Fatal Error, page 16
He opened the drapes, picked up his car keys, and placed the bags in his car. He sat in the driver’s seat, and studied a map. He would dispose of the trash in the village, but the box would require a much longer journey. He traced his finger along the country roads around Rome. He would travel to the east side of the city, to a small peak in the hills beyond Tivoli. A beautiful, rugged spot, with a clear line of sight to Rome. Ideal for radio reception and telephone calls. He would wind the clock, set the alarm, and at the appointed hour, the alarm would trigger an untraceable phone call to Colonnello Vanelli’s office.
For what it was worth, he would give them their precious proof of life. Not of Grantly, but of the delicate Miss Kimball. He laughed. First Wilson Grantly, then Miss Kimball, then the FBI.
The Americans had blundered in where they weren’t wanted, and now they would pay the price. A very high price.
Miss Kimball was far more valuable than Wilson Grantly. She’d killed Luigi. He’d seen the news reports on the Internet. She’d shot his brother.
Simply thinking the truth reddened his face and raised his heartbeat pounding hard in his chest. He tamped his rage to a rigid level of manageable anger. There would be plenty of time for vengeance later.
His nostrils flared. His breathing slowed.
First, he’d collect the ransom.
After that, money wasn’t the only price she would pay.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Jess watched. There was no light. Not real light. Just the flashes and blooms of her overstrained retinas, a wide-awake replay of the visions of deep sleep.
Her back ached. She shifted her weight as she half lay, half sat on the plastic bag on the old bed. She moved every few minutes, but numbness was setting into her arms and legs. She shivered. The cold penetrated her jeans, and she wished she’d worn a warmer shirt. How long had she been underground? An hour? Two?
Two hours. She bit her lip. The best chance of escape and rescue was always in the first few hours. She knew because of her work at Taboo with crime victims and their families. And she’d been told many times that her son, Peter, wasn’t likely to be found because too much time had passed since he’d been kidnapped. Way too many years.
Immediately after any kidnapping, the captor was running on adrenaline that prevented him from thinking clearly, and the rescuers were doing the same. The rescuers became more acute, more determined, as they made progress toward the hostage. But the captor’s high faded as fast as the drug drained from his bloodstream.
But two hours were two hours. Kidnappings had been solved after much longer times in captivity.
She breathed out. Enzo had left her. He had locked her up and, as far as she could tell, returned to the surface of the earth and driven away. Perhaps that made things different? Perhaps, with no immediate contact between them, her chances of escape and rescue would last longer?
She stretched her aching muscles as much as her restraints allowed.
Morris would know she had been taken because he’d been on his way to the hotel. He would have investigated when she didn’t appear. He would have found Santo Mola, the man Enzo coshed. He would have reviewed the hotel’s security camera footage, and the ones from the street. He would have seen Enzo, and tracked the car.
She grimaced. The houses she had seen from the rear of the car definitely weren’t located in the city. They had lawns and gardens and views. Driveways with gates and rustic nameplates. They were on the outskirts of a town or a village, way beyond the city limits. There would be no surveillance cameras here.
So, they would know she had been kidnapped, and probably by whom, but after that she was on her own. If she escaped from Enzo’s prison, she’d have to do it herself.
Escape? She pulled on the zip-tie. The possibility seemed remote. Even if she could break free, the door was thick, and the wooden bar sealing it shut was solid and heavy.
She shook her head and shrugged. An involuntary sigh escaped her lips. If only she’d asked for some evidence that it actually was Morris waiting at the hotel. If she’d called him or talked to him, everything would have been different. One phone call. She bit her lip.
She hadn’t taken Morris’s warnings seriously enough. Or Vanelli’s. He wasn’t the world’s greatest communicator, but if she had believed him, she’d be at the airport, sipping wine in the club lounge.
Enzo had been in control from the moment he kidnapped her. She sat in the blackness, and watched the speckles of light dance in her vision. Yes, Enzo was in control, and she was on her own. How would she change that balance?
Pins and needles ran through her right leg. She rolled sideways to relieve the pressure on her hips and stretch her leg. The tingling subsided.
Enzo had tied her up and locked her in, but he hadn’t killed her. Did that mean he cared more for money than he cared about revenge?
Either way, he’d singled out the FBI to pay for her release, but would they? They had a well-known standing protocol never to pay ransom. She took a breath.
Damn. She sat as upright as her bonds would allow.
Ransom.
Enzo wanted to exchange her for money. Like Wilson Grantly. Enzo would threaten her life, maybe, she curled her fingers into fists, even harm her. There would be back and forth. Messages, demands. Morris would play for time. Trace phone calls. Fingerprint ransom notes. Analyze speech patterns. Anything for a lead. Until Morris would agree to the ransom in the hope of pulling off a sting.
Enzo would play them along. Morris would work night and day. Everything would happen as she thought.
Everything except that Enzo wasn’t planning to let her go.
He couldn’t.
She’d shot his brother. She hadn’t killed Luigi, but she could have. And if she hadn’t shot him, he would have escaped. In Enzo’s eyes, she’d killed Luigi either way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Enzo delivered his phone call device to its appointed hilltop, and drove back to Rome. He pulled off the main road, unlocked the gate to his property, and drove on through.
Halfway to the cabin, he turned off the track and onto a wide walking path. Long grass and branches scraped down the sides of the Ford. The wheels fell into giant potholes, grinding the underside of the car against rocks and stones.
He didn’t care. He would torch the Ford tomorrow.
The path opened into a clearing. He swung the car around, pointing it back down the route he had just taken, and stepped out.
The air was fresh with the scent of trees and a hint of salt from the coast a mile away. The tall trees and the sun’s angle kept its rays from the floor of the clearing.
He rummaged in the trunk, and pulled out a pair of heavy gloves that reached his elbows. He tucked the cuffs of his jeans into his boots. Left leg then right. No need to invite trouble.
He pushed his way through the long grass to a clearing under a tree. Beside the tree was a green wooden box with a hole on one side and a handle on the top. He took hold of the handle.
The box squirmed in his hand. He peered through the hole. Tiny eyes stared back at him. Teeth and claws flashed. Rats. Good sized ones. He snapped a wooden cover over the hole.
Two. Not many, but he was out of time. He shook the box. He’d have to go with what he had. There again, two might be the best number. More might be overwhelming. He gave a flat smile. He didn’t want things to come to an end too quickly.
The scratching and scuffling continued as he walked back to the Ford and dropped the green box in the trunk. He drove back through the grass and branches, over the rocks and potholes, down the wide footpath, to the lane and on to the cabin.
He took the box into the cabin, looped a cord through the handle, and lowered the rats into the mine. He climbed down, and flipped the switch that brought on the gloomy yellow lights strung down the tunnel.
The rats’ scratching turned frantic. He shook the box to save them from themselves. The noise stopped.
He walked down the tunnel. The silence was oppressive, the jagged rocks and heavy earth swallowed every sound.
He found the door he wanted, and peered through the spy hole. Satisfied, he removed the locking bar, and opened the door.
“Hello, Jess.”
She blinked up at him. Her knees were drawn toward her chest, her shoulders were rolled forward. Only the zip-tie holding her arms behind her prevented her from curling into a fetal position.
She said nothing.
He took another step into the room. “We need to talk. To come to an agreement.”
Her gaze flitted to the wooden box. She gave the barest of nods.
“The FBI will be paying for your release. They’re obligated. They involved you. Or you involved yourself, and they didn’t stop you. Either way, they are culpable.”
She said nothing.
“So, why am I here?” He shrugged. “They will pay. They hate bad publicity, and I, or more correctly, you, could give them some very bad publicity. So, all they need is…encouragement…and that is where you come in.”
He placed the box on the floor in front of her. The rats scrabbled, rocking the box. He pulled a cover from one side, revealing inner wire mesh. The rats flocked to the mesh and resumed scratching for freedom. They climbed over each other, squirming and wrestling for the best angle to gnaw through the wire.
Jess swallowed. Her eyes widened. White all but consumed her irises.
He nudged the box, sending the rats into a frenzy. “Two of them.”
He waited for a gasp or some display of fear, but she kept her lips closed tight.
“Teeth and claws,” he said. “And hunger.”
She looked up at him but did not reply.
“In the wild, rats are always hungry. Never satisfied. It’s their life. Their existence. They live from meal to meal.” He kicked the box. “And if you leave them no choice, they will eat each other.” He gave an upturned smile. “No qualms. No hesitation…no hunger.”
“What do you want?” Her defiance was amusing.
He smiled. “If you leave them food, they will eat the food first.” He raised his eyebrows. “Leave them a lot of food and they will eat for a long time.”
She did not reply.
He sniffed. “I want you to understand.”
“Understand what?”
He shook his head with mock sorrow, as if she was dimwitted. “I want you to understand what it is like.”
She said nothing.
He smiled again. “When it is dark and they have food to eat.”
In the hardened mask of her face, a tiny wrinkle appeared across her forehead, barely visible in the dim light. But he saw it. And he smiled again.
He scooped up the box by the handle, and stepped out of the room. He slammed the door and dropped the wooden bar into place.
Through the spy hole, he caught a last glimpse of her face. The defiant mask was gone. Deep furrows lined her forehead. She cringed and shut her eyes.
Mission accomplished.
He barely stopped himself from laughing.
Enzo adjusted his expression and stepped to the last door. He lifted the bar and swung the door open.
Grantly lay on the floor, his clothes covered in dried blood, his ruined hand cradled to his chest. He’d found swaddling and the blood had clotted. Precisely as Enzo had expected.
Grantly swung his head slowly toward Enzo. His eyes converged, pulling themselves back from whatever deep recesses they had found in the dark.
Enzo held the box behind his back, and smiled like a long lost friend. “Hello, Wilson.”
Wilson grunted, low, hoarse. He swayed his head side to side, trying to clear whatever fog filled his mind.
“Not long now,” Enzo said.
Wilson made no noise.
“We are negotiating.”
Wilson’s lips quivered.
“I believe you may have a generous benefactor. Someone who will fulfill the promise your parents broke.”
Wilson grunted.
“The FBI.”
Wilson’s gaze lurched in his direction.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Enzo tilted his head and ticked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “The very FBI we did everything in our power to avoid will now pay your ransom.”
Wilson moved his head. Enzo couldn’t tell if he was attempting to communicate, or if he was about to pass out.
He kicked Wilson’s leg. “That would be good, wouldn’t it? I get the money, and you? You get freedom.”
Enzo looked around the damp, bleak cell where Wilson had been confined for more than six days. “Freedom.” He scuffed at the ground with his boot. “Probably seems like a lovely dream in here, but freedom for you is entirely possible.”
He smiled again, showing a row of straight, white teeth. “You just have to do one small thing.”
Grantly arched his eyebrows as if he understood. He nodded.
“Scream,” said Enzo.
In one continuous movement, Enzo swung the box from behind him and lobbed it across the cave.
Grantly’s head lurched to follow the box’s path across his cell. It smashed on the wall. The lid broke off. The box and its contents scattered in all directions.
Grantly yelped.
Enzo leapt back, slamming the door shut behind him. He dropped the heavy wooden beam into place.
Enzo watched through the spy hole and waited a few minutes until the screaming started.
The rats were a psychological weapon. They would torment him. Deprive him of sleep. Needle at whatever was left of his soul. Constantly. Minute by minute. Hour by hour.
But the rats wouldn’t kill Grantly. That was something Enzo would do himself. Eventually.
He took a deep breath. He didn’t need Grantly or his pathetic quarter million dollars now. Kimball was a much more valuable prize. But Grantly would serve one last purpose.
Enzo returned along the tunnel, passed Kimball’s door. The entire length of the walk from the end of the tunnel to the ladder, Enzo heard him.
Grantly was in fine voice. Yelling and screaming. Rasping, desperate, begging. The rats displacing his sanity. As planned.
Enzo laughed.
Five million Euro. Kimball would bring that much, at least.
The longer Grantly lasted, the more she’d be begging them to pay.
Her rescuers would be begging Enzo to accept it.
What a cheerful thought.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Jess closed her eyes, and listened as Enzo walked away from her cell. He opened another door. The tunnel’s echoes confused his voice, and the heavy wooden door blurred his words, but his intonation was hard, questioning.
She frowned. Questioning who? She strained to hear, but there was no reply to Enzo’s questions.
Wood splintered. Probably the box he’d carried.
The cell door scraped back into position.
Someone yelped.
There was a long silence before she heard footsteps. Enzo, heading closer. She shuffled backwards. He paused outside her cell. She took a deep breath.
The shout rang out. A terrified mixture of surprise and shock. Then another, and another.
Enzo remained outside her door.
The shouting grew into screams. Irregular staccato bursts that built until they rolled over each other. The notes rising and falling. Rasping over the gender. Hiding the owner behind their terror.
But she knew the owner, and the terror. She drew her knees toward her chest. Wilson Grantly. He was locked in the same tunnel. With the rats. Enzo had let them loose in a cell just like hers.
His talk. His vile superiority. His gloating. He’d carried out his threat. Just like he told her he would. She exhaled. Just like she knew he would.
A tremolo joined the screaming. Wilson moving abruptly, violently even. His screams doused in anger and venom. He thrashed, stamping, thumping, pounding, but the screams returned. The rats were terrorizing him, and he was trying to kill them.
Enzo walked away. He didn’t speak, but his footsteps said all she needed to know. He was satisfied, contented, pleased with himself. She shivered. He was getting a kick out of his sick power.
She counted his steps from the door to the ladder. How many steps to cover the distance from her cell to the ladder? She counted the moments as she imagined him climbing up to ground level. How many rungs on that ladder? How quickly could she climb to freedom?
The light went out in the tunnel, and the coal black returned.
She shuffled her back against the cave wall.
Wilson screamed on.
She rolled her shoulders, curling her head to one side, willing the noise to stop. For her sake.
And his.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Morris rubbed his eyes. Vanelli rolled the video back and forth. On a monitor between them, a man cartoon-walked in and out of Jess’s hotel. She walked in front of the man, patiently reversing direction as Vanelli twisted a knob on the playback panel.
Two men to their right were hunched over another monitor, tracing the white Ford’s journey out of Rome.
“It’s him,” Morris said.
Vanelli shrugged. “Hard to say.”
“Has to be.”
“His hat hides his face.”
“Which proves it’s him.”
“We have too much experience with kidnapping here.” Vanelli’s sour frown revealed his feelings about the despicable crime. “No kidnapper wants to appear on camera. Believe me.”
Morris rubbed his neck and stretched to relieve tight muscles.
Vanelli gave a pained smile. “I want Ficarra as much as you do, I want her back as much as you do. But we can’t jump to conclusions. That would be foolish.”
“Her name is Jessica Kimball.”
Vanelli’s face was expressionless. Sometimes it was impossible to read the man. Did he care about Jess Kimball? Or only about keeping his name out of a failed investigation in the press?
“And Enzo’s disappeared. Poof.” Morris snapped his fingers and opened his hand to the air like a magician. “One minute he’s the family man, the next he’s gone on a business trip, according to his wife. Makes no sense.”
For what it was worth, he would give them their precious proof of life. Not of Grantly, but of the delicate Miss Kimball. He laughed. First Wilson Grantly, then Miss Kimball, then the FBI.
The Americans had blundered in where they weren’t wanted, and now they would pay the price. A very high price.
Miss Kimball was far more valuable than Wilson Grantly. She’d killed Luigi. He’d seen the news reports on the Internet. She’d shot his brother.
Simply thinking the truth reddened his face and raised his heartbeat pounding hard in his chest. He tamped his rage to a rigid level of manageable anger. There would be plenty of time for vengeance later.
His nostrils flared. His breathing slowed.
First, he’d collect the ransom.
After that, money wasn’t the only price she would pay.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Jess watched. There was no light. Not real light. Just the flashes and blooms of her overstrained retinas, a wide-awake replay of the visions of deep sleep.
Her back ached. She shifted her weight as she half lay, half sat on the plastic bag on the old bed. She moved every few minutes, but numbness was setting into her arms and legs. She shivered. The cold penetrated her jeans, and she wished she’d worn a warmer shirt. How long had she been underground? An hour? Two?
Two hours. She bit her lip. The best chance of escape and rescue was always in the first few hours. She knew because of her work at Taboo with crime victims and their families. And she’d been told many times that her son, Peter, wasn’t likely to be found because too much time had passed since he’d been kidnapped. Way too many years.
Immediately after any kidnapping, the captor was running on adrenaline that prevented him from thinking clearly, and the rescuers were doing the same. The rescuers became more acute, more determined, as they made progress toward the hostage. But the captor’s high faded as fast as the drug drained from his bloodstream.
But two hours were two hours. Kidnappings had been solved after much longer times in captivity.
She breathed out. Enzo had left her. He had locked her up and, as far as she could tell, returned to the surface of the earth and driven away. Perhaps that made things different? Perhaps, with no immediate contact between them, her chances of escape and rescue would last longer?
She stretched her aching muscles as much as her restraints allowed.
Morris would know she had been taken because he’d been on his way to the hotel. He would have investigated when she didn’t appear. He would have found Santo Mola, the man Enzo coshed. He would have reviewed the hotel’s security camera footage, and the ones from the street. He would have seen Enzo, and tracked the car.
She grimaced. The houses she had seen from the rear of the car definitely weren’t located in the city. They had lawns and gardens and views. Driveways with gates and rustic nameplates. They were on the outskirts of a town or a village, way beyond the city limits. There would be no surveillance cameras here.
So, they would know she had been kidnapped, and probably by whom, but after that she was on her own. If she escaped from Enzo’s prison, she’d have to do it herself.
Escape? She pulled on the zip-tie. The possibility seemed remote. Even if she could break free, the door was thick, and the wooden bar sealing it shut was solid and heavy.
She shook her head and shrugged. An involuntary sigh escaped her lips. If only she’d asked for some evidence that it actually was Morris waiting at the hotel. If she’d called him or talked to him, everything would have been different. One phone call. She bit her lip.
She hadn’t taken Morris’s warnings seriously enough. Or Vanelli’s. He wasn’t the world’s greatest communicator, but if she had believed him, she’d be at the airport, sipping wine in the club lounge.
Enzo had been in control from the moment he kidnapped her. She sat in the blackness, and watched the speckles of light dance in her vision. Yes, Enzo was in control, and she was on her own. How would she change that balance?
Pins and needles ran through her right leg. She rolled sideways to relieve the pressure on her hips and stretch her leg. The tingling subsided.
Enzo had tied her up and locked her in, but he hadn’t killed her. Did that mean he cared more for money than he cared about revenge?
Either way, he’d singled out the FBI to pay for her release, but would they? They had a well-known standing protocol never to pay ransom. She took a breath.
Damn. She sat as upright as her bonds would allow.
Ransom.
Enzo wanted to exchange her for money. Like Wilson Grantly. Enzo would threaten her life, maybe, she curled her fingers into fists, even harm her. There would be back and forth. Messages, demands. Morris would play for time. Trace phone calls. Fingerprint ransom notes. Analyze speech patterns. Anything for a lead. Until Morris would agree to the ransom in the hope of pulling off a sting.
Enzo would play them along. Morris would work night and day. Everything would happen as she thought.
Everything except that Enzo wasn’t planning to let her go.
He couldn’t.
She’d shot his brother. She hadn’t killed Luigi, but she could have. And if she hadn’t shot him, he would have escaped. In Enzo’s eyes, she’d killed Luigi either way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Enzo delivered his phone call device to its appointed hilltop, and drove back to Rome. He pulled off the main road, unlocked the gate to his property, and drove on through.
Halfway to the cabin, he turned off the track and onto a wide walking path. Long grass and branches scraped down the sides of the Ford. The wheels fell into giant potholes, grinding the underside of the car against rocks and stones.
He didn’t care. He would torch the Ford tomorrow.
The path opened into a clearing. He swung the car around, pointing it back down the route he had just taken, and stepped out.
The air was fresh with the scent of trees and a hint of salt from the coast a mile away. The tall trees and the sun’s angle kept its rays from the floor of the clearing.
He rummaged in the trunk, and pulled out a pair of heavy gloves that reached his elbows. He tucked the cuffs of his jeans into his boots. Left leg then right. No need to invite trouble.
He pushed his way through the long grass to a clearing under a tree. Beside the tree was a green wooden box with a hole on one side and a handle on the top. He took hold of the handle.
The box squirmed in his hand. He peered through the hole. Tiny eyes stared back at him. Teeth and claws flashed. Rats. Good sized ones. He snapped a wooden cover over the hole.
Two. Not many, but he was out of time. He shook the box. He’d have to go with what he had. There again, two might be the best number. More might be overwhelming. He gave a flat smile. He didn’t want things to come to an end too quickly.
The scratching and scuffling continued as he walked back to the Ford and dropped the green box in the trunk. He drove back through the grass and branches, over the rocks and potholes, down the wide footpath, to the lane and on to the cabin.
He took the box into the cabin, looped a cord through the handle, and lowered the rats into the mine. He climbed down, and flipped the switch that brought on the gloomy yellow lights strung down the tunnel.
The rats’ scratching turned frantic. He shook the box to save them from themselves. The noise stopped.
He walked down the tunnel. The silence was oppressive, the jagged rocks and heavy earth swallowed every sound.
He found the door he wanted, and peered through the spy hole. Satisfied, he removed the locking bar, and opened the door.
“Hello, Jess.”
She blinked up at him. Her knees were drawn toward her chest, her shoulders were rolled forward. Only the zip-tie holding her arms behind her prevented her from curling into a fetal position.
She said nothing.
He took another step into the room. “We need to talk. To come to an agreement.”
Her gaze flitted to the wooden box. She gave the barest of nods.
“The FBI will be paying for your release. They’re obligated. They involved you. Or you involved yourself, and they didn’t stop you. Either way, they are culpable.”
She said nothing.
“So, why am I here?” He shrugged. “They will pay. They hate bad publicity, and I, or more correctly, you, could give them some very bad publicity. So, all they need is…encouragement…and that is where you come in.”
He placed the box on the floor in front of her. The rats scrabbled, rocking the box. He pulled a cover from one side, revealing inner wire mesh. The rats flocked to the mesh and resumed scratching for freedom. They climbed over each other, squirming and wrestling for the best angle to gnaw through the wire.
Jess swallowed. Her eyes widened. White all but consumed her irises.
He nudged the box, sending the rats into a frenzy. “Two of them.”
He waited for a gasp or some display of fear, but she kept her lips closed tight.
“Teeth and claws,” he said. “And hunger.”
She looked up at him but did not reply.
“In the wild, rats are always hungry. Never satisfied. It’s their life. Their existence. They live from meal to meal.” He kicked the box. “And if you leave them no choice, they will eat each other.” He gave an upturned smile. “No qualms. No hesitation…no hunger.”
“What do you want?” Her defiance was amusing.
He smiled. “If you leave them food, they will eat the food first.” He raised his eyebrows. “Leave them a lot of food and they will eat for a long time.”
She did not reply.
He sniffed. “I want you to understand.”
“Understand what?”
He shook his head with mock sorrow, as if she was dimwitted. “I want you to understand what it is like.”
She said nothing.
He smiled again. “When it is dark and they have food to eat.”
In the hardened mask of her face, a tiny wrinkle appeared across her forehead, barely visible in the dim light. But he saw it. And he smiled again.
He scooped up the box by the handle, and stepped out of the room. He slammed the door and dropped the wooden bar into place.
Through the spy hole, he caught a last glimpse of her face. The defiant mask was gone. Deep furrows lined her forehead. She cringed and shut her eyes.
Mission accomplished.
He barely stopped himself from laughing.
Enzo adjusted his expression and stepped to the last door. He lifted the bar and swung the door open.
Grantly lay on the floor, his clothes covered in dried blood, his ruined hand cradled to his chest. He’d found swaddling and the blood had clotted. Precisely as Enzo had expected.
Grantly swung his head slowly toward Enzo. His eyes converged, pulling themselves back from whatever deep recesses they had found in the dark.
Enzo held the box behind his back, and smiled like a long lost friend. “Hello, Wilson.”
Wilson grunted, low, hoarse. He swayed his head side to side, trying to clear whatever fog filled his mind.
“Not long now,” Enzo said.
Wilson made no noise.
“We are negotiating.”
Wilson’s lips quivered.
“I believe you may have a generous benefactor. Someone who will fulfill the promise your parents broke.”
Wilson grunted.
“The FBI.”
Wilson’s gaze lurched in his direction.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Enzo tilted his head and ticked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “The very FBI we did everything in our power to avoid will now pay your ransom.”
Wilson moved his head. Enzo couldn’t tell if he was attempting to communicate, or if he was about to pass out.
He kicked Wilson’s leg. “That would be good, wouldn’t it? I get the money, and you? You get freedom.”
Enzo looked around the damp, bleak cell where Wilson had been confined for more than six days. “Freedom.” He scuffed at the ground with his boot. “Probably seems like a lovely dream in here, but freedom for you is entirely possible.”
He smiled again, showing a row of straight, white teeth. “You just have to do one small thing.”
Grantly arched his eyebrows as if he understood. He nodded.
“Scream,” said Enzo.
In one continuous movement, Enzo swung the box from behind him and lobbed it across the cave.
Grantly’s head lurched to follow the box’s path across his cell. It smashed on the wall. The lid broke off. The box and its contents scattered in all directions.
Grantly yelped.
Enzo leapt back, slamming the door shut behind him. He dropped the heavy wooden beam into place.
Enzo watched through the spy hole and waited a few minutes until the screaming started.
The rats were a psychological weapon. They would torment him. Deprive him of sleep. Needle at whatever was left of his soul. Constantly. Minute by minute. Hour by hour.
But the rats wouldn’t kill Grantly. That was something Enzo would do himself. Eventually.
He took a deep breath. He didn’t need Grantly or his pathetic quarter million dollars now. Kimball was a much more valuable prize. But Grantly would serve one last purpose.
Enzo returned along the tunnel, passed Kimball’s door. The entire length of the walk from the end of the tunnel to the ladder, Enzo heard him.
Grantly was in fine voice. Yelling and screaming. Rasping, desperate, begging. The rats displacing his sanity. As planned.
Enzo laughed.
Five million Euro. Kimball would bring that much, at least.
The longer Grantly lasted, the more she’d be begging them to pay.
Her rescuers would be begging Enzo to accept it.
What a cheerful thought.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Jess closed her eyes, and listened as Enzo walked away from her cell. He opened another door. The tunnel’s echoes confused his voice, and the heavy wooden door blurred his words, but his intonation was hard, questioning.
She frowned. Questioning who? She strained to hear, but there was no reply to Enzo’s questions.
Wood splintered. Probably the box he’d carried.
The cell door scraped back into position.
Someone yelped.
There was a long silence before she heard footsteps. Enzo, heading closer. She shuffled backwards. He paused outside her cell. She took a deep breath.
The shout rang out. A terrified mixture of surprise and shock. Then another, and another.
Enzo remained outside her door.
The shouting grew into screams. Irregular staccato bursts that built until they rolled over each other. The notes rising and falling. Rasping over the gender. Hiding the owner behind their terror.
But she knew the owner, and the terror. She drew her knees toward her chest. Wilson Grantly. He was locked in the same tunnel. With the rats. Enzo had let them loose in a cell just like hers.
His talk. His vile superiority. His gloating. He’d carried out his threat. Just like he told her he would. She exhaled. Just like she knew he would.
A tremolo joined the screaming. Wilson moving abruptly, violently even. His screams doused in anger and venom. He thrashed, stamping, thumping, pounding, but the screams returned. The rats were terrorizing him, and he was trying to kill them.
Enzo walked away. He didn’t speak, but his footsteps said all she needed to know. He was satisfied, contented, pleased with himself. She shivered. He was getting a kick out of his sick power.
She counted his steps from the door to the ladder. How many steps to cover the distance from her cell to the ladder? She counted the moments as she imagined him climbing up to ground level. How many rungs on that ladder? How quickly could she climb to freedom?
The light went out in the tunnel, and the coal black returned.
She shuffled her back against the cave wall.
Wilson screamed on.
She rolled her shoulders, curling her head to one side, willing the noise to stop. For her sake.
And his.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Morris rubbed his eyes. Vanelli rolled the video back and forth. On a monitor between them, a man cartoon-walked in and out of Jess’s hotel. She walked in front of the man, patiently reversing direction as Vanelli twisted a knob on the playback panel.
Two men to their right were hunched over another monitor, tracing the white Ford’s journey out of Rome.
“It’s him,” Morris said.
Vanelli shrugged. “Hard to say.”
“Has to be.”
“His hat hides his face.”
“Which proves it’s him.”
“We have too much experience with kidnapping here.” Vanelli’s sour frown revealed his feelings about the despicable crime. “No kidnapper wants to appear on camera. Believe me.”
Morris rubbed his neck and stretched to relieve tight muscles.
Vanelli gave a pained smile. “I want Ficarra as much as you do, I want her back as much as you do. But we can’t jump to conclusions. That would be foolish.”
“Her name is Jessica Kimball.”
Vanelli’s face was expressionless. Sometimes it was impossible to read the man. Did he care about Jess Kimball? Or only about keeping his name out of a failed investigation in the press?
“And Enzo’s disappeared. Poof.” Morris snapped his fingers and opened his hand to the air like a magician. “One minute he’s the family man, the next he’s gone on a business trip, according to his wife. Makes no sense.”
