STONE FINISHED HIS LUNCH and pushed back from the table.
“I’m going to look for Sergeant Young,” he said.
“Take it easy, Stone,” Lance said. “He’s only been gone for an hour, and we know where he went. Relax and have some dessert.”
Stone tried to relax. “Ginny, how are you coming with Esme’s diary?”
“Slowly,” she replied. “I can go faster, if you don’t care if I destroy it.”
“Please do it as you see fit, Ginny.”
“It’s just that it’s all these thin sheets, and they’ve been mashed together by water and the pressure of the cover. If I use the heat from the hair dryer too much, they dry too fast and crumble.”
Lance spoke up. “Ginny, if it’s too difficult, I can send it back to Langley and let the experts have a go at it.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Stone said.
“You mean Holly doesn’t have time for that,” Ham said. It was the first time he had spoken during lunch.
“I can do it, Lance,” Ginny said, “but it has to be done slowly, and I don’t think your people at Langley could do it any faster. I know it would be nice to do this in a lab, to better preserve the diary as evidence, but we have a different priority here, and that’s to get Holly back as quickly as possible.”
Stone stood up. “I’m going to go call Tom Young and see if he’s all right.” He left the room.
Ham watched him go. “I think Stone is almost as tightly wound as I am.”
Stone came back. “I got his voice mail. I’m going to wait another half an hour, and then I’m going over to Caleb’s house.” He sat down and tried to eat the apple pie in front of him.
“There are dead spots on this island,” Lance said. “Maybe Tom is in one of those.”
The doorbell rang, and Stone got up and went to the front door. A moment later he came back into the kitchen with Sergeant Young.
“What happened over there?” Lance asked.
“Let’s take a look at those thermal images,” Young said.
Stone went to get them and spread them on the kitchen table.
“I searched the whole house,” Young said. “Caleb didn’t give me a hard time; he seemed to be happy for me to look around.” He tapped a finger on two of the sleeping figures. “This is the twins’ room,” he said, “and it would appear that they’re sleeping there. However, there’s a guest room one floor up, directly over the twins’ room, and Caleb says they had people sleeping there last night.”
“Who?” Stone asked.
“A couple named Bill and Julie Robertson from Boston. I checked, and there’s a phone listing there, and I got an answering machine. Caleb says they’re spending the whole summer cruising the coast in their sailboat and that they came in by sea yesterday and left the same way early this morning. He didn’t have the boat’s name or description, so I can’t ask the coast guard to look for it. I’ve got somebody checking the Massachusetts yacht registry for the information we need to launch a search.”
“So, we’re back where we started?” Stone asked.
“I wish to God we could nail down the twins on Nantucket and confirm the past four days of their alibi. I’m beginning to get the feeling we’re wasting valuable time on those boys.”
“Funny,” Stone said, “I’m getting the feeling that they are less and less of a waste of our time.”
HOLLY JERKED AWAKE, feeling pain. She felt it again; somebody had slapped her sharply across the face. Then she heard an odd, mechanical-sounding voice.
“Listen to me carefully,” it said. “I have decided to accept your offer for your freedom. I’m going to remove the tape over your mouth, and I want you to answer my questions. Say nothing else, just answer. Do you understand me?”
Holly nodded.
“My question is, what do you need to accomplish the transfer of funds?”
The tape was ripped off. Holly panted for a moment.
“Answer me.”
“I need a computer and an Internet connection.”
“That’s it?”
“That and for you to find a way to convince me, beyond any doubt, that the moment I complete the transaction, I will be freed.” She heard the rip of duct tape being torn, and a fresh strip was slapped over her mouth.
“I don’t know if I can convince you of my intentions,” the voice said, “but I will promise you this: If we can’t make this happen quickly, you will be dead in less than twenty-four hours.” She felt the man leave the room.
Holly felt less drugged than usual, and she forced herself to start planning. First, she had to convince the man that she would cooperate with him, to the extent that he would untie at least one hand. She could still feel the weight of the small 9 mm pistol on her belt under her sweatshirt, and if she could get at that, she would not hesitate to shoot anybody who stood in the way of her freedom.
For the first time, she began to feel something like hope.
She took deep breaths, sucking as much air as possible into her lungs, and her brain began to work.