by Gayle Wilson
“Eagle Pass,” she said.
Although it surprised him that she had been shopping there, he pushed the question to the back of his mind so he could concentrate on what she was saying.
“Mandy was asleep. In the rearview mirror I noticed a car following me. I thought about calling the sheriff’s office, but they weren’t…doing anything, so I decided I was just being silly. And then, all of a sudden I looked up and there was a truck across the road ahead of me. I couldn’t stop in time and we hit it. Mandy wasn’t hurt. That’s the first thing I checked, and by the time I had, they had already surrounded the Jeep. They were all around us. They had guns. Shotguns. Rifles. They took the phone away and made me get out of the car. Then they taped my hands together…and they took Mandy.”
“I need to know what they said. Exactly what they said.”
“They…the leader…he kept telling me that if I did what they told me, no one would be hurt. That I’d get Mandy back in a few days. That if I cooperated, I’d be around to watch her grow up. Otherwise…” She paused, swallowing again before she went on. “He said all they wanted was the money. And that we’d be contacted about how to pay it. So…I didn’t do anything. I just watched while they put her in the car and drove away. I didn’t do anything to stop them.”
The halting words had grown softer and finally the pained narrative faded. Her shadowed eyes looked up at him, begging for absolution, he understood, for relief from the guilt that she had let strangers take her baby.
“You did the right thing. The only thing you could have done. Otherwise, you could have gotten your baby killed.”
He had said the words before, had said them to assuage this same guilt. And they were true. He had just never said them with as much conviction as he did now.
“You never know how nervous the kidnappers are. How inexperienced. They were probably just as scared as you were,” he assured her. “In situations like that, if someone does something stupid, all hell can break loose.” He had fought the urge to touch the twisting fingers. Her eyes continued to search his, trying to read if he were telling her the truth. “All they want is the money,” he finished. “Just like they told you.”
“Who are they?” she asked, eyes still on his, still needing the reassurance that he really knew all about these kinds of incidents, that he was really as good as they had told her father he was.
That was the pertinent question. One Chase couldn’t answer. At least not yet. “We won’t have any idea until we get their demands. And we may not know even then. It literally could be anybody.”
“Hell,” Sam said, “there can’t be that many of the bastards around. Why don’t somebody do something to stop them?”
“There were over two thousand kidnappings in Mexico last year. Maybe that many different groups involved in them. It’s the newest cottage industry down there. It could be anybody,” he said again.
“They were very concerned that the authorities not be called in,” Samantha said. “He kept saying, ‘No police.’”
“They don’t want the police involved for a lot of reasons. If it’s antigovernment guerrillas, the Mexican authorities don’t want them to get their hands on the ransom and use it in their fight against the government, so sometimes the police interfere to prevent the exchange. Occasionally there’s been corruption. The ransom ends up in the hands of the officials rather than the kidnappers, and then the victims are…”
“Not released?” she questioned, her eyes again reflecting that fear.
“It’s in everyone’s best interests to see that the ransom is paid, as quickly as possible, and the hostage released. Their continued success at this very profitable business depends on that.”
“And yours,” Sam said.
“I offer a service for people who prefer to have someone experienced deal with the kidnappers. You came to me, Mr. Kincaid, I thought, because you wanted my services.”
“It just seems a hell of a way to make a living,” the old man said, disgust in his voice. “What happened to being a lawman like your brother? Not enough money in it?”
The force of the fury that surged through his body surprised Chase. It shouldn’t have. The old man had always been able to rattle his cage. Sam Kincaid might care that much about money, but he should know that a McCullar wouldn’t.
Besides, the old man knew damn well what had driven him from law enforcement. They both knew. Sometimes Chase still woke up at night, sweating and trembling from watching again as that truck exploded. From seeing his brother’s burning body thrown out of it. From reliving all that had come after that.
Despite his determination not to let the old man goad him, Chase found he was on his feet. To hell with Kincaid. To hell with whatever he thought about what he did for a living. To hell with being a puppet again, his strings pulled by that manipulative old—
“Chase,” Samantha said quietly, looking up at him. “It doesn’t matter what he says. If you’re really the best, I need you to get her back. To get Mandy. Please.”
He looked down, straight into her eyes, and he knew that it really didn’t matter what the old man said. Nothing had changed, despite the years. He would still cut out his living, beating heart if she asked him to. Considering that she was married to someone else and that he would have to have contact with her until this was over, that felt like a remarkably accurate description of what he imagined lay ahead.
Suddenly the swing door opened again. Jason Drake came in, holding a plain white business-size envelope in his hand.
“This was in the post-office box in town, Mr. Kincaid,” he said, walking across the room to offer the letter to Sam. “I think maybe it’s the one you were expecting.”
“I sent Drake into town to see if anything…personal had come in the mail,” Sam explained.
Automatically Sam reached for the letter, and Chase said, “It might be better if you let me look at it first.”
Sam’s hand paused in midair. The old man was unused to relinquishing authority to anyone, but finally he nodded to his assistant. There was a minute hesitation before Drake walked around the table to hand the envelope to Chase.
“And it might be better if we look at this somewhere more private,” Chase added.
“My people are trustworthy, Mr. McCullar,” Sam said. “Rosita’s been with me since before Samantha was born, and Drake handles most of the ranch’s business now. I got nothing to hide from them.”
Rosita’s hands had hesitated over the dishes she’d been clearing away, but nothing about Jason Drake’s expression had changed. It was professional and disinterested.
“It’s okay, Mr. Kincaid,” he said easily. “I’ve got some work outside.”
“Thanks for getting the mail,” Sam said.
“Of course. I’ll see you all later. Mrs. Berkley,” he said, nodding and smiling at Samantha. He walked out the swinging door, and there was a brief silence.
“You want me to come back later, Miss Samantha?” Rosita said softly.
“No, Rosita. You go ahead and get the dishes. I know you have a lot to do. We don’t want to hold you up.”
They waited through another silence, punctuated by the occasional ping of glassware, until Rosita had finished clearing the table and disappeared back into the kitchen.
“That was uncalled for,” Sam said as soon as she was gone. “I’d trust my people with my life.”
“That’s your business. I won’t trust them with mine. Ask Mrs. Berkley if she’d trust them with her baby’s,” Chase suggested. “You hired me to make decisions, Mr. Kincaid. This is one of them. Only the three of us will know about the arrangements to pay the ransom.”
“Those are my people,” Sam said. “My friends.”
“But I’m the one who’s going to be carrying a whole lot of your money across the border. The fewer people who know anything at all about that, the better.”
“He’s right,” Samantha said.
“About not trusting Rosita?” Sam asked sarcastically.
“About paying him to make the decisions. It’s what we hired him for, Sam. Let him earn his money.”
Sam led the way back to his office, automatically taking his place behind the massive desk. Samantha sat in the maroon leather chair, and Chase found himself moving as far away from her as he could manage without being obvious about it. He declined Sam’s offer of another chair, leaning instead on the edge of a big library table that stood against the wall between the room’s long windows.
He examined the envelope he held, noting that it had been addressed to Sam Kincaid, at the Kincaid Ranch, and sent to the post-office box the ranch maintained in nearby Crystal Springs. There was no return address. He didn’t worry about fingerprints or any physical evidence the letter might contain. Nobody involved in this had prints in any computer in the States. The only reason the envelope and its contents were important was for the information they would provide about paying the ransom. They weren’t interested in catching the people who had taken the baby, just in getting her back.
He used his thumbnail to tear open the flap and then pulled out the single sheet of paper it had held, laying the envelope on the table beside him. The very short instructions were handwritten and in Spanish. He read them carefully, once and then again, just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.
He didn’t like what he read.
“How much?” Sam asked.
“A million dollars,” Chase answered, glancing up over the paper he held.
No one said anything in response.
“Which means they’re amateurs,” Chase added, just in case they hadn’t understood. He didn’t like dealing with amateurs. He liked people who knew what they were doing, who understood exactly how the game was played.
“Why?” Samantha asked.
“Because your father could afford a lot more. A hell of a lot more. Everybody along the border knows that. Except apparently these guys don’t, which means they didn’t do their homework. Amateurs. And they want us to go into Mexico before they’ll give us directions on where they’ll meet us to make the exchange.”
“That’s not the way it’s usually done?” Sam asked.
“Not for me. In and out. That’s what’s supposed to happen. As close to the border as possible. We’ll try to negotiate when we meet them. We can probably get by with half a million, convince them that—”
“No,” Samantha said.
Both men looked at her.
“You just do whatever they say. No negotiations. No delays. You just do whatever they ask and get Mandy back.”
“That’s not the way that I—”
“It is now,” she said, holding his eyes. “Whatever they say, you do it. That’s what I’m paying you for.”
It angered him. It sounded too much like her father. Like somebody talking to the hired help.
“I thought your father was paying,” he said. “Or your husband. Maybe he might be interested in trying to save half a million dollars. I know that’s not much to the Kincaids, but most people would be interested in that kind of deal.”
So far there had been no mention of Samantha’s husband from either of them. He wasn’t sure, now that he thought about it, exactly who was hiring him. Mrs. Berkley, Drake had called her. It seemed to Chase that Mr. Berkley might like to have some say-so in what was going on.
“Maybe we should wait until your husband gets here to settle the financial details of our arrangement,” he suggested.
There was a silence that lasted for a few heartbeats before Samantha said, “My husband has nothing to say about this.”
“That seems pretty arrogant,” Chase said, “even for a Kincaid.”
“Divorced,” Sam added, his eyes on his daughter’s face.
Chase felt his heart rate accelerate, but he ignored the emotions thudding around in his chest. Concentrated on trying to say something in response that made some kind of sense. Divorced. The word beat at his consciousness.
“Still, this is his baby we’re talking about,” Chase said. “I don’t think—”
“Believe me, Amanda’s father isn’t interested,” Samantha averred. She made no effort this time to hide the bitterness.
Divorced, he thought again. Then the significance of that hit him, and his brain started working again. “You have custody?” Chase asked.
“Yes,” Samantha said.
There was a hint of defiance in the single syllable, and it, too, was tinged with bitterness. Which probably meant that what he’d begun to suspect was true.
“Full custody?”
“Yes,” she said again, this time without the defiance.
There was instead a question growing in her eyes. She didn’t understand what he was getting at. He found himself wondering how it had all gone so wrong between the two of them. Not with Berkley. He didn’t give a damn about that. Between him and Samantha. How they had managed to screw up what they once had had to this extent.
He held her eyes for a moment, for the first time in his life feeling pity for Samantha Kincaid. Berkley, he corrected himself, and then he turned to Sam. “I don’t think I’m the man for this job, Mr. Kincaid.” He straightened, putting the letter down beside the envelope on the table.
“You can’t just walk out on us,” Sam blustered.
“I told you. I choose my own jobs.”
“I thought we had a deal.”
“Things change. I’m not the man you need. I suggest you contact the FBI. Maybe they can help you.”
He had already started toward the door when she stopped him.
“Because I’m divorced?” Samantha asked. “Is that it? I promise you, Mr. McCullar, that I’m no longer interested in you. Your virtue is safe from me. The only thing I need you for is to get my daughter back. I assure you I’m no longer interested in anything else you may think you have.”
Stung by the contempt in her voice, he turned around. There was a lot of the old, volatile Chase McCullar beneath the veneer he’d put on in the last few years, and he suspected that everyone in this room knew that the polish he’d been trying for was just a veneer. So he let himself express his anger.
“Whether or not you have a husband has nothing to do with my decision not to take this job, Mrs. Berkley. I just happen to know the statistics. Better than ninety-five percent of the child abductions in this country are carried out by the noncustodial parent. Given the fact that Amanda is your father’s only grandchild, the stakes here are very high. I suggest you contact your husband’s lawyers. Tell them you aren’t fooled by the games he’s playing.”
“You think my husband had something to do with the kidnapping?”
It was clear she was furious about the suggestion he’d just made, but he knew that there were unresolved issues here. He had felt the tension whenever Berkley was mentioned. From Sam and from his daughter. They must have had their own suspicions from the beginning, but for some reason they had chosen to hide the facts from him. They had chosen, in essence, to lie to him.
“I don’t know your husband. But I’m willing to bet on one thing. Your daughter wasn’t taken for the money. You may need a negotiator, but this isn’t the kind of job I work.”
“Do you think I didn’t know what was going on yesterday?” she said. “The men who took Amanda were Mexicans. The tags on both vehicles they used were Mexican.” She paused, fighting her anger in order to continue more calmly, more convincingly. “This has nothing to do with my husband.”
“I heard he was rich and important enough to get even Sam’s seal of approval. It wouldn’t take much to arrange something like what happened yesterday. It even makes sense. It sends you and your father on a wild-goose chase looking for phantom kidnappers in Mexico while he has time to hide the baby. Maybe even get her out of the country. Take her to Europe. And given that possibility, I suggest you move as quickly as possible to stop him. If you want to see your baby again.”
“It ain’t him,” Sam said. His voice sounded remarkably flat after the emotionally
charged exchange that had been going on between the two of them. “She’s right about that.”
“How sure are you?” Chase asked.
“Sure enough not to call the feds. And sure enough to give you a million dollars of my money to take across the border. You remember that I don’t back losing hands. He ain’t involved in this. You can take my word on that, McCullar.”
The surety in the old man’s voice made Chase hesitate. Sam Kincaid was no fool. He hadn’t gotten where he was without being a pretty accurate judge of character. He’d read Chase’s like a book. Years ago. Even now, it appeared.
Considering Sam’s conviction that the father wasn’t involved, Chase knew they would hire someone else to do this if he turned them down. Someone else would take the money across and get the baby back. It might as well be him. Because, just as he had told them, he really was the best.
“How soon can you have the money ready?” he found himself asking. He didn’t look at Samantha again. It would be Sam’s money. At least that was clear.
“When do they want it?”
“Immediately. They don’t give you much time to make the arrangements, which also shows they’re new at this. They want someone to be in Melchor Múzquiz on Saturday. Whoever shows up will be met and given instructions for the exchange.”
“Whoever shows up?” Sam said.
“My fee is ten percent.” He still didn’t know why he had made the decision, but divorced kept echoing in the back of his mind.
“Deal,” Sam said, holding out his hand.
Chase eased in a breath before he took the three steps that brought him close enough to the desk to accept it. He was surprised at the strength in that knotted, liver-spotted hand.
“I’ll need pictures. The most current you have. A good close-up. And a description of any identifying marks. Scars. Birthmarks. With a baby it’s hard to—”
“No,” Samantha said. “No pictures.”
“Samantha,” Sam said.
“There are no pictures,” she said again. Her eyes lifted to Chase’s, and despite the olive-toned darkness of the skin that surrounded them, they were very clear and very calm. “I haven’t had time to get any made.”