Free The October List by Jeffery Deaver

?’
    ‘I used to.’
    ‘Well, now you’ve got my DNA on you. If they catch you, I’m going down too.’
    She smiled. ‘Oh, Daniel …’
    ‘It’ll be okay, Mac. I promise.’
    ‘Mac?’ She blinked, hearing him use this name.
    ‘You’re more of a Mac than a Gabriela. And come on, with a last name like McKenzie, don’t tell me nobody’s ever called you Mac?’
    ‘True.’
    Gabriela didn’t tell him that she and her father used nicknames for one another, and the one he’d bestowed on his daughter was indeed ‘Mac.’
    ‘You mind?’
    She smiled. ‘I love it.’
    ‘And I may just love you,’ Daniel whispered.
    She stiffened at the word, then let herself go and pressed against him, shoulders-to-thigh. And for a fleeting moment the horrors of the weekend vanished.

CHAPTER
24
     

10:00 a.m., Sunday
1 hour, 10 minutes earlier
     

 

 
     
    Daniel and Gabriela had checked out and were sitting at a wobbly table in a coffee shop on the Upper East Side.
    She nodded back to the hotel in which they’d spent the night. ‘You always take girls to dives like that?’
    ‘Only the ones I think can handle it. You passed the test.’
    She gave a wry smile and turned back to her task. Dozens of documents sat in front of them, business records, letters, copies of emails.
    She examined the last few in the pile. She leaned back. ‘It looks like there’s close to a million dollars in quote “miscellaneous assets” that my boss has. But there’s no clue where they could be. It’s so unfair! To know there’s money out there, enough for the ransom, but not know where it is. How the hell’m I going to get Joseph his goddamn money?’
    Daniel examined his half of the documents and he admitted that he had found nothing helpful either.
    Gabriela’s coffee sat untouched before her. Daniel was drinking tea. Two bags sat in the cup, dyeing the water ruddy brown. Not many people drank tea, she reflected. Her mother did. For the past six years, though, the woman mostly just stared at the cup of cooling English Breakfast on the table in the assisted-living home.
    Forget that. Concentrate. This is important, this is vital.
    Gabriela found herself sweating. She wiped her palms on her blue jeans. She’d peeled off the windbreaker, but the restaurant was hot and her wool sweater, which she’d knitted herself, was warm. The pale green garment was thick. She remembered picking out the yarn, searching online to find a good pattern for the collar and sleeves, an Irish chain.
    She sipped coffee and picked at toast, for which she had no appetite. Then, with both hands, she gestured desperately at the documents and muttered, ‘Where do we go from here? Safe-deposit boxes?’
    ‘The police will’ve found them all, locked them down.’
    They were silent, surrounded by the sound of the milk steamer, Muzak from CDs offered for sale, a little conversation and a lot of clattering keyboards. Looking out of the window, she noted the silhouette of the Queensboro Bridge, 59th Street. It was stark against an indifferent sky.
    Gabriela had a sip of coffee, then another. It was bitter. She didn’t mind. The sharp flavor made her alert.
    ‘Did you find anything about this mysterious Gunther?’ he asked.
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘What about family property?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Your boss’s parents? Brothers and sisters? Someplace that was held in a different name than Prescott.’
    Gabriela said quickly, ‘Yes, yes! There is.’ Her eyes grew wide. ‘That could be it. When Charles’s father died last year, he and his siblings were going to put the family home on the market but they decided they had to fix the place up first. Charles would go up there every few months to work on it. It’s still being renovated.’
    ‘Whose name was it under?’
    ‘It was a trust the lawyers named something like One Oh Nine Bedford Road Trust.’
    ‘The police might not have heard about it yet.’
    She continued, ‘I’ve seen pictures. It’d be