The Wrong Hostage by Elizabeth Lowell Read Free Book Online

sanctioned.
    Everything Grace had worked to be rebelled at the thought of being caught in a place where the law she loved was worse than helpless. The courtroom was like a hospital—awful things might happen in it, but the purpose was greater than the blood and pain, and at the end of the day everything was disinfected and ready to work again. Not like the gutters, where nothing rose above the blood and pain, and nothing was ever clean.
    St. Kilda Consulting worked in the world’s gutters.
    Grace memorized the number, locked up the file again, and went to find a minimart that sold phone cards. This was one call she didn’t want a record of on her monthly statement.

M IDTOWN M ANHATTAN
S ATURDAY NIGHT
7
    D WAYNE T AYLOR REACHED FOR one of the three landline phones sitting on a desk that was neither messy nor neat, simply well used. “Steele’s office.”
    “This is Mandy in triage,” a husky voice said. “I’ve got a Judge Grace Silva on line four. She won’t talk to anybody but Ambassador Steele himself. I’ve forwarded what we have on her to you. File SK1/17.”
    Dwayne’s broad fingers danced across his computer keyboard, found the file, and opened it. “What’s her problem?”
    “Kidnap/ransom. Beyond that she won’t talk to anyone but Steele.”
    Dwayne scanned the information he’d retrieved on Judge Silva and made one of the intuitive, incisive judgments Steele paid him very well to make.
    “Put her on.”
    Dwayne took the phone off speaker and switched the sound to the headset he wore. “Judge Silva, this is Mr. Steele’s personal assistant, Dwayne Taylor. What can St. Kilda Consulting do for you?”
    At the other end of the line, Grace held on to her patience by a very fragile thread. “I made it quite clear to the last four people who wasted my time that it was Ambassador Steele or no one.”
    “I understand. Are you on a secure line?”
    She hesitated. This morning she would have laughed. Now she was glad she’d left her house to make the call.
    You keep this between us or I kill the boy .
    “I think so,” she said. “I’m at a pay phone in a cinema multiplex. I’ve got maybe two more minutes on this calling card. Then I have to go to the minimart and buy another.”
    Dwayne almost smiled. Whatever the judge was, she wasn’t stupid. “Were you followed?”
    “I—” It hadn’t occurred to her. God, I hate this . “I don’t think so.”
    “Is this a matter of extreme urgency?”
    “What’s your definition of—”
    “A terrorist with a gun held against a hostage’s head,” Dwayne said calmly.
    “I—God—no, it’s not. Yet.”
    “How much time do we have?”
    “Two days—no, two days from twelve-thirty this afternoon.”
    Dwayne breathed out a silent sigh of relief. Compared to most kidnap/ ransom situations, that was a decent amount of time. He wrote “RED-2” across the notes he was taking.
    “How necessary is secrecy?” he asked.
    “Life or death.”
    His pen paused. He circled “-2.” “Are you at your La Jolla address?”
    Grace didn’t bother asking how Dwayne knew where she lived. The CIA file she’d broken rules to get assured her that when it came to private solutions to problems that simply couldn’t be made public, St. Kilda Consulting was the best.
    That was what she needed.
    The best.
    “I’m twenty minutes away,” she said.
    “Go home. In an hour a woman will pick you up and take you to a secure place. At twenty-three hundred you will have a video conference with Ambassador Steele. That is eleven o’clock Pacific daylight time. Is that satisfactory?”
    Grace looked at her watch and automatically asked, “Can’t I just call him from my house?”
    “Are you going to say anything that you wouldn’t like seeing on the eleven o’clock news?”
    “Oh. Of course.” Grace felt like a fool. “Sorry. I’m not used to this.” And I hate it .
    “That’s why you called St. Kilda,” Dwayne said gently. “Do you enjoy reading, watching TV,