Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Chloe woke up with a gasp, heart pounding. Her head pulsed with sharp pain, as if she were wearing a crown of spikes.
“Good. You’re awake.” The voice, deep and accented, came from somewhere in front of her. “You’re no good to me dead.”
The words made no sense, none. It was noise, together with other noise, a low humming sound.
Her world was pain—sunlight directly in her eyes that was like a bright lance piercing her head.
She could only keep her eyes open for a few seconds at a time.
Her right side hurt, as if something hard had fallen on it.
There was a sharper pain in her right thigh, tight and focused and burning.
Her arms were tied together at the wrists.
Finally she was able to twist around enough to look at where it hurt, but only for a moment.
She stared at the bright red spot blankly.
In the middle of the spot was a hole, a tiny puncture wound. She closed her eyes.
Had she been bitten by a venomous insect? Could that explain her reaction to light, the pounding headache, the lassitude? Maybe, but it didn’t explain the low humming sound, like—like an engine.
A…car? Was she in a car?
Keeping her eyes open for more than a few seconds was impossible, it was like having a stage spotlight shine right in her eyes.
The tone of the humming noise changed and she rolled against something soft.
The deep fog in her head lifted for long enough to recognize that, yes, she was in a car that had just changed gears.
She was lying on her side in the back seat and there was a plastic strip keeping her hands tied.
She tried to pull her hands apart but it was hopeless.
All she did was cut into the flesh of her wrists.
She couldn’t fathom any of this. Was she in a nightmare? Her last memory was sitting happily in Mike’s kitchen, sipping tea. Had she gone back to bed and fallen asleep and now she was dreaming being held captive by Russians?
The metallic mechanical beeps of a cellphone. Not a number. Someone on speed dial.
“No, this is not Chloe, Mr. Bolt,” that deep Russian-accented voice said. “Chloe is alive and your sister will stay that way as long as you do exactly what I say…”
Harry, who was almost as good at computers as Nicole, was sitting at the computer, scrolling through the files on the thumb drive.
Nicole and Sam were on their way to the hospital, Sam keeping them up to date. He sounded frantic and was breaking land speed records to get Nicole to the doctors so he wouldn’t have to deliver their little girl.
Harry suddenly sat up. “Shit.”
“What?” Mike walked over, frowning. There was something worse than little girls being sold at an auction?
He’d scrolled through the photographs, wishing he could throw up like Nicole. Pretty, innocent little girls. Most too thin, but clearly beauties. He didn’t understand the Russian but he understood the numbers all right. The ages, which ran from 6 to 10, and the bids, which all started at $100,000.
There was tons of other info, which was going straight to the FBI just as soon as Sam and Nicole’s little girl was born.
The FBI was going to want to talk to Sam, too, and there was no way Sam would leave Nicole’s side.
Not even a gun pointed to his head would do it.
It was better all round if they just waited until Sam was free.
“Look at this.” Harry pointed to the screen.
“I don’t see—" And then Mike did. A list of names in Latin script, not Cyrillic. A list of names of potential customers, men who’d bid on those little girls.
It took a lot to shock Mike, but he was floored. There were people here he knew, people he recognized. Men he would never suspect could be filthy buyers of little girls
The mayor’s top aide, four district attorneys, five CEOs of major corporations, a famous journalist, the head of surgery at a major hospital…the list went on and on. Little girls being obviously a popular commodity.
He wanted to vomit like Nicole had and he wanted to punch a hole in the wall. Harry just stared grimly at the screen. “Those scumbags are going down.”
It was a thought to warm the heart. “Oh yeah,” Mike promised.
“We’re calling in the FBI.” And he knew precisely who to call.
Special Agent Aaron Welles, who was a friend and whose mother had been beaten on a regular basis by his dad.
He was a big help to RBK in helping battered women because he had an emotional stake in it.
And pedophilia—again, Mike had to suppress the gag reflex. They all hated it. All he had to do was think of his nieces and some fuckhead hurting them and he went a little crazy.
“Aaron’s going to be all over these guys. When are the girls arriving?”
Harry peered into the monitor intently, as if the harder he looked, the better he could understand Russian. He threw up his hands. “I can’t tell,” he growled, frustrated. “Goddamn it. I hope it’s not now. Those girls will be disappeared fast if they get a chance to land.”
“Cut and paste the info into Google Translate,” Mike suggested. “What?” he said when Harry glared at him.
Harry was pouding at the keyboard. “I hate it when you have good computer ideas. That’s my thing.
You’re good with weapons, I’m good with computers.
That’s the way it should be. Okay, here we go…
” He read the translation and sat back, relieved.
“Got it. Ship’s due in San Diego harbor two days from now.
The Coast Guard can intercept them. Those guys won’t know what hit them.
We have to make sure no one warns them, otherwise they’ll throw those poor girls overboard. ”
Harry’s cell buzzed. He pulled it out, looked at Mike. “It’s Chloe.”
Mike frowned. Why was Chloe calling Harry and not him? He moved closer to Harry, shamelessly listening in. Did Chloe need something? If she did, by God Mike’d get it for her, not Harry.
“Yeah honey,” Harry said, then stiffened. He shot a glance at Mike and switched to speakerphone.
“—not your sister, Chloe, I’m afraid, Mr. Bolt,” a deep, strongly accented voice said. “Your sister is now in my hands. You have something that belongs to me. I will give you your sister back in exchange for it.”
Every hair on Mike’s body was standing up in panic. A drop of sweat rolled down Harry’s temple.
“Who is this?” he asked, though Harry knew as well as Mike who it was.
Nikitin. The Russian. The man who hadn’t hesitated to waterboard a woman. The man who had Chloe.
Chloe in his hands.
Mike shuddered. His body had a reaction it had never had before.
He felt an electric shock throughout his body as he pumped out sweat in one stinking rush.
His muscles were weak, he had to stiffen his legs to keep upright.
His insides roiled painfully and he barely made it in time to the fancy designer wastebasket Nicole had used and which had just been cleaned by Marisa.
It was absolutely uncontrollable. Mike had had a vision of Chloe being waterboarded and his entire body had rejected the thought so hard his guts turned inside out.
Harry scowled at him, covering the microphone so the fuckhead at the other end of the line wouldn’t hear him puking his guts out.
“—GPS coordinates,” he was saying. “You will follow those coordinates on your own. I will see if anyone follows you, believe me. Come alone and come with the thumb drive and we will all walk away from this and forget about it.”
He disconnected.
“You almost gave yourself away,” Harry complained. He sounded normal but his face was ice white.
“Couldn’t help it,” Mike mumbled, wiping his mouth.
Harry’s scowl deepened. “Get it together, Mike,” he snapped. “You’re not going to help Chloe if you’re out of control. Trust me on this.”
“Does he have Chloe? How could he? My place is secure, goddamnit! How could the fuckhead get in?”
Mike went to the program that controlled the videocams at their condo.
The super knew nothing about it. He clicked on to the feed and got nothing but static.
“Fuck,” he whispered, punching out a number.
He listened as the phone at the ground floor security unit rang and rang.
“Security’s not picking up. Josè’s on duty this morning.
The guy’s good. If he’s not picking up, he’s either knocked out or dead.
Let me try one more thing.” He dialed his own landline and listened as it rang, each ring like a gong that echoed through his body. No way would Chloe not answer.
Mike and Harry looked at each other. “He’s got her,” he said flatly. Harry nodded.
Fuck.
Mike tried to stabilize, tried to get his head back in the game, tried to find his icy calm, that cool, still place inside him that allowed him to function under the most terrible of circumstances.
It wasn’t there.
It was gone.
He stood there, sweat pouring down his body, hands shaking, mind full of static, incapable of thinking, just seeing. Images of Chloe, broken and bleeding, in the hands of violent men.
He couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t. He didn’t have any mechanism inside him that could cope with this. He moved to the wastebasket and bent over, then reeled back from Harry’s blow, nailing him right on the jaw.
“Fuck that!” Harry got right up into his face.
“You’re not going to get all panicky on me now, Mike.
My sister’s in the hands of a monster. I almost lost her to one once and I’m not going to lose her now.
Come back you son of a bitch and help me, here!
If you don’t pull your head out your ass, we’re going to lose her! ”
He straightened, fingering his jaw, breath heaving in and out of his lungs. Harry still packed a punch.
Harry was terrified. But the thing was, if Chloe died, Harry would be devastated. He’d mourn forever. But his life would go on. He had a wife and a child and his family would remain.
If something happened to Chloe…Mike’s mind skittered away from the thought, but he hung on to it grimly.
He needed to understand this. If something happened to Chloe, if she died, Mike had nothing.
It was as if he’d lived his life in a dank, dark cave and Chloe had opened the cave door and shown him a beautiful world of light.
With Chloe gone, that door would shut forever.
He’d never have another shot at it because it was only Chloe who could open that door for him.
He had to fight for her life and for his.
He stood there, head down like a bull, ignoring the pain in his jaw. The cooling sweat on his body chilled him, but he’d stopped pumping out sweat like an animal. He looked at his hands. They were steady, as they’d always been.
His head was clear.
Chloe was not going to die. Not while he had a breath in his body.
“Where are the coordinates?” he asked sharply.
Harry slumped in relief. “Thank God you’re back. I need you, Mike. I can’t do this alone.”
Their eyes met. “Nothing’s going to happen to Chloe,” Mike said, his voice steady. “We’re bringing her home. If we can nail the scumbag, then that’s icing on the cake, but bottom line? Chloe’s coming home.”
Harry was punching the keyboard. “The GPS coordinates are…here.” His finger rested on a map. “Here, near the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation.”
Perfect. Near Warner Springs, where he’d undergone SERE training. Mike knew that area intimately. He’d been on the run from Marine ‘enemies’ for two weeks. He’d sweated and bled and nearly died there.
“He chose it because there are flat stretches. He’s planning a showdown, an exchange.
He chose it from a map, or someone found it for him.
Because that’s a Navy special-ops training site, and he won’t be familiar with it.
I am, Harry. We’re going to win this.” Mike zoomed the map out and followed the route with his finger.
“It’s mostly freeway almost all the way there.
The 163 to the 15 to the 78. Then we get into the hills over to where he wants us. ”
“He doesn’t know I have you.” Harry’s heavy hand landed on Mike’s shoulder and he stared into Mike’s eyes. He’d aged ten years in the past ten minutes. “We’re going to get my sister back.”
Mike briefly squeezed Harry’s hand, then went to the gun locker.
“Fucking A, we are.”