‘Yeah? Who’s your brother?’ the man asked. ‘Dalton Pettigrew,’ she answered. The man looked at a list in front of him and shook his head. ‘We don’t have anyone by that name here.’ Mary Ellen stared at the man for a moment, then walked back out the front door. EMIL Things aren’t going as planned, Emil thought. Who could plan for breaking equipment and a kid with asthma? Nothing he’d found on the Internet about Jean MacDonnell and her family indicated that her son had asthma. As for the broken equipment, he should have looked further than his first interview when he hired an assistant for this gig. Holly Humphries wasn’t exactly working out. ‘OK, now look into the camera,’ he told her. ‘Hold up today’s newspaper. Tell them how much the ransom is.’ ‘Wouldn’t she cover her face?’ Holly asked. ‘I mean, she plans to get out of this, right? Why would she let anyone who watched this videotape know her identity?’ He was beginning to hate this girl almost as much as he hated Jean MacDonnell.
