Read The Rules Of Silence for Free Online Page A

garage. It developed into a hostage standoff situation (it turned out to be a bad marriage turned worse) that lasted a couple of days. Among the various law enforcement-type consultants brought in during the ordeal was a guy named Gil Norlin. It was never clear to Titus who brought him into the situation or whom he answered to, but he was always sort of hanging around on the edges of it. Never fully engaged, never having any authority for anything. Yet Titus noticed that people did consult him, even the FBI agents, but always quietly, to the side.
    Titus heard later that he was a former CIA officer, retired now. A consultant. He had left Titus his card, avoiding his eyes, Titus remembered. Titus headed for the house.
    Wearing his robe, he rummaged around in his office for twenty minutes before he found the old card in an outdated Rolodex at the back of a drawer.
    He looked at his watch. At this hour the winding roads of the wooded hills were sparsely traveled, and even Titus would be able to see someone following. On the other hand, it really didn’t matter. Even with all the advanced technology available today, a call from a spontaneously chosen pay phone was still a safe call. Even if Alvaro’s people had a surveillance tag on the Rover and knew he was making the call, they wouldn’t know whom he was calling or what the call was about.
    Alvaro had specified no law enforcement. But he knew that Titus would have to make arrangements with a variety of people in order to raise the money Alvaro was demanding. For all he knew, Titus could be calling his banker, his broker, his accountant, his lawyer. Surely those conversations could be private and not considered a violation of Alvaro’s bans on communication? Was Titus to have understood from Alvaro’s instructions that he could never have another private conversation? That just didn’t seem realistic. It was worth the risk of pushing the envelope a little to find out just how tight a grip this guy had on him.
    He grabbed the card from his Rolodex, threw on some clothes, locked the house—feeling stupid, considering what had just happened—and went out and got into the Range Rover.
    It took him only ten minutes to get down the winding narrow roads below his house to the lone all-night convenience store at an isolated intersection in the woods. He hadn’t seen anyone following him so far, although he knew that his countersurveillance skills had to be less than great.
    There were no other cars there. He placed the call from the pay phone outside. That number had been changed. He dialed the new number. He got a recording that gave him yet another number, where he received a cell phone number, where he got a recording to leave a pay phone number and state if he had an emergency. He did both.
    Agitated, he sat in the Range Rover with his window down so he could hear the phone ring and stared at the bright interior of the store. Nobody was in there except the night clerk. No other cars were parked outside except his. The two of them, the middle-aged woman suspended in fluorescent isolation as she stared into space from her stool behind the cash register and Titus staring at her from his solitary, lightless cubicle, were polar opposites, bound together by their dissimilarities. Black-and-white metaphors for the bewildered.
    When the phone rang he was out of the Rover in an instant and picked up the receiver on the third ring.
    “Yes?”
    “Yeah, this is Titus Cain. I met you about four years ago. There was this abduction—”
    “Yeah, I remember.”
    “I need to talk to you.”
    “What’s the situation?”
    “Extortion. Death threats if I call law enforcement. This phone call’s a big risk.”
    “How were the threats made? Letter?”
    “Three armed gunmen showed up at my house about an hour ago. Shot my dogs right there in front of me and gave me ultimatums.”
    “Give me the address where you are right now.”
    “I imagine I’m being followed. My car’s