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Chet rose from the sofa and put his arms around Vanessa. She buried her face against his chest, and in a muffled, tear-suffused voice she said, “Tell them, Chet.”
“It’s the honest-to-God truth, Mr. DeWinter,” Chet said manfully. “When Vanessa spanked Linden, I couldn’t believe it—she’d never done that before, my word on it. I mean, Vanessa turned me down when I asked her to marry me last month because she said she couldn’t leave the twins. So when she spanked your daughter I was shocked. But she didn’t hurt her. Vanessa could never hurt Linden, or Laurel, either.”
Dirk didn’t know what to say. Relief that his original trust in Vanessa and Chet hadn’t been misplaced—that they weren’t involved in his daughters’ kidnapping—was joined by a father’s justifiable anger that his daughter had been spanked, no matter the provocation. But even as he thought this, he remembered a time or two when he’d been tempted to do the same to one of the girls himself after some particularly naughty behavior. They might look like angels, but they didn’t always act like it.
He’d never spanked them, though. Could never. The harshest punishment he’d ever been able to administer was a time-out. But he could understand how Vanessa had been pushed to the brink, while at the same time not condoning it.
A sharp rapping on the door tore his attention away from Vanessa. And because he’d been expecting it momentarily, he was pretty damned sure it was another ransom note.
Tian Tan Buddha, 4:30 p.m. Climb the stairs to the base of the statue. Locate the deva holding an offering of fruit and pretend to take pictures like a tourist. When you receive the phone call, you will have one minute to talk with your daughters—make it count. After you hang up, place the bag in the cache beneath the stone to the left of the deva. Leave and don’t look back. Return to your hotel and await further instructions. Don’t do anything stupid.
Out on the patio, where they’d retreated for privacy, Mei-li handed the note back to Dirk, a slight furrow between her eyebrows. “Someone has been there—this location isn’t something you would be able to discover on the internet.”
“Doesn’t that confirm your theory that one of the kidnappers is a local?”
“Yes, but...” She tried to think of how to word this. “Tourists flock to the Tian Tan Buddha. And that floor where the devas are?” she said, referring to where the six Mother Buddhas were located right beneath the base of the main statue, three on one side, three on the other. “There are always people around, so it’s not very private. Even if you can put the ransom where they’re asking you to, it would be difficult to do it without being observed. Same goes for retrieving it. And it’s not the kind of place someone can make a quick getaway—they’d have to run down all those stairs to escape, and there’s something like two hundred sixty of them.”
She had a bad feeling about this, and it was due in large part to the text she’d received right after the delivery of the latest instruction note—Ransom not retrieved. Not at the Peak. Not at the museum. Theories?
She had a theory. She just wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed based on what she knew. If she was wrong...she didn’t even want to think about the consequences if she was wrong.
Dirk’s smartphone went off, signaling an email had been received. “Don’t look at it,” she pleaded, trying to grab the phone he’d pulled from his pocket. “Don’t do that to yourself. Download it. Get the GPS coordinates. But don’t look. I’ll look at it for you.”
He held the phone out of her reach. “I can’t do that.” His voice was firm. Unwavering. And she understood. Because if they were her daughters, she would have had to look, too. She wanted to spare him, but he wouldn’t spare himself. Then his face softened, and he briefly touched her cheek. “But I appreciate the offer.”
Dirk went into the study to download the file onto his laptop, and Mei-li knew he didn’t want an audience, not even her. She used the time to send a text, then called Patrick to tell him where they needed to go and when they needed to be there.
“I filled up the petrol,” he told her. “So we’re all set. But we should leave soon.”
She went in search of Dirk. She tapped on the door, and when he called out, “It’s open,” she went inside, closing the door behind her.
As she had once before, she stood with her back to the door. “Are you okay?”
