Sufficient Ransom
Authors: Sylvia Sarno
Sufficient
Ransom
A Novel
Sylvia Sarno
Savvy Scribe Press
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Sylvia Sarno
All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
ISBN-13: 978-1484884591
ISBN-10: 1484884590
First published in America in 2014 by Savvy Scribe Press
Cover design by Alexander von Ness
For Dana,
The Man Who Knows
My shame and guilt confounds me.
Forgive me, Valentine: if hearty sorrow
Be a sufficient ransom for offence,
I tender ‘t here: I do as truly suffer
As e’er I did commit
Proteus
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Shakespeare
C
HAPTER
1: Sunday, September 30
C
HAPTER
4: Wednesday, October 3
C
HAPTER
11: Wednesday, October 10
C
HAPTER
12: Thursday, October 11
C
HAPTER
15: Tuesday, October 16
C
HAPTER
16: Wednesday, October 17
C
HAPTER
17: Thursday, October 18
C
HAPTER
20: Tuesday, October 23
C
HAPTER
21: Wednesday, October 24
C
HAPTER
22: Thursday, October 25
C
HAPTER
26: Tuesday, October 30
C
HAPTER
27: Wednesday, October 31
C
HAPTER
28: Thursday, November 1
C
HAPTER
29: Saturday, November 3
C
HAPTER
1
Sunday, September 30
8:00 P.M
.
A
nn Olson and her six-year-old son were alone in the house. It was already dark.
“Mom, can you read the story again? Please. I have to make sure the bird finds his mother.”
Ann scooped up the book and placed it on the shelf next to Travis’s bed. Tucking the blue striped quilt around her only child she said, “I’ve read it three times. It’s time to go to sleep, sweetie.” She kissed her son’s freckled nose and stood up. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Mom?”
She knelt and caressed his soft brown hair. “What, honey?”
He pulled the blanket to his neck. “I’m scared of the dark.”
Ann bent over and kissed her son’s forehead, her voice extra soothing to mask her own anxiety. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s no one here to hurt you.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“As you go to sleep, try to think of happy things like Legoland and the zoo. Think of the little animals we saw at the tide pools today. The crabs and those fuzzy sea creatures. What are they called?”
Travis’s eyes lit up. “The enemies!”
Laughing, she corrected him. “Anemones, you silly.”
Travis’s face grew serious. “Mom, I’m still scared.”
She stroked his head, smiling to herself. Her son’s bedtime stalling tactics were getting more sophisticated. “I’ll keep your light on,” she said, as she stood up. “And the hall light too. If you need me in the night, come get me, okay? For now, you need to go to sleep.”
“When will Dad be home?”
Her husband, Richard, was on yet another business trip—one of many every year—more than she cared to count. He had cancelled his last trip to Hong Kong in order to work out a plan with their lawyer to fight the charges Child Protective Services had filed against them. When Ann begged her husband to cancel this trip too, he said that if this new biotech start-up he had bet his career on was to survive, he had to go.
Ann tucked her son’s beloved rabbit by his arm. “Your father will be home in six days, honey. It’s late, Travis. You need to go to sleep.”
“I miss Dad.”
The very real possibility that her child could be taken from her and put into foster care, all because a misguided CPS agent got it into her head that Ann was a danger to her son, made Ann sick with apprehension. “I miss Dad, too.”
The truth was she was upset with her husband for leaving her and Travis to face CPS alone. In her saner moments Ann realized she was being unreasonable. Richard had major responsibilities. Defending his decision to go on this trip, he had echoed their lawyer’s assurance that CPS didn’t have a case. Well Ann knew
that
. Still, she couldn’t help feeling that her husband had let her down.
The doorbell rang.
Her body tensed. She wasn’t expecting anyone.
Travis’s eyes froze. “Who is it, Mom?”
“Probably some salesman.” She tried to sound unconcerned so he wouldn’t worry.
The doorbell rang again.
She tousled her son’s hair. “I’ll be right back.”
Ann stepped onto the landing and looked over the wrought iron railing. The entrance hall below was dimly lit from the outdoor lights that had come on when the visitor stepped up to the door. The wind pushing the vertical blinds in the family room at the back of the house made a slight rustling sound.
Her hand came to her mouth in anxious surprise. The shade by the window next to the front door was up. Usually when Richard was away she had the house battened down for the night, way before dark. Tonight she was so caught up with Travis that she hadn’t noticed it getting late.
Ann hurried down the stairs hoping to get to the peephole unseen so she could decide whether she wanted to open the door or not.
It was too late. Kika Garcia appeared in the window.
Damn it!
Her hand at her brow as if trying to see into the house more clearly, Kika called out, “I need to talk to you, Mrs. Olson. Please open up.”
Crouching at the other side of the door, so that social worker couldn’t see her, Ann tried to keep the fear out of her voice. “What do you want now?”
“I prefer to not have to shout it.”
Ann didn’t want her neighbors to hear this either. They had already caused her enough trouble. She switched on the hall light, unlocked the door, and faced her overwrought adversary. A half a head shorter than Ann, Kika Garcia had long dark hair and thick bangs over piercing green eyes. She wore a gold Madonna-and-Child medallion at her neck and spoke with a slight Mexican accent.
“I don’t understand why you keep coming here,” Ann said in a calm voice, though she felt anything but calm. “My attorney told you and your supervisor that all communication should be through his office.”
Kika’s mouth turned down. “I’m not going to let some lawyer stop me from doing my job. It’s my job to protect your child.”
“Don’t you read the papers?” Ann said. “Children are disappearing in San Diego. CPS should be worried about them, not Travis, who is loved and well cared for.” Just yesterday, a Mexican nanny had kidnapped her charge, a young girl.
Kika dismissed Ann’s words with an irritated wave. “That’s police business, not CPS’s. Please bring Travis to the door. I need to make sure he’s okay.”
Ann threw her hands up in frustration. “You just can’t go to people’s houses at night and expect to see their children. You’re being unreasonable.” That Travis should be subjected to such treatment made her want to slam the door in Kika’s face, but she was afraid that
that
might be used against her too.
“Neither you nor your lawyer have answered my calls or emails. You’re never home.” The social worker’s face scrunched into an impatient frown. “You know? Rich people shouldn’t be allowed to get away with hurting their children any more than poor people. I guess you’ll learn that the hard way.”
Remembering how her temper had gotten her into trouble before, Ann reminded herself not to be drawn into a shouting match with the social worker. “Miss Garcia,” she said. “Try to see things from my point of view. You interviewed my son at his school without my husband or me. You should know children will sometimes make things up because they get confused. We explained everything to the best of our ability. But you’d already made up your mind that we had hurt our child. You’ve been after us ever since. We’re good parents. You need to drop the case.”
“Sorry if I don’t take everything you say on faith, Mrs. Olson. The bruises and scratches all over your son’s body are a fact not so easily explained away. Not only that, the week before your son was hurt, the police were called here because
you
had lost it.” She folded her arms to her chest. “And just so you know, what I did was perfectly legal. As
a CPS investigator I have the right to speak, in private, to any child I believe is in danger.”
“My lawyer says it’s a matter of days before the abuse charges against us are dismissed. You have no case!”
Kika’s lips curved into a sneer. “I’m not gonna let some overpaid puppet tell me what’s what.”
The social worker was clearly irrational. “You need to keep away from Travis.”
Kika leaned in and pointed her finger at Ann. “You’re about to lose your child.”
Ann stepped back and shut the door, trying not to slam it, though she felt like it. She jerked the window shade down.
What’s she planning now?
It was the third time in the past ten days Kika had come to the house, but never before at night.
Travis was staring up at her, his brown eyes wide with fear. “Who was at the door? Mommy, what’s wrong?”
Her hand fluttered to her neck. “Nobody, honey. We need to—” There was no way she and Travis could stay in the house alone with that woman around. Trying not to show how upset she was, Ann knelt before her son and gently pushed his hair back from his face. “We’re going to a hotel now, sweetie, a place with a big pool.”
Travis’s face scrunched into a frown, his eyes questioning. “A hotel?” He pulled at her tee shirt as she stood up. “I don’t want to go to a hotel. What’s wrong, Mommy?”
Everything was wrong. A lunatic was threatening to take her child and she might gain the legal right to do it. Ann knelt before her son again, her voice steady. “Everything’s okay Travis. Come. Help Mommy lock up.”
Travis didn’t move. He looked worried.
She tried to think how to reassure her son. The idea came to her quickly. She would make a game of it. “You know the lady who talked to you at school those times, the one with the dark hair?”
Travis smiled. His two front teeth were missing. “You mean Kika.”
Ann felt a pang of jealous worry. Travis was too young to understand that Kika was not the kind person she pretended to be, but rather a scheming liar determined to take him from his parents and put him in foster care.