“Nothing that will risk Kylie,” she says.
Pete takes her cold, trembling hand in his. “It’s going to be OK,” he says.
She nods and looks into his dark, steady eyes. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. We’re going to get her back.”
“Why me, do you think? Why my family?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“She said she researched me online. She saw that Marty and I did that Peace Corps project in Guatemala. She saw Harvard and cancer survivor and all my jobs and she thought I seemed like someone who had her act together. I’m not. I’m a loser, Pete. I’m weak.”
“You’re not, you’re—”
“I’ve screwed up my whole life. I invested everything in Marty. I can’t even look after my own daughter!”
“Stop it, Rach.”
“I don’t own a gun. I had to buy one. Today.”
“Another smart move.”
“Today was the first time I’ve ever fired one.”
Pete now takes both of her hands in his. “Trust me, Rachel. You’re handling this. And now I’m here to help you.”
“In the Marines, I know you were an engineer, but did you ever, have you ever had occasion to…”
“Yes,” he says simply.
“More than once?”
“Yes.”
She nods and takes a deep breath. “I drove up to New Hampshire to get the gun and the other supplies. I was nearly seen by someone on the island but I think I gave her the slip.”
“That’s good too.”
“How can anyone carry out any kind of criminal enterprise in New England when everybody knows everybody?”
Pete smiles. “We’ll figure it out, Rach. What else have you done?”
“Here are my targets,” she says, handing Pete the list of vulnerable kids who fit the criteria.
“You want stable parents who look as if they won’t go to the cops and who’ll carry out a kidnapping?” Pete asks.
“They can’t be broke, and they can’t have any connection to cops, journalists, or politicians. And they have to have kids of the right age. No kids with special needs. No diabetics or anything like that.”
“What about kidnapping a spouse instead of a child?” Pete asks.
“You can’t be sure of how someone will feel about a spouse. Look at us. Three divorces between us. But all parents love their kids, right?”
“Right. Well, this seems OK. Toby Dunleavy, that’s your number-one target?”
“Yup. I had a different number one, but the mom was dating a cop.”
“Have you been over to the Dunleavy house?”
“Nope. Gonna do that later tonight. But first I need your help with the mattress and the board at the Appenzellers’.”
“Where is this place?”
“Just across the basin. Come on, I’ll take you.”
They go outside in the rain and walk along the basin trail. “A lot of these big houses are vacant this time of year,” Rachel explains.
“You broke into one of these by yourself?” Pete asks.
“Yup. I knew the Appenzellers were gone. I was a little worried about an alarm but there wasn’t one.”
“You did well. I’ve done a few B-and-Es myself and it’s always scary.”
“We can go in through the back,” Rachel says when they reach the path next to the Appenzeller house.
“This place is a good choice, Rach. I like the brick,” Pete says. “How did you pick the lock?”
“I didn’t. I hit the mechanism with a chisel.”
“Where did you learn how to do that?”
“Google.”
They go inside and up on the first floor they grab a mattress and bedding from the spare bedroom. They manhandle it down to the basement. Rachel has already brought over the board to cover the window. “We’ll put it up with Marty’s old electric drill. I think that will make less noise than a hammer,” Pete says.
They put up the board and try to make the basement as pleasant as possible with sheets and blankets and a few toys and games Rachel brought over earlier. It’s devastating to think that if this actually works and they don’t get killed or arrested, a scared little boy will be down here soon. Rachel has attached a heavy chain to a concrete pillar near the mattress, and this sends a shiver down Pete’s spine.
They close the back door of the Appenzellers’ and return to Rachel’s house.
“Now what?” Pete wonders.
“Search my house for bugs. I hate the idea that they’re watching everything I do.”
Pete nods. “I can do that.”
He takes the wireless detector out of his bag. In the old days of analog-bugging equipment, you needed a radio receiver and complex equipment, but now a fifty-buck wireless detector can do the job. He goes through the house and then he gets to work on the phone and the computer.
“It’s largely a negative,” he says at last. “I did a thorough scan of the entire house from top to bottom. I looked in the basement and I even looked in the crawl space above the kitchen.”
“Did you say largely negative?”
“I did. You don’t have any bugs in the house. However, as I suspected, your Mac has been completely compromised.”
“How?”
“There’s a spyware bot on your Mac that, when connected to the wireless network, slaves the camera and also shows a live screenshot of whatever is on your home screen. It was fairly easy to capture your passwords after that. The bot has a randomly generated name that doesn’t mean anything. Its destination is also encrypted.”
“How do you know how to do all this?” Rachel asks, impressed.
“Well, you know me, I’ve been tinkering with computers since the Stone Age days of the internet. Trying to get back into it more seriously. Private security is a big growth sector for former servicemen.”
“Can you remove the bot thing?”
“That’s a fairly easy task. But if I do, its absence will be noticed immediately.”
“Whoever it is that’s hacking me will know that I’m onto them?”
“Exactly. And if they know that you’re onto them, they will undoubtedly deploy further countermeasures. Just don’t use your Mac and phone until Kylie is back. Then I’ll kill the bot and wipe your machines.”
“They’re going to be calling me on my iPhone. I need it.”
“Just be aware, then, that they’ll be listening in on you, and your phone, of course, is also a GPS transmitter.”
“Could they be physically watching the house?” Rachel asks.
“They could,” Pete says. “They could be watching us right now. My guess is they’re not.”
Rachel shudders. “I keep seeing Kylie in that basement. She must be terrified.”
“She’s a resilient kid. She’s a tough little cookie.” Maybe too tough, Pete thinks. I hope she doesn’t try anything stupid.
22
Friday, 1:11 a.m.
Kylie waits until she thinks it’s very late, but naturally she has no way of telling the time. No iPhone, no iPad, no Mac. No watch, of course, but who wears a watch these days?