themselves out of the way. The van tore past them, crashed right
through the front door and came to an abrupt halt, its wheels still
spinning, when it struck a four-foot-thick interior wall.
A minute later, several heavily armed men surrounded the van and
wrenched the damaged door open. No one was inside. The men’s eyes
passed over the receptacle where the cellular phone would normally be
kept. The phone was completely under the front seat, the phone cord
pretty much invisible under the weak illumination of the dome light.
They believed the phone had probably been dislodged upon impact rather
than that it had deliberately been placed there.
Sidney entered the house through the rear. When the man had given her
directions to the place, she had instantly recognized it. She and Jason
had stayed at the resort several times, and she was very familiar with
the interior layout. She had taken a shortcut and arrived in half the
time her daughter’s captors had allotted her. She had used those
precious extra minutes to rig the van’s steering wheel and accelerator
with rope she had found in the back of the vehicle. She clutched her
pistol, her finger resting lightly on the trigger as she stole through
the dark rooms of the resort. She was ninety percent certain that Amy
was not on the premises. The ten percent of doubt had led her to use
the rigged van as a diversion so that she could at tempt a rescue,
however improbable, of her daughter. She was under no delusions that
these men would let Amy go free.
Up ahead she heard the sounds of raised voices and feet running toward
the front of the house. She cocked her head to the left as a pair of
footsteps echoed down the hallway. This person was not running; the
tread was slow and methodical. She shrank back into the shadows and
waited for the person to pass by. As soon as he did, she pressed the
muzzle of her pistol directly against his neck.
“Make any sound at all, and you’re dead,” she said with a cold finality.
“Hands over your head.”
Her prisoner complied. He was tall, with broad shoulders. She felt for
his gun and found it in a shoulder holster. She crammed the man’s
pistol in her jacket pocket and pushed him forward. The large room up
ahead was well lit. Sidney could not hear any noise emanating from the
space, but she didn’t think that silence would last long. They would
soon figure out her ploy, if they hadn’t already.
She prodded the man away from the light and down a darkened hallway.
They came to a doorway. “Open it and move inside,” she told him.
He opened the door and she pushed him inside. One of her hands felt
around for the light switch. When the lights came on, she shut the door
behind her and looked at the man’s face.
Richard Lucas stared back at her.
“You don’t look surprised,” Lucas said, his voice even and calm.
“Let’s just say nothing surprises me anymore,” Sidney replied.
“Sit.” She motioned with her gun to a straight-backed chair. “Where are
the others?”
Lucas shrugged. “Here, there, everywhere. There are a lot of them,
Sidney.”
“Where’s my daughter? And my mother?” Lucas kept silent. Sidney put
both hands on her gun and pointed it directly at his chest.
‘Tm not screwing around with you. Where are they?”
“When I was a CIA operative, I was captured and tortured by the KGB for
two months before I escaped. I never told them anything and I’m not
telling you anything,” Lucas said calmly. “And if you’re thinking about
using me to exchange for your daughter, forget it. So you might as well
pull the trigger, Sidney.”
Sidney’s finger quivered on the trigger as she and Lucas engaged in a
staring contest. Finally she swore under her breath and lowered the
pistol. A smile cracked Lucas’s lips.
She thought quickly. All right, you sonofabitch. “What color is the
hat Amy was wearing, Rich? If you have her, you should know that.”
The smile disappeared from Lucas’s lips. He paused for a second and
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