Forty Thousand Dollars Demanded to Bring Our Lost Daughter Home
“Did you bring the money?” he asked.
“It is in the car,” I said, pointing a thumb back toward the open door of the Buick. “Every dollar of it.”
He nodded toward the passenger side, his hand shifting to tap his brass key ring against his palm inside the slicker pocket. It was a rhythmic, metallic clicking that sounded exactly like the one I had heard on his porch on Thursday afternoon when we asked about the strange cars.
“Get it out,” he said.
“Take the hood off first, Vince,” I said.
The silence that followed was so complete I could hear the trickle of the creek through the limestone blocks behind the old sorting shack. A small breeze stirred the dry thistle at our feet, sending a few grey seeds drifting across the gravel between us.
He did not move his hands from his pockets, but his shoulders rose an inch under the yellow plastic.
