“I thought I might.”
His smug chuckle rankled. “Or are you bluffing?” Coburn asked.
“You wish.”
“Singing Elmos are easy to come by. How do I know it’s Emily’s?”
“Nice place Tori has got there on the lake.”
Coburn’s hand formed a fist. Through gnashed teeth, he said, “You hurt that little girl and—”
“Her fate is up to you, not me.”
Honor still had her fingers clamped over her lips. Above them, her eyes were watery, wide, and stark with anguish. Entering into a pissing contest with Doral wouldn’t get Emily returned to her unharmed. Although it galled him, he dispensed with the threats and asked what the terms were for getting Emily back.
“Simple, Coburn. You disappear. She lives.”
“By disappear, you mean die.”
“You’re nothing if not smart.”
“Smart enough to survive the car bomb.”
Doral didn’t address that. “Those are the terms.”
“Your terms suck.”
“Nonnegotiable.”
Mindful of the time he’d been on a phone that might possibly be traced, Coburn asked, “Where and when?”
Doral told him where to go, what time to be there, and what to do when he arrived. “You follow these instructions, Honor drives away with Emily. Then it’s you and me, pal.”
“I can hardly wait,” Coburn said. “But one last thing.”
“What?”
“Since you’ve botched everything so bad, why are you still breathing? The Bookkeeper must have a reason for keeping you alive. Think about it.”
Doral disconnected, muttering a stream of vile language.
Coburn was playing him. He was well aware of that. But Coburn was good at it.
Because he had tapped into Doral’s worst fear: He was nothing more than a flunky, and after everything that had gone wrong over the past seventy-two hours, an expendable one.
He looked over his shoulder into the backseat where Emily was sleeping, dosed with the Benadryl that he had given her so she wouldn’t be afraid or put up a fuss when it became clear to her that Uncle Doral had fibbed about why he’d taken her in the middle of the night from Tori’s lake house.
Just as he’d pulled the trigger to end Tori’s life, a piping voice came from behind him. “Hi, Uncle Doral.”
He spun around and there had stood Emily in the doorway of Tori’s bedroom, wearing a nightie, holding her Elmo and bankie, and, most disconcerting of all, happy to see him.
“Aunt Tori and I made mud pies. And guess what? Tomorrow she’s going to let me play in her makeup. How come you’ve got gloves on? It’s not cold outside. Why’s Aunt Tori on the floor?”
It had taken him several seconds to process her unexpected appearance. She started coming farther into the room, and with only seconds to spare, he had a burst of inspiration.
“She’s hiding her eyes and counting because we’re going to play hide-and-seek.”
With complete trust, Emily had played along. Sneaking downstairs with him, and out to the car that he’d borrowed from his cousin for the night, and into his backseat, Emily had stifled her conspiratorial giggles. They were several miles from the house before those gave way to wariness.