Chapter 17: Which One Will It Be

"A driver," Jonas said into the phone, and took it out of her hand. "Which driver?"

Blaine's voice shook through the speaker. "Howard's. The old one. She said you have until midnight."

"Why is she calling you?"

"She says I'm the only one you'll believe."

Jonas ended the call.

Howard was already on the stairs, and his face had gone gray.

"My driver has driven me for thirty years," he said. "He is not at home. I rang his house an hour ago."

"It's a lure," Jonas said. "She wants Leigh at that dock."

"Then we send police," Conroy said.

"We send police and my men to the lane. Leigh stays in this house."

Leigh crossed her arms.

"I'm not hiding while a sixty-year-old man sits in a boat shed," she said.

"You're not going near the water."

"That's condition two. You haven't even asked if I'm afraid."

"Are you?"

"I'm angry."

"That's not what I asked."

She almost smiled, which annoyed her.

"Fine," she said. "I'll wait in your car. You can give the orders from the porch where I can see you."

He studied her face and nodded once.

Conroy was shouting into a phone in the hall, and the detective's voice crackled back.

Leigh walked down the side passage to the garage with her coat over her arm.

Jonas's black car sat under the lamp, its engine off.

She put her hand on the door.

A gloved palm closed over her mouth from behind.

She drove her heel back into a shin, and a man grunted, and a second pair of hands caught her wrists.

A sack went over her head and the world turned to rough cloth.

"Don't scream," a voice said in her ear. "Nobody's coming."

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