Two Nights in Lisbon

Ariel answers the phone. A disguised voice informs her that John has been kidnapped, and she has two days to pay a ransom of €3 million. In panic, she questions whether John is alive, and he comes on the phone briefly. When she protests the amount is unreasonable, the kidnapper reminds her she has options for getting the money.

Griffiths’s team witnessed the ransom call and Ariel’s obvious distress. Griffiths orders the surveillance to continue.

Disturbed by the call, Ariel tries to reach her son at his summer camp. The director, considering her overprotective, refuses to disrupt George’s day. Ariel calls her mother, Elaine, to tell her about the kidnapping. She orders her mother to turn off all their electronic devices.

The narrative turns to Ariel’s past when she was unable to cope with her farmhouse. After a local handyperson was contemptuous of her ineptitude, Ariel resolved to cultivate all the necessary expertise to maintain her home and direct her life. Ariel extended this drive for competence into every aspect of her life, including self-defense, leading the narrator to point out that her skills include “even how to kill someone, using nothing but her bare hands” (100).