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everything. The investigation is moving too slowly. Every hour that goes by ratchets her panic up another notch.
    ‘Who could have taken her?’ Anne whispers to Marco when they’re alone. Anne has sent her parents home for the time being, even though they’d wanted to settle themselves in the spare room upstairs. But Anne, as much as she relies on her parents, especially in times of stress and trouble, finds they make her anxious, too, and she is anxious enough. Plus,having them around always makes things more difficult with Marco, and he already looks like he’s about to snap. His hair is a mess, and he hasn’t shaved. They’ve been up all night, and the day is half gone. Anne is exhausted and knows she must look as bad as Marco does, but she doesn’t care. Sleep is impossible.
    ‘We have to think, Marco! Who would take her?’
    ‘I have no idea,’ Marco says helplessly.
    She gets up and starts pacing back and forth in the living room. ‘I don’t understand why they haven’t found any evidence of an intruder. It doesn’t make sense. Does that make sense to you?’ She stops pacing and adds, ‘Except for the loosened lightbulb in the motion detector. That’s obviously evidence that there was an intruder.’
    Marco looks up at her. ‘They think we loosened the lightbulb ourselves.’
    She stares at him. ‘That’s ridiculous!’ There is a note of hysteria in her voice.
    ‘It wasn’t us. We know that,’ Marco says fiercely. He runs his hands nervously up and down his thighs on his jeans, a new habit. ‘The detective is right about one thing – it looks planned. Somebody didn’t just walk by, see the door open, and go in and take her. But if she was taken for ransom, why wouldn’t the kidnapper have left a note? Shouldn’t we have heard from them by now?’ He checks his watch. ‘It’s almost three o’clock! She’s been gone over twelve hours already,’ he says, his voice breaking.
    That’s what Anne thinks, too. Surely they should have heard from someone by now. What was normal in cases of kidnapping? When she’d asked Detective Rasbach, he’d said, ‘There is no normal in a kidnapping. They’re all unique. If ransom is demanded, it can be within hours – or days. But generallykidnappers don’t want to be holding on to the victim for any longer than they have to. The risks go up over time.’
    The police have put a wiretap on their phone to record any potential conversations with the kidnapper. But so far no one claiming to have Cora has called.
    ‘What if it’s someone who knows your parents?’ Marco suggests. ‘Maybe one of your parents’ acquaintances?’
    ‘You’d like to blame this on them, wouldn’t you?’ Anne snaps, walking back and forth in front of him with her arms crossed.
    ‘Hang on,’ Marco says. ‘I’m not blaming this on them, but think about it for a minute! The only ones with real money around here are your parents. So it has to be somebody who knows them and knows they’ve got money. We don’t have the kind of money a kidnapper would be after, obviously.’
    ‘Maybe they should be monitoring my parents’ calls,’ Anne says.
    Marco looks up at her and says, ‘Maybe we need to be more creative with the reward.’
    ‘What do you mean? We already offered a reward. Fifty thousand dollars.’
    ‘Yes, but fifty thousand dollars for information leading to our getting Cora back – how much is that going to help if nobody saw anything? If anybody actually saw something, don’t you think they would have told the police by now?’ He waits while Anne considers this. ‘We have to get things moving,’ Marco says urgently. ‘The longer they have Cora, the greater the chance they’ll harm her.’
    ‘They think I did it,’ Anne says suddenly. ‘They think I killed her.’ Her eyes are wild. ‘I can tell from the way that detective looks at me that he’s already made his mind up about me. He’s probably just trying to decide how much
you
had to do with