Sara's Game Read Online Free PDF Page B

fished the note out of her purse and shoved it into his hands.  “Find out where that came from.  I’ll call you when I can.”
    He’d tried to protest, but his words got lost in the rush of wind at her back. 
    And now, making her way across the bridge, she wished she’d had time to give him more information, to tell him what the voice had said, and to work out a plan so she wouldn’t be driving into whatever was waiting for her in the Rose Gardens without backup. 
    Playing this so-called game on her own.
    Sara thought about calling Miss Willow, just to hear a comforting voice, but there was no sense in frightening her and risk giving out too much information.  But the voice had only said, “ Don’t tell the police.”   Should she risk letting someone else know?
    No, not yet.   Who knows what they’d do to the kids if they found out.
    They . 
    Plural.  Definitely more than just the person on the phone, given the timed coordination.  Which meant she was up against a group of people.  She could handle one person if she got the chance.  Possibly.
    Sara played it out in her mind.  A well-placed kick to the balls, or a forehead to the bridge of a nose, pouncing on him with a knee across his Adam’s Apple, all of her weight pressing down.  It was feasible.  But a group of people?  No way.  She imagined standing in a circle, surrounded.  Imagined throwing a punch at the nearest person and then getting swarmed by a hive of vicious, grinning henchman.
    She took the exit ramp and passed a young woman, bouncing lightly by on a mid-morning run.
    A woman .
    Why did the fact that it was a woman jogging by click in her subconscious?  What was the trigger, and why did it seem important?
    Dave said a woman was on the line for me.
    Some woman.
    She had forgotten that particular detail in her rush to get moving.  But was it a decoy?  Had they used the voice synthesizer to disguise the person’s real voice as a woman’s?  If it was a woman, that narrowed the list of possibilities by half. 
    The kids’ pamphlets said kidnappers were likely male, friends or family, and she definitely didn’t know any women capable of something like this. 
    She had no family in the area.  They were all back in Virginia.  Brian had come from a small clan of Winthrops in Washington.  His parents had passed.  His sister lived in Des Moines.  The rest of the aunts (and uncles and female cousins) stayed in the near-perpetual drizzle of Seattle.  Her friends were sweethearts with children of their own.  Her assistant Shelley, her coworkers, and all the rest of the women at LightPulse were good-natured and friendly.  And she hadn’t gotten a hint of resentment from any of them when she had been promoted to Vice President over some of the more seasoned employees.  What would be their motivation?
    It couldn’t be anyone she knew, could it? 
    Behind closed doors, Sara...
    No.  No, no, no.  It wasn’t possible.  Nobody close.  It had to be a stranger.  Had to. 
    But what if it wasn’t?
    She drove up Knob Hill toward the Rose Gardens, getting closer and closer, rifling through the possibilities, checking off each woman she knew, dismissing them all for different reasons.  Most would be at work, leading busy lives.  Some were stay-at-home moms keeping control of toddler-induced bedlam with no time to plan a coordinated kidnapping.
    That wouldn’t stop any of them from making a phone call , but none of them have a reason.  Not a single one of them would have any reason to do this...would they?
     

 
    CHAPTER 5
    SARA
    Sara arrived at the Rose Gardens with a minute remaining on her deadline.  She found a parking spot, got out, and left the keys in the ignition with the minivan running, as instructed. 
    She stood with her arms crossed, taking in the surroundings.  She didn’t know what she was looking for, but it seemed like the right thing to do.  She’d only been there once before, twelve years ago.  It was on