“Faye, that’s not why I’m here.”
She lowered her eyes. “I know. What Ham’s put us through—” She raised her eyes again, her liner smudged from moisture. “You can’t imagine.”
Ethan drank some of his coffee, which, of course, was perfect. He thought of Juliet and the rotgut she’d drink, then pushed her out of his mind, because it wasn’t going to get him anywhere.
“It’s very sweet of you to stop by,” Faye said, on the verge of tears now.
“Faye,” Ethan said, “I need to know everything.”
She sprang to her feet. She wore trim white pants with a hot-pink-and-white top and hot-pink sandals, as if she’d deliberately dressed to cheer herself up. “More coffee?”
“Faye—”
“Just—” She spun around to him. “Just find my son, Ethan. Please. Find him and bring him home before he does something none of us can undo. I want him out of harm’s way.”
Ethan pushed aside his coffee. “Tell me everything, Faye, or I go quail-hunting.”
She smiled wryly. “You don’t hunt. Luke does, but you—” She took a breath, a sharpness coming into her expression. “I should say you don’t hunt quail. People, yes. You’re a search-and-destroy specialist. Isn’t that what you are, Ethan?”
There was a superciliousness about her tone—a sarcasm combined with an almost romanticized take on what he did—that set Ethan’s teeth on edge. He got to his feet. “Did you and John pay off Ham’s kidnappers?”
She grabbed the plate of pecan rolls and brought it to the counter. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“All right,” he said. “I’m leaving.”
She tried to smother a sob, her back to him. “We’d have done anything, Ethan. Anything. If you haven’t been in our position, you don’t know.”
Ethan didn’t react to her emotion. “Go on.”
“Someone contacted us.” She didn’t turn around. “Just a voice on the end of the phone. He promised to call us with details. He never did.”
“How much did he want?”
She ripped open a drawer and pulled out a box of Saran Wrap, snapping it down on the counter. “Five million. We didn’t balk. We didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t give us a chance to respond.” Her tone was argumentative now, anticipating Ethan’s reaction. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“When did you get the call?”
“Three days before Ham turned up here.”
Two days before Ethan and his team had freed her son. “Did you tell the authorities?”
“What authorities? Ham was being held in some rat-hole in Colombia, for God’s sake! There was no one to tell. Low-life mercenaries in a foreign country had my son. They wanted money. What were we supposed to do?”
Take matters into their own hands, Ethan thought. It was what Carhills always did.
“I thought the voice might have been yours,” she whispered, tearing off a sheet of Saran Wrap. “I almost wish it had been.”
“You wish I’d kidnapped your only son. For money.” Ethan stared at her, truly stunned, then moved for the door. “I should go.”
She started to cry. “I’m sorry for even thinking such a thing. I’d hoped—I knew if it’d been you, there’d have been a reason, a larger purpose.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“You can’t tell anyone about the ransom call,” she said, spinning around at him. “Nothing came of it. We never got another call. John—he’ll be furious I told you. We’re worried about Ham, Ethan. No—we’re terrified for him. I don’t know what he’s involved in. I understand we don’t show emotions well, but we love Ham with all our hearts.”
Mia O’Farrell would want to know about the five million. So would FBI Special Agent Joe Collins and Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Mike Rivera. And Juliet, up in New York with her dead doorman and her dead fish and her traumatized niece.
If Faye and Johnson Carhill had been ordinary parents receiving a ransom demand for their son, they’d have called the feds the minute they hung up.
But, then, if they’d been ordinary parents, Ham might never have gone to South America in the first place.
Faye averted her eyes, her hands shaking. “Please, Ethan. Find my son.”
He kissed her on the cheek, ignoring her tears. He had no illusions that she’d given him the whole story. The Carhills never laid out all their cards at once.