What was he saying? She tried to read his lips.
Want. . a. . Something. Try as she might, she couldn’t read lips.
I don’t understand, she said. She pointed at her ears. I can’t hear you. I’m deaf, mister.
His shiny brow furrowed. She wasn’t sure he understood what she had told him.
His lips moved again. She thought he said, You have it.
Have what?
He dug inside the front chest pocket of his overalls. He fished out a candy bar. A Snickers.
Giant had the biggest hands she’d ever seen in her life, but she could tell that it was the king-size Snickers, too.
Her stomach churned. Snickers bars were one of her favorite sweet treats ever, right up there with Grandma Rose’s double-chocolate cake.
As delicately as if he were putting a candle on a birthday cake, Giant placed the candy at the edge of the mattress. Slowly, watching her all the while, he got up and backed away to his chair.
He was giving the candy to her.
Her parents had taught her never to take candy from strangers, but she suddenly became aware of how hungry she was. She hadn’t eaten her normal breakfast of cereal, fruit, and milk. She hadn’t eaten anything since dinner last night. She was famished.
She stared at the candy bar. It hadn’t been opened. It was totally wrapped up, like when you bought it brand new at the grocery store.
Mom’s voice replayed in her mind: Jada, baby, never, ever take anything from a stranger, okay, honey? Never talk to strangers, never take candy from strangers. It’s not safe.
She had never in her whole life disobeyed that rule. But her mouth was literally watering.
What if she was kept in this terrible room for a long time? What if this candy was the only food she ever got there? Would Mom and Daddy want her to starve to death instead of eating a piece of brand-new candy?
But what if it had been poisoned? Grandma Rose had once spoken about that when she and Mom had been talking about why kids shouldn’t be allowed to go trick or treating on Halloween. Uh-huh, folks these days are too crazy, she had said, they put poison in the candy, razor blades in the apples.
As she was trying to make a decision, her raging hunger abruptly made the choice for her; she snatched the Snickers off the floor and tore open the package with her teeth. She bit off a big chunk, and though the chocolate was warm from being kept in Giant’s pocket, it was sweet and delicious, the best thing she’d ever tasted in her life.
She ate the whole thing, and licked her fingers clean, too. When she had finally finished, she glanced across the room at Giant.
He was smiling at her.
26
Around a quarter past noon, Corey pulled into the parking lot of his bank.
After a long bout of deep, agonizing thought, he had resolved to move forward with Todd’s idea of paying Leon a smaller ransom. It was the least repulsive choice from a menu of ugly options.
With going to the cops out of the question, and being unable to pay Leon the outrageous amount he demanded, Corey was willing to chance that giving him fifty thousand in cash, tempting him to take the money and get the hell out of Dodge, might just work. Besides the fact that Leon had never pulled off a big score and would consider fifty grand a major jackpot, Leon was the kind of guy who liked to get the maximum return on a minimum amount of effort, which was why he’d become a criminal in the first place, instead of a law-abiding citizen who worked legitimately for the things he wanted. A briefcase full of more money than Leon had ever seen in his life, for relatively little work on his part, might bring a swift end to this nightmare.
Stubborn logic, however, argued that he might be taking a foolish risk that could place Simone and Jada in greater jeopardy than ever.
But he didn’t know what else to do-and the worst choice was to do nothing at all.
The sun had recently broken through the clouds, and in his anxious state of mind, he interpreted the sun’s emergence as a positive sign. God was smiling on him in approval of his plan of action-that was what he wanted to believe, anyway. Although he’d never been particularly religious, that day he was alert for signs of Providence and was frequently murmuring desperate prayers under his breath.
Perhaps he was a hypocrite for calling on God during his time of adversity, but so be it.
He uttered another short prayer and then went inside the bank, leaving his gun in the glove box. He felt naked without the revolver’s comforting weight riding his hip, but he seriously doubted that his concealed carry permit allowed him to bring his firearm inside a financial institution. Although he’d been skirting the law on several counts that day, he didn’t want to toss all caution to the wind, either.
It was the lunch hour, and the lobby was full. Ten minutes had passed by the time he reached a teller and told her that he wanted a cashier’s check for fifty thousand dollars, to be withdrawn from his joint checking account; before leaving the office, he had visited the bank’s Web site and transferred all of the monies from their savings into the joint checking.
The teller was a stout, brown-haired woman with enormous bifocals that magnified her eyes to an almost freakish degree, and upon hearing his request, those saucer-eyes of hers squinted in skepticism. Undaunted, he produced his driver’s license and checkbook and asked her the processing fee that he should add to the withdrawal. When she told him, he filled in the full amount with a shaky hand.
He had never penned a check for anywhere near fifty thousand, but if he had the funds and the lives of his family were at stake, he would have gladly paid fifty million for their safe return.
When the teller asked to whom the cashier’s check should be payable, he said, “Todd Gates.”
Earlier, Corey had called the bank and learned that the largest cash withdrawal he could receive on short notice from any given branch was two thousand dollars, far short of the fifty he needed. Todd had offered a solution: Corey could pay him, and in exchange, Todd would give him the money in hard currency.
You have fifty grand in cash available? Corey had asked, incredulous.
When you run with the big dogs, you need to have major funds on tap, Todd had admitted with a shrug. The guys I play poker with don’t accept checks or credit cards, if you know what I mean.
Corey knew what he meant. Todd played with the kind of people who gambled for high stakes, and they weren’t exactly reporting their winnings to the IRS. Corey had known for some time that Todd swam in those murky waters, but he had avoided making a big deal about it, deciding that as long as Todd was on point at work, the man’s private life was none of his business.
But a check-for-cash exchange for fifty grand was going to make it his business, like it or not. He would have to accept that. All he wanted was Simone and Jada brought home safely-anything else, he could deal with afterward.
The teller printed the check and slid it across the counter for his approval. He nodded, head swimming as he saw all those zeros and remembered the hard work and sacrifice it had taken to build up their savings.
All gone soon, courtesy of Leon. Anger flashed through his chest.
The teller inserted the check in a business-size envelope and passed it to him, and Corey marched out of the building, arms swinging.
As he was getting behind the wheel, the cell phone Leon had given him chirped. Corey fumbled the phone out of the holster.
“Guess who?” Leon said.
27
“Listen, I’ve got your money,” Corey said.
“Word?” Leon said. “Now that was fast, I mean, whoa, you moved like the wind pulling together such an exorbitant sum of capital, so much for your woe-is-me claim that you didn’t have the funds, I knew you were lying through your bleached teeth.”