And The Bookkeeper had Emily.
“Okay, Doral, you’ve got my attention.”
“I thought I might.”
His smug chuckle rankled. “Or are you bluffing?” Coburn asked.
“You wish.”
“Singing Elmos are easy to come by. How do I know it’s Emily’s?”
“Nice place Tori has got there on the lake.”
Coburn’s hand formed a fist. Through gnashed teeth, he said, “You hurt that little girl and—”
“Her fate is up to you, not me.”
Honor still had her fingers clamped over her lips. Above them, her eyes were watery, wide, and stark with anguish. Entering into a pissing contest with Doral wouldn’t get Emily returned to her unharmed. Although it galled him, he dispensed with the threats and asked what the terms were for getting Emily back.
“Simple, Coburn. You disappear. She lives.”
“By disappear, you mean die.”
“You’re nothing if not smart.”
“Smart enough to survive the car bomb.”
Doral didn’t address that. “Those are the terms.”
“Your terms suck.”
“Nonnegotiable.”
Mindful of the time he’d been on a phone that might possibly be traced, Coburn asked, “Where and when?”
Doral told him where to go, what time to be there, and what to do when he arrived. “You follow these instructions, Honor drives away with Emily. Then it’s you and me, pal.”
“I can hardly wait,” Coburn said. “But one last thing.”
“What?”
“Since you’ve botched everything so bad, why are you still breathing? The Bookkeeper must have a reason for keeping you alive. Think about it.”
Doral disconnected, muttering a stream of vile language.
Coburn was playing him. He was well aware of that. But Coburn was good at it.
Because he had tapped into Doral’s worst fear: He was nothing more than a flunky, and after everything that had gone wrong over the past seventy-two hours, an expendable one.
He looked over his shoulder into the backseat where Emily was sleeping, dosed with the Benadryl that he had given her so she wouldn’t be afraid or put up a fuss when it became clear to her that Uncle Doral had fibbed about why he’d taken her in the middle of the night from Tori’s lake house.
Just as he’d pulled the trigger to end Tori’s life, a piping voice came from behind him. “Hi, Uncle Doral.”
He spun around and there had stood Emily in the doorway of Tori’s bedroom, wearing a nightie, holding her Elmo and bankie, and, most disconcerting of all, happy to see him.
“Aunt Tori and I made mud pies. And guess what? Tomorrow she’s going to let me play in her makeup. How come you’ve got gloves on? It’s not cold outside. Why’s Aunt Tori on the floor?”
It had taken him several seconds to process her unexpected appearance. She started coming farther into the room, and with only seconds to spare, he had a burst of inspiration.
“She’s hiding her eyes and counting because we’re going to play hide-and-seek.”
With complete trust, Emily had played along. Sneaking downstairs with him, and out to the car that he’d borrowed from his cousin for the night, and into his backseat, Emily had stifled her conspiratorial giggles. They were several miles from the house before those gave way to wariness.
“I don’t think Aunt Tori can find us if we hide this far away.” And then, “Are you taking me to Mommy? Where’s Coburn? He’s gonna buy me an ice cream. I want to see them.”
The questions had become numerous and unnerving, and he was glad that one of his sisters had once remarked on the effectiveness of the liquid antihistamine for sedating kids. He’d stopped at a 7-Eleven, bought a cherry Slurpee and a bottle of the medication, and soon after drinking the laced slush, Emily was sleeping soundly.
That’s when he’d called The Bookkeeper to report his success. He wasn’t praised for a job well done, but he actually thought he heard a sigh of relief. “See if you can get Coburn to answer your brother’s phone. Set it up.”
Now things were in place and all he had to do was wait for the appointed time. He faced forward, unable to look into Emily’s angelic face and acknowledge what a creep he was for exploiting her affection for him. This was Emily, for crissake. Eddie’s kid. He’d killed her father. He would have to kill her mother, too. Sourly he thought that making an orphan of a sweet little girl like Emily was some fucking career, wasn’t it?
He wondered how he’d come to sink this low without his noticing. He was in so deep he couldn’t even see the surface anymore.
He’d chosen this path and there was no going back. Initially he’d thought that closing all his escape hatches was a good thing. He’d thrown off his old life the way a snake shed its skin. Having had his fill of kowtowing to his fishing charter clientele, and his usurious creditor, he had turned his back on that business and had exchanged customer service for adventure and violence. He’d relished being licensed to bully and intimidate and, if necessary, kill.
Looking back now, however, he remembered those days on his charter boat as being much less complicated than his days were now. The work had been backbreaking and the income dependent on factors beyond his control, yet he remembered that time with a nostalgia that bordered on yearning.
But when he’d signed on with The Bookkeeper he’d made a covenant with the devil, and it was a commitment for life. There was no do-over. He couldn’t throw his life into reverse.
As for his grandiose idea of eliminating The Bookkeeper and assuming control of the operation, who was he kidding? It would never happen. Even if he had the courage to attempt it, he would blunder and wind up dead anyway.
No, he would stick to the path he’d chosen until he came to a dead end.
But before he cashed out, whether it was twenty years or twenty minutes from now, he was going to kill Lee Coburn for killing Fred.
Immediately after Coburn disconnected from Doral, he punched in the number of Tori’s lake house and got an automated voice mail message.
“What’s Tori’s cell number?” he asked Honor, hoping that Tori had defied him and restored her phone’s battery.
She lowered her hands from her mouth. Her lips were white from the pressure her fingers had applied to them. They barely moved as she dully recited the number.
That call also went straight to voice mail. “Dammit!”
Tremulously she asked, “Coburn? Is Emily alive?”
“If they had killed her, they wouldn’t have anything to bargain with.”
He could tell she wanted to believe it. He wanted to believe it.
She hiccupped a sound. “Is he holding her hostage at the lake house?”
“Sounded like he was in his car.”
“Do you think Tori is—” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the question and ended on a whimper.
Coburn punched in 911, and when the operator answered he gave her the address of Tori’s lake house. “A woman at that address has been assaulted. Send police and an ambulance. Got it?” He made the operator repeat the address, but when she started asking questions, he disconnected.
Honor was trembling. “Will they kill my baby?”
As bad as the bald truth was, he refused to lie to her. “I don’t know.”
She made a sound of such abject despair that he put his good arm around her and pulled her hard against him, laying his cheek on the top of her head.
“We’ve got to call the police, Coburn.”
When he didn’t say anything, she raised her head and looked up at him. “We can,” he said quietly.
“But you don’t think we should.”
“She’s your kid, Honor. You’ve got to make the decision. Whatever you decide, I’ll go along. But I think if you bring the cops into it, The Bookkeeper will know in a matter of minutes.”
“And Emily will be killed.”
He nodded bleakly. “Probably. The Bookkeeper wouldn’t back down. He’d have to follow through on the threat or he’d look weak. He won’t let that happen. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I won’t bullshit you.”