Ransom

“I haven't read anywhere about any of Barnes's deals going sour. Believe me, Morgan, they've got it. Or he did and she does now. She probably just doesn't like to spend it. Are you keeping track of her?” Addison asked, pleased with the way things were going. Peter had put the team in place quickly, and he said he was going to Tahoe over the weekend to find a house. He wanted to find a cabin somewhere in an isolated area where they could keep the kids for as long as it took for her to come up with the ransom. As far as Addison was concerned, this was just business. For him, there was nothing personal or sentimental about it. Peter was feeling more intense, after watching her drop off, pick up, and constantly hug and kiss her children. Not to mention the nightly tears in her bedroom window.

“Yes, I'm keeping track of her,” Peter said tersely. “She doesn't do anything except drive her kids around and go through red lights.”

“Great. Let's hope she doesn't kill them before we get them. Does she drink?”

“I don't know. She doesn't look it. I think she's distracted or upset.” The day before, he had watched her nearly hit a woman in yet another crosswalk. Everyone had honked at her, and she had jumped out of the car and apologized profusely, and when she did, he saw that she was crying. Fernanda was driving him crazy. She was all he could think of now, not only because of what they had in store for her, but because of what he wished he could say to her, and the time he wished he could spend with her, if things were different. In other circumstances, he would have liked to get to know her. In his mind, she had become the perfect woman. Seeing her with her children, he had come to admire her so much. He loved watching her, and wondered what she'd been like when Barnes married her. Thinking of her as a young girl nearly drove him insane.

Why hadn't he met her then? Why was life so cruel? While he had been busy screwing up his life, and his ex-wife's, Fernanda had been married to a lucky guy, and building a family. She was spectacularly beautiful. And Sam had won his heart the first day he saw him. Ashley was a beauty. Will looked like the kind of son every man wanted. Whatever else Allan Barnes had done, and the name he had made for himself in the business world, it was obvious to Peter Morgan that he had left the perfect family behind. Peter felt like a Peeping Tom watching her, and when he went back to his hotel to sleep at night, invariably he found himself dreaming of her, and couldn't wait to go back in the morning to see her again. She had begun to haunt him like an old friend, or a lost love. In fact, for him, she was like a reminder of a lost world. A world he had always wanted to be part of, and had been for a time, but seeing her reminded him of the life and opportunities he had blown. She was everything he had always wanted and would never have again.

He hated to turn her over to Carlton Waters on Saturday, when he gave him the car, and used the van to go to Tahoe. He had a listing of houses to rent he'd gotten on the Internet. He didn't want to work with a realtor. But as long as no one saw Carl and his boys, there was no problem. If anything happened, Peter could always say that the men had broken in and used the house while he was in San Francisco. They were all making painstaking efforts to keep all of the various elements separate, and so far, there had been no problems. No one in Modesto, other than Stark and Free, knew that Carl was in the city. He was going to be back by curfew.

No one was going to follow Fernanda after six o'clock that night, until Peter got back from Tahoe sometime around ten. And if she followed her usual pattern, she'd be home with her children long before that. The only time she went out at night was to drop off Will or Ashley at friends' houses, or pick them up after a party. She didn't like Will driving at night, although as he told her frequently, and Peter could have verified, her driving was far worse than his was. From everything Peter had seen, she was a total menace.

“What's she liable to do today?” Carl asked Peter when he picked up the car keys. He was wearing a baseball cap that shielded his face, and changed his looks, and dark glasses. When Peter followed her, he looked as he always did, and if there were too many people on the street, he drove around the block a few times, and came back again. But so far he didn't have the feeling anyone had spotted him, least of all Fernanda.