"But once the idea is planted, it's almost impossible to remove. They will make impossible demands and think you're lying to them when you claim you can't fulfill them." He took a map out and spread it across his desk. "Are you familiar with the factions dividing this country?"
She shook her head. Everything she knew about Colombia she'd learned in the past week, and none of it involved politics.
He pointed to different-colored circles covering the map. "These represent various militant groups that are battling the current government and the territories they control."
Very little land was left unclaimed. Julia looked at him to see if he could possibly be serious. If this was true, Colombia was involved in a massive civil war. "And they all finance themselves through kidnappings?"
"Among other things. Illegal drugs also play a huge financial role. Your husband could be with a group that feels no need to hurry the negotiation, one that's willing and able to hold out forever to get what they want. You have to remember that they aren't on a deadline and don't have the emotional stake in this that you do. They've been at this a long time, Mrs. McDonald. As sick as it sounds, they're professionals. They know what they're doing.
She found the news oddly comforting. Although, how did professionals make such a stupid mistake and kidnap the wrong man?
"Another thing you must accept is that time is something you're going to have to learn to deal with. If you don't, it could destroy you. I know all you can think of right now is obtaining your husband's freedom as quickly as possible. That's simply not going to happen. At least not on your timeline. There is a process with these things. The kidnappers have to get your husband to a place where they feel safe before they begin negotiating. And even then they may not make contact for weeks. It's a psychological game. They are aware that the longer they make you wait, the more desperate you will feel and the more willing you will be to give them what they want."
She couldn't imagine feeling any more desperate or scared than she did at that moment. She was hanging on by her fingertips and would do anything, pay anything, asked. What kind of men wanted her to suffer weeks, maybe months longer for a few more dollars? And if they would do this to her, what would they do to Evan?
She'd come to Paul Erickson's office with an unfocused, wildly escalating fear. He had grounded her, supplying her answers and hope and direction. "But if Evan isn't the person they thought he was, why don't they just release him?"
"He's American. He works for a large company.
Even if he's not the man they were after, they have to figure he's worth something."
At last someone was giving her information she could deal with. Her strongest coping mechanisms involved knowledge and planning. If she could just focus on these, she would make it. "Who are these people in these circles?"
"The largest are FARC, which is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and ELN, which is the National Liberation Army. Many of the groups operating without set boundaries are small bands of out-of-work drug traffickers who were caught in police crackdowns. They're criminals by nature and unqualified or unwilling to seek legitimate work. Kidnapping becomes their source of income until they can get back into drugs again.
"There are even men who specialize in snatching people off the street to sell to one of the larger, more organized groups like FARC," he added. "They're paid a finder's fee and never have to get involved with the ransom process."
"What would you do if it was your wife or child who had been taken?" Julia said.
"I would hire a private negotiator to work with the FBI. They don't have to play by the rules."
"Where do I find one of these private negotiators?"
For the first time Paul Erickson smiled."I thought you would never ask." He removed a sheet of paper from his desk and handed it to her. "Of course, if asked, you'll forget where you got this."
She glanced at the paper and then at him. His job, his reputation, his future with the foreign service rested in her hands. "Why are you doing this for?"
"Because I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't." He smiled. "And I'm a man who enjoys a good night's sleep."
Julia thought about walking the ten blocks back to the hotel but was so shaken by everything Paul Erickson had said that she knew she would see kidnappers lurking in every doorway. She thought about ten-foot walls and barbed wire and machine guns.
What a hideous way to live.
But then, Evan hadn't been walking; he'd been in a car on a main road when an SUV
had swerved in front of them and another had hit them from behind. Within seconds Evan was gone, the driver left behind, bleeding from a blow to the head. He was the only witness and too terrified to give helpful descriptions of the men or the cars they were driving.
She had the receptionist call a cab and was back at the hotel in five minutes.
Exhausted and aware it was an hour past the time she'd promised to call Barbara and her parents, she considered begging off dinner with Harold but changed her mind. She had a lot to tell him and was eager to hear what he'd learned.
The nurse answered the door. Harold was sitting propped up in bed, surrounded by pillows, a phone beside him, his laptop on his thighs, a cup of coffee on the nightstand.
"Come—" He pointed to the chair beside the bed. "Tell me what you found out today and then I'll tell you what my friend at the State Department had to say."
Julia relayed what she'd learned, and ended by digging in her purse and handing him the list of private companies that handled ransom negotiations.
Harold studied the list for several seconds. "Both the firms my friend recommended are on here. Did you get a feel for one over the other?"
Julia shook her head."I got the impression they're all people Paul had worked with and that he felt we would be in good hands with any of them."
Dear God. Two days ago she'd been an ordinary woman living an ordinary life, where the biggest decision she'd had to make was whether to pay four dollars a pound for ground sirloin or buy the ground chuck. Could she really be having a conversation with Harold about hiring a hostage negotiator?
"Then we'll go with whichever one can get here the quickest. Is that agreeable with you?"
"I want you to know that I'll find a way to pay you back. It may take a while, but—"
"Stop right there," Harold said, holding up his hand."I don't ever want to have to say this again Julia, so listen carefully. You are not to talk about how much any of this costs or to even think about it. Evan was doing a job for me. He should be home with you right now, and I should be the one those people took. I'm responsible both morally and financially for what happened to him, and I fully intend to see this through, no matter how much it costs." He stared at her. "Is that clear?"
She nodded, afraid to trust her voice.
"Another thing. Evan is on the payroll and will be for however long it takes to get him home again. And, of course, he will also be participating in the profits through his partnership share." He reached for some papers on the nightstand, gasped and grabbed his side. "Damn—I keep forgetting I shouldn't do that."
Julia retrieved the papers and handed them to him.
"I had my assistant get automatic deposit forms from payroll and fax them to me.
Figured it would take at least one thing off your mind."
"Thank you." Harold was plainly more prepared for what lay ahead than she was, and she was more grateful than she could tell him.
"Now that that's out of the way, why don't you make those phone calls you were talking about and I'll make dinner arrangements."
"I'm really not hungry.
He smiled gently. "Neither am I. But we both have to keep up our strength for what's ahead."
Betrayed by an overwhelming swell of gratitude, Julia's chin quivered as she fought to hold back tears. "I don't know what to say. How will I ever be able to thank you?"
"This isn't a gift. It's simply what Evan has coming to him." His voice broke. He coughed t
o clear his throat before going on. "I have the highest regard for—God, that sounds so tight-ass. What I really mean to say is that Evan is special. If I had a son, I would want him to be like Evan in every way."
"I don't know what I would do if—" She couldn't finish. "We're not going to let anything happen to him," Harold insisted.
It already has, she felt like shouting. Instead, she said, "I can't stop thinking about mosquito repellent." She shrugged. "Stupid, huh? But Evan is a magnet for mosquitoes.
If he's somewhere in the jungle, I know they're driving him crazy."What she left unsaid was that mosquitoes carried malaria, just one of the diseases Evan hadn't been inoculated against because the trip was supposed to have been a short one and he wasn't going outside the city. Even her ultraconservative doctor had given the okay under those conditions.
"And I keep thinking about him trying to escape and getting lost." Responding to her stunned look, Harold immediately added, "Now, that was stupid. Mary is forever telling me I should have a ten-second delay installed between my head and my mouth. I hate to admit it, but she just may be right."
"It's okay. The same thought has gone through my mind." More often than she wanted to admit. A hundred times, she could have added. It was the dancing tip on the flame of fear ignited when she'd first heard Evan had been taken. Amazingly, he could find his way around every large city they'd ever visited, almost instinctively knowing how it was laid out and where things would be. But in a five-acre forest he'd be lost the minute he turned around.
She moved to leave. "What time do you want to go to dinner?"
They set the time and agreed to keep things simple by eating at the hotel restaurant.
Julia took the elevator the six flights up to her room, and stepped out of her heels the minute she was inside. She called her sister first. Barbara answered immediately.
"You need to call Dad as soon as you hang up," she said after Julia had filled her in on what she'd learned that day. "He's flying into Bogota in the morning, and I didn't know where to tell him to find you. I've misplaced the paper you said you left me with all the contact information."
"It's not on the refrigerator?"
"I thought that was the information for Evan, not you."
"I'm staying in the room he'd booked, actually." She looked around at the luxurious suite originally intended for Harold and paid for by Gutierrez Construction. She spotted Evan's suitcase in front of the closet. "The police must have delivered his luggage while I was gone." Her throat tightened and just that quickly she was crying again.
"See? You need Dad there."
"I can barely take care of myself," Julia said. "How am I going to keep him from falling apart? I don't suppose there's any way you could talk him out of coming."
"Not a chance."
"There's nothing he can do here. There's nothing any of us can do until we hear from whoever took Evan. How am I going to make him understand that?"
"He's devastated, Julia. He has to do something, even if it's just being there with you.
You know how he feels about Evan. He's as much Dad's son as Fred is."
"How is Mom going to run the farm by herself?"
"She's not. She's insisting on coming here to stay with Shelly and Jason."
"And who's going to—"
"I asked and Dad said it was all taken care of. I have a feeling they talked Fred into coming home for a couple weeks."
"But he just got that teaching job at UCLA." For someone with only two years'
experience teaching at the college level, the University of California at Los Angeles was the highest plum on the tree, one Fred had to reach so far to pluck that it was an astonishing achievement when he got the job and was worthy of two days' celebration.
Julia groaned. She had no more control over her family than she did the kidnappers.
"Take a deep breath and calm down," Barbara said. "We're your family and this is what families do. Let us help you."
Julia sat down heavily on the bed and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. "I'm so scared, Barbara," she admitted. "This isn't turning out anything like I'd imagined. I thought we would get here, there would be a ransom note, we'd pay it and then get the hell out. Now we're being told it could be months before we even hear from the kidnappers and then months more negotiating with them."
"What are you going to do? You can't stay there all that time."
"What choice do I have?"
"Oh, Julia—I'm so sorry." Her voice cracked. "I don't know what else to say. How do people keep their sanity going through something like this?"
"It has to be that old cliche, one day at a time."
"One more thing before you hang up. I know it's the last thing you want to think about right now, but there were several panicked phone messages on the machine today, something about a newsletter you've been working on."
"Damn. I forgot it was due today." Actually, she'd forgotten about it entirely. "What did you tell them?"
"Nothing."
She gave Barbara instructions on how to send the partially finished newsletter by e-mail and where to find the phone numbers for the companies with work still pending.
"Tell them I'll get in touch when I'm home again and not to count on me for anything until then."
"What do you want me to tell the kids?"
She tried, but couldn't stop looking at Evan's suitcase, knowing that it was filled with clothes he had packed, a razor he'd used, his aftershave, the, notes she'd written and tucked in pockets and shoes. "Tell them I'm fine and that I'll phone them tonight."
"Anything else?"
"There's a peach-colored rose in a glass in my office. Please don't let anything happen to it."
"I'll take care of it right now."
They said goodbye and hung up. Julia went to the window and looked down fifteen stories to the traffic crawling past the hotel. She could have been in any large city anywhere in the world and the scene would have been the same. Too many people trying to get someplace. Fathers eager to be with their families; mothers going to work every day and wondering if their children were suffering because of it. Some people were happy, some were sick, some were dying. And some, a unique few, were just like her, waiting and hoping and praying for a loved one who had become a commodity.
How did they do it? How did they get up each morning and face another day? How did they go about their lives doing the normal, everyday things that had to be done while they waited? Did they keep their dentist appointments? Enjoy a fine glass of wine? Visit friends? How did they go on with their lives, when she was so consumed with thinking about Evan that at times she had to remind herself to breathe?
She left the window and reached for her lifeline, her connection, her promise—the letter she was writing for Evan.
Two Days Missing
Three weeks to the day after I fell in love with you, I finally managed to get you to actually talk to me. I cornered you after school in Mrs. Winslow's classroom, blocking the only exit with my body and a pair of crutches. It was my first day out of the wheelchair and I'd spent it stumbling around like a one-legged tightrope walker.
"Where's Mrs. Winslow?" I asked, as if I cared.
You leaned back in a chair that barely fit you and tried to pull off boredom. You weren't just different— mysterious, a little dangerous-looking, blatantly sexy— from the boys I'd known all my life, it was as if you were a different species. And it was pretty obvious you weren't just pretending not to like me. No boy had ever rolled his eyes when he saw me or made a point of purposely heading in the opposite direction when he ran into me in the hall. Well, my brother had, but that didn't count.
I assumed at the time that it was the cheerleader thing that turned you off, and there was no way I would let that stop me. I don't think I would have believed the truth, that you were afraid of me and what I might discover, if anyone had been smart enough to figure it out and tell me.
"Mrs. Winslow?" I repeated.
"She had
a phone call. Said she didn't know when she'd be back."
"So what are you still doing here?"
You ran your fingers through that beautiful long, black hair, sweeping it from your face and letting me see a deep scowl. "And how is that any of your business?"
"Oh, cut the crap, Evan. You're not as tough as you want everyone to think you are."
You didn't say anything, just slammed your book closed and crossed the room, shooting me a look that told me if I didn't move out of the doorway, you would move me. I didn't. And you did. But when you put your hands under my arms to set me aside, my crutches crashed to the floor. Which meant that you either had to keep holding me or let me fall.
"Damn it."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. The real surprise was that after a couple of seconds, you laughed, too. The transformation took my breath away. Plainly, there are levels to love at first sight, steps you either take forward or backward once you get past that initial melted-ice-cream feeling. I knew at that moment that I would only be going forward with you.
"Now what?" I asked.
There was still a trace of the smile when you said, "Now I pick you up and dump you out the window."
"Aw, come on, tell me how you really feel." To this day, Evan, I don't know how I got the nerve to say those words.
"What do you want from me?"
"I want to be your friend." I wanted a lot more, of course, but realized I'd be lucky to get you to acknowledge me the next time we saw each other.
"Why?"
I grinned. "Because you're the only person I know who doesn't like me."
"Don't sell yourself short. I'll bet there are dozens—hundreds, maybe." You took one of my hands and put it on the doorframe. "Hang on to this."
"I will if you '11 drive me home. I missed the bus."
You stared at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. "No."
"Why not? It's not like it's out of your way. "Your aunt lived in a rented house on a piece of property a couple of miles down the road from my parents' farm. "Besides, it's your fault I missed the bus."
"Now, how do you figure that?"
If I'd Never Known Your Love Page 3