Eleven
I headed home, driving east through the Columbia River Gorge. The old dark rock faces rose up on my right, their visages dotted with green Doug fir whiskers. To my left, when the tall cottonwoods thinned a bit, I could see the mighty Columbia River winding east and west like a giant watery python, silver green on this partly cloudy day.
I wished the landscape could help me figure out what was going on with Danella. Why would someone kidnap Maggie Green’s daughter in order to blackmail her? Blackmail her into doing what? Maybe she was in witness protection. Or maybe she was rich and they wanted her money. But why wait until Tuesday or Wednesday? What was happening then? Did it have something to do with her job, if she was a computer engineer at Darby’s?
Maybe she was working on a
