James Grippando - The Abduction

Allison shuddered. “How does kidnapping Kristen Howe fit into that scheme?”

“That’s the leap of logic, but maybe it’s not that big of one. On the surface, it’s tempting to look at the way the general has shot up in the polls after Kristen’s abduction and infer that her kidnappers are trying to help Lincoln Howe win the election. But maybe that’s not their real motivation at all. Maybe they don’t really care if Lincoln Howe wins. What they really want is for Allison Leahy to lose. Again, they want to hurt you. ”

She froze, thinking. “But why?”

“The more you can tell me, the sooner we’ll figure that out.” He glanced at her empty cup. “Some more coffee’s probably an excellent idea.”

“I’m actually immune to the stuff,” she said, then shot him a look that drained him. “It’s been a long eight years, Harley. Every night’s a very long night.”

The titanium-coated knife hurled through the air, sticking into the plasterboard wall with a quick thud.

Tony Delgado crossed the living room to inspect the damage. Concentric circles drawn in black Magic Marker covered the living room wall, forming the rings of a makeshift dartboard. Inch-long puncture marks dotted the target, most within a few inches of the bull’s-eye.

“Good shot,” Tony told his younger brother. He yanked the knife from the wall.

Repo sat erect on the couch, stewing in his thoughts.

Tony sucked down the last of his Budweiser, then checked the refrigerator. The twelve-pack his brother had brought with him from Philadelphia was gone. “Repo!” he shouted. “Your turn for a beer run.”

“I’m not even drinking.”

Tony gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Hey, you didn’t kill Reggie Miles, either. But we’re all in this together.”

The Delgado brothers shared a laugh.

Repo rose from the couch, grumbling. “You two are a couple of real jokesters.”

“Just lighten up,” said Tony.

Repo turned. “That’s your answer to everything. I just gotta roll with it every time you two dickheads change the plan. Well, that isn’t the deal I cut. Nobody was supposed to get killed, and there wasn’t supposed to be a ransom. All we were supposed to do is hold the girl until after the election.”

“That’s right. That’s what we were supposed to do.”

“Then why’d the guy on the news say there was a ransom demand?”

“Because I leaked it to them, that’s why. It’s just strategy. Kidnapper says don’t leak it to the cops, then the kidnapper leaks it to the press. Gets everybody on the other side all fucked up, everybody pointing fingers at each other.”

“So the ransom demand isn’t for real? It’s just a ploy?”

Tony stepped forward, tapping the flat side of the blade against his palm. “You ask too damn many questions, Repo.”

“I got as much on the line here as anybody. Is it too much to ask who the hell hired us? Who’s in control?”

Tony smiled thinly. “That’s two very different questions. Who hired us? That’s none of your concern. Who’s in control?” He turned and flung the knife at the wall, sticking a bull’s-eye. “So long as we got the girl, I’m in control.”

At 2:00 A.M. Repo lay restless on the couch, staring at shadows on the ceiling in the dark living room, thinking of Kristen Howe alone in the basement. He knew she was terrified. He’d seen it in her eyes. He was the only human being who had looked into those eyes since the abduction. Tony and Johnny had no interest in caring for a twelve-year-old girl, so Repo had volunteered. Every three or four hours he’d don his ski mask to walk her to the bathroom or bring her a sandwich and a glass of water. Tony had ordered him to keep her blindfolded at all times, but Repo figured it would be less scary for her if every few hours she could see that she wasn’t buried alive in a coffin or tied to a stake in some imaginary snake pit.

The furnace kicked on, giving Repo a start. Tonight was colder than last, and the drafty old house seemed incapable of warming to a comfortable room temperature. He covered his exposed toes with the blanket, then thought again of the girl. The basement was colder than the rest of the house, and he wasn’t sure if the heating vents were open down there. She could be freezing. He slid off the couch, pulled on his trousers, then grabbed his ski mask and headed for the stairway.

He paused halfway down the hall. Loud snoring poured from the master bedroom, where Tony and his brother lay sleeping off a case of beer. He peeked into their room. Sprawled across the bed in their underwear, they seemed more unconscious than asleep. But for the snoring, they almost looked dead-not a wholly unappealing prospect, thought Repo. Quietly he stepped back into the hall and closed the bedroom door.

He stepped slowly toward the door that led to the basement steps, so as not to make a sound. Before opening it, he pulled on his ski mask. He glanced over his shoulder, making sure the Delgados hadn’t heard him, then froze. His reflection showed in the bathroom mirror at the end of the hall.

He looked frightening as hell.

He gripped the doorknob as he thought things over. He couldn’t let her see his face, but he didn’t have to look like a terrorist, either. He pulled off the mask, then grabbed a small hand towel from the bathroom sink and tied it around the lower half of his face. He checked himself in the mirror. He looked like those bank robbers in the old movie westerns. Effective, but not terribly scary. Perfect.

He grabbed the flashlight that was hanging on the wall, then opened the door. He started down the narrow staircase, closing the door behind him.

The wood steps creaked with each step. The light fixture in the stairway was broken, so the narrow beam of the flashlight showed the way. He paused halfway down the steps, taken by the familiar smell. It reminded him of his old house in Philadelphia as a kid, where he’d spent countless hours in a virtual hole in the ground playing Ping Pong and bumper pool. Funny, the way basements all seemed to smell alike.

He stopped at the base of the steps, shining the flashlight ahead of him. Cracked linoleum covered the cold cement floor. It had buckled along the baseboards, where groundwater had seeped in. Mildew stained the corners. Warped sheets of old wood paneling covered the walls, as if some previous owner had made a half-hearted attempt to give the basement a finished look. The small ground-level window, high over the sink, had been boarded from the outside.

Repo fumbled for the lamp on the bar. He switched it on and cut off the flashlight.

In the dim ball of light he saw Kristen lying beneath an old army blanket, her body stretched across the thin mattress of a convertible sofa. Metal cuffs secured one hand to the frame at the top, near the sofa back. Her ankle was cuffed at the opposite end. A black blindfold covered her eyes, and a wide strip of silver duct tape covered her mouth.

Her body tensed with the sudden awareness of someone else in the room.

Repo approached slowly, so as not to startle her, then sat in the chair beside the bed. He leaned forward and whispered, “I’m going to take off your blindfold now.”

She didn’t move.

He reached behind her head and untied the blindfold. With a gentle tug, it slid out from beneath the pillow. Her long lashes fluttered. Even the dim glow of light from across the basement seemed to bother her unadjusted pupils. Repo watched as she struggled to bring her big brown eyes into focus. Like a sleeping angel, he thought, waking to a nightmare. Finally their eyes met.

She looked confused at first, as if expecting to see the ski mask. She still looked frightened, but less so than before.