“FIRST,” HE SAID, “get rid of that old lady who’s with you. Send her back to the office. Whatever you told her, tell her you changed your mind.”
I looked around. “You’ve got eyes on me?”
“Remote camera, dude. I’m fifty miles away. Lose the broad right now or Lucy gets a broken finger.”
I stopped dead and held up the phone. “This’s her,” I said to the woman. “My wife. She and the other girl aren’t in the room right now, so I don’t need to go in.”
She shrugged. “Suit yerself. You need something or want another room, you know where to find me.” She U-turned and went back to the office.
I felt my heart fluttering. My vision darkened for a few seconds. Kyle had Lucy and Harper. They were fifty miles away. “She’s gone,” I said into the phone.
“I see that. And I see you’ve got a red Sequoia. That’s good. You’ll be needing that four-wheel drive.”
I didn’t respond to that. I was having trouble getting enough air.
“Where’s Jake?” Kyle asked.
“Renown Medical, last I heard. The police have him. Kidnapping and murder are against the law.”
“How’d you get past him? He told me he and Joe had you guys in that basement.”
It’s unlikely he would know what condition Jake was in. “I got the upper hand, that’s all. I sucker punched him. Guess I hit him kinda hard. He might have a concussion. I think they were doing tests.”
A lengthy silence. Then, “I don’t see that happening, you handling Jake one-on-one. No way, Sally, not with you cabled to that wall the way I told him.”
Sally?
“But it is what it is. I’ll have to ask him,” Kyle went on. “I might be able to see him at the hospital. I thought about it. Cops don’t have a thing on me.”
Not yet, I thought. He didn’t know Sue Harvey had ID’ed him as the guy who’d asked about the Monroe Street house several days ago. When that came out, Kyle would be número uno on the FBI’s to-do list.
“Listen up,” Kyle said. “I’ll tell you how this is gonna play out. If it doesn’t work out exactly like I tell you, Lucy and this Harper chick are dead. You got that?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got the recording, the video?”
Now what? Say no and possibly get the girls killed? Or lie and maybe get them killed anyway, but later?
No good choices, but I chose later.
“Time’s wasting, Sally,” he said. “Say something.”
“Yes,” I replied. “I’ve got it. It’s on a flash drive. I don’t have any way of knowing if it’s the only copy, though. For all I know, that girl, Cathy, the younger and smarter of the two, could’ve made a hundred copies.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m in this for two mil, then I’m out of the country. All I need is the video. Did you look at it?”
How to answer? No didn’t seem likely, so I said yes.
“What’s on it?” Kyle asked.
I’d given that some thought on the drive from Reno to Tonopah and added it up. Two prom-princess babysitters, $500, danger, big$$, and a video came up Carl Haas, MD and blackmail. At least one of the girls babysat the Haases’ kids. If Carl Haas were caught up in a big scandal, Sylvia Haas could kiss that VP running mate thing goodbye, no hope of ending up a heartbeat away from the presidency. It made sense. People into power would kill to keep it or get more. It’s how dictators see the world. D.C. was full of it. Anyone wanting to be a U.S. senator was automatically unfit for the job. Need proof? Look at the senate.
I took a chance and said, “The lieutenant governor’s husband and those two girls. It’s pretty raw.”
“Figured it had to be something like that. Okay, here’s how it’s gonna work. I’ve got cameras in a few places. If I see a bunch of black Suburbans, police, anything like that, I off these two and split, take my chances.
“At 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, you’re going to turn left off U.S. 95 exactly 34.6 miles northwest of Tonopah to a place called Silver Peak on road number 265. I’ll have eyes on that intersection. Be there right at ten, not before, not after. If I see anyone but you in that red Sequoia, the girls die right then and I’m gone.
“Fifteen point two miles south on 265 you’ll see a dirt track to the right that goes up into the Silver Peak Range. Four miles up that track it forks. Take the left-hand fork and follow it into the hills about sixteen miles. It’ll wind all over but no more forks. Twenty miles from 265 you’ll see a cabin in a clearing. End of the line. Stop at a log across the trail about a hundred feet from the cabin and get out.
“Here’s where it gets interesting, dude. Now we’ll see how much you love your cute little wife. You get out of that SUV and strip, and I mean all the way down to bare metal, no jockeys, not even socks. There’s not going to be any pepper spray in the back waistband of your underwear, no weapons, no wire, nothing but that flash drive in your left hand or I’ll blow you away. I’ll be in the doorway. The girls will be in the cabin in handcuffs, hand and foot. I’ll have a .454 Casull revolver with a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel aimed at you as you walk toward me. If I see a weapon or anyone but you, you die and those girls get a bullet in the head that would stop a grizzly in its tracks. Try anything at all and I’ll put a hole in you big enough to put your fist through. Is all of that clear enough, Sally?”
“Yes.” I was starting to really hate that Sally shit.
“Want me to repeat any of it?”
“No. But why ten in the morning?”
“Light, dude. I’ll have you live on camera, uplinked to satellite, down to my sat phone. I’ve got several cameras set up on the road in. You’ll never see them. If I get a hint of anyone headed my way but you, I will—”
“I get it.”
“If you’re thinking of coming early, or sending in the troops, say at three in the morning, the girls and I won’t be at the cabin and you’ll never see them again until you ID them in a morgue. Got that?”
“Yes.”
“I found that tracker on my Lexus. Don’t try anything funny like that again. And don’t expect to see that Lexus up at the cabin. I’m in a different ride now.”
“I want to hear Lucy’s voice. I want to be sure she’s all right.”
Fifteen seconds of silence, then Lucy said, “Mort, we—Harper and I—were in the motel room and—”
Then she was gone. Kyle said, “She’s fine, Sally. You aren’t going to talk with her again so don’t ask. Now hold up your right hand and some fingers.”
“Your choice. Surprise me.”
I held up two, index and little, and slowly rotated my wrist since I didn’t know where the camera was.
“Two,” Kyle said. “Pointing finger and little finger. I’ve got you on HD video, friend. As I will tomorrow when all of this is going to go as smooth as silk, won’t it?”
I lowered my hand. “Yes.”
“Good deal. You and I aren’t going to talk again. Got any last-minute questions?”
“Why did Attorney General Leeman have to die?”
“Everyone dies sometime.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Another moment of silence. “Those two idiot girls sent a copy of the video to the lieutenant governor, Sylvia Haas, demanding a million bucks. Half a mil each. One of the girls got cold feet and chickened out. Before Haas had a chance to respond to their demand, the girl sent a copy of the video to the attorney general, probably to get the cops all over Haas’s husband. Leeman didn’t tell anyone before confronting Sylvia in private. Big mistake. An even bigger mistake was telling Sylvia she’d given a copy of the video to someone for safekeeping. She thought that would keep her safe. She didn’t say who she gave it to, but she told Sylvia it was someone she trusted. Sylvia called me while Leeman was still at her house, told me to fix it. I got over there right away, got Leeman out of there. Jake and me went to work on her the next day. We might’ve gotten more than we did and avoided a whole lot of trouble except she died suddenly when Jake was waterboarding her. It might have been a heart attack. I think he let a session go on too long. Jake wasn’t always in control and he liked waterboarding. Leeman died shortly after hinting she’d given a copy of the video to a family member. It shouldn’t be hard for you to figure out how things went from there.
“You got two girls counting on you, Sally. Right now they’re okay, but that could change. Bring that thumb drive tomorrow or the body count will go up by three—two girls and one dumb shit.”
Then he was gone.