“So we meet in the middle of nowhere, I give you the disk and you let
him and me go out of the goodness of your heart? Right!
Under that proposal you’ll have the disk and my father and I will be
somewhere in the Atlantic providing nourishment for sharks. You’ll have
to do a lot better than that if you want what I’ve got.”
Though the man had covered the receiver, Sidney heard voices on the
other end of the line, a couple of them raised in anger.
“It’s our way or nothing.”
“Fine, I’m on my way to state police headquarters. Be sure to stay
tuned to the evening news. I’m sure you don’t want to miss any thing.
Good-bye.”
“Wait!”
Sidney didn’t say anything for a minute. When she did, she spoke with
far more confidence than she was feeling at the moment. “I’ll be at the
intersection of Chaplain and Merchant Streets smack in the center of
Bell Harbor in thirty minutes. I’ll be sitting in my car. It should be
easy to spot–it’s the one with all the extra air-conditioning.
You blink your headlights twice. You let my father out. There’s a
diner right across the street. I see him go in there, I open the car
door, place the disk on the sidewalk and drive off. Please keep in mind
that I’m heavily armed and more than prepared to send as many of you as
I can straight to hell.”
“How do we know it’s the right disk?”
“I want my father back. It’ll be the right disk. I hope you choke on
it. Do we have a deal?” Now her tone of voice brooked no opposition.
She waited anxiously for the answer. Please, God, don’t let them call
my bluff. She let out a sigh of relief when it finally came. “Thirty
minutes.” The line went dead.
Sidney got back in the car and gripped the dashboard in frustration.
How the hell had they tracked her and her father? It was impossible.
It was as if they had been watching Sidney and her father the entire
time. The white van had also been at the gas station. The attack
probably would have occurred there except for the timely arrival of the
state troopers. She lay down across the front seat as she fought to
keep her nerves in check. She moved her purse out of the way and then
opened it, just to make sure the disk was still there.
The disk for her father. But once the disk was gone, she would spend
the rest of her life running from the police. Or at least until they
caught her. Quite a choice. But there was really no choice about it.
As she sat back up she started to close her purse. Then she stopped,
her thoughts drifting back to that night, the night in the limo. So
much had happened since her terrifying escape. And yet it hadn’t really
been an escape, had it? The killer had let her go and also had
courteously let her keep her purse. In fact, she would have forgotten
it entirely except for him tossing it to her. She had been so happy to
get out alive, she had never really considered why he would have done
something so remarkable …. She started to claw through the contents
of her purse. It took a couple of minutes, but she finally found it, at
the very bottom. It had been inserted through a slit in the lining of
the purse. She held it up and stared at it. A tiny tracking device.
She looked behind her as a shiver thudded up her spine. Putting the car
in gear again, she sped off. Up ahead, a dump truck converted into a
snowplow had pulled to the curb. She looked in her mirror. There was
no one behind her. She rolled down the driver’s-side window, pulled up
to the truck and cocked her hand back as she prepared to toss the
tracking device into the back of the truck. Then, just as quickly, she
stopped the swing of her arm and rolled her window back up. The
tracking device was still in her hand. She hit the gas, leaving the