Читать книгу In This Together - Kara Lennox - Страница 12

CHAPTER FOUR

SHE HAD TO call someone. Of course she did. Travis Riggs had kidnapped her! What was she supposed to do, hand him back the phone with a polite, “Excuse me, I think you dropped this”?

Lord only knew what he might do when he found out he’d been pickpocketed. Thus far, he seemed pretty harmless. She didn’t sense violence in him. But what did she know? Not everyone broadcasted their true natures. He was obviously unbalanced. One little thing could set him off like a firecracker.

She could call 911, but then she would have to do a lot of explaining. Travis had undoubtedly told Daniel not to call the police, and Daniel’s natural inclination was to rely on his own resources first. All those years he’d spent fighting the murder charge against him had left him with a healthy skepticism toward law enforcement. He had a lot of respect for certain, individual cops. But for the institutions, he didn’t.

Decision made. She’d call Daniel. With trembling fingers, she dialed the number.

He picked up almost before it rang. “Daniel Logan. You listen to me. If I don’t have Elena back unharmed within the hour, I will personally—”

“Daniel, it’s me,” she whispered. God, she’d never heard him so angry, and she’d heard Daniel angry plenty of times.

“Elena? Thank God. Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. He hasn’t hurt me and he’s not going to. It’s all bluff.”

“Where are you?”

“I don’t really know. Daniel, please listen, I don’t have much time. Could you just give him what he wants?”

He paused just long enough that Elena knew he didn’t have an easy answer for her. “I won’t do anything to endanger you. If that were the only way to get you back unharmed—”

“He’s not going to harm me.” Well, she was pretty sure. “There’s a child involved. His brother is going to lose his little girl forever. That’s why he’s so crazy. The wife, Tammy, she was having an affair that was never investigated.”

“I will give him precisely what he asked for—no more, no less. And once I have you back safely, I will nail his ass to the wall so thoroughly he’ll never see daylight again.”

Oh, boy. Daniel was really, really bent out of shape. “How’s the power plant?”

“Why are you asking me that? You’ve been kidnapped! Who cares about a power plant?”

“Everybody, if there’s a radioactive leak.”

“It was a false alarm. The safety team resolved it long before I got there.”

“Oh, that’s good.”

“Keep talking, Elena. I’m going to work with his provider to see if we can triangulate your location.”

“You don’t have to do that. He’s not going to hurt me.”

“You think I should just roll over and do whatever he wants? Do you want every two-bit gangster out there with a friend or relative in prison to think they can get me to—”

“In this particular case, yes—give him what he wants. If you do find me, if you come in here with guns blazing, I’ll be in more danger than I am now.”

“You’re being held hostage by a maniac. I don’t think it could get much worse than that. You don’t know this guy. You don’t know what he’s capable of. And I’m capable of conducting a proper hostage extraction, thank you very much.”

Dios, he was in a snit. She’d made a mistake. She shouldn’t have called Daniel. “I have to go. If he realizes I took his phone, he’ll move me.”

“I’ll find you, Elena.”

She turned off the phone, sick to her stomach. What if Daniel made good on his threat? She doubted Travis even had a gun, but she feared he might be dangerous when cornered, weapon or no. He could end up getting himself killed.

Her eyes burned with tears. Why was she like this? She’d outsmarted her kidnapper; she’d gotten a message to Daniel. She should be elated. But she was frightened, and she felt as though she’d done something wrong. Really wrong.

Suddenly the bathroom door burst open, and if she’d been scared before, she was terrified now. Travis filled the door, looking very large, and if he could have shot lasers from his eyes, he probably would have. He looked like an avenging dark angel.

He came toward her, and for one horrible moment, she thought he was going to hit her. But he snatched the phone out of her hands.

“I didn’t even turn it on,” she said.

“You had my phone for five minutes and you didn’t turn it on?”

All he had to do was check the call history to know she was lying. “Okay, yes, I turned it on, but I just wanted to tell Daniel I was okay. I asked him to give you what you want.”

“I’ll just bet you did.” He took her arm. “Come on. We have to go.”

“We do?”

“I suppose you think we should just sit here and wait for the cops to come and arrest me?”

She tried to reason with him as he dragged her through the house. “I didn’t tell him where we were. I couldn’t, because I have no idea.”

“The cops can locate me by the GPS. They can get within a hundred feet, and once they do that, they’ll figure out we’re in the vacant house.”

She knew that, but she was surprised he did. She’d assumed when he said he couldn’t manage a simple online form that he wouldn’t understand how the GPS tracker on a phone worked.

He took her through the back door. It was only a few feet to the truck, which was already open. No chance of her making a break for it, not that she’d have given herself even a small chance of escaping him. He was strong and fast. He’d recovered awful damn quickly after she’d bonked him with the wrench.

He pulled her to the rear of the truck.

“Oh, come on. Do I have to ride in the back again?”

“Of course not, princess. Your limo should be here in a few minutes. Yes, you have to get in the back. I know you think I’m stupid, but do you really think I’d put you up front with me where you can jump out at the first stop sign? Or open the window and scream for help?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid.” She sighed as he opened the cargo cover and the tailgate.

“Will you get in, or do I have to stuff you in there? I don’t want to hurt you. I really, really don’t. But I’ll do what has to be done not to get caught. Not yet.”

She could fight him. He’d have a helluva time getting her into the back of the truck if she kicked and clawed and screamed, and maybe a neighbor would hear her this time. But in the end, she’d probably hurt herself worse than him. He’d get her inside the truck—no doubt about that—and be gone before the cops arrived.

She looked him in the eye and made sure he looked back. Then she gave him the evil eye, something her abuela had taught her. She’d reduced more than one grown man to quivering jelly with this look.

“I’m keeping score. I’ll make you pay.”

“I don’t doubt it. Get it through your head, Elena. You can’t talk me out of this. The only thing that matters is that someone gets Eric out of prison so he can get his little girl back and try to salvage what used to be a good and productive life.”

She looked away. Then she sat on the tailgate and swung her legs up. Travis held her hand, helping her wedge herself into the truck bed as if he were assisting her into Cinderella’s carriage.

“Oh, comfy.” She patted a folded blanket he’d put in there so she’d have a cushion for her head. Just before he shut her in, she handed him his cell phone, which she’d pickpocketed again.

“Son of a bitch!”

“You might want to stop carrying it in your front pocket,” she said sweetly.

“How did you do that? Do you moonlight as a magician or something?”

“Trade secret.”

He closed the tailgate and cargo cover. The last she saw of him, right before it went dark, he had the strangest, most perplexed look on his face, as though he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her.

She could have kept the phone. She could have turned it on again once she was out of his sight. His provider would track the pings and follow them right to whatever new location he drove to. But she hadn’t.

Some part of her really didn’t want Travis to get caught.

* * *

DANIEL HAD ASKED Randolph, his chauffeur, to drive him directly to the Project Justice offices downtown, where everyone had been put on notice. Elena had been kidnapped. And when it came to his people, no effort was too great.

Celeste was in her usual place at the front desk. A former Houston cop, she was the building’s first line of defense—and a formidable one at that. Her wild-colored clothes and big dangly earrings were a deceiving affectation. No one got past her if she didn’t want them to.

She got to her feet. “Daniel. Any word since she called?”

“No.” It didn’t surprise him that news of Elena’s call had reached Celeste. She always seemed to know everything that was going on. “Celeste, thank you for your quick and decisive actions when the kidnapper called.”

“I knew he was serious. I tangled with him once before, when he tried to get in here without an appointment.”

“You’ve met him, then? What’s he like. Tell me every detail you remember.”

“He’s over six feet, muscular build, working man’s hands. Dark hair, kinda shaggy. Blue eyes. Nice looking, can’t deny that. Any other time—”

“Irrelevant, Celeste.”

“Right. He was very polite but insistent. And stubborn. He didn’t want to take no for an answer, no matter how many times I explained that his first step was to fill out the online form. Once he realized I wasn’t going to budge, he left. Not in a happy mood.”

“Did he seem unbalanced?”

“No, not at all. He stated his case in very clear terms. I remember the case he was talking about, the Tammy Riggs murder.”

Daniel remembered it, too, though not in great detail. He followed a lot of crimes, sensational or not.

“He had a sort of noble bearing. Looked me right in the eye. Never used any coarse language, didn’t lose his temper.”

“Thank you, Celeste. If any more calls come through from him, put them—”

“Directly through to the conference room. Yes, sir.”

God, he loved Celeste. He suspected he was the only person in the world she addressed as “sir.”

From the lobby, he went directly to the main conference room. He could hear the buzz of conversation behind the door before he opened it; his team was on the case.

Conversation stopped as he entered.

“Daniel.” The speaker was Ford Hyatt, his most experienced investigator. “Any new developments?”

“Not on my end. Bring me up to speed.” He pulled out a chair at the head of the long mahogany table. Usually he ran Project Justice meetings from home, via video conferencing. But for this matter, it was important to be there in person—if only to make sure his people knew this was no ordinary operation.

“We have copies of the security video from the front gate,” said Mitch Delacroix, who was in charge of anything involving computers, video or audio.

“You caught the abduction on video?”

“Unfortunately no. Elena walked down the driveway and went outside the gate to talk to him.”

Why had she done that? Elena was quite proficient at discouraging nuisance visitors. Then, she had seemed unusually troubled by the man’s plight—not her usual ruthlessly efficient manner.

“What about his vehicle?”

“Also not caught on video.”

Daniel made a mental note to add some extra surveillance cameras outside the gate to include more of the street in front of his house.

“We do have a vehicle description,” Hyatt said. “Riggs owns a black 2001 Ford F-150 pickup.”

“What else do we know about him?”

“Travis Brandon Riggs. Thirty-three years old. He and his brother, Eric, were raised by a single mother, now deceased. Father unknown. He did a short stint in foster care when he was ten. Dropped out of high school when he was sixteen. Since then he’s worked in construction on and off. Three years in the army. Honorable discharge. Married to a Judith Evans, divorced a year later. Did a stint at the Harris County Jail for assault. Haven’t found out the particulars yet, but I’m working on it.”

So, he did have violent tendencies. That was bad news.

“No trouble since he got out—that was almost ten years ago. Currently he owns a small construction company doing home repairs, remodeling and renovation.”

“Home address?”

“It’s a one-bedroom apartment in Westridge, nothing special.” Mitch brought up a picture of a blocky, 1970s-era building on the video screen. It was small but tidy—neatly trimmed lawn, freshly painted, freshly raked. “We’ve already got it under surveillance,” Mitch continued. “He hasn’t been there.”

And he probably wouldn’t be dumb enough to show his face there, either. He’d made no attempt to hide his identity, and he had to know there was a good chance the authorities or Project Justice people would come looking for him.

“Mitch. What’s the word from Reynolds?” David Reynolds was Daniel’s contact at Riggs’s cell phone provider. For a hefty fee, he would check the GPS data and report back.

Daniel had already sent another investigator to check out the first location, the place from which Riggs had made his first call, but it hadn’t looked promising and had probably been only a temporary stopping point. Daniel was counting on Elena’s call yielding more fruitful information.

“Reynolds is still working on it.”

“Griffin,” Daniel said, addressing another of his best, a former investigative reporter who had become one of his most skilled operatives, especially when it came to working undercover. “As soon as you have a location nailed down, I want you and Jillian to go there. Take the fake utility truck—uniforms should be inside it. Once you confirm it’s the right place, we’ll figure out our next move.

“Raleigh,” he asked another senior investigator, who was also his top-dog lawyer, “are you ready to brief me on the Eric Riggs case? You know what I’m looking for—a piece of jewelry missing from the victim, a detail never released to the public.” He needed something to appease Travis Riggs, to lull him into believing Daniel was knuckling under the pressure.

“It was a necklace,” Raleigh said. “A gold locket.”

Obviously Travis hadn’t done his homework, or he’d know that Daniel did not knuckle under to anyone. He would do whatever it took to keep Elena safe, of course. But she said she didn’t think she was in any danger. Daniel was banking on that being true. He just had to keep stringing Travis along until he made a mistake. And he would. When he did, his ass was Daniel’s.

Mitch murmured something into his headset and then turned to Daniel. “We have the location nailed down to three houses in a subdivision in Timbergrove.”

“Let’s roll.”

* * *

FORD HYATT, DRESSED in full SWAT-like gear, showed Daniel a satellite map on his phone. “It’s these three houses, at the end of the cul-de-sac.”

Daniel spoke into a radio. “Anyone have eyes on those houses?” Jillian and Griffin were already inside the complex in their fake utility truck.

“Affirmative,” came Jillian’s response. “We can rule two of them out. I’ve seen people going in and out, no kidnapper types. The third one appears unoccupied.”

“That’s our target, then. Hyatt, Kinkaid and I are right behind you.”

Daniel and his two operatives were in a taxi with tinted windows. Daniel, behind the wheel, was dressed as your average cabdriver. Hyatt and Kinkaid were in back. Taxis seemed to have no trouble getting in and out of gated communities. Mitch simply faked a call from a resident to the guardhouse requesting a cab. Five minutes later, Daniel and his party were inside. The guard barely looked at them as they passed through. They would be on camera, if a question ever came up, but with shades and a hat, Daniel wasn’t recognizable, and the taxi’s license plates wouldn’t trace back to anything.

Moments later, he pulled up behind the utility truck and spoke into the radio again. “Griffin and Jillian, make entry at the rear.” He didn’t bother using code names; their communications were encrypted. “Hyatt and Kinkaid will come through the front. On my signal.”

He watched as the utility truck slid into the driveway of the house in question, which did not appear lived in. That was good news. Less chance that they were breaking into the home of an innocent family.

Daniel gave Griffin and Jillian a few seconds to get situated and then signaled Hyatt and Kinkaid. They exited the taxi and ran noiselessly to the home’s front porch. Daniel hoped to hell the neighbors didn’t see; this was the sort of highly illegal maneuver that he and his people could get arrested for. He’d considered letting the police make the extraction, but no cops could mobilize as fast as Project Justice could. And this was Elena they were talking about.

Daniel remained in the taxi. He didn’t have the same training as the others, and if he tried to play macho cop he could put himself and others in danger. But as soon as they had the kidnapper subdued, he would be there.

“On my signal,” he said. “One, two, three, go.”

Without hesitation, Hyatt broke the glass in the front door, reached in and opened the door, yelling out a warning to anyone who might be inside to get on the floor. They looked like cops and sounded like cops, but they never identified themselves as such. Posing as a cop brought additional criminal charges.

Daniel counted off the seconds as he listened to the shouting and banging door on the open channel of his radio. No sounds of gunfire, thank God. More good news.

“Clear... Clear... Clear...” That single word came through over and over again. Twenty seconds in, Daniel heard, “All clear.” That meant he could go in. But he had a bad feeling as he sprinted across the front lawn and into the house.

Hyatt met him. “There’s no one here. It appears the house is being renovated.”

“Found something!” Jillian shouted from another part of the house. All eyes looked toward the hallway where she appeared, holding a blue piece of clothing.

“Elena’s jacket. Damn.” How close were they? By how many minutes had they missed rescuing Elena and taking Travis Riggs down? Ten? Five?

“There was also a small amount of blood in the bathroom,” Jillian said, her eyes downcast. “And some blood-soaked tissues in the trash.”

“Damn it! How much blood?”

“Enough to be concerned,” Jillian replied.

Daniel sighed. “I hate to say it, but we’re going to have to call in the authorities. What they lack in speed and precision, they make up for in sheer numbers. At this point, we have no idea where he might have taken her. The cops can get choppers in the air, monitor phones, bank accounts, credit cards.” Project Justice could do all of those things, but they didn’t have the number of people required to monitor it all. “Come on. Let’s clear out of here before the real cops arrive.”