Chapter 15 #3
“Family relationships can make it difficult to remain objective,” the agent noted. “You said yourself you had no way of finding him. Beating yourself up about it now won’t change anything. Please, continue.”
Taylor remained silent for a moment while she marshaled her thoughts.
“At the beginning, I checked the box once, maybe twice each week, but less often once I’d gotten a feel for how regularly he was writing to me.
This went on for months, and months turned into years.
I kept asking the questions but I never received any answers to them.
Eventually, I stopped asking. To be honest, I think I was afraid to find out.
Then I found the package. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to Nick. ”
“And when was that, Ms. Markham?”
“Three weeks ago. Exactly,” she added. “Although it feels like it should be much longer.”
“Do you have the package with you?”
“It’s here,” Nick replied, indicating the attaché case by the side of his chair, although he made no attempt to retrieve it.
Livingston looked up from the notes he’d been taking, in addition to the recording. He frowned. “I see. You didn’t think to report it to the police or the FBI as soon as you received it?”
Nick stepped in. “That would be my fault, Special Agent Livingston. Taylor came to me for help, and I wanted to do that as effectively as possible. In order to do that, I had to ascertain exactly what we were dealing with, so I took it upon myself to consult friends who have more expertise in that area. One of those friends is an IT expert who was able to give us a location for Charles Markham, and because he’s former military, he was also able to?—”
“Whoa.” Livingston raised a hand. “Your former military IT expert wouldn’t happen to go by the name of John Keegan, retired from the SEALs for medical reasons, would he?”
“You know Tex?” Nick asked.
“Friend of a friend, and highly respected, but you still haven’t explained why you waited until now to report this.”
“Taylor’s safety was and is my paramount concern,” Nick replied in a no-nonsense manner.
“We’d found out enough to realize that whoever was behind whatever had triggered Taylor’s father to send the package might somehow find their way to her, so I arranged for her to leave the area, accompanied by Rhys Dalton, one of my operatives, for protection. ”
“Which is how you ended up in California, Ms. Markham?”
Taylor nodded. “That’s correct. And while we were there, Nick managed to trace my father’s whereabouts, with help from Tex. He was in Las Vegas, so we went there with Wolf and Ice—sorry, Matthew Steele and his wife Caroline, and two members of Matthew’s SEAL team.”
This time, both of Livingston’s eyebrows rose. “You certainly weren’t taking any chances. So, you didn’t take this to local law enforcement in California, either.” He turned his piercing gaze on Nick. “Were you responsible for that decision as well, Mr. Blackmore?”
Nick leaned back in his seat and rested his left ankle on his right knee, the very picture of nonchalance.
“As the CEO of Spectrum Security Inc., I take full responsibility for all decisions made and actions taken,” he stated with cool confidence.
“I decided to take a deeper look into the information that Taylor had received before bringing it to you, because I didn’t want to waste your valuable time.
When we found out where Taylor’s father was supposedly located, I was—and still am—of the opinion that she deserved a chance to find out what the hell he was playing at.
Quite understandably, she wanted to believe he was still a good man who’d done all this for a good reason.
And if that wasn’t the case, she deserved a chance to persuade him to give himself up. ”
Taylor sat up straight and squared her shoulders. “Yes, that’s it exactly. I wanted to hear it all direct from Pops. I hoped it would be totally harmless, and if it wasn’t, I hoped to persuade him to hand himself in. But we arrived too late. He wasn’t there—they’d taken him.”
Livingston gave a quiet hum of doubt and displeasure. “I’m willing to take that at face value for now. The reality of the situation is we appear to have a series of federal crimes involving a prominent US defense contractor, now further complicated by a suspected kidnapping?—”
“It’s not suspected,” Taylor snapped in sudden frustration. “It’s a fact, and it’s a double kidnapping because they also took the woman who was living there.”
Livingston leveled his gaze at her and gave a brief nod.
“Duly noted. Given that lives are at stake, the matter of the kidnappings has to take priority—I’ll be taking the lead on that investigation.
We have to assume there’s a relationship between your father and the woman and they took her to give them some leverage over him.
The question then becomes what are the consequences, should that leverage be effective. ”
“They come after this.”
Nick opened up the attaché case, removed the bundle of papers, and set them down in the center of the table, with two flash drives on top of the pile.
“That’s everything we received. The black drive is the one that arrived with the papers—the red one contains the results of our inquiries and our analysis to date. ” He pushed the pile toward the agent.
“Thank you. This will give us a good start in our investigation of the contractor. Following my initial discussion with Rachel, I already have a team ready to go.”
“If we are to assume there is a connection between the kidnappers and the data, in my opinion, they’ll prioritize recovering their property,” Rachel volunteered.
“If I’m right, they’ll use the woman to find out what he did with it.
I also believe it’s safe to assume they searched the house first, then took Markham and the woman when they couldn’t find what they wanted.
Removing them to another location would also give the perpetrators as much time as they need to do whatever they deem necessary to achieve their objective. ”
“And what happens when they get what they want from Pops—if they haven’t already?” Taylor asked. “I may be wrong, but it seems to me there’s only one thing they can do when they find out he’s sent everything to me, and that’s to use the snail mail setup I described to you to find out where I am.”