The Nightmare Thief (20 page)

“Left arm, my chest. Oh God.” Kyle squeezed his eyes shut.

The rancher eyed him for several long, hard seconds. “We’d better call an ambulance.”

He put his hands on his knee and made to stand. Kyle gripped his sleeve. “Don’t leave me here.”

Dustin said, “Get him on your horse.”

“I have to ride back to the house to call an ambulance.”

“We may not have time for an ambulance to get here. You have a car at your house? A truck? I’ll drive him to the hospital.”

The rancher paused, hesitant, but looking at Dustin’s face, he finally softened.

“Son, on this side of the gorge we’re twenty miles from access to the logging road. You’re right, we need to drive him. Help me lift him into the saddle.”

Dustin slung Kyle’s arm around his shoulder. “We’re going to take care of you, dude. You’re going to be okay.”

The rancher tossed Kyle’s other arm over his shoulder and they carefully lifted him to his feet. The rancher said, “What are your names?”

“I’m Dustin, and this is Kyle.”

“I’m John Yarrow. Let’s get him in the saddle.”

They walked toward the horse. Kyle’s feet twisted and dragged. He gasped for breath. “Hurry.”

“Almost there,” Dustin said.

Kyle glanced up at the horse. He was virtually hanging in the other men’s grasp. Yarrow grabbed him tighter. “I’ll lift you.”

Kyle groaned and pitched forward in pain, his arm slipping from Yarrow’s shoulder. He lurched forward out of Dustin’s grasp.

He took two fast steps ahead of them and reached the horse. He pulled the shotgun from its scabbard on the saddle.

Dustin said, “Kyle?”

Kyle said nothing. He swept the barrel around.

Yarrow leapt for the gun.

H
augen pulled the Volvo off the road on a curve with an unobstructed line of sight to the sky south of him. He dialed the satellite phone.

After a few seconds’ delay, it rang. The voice modulator was attached. And this phone connected through an exchange in the UK, so that geo-location would be impossible. Nobody could track him.

Peter Reiniger answered curtly. “You’re not going to get what you want. I don’t deal with extortionists.”

“But you are dealing with me. You’re having this conversation. You answered, you haven’t hung up, and you aren’t going to,” Haugen said. “Keep this up, and your daughter will walk away without a scratch.”

“You won’t let me phone my lawyer or the company’s emergency action team, so how—”

“They don’t need to be involved. Perhaps you were too shocked the first time to understand me.”

“Then explain,” Reiniger said.

“It’s about maximizing returns. It’s about value for money.”

“Put it on the table.”

“If you want your daughter back, you’re going to pay me twenty million dollars. You’re going to transfer it to an account number I will give you.”

The connection crackled. “Twenty million? Are you crazy? I can’t get that money.”

“Stop complaining. You sound like a whiny schoolboy.”

Haugen curbed himself. He had to slow his words, make sure his voice and vocabulary couldn’t tip Reiniger off. He didn’t want anybody to suspect his identity. But this was such a delicious moment that it was nearly impossible to control his … venom.

Reiniger loved games. Haugen had discovered this about him. Reiniger liked to test his subordinates, put them through the wringer under the guise of self-enlightenment. But now it was Haugen’s turn to put Reiniger to the test.

“I did not ask if you could get the money. I said if you want to see your daughter alive, you will pay me. You have until six A.M. The clock starts now.”

“Wait—no, you can’t—”

“I can. I am. Do it.”

Reiniger certainly could do it. Haugen knew
exactly
how he could arrange the payment. He had only one way to secure the funds, and that realization had to be hitting him between the eyes. He knew how to add. He knew where his marbles were.

And Reiniger undoubtedly knew what would happen when he paid. His partners in Reiniger Capital would be unhappy. Their backers would be livid. Peter Reiniger would pay a heavy price for ransoming Autumn. He might lose his company. He might be taken to court, or worse.

Perfect.

“You’re operating in a mental battle space that’s incorrectly configured,” Haugen said. “You still think this is about making sensible business decisions. You think it’s about maintaining your reputation as a hedge fund great white shark.”

“You bastard, that’s not what it’s about.”

“The game board has been upended. When we finish this call, you will phone your partners in Singapore. They’re always ready to make a provision for seamless financial transactions.”

Reiniger was quiet for a long moment. “When do I get my daughter back?”

“When I say.”

“That’s insane.”

“It’s no more insane than you staying at the helm of Reiniger Capital when others in your employ take the fall for you.”

He shouldn’t have said that—he realized it as soon as the words slipped from his mouth. But Reiniger
should
feel worried. He should be concerned about Haugen’s rationality. Let him worry that a madman had his baby girl.

“I’ll make the call,” Reiniger said.

“Good. Besides, why are you worrying? Reiniger Capital insures against kidnap, does it not? Senior executives, spouses, and children.”

Haugen had analyzed this too. Reiniger Capital insured its senior management against kidnapping in the amount of ten million dollars. There was only one problem for Peter Reiniger, capitalist reptile, iguana-in-Armani.

Haugen stared at the sky. The clouds boiled overhead, gray and threatening. The strangled silence on Reiniger’s end, the purity of its helplessness, was sweet.

Reiniger’s voice rose, stress bleeding through. “Just give me my daughter back, you bastard.”

Haugen smiled. It was all so neat. And Reiniger was going to help him tie the bow.

“Now, for part two. The jet.”

 

 

The Town Car raced back toward the airport. Peter Reiniger clutched the phone. His chest felt like a band had been placed around it.
Kidnap insurance.

This cocksucker on the other end of the line had done his research. Reiniger Capital did insure senior executives and their families against ransom demands.

But children were insured for two million dollars. This bastard wanted twenty.

Reiniger could barely breathe. The animal would kill Autumn’s friends, one by one, and then he would kill Autumn. He had to get the money.

There was only one way to do it: by raiding Reiniger Capital’s cash reserves.

Reiniger Capital had just over a billion dollars in gross assets under management. That money was invested on behalf of the fund’s select group of private clients. It was invested in stocks and bond funds and credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. It was 98 percent invested.

But the business kept 2 percent of assets in liquid form—cash—as a reserve. Twenty million.

Reiniger could get it. He could access it instantaneously, day or night.

He would use it to buy Autumn’s freedom.

His chest squeezed. This would cost him dearly. Because raiding the reserve account would have drastic consequences for his fund and investors. It would trigger immediate demands for collateral to secure the depleted balance. He would have to call in payment from his biggest investors to cover the withdrawal.

Painful didn’t cover it. Catastrophic did. His fund was highly leveraged, as were his partners’ investments. They’d have to scramble to meet their obligations to him.

But that was down the line. Right now, what counted was that
he could do this.
He had the means, at his fingertips, to save his daughter.

“Tell me where to send the money,” he said.

“That’s better,” the voice said. “That’s a good first step.”

The man gave him an account number. Reiniger scribbled it down.

“What about the jet?” he said.

“A Gulfstream G-Five,” the voice said. “I want it on the runway at Reno airport at six A.M., fully fueled and with a fresh crew, ready to fly.”

“All right.”

“Not any jet—your jet. And I want you there to greet me.”

Jo ran across the field. The grass was beaten down, the earth rocky. In the west, lightning flashed. Cold rain spattered her face and shoulders.

The thunder rolled. At the far side of the pasture, a gate led to a path that headed deep into the trees. She climbed over and kept going.

A deeper thunder cracked the air. She jumped.

The second blast came moments later.

In the pasture, the cattle lowed. Crows cawed overhead and took flight in the stormy dusk. She ducked into the trees, chest pounding.

The gunshots echoed and faded. She forced herself to be still and listen. All she heard was the wind and the nervous shuffling of the cattle in the field.

Two shots. She was sure. From a big gun. She couldn’t tell how far away.

She ducked deeper into the trees and then, slowly, warily, began to parallel the trail. She felt as spooked as a cat. The rain pattered harder. Lightning in the clouds bleached the scene ahead. She stopped.

Though she was still deep in the trees, she could see it. Barely. The wind slapped her in the face. Heart drumming, she edged her way toward the trail. Another flash of lightning etched the view. Just for a moment—white, blue scale, dark.

Two people lay on the trail.

One lay faceup, arms thrown wide—a big man in a down vest and cowboy boots. The second lay a few feet beyond him, facedown, as if he’d been flung to the ground with violent force. Jo recognized his USF sweatshirt. It was Dustin.

The thunder fell across the hillside like rocks in an oil barrel.

Jo stood frozen, looking at the men. Looking around the trail, the trees, trying to see where Kyle was.

The rain came. Full on, cold, whipped by the wind. She could see nobody, no movement. None at all.

She bolted from the trees toward the two men.

The wind blew cold rain into her face. In the distance, the cattle lowed. She reached the big man in cowboy boots. His face was ruddy and weathered. His eyes were open and unseeing. A blast to the chest had cored him.

She closed his eyes, her hands shaking, and ran to Dustin’s side.

“No,” she moaned.

He had a massive blast wound in the center of his back. His sweatshirt was shredded by buckshot and sopping with dark blood. She pressed her fingers to his neck, searching for a carotid pulse.

He was gone. Death, she knew, had probably been immediate. But the moment of fear beforehand would have been horrific. The blast had torn through him, narrow spread, blown apart his spine and probably most of his lungs and his heart. Shotgun, large bore. Close range. In the back.

She swallowed the urge to retch, to scream, to cry, to try to help the poor kid.

She looked around. Where was Kyle?

She had to presume the shotgun belonged to the dead man. Kyle had gotten it and killed the rancher and Dustin. Where had he gone?

The rain peppered her back. It chilled her hands and face. Lightning flashed again.

The rancher’s pockets had been turned inside out. Had Kyle taken his keys? Lying by the man’s hip was his wallet. It was open and had been emptied of cash. A snapshot flicked in the wind. A woman with two young kids.

More lightning flashed. And in the stark shadows it supplied, she saw tracks: boots and hooves.

They followed clearly along beaten tire tracks.

Kyle was headed for the rancher’s home. Maybe for his family. She stood up and ran after him.

 

 

Kyle kicked open the door at John Yarrow’s knotted-pine ranch house. The lights were off. The house was cold.

He stormed through the place room by room, shotgun raised. He threw open closet doors and peered under beds. Anybody who thought he could stay alive by hiding had another thing coming. But if Yarrow had a wife or kids, they were long gone. There was only one plate in the kitchen sink. One glass drying on the drain board.

He found a plate of chicken in the fridge and tore into it with his bare hands. He drank a quart of milk and tossed the carton on the floor. He went to Yarrow’s bedroom and found a T-shirt and heavy flannel shirt. They would have fit him when he was young and fat. But they would be warm. In the front closet he found a brown duster. Tonight was going to be a bitch, weather-wise.

He dumped the Edge Adventures polo shirt. He said good riddance to Kyle Ritter too. Who cared anymore if he was using the alias? Ruben Kyle Ratner, Kyle Ritter, Red Rattler—all the same to him. His driver’s license had worked good enough to pass Edge Adventures’ background check, but then the license he’d given them didn’t match the name on his records in the California prison system.