Chapter 8

Osvaldo's face showed his anger. If the man had even the slightest weakness in his heart, the rage he was experiencing would almost certainly have triggered a seizure. In the face of such naked and barely contained aggression, the maid quailed and shook in front of him.

"Tell me again what these letters contained?" he snarled.

"They were from someone called Johnny and they explained that he had been wrongly imprisoned for robbery, Sir," the maid stammered.

"And what else did you see?"

"Money, Sir, lots of money. Many thousands of dollars I think. And there is a necklace of diamonds and rubies in a case."

Osvaldo tried with supreme effort to calm himself down.

"You have done well, Theresa. Make sure that your mistress doesn't know that you have found these things or told me of them."

"Of course, Sir. By the looks of things, she drank so much whisky last night that she will be out for some hours yet," the maid replied and then took her opportunity to beat a hasty retreat from Osvaldo's study.

Rose might have thought that her maid was loyal to her, but Osvaldo had long since ensured that her only loyalty was to him. He needed to know what Rose was thinking and what better way to do that than to have her confidant in his service? When he had made the arrangement all those years before, he had never factored in something like this.

"Someone has been in Rose's room! Someone who had her necklace, the same one retrieved from Palm Springs by the sounds of the description and also letters from Johnny." he thought. "It can only be the mystery jogger that Markow is looking for. First he appears beside Johnny when he is dying. Then he turns up in Monroe and now he has been inside the house. Who is this man? More to the point, why has Markow not dealt with him yet? I swear by all that is holy that Markow's time has come to an end. This is the last time he will let me down!

"What damage has been done by this? What further damage can this stranger do? He has delivered these things to Rose, now what else is he planning to do? Rose already knew Johnny was dead and that he had been in prison — so there should be no harm there. The necklace is nothing. What else could the jogger do now?"

Try as he might, Osvaldo couldn't identify any other trouble the stranger could cause.

"Even if Rose told him about the boy, there's no way for them to find out where I have him. What else might she have revealed?"

The discipline of thinking things through had helped convert his towering rage into cold fury. So far as he could see there were no weaknesses in the arrangements he had made — other than the fact that this stranger had managed to enter the big house despite the tight security.

"That must not happen again, and the best way to make sure of that is to remove him altogether," Osvaldo concluded.

He crossed to his phone and punched in the numbers for Markow's mobile. His call was answered immediately.

"Markow."

"I cannot begin to describe how angry I am right now," Osvaldo began, "your mystery jogger has been inside the house and he has spoken with Rose."

Markow was preparing himself for another day of surveillance on the house where he was hoping MacSween would eventually turn up. So far there had been no sign of him and Markow's frustration had been growing. With those few words, Osvaldo had made it clear that the stakes had been raised yet again.

"While you are sitting around in Cedar City, this man has been inside the house! How is that possible?" Osvaldo demanded.

Markow tried to defend himself.

"I've made progress. I've found the house where MacSween is living. From what little I've been able to gather, he's here with his family."

"Take one of them! Take one and use that to bring this man to us. He can't be allowed to cause any more trouble. Do I make myself clear? Do it today, now in fact. Don't bother calling back until it is done," Osvaldo ordered.

Greg looked at the mobile that had gone silent in his hand. Osvaldo's anger was like a palpable thing that had reached out of the phone and slapped him repeatedly for his failure so far.

"What have I got myself into?" he asked himself. "There's no time for any planning, yet he expects me to kidnap somebody just like that. Now, he said. Do it now.

He looked over at the house he had been watching. There had been no sign of any of the occupants yet this morning, but it was still very early. How would he carry out Osvaldo's orders? Not for a second did he consider doing anything else but follow Osvaldo's orders. The alternative would be his own death — he knew that.

He felt extremely exposed at that moment. As a police officer, he knew how difficult it was to carry out any crime without leaving some kind of clue. To try to carry something off as big as this, at such short notice, was a recipe for disaster, but he knew he had to make the attempt. Greg began to take an inventory of the meagre resources he had at his disposal.

"Taking one of them in public is too risky, getting them subdued somehow inside the house would be best and then I could transfer them to the trunk of my car. I've got my service piece I suppose. Wait! There are two tasers in the trunk, they might come in handy."

He continued to try to patch together a plan over the next half hour or so and then his attention was drawn to the older woman and the man coming out of the front door of the house. They walked to the Ford in the drive and moments later they passed him and were gone.

"Okay, the two girls are in there on their own. Do I risk it and try it now?"

Greg knew that he was unlikely to get a better opportunity and Osvaldo had said he had to act now. Climbing out of the car, he opened the trunk and retrieved the two taser units. Without pausing, he walked across the road and straight up to the front door of the house. Trying the door, he couldn't believe his luck when he found it unlocked and he walked straight in.

With one of the tasers held at the ready, Greg walked quietly through the house. There was no sign of anyone in the family room, kitchen or in either of the first two bedrooms he came to. In the third bedroom he breathed a sigh of relief when he found both the young girls still fast asleep in the same king-sized bed.

Lining up on the blonde, Greg fired the first taser and watched as the two little darts shot forward towards her, their wires trailing behind. One barb lodged itself in the girl's arm and the other just below where the swell of her breasts was evident under her sleepshirt. Dropping the first taser, Greg discharged the second at the brown-haired girl on the other side of the bed.

He was all business now as he used the time the girls would be incapacitated to bind and gag them. The impact of the barbs had woken both girls up, but neither could move a muscle and the terror was clear in their eyes. Greg stripped two pillows and used the pillow cases to fashion gags, wrapping some of the duct tape he had with him round the girls' heads to keep the gags in place.

He flipped the blonde over and pulled both her hands behind her back, using the tape to secure them. Greg then did the same with the brunette and then checked to make sure both were secure. Recovering both of the tasers, he ran for the front door, before slowing to a walk and dumping the tasers in the back seat of his car. He reversed the car up to the front door of the house and opened the trunk in readiness for its cargo.

"Which one to take?" he asked himself when he made it back to the bedroom.

He decided the brunette was marginally cuter and that decided Fiona's fate. Greg picked her up and hurried back through the house before dropping her unceremoniously into the trunk, which he then slammed shut. He made sure to close the front door before jumping into the car and driving away from the house.

Heading immediately for the interstate, he couldn't believe how much his hands were shaking on the wheel. He'd done it. Despite all of the odds, he'd done what Osvaldo had told him to. What now? Greg had no idea where he was going to take the girl and as panic began to set in, he grabbed his mobile and called Osvaldo.

"What?" snapped the voice on the other end of the line.

"I did what you asked. I've got one, but I don't know where to take her," Greg admitted.

"Head for Louisiana and I'll figure something out and get back to you. Don't fuck this up, Markow!"

Greg didn't exactly relax after the call, but at least he was no longer about to panic. Osvaldo would sort out a place to take the girl; he had all manner of resources at his disposal.

There was nothing to alarm Christine and Frank when they returned to the house. Their trip out had been to purchase a new outdoor grill and Frank was relishing his first chance to prepare a burnt offering.

"I can't believe those two girls are still in bed at this time — totally shameless," Christine laughed.

"Leave them be. I'm sure I could still hear them talking and giggling at some ungodly hour of the morning, so I'm not surprised they haven't surfaced yet," Frank laughed too.

He walked through the house towards the back patio to check for the umpteenth time where he was going to set up the grill. The door to the girls' bedroom was still ajar and that drew his eye as he passed.

"CHRISTINE!" he screamed, when he saw Lizzie trussed up on the bed.

By the time Christine had rushed to join him, Frank had turned Lizzie over and he was trying to find something to cut the tape that bound her hands and held her gag in place.

"In the drawer of the dressing table," Christine advised, guessing what he was looking for. She crawled onto the bed and drew Lizzie to her, trying to comfort the girl with a hug.

Frank found a small pair of scissors and he began cutting the tape on Lizzie's wrists.

"Free her mouth first," Christine snapped, the stress getting to her.

Frank gave her a look and she realised he couldn't get to the tape around Lizzie's head due to the fact that she was hugging the girl.

"Sorry," Christine said, a little sheepishly, given the way she had snapped at him.

Frank switched his attention to the tape holding the pillow-case in place. Lizzie yelped as some of her hair remained stuck to the tape when Frank pulled it off, but as soon as the gag was free from her mouth, her concern was all for Fiona.

"He took Fiona!" she wailed.

"Calm down, honey. Who took Fiona?" Christine asked, barely managing to keep herself together.

"The man, he's taken her."

"You're not making any sense, what man?"

"I don't know who he was. One minute I was sleeping and the next something stung me and I couldn't move." At this point Lizzie started to sob, but she continued to try to tell her story through the tears. "He fired some kind of gun at Fiona and then he gagged us both and tied our hands behind our backs. He went away for a few minutes and then came back, picked up Fiona and carried her away."

Christine's face had gone chalk white.

"What do you mean? He shot Fiona?" she asked, her voice trembling.

"I don't know, he fired something. It had little wires coming from it and they were stuck into Fiona's skin," Lizzie blubbed.

"A taser," Frank guessed, "she should be okay if it was."

He could see that Christine was on the verge of breaking down now and it was going to be up to him to take control of the situation.

"Did he say anything? Give any hint as to what he wanted?" Frank asked Lizzie.

She shook her head in the negative, now sobbing too hard to speak.

"We need to phone the police and get them to take care of this," Frank said, the reluctance evident in his voice.

"NO!" yelled Lizzie. "We can't."

"Why not?" he asked.

Lizzie's expression showed the guilt she was feeling that none of them had shared what had happened in Palm Springs with the two adults.