Читать книгу Colton Under Fire - Cindy Dees - Страница 11

Liam got rid of her family in the nick of time because over the next hour, Chloe went from bad to worse. Coughs wracked her tiny body, and each wheezing breath the little girl drew terrified Sloane a little bit more.

A new doctor came in at lunchtime and introduced herself as a pulmonologist, a lung and breathing specialist. The woman commenced listening to Chloe’s chest through a stethoscope. The doctor frowned and jerked her head toward the hallway door.

Sloane’s brain froze. It was bad news. A little voice somewhere in the back of her skull screamed, nononono.

“Ms. Colton, you daughter is very sick. We’re going to do everything we can for her. We’ll x-ray her chest periodically to check for fluid in her lungs, and I’m going to start support for her breathing. She’ll still be breathing on her own. I just want to get a little more oxygen into her.”

Sloane managed to pull her wits together enough to ask, “How long will this phase of the virus last?”

“The next twenty-four hours should tell the tale. If we can dodge pneumonia, we should be home free after that.”

“What can I do for her?”

“Keep her calm. Keep the oxygen tube under her nose. If she won’t tolerate it on her face, we’ll have to sedate her. In fact, I may do that anyway—”

“Please hold off. I’d rather avoid sedation if we can. I’ll keep her breathing the oxygen. I won’t take my eyes off of her.”

The doctor nodded and moved over to the nurses’ station to write up the order for oxygen supplementation. Then she looked up at Sloane. “I’ll check on Chloe again in a few hours. The nurses will call me if there are any significant changes between now and then.”

Sloane nodded. But then she caught the grim looks that passed between the doctor and the head nurse. Crap, crap, crap.

If there was one feeling in the world she couldn’t stand above all others, it was feeling helpless. And right now, there wasn’t a blessed thing she could do to help her baby. This was entirely out of her hands. Which completely panicked her.

* * *

Liam had agreed to meet the FBI’s tech guy at the police department and was glad he did. He would have arrested Rahm Zogby on sight if he’d seen the guy lurking around Sloane’s place. The FBI technician had a chest-length beard and a ragged bandana tied around his forehead, holding back long, lanky hair. If the man bathed, it wasn’t evident, and the van, marked “Manny’s HVAC Service,” looked nearly as disreputable as its driver.

“Liam Kastor?” Rahm asked as Liam climbed out of his truck.

“That’s me. Agent Zogby?”

“Just Zog. Or Rahm. I’m not a badge flasher.”

Liam wasn’t sure if that meant the guy had an FBI badge and chose not to show it, or that the guy was a civilian. Zog drove the van while Liam rode in the torn vinyl passenger seat. Liam directed him across town to Sloane’s house, and the FBI man parked out front.

“What’s the plan...Zog?”

“You’ve got the keys and permission to go in, right? That’s what Stefan Roberts told me.”

“Correct.”

“I’m gonna go in and pretend to fix the air conditioner and heater while you put on this monkey suit and help me.” The guy held out a cheap brown jumpsuit that would fit over his street clothes. “Ideally, you’d have some work boots to wear, but we’ll chance it. Just pull the jumpsuit down so it covers up your shoes as much as possible.”

“Got it.” Liam crawled in the back of the van, sat on the hard ribbed floor, and wrestled on the uniform.

Zog eyed him critically. “Pull the baseball cap down lower. Good. Keep your face turned away from the cameras as much as you can without being obvious about it. And watch what you say. The cameras may have an audio pickup.”

Liam nodded his understanding and yanked the cap down practically to the bridge of his nose.

“Here. Carry this.” Zog thrust a grimy bucket full of tools at him. They climbed out and headed for the kitchen door at the back of the house.

Liam let them in, and Zog made a beeline for the thermostat on the wall in the dining room. He popped the cover off and fiddled with the electronics inside. “Gotta look at the base unit,” he announced.

They piled upstairs to the slant-ceilinged office. At one end of the space was a short door that turned out to lead to a partially finished attic space.

“Perfect,” Zog breathed.

Frowning, Liam watched the guy get down on his hands and knees and crawl for the corner over the front door. Flashes of light indicated that Zog was photographing something. When the guy backed up and headed for the other side of the open space, Liam estimated that Zog was on top of the camera in Chloe’s room. More flashes of light.

“Hand me that zipped pouch in the bottom of the bucket,” Zog muttered.

Liam passed it over and was startled when the technician went to work, quickly attaching wires to something in the corner.

“’Kay. Done,” Zog announced.

Liam opened his mouth to ask what the guy had found, but Zog waved him to silence. They tromped downstairs. Zog replaced the thermostat cover while mumbling something about being glad it was just a fuse that needed replacing and chuckling over how they were gonna be able to charge for a full-service visit. Then they piled into the van and drove away from Sloane’s bungalow.

“Well?” Liam demanded.

The stoner persona dropped in an instant, and Rahm spoke crisply. “State-of-the-art surveillance and transmission system. Someone’s nearby monitoring the camera feed, or else there’s a remote unit nearby where the data is being collected, forwarded to another location, and possibly recorded for later viewing. Either way, your stay-at-home mom has some serious hardware in her attic. Stuff’s practically military grade.”

“But why?” Liam blurted in frustration. “She’s a mom.”

“You sure about that? There’s a good twenty grand in gear installed in that house. We’re talking a top-drawer private security firm or the FBI. They’re the only types who have access to that kind of tech besides the military.”

Suddenly, Liam didn’t know anything at all about Sloane. Who in the world would bring that kind of juice to spy on her? And why?

The van pulled to a stop beside his pickup truck back at the station.

“Here,” Zog said, holding out a flash drive and a cigar-box-sized box with an antenna sticking out of it. “You’ll need these.”

“What are they?”

“Plug the antenna unit into an electrical outlet and plug that flash drive into your computer, and you’ll see the exact same feed as the cameras. I cloned the whole system for you.”

Liam sputtered. He didn’t want to spy on Sloane! He only wanted to know who’d done it. “Is there any way we can track who’s picking up the signal?”

“I planted a signal tracker at the house, but I’m gonna have to go back to the bench in my lab and catch an outbound batch burst of data before I can give you a location. Give me, say, twelve hours? I doubt the surveillance batches are going out any slower than that.”

“Fair enough. Thanks for all your help, man.”

Zog said soberly, “I hope you find the answers you’re looking for.”

So did he. It would kill him to have to take Sloane down if she was mixed up in something nefarious. And Chloe—that kid couldn’t end up back in her father’s hands. Could the Coltons be convinced to sue for custody—

Slow down, there, Tonto. Sloane isn’t convicted of anything yet. Innocent until proven guilty, buddy.

Please God, let Sloane not be tangled up in something illegal.