EMILY’S FACE WAS GLUED to her pillow by a paste of dried blood. She lifted her head slowly, wondering why the pillowcase was pulling at her skin. Then she remembered the hot slash of the knife. She was about to scream at the image of horror she recalled, but she stopped the sound in her throat and instead prayed, Oh Jesus, oh sweet Jesus, what have I done?
She remembered that she had freed the crossbar of the headboard and had been able to slide the locked handcuffs off. She could have bolted into the ceiling and began her crawl to freedom. But they were still walking back and forth right over her head. They would certainly hear her pulling down the ceiling tiles. She had decided to wait until they went to bed.
Then she had heard Mike leave, banging the door angrily behind him. Maybe this was her chance. Maybe she should slam down one of the ceiling tiles and make a racket by knocking over the table and chair. That would bring Rita charging into the room. Emily was just as big as the other woman and probably a lot stronger. She would have the element of surprise working in her favor. She could overpower her jailer and then simply escape out the front door. But suppose Rita had a gun? Then there would be no struggle. All she would be able to do was watch helplessly while she was reshackled to something more durable than the bed frame. Maybe the water pipes under the bathroom sink. Then there would be no possibility of escape. Once again, she had made a terrible mistake in judgment. She had decided to wait.
Emily had realized the enormity of her mistake when Mike returned and Rita left the house. Now she was alone with the man who had promised to ravage and mutilate her. She had no doubt that he soon would be coming down the steps to deliver on at least part of his threats. That was when she had formulated her plan. Lie still. Pretend she was still tied to the bed. Do something to distract him so that he wouldn’t notice that the chains were hanging freely. Then, when he got close, crack his skull with the bedpost and lock him in the basement
It had been a good plan. It had come within one footstep of succeeding. But in the end, it had failed awfully. She had paid a terrible price.
Emily sat up slowly. Her jaw ached. Her ear was throbbing. Her knees and elbows were skinned from her fall down the stairs. She lifted each arm and kicked each leg to make sure that the muscles were still working. Lastly, she felt for her ear, and recoiled at the touch. It ended abruptly in a ridge of dried blood that was attached to her hair. There was a small mirror in the bathroom, but she was afraid to see how badly she was damaged. She had to keep focused on her escape.
She listened carefully. The house was completely quiet. There were no footsteps nor rumbles of water running through the pipes. Her keepers were asleep, probably two floors above her head.
She tied the torn corners of the nightgown into a knot, keeping the ripped neckline from falling down around her arms. The gown almost fit, giving her freedom to move. She folded the legs of the table, carried it into the bathroom, and set it up directly under the ceiling tile that she had been able to pop out so easily. Then she went back for the folding chair and used it like a step stool so that she could climb silently up onto the table.
When she raised her hands, the free ends of the shackles swung together, rattling like the rumble of an anchor chain. She paused with her hands over her head, listening for any response from upstairs, and then breathed in relief when there was none. You’re panicking, she chastised herself. The sound had been hardly audible, amplified by her own fear. She looped the chains around her arms and then pulled the sleeves of the nightgown over them to keep them silent. The ceiling tile moved away easily.
She was staring into heavy darkness. Far ahead there was a faint trace of ambient light; probably a distant streetlight shining through the window that had illuminated her goal during the day. Emily waited a few seconds until her eyes adjusted enough for her to make out the edges of the rafters. She reached as far forward as she could and dragged herself up into the narrow channel. When her waist reached the edge of the ceiling opening, she let her weight settle on the top of the tiles. The suspended ceiling groaned under her, but she didn’t sense that it was sagging. It was going to hold up.
She started forward, but the neck of the nightgown pulled her to an abrupt halt. When she pushed backward with her knees, she was pulling the gown back instead of forcing herself ahead. Emily lifted up and pulled the hem up to her thighs. The tiles were like sandpaper against the welts left by her fall.
In a matter of seconds, she was breathless. The space was much too small for her to get to her hands and knees. Instead, she had to twist her body completely just to edge her knee or elbow ahead a faction of an inch. The effort was exhausting, particularly in the hot, dead air that was trapped under the floor. She was able to twist her head back and catch a glimpse of the space that she had climbed through. It was only a few inches beyond her toes. It had taken all her effort to move just the length of her body.
She gulped down air and then pushed ahead. She tried to find a productive body rhythm. Press herself hard against the right rafter, advance her left knee and elbow until they were grinding against the splintery wood, and then roll to her left as she pushed forward with the knee and elbow. But there was no way she could find a pace. Her knees had to be fitted carefully over each of the ceiling frames. Otherwise, she would be cutting herself to shreds. The rafters were rough-hewn. Splinters gripped the fabric of the gown and stuck into her bare skin. Every movement had to be executed slowly and precisely. There was no way she could hurry, nor any alternative to the exhausting effort.
The light ahead seemed a bit brighter, perhaps because she was getting closer, but probably because her vision was acclimating to the environment. She could see the open rafters where the ceiling ended, giving her plenty of space to drop down into the other room. Just that flicker of encouragement was enough to keep her struggling forward.
There was a sudden roar, starting far off and tumbling toward her like an approaching train. Water was running in the drainpipes. One of them was awake and Emily tried to listen through the cascade for the sound of footsteps. There was an instant when all was quiet again. Then the floorboards directly above her head groaned.
She lay perfectly still, holding her breath as if even the slightest movement of air would give her away. Footsteps shuffled above her. The refrigerator door creaked as it swung open and then seemed to explode as it was slammed shut. There were more footsteps; his, she thought. In her mind, she plotted his route back and forth across the kitchen, tensing when he seemed to be moving in the direction of the basement door. If he came down the stairs, there would be no escape for her. He could beat her to either end of the tunnel in which she was now trapped and be waiting in rage when she finally lowered herself out of the ceiling.
The refrigerator creaked open again and once more there was the loud slam when it was closed. Footsteps sounded directly over her head and then diminished as he climbed back up the stairs. Emily let herself breathe normally for a few seconds. She blinked the perspiration out of her eyes. Then she wiggled ahead, gaining an inch at a time toward the faint fight ahead. Her shoulders ached. The muscles in her legs were verging on spasm. She could feel fire where her skinned knees had been rubbed raw.
Slowly, painfully, she was approaching her goal and now she could begin to weigh the problems she would face when she reached the other room and the ceiling that was supporting her came to an end. She would enter the open space head first, with no room to turn herself around. That would mean dropping from the ceiling height to the floor with nothing to break her fall but her outstretched arms.
She thought of alternatives. Perhaps, when she reached the end, she could lift out the last ceiling tile. Then, if she could manage to cross the open space with just the framing for support, she would leave herself room to lower her feet and get herself turned around. Or maybe the top of the wall that framed out the space she was escaping would give her a handhold. Then she would have something to hang from while she dragged her feet out from the narrow space over the ceiling. She couldn’t be sure what she would find, but just thinking of the possibilities was a distraction from her agonizingly slow passage. Emily figured that she had been in the ceiling for about half an hour and was still only halfway to her destination.
Again and again she paused, stretching the pain out of her limbs and gasping down swallows of the still, dusty air. At one point, she exploded with a sneezing fit and then lay absolutely motionless while she listened to hear if her keepers had been aroused. At last, her outstretched fingers locked over the framing that held the last tile in place. She was able to drag her head out into the open.
She was peering down into a small room, bounded on one side by the studs of her framed-out prison and on two other sides by concrete walls that she took to be the foundation walls. The fourth side was a metal fire door.
Directly below her was a small heating unit. Hot water pipes rose from its boiler and disappeared through the flooring above. Directly across from her was the source of the sunlight she had seen during the day and now the hazy moonlight that had been her goal for the past hour. A small window, high on the wall, opened out to a window well. It looked to be about two foot wide, and maybe eighteen inches deep; plenty of room for her to wiggle through if it could be opened and if she could find something to stand on so that she could raise herself up to the sill.
She stretched out to the heating pipe and found it warm but not too hot to touch. Clutching it in both hands, she dragged her body across the last ceiling frame. She dropped one leg and then let the other slip off the edge. Her body cartwheeled, tearing her hands from the pipe and sending her crashing down to the floor. He legs buckled and she sprawled out onto her back. She lay still for a moment, taking inventory of her pain. Then she smiled. A nasty fall, but not much worse than many of the dives she had taken on the tennis court. Nothing was broken and she had escaped from her cell.
Emily eased to her feet. She listened to make sure that the sound of her fall had gone unnoticed. Then she went to the door and gently grasped the knob. But it wouldn’t turn. The door was locked from the other side.
She bent low and looked for the locking mechanism in the minute crack between the door and the frame. Then she dropped down to her raw knees to look under the door. But there was nothing to see. There was no trace of light from the other side. The lock seemed heavy. She wouldn’t be able to wiggle the door open.
She felt herself beginning to tremble and had to struggle to get hold of her nerves. Then she waved her arms through the darkness until she made contact with a pull cord that was hanging from an overhead bulb. The light would certainly shine through the window and, even with the well, would be visible from outside. But her jailers were probably still asleep. And even if one of them were awake, the odds were that their bedroom would be on a different side of the house. Emily had to know exactly where she was and what she had to work with. She pulled the string and light flooded the room.
It was a furnace room, accessed from outside by the locked door that probably led to the garage. There was the small, squatting furnace and a tall, thin water heater, surrounded by a maze of cross-connected copper pipes. An oil line came out of the concrete floor and bent into the face of the burner. A round, sheet metal flue disappeared through the wall a few feet over the door. Other than that, the room was empty. There was nothing she could use to pry at the door jam. No tools that she might use to knock the bolts out of the door hinges. Worse, there was nothing that she could climb on. No workbench, nor cartons, and certainly not a ladder. When she went to the window, she could just manage to curl her fingertips over the sill. With such a weak handhold, Emily couldn’t even lift her toes from the floor.
She spent the next fifteen minutes in a frantic search for things that she might put to use. She tugged on the pipes to see if a section could be pulled free. She tried to lift the small firebox door from the boiler. She even tried to tip the hot water heater so that she could free one of the bricks on which it rested. But everything was secure.
Emily stood in the middle of the barren room, battered, barefoot and clad only in the ripped nightgown. She had been clawing her way forward for more than half an hour and yet she was less than twenty feet from the spot where her broken bed stood. She had escaped her prison cell only to lock herself in an another cell. She had freed herself from her tormentor, but all she had really done was given him a new reason for his terrifying anger. She felt herself choking on her own frustration.
One of the handcuffs dropped down from under the sleeve of her gown. Emily stared dumbly at the eighteen-inch length of chain with the closed manacle hanging from its end. She tugged at the other sleeve, freeing the second chain. Her eyes scanned the heavy metal extensions of her arm and she grasped the chains just below the cuffs that fastened them to her wrists. A weary smile crossed her lips and then she pulled the string to douse the light that was shining out into the window well. She wasn’t beaten yet.
Andrew Hogan caught up with Helen Restivo at an all-night diner, where she was having the standard field breakfast of a doughnut and a cup of coffee.
“Just the coffee,” he told the waitress as he slid into the booth.
“Smart call,” Helen told him as she pushed her partly eaten doughnut away. “They get worse with the years.”
She filled him in on the street activity. The State Troopers were doing the most efficient thing by talking with all the street toughs and lowlifes who worked the neighborhood. It made sense that any newcomers would be thoroughly cased as potential burglary victims or as targets for pension check and social security rip-offs. Someone must have noticed them.
Her hirelings were doing the gumshoe work, showing photographs to taxi drivers, gas station attendants, and convenience store managers. The police photo lab had printed up shots of the two that had been arbitrarily retouched. Rita appeared with hair of varying lengths and shades while Mike was in both clean-shaven and bearded versions. It was the clean-shaven Mike, without the moustache, that the owner of the stolen car had recognized. Two people had identified shorthaired versions of Rita.
“We’re going door to door selling magazine subscriptions,” Helen reported. “I feel as if we’re standing right on top of them. It’s amazing that we haven’t had a hit by now.”
“What about the troopers?” Andrew asked as a cup was set in front of him.
“Nothing at all,” she answered. “Apparently our couple are experienced enough not to make waves in a community. As far as the local scum knows, they don’t even exist.”
He glanced at his watch. “Almost six,” he mumbled absently. Then he turned to Helen. “So what do you think?”
“I don’t want to be grim.”
Andrew nodded. “That’s what I think, too. She has to be dead by now. And to tell you the truth, I feel more than a little guilty.”
Helen seemed surprised. Andrew Hogan wasn’t the kind of policeman who let himself get emotionally involved with anyone. In his world, both the victims and the criminals were simply data. With all the suffering he dealt with, indifference was the only way to survive.
He noticed her interest. “I’ve been thinking that if I had left Walter Childs alone, he might well have saved her. He had two chances to pay the ransom. Either one might have brought her. I screwed up both of them.”
“We can’t always succeed, but we have to always try,” she quoted from one of the inspirational speeches he used to give to the troops.
“Mindless idealism,” he answered.
“Besides, if we’re going to start blaming ourselves, then I have to come in for a share,” Helen told him. “It was my team that missed whoever was waiting in the airport at Grand Cayman. And it was my people who lost the guy in the shopping mall. I’d say that I was more to blame than you.”
“Okay,” Andrew agreed.
“Backstabbing son of a bitch,” Helen accused. They both laughed. The waitress poured seconds on the coffee and picked up the remnants of Helen’s doughnut.
“It’s not that I screwed up,” Hogan went on. “It’s that maybe I didn’t care enough about the consequences.”
“ ‘You can’t let yourself care.’ You must have said that a thousand times.”
“So maybe I was wrong a thousand times.”
Helen’s expression was puzzled. “What’s with you?”
He shook his head. “Nothing important. But I want you to pull your people off Walter Childs.”
“What? You know what he might try to do.”
“Maybe he will. It’s his wife.”
“Probably he will, and it’s the bank’s money. You have to be kidding.”
His expression showed that he wasn’t. “Right away. Get in touch with whoever you have watching the Childs house and tell him to take the rest of the day off.”
She pushed her cup away and took the cell phone out of her purse. “Andrew, why are you doing this?”
He turned his hands up in a gesture of ignorance. “Walter said that I never made a mistake with a woman I loved and had to live my life regretting it. I guess I’m beginning to understand that something like that would be awful.”
Helen shook her head slowly. “Why would you listen to the philosophy of Walter Childs? He’s a heartless bastard. Even if he gets his wife back, he’s going to dump her for this year’s model. For all we know, he’s going to pay the hundred million to himself.”
“Indulge me,” he said, pointing to her telephone. “Make the call.”
She was angry as she dialed. “Maybe you’re letting him send the bank’s money to that tennis stud. He’ll never get his wife back.”
Andrew gestured again toward the phone.
“Or to Mitchell whatever-his-name-is. He gets a hundred million he doesn’t need. And you get canned in disgrace.” Helen heard the voice of the man she was calling. She put her hand over the phone. “Please, Andrew. Don’t do this. You’re putting your own neck in a noose to ease Walter Childs’s conscience. For God’s sake, he doesn’t deserve it. He’s been screwing young ladies who can’t afford to say no.”
Hogan pointed impatiently toward the phone. “I’m not worried about his conscience. I’m thinking about my own.”
Helen shook her head in despair and gave the order. She had to repeat it before her man really believed what she was asking.
He paid the bill and then walked her to her car. She was going back to ringing doorbells. He was headed to the State Trooper barracks, hoping that the professional police had turned up something. He held her door open and then bent through the window.
“Helen, you knew what I meant, didn’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
“When I said I had never made a mistake with a woman and lived to regret it? Because it’s not true. I did make a mistake with you.”
Helen made a point of looking directly into his eyes. “The answer is still no, Andrew. There’s no way I’m ever going to get tied up with someone who feels responsible for me.”
The automatic window closed in his face and the car pulled away.
Walter was in a daze, numbed by the horrors of the past week. It was not that he had forgotten the miscalculations and blunders that he had made in his dealings with Emily’s jailer, nor that he could block out the thought of the pain he had probably caused her. It was simply a case of overload. There were too many tragedies for him to deal with rationally. So many of the structures that supported his version of reality had been undermined that he felt like the pathetic victim in a bad dream. He had lost control of his fate. All he could do was hope that he survived until the sunlight woke him in the morning. And then he would go on from there.
His family was finished. He had killed his wife and even if she managed to survive her ordeal, she would never forgive him. His children despised him. Somehow, he had nourished the hope that he could maintain a civil relationship with his old life even as he started a new one. But now he understood that could never be.
But even his new life was in jeopardy. He had broken faith with Angela, doubting her explanation of the events in Grand Cayman. And, if she were lying, then it was certain that she had broken faith with him. He loved her as much as ever, but he was no longer certain that she really loved him.
His career was in ruins. The chairman would already have good reason to doubt his judgment. And once he reached his office, there would be ample evidence to doubt his honesty. He was going to have to learn to live without the big office that he had coveted.
Walter drove out of the tunnel onto the West Side streets, headed uptown, and then cut across Central Park. The park road was strangely empty and the footpaths inviting to the Sunday morning joggers. The air was still, the grass tinted to a fresh spring green, and there were buds on the flowering trees. For a few minutes, there was beauty in Walter’s dismal world and he couldn’t help thinking how hopeful his life had seemed only a few days before. All he could do was salvage what was left. In a few minutes, he would collect the ransom from InterBank and pay it into the private account in Zurich. Maybe this would save Emily. Maybe it would save him. He was determined that this time there would be no tricks. This time he would be calling the shots, not Andrew Hogan.
He had thought over and over again of Angela’s comment that Hogan couldn’t possibly be causing more problems if he were trying. “Is there any reason why he’d want to destroy you?” she had asked. Any number of reasons, Walter had decided. He could count a dozen slights that he had inflicted on the former police commissioner without stretching his memory. Petty things, certainly. Correspondence ignored. Changes to procedure made without consulting Andrew’s department. Greetings in the elevator that were condescending rather than sincere. Hogan was a proud man who had reached the pinnacle of his career. Even the most accidental slights from the princes of banking could seem like expressions of disdain for his humble beginnings.
But none of this would justify his placing an innocent woman in danger. And that was what Angela had implied. She thought that Hogan was impeding Emily’s rescue just to keep Walter swinging in the wind. Unless they could find some other way to free Emily, there was no question that Walter would have to pay the ransom. And that, Hogan knew as well as anyone, would be the end of the Walter’s banking career.
He parked his car, walked to the bank’s main doors, and signed in with the security guards. The overhead lights were on throughout the executive floor, acknowledging that global banking had become a seven-day affair. Walter walked past Karl Elder’s suite of offices where two of the secretaries were at their desks, jumping at each command that boomed through his open inner door. Walter walked quietly by, trying to pass unnoticed. Karl always had time for long stories about his global affairs, boring at best and infuriating when there was work to be done. There was no time for stories now.
He was relieved that none of his staff had come in. Certainly, once he closed his door no one would bother him. But he was about to violate the trust of all his associates and he knew it would be easier if they were nowhere in sight. He slipped his jacket off and threw it at the sofa. Then he pulled down his tie, opened his shirt collar, and rolled his chair up to his computer terminal. At the touch of a key, his monitor lit up and after a few dialogue exchanges with the security menu, he typed in his personal authorization code. There were only eight code numbers that opened every door in the InterBank local area network, giving complete access to every file in the bank’s information vaults. Walter’s was one of them.
In rapid sequence, he opened the accounts in which he had parked the bank’s funds, transferring their balances into a single account. With each transaction, the amount in the designated account rose, until it finally flashed $100,000,000.00. In effect, he had packed the entire ransom into a single bag.
The “bag” was set down in a corner of the screen while a new series of communications began. Walter logged onto a high-speed data link that the bank owned, actually a fiber path to an earth station in Atlanta, and an uplink to an equatorial satellite that was in a parking orbit off the coast of Brazil. The satellite’s footprint covered the eastern two thirds of the United States, the northern half of Latin America, the North Atlantic, and Western Europe. One of Fassen Bank’s rooftop antennas was aimed directly at it.
Walter typed in the routing code that would link his account with the target account in Fassen Bank. Once again, the system demanded a code number, this one a special authorization required before any funds beyond a threshold amount could leave InterBank. Walter responded with a new number, generated by his secret cipher, which appeared as asterisks on the computer screens. He raised the ransom “bag” into the space reserved for the transaction source and then ordered the system to send.
Walter sat for a full minute, staring at the face of the screen. With a few keystrokes he had just changed his life forever and the enormity of the event was weighing on him. Technically, he was a thief. He had just robbed a bank. Not embezzled, or defrauded, or misappropriated, nor any of the gentle words used to describe white-collar crime. But robbed, just as if he had gone up to the teller’s window with a note and pointed the barrel of a shotgun through the glass. He had gone to the vaults, tossed the money into a sack, and carried it out of the bank building.
There was no doubt that he would be caught and probably no later than noon the following day. Karl Elder would notice the large transfer and come to ask for the details. If InterBank had just enriched Fassen Bank, he would want to take full credit for his generosity. Mitchell Price would find the transaction printed out as an exception to one of his computer security procedures. He would want a full explanation. Sometime before noon, there would be a call from the president’s office. “Mr. Hollcroft wonders if you could spare him a moment?” the executive secretary’s voice would ask politely. And then, after the usual small talk about their weekends, Jack Hollcroft would say, “Walter, you sent money to Fassen yesterday and I’ll be damned if I can remember what’s involved.”
There would be inescapable guilt, but there would also be a measure of understanding. “It must have been a terrible ordeal, Walter. And how is Emily? Home? Feeling well? Nothing is more important than her welfare.”
But, of course, there was policy. An institution like InterBank had to follow procedures. That was the final defense for any mistake or transgression. Not following procedure eliminated any ambiguity that surrounded a misdeed. It was proof of guilt.
There would be nothing personal. No hard feelings and certainly no cries of anguish. After all, the damn money was insured by policies that were spread across the entire global reinsurance industry. But there would be no doubt that Walter had violated policy, which was the ultimate example of poor judgment. His was certainly not the hand that the directors would want on the tiller.
Walter started to button his shirt collar and then realized that proper bank attire was no longer important. He left it open and instead of pulling up the knot in his tie, he dragged it down and slipped it over his head. The lobby security guards couldn’t believe their eyes when he stepped out of the elevator in what appeared to be a sports shirt, his jacket folded casually over his arm.
He crossed the street, reclaimed his car from the parking garage, and drove uptown toward Angela’s apartment.
* * *
Emily sat on her haunches, looking at the print of the window formed by the stream of sunlight on the opposite wall. She was exhausted, from her climb through the space over the ceiling and then from spending the night pacing her tiny prison cell. But she couldn’t let herself sleep. Not when one of them would be coming down at any moment.
She had expected them long ago, when the daylight had first crept through the window. She had heard someone—Rita, she thought—moving around in the kitchen. It was hard to tell what was happening. In her new room she was no longer directly under the kitchen and the sounds were much harder to interpret. But she had guessed that it was Rita fixing breakfast and had braced herself for the onslaught she could expect once she came down the stairs and found her missing.
But then there had been voices. She heard continuous murmurs, interrupted by staccatos of shouting. And then the shouting had become continuous. At one point, she had been able to make out Mike saying, “Nobody’s goin’ to call! If they didn’t call on Friday, they’re not goin’ to call now.” The haggling grew more heated until Rita’s voice cut through with, “Maybe they didn’t find the van. Maybe no one is looking for us.” Seconds later, Mike had shouted, “You said yourself it was time to cut. Let’s just leave her and get out of here.”
There was a long period of quiet movement in the rooms above. The little bit of conversation was too soft for Emily to hear. She wondered about Mike’s insistence that “they just leave her.” More than likely, he didn’t want Rita to know what he had done to her. She prayed that Rita would agree, because if they left without checking on her, then she could use the swing of her chains to break the small cellar window. Then she could scream until someone came to her rescue.
“I’m bringing her some breakfast,” Rita’s voice shouted from above.
“No!” Mike yelled immediately from another part of the house. “Leave her. We’ve got to get out of here.”
She heard the door open and then Rita’s footsteps on the stairs in the other room.
“Don’t go down there!” Mike’s voice yelled. There was the pounding of his running footsteps.
“Jesus!” It was Rita screaming from the other room. “Jesus, what did you do to her?”
“Don’t go down,” Mike repeated. His footsteps pounded through the kitchen.
Rita’s voice yelled, “Her bed is all bloody. What did you do with her?”
Then Mike’s voice, “Where the fuck is she?”
“What did you do, cut her up?”
“She was here, in the bed. I left her here.”
“Drowning in her own blood, you goddamn thug?”
“The ceilin’. She went out through the bathroom ceilin’…”
“It looks more like you stuffed her down a drain. What the fuck is the matter with you?”
“Will you shut up and help me find her?”
“She couldn’t have gone anywhere. That ceiling just leads to the furnace room. What in hell did you do to her?”
“She’s in the furnace room,” Mike yelled and she heard his footsteps racing up the stairs.
Emily moved quickly and took up her position, pressed to the wall behind the locked door. It was only seconds until she heard hurried footsteps outside and then the sound of the garage door opening. She set her weight as if she were positioning to hit a hard, cross-court backhand. Her body was coiled and her fingers were wrapped around the shackle chains that hung from her wrists.
A dead bolt slid on the outside of the door. The knob turned and the heavy door swung open. Mike stepped into the room, leading with the pistol that he held in his hand.
She started her backhand, beginning low near the floor and whipping her arm around and upward in a topspin motion. The chain followed like a whip the handcuff at its end picking up momentum. It was nearly whistling when it struck Mike on the side of the head with a sharp, metallic crack. His head snapped sideways and the gun clattered to the cement floor. Then he sagged against the hot water tank and slid down the face of the tank onto his knees. His vacant eyes circled toward Emily and tried to focus.
This time both chains came from directly overhead. She had jumped out next to him and was bringing both hands down as if she were aiming a sledge at a log splitter. The cuffs hit the tall wave across the crown of his head. Mike didn’t make a sound. He simply fell forward and landed on his face.
Emily bent down and picked up the gun. She was holding it in both hands when she stepped through the door and out into the garage and came face-to-face with Rita. The two women stared at each other.
“Turn around,” Emily ordered.
Rita was shocked by Emily’s battered condition. She reached out to help, but stopped suddenly when she saw the gun, its muzzle bouncing around in Emily’s trembling hands.
“Be careful with that. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Emily laughed at the irony. She had been hurt terribly. “Turn around and walk slowly back up into the house. I’ll be right behind you.”
Rita hesitated. “You won’t shoot me.”
“I don’t want to,” Emily said in precisely clipped words. “But if I have to leave you behind me, I’m going to make sure that you can’t come after me.” She steadied the gun and then lowered it until it was aimed at Rita’s knees.
“No,” Rita said instantly. “I’ll go.” She turned slowly out of the garage and went to the steps that led down from the side of the house. Emily followed a few paces behind.
The house was an old, wooden-frame structure, facing the blank back wall of an industrial building that was directly across the street. Farther down the road, there were a few other houses, all tired and in need of repair. Mike and Rita could have shouted at each other forever and Emily might have screamed her head off. There was no one close enough to care.
The layout was pretty much as she had pictured it. The basement room where she was held had once opened out into the garage. But that opening, along with the heating plant, had been walled off, creating a separate furnace room that accessed the garage. When she had crawled over the drop ceiling, she had found her way into the other part of the basement.
Rita went into the house, holding the storm door just long enough for Emily to catch it. They crossed a hallway with a linoleum floor and then walked into a sparsely furnished living room.
“Where’s the telephone?” Emily demanded.
“In there!” Rita nodded toward the kitchen and Emily waved her ahead with the barrel of the gun. She went in slowly and hesitated near the door.
“All the way in. Get over there. By the stove.”
She did as she was told, clearing the center of the room.
Emily glanced around and spotted the door that opened to the basement steps. She circled around close to the walls, keeping as much distance as possible between herself and the other woman. She slipped the bolt, eased the door open, and then moved back into the center of the kitchen.
“Go downstairs into the basement,” Emily said. “And close the door behind you.”
Rita moved carefully, never taking her eyes off the gun. “Listen, I’m not the one who hurt you. I was just watching you.” Her voice oozed sympathy. Rita was a con artist for any occasion.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to lock that door, call the police, and give them this address. Then I’m going to sit down and wait. But if either of you come up into the room, I’m going to do my best to shoot you.”
Rita was in the doorway. “What about Mike?” she asked. “Is he going to be all right?”
“You know what, Rita? I don’t give a damn. And neither should you.” Emily reached across her and slammed the door shut. She reached for the bolt.
Suddenly she was slammed back against the wall, the pistol driven into her stomach so that it knocked her breath away. The door had snapped back, into her face, and right behind it came Rita, moving like an athlete. She grabbed the gun and tore it out of Emily’s hands, sending it skidding across the kitchen floor. Then she took Emily around the neck and began banging her head against the wall.
It took Emily a long second to react. As soon as she had closed the door, Rita had hurled it open from the other side. Before she knew what had hit her, she was being pounded. Her rage flashed and she swung her hands up inside Rita’s arms, grabbed her face, and then pushed her thumbs into her eyes. Rita pulled away, screaming in pain, giving Emily the room she needed to hurl a roundhouse right squarely into Rita’s jaw. Then she pushed with both hands, driving the shrieking woman back through the open door. But before she could slam it shut, Rita came charging back, this time with her head down. She flung Emily backward, away from the door and out into the kitchen. For an instant, they stood on opposite sides of the room, staring furiously at each other. Simultaneously, they saw the discarded pistol that lay between them.
Emily moved first and dove toward the gun. Her hand was reaching out for the weapon when her fingers suddenly pulled up short. Rita had leaped down beside her and caught the shackle chain that was dangling from her wrist. Emily tried to get to her feet, but Rita held the chain and pulled her back down to her knees. She twisted Emily over onto her back, took the length of chain in both hands, and began forcing the links down onto Emily’s throat.
It was a struggle of strength for which Emily was poorly matched. Rita was up on her knees so that she could lean her weight across the chain. Emily was on her back, able to generate little resistance. The links were pressing into her flesh and against the hard edge of her windpipe. She gagged as she tried to scream. All the strength she could muster wasn’t enough to back the chain off her neck.
Emily let go with her free hand, taking all of Rita’s choking pressure. Instead of continuing the losing struggle, she swung the free chain and handcuff into the murderous face that was high above her. Rita struggled through the first blow, resuming her chokehold after it released for a split second. But the second blow hit into her eye and she let out a scream. One hand flew up to her face, giving Emily freedom to swing another blow. This time the iron cuff tore across Rita’s nose. Both hands went to her face, letting Emily grab the chain that had been pressing on her throat and quickly force it under Rita’s chin. Their roles changed as Rita lost her balance and fell heavily from her knees onto her side. Emily spun around on the floor to open some distance between them. She kicked out viciously, leaving her opponent in a helpless ball. Then she scrambled to the gun, snatched it up, and struggled to her feet She stood wobbling for an instant and then fell back against the wall.
“Don’t move,” she managed when Rita tried to lift herself to her feet. “Stay right there or I’ll start firing. I swear to God, I will.” Rita settled back and sat on the floor. Emily stood watching her, the gun wavering as she panted for breath. From the corner of her eye, she spotted the telephone, mounted on the wall on the other side of the doorway. She began to slide toward it, keeping the gun oriented in Rita’s general direction. Emily knew that she couldn’t aim precisely, but she was sure she could hit her target at the close range between them. There was no doubt in her mind that she had the courage to fire and to keep firing until Rita was no longer moving. She eased past the open doorway.
There was a fraction of an instant when she thought she was aware of Mike, a sense of his presence or possibly the sound of his breath. But long before she could react, an arm swung around her neck. A hand reached across her and grabbed for the pistol. She tried to swing the gun at her attacker. A shot exploded in her face. There was a thud over her head as the bullet tore into the ceiling, sending down a shower of plaster. Then the gun was ripped out of her hand.
She flew forward, crashing into the kitchen sink. When she turned, Mike was a distance away, still in the doorway and leaning against the jam. His face was contorted in rage. A web of bloodstains trickled out of his hair and across his face. The handle of the gun dangled from his grip.
“Shoot the bitch,” Rita groaned from her seat on the floor.
“Yeah … yeah …” Mike promised between gasps for air. “But not here … down in the washroom … where the blood won’t matter…”
He didn’t bother to turn the gun in his hand so that he could hold the grip and put his finger across the trigger. Instead he stood away from the door jamb, wobbled for a moment while he found his balance, then stepped across to Emily and twisted her hair between his fingers. Without a word, he began dragging her to the open basement door.
She knew she should flail out with her hands or turn herself around so that she could aim a kick. Anything that would keep him from dragging her to her execution. But there was no struggle left in her. She had used up every bit of her strength and all her will to fight. She moved along meekly to the top of the stairs.
The telephone rang.
Mike froze. His grip on her hair relaxed and his labored breathing seemed to stop. Rita, who had been trying to pick herself up, hesitated with one knee still on the floor. Emily looked at the phone as if she expected it to begin talking.
It rang again. Mike looked from Rita over to the phone and then back to her again. He listened and with a quick jerk of his head ordered her to answer it. She moved quickly and lifted the handset during the third ring.
“Yes?” There was fear in her voice. She listened for several seconds. “Yes,” she said again and then listened in silence for half a minute. “No. No need to repeat anything. I understand.” She put the phone back on the hook and then stood and stared at it as if she expected it to ring again.
“What?” Mike demanded.
“We have to let her go. Then we pick up the rest of our money.” She and Mike stared at each other.
“Fuck it,” Mike finally managed. “We owe this bitch.”
“We let her go tonight and we pick up five thousand tomorrow,” Rita corrected.
“No. We finish her so there’s no witness. And then we get our asses out of here. I’m not leavin’ her to have the last laugh on me.”
“She’ll be laughing at both of us if we’ve been through all this and don’t have anything to show for it. And her remembering us won’t mean a thing. Sooner or later they’re going to open that van and figure out who we are.”
He turned the gun in his hand and then pushed the muzzle against Emily’s cheek. “I don’t want to leave her behind. It’s too dangerous.”
“And I don’t want to walk away from five grand. That’s just too stupid. Look, we drop her off tonight and as soon as they see she’s okay, they tell us where to pick up the money.”
“There won’t be any more money!” He shouted at her.
“Not if they don’t get her back. That was the deal and that’s the way they’re playing it. You said there were probably some heavy hitters behind this. I don’t think it would be safe to cross them.”
Mike shook with frustration. Then he took a deep breath and screamed. “Ahhhh!” He shook his grip on Emily’s hair as if he hoped to tear her head off. Then, when his venting was over, he flung her through the open cellar door. She grabbed the banister and spun with the momentum of her own weight, but managed to keep her footing. When she heard the door slam above her, she slumped in defeat on the bottom step, back in the room she had escaped.