“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow.”

“And what, he gambled it all away? That’s why he knows that creep from Atlantic City?”

“Not exactly. The fund he runs—the fund he owns, for all practical purposes—is the single largest private investor in the gaming industry. That’s their specialty. Online gambling, casinos, real estate associated with casinos. If someone is wagering money, chances are Manning Capital has a piece of the profit.”

I’m stunned. It’s hard to imagine the frightened little man, cowering all alone in his empty house, as some sort of gambling mogul. “You mean Manning’s a gangster?” I ask. “Like the godfather or Tony Soprano?”

“Not a gangster,” Shane says, shaking his head. “An investor.”

“What’s the difference?”

Shane laughs. “One goes to prison, the other doesn’t.”

My friend Fern likes the slots. Not me. I hate the idea of putting money in a machine that doesn’t stitch things together, so I never participated. Truth is, I’ve never actually been in a casino, not in New Jersey, not in Connecticut, not anywhere. I don’t buy lottery tickets. With me it’s not a religious or moral objection, it’s about years of being careful with every penny, apportioning this much for groceries, that much for a car payment, medical insurance, so many dollars for school expenses. Plus, you win a game of cancer, roll the bones with death, everything else pales.

Heading back to Valley Stream, Shane does his best to bring me up to speed. All the things he was doing while I slept, and after Monica Bevins came by. How Kelly’s prints may be present in Seth’s Porsche, and that’s why it was important to have the vehicle impounded—it will help build a case for intervention. How, exactly, the FBI runs a so-called shadow investigation. No agents will approach Edwin Manning directly, but in all other ways the full investigative weight of the agency will come to bear, with a special emphasis on the financials. Financials being the money that flows to and from Mr. Manning.

According to Shane, the financials are the key.

“He withdraws a large amount of cash, we’ll know it before the teller stops counting. If he wires money to, say, an offshore bank, we’ll know that, too.”

“You think this has something to do with gambling? That’s why his son was kidnapped? Or is it just because Manning is rich?”

“Dunno,” says Shane. “Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe we’re completely off base about a kidnapping and Seth and your daughter hijacked daddy’s private plane and are out there sightseeing.”

“You believe that?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Shane admits. “Edwin Manning isn’t worried about his boy borrowing the company plane. Somebody scared the hell out of him.”

“So what do we do? How do we find Kelly?”

“I suggest we leave the determination of abduction up to law enforcement for the moment, and concentrate on locating the Beechcraft. Make sense?”

“Yeah, but the man at the desk, he made it sound like that plane could go anywhere,” I say, discouraged.

“Range of fifteen hundred miles,” Shane admits. “That means with fuel stop or two it could be anywhere in North America. But it’s not just anywhere, it had a specific destination. A destination yet to be determined.”

“You make it sound hopeless.”

“No, no,” he protests. “My bad. Not hopeless at all. We’ve got the tail number. Airports, even small local airports, pay attention to tail numbers. We’ll find it. And once we find the plane, I promise you, we’ll find your daughter.”

Shane sounds so confident, so sincere. I would be more comforted if I hadn’t heard him lie so convincingly earlier.

The big break is waiting for us at my house, on the kitchen counter. On Shane’s laptop, to be exact, in the form of a message from my cell phone company.

“What does it say?” I ask eagerly. “Have they found her?”

The big guy hunkers down, scrolling through a PDF file of the current bill.

“Here we go,” he says softly, clicking on a line. “You have relatives in Florida? Friends? Does she?”

“Kelly’s in Florida?”

“Her phone is. That last call you received, it originated somewhere within range of a cell tower in western Dade County.”

“Dade County?”

“Miami,” he says. And then his finger touches the screen, “Hey, look at this. Several more calls have been made from her phone, accessing the same cell tower. The most recent was about ten hours ago.”

“She tried to call me?” I say, my heart slamming. “Why didn’t I get the call?” Then it hits me. “Oh! I was asleep! What an idiot!”

Fumbling for my cell phone, wondering how I could have missed it—I checked for messages first thing and there’d been nothing. I’d been compulsively checking every fifteen minutes all morning, still nothing. Stupid phone!

“No, wait,” Shane says, sounding intrigued as he switches between windows on the screen. “The calls weren’t placed to you. See this? The calls went to a number in Oyster Bay, New York.”

He looks at me, eyebrows raised.

“Oh … my … God,” I say, as the implication slowly sinks in.

Can’t be true, no way.

“Interesting,” Shane says, easing back on the stool. “Your daughter’s in the Miami area and she’s been calling Edwin Manning. Now what do you suppose that means?”

28. The Man With A Plan

They say everybody has falling dreams—that’s why they call it falling asleep. Trouble is, I’m wide-awake in my own kitchen, but it feels like somebody shoved me out of a plane without a parachute. Falling into the truly terrifying idea that my beautiful daughter has become someone I don’t recognize. Someone complicit in an extortion scheme, stealing money from her boyfriend’s superrich dad. And if that’s true, if I don’t know my own child, then nothing makes sense. In the end it’s Randall Shane who reaches out with his long arms and snatches me just before I hit the ground. Not that he knows it.

“There’s another, even more plausible explanation,” he says, stroking his chin, lost in thought. “Maybe it wasn’t your daughter who called Edwin Manning.”

“You said it was her phone!”

“Exactly. But let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that she and Seth were detained.”

“Detained?”

He flashes a grim smile, studies me with his sad and handsome eyes. “I thought detained might be a nicer word than abducted or kidnapped. And you look like you could use a nice word. I had no idea a living person could look so pale. Anyhow, let’s assume Kelly has been detained, okay? They take her purse. They use her cell phone to call Manning. Simple as that.”

Simple as that. Something to cling to, and also it makes sense. I’d been stuck on the fact that Kelly’s phone is practically an appendage, and that therefore any calls from it would originate with her, but that’s just stupid. No self-respecting kidnapper would let a victim keep her phone.

Victim? What am I thinking?

The idea of Kelly being a victim—first time I’d put that horrible word and her name together—sends a shudder through me. At the same time there’s no denying that I’m vastly relieved that she need not be complicit just because her phone has been linked to a crime. Then it hits me again, the double whammy, would it be better if she’s a victim or the criminal? Missing or runaway? Dead or alive? The whole world spinning, demanding that I choose.

“You better sit down,” Shane is saying from a great distance.

He hands me a white paper bag. Where on earth did he find this particular bag? Did he know it was left there for exactly this purpose? I recognize it by the scent of the mint chocolates it once held. Mint chocolates Kelly and I pretended to fight over, sneaking them out of the bag when the other wasn’t looking, a lovely game we like to play. Shane is insisting that I breathe into the bag, and it’s a while before I’m back down to earth, breathing at a normal rate.