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Oldrich had never taken a bribe himself, but he had been on the receiving end of enough offers when he had worked traffic to know how it was done. Speeding ticket? Oh, Geez. I’m really sorry, Officer. It won’t happen again. What? You want to see my license? Sure. By the way, pay no attention to the money I’ll attempt to hand you at the same time. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t even exist. Wink, wink.

As he hoped, the banker didn’t acknowledge the money. She didn’t even look at it. She did, however, say she would see what she could do for him. And he, in turn, asked if he could use the restroom while she got the documentation together.

When he returned, the money was gone. In its place: bank records for Anton Mira going back eighteen months.

Anton thanked her for being so helpful, picked up the stack of papers, and left.

He wanted to review them somewhere private. Last thing he needed was for someone in the department to figure out what he was up to.

Oldrich found a dive bar far enough from his home and HQ that it was unlikely he would run into anyone he knew. The place smelled of cigarette smoke, and everyone looked like they were well past “one too many.”

He ordered a beer from the bartender and took a table as far from everyone else as he could get. He perused the documents line by line to make sure he didn’t miss anything, starting with the most recent month and working his way backward. Most of what he found was exactly what he expected to: deposited paychecks (no wonder Anton always got the drinks), utility payments, trips to the grocery store. But it didn’t take long before Oldrich found what he was looking for. Right at the top of the fifth page, there was a deposit that had come in via wire in the amount of 2,335,499.00 koruna and dated two days before Matthew had been released. The sender was Aden Tindol.

Oldrich was devastated. He had hoped there would be another explanation.

He folded the papers, slid them into his coat pocket, and finished his beer.

The right thing to do would be turn Anton in. This wasn’t even close to accepting a bribe for a traffic ticket (or to offering one in exchange for bank records), but he wasn’t sure he could bring himself to do it. At least not without talking to Anton first.

There had to be an explanation. He had to be missing something.

CHAPTER 55

Austin’s cabin was in a remote part of the woods. His nearest neighbor was a mile away, and more often than not he had the small lake on the edge of his property to himself.

The road that got him there transitioned from two lanes to one to gravel to dirt. And by the time he was within sight of the house, it was so tight there was no turning around. At night, with that last stretch of road visible only thanks to his headlights, it looked like something out of a horror movie.

He pulled up to the cabin, left his headlights on while he made his way up the wooden steps to the porch. The kids still had his keys. But there was always another way in. And here he could do it without breaking a window.

At the far end of the porch there was a statue, about eighteen inches in height. A stone frog standing on two legs, wearing a tuxedo jacket. It was just the sort of kitsch Kim loved, although she had never seen it. Not until recently.

Austin had bought the cabin a month before their trip to the Czech Republic. And, yes, he had done it without telling his wife. But it was cheap, and he had been able to pay for it outright with an inheritance he had gotten when his mother passed away years earlier.

At the time, he hadn’t planned on keeping the cabin a secret forever. He had intended to bring Kim and their four-year-old son Connor up here for a surprise trip to celebrate their anniversary in September.

Ever since Austin had known her, Kim had talked about having a place like this. Somewhere they could go to get away from the noise of the city. (In those days, the three of them had lived in a walk-up much like the one Austin lived in now.) He was sure she would love it and, from the stone frog to the afghan throw on the sofa, had decorated it with her in mind.

He picked up the frog with two hands and moved it to the side. Underneath was a spare key to the front door. Not exactly high-tech security, but it was at least as secure as the fake rock Kim hid a key in at her house, and this far out, it hardly mattered.

Austin turned on all the lights. He stopped in his bedroom to remove a pair of keys and a gun from a small safe, then headed for the cellar. The door creaked. So did the stairs. He could hear muted voices whimpering. He flipped the light switch.

There were two wire cages in the middle of the room, not quite big enough to sit upright in. Kim and Frank were each locked in one of them. They were wearing gray sweats Austin had made them put on when he had taken their clothes. The sweats were too big on Kim, too small on Frank. Their hands were bound.

Each cage had a water bowl on one end (although his guests couldn’t drink from them with their mouths gagged) and a pot on the other for use as a toilet. The room stank.

They looked weak and tired—no surprise, since they hadn’t eaten in days—and they were squinting from the sudden light of the bare sixty-watt bulb in the