard facing away from the house, as though backed up to the rear stoop or to the sloping cellar doors.

She was wearing a White Sox cap and as she got closer she pulled the bill low over her forehead and leaned away, as though playing with the radio. She was going forty-five or so, and she didn’t slow down. There were so few cars on this road, Debra might be especially suspicious of one that went by too fast or too slow. As she drove past the house heading toward the river, she glanced back and from that angle could see into the three-sided shed out near the evergreen trees. It wasn’t a shed for tractors or farm implements. It was a hangar, and sitting inside was a small airplane, the kind she thought might be used for crop dusting.

She kept going east, up the slight rise and then down the steeper slope to the river and across the bridge. Where the road ended with a T at the crossroad, she turned north. From her canvass of the scattered homes in the vicinity a week ago, she remembered driving past a deserted farm with a FOR SALE sign. Today she made a few wrong turns, but eventually found the place again. The only structures still standing were the house itself, its paint worn away and its windows broken out, and half of a barn. Even the Realtor’s sign looked old and ready to fall down.

She turned up a driveway being taken over by weeds, parked near the house, and got out of the car. She could hear Carlo calling to her from the trunk, but ignored him and retrieved a gun case from the floor of the back seat and opened it. The shotgun was a pump-action Remington 12-gauge short-barrel, with a Browning recoil suppressor custom-built into the stock and a tube magazine that held five shells. She had three additional five-packs, twenty shells in all, packed with double-O buckshot, standard police issue. Way too many, she hoped, even figuring the few she’d expend now in practice.

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later Kirsten was backing out onto the road again, the Remington unloaded and stowed in its case in the back seat. Until that day she hadn’t fired a 12-gauge since she was a cop, and then only during training sessions at the range. Now, despite the recoil supressor, her shoulder was sore, but she’d learned one important thing. Using that double-O buckshot, with nine .32-caliber pellets in each shell, from fifty yards away she was able to hit the side of a barn.

That would have to be good enough. The hard part now would be the wait, and putting up with Carlo for ten or twelve hours.