“I’m locked out of it,” she says. “I’m out of the loop, I can have a Rembrandt delivered to my house in an hour probably”—she drains her glass and thinks for a second about whom she could actually call about that—“but I can’t just fork something over to you. Vic doesn’t even give up his money for his own projects—you need something of value to him to even get his affection. I mean, attention.”

Martin pours more, almost too much for the tumblers to hold. It shivers at the surface, an evil lake. “That’s it, then,” he says. “That’s what we’ll have to do. Finish your drink.”

“I’ve had more than I have in almost a year, almost,” she says, hearing in her voice how she shouldn’t drive home. This is her, maybe, she thinks, liquored up and in thrall to moody schemes. This is her with the marriage removed.

“Finish it,” he insists, jumping into his jeans. “I will too.”

So they do, and for a minute the bar is a volcano Padgett’s in, the drink arsoning down her body. Martin too. He is scared, like seeing a horror movie twice, of what he knows he is about to say out loud.

“You’re thinking something,” Padgett says.

Martin empties the empty glass into his empty mouth again. “We could take her,” he says.

Padgett brushes her hair, sloppily, uselessly, out of her eyes. “Take?” she says.

“You’re the one who said, something valuable to him.”

“But what do you mean, take?”

“Kidnap,” he says.

Her first thought, over the thunder in her ears, is that she, Padgett, is kidnapped already, a naked prisoner on the floor, but that isn’t possible, she lay down on the floor herself, she’s an adult, isn’t she? “What,” she says, but now she knows it. “Who?”

“The daughter,” Martin says. “Kit. The little baby. From that school.”

“Have you lost—”

“Everything, I’ve lost. But this is easy. Do this easy thing, and then we’re square as we ever were.”

“Square? I’ve got to get dressed.”

He puts one hand, sweaty with liquor, on her bare shoulder. “No.”

“No,” she agrees. “This is fucking terror, Martin. You want to hurt a little girl—”

He is shaking his head fast. “It’s not real kidnapping,” he says. “Not really. It’s a con.”

“Who? Who does it?”

“Under the table,” Martin says. “Over in hours. I’ll grab her and put her someplace—”

“Where?”

“I know where.”

“And if this went wrong you what, bury her in the woods? What kind of person do you think I—”