Party music was still blaring from the stereo, but Patrick had counted six shots, which was far too many to have gone unnoticed by the other kidnappers down the hall or in the next room. Olga took aim at the sick guy in the corner, but the sicker he got, the more boyish he looked to Patrick.

  “Enough,” said Patrick, turning Olga’s gun away.

  She didn’t resist, but she went from body to body, rifled through pockets, and grabbed ammunition and cash. She handed the dead muscleman’s Glock to Patrick.

  “Do you know how to use a gun?” she asked, as she pulled on her shirt.

  “My dad used to take me to the shooting range with him. But to be honest, I’m much better at paintball.”

  “This is a nine millimeter. Semiautomatic. Fifteen rounds in the magazine and one in the pipe. Make your dad proud.”

  “Got it.”

  “The only way out of this building is to shoot our way out. Can you handle that?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  No answer was required. “Follow me,” said Olga, and she started toward the door.

  Patrick said a quick prayer, his quickest one ever, and was right on Olga’s heels as she flung open the door. She grabbed Patrick’s hand, leading with her pistol as they burst into the hallway, greeted by the pop pop pop of return gunfire.

  “Olga!” Patrick shouted.

  She hit the floor, never letting go of his hand, taking Patrick down with her.

  Chapter 36

  Christian Gamble waited alone at a table in the prison visitation center. It was his first trip to FCP Alderson, and it would be his first communication with Sandra Levy since the day of her arrest. His lawyer would have killed or at least maimed him had she known he was there.

  “Inmate’s on her way,” the corrections officer said.

  Gamble thanked him, still finding it bizarre that Sandra was an “inmate.” Even stranger was the fact that he was third on the list of Gamble family visitors, after his wife and daughter.

  “Was that your Super Puma that touched down on the helipad?” the officer asked in a West Virginia accent.

  Gamble had flown up from Virginia on the company helicopter, a Eurocopter EC225 Super Puma. Kate had called twice during his flight, which he’d ignored, not wanting to have to explain where he was going. It was another trait Kate had inherited from her mother, the innate ability to know exactly when he was stepping out of line.

  “Yeah, that was me,” said Gamble.

  The guard whistled and said, “That’s one sexy bird.”

  “Was that a compliment or a come-on?” asked Sandra, as she emerged from around the corner.

  The guard started to explain, but Gamble told him to drop it. He stepped away, leaving the inmate and visitor alone at the table. Sandra crossed one khaki pant leg over the other, interlaced her fingers, and sat with her hands folded in her lap.

  “You look good, Christian,” she said.

  “Is that a compliment or a come-on?” he asked.

  Sandra smiled. “Let’s not rewrite history. You were the one who had the crush on me. Not the other way around.”

  “It was a safe crush. I knew nothing would come of it.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “A psychiatrist can lose her license for having a relationship with her patient.”

  “You weren’t technically my patient.”

  “Look, Sandra. I know you think I led you on. But I was starving for . . . just for someone to talk to. Before we were married, Elizabeth once said to me, ‘There’s only two kinds of people who can be totally honest with each other, lovers and strangers. Everyone else is just negotiating.’”

  “I like that.”

  “It’s especially true when you’re CEO of a company like mine. Elizabeth and I used to have that kind of honesty. We lost it when her ‘lover’ became vodka.”

  He wasn’t looking for sympathy, but he saw a glimmer of it in her eyes.

  “But you would never leave her.”

  “How could I? You said it yourself. Alcoholism is a disease.”

  “So?”

  “If my wife got cancer, would I leave her? If she developed dementia, would I find someone new?”

  “That’s not the same thing,” she said, any sympathy supplanted by pure frustration. “Cancer and dementia don’t come in a bottle.”

  “Either it’s a disease or it isn’t, Doctor. ‘In sickness and in health,’” he added, referencing the traditional vows.

  “I suppose some people would find that admirable.”

  “You don’t?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Not as long as I’m in this place.”

  “You won’t be in prison forever,” he said.

  “I will if I succumb to the father-daughter tag team you and Kate are playing, trying to get me to admit to something I didn’t do.”

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  “Then why did you come here?” she asked.

  His gaze tightened. “I want to hear how you knew about the note.”

  “The note?”

  “The note Elizabeth left me. ‘I did it for Kate.’”

  Sandra looked away, then back, and Gamble knew her well enough to see that she was going to dodge the question.

  “Your wife came to see me,” said Sandra. “She was jealous of me.”

  “No kidding. She made that nine-one-one revenge call just to spite me.”

  “This was a different kind of jealousy. It had nothing to do with what she thought had happened between us. She was jealous because she’d had a front-row seat for all I’d gone through with you, your company, the FBI, the Justice Department. And now prison. It boggled her mind that I never cracked. I was so strong, and she felt so weak.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her never to compare your inside to someone else’s outside.”

  The words hung in the air between them. It was one of the reasons he’d found it so easy to talk to Sandra. She was more than just a good listener. She’d helped him simplify things, without all the psychobabble. It reminded him of the way things had once been with Elizabeth.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “How did you know what was in the note?”

  “Detective Anderson from Fairfax Police visited me.”

  The answer didn’t surprise him. “When?”

  “More than a month ago. He wanted to know if you were abusive to Elizabeth and if that was why she killed herself.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth. I said he couldn’t be farther off track with that theory. Then he told me about the note and asked me what I thought it meant.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Far less than I could have,” she said.

  “I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean.”

  She sat forward and leaned into the table, looking him straight in the eye. “I knew immediately it was not a suicide note.”

  The room suddenly felt ten degrees colder. “You ‘knew’ because you’re a psychiatrist, or—”

  “I knew.”

  He studied her expression, staring right back at her. “Are you messing with me?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “You need to give me more.”

  “Why should I?” she asked, her tone turning sarcastic. “Because I owe you so much for the way you courageously rallied to my defense?”

  “There was nothing I could say in your defense. You used my credentials to access classified areas of the Buck campus. The FBI all but caught you walking out the door with top-secret code.”

  “It’s like I told your daughter: I did it for my daughter.”

  “I’d love for you to tell me exactly what ‘it’ is?”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “If I told you, it would take all the urgency out of bringing Patrick Battle home, safe and sound.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, now that your wife is dead, Patrick is the only person other than me who can tell you what ‘it’ is.”

  She rose and started away from the table. Gamble started after her, but a guard stopped him and said, “Sir, you can’t leave the table.”

  “Sandra!”

  She stopped and turned to face him.

  “You’re definitely messing with me,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I’m dead serious, Christian.”

  He could see that she was. She turned and headed for the inmate exit, nothing more to say.

  Chapter 37

  Kate’s hair whipped in the swirling wind as she watched her father’s helicopter touch down in northern Virginia.

  She was still angry at him. She’d texted, emailed, and left at least a half dozen voicemail messages, and still it had taken him over an hour to get back to her. His excuse—“I was busy”—rang hollow. To his credit, not a moment was lost after hearing about her call from Patrick and the kidnapper’s ransom demand. They were in his limo two minutes after touchdown, heading to one of the most expensive homes in Fairfax County.

  Kate’s father didn’t exactly hide his wealth, but his business partner put his on display like no one else. According to a Haute Living feature story Kate had read some years earlier, Jeremy Peel’s Tudor-style mansion was on a thirty-acre estate that spanned three towns and had five addresses, putting his annual property tax bill somewhere north of $300,000—all worth it, no doubt, if you and your third wife needed nine bedrooms, twelve bathrooms, two swimming pools, a clay tennis court, a putting green modeled after the famous twelfth hole at Augusta, a collection of beehives, and three large paddocks. Throw in a river running through the wooded backyard and a trout-stocked private lake, and life had to be good. Most of the time.

  The Peels’ butler took Kate and her father to the study. Peel was standing at the credenza between a pair of Tiffany lamps. David Walker, head of BJB Funding, the CIA’s venture capital arm, was seated in a tufted leather armchair. With her father seated beside her on the camelback couch, Kate had the entire holy trinity of Buck Technologies in one room to discuss the fate of Patrick Battle.

  “We can’t pay,” said Peel.

  Before Kate could reply, her father said exactly what she was thinking.

  “Jeremy, we’re talking two million dollars. Not two hundred million.”

  “It’s not the amount. It’s about precedent. If we pay a ransom to these hoodlums, Buck Technologies will be known as an easy mark. Our wives, our children, our employees will be targets all over the world.”

  “That’s why we have bodyguards and kidnap-and-ransom insurance,” said Gamble.

  Kate was both surprised and encouraged by what she’d just heard. “Buck has insurance for kidnappings?”

  “Yes,” her father said. “It covers the ransom and pays for a private negotiator. But the policy is void if you tell anyone you have it. So that information does not leave this room.”

  “Is Patrick covered?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately, no,” he said. “Obviously I would have told you, if it did.”

  “Why isn’t he covered?” asked Kate.

  “We don’t buy it for every employee in the company. It’s very expensive.”

  Kate assumed she was covered, as the daughter of the CEO. Before she could decide if there was any need to confirm, the venture capitalist jumped in.

  “Jeremy is right,” said Walker. “Buck can’t pay a ransom. And there’s no room for debate on this matter.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Kate.

  Walker and Peel exchanged glances, and they seemed to come to agreement that the CIA should do the talking. “This company’s biggest investor is the CIA. The CIA doesn’t pay ransom to terrorists.”

  “How do you know Patrick was kidnapped by a terrorist organization?” asked Kate.

  “The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia has been on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations since the Clinton administration. Technically, the FARC laid down their arms under a peace treaty, but they’re still on the list.”

  “I never said anything about the FARC,” said Kate.

  “Let’s deal in facts, please. Thousands of FARC dissidents have lost faith in the peace process and rearmed. Kidnapping for ransom is their chief source of revenue. The CIA isn’t going to contribute to their war chest.”

  Kate glanced at Peel, then back at Walker, and they were clearly aligned against her father, two against one. She refused to be the irrelevant fourth voice.

  “I can’t just sit here and have you tell me there’s nothing we can do for Patrick because the CIA might end up with egg on its face if Buck pays a ransom. I can’t and I won’t let that happen.”

  “It’s not debatable,” said Walker. “Buck can’t pay a ransom in any amount.”

  “Then I’ll pay it,” said Gamble.

  “Christian, I’m not trying to be difficult,” said Walker, even though he was. “But when it comes to the kidnapping of a Buck employee, there’s no distinction between Buck paying a ransom to terrorists and its CEO paying it. If this were a kidnapping of someone in your family, it might be different.”

  “Then I’ll give two million dollars to Kate, and she can do whatever she damn well pleases with it. Can the CIA live with that?”

  “The CIA is going to have to live with it,” said Kate. “Dad, I accept your gift. Thank you.”

  “My head of security is former FBI. I’ve already spoken to him. He said I should coordinate with the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell.”

  Walker immediately shook his head. “Not a good idea.”

  “What’s the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell?” asked Kate.

  Her father answered. “It specializes in international kidnappings of U.S. citizens. The teams operate out of FBI headquarters, but they pull talent and resources from the Department of Defense and the State Department.”

  “But the CIA is part of the State Department, and Mr. Walker just said the CIA won’t pay a ransom.”

  “Your daughter is right,” said Walker. “The money invested by the CIA in Buck Technologies is taxpayer money. That’s the problem here.”

  “It’s my daughter’s money. I just gave it to her. The fusion cell will help if Kate wants to use her own money to pay Patrick’s ransom. It just won’t pay a ransom using taxpayer money.” He looked at Walker, and then at his business partner. “Why are the two of you being such pricks about this?”

  Kate wanted to side with her father, but she couldn’t. “There’s another problem, Dad. The kidnapper said not to contact the FBI, the State Department, or anything of the sort. That’s the quickest way to get Patrick killed.”

  Her father paused to consider the wrinkle. “All right. Plenty of families use private security firms and never report it to law enforcement. We can work that out. Unless the CIA has a problem with that, too.”

  He was clearly fed up with the two obstructionists in the room, as was Kate. There was no response from Peel or Walker—just an icy silence.

  Kate’s cell rang, and she checked the screen. It was the same number Patrick had used to call her.

  “It’s them,” she said, her voice like a reflex.

  “Put it on speaker,” said Walker.

  It was a split-second decision, but her gut instinct wouldn’t let her trust a man who clearly cared more about the CIA than about Patrick.

  “Fuck off,” she said, as she hurried out of the study. She continued down the grand hallway toward the foyer, answering on the fourth ring.

  “Patrick?” she said into the phone, hoping to hear his voice.

  “No, but it is the next best thing,” his kidnapper said.

  Kate opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. “I have your money.”

  “That’s good news.”

  The voice on the line sounded different, less of an accent than on the first call. Kate figured he wasn’t the first kidnapper to try and disguise his voice. “When do I get Patrick?”

  “There’s been a new development.”

  Kate froze, fearing the worst. “You’d better not have hurt him.”

  “He’s fine. But I changed my mind about the two million.”

  Kate could have kicked herself. She shouldn’t have been so quick to tell him that she’d already raised the money. Not a good negotiating tactic.

  “You can’t keep asking for more money,” she said, and then she found the fortitude to talk tough. “I have my limits.”

  “This deal is not about money anymore,” he said.

  “Kidnapping is always about money.”

  “Not this one. Keep your money.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Code.”

  “What kind of code?”

  “Buck Technologies code.”

  “You’re asking for something I can’t deliver.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Kate. I know who your father is.”

  Kate stepped a little farther away from the front door. “You asked for money, and I got it. That was the deal.”

  “Was the deal. The deal’s changed. If you want to see Patrick alive, you’re going to deliver exactly what I want.”

  “You can’t just say you want code. What code are you talking about?”

  “I think you’ve got enough to chew on for now, Kate. Keep your phone on. Answer when I call.”

  The voice on the line was definitely different. The deal was different. Too much was changing, and it was making Kate’s heart pound. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Silly question.”

  “You don’t sound like the man who called me before. I want to talk to Patrick. I need to know he’s there.”

  “Soon,” the man said. “We’ll talk very soon.”

  The line went silent.

  Kate stood alone on the porch, still holding her phone, wondering what to tell her father.

  Chapter 38

  The open Jeep was speeding toward the coast, and Javier smelled seafood. Not the rich aroma of cazuela de mariscos or some other tasty Colombian dish, but the pervasive stench of the seafood industry at Colombia’s main Pacific port of call.