“You okay?” Wagstaff asks.
“No, not really.” Ariel stands up abruptly. “I need to confirm a few things. I’m going to step out to make a call.” Ariel shuts the door behind her. She checks her watch. It’s early in the day for this, but she has no choice. She waits for the international call to connect.
“Ariel?” It’s a croaky voice that answers. “Everything okay?”
“No, actually. Sorry for calling so early, but John has been kidnapped—”
“Oh my God. Seriously?”
“—and I need your help with something urgent. It’s going to sound strange.”
“Of course. Anything.”
“I need you to go to the store right now.”
“Like, right now?”
“Yes, immediately. Throw on some sweats, get in your car.”
Persephone lives in her parents’ house, a five-minute drive to the store. Hers is a small-town life where she knows everyone—the cops and firefighters, shop owners and bartenders, teachers and doctors and local-newspaper reporters. Everything is at most five minutes away.
“I promise, P., you’ll be back home in twenty minutes, go back to bed, whatever.”
“Okay.”
“When you get there, please call me from the basement. And Persephone?”
“Yeah?”
“This is really, really important.”
*
Ariel yanks open the door, and the receptionist and Wagstaff both look up. Ariel’s eyes dart immediately to her paperwork sitting on the table, folded in half but in plain sight, right in front of the reporter. She marches over, snatches up the faxed pages.
“You didn’t look at this, did you? Tell me you didn’t look.”
Wagstaff shakes his head.
“Oh God, you did.”
“I didn’t.”
Ariel stares at him, trying to figure out if she believes him. She doesn’t. He’s maintaining eye contact way too firmly.
“How could you?” She’s keeping her voice low; she doesn’t want to alarm the receptionist.
“I’m just trying to help.”
“You cannot write about this. You understand that, don’t you? Please tell me you understand that.”
“I promise I won’t. Not until your husband is out of danger.”
“No no no no no.” She ruffles the contract. “This? Never. You can never reveal this. You did not have a right to look. I did not have the right to allow you. I will go to jail. And that’s actually the best-case scenario. Do you understand what could happen to me?”
“Uh, I …” he stammers.
Her phone starts ringing again.
“Oh good grief.” She looks at the screen, answers. “P., hold just a sec, okay?” She covers the mic, turns her eyes back to the reporter. “Get out of here.”
“What?”
“I can’t trust you. I never should have trusted you in the first place. Please leave. Now.”
*
Carolina Santos looks up at the young detective who’s rushing over. “We found the kidnapped man’s client. His name is Jorge Vicente.”
“Excellent.”
“Two weeks ago, Vicente made a reservation for six people at nine o’clock tonight at Monthana. Do you know this restaurant?”
“I do.” But Santos has never eaten there. Monthana is beyond her means.
“Vicente confirms that two of his guests are supposed to be the American consultant and his wife. I informed him that the Americans will not be able to join tonight.”
Santos’s fingers are already bouncing across her keyboard.
“Jorge Vicente,” she reads from the screen, “is chief financial officer of Os Canários Enterprises, which is … Oh who can tell from these websites. Mining? Maybe lumber also.” She’s clicking around, then shrugs, stands, grabs her jacket. “Let’s go,” she says to Moniz.
“Should we inform the wife?” Moniz asks.
“Not yet,” Santos says. “Let’s first hear what Vicente has to say.”
*
“There he is,” Nicole Griffiths says. “How are you feeling, slugger?”
Guido Antonucci smiles sheepishly. He had to have known that this was coming. He did after all get beat up by a girl. An amateur girl. He must be mortified. Griffiths certainly would be.
“I’m good, thanks.”
He doesn’t look it. His entire face seems to be swollen. But he’s here, and Griffiths knows he’s ready to work. Now is not when she’s going to give him his full serving of shit.
“Guido, can you get ears into Pryce’s hotel room?”
“Ugh. You mean right now?”
“As soon as humanly possible.”
“This time of day? I dunno. A hotel is likely to be busy.”
“True. But on the other hand, there shouldn’t be any housekeeping staff wandering around to worry about.”
“Good point.” He thinks about it. “We wouldn’t be able to hide the devices very well. Just a few mics in lamps. If Pryce starts looking, it’s not going to be hard for her to find our hardware. Then what?”
“That depends on who she really is, and what she’s really up to. If she’s just a regular civilian whose regular civilian husband got kidnapped?” Griffiths shrugs. “Then she’s not going to be checking any lamps for any microphones.”
“But.”
“Yeah. If she does sweep the room, then we’ve definitely learned that she’s a person who sweeps a room.”
“So you’re saying a camera too?”
“It doesn’t need to be great, Guido. It doesn’t need to be at the ideal cinematography angle. It just needs to show us if this is a person who looks for bugs.”
Antonucci nods. “I’m on it.”
“Thanks. But Guido? I don’t think you should be the one to go into the hotel.” She swirls her fingers around the front of her own face. “In this state you’re a little too conspicuous.”
*
“Okay,” Persephone says, “I’m in the basement.”
“Good. You know where the toolbox is?”
“Sure.”
Everyone in the shop is familiar with the toolbox, the WD-40 for squeaky hinges, the screwdriver to tighten brackets, hammer and nails and picture wire for inscribed author photos and signed book jackets. Fuses for the master board, a putty knife, spackle, drywall tape.
“You’ll need the sledgehammer.”
“The sledgehammer? Seriously?”
“You see that framed BookExpo poster? Take it off the hook.”
“Um, okay … done.”
“Now take the sledgehammer and smash a hole through the wall, right below the hook.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
“Okay,” Persephone says, “I’m gonna put you on speaker. Then I’ll swing.”
Ariel hears a thud, but not any cracking noise. “Don’t be shy,” Ariel says, loudly.
Another thud.
“Come on, Persephone, full swing.”
Then she hears it, the smash and crack and plop-plop of debris hitting the floor, then a muttered “Holy shit.”
“Grab the canvas bag that’s in the wall.”
“Did you do this? Build this hiding spot?”
Ariel had rented a power saw to cut a hole in the wall. She’d placed the tote—a convention giveaway—inside the wall, resting on a joist. Then she’d pushed the cutout piece of drywall back into place, taped around the edges, spackled over the tape, sanded the spackle, brushed the wall with primer, then two coats of paint. It looks perfect. Looked.
“Persephone, I want you to listen to me carefully.”
“This is so awesome.”