Anson seemed to follow that same chain of reasoning, for he said, "All right. Okay. Four hundred thousand."

"What?"

"In the boat. I'll tell you where to find it."

"We're still two hundred thousand short."

"There's no more. Not cash. I'd have to liquidate some stock."

Mitch turned to look at the kitchen clock—11:56.

"Four minutes. No time left for lies, Anson."

"Would you for once believe me? Just for once? There's no more in easy cash."

"I already have to change the conditions of the trade," Mitch worried, "no wire transfer. Now I also have to bargain them down two hundred thousand."

"They'll take it," Anson assured him. "I know these pigs. Are they gonna turn down a million eight? No way. Not these pigs."

"You better be right."

"Listen, we're okay now, aren't we? Aren't we okay? So don't leave me in the dark."

Mitch had already turned away from him. He didn't switch off the laundry-room light, and he didn't close the door.

At the table, he stared at the bearer bonds and the cash. He picked up the pen and the notepad and went to the phone.

He could not bear the sight of the telephone. Phones had not brought him good news lately.

He closed his eyes.

Three years ago, they were married with no family in attendance. Dorothy, the grandmother who had raised Holly, had passed suddenly five months previously. On her father's side were an aunt and two cousins. She didn't know them. They didn't care.

Mitch couldn't invite his brother and three sisters without extending an invitation to his parents. He didn't want Daniel and Kathy to be there.

He wasn't motivated by bitterness. He didn't exclude them in anger or as punishment. He'd been afraid for them to be present.

This marriage was his second chance at family, and if it failed, he wouldn't have the nerve to try a third time. Daniel and Kathy were a systemic disease of families, a disease that, allowed in at the roots, would surely deform the plant and wither its fruit.

Afterward, they told his family they had eloped, but actually they'd had a small ceremony and reception at the house for a limited number of friends. Iggy was right: The band had been woofy. Too many numbers with tambourines. And a guy singer who thought his best trick was extended passages in falsetto.

After everyone had gone and the band was a comic memory, he and Holly had danced alone, to a radio, on the portable dance floor that had been set up in the backyard for the event. She had been so lovely in the moonlight, almost otherworldly, that he unconsciously held her too tight, as if she might fade like a phantom, until she said, "I'm breakable, you know," and he relaxed, and she put her head on his shoulder. Although he was usually a clumsy dancer, he never once put a foot wrong, and around them turned the lush landscaping that was the consequence of his patient labor, and above them shone the stars that he had never offered her because he wasn't a man given to poetic declarations, but she owned the stars already, and the moon bowed to her, as well, and all the heavens, and the night.

The phone rang.

Chapter 49

He answered on the second ring and said, "This is Mitch."

"Hello, Mitch. Are you feeling hopeful?"

This mellow voice was not the same as on the previous calls, and the change made Mitch uneasy.

"Yes. I'm hopeful," he said.

"Good. Nothing can be achieved without hope. It was hope that brought me from Angel Fire to here, and it's hope that'll carry me back again."

On consideration, the change didn't disturb Mitch so much as did the nature of the voice. The man spoke with a gentleness that was just one station up the dial from spooky.

"I want to talk to Holly."

"Of course you do. She is the woman of the hour—and acquitting herself very well. This lady is a solid spirit."

Mitch didn't know what to make of that. What the guy had said about Holly was true, but from him, it sounded creepy.

Holly came on the line. "Are you okay, Mitch?"

"I'm all right. I'm going crazy, but I'm all right. I love you."

"I'm okay, too. I haven't been hurt. Not really."

"We're going to pull this off," he assured her. "I'm not going to let you down."

"I never thought you would. Never."

"I love you, Holly."

"He wants the phone back," she said, and returned it to her captor.

She had sounded constrained. Twice he'd told her that he loved her, but she had not responded in kind. Something was wrong.

The gentle voice returned: "There's been one change in the plan, Mitch, one important change. Instead of a wire transfer, cash is king."

Mitch had worried that he would not be able to talk them out of having the ransom sent by wire. He should have been relieved by this development. Instead it troubled him. It was another indication that something had happened to put the kidnappers off their game. A new voice on the phone, then Holly sounding guarded, and now a sudden preference for cash.

"Are you with me, Mitch?"

"Yeah. It's just, you've thrown me a curve here. You should know...Anson hasn't been as full of brotherly concern as maybe you thought he would be."

The caller was amused. "The others thought he would be. I was never sure. I don't expect genuine tears from a crocodile."

"I'm handling the situation," Mitch assured him.

"Have you been surprised by your brother?"

"Repeatedly. Listen, right now I can guarantee eight hundred thousand in cash and six hundred thousand in bearer bonds."

Before Mitch could mention the additional four hundred thousand that was supposedly aboard Anson's boat, the kidnapper said, "That's a disappointment, of course. That other six hundred thousand would buy a lot of time to seek."

Mitch didn't catch the last word. "To what?"

"Do you seek, Mitch?"

"Seek what?"

"If we knew the answer, there'd be no need to seek. A million four will be all right. I'll think of it as a discount for paying cash."

Surprised by the ease with which the lower figure had been accepted, Mitch said, "You can speak for everyone, your partners?"

"Yes. If I don't speak for them, who will?"

"Then...what's next?"

"You come alone."

"All right."

"Unarmed."

"All right."

"Pack the money and bonds in a plastic trash bag. Don't tie the top shut. Are you familiar with the Turnbridge house?"

"Everyone in the county knows the Turnbridge house."

"Come there at three o'clock. Don't get cute and think you can come early and lie in wait. All you'll get for that is a dead wife."

"I'll be there at three. Not a minute earlier. How do I get in?"

"The gate will appear to be chained, but the chain will be loose. After you drive onto the site, replace the chain as it was. What will you be driving?"

"My Honda."

"Stop directly in front of the house. You'll see an SUV. Park well away from it. Park with the back of the Honda toward the house and open the trunk. I want to see no one's in the trunk."

"All right."

"At that point, I'll phone you on your cell with instructions."

"Wait. My cell. It's dead." Actually it was somewhere in Rancho Santa Fe. "Can I use Anson's?"

"What's that number?"

Anson's cell phone lay on the kitchen table, beside the money and the bonds. Mitch snared it. "I don't know the number. I have to switch it on and look. Give me a minute."

As Mitch waited for the phone company logo to leave the screen, the man with the gentle voice said, "Tell me, is Anson alive?"

Surprised by the question, Mitch said only, "Yes."

Amused, the caller said, "The simple answer tells me so much."

"What does it tell you?"

"He underestimated you."

"You're reading too much into one word. Here's the cell number."

After Mitch read the number and then repeated it, the man on the phone said, "We want a smooth simple trade, Mitch. The best piece of business is one from which everyone walks away a winner."

Mitch considered that this was the first time the man with the gentle voice had said we instead of I.

"Three o'clock," the caller reminded him, and hung up.

Chapter 50

Everything in the laundry room was white, everything except the red chair and Anson in it and the small yellow puddle.

Reeking, restless, rocking side to side on the chair, Anson was resigned to cooperation. "Yeah, there's one of them talks like that. Name's Jimmy Null. He's a pro, but he's not a front guy. If he's on the phone with you, the others are dead."

"Dead how?"

"Something went wrong, a disagreement about something, and he decided to bag the whole payoff."

"So you think there's just one of them now?"

"That makes it harder for you, not easier."

"Why harder?"

"Once he's wasted the others, his tendency will be to clean up totally behind himself."

"Holly and me."

"Only when he's got the money." In his misery, Anson found a ghastly smile. "You want to know about the money, bro? You want to know what I do for a living?"

Anson would be offering this information only if he believed that the knowledge would do his brother harm.

Mitch knew that the glint of vicious glee in Anson's eyes was an argument for continued ignorance, but his curiosity outweighed his caution.

Before either of them could speak, the telephone rang.

Mitch returned to the kitchen, briefly considered not answering, but worried that it might be Jimmy Null calling with additional instructions.

"Hello?"

"Anson?"

"He's not here."

"Who's this?"

The voice didn't belong to Jimmy Null.

"I'm a friend of Anson's," Mitch said.

Now that he'd taken the call, the best thing was to carry through with it as if all were normal here.

"When will he be back?" the caller asked.

"Tomorrow."

"Should I try his cell?"

The voice teased Mitch's memory.

Picking up Anson's cell phone from the counter, Mitch said, "He forgot to take it with him."

"Can you give him a message?"

"Sure. Go ahead."

"Tell him that Julian Campbell called."

The glimmer of the gray eyes, the glitter of the gold Rolex. "Anything else?" Mitch asked.

"That's everything. Although I do have one concern, friend of Anson."

Mitch said nothing.

"Friend of Anson, are you there?"

"Yes."

"I hope you're taking good care of my Chrysler Windsor. I

love that car. See you later."

Chapter 51

Mitch located the kitchen drawer in which Anson kept two boxes of plastic trash-can liners. He chose the smaller of the sizes, a white thirteen-gallon bag.

He put the blocks of cash and the envelope of bearer bonds in the bag. He twisted the top but didn't tie a knot.

At this hour, in the usual traffic, Rancho Santa Fe was as much as two hours from Corona del Mar. Even if Campbell had associates at work here in Orange County, they wouldn't arrive immediately.

When Mitch returned to the laundry room, Anson said, "Who called?"

"He was selling something."

Sea-green and bloodshot, Anson's eyes were oceans murky with shark's work. "It didn't sound like sales."

"If you were going to tell me what you do for a living."

Malicious glee swam into Anson's eyes again. He wanted to share his triumph less out of pride than because somehow it was knowledge that would wound Mitch.

"Imagine you send data to a customer over the Internet, and on receipt it appears to be innocent material—say photos and a text history of Ireland."

"Appears to be."

"It's not like encrypted data, which is meaningless if you don't have the code. Instead it appears clear, unremarkable. But when you process it with a special software, the photos and text combine and re-form into completely different material, into the hidden truth.'"

"What is the truth?"

"Wait. First...your customer downloads the software and never has a hard copy. If police search his computer and try to copy or analyze the operative software, the program self-destructs beyond reconstitution. Likewise documents stored on the computer in either original or converted form."

Having striven to keep his computer knowledge to the minimum that the modern world would allow, Mitch wasn't sure that he saw the most useful applications of this, but one occurred to him.

"So terrorists could communicate over the Internet, and anyone sampling their transmissions would find them sharing only a history of Ireland."

"Or France or Tahiti, or long analyses of John Wayne's films. No sinister material, no obvious encryption to raise suspicion. But terrorists aren't a stable, profitable market."

"Who is?"

"There are many. But I want you to know especially about the work I did for Julian Campbell."

"The entertainment entrepreneur," Mitch said.

"It's true he owns casinos in several countries. Partly he uses them to launder money from other activities."

Mitch thought he knew the real Anson, a man far different from the one who had ridden south with him to Rancho Santa Fe. No more illusions. No more self-imposed blindness.

Yet in this essential moment, a chilling third iteration of the man revealed itself, almost as much a stranger to Mitch as had been the second Anson who first appeared in Campbell's library.

His face seemed to acquire a new tenant that slouched through the chambers of his skull and brought a darker light to those two familiar green windows.

Something about his body changed, as well. A more primitive hulk seemed to occupy the chair than he who'd sat there a minute previous, still a man but a man in whom the animal was more clearly visible.

This awareness came to Mitch before his brother had begun to reveal the business done with Campbell. He could not pretend that the effect was psychological, that Anson's revelation had transformed him in Mitch's eyes, for the change preceded the disclosure.