Chapter 18
Eighteen
Cam sat in the driver’s seat of the surveillance van, surveying the run-down bowling alley through night vision binoculars.
The car they’d tracked was parked out front, right where GPS said it would be, and there was a light on in the main structure, but there was no visible movement inside, no other lights flickered, and no other cars came or went.
Cam was starting to think the kidnapper was gone from this site already, moving Lette elsewhere.
He wordlessly passed the binoculars to Garrett, as had been their routine for the past hour. This time, however, Garrett set the goggles on the dash and fell back in the passenger seat with a huff. “She’s not in there.”
“Agreed,” Cam said. “But I want surveillance to confirm no heat signatures before we move in. I called in the drone. Should be flying over soon.”
“Those things aren’t foolproof. If there’s a basement . . .”
“Oh, I know.” Two months ago, he’d had a drone fly over a farmhouse outside of Boston, looking for a kidnap victim.
The drone hadn’t detected any bodies, and the house had been clear of the suspect, but they’d found the victim, thankfully alive, in the basement.
“But the drone will give us some indication of what we’re walking into. ”
Garrett shifted in his seat, reached for the goggles again, and peered through them. The flurry of movement was consistent with the past hour in the car and with the other instances Cam had been in the same room with him. “You’re awfully fidgety for a Marine.”
“I did my share of recon, then I got in the air. Never looked back. Plane or chopper, I’m always in motion. This sitting-still shit”—he waved a hand in the air, gesturing around the car—“is for the birds.”
Cam chuckled. “One and only stakeout for you. Got it.”
“How do you do it?”
“Sit still?”
“Wait.”
Cam briefly took his eyes off the building to send a sympathetic glance Garrett’s way. “It’s your sister. You’re more anxious than usual.”
“How are you not? You said you understood.”
“I do, better than you think.” Cam’s gaze was back on the bowling alley, but his mind was in a different time and place.
“My sister was taken when I was a teenager. She was twelve. It almost tore our family apart. It’s why I joined the FBI, to find her.
And it’s why I do what I do, to try and save other families from the loss my family suffered. ”
“Did you find her?”
“Twenty years later, thanks in no small part to Nic. And I will do everything I can to make sure he doesn’t go through what I did, including being extra careful how we approach this.” He pointed at the building. “In case she is in there. He’s lost enough already.”
Garrett raised the binoculars again, one more look, before handing them off to Cam. “So you guys make this work? Living and working together?”
Cam peered at the building through the green-tinted lenses. “We do.”
“But what if it craters this case?”
“It won’t.” Still seeing no movement, he dropped the binoculars in his lap.
“It hasn’t. If anything, it’s helped us in cases we work together.
Predictability in a world of unpredictability is a gift.
When my sister’s cold case heated up again and I needed someone who could handle a delicate situation with Justice, Nic was the only person for the job, and not because I was fucking him.
We closed fifteen cases that week, including my sister’s.
We can use that to our advantage to find yours. ”
Garrett propped an elbow on the car window, head in his hand. “This conversation is both reassuring and awkward.”
“That it is.” But it was also needed. To reassure Garrett they were doing everything they could and to reassure himself of his role in this at Nic’s side. “But you need to know I’m invested too, like he was in my sister’s case.”
“That’s good.” Garrett’s nod was cut off mid-motion, the soldier turning his ear to the window.
Cam heard it too—the drone passing overhead. “That’s good too.” He lifted the binoculars, tracking the drone as it flew a pattern around and over the building. After another couple passes, it rose into the clouds and disappeared. Cam’s phone rang a minute later.
“What’ve we got?” he answered on speakerphone.
“All clear,” Jamie said. “No heat signatures, at least in the part of the building the drone can read.”
“And that’s all of the building,” Lauren cut in. “I managed to get the demo plans from a very irate city planner. No basement.”
“All right, then,” Cam said. “Stand by for entry.”
“I want to go in with you,” Garrett said as soon as Cam ended the call.
Cam hesitated and Garrett jumped all over it. “There’s no one in there, but my sister may have left something behind. Will you be able to spot it? Know its significance? If it might be a clue? There’s no time to waste here.”
He was right and he was qualified. More than that, Cam didn’t trust him to stay in the car. Better to have him in sight. “Fine, though just because there are no bodies doesn’t mean the place hasn’t been rigged. We go in slow.”
“I know what explosives look like, Agent Byrne.”
Yeah, he definitely wouldn’t have stayed in the car.
“All right, let’s go then.” He radioed for the tactical team stationed a block away, and five minutes later, they were through the fence and converging on the structure.
With their flashlights, they checked each doorway and threshold for explosives before stepping through or over.
All clear. But there was evidence someone had been here.
Tread marks across the dusty floor where someone had walked. Bigger swaths of dust cleared where someone had been dragged. The lingering hot metal smell of a neglected radiator heater recently cranked. The stale, pungent odor of convenience-store coffee.
As they neared one of the back rooms, Garrett froze, inhaling deep. “Lette’s been here.”
Cam breathed in and detected two things—the same citrusy soap he’d noticed earlier on Garrett, likely from the hotel, and blood. Garrett moved to rush forward, and Cam grabbed him by the arm, hauling him back. “We need to clear the area first.”
The other agents crept past them, doing their checks. At the call of “Clear,” Garrett wrenched himself free and darted into the room. Cam followed, stopping behind where he knelt in the far corner.
It wasn’t as much blood as Cam had feared—God knows he’d seen worse—but it was still enough to be worrisome. Collected in one general area. Lette had an injury on her person somewhere.
Garrett, however, wasn’t focused on the blood. He was staring down at an object in his hand. “She was definitely here.” Still crouched, he rotated and lifted his hand, palm open. In it was a high school class ring on a chain. “It’s Nic’s.”
The one Nic had told Cam about—the ring he’d given to Garrett, and Garrett had given to Lette. Cam folded Garrett’s fingers around the ring and rested his other hand on Garrett’s shoulder, as much to comfort himself as the major.
“We have to find her,” Garrett croaked, and Cam nodded.
Once he could swallow around the lump in his throat, Cam took his phone out and rang Lauren.
“They were here,” he told her. “But they’re gone now.
We need to widen the search area. He’s probably headed south, maybe west, away from us in any event.
Pull up traffic cams, ATMs, any source of surveillance.
Let’s see if we can spot a car leaving this area with passengers meeting their description. Lette is likely injured.”
“On it,” Lauren replied.
“Cam,” Aidan said, coming on the line. “We’ve got a bigger problem.”
He squeezed Garrett’s shoulder, then stepped away, not wanting to shake him up any more than he already was. “How the fuck can it be bigger?” he asked, voice lowered.
“I have alerts on Nic’s bank accounts.”
“You what? Why?”
“Moore’s orders.”
Fuck, had Nic been right not to trust the AD? “What the hell? Why’s he keeping tabs on us?”
“Cam!” Aidan clipped, more boss tone than he’d ever used with him. And also with an undercurrent Cam had heard before when Jamie was in danger. “It doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is that Nic withdrew a large sum of money an hour ago.”
“How? It’s way after hours.”
“Not if you used to fuck the bank manager.”
Cam gritted his teeth, trying and failing to block out the reminder of Nic’s past conquests. Never mind that one of his other lovers was also in the room with Cam. One who was straightening up from his crouch, glancing Cam’s way, and definitely cluing in to the fact that something else was amiss.
“How large?” Cam asked.
“Enough to pay off his father’s debts.”
“Fucking hell.”
Ransom demand; it had to be. And after the pile-on Nic had had to endure this afternoon, Cam wasn’t surprised he’d finally decided to take matters into his own hands, especially with his sister’s life at stake. “Where’s he headed with it?”
“Cam, are you sure you want to do this?”
“You’re tracking his accounts for fuck’s sake. Just check the GPS on his truck and keep me posted. I’m headed back now.”
“He may not forgive you,” Aidan warned.
“I won’t forgive myself if I let him do this.”
Gravel crunched under tires, headlights cut through the darkness, and Nic clicked off the safety on his Beretta, laying it behind the briefcase on the table. Out of sight but within easy reach.
He’d left the front door unlocked and a single light on in the kitchen.
Vaughn undoubtedly knew Curtis’s house well enough. He could find his way through, and Nic, sitting on the back patio, would see him coming, and who else might be with him. Assess what he was up against.
But rather than Vaughn and his henchmen, a lone figure appeared in the shadows between the foyer and the kitchen. Judging by his size and shape, the man wasn’t Vaughn. Nic reached for his Beretta, was halfway to standing, when the intruder stepped fully into the light, revealing his identity.
One sort of tension rolled out, another rolled in.