TWENTY-FOUR

arco is at his office, staring blankly out his window at the view. No one else is there. He has no staff of his own on site. Since it’s Saturday, the rest of the building is quiet, too, for which he’s grateful.

He thinks about the meeting he and Anne had earlier in the day with Detective Rasbach. Rasbach knows, he’s sure of it. Those eyes of his seem to look right through Marco. Marco might as well have stood up and said, This is the man I conspired with to take Cora for a couple of days and negotiate the ransom money. He’s now dead. I have lost control of things. I need your help.

They have a lawyer now. A lawyer famous for getting people acquitted—people who are guilty as hell. Marco realizes now that this is a good thing. There will be no more interviews without the lawyer present. Marco no longer cares about his reputation; it’s all about staying out of jail and keeping Anne in the dark.

His cell phone rings. He looks at the display. Cynthia is calling him. That bitch. Why would she be calling? He hesitates, wondering whether to answer or let it go to voice mail, but in the end he picks it up.

“Yes? ” His voice is cold. He will never forgive her for lying to the police.

“Marco, ” Cynthia purrs, as if the last few days had never happened, as if his child were not missing, and everything was the same as it used to be. How he wishes that were true.

“What’s up? ” Marco says. He wants to keep this short.

“I have something I want to talk to you about, ” Cynthia says, a little more businesslike. “Can you come by the house? ”

“Why? Did you want to apologize? ”

“Apologize? ” She sounds surprised.

“For lying to the police. For telling them that I came on to you when we both know you came on to me. ”

“I’m sorry about that. I did lie, ” she says, with an attempt at playfulness.

“What the fuck? You’re sorry? Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused me? ”

“Can we discuss it? ” She’s not playful anymore.

“Why do we need to discuss it? ”

“I’ll explain when you get here, ” Cynthia says, and abruptly hangs up the phone.

Marco sits at his desk for five full minutes, drumming his fingers on its surface, trying to decide what to do. Finally he gets up, closes the blinds, leaves his office, and locks his door. He feels uneasy about ignoring her. Cynthia is not the kind of woman you ignore. He’d better see what she has to say.

When he gets to his own neighborhood, Marco realizes that if he’s going to see Cynthia, even if only for a couple of minutes, it’s better that Anne not know about it. And he wants to avoid the reporters. So he’d better not park in front of the house. If he parks in the garage, he can go to Cynthia’s through the back for a couple of minutes first and then go home.

He parks the Audi in his own garage and then goes through the backyard gate over to Cynthia’s and knocks on the back door. He feels furtive, guilty, as if he’s sneaking around on his wife. But he isn’t—he just wants to see what Cynthia has to say, and then he’ll get the hell out of there. He doesn’t want to sneak around on his wife. He glances aimlessly over the patio as he waits for her to answer the door. This is where he was sitting when she crawled into his lap.

Cynthia comes to the door. She looks surprised. “I was expecting you at the front door, ” she says. It’s as if she’s insinuating something. But she’s not as flirtatious as she usually is. He sees right away that she’s not in a sexy mood. Well, neither is he.

He steps inside the kitchen. “What’s this about? ” Marco says. “I’ve got to get home. ”

“I think you’ve got a couple of minutes for this, ” Cynthia says, and leans back against the kitchen counter, folding her arms beneath her breasts.

“Why did you lie to the police? ” Marco asks abruptly.

“It was just a little lie, ” Cynthia says.

“No it wasn’t. ”

“I like to tell lies. Just like you. ”

“What do you mean? ” Marco spits angrily.

“You’re living a lie, aren’t you, Marco? ”

Marco starts to feel a chill. She can’t know. She can’t know anything. How could she? “What the hell are you talking about? ” He shakes his head as if he has no idea what she’s getting at.

Cynthia gives him a long, cool look. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Marco, but Graham has a hidden camera, in the backyard. ” Marco says nothing, but he feels cold all over. “And it was recording on the night you were here, the night your baby went missing. ”

She knows, Marco thinks. Fuck. Fuck. He starts to sweat. He looks at her beautiful face, so ugly to him now. She is a manipulative bitch. Perhaps she’s bluffing. Well, he can bluff, too.

“You had a camera on? Did you get anything on the kidnapper? ” he asks, as if this is good news.

“Oh, yes, ” she says. “I sure did. ”

Marco knows he’s finished. She has him on video. He can tell by her face.

“It was you. ”

“Bullshit, ” Marco scoffs, trying to act as if he doesn’t believe a word of it, but he knows it’s no use.

“Would you like to see it? ”

He would like to wring her neck. “Yes, ” he says.

“Come with me, ” she says, and turns to go upstairs.

He follows her up to her bedroom, the one she shares with Graham. He thinks how foolish she is, inviting a man who she already knows is capable of a kidnapping up to her bedroom. She doesn’t appear to be afraid. She appears to be in total control. But that’s what she likes—to be in control, to pull people’s strings and watch them dance. She also likes a little spice, a little danger. She’s obviously going to blackmail him. He wonders if he’s going to let her.

A laptop lies open on the bed. She clicks some keys, and a video begins to play, with a date and time signature. Marco blinks rapidly as he watches the video. There he is fiddling with the light, going into the house. He comes out a couple minutes later with Cora in his arms, wrapped in her white blanket. It is unmistakably him. He glances around to make sure he’s unobserved. He looks almost directly at the camera, but he has no idea that it’s there. Then he walks quickly to the rear door of the garage and reappears about a minute later, walking back across the lawn without the baby. He’d forgotten to reset the light. Seeing it all now, after everything that’s happened, Marco feels overwhelming regret, and guilt, and shame.

And anger that he’s been caught. By her. She will show the police. She will show Anne. He is finished.

“Who else has seen this? ” he asks. He’s surprised at how normal his voice sounds to him.

She ignores his question. “Did you kill her? ” Cynthia asks, almost with her old playfulness.

He is sickened by her, by her morbid, unfeeling curiosity. He doesn’t answer. Does he want her to think he might be capable of killing? “Who else? ” he demands, looking fiercely at her.

“No one, ” she lies.

“Graham? ”

“No, he hasn’t seen it, ” Cynthia says. “I told him I checked the camera but the battery had died. He didn’t question it. He doesn’t know anything about this. ” She adds, “You know Graham. He doesn’t take much of an interest. ”

“So why are you showing this to me? ” Marco asks. “Why didn’t you go straight to the police? ”

“Why would I do that? We’re friends, aren’t we? ” She gives him a coy smile.

“Cut the bullshit, Cynthia. ”

“Fine. ” The smile disappears. “If you want me to keep this to myself, it’s going to cost you. ”

“Well, that’s a bit of a problem, Cynthia, ” Marco says, his voice very controlled, “because I don’t have any money. ”

“Oh, come on. You must have something. ”

“I am stone broke, ” he says coldly. “Why do you think I kidnapped my own child? For fun? ”

He can see the disappointment in her face as she readjusts her expectations.

“You can mortgage your house, can’t you? ”

“It’s already mortgaged. ”

“Mortgage it some more. ”

The cold bitch. “I can’t. Not without Anne knowing, obviously. ”

“So maybe we need to show Anne the video, too. ”

Marco takes a sudden step toward her. He doesn’t have to play the part of a desperate man—he is a desperate man. He could throttle her right now if he wanted to. But she doesn’t look scared, she looks excited. Her eyes glitter, and he can see her breasts rising and falling rapidly as she breathes. Perhaps it’s danger she wants, more than anything else. The thrill. Perhaps she wants him to throw her onto the bed they’re both standing beside. For a brief moment, he considers it. Would she not blackmail him then? Not likely.

“You’re not showing that video to anybody. ”

She takes her time responding. She looks right in his eyes. Their faces are mere inches apart. “I would rather not show it to anybody, Marco. I would like this to be just between the two of us. But you’ve got to work with me here. You must be able to get some money. ”

Marco thinks furiously. He doesn’t have any money. He doesn’t know how to get any. He will have to buy time. “Look, give me some time to figure things out. You know what a shit show my life is right now. ”

“Things haven’t exactly turned out as you planned, have they? ” she says. “I presume you expected to get the baby back? ”

He wants to hit her, but he stops himself.

She looks at him appraisingly. “Fine. I’ll give you some time. I won’t show anyone the video—for now. ”

“How much money are we talking about here? ”

“Two hundred thousand. ”

It’s less than he was expecting. He would have expected her to ask for more, an amount more in keeping with her flamboyant nature. But if he pays her, she’ll ask for more, and more—that’s the way it is with blackmailers. You never get out from under them. So the amount she’s naming now is meaningless. Even if he pays her and she destroys the video in front of him, he’ll never be certain there are no copies. His life is totally destroyed, on so many fronts.

“I think that’s fair, ” she says.

“I’m leaving now. Stay away from Anne. ”

“I will. But if I get impatient, if I don’t hear from you, I might call. ”

Marco pushes past her out of the bedroom and goes down the stairs and out the sliding glass kitchen doors without looking back. He’s so angry he can’t think straight. Angry and scared. There’s proof. Proof that he took the baby. This changes everything. Anne will know. And he could go to jail for a very long time.

At that moment he doesn’t see how things can get any worse. He enters his own backyard through the gate from Cynthia’s patio. Anne is out there watering some plants.

Their eyes meet.

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