Chapter 25
Trade. You for her.
Mason was typing as soon as he stopped reading.
When and where?
The text came back as undeliverable.
He stared down at his phone and typed again. Pressed send and willed it to go through.
Undeliverable.
“Motherfucker!” he shouted.
Angie jumped.
He was already dialing Sophia. It rang once.
“Mason—”
“I just got a text. Photo of Kayla and a trade offer. Number's already dead.” He was pulling up the forward screen as he talked. “I'm sending it to you right now.”
A pause. He heard Rylie's voice in the background, sharp and immediate.
“Got it,” Sophia said. “We've got it.”
“Give it to Lydia. I need everything she can pull off that number before the trail goes cold. Carrier, cell tower, anything.”
“Already on it.” That was Lydia's voice, closer now, and he could hear that she was already three steps into the problem.
“God, Mason.” Sophia’s voice trailed off. She was seeing what he’d seen. Their daughter on a concrete floor, her eyes barely open, small and cold and very far from home.
“We’re going to get her, Sophia. I swear it to you.”
“When are you coming back?” Sophia asked.
“Soon. I love you.” He ended the call and looked over at Angie. She’d been looking over his shoulder. She knew exactly what was going on.
He pulled a breath in through his nose. Let it out.
One thing at a time.
“Each piece is a waiting game,” Angie whispered.
“I know.”
They both stared out the windshield, waiting to see who might head up to Mrs. Kowalski’s apartment.
Eighteen minutes later, a beat-to-shit white Ford truck double-parked in front of the apartment building and a skinny man wearing a Padres jersey hustled out and went upstairs.
He came out carrying a cat carrier that appeared to be actively fighting him.
Mason could hear it from half a block away—a low, continuous sound somewhere between a growl and a threat, punctuated by the occasional sharp impact of something hitting the interior walls of the carrier.
The man swore under his breath, switched his grip, swore again.
Mason looked at Angie.
Angie looked at Mason.
“That's our guy,” she said.
He got into his truck, and almost managed to run into the one car that was driving along the road. It was almost like he’d tried. They followed him onto the 5 on-ramp, which Mason had not expected. After five miles he jerked his wheel, and almost ran off the road.
Angie snorted. “I bet it was the cat.”
Mason couldn’t find it in himself to laugh. Nothing was funny. There was only Kayla.
The man finally took an exit off the freeway into a residential neighborhood in San Clemente that was quiet in the late hours where most people were in bed.
This time the man actually made an attempt at parallel parking, scraped against a silver Prius’ bumper, then decided to double park. He reached in and retrieved the cat carrier from the back seat.
Whatever was inside it had not calmed down.
Mason could hear it from two car lengths back. So could Angie, judging by her expression.
They watched him walk up the path toward a small stucco bungalow, beige, terra cotta trim, the kind of place that looked exactly like the six houses on either side of it.
He was swearing continuously now, low and inventive, the carrier swinging and rattling in his grip as something inside it hit the door again, hard, with what sounded like spite.
The latch gave.
Mason wasn't entirely sure how it happened. One moment the carrier was in the man's hands and the next the door was hanging open and something fast, orange, and extremely motivated launched itself out, hit the porch railing, and was gone into the neighbor's bougainvillea before anyone could react.
The man stood on the path with an empty carrier and stared after it.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he said, to no one in particular.
He pounded on the door. There was no answer.
The man pounded again.
Mason and Angie looked at one another.
Please God, not another dead end.
“I’ll go around the back,” Angie whispered. Mason nodded.
The man was now on the front stoop, pounding and yelling. This did not look promising.
Mason got slowly out of the car and strolled up to the man, who turned to Mason. “Do you live here?”
“No. You’re being awfully loud.”
“The lady inside owes me money. She gave me a hundred dollars to pick up a cat from some old lady in downtown San Diego, then bring it to her here. The cat scratched the shit out of me. Now she’s not here to pay me the other hundred.”
Mason looked at him. Read him. He'd been doing this long enough to know the look of a significant player, and one who was a patsy. This man was a patsy.
He kept going. “— my arm looks like I lost a fight with a weed whacker, and now the evil little fucker is gone, and I won’t get my other hundred, but that bitch isn't even—”
“Be quiet.”
The man stopped complaining and looked at Mason, as if he could come up with an answer to a mess that wasn’t of his making.
Angie was already coming back from around the side of the house. Her face told him what he needed to know before she opened her mouth.
“Nobody’s home, but it’s not cleared out. Not like the place before.”
“Who are you? What are you talking about?”
Angie looked the man up and down. “You. Get gone.”
“I’m owed money.”
“You planning on leaving a note for the Prius owner?”
He looked nervously over his shoulder at his truck. “I, uhm.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Get gone. Now.” Her hand started reaching for the inside of her jacket and the man dropped the cat carrier and ran toward his truck.
“I left a camera in the back,” she told Mason. “It’ll tell me when she comes back. Need to do one up front, too.”
Mason watched her pull out a piece of small surveillance equipment from her jacket and position it. As she did, he felt the cat brush up against his ankle. He looked down.
The cat looked up at him with his one good eye, then purred.
Mason picked up the cat carrier and positioned it with the door open. The cat walked in and settled. He picked up the carrier, and followed Angie back to the car. As soon as they were inside, he called Sophia.