Danielle Steel - Ransom

“Did you bring us more pictures?” Sam asked with interest, as Ted smiled at him.

“Yes, I did.”

“Who is it this time?” Sam was acting like the official deputy Ted had made him the last time. He tried to sound blasé about it, as his mother smiled. There wasn't much to smile at right now. Ted had called and told her about Morgan. Apparently, he'd been outside for weeks, and she'd never seen him once. It didn't say much for her powers of observation, and she was worried. Ted had told her that there would be four men at her house shortly after midnight. Two SFPD and two FBI. Sam was very excited about it, and wanted to know from Ted if they'd be wearing guns. Sam had asked his mother earlier, but wanted confirmation from him.

“Yes, they will,” Ted responded, as he took the mug shot out of the manila envelope he had brought with him, and handed it to Will. “Is this the man you saw in the car across the street?”

Will looked at it for less than a minute, nodded, and handed it back to Ted. “Yes, it is.” He looked slightly sheepish. It had never occurred to him to tell his mother that he had seen a man in a car who had smiled at him. He just thought it was a random coincidence that he had seen him twice. He looked like a nice guy. And something like his dad.

Ted circulated the mug shot around the table. Neither Ashley nor Sam recognized him, but when the photograph reached Fernanda, she sat and stared at it for a long time. She knew she had seen him somewhere, but couldn't remember where. And then suddenly, she remembered him. It had either been at the supermarket, or the bookshop. She remembered dropping something and his picking it up, and just as Will had said, it had struck her at the time that he looked like Allan. She explained the circumstances to Ted.

“Do you remember when that was?” he asked calmly, and she said that it had been sometime in the past few weeks, but she wasn't sure when, which confirmed that he had been watching them for a while. “He's out there now,” he explained quietly to the kids, and Ashley gasped. “And we're not going to do anything about it. We want to see who comes to talk to him, if anyone, who spells him off, and what they're up to. When you go outside, I don't want you to look for him, or notice him, or acknowledge him. We don't want to scare him off. Just act like you don't know anything about it,” Ted said calmly.

“Was he out there just now?” Ashley asked, and Ted nodded. He knew the car now, from Detective Jamison's description, and where it was. But he hadn't even appeared to notice it. Ted was driving his own car, and chatted and smiled with the young cop he'd brought with him, trying to propagate the myth that he was a friend bringing his son over to visit. They actually looked convincing. The young policeman looked the same age as her older children and in fact, wasn't too much older.

“Do you think he knows you're a cop?” Will asked him.

“I hope not. But you never know. He might. I'm hoping he just thinks I'm a friend of your mom's for now.” But there was no question, when they put four men on the detail, it was going to attract attention and would inevitably warn Morgan and his cohorts of something. It would be a double-edged sword once that happened. The police lost the advantage of anonymity, but it also warned the kidnappers to proceed with caution, or it could scare them off completely, although Ted considered that unlikely. They had no other choice. Fernanda and her family needed protection. And if it scared the man off for good, that was all right too. But above all, she needed a police presence there to protect her and her children. Some of the cops on the detail were probably going to be women, which might create a distraction at first, and make it less obvious that cops were on the scene. But sooner or later, four adults arriving twice a day, going everywhere with Fernanda and the children, and staying there twenty-four hours a day was going to attract considerable attention, and more than likely alarm them. Ted knew there was nothing else they could do for the moment. The captain had also discussed putting what he called a 10B out front, which was an unmarked police car with a plainclothes policeman in it. But Ted didn't think they needed one, and having Peter Morgan and a cop staring at each other in parked cars seemed foolish, even to him. The local station was going to be making passing calls to keep an eye on them, and that would be helpful too, and enough for the moment.

By the time they finished talking about it, the young officer Ted had brought with him was ready. He had put paper towels down, and set up his kits on them. His briefcase lay open, and two full fingerprinting kits were lying next to the sink. One had black ink, and the other red. Ted asked them all to step up to the sink. He asked Will to go first.

“Why do you have to fingerprint us?” Sam asked with interest. He was just tall enough to see what Will and the detective were doing. It was a fine art, as he rolled Will's fingers expertly side to side across the pad, and then rolled them again on a chart, which showed each finger of his hands. He rolled them to make sure they were clear, and Will was surprised to discover that the ink didn't leave his fingers dirty. They did red ones first, and then black. Will understood why they were being fingerprinted, as did Ashley and Fernanda, but no one wanted to explain it to Sam. It was in case one of them got kidnapped, or killed, with the fingerprints, their bodies could be identified. It was not a cheering prospect.

“The police just want to know who you are, Sam,” Ted said simply. “There are a lot of ways to do that. But this one works. Your fingerprints will stay the same for the rest of your life.” It was a piece of information he didn't need, but it helped. Ashley went next. Then her mother, and finally Sam was last. His fingerprints looked tiny on the cards.

“Why are we doing red and black?” Sam inquired as the detective took his prints for a second time.

“The black ones are for SFPD,” Ted explained, “the red ones are for the FBI. They like to be fancier than we are.” He smiled at him, as the others stood by and watched. They were huddled together as though they took strength in standing close to one another, and Fernanda was hovering over them like a mother hen.

“Why does the FBI like red?” Fernanda asked.

“Just to be different, I guess,” the detective doing them said. Other than that, there was no real reason. But fingerprints done in red always belonged to the FBI.

As soon as he finished doing the fingerprints, he took out a small pair of scissors, and he turned to Sam with a cautious smile. “Can I snip a little piece of your hair, son?” he asked politely, as Sam looked at him wide-eyed.

“Why?”

“We can tell a lot of things from people's hair. It's called a DNA match.” This was a lesson none of them needed, but like the rest of it, they had no choice.

“You mean like if I get kidnapped?” Sam looked frightened, and the man hesitated, as Fernanda stepped in.

“They just want us to do it, Sam. I'm going to do it too.” She took the scissors from the man, snipped a tiny wisp of Sam's hair, then her own, and then her other children's. She made as little fuss about it as she could, and thought it seemed less ominous if she did it for them, rather than a stranger. Shortly after that, talking quietly amongst themselves, the children went upstairs. Sam wanted to stay with her, but Will took him by the hand and said he wanted to talk to him. He thought his mother wanted to talk to Ted about what was happening, and he assumed correctly that Sam would get scared. There was a lot happening to them. A lot had already occurred in a very short time. And Fernanda knew that after midnight, with four armed policemen in the house night and day, their lives would dramatically change.