1

"Hold on a minute, Rob, I think one of the twins is crying. Let me call you back."

Nineteen-year-old Trish Logan put down her cell phone, got up from the couch, and hurried across the living room. It was her first time babysitting for the Frawleys, the nice people who had moved into town a few months earlier. Trish had liked them immediately. Mrs. Frawley had told her that when she was a little girl, her family often visited friends who lived in Connecticut, and she liked it so much she always wanted to live there, too. "Last year when we started looking for a house and happened to drive through Ridgefield, I knew it was where I wanted to be," she told Trish.

The Frawleys had bought the old Cunningham farmhouse, a "fixer-upper" that Trish's father thought should have been a "burner-upper." Today, Thursday, March 24th, was the third birthday of the Frawleys' identical twin girls, and Trish had been hired for the day to help with the party, then to stay for the evening while the parents attended a black-tie dinner in New York.

After the excitement of the party, I'd have sworn the kids were dead to the world, Trish thought as she started up the stairs, headed to the twins' room. The Frawleys had ripped out the worn carpet that had been in the house, and the nineteenth-century steps creaked under her feet.

Near the top step, she paused. The light she had left on in the hall was off. Probably another fuse had blown. The wiring in the old house was a mess. That had happened in the kitchen this afternoon.

The twins' bedroom was at the end of the hall. There was no sound coming from it now. Probably one of the twins had cried out in her sleep, Trish thought as she began to inch her way through the darkness. Suddenly she stopped. It's not just the hall light. I left the door to their room open so I could hear them if they woke up. The night-light in the room should be showing. The door's closed. But I couldn't have heard one of them crying if it was closed a minute ago.

Suddenly frightened, she listened intently. What was that sound? In an instant of sickening awareness, she identified it: soft footsteps. A hint of equally soft breathing. The acrid smell of perspiration. Someone was behind her.

Trish tried to scream, but only a moan escaped her lips. She tried to run, but her legs would not move. She felt a hand grab her hair and yank her head back. The last thing she remembered was a feeling of pressure on her neck.

The intruder released his grip on Trish and let her sink to the floor. Congratulating himself on how effectively and painlessly he had rendered her unconscious, he turned on his flashlight, tied her up, blindfolded and gagged her. Then directing the beam onto the floor, he stepped around her, swiftly covered the length of the hall, and opened the door to the twins' bedroom.

Three-year-olds Kathy and Kelly were lying in the double bed they shared, their eyes both sleepy and terrified. Kathy's right hand and Kelly's left hand were entwined. With their other hands they were trying to pull off cloths that covered their mouths.

The man who had planned the details of the kidnapping was standing beside the bed. "You're sure she didn't see you, Harry?" he snapped.

"I'm sure. I mean, I'm sure, Bert," the other responded. They each carefully used the names they had assumed for this job: "Bert" and "Harry," after the cartoon characters in a sixties beer commercial.

Bert picked up Kathy and snapped. "Get the other one. Wrap a blanket around her. It's cold out."

Their footsteps nervously rapid, the two men raced down the back stairs, rushed through the kitchen and out to the driveway, not bothering to close the door behind them. Once in the van, Harry sat on the floor of the backseat, the twins wrapped in his beefy arms. Bert drove the van as it moved forward from the shadows of the porch.

Twenty minutes later they arrived at the cottage where Angie Ames was waiting. "They're adorable," she cooed as the men carried the children in and laid them in the hospital-style crib that had been prepared for them. With a quick, deft movement of her hands she untied the gags that had kept the little girls silent.

The children grabbed for each other and began to wail. "Mommy… Mommy," they screamed in unison.

"Sshhhh, sshhhh, don't be scared," Angie said soothingly as she pulled up the side of the crib. It was too high for her to reach over it, so she slipped her arms through the rails and began to pat their dark blond ringlets. "It's all right," she singsonged, "go to sleep. Kathy, Kelly, go back to sleep. Mona will take care of you. Mona loves you."

"Mona" was the name she had been ordered to use around the twins. "I don't like that name," she'd complained when she first heard it. "Why does it have to be Mona?"

"Because it sounds close to 'Momma.' Because when we get the money and they pick up the kids, we don't want them to say, 'A lady named Angie took care of us,' and one more good reason for that name is because you're always moaning," the man called Bert had snapped.

"Quiet them down," he ordered now. "They're making too much noise."

Copyright © 2006 by Mary Higgins Clark