The Gatekeeper
The Gatekeeper
Michelle Gagnon
From the moment sixteen-year-old Madison Grant is abducted, an unthinkable terrorist plot is set in motion–pitting Special Agent Kelly Jones against her most powerful adversary yet.The kidnapper's ransom demands aren't monetary…they come at a cost that no American can afford to pay. As Kelly's fiancé, Jake Riley, races to find Madison, Kelly is assigned to another disturbing case: the murder and dismemberment of a senator. At first the two cases don't appear to be related.But as Kelly navigates her way through the darkest communities of America–from skinheads to biker gangs to border militias–she discovers a horrible truth. A shadowy figure who calls himself The Gatekeeper is uniting hate groups, opening the door to the worst homegrown attack in American history.
Praise for
MICHELLE GAGNON
“Boneyard is a winner!
A compelling page-turner that pays due attention to the human heart. It’ll keep you up all night.”
—Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author
“A stellar work of mounting suspense and terror. Ritual murder, ancient magic and buried secrets all blend seamlessly in this debut mystery by a major new talent. Not to be missed!”
—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author,
on The Tunnels
“I defy anyone to read the first chapter of Boneyard and put the book down. With a cast of deftly drawn characters and a beautifully resonant setting, Boneyard is pure reading pleasure-creepy, terrifying and utterly believable. I recommend it with great enthusiasm.”
—Douglas Preston, New York Times bestselling author
“The Tunnels starts out scary and only gets worse, or—if you like frightening thrillers—better. Michelle Gagnon is a fresh and confident new voice in crime fiction. An auspicious debut.”
—John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author
“Gagnon’s plot is fast-paced, appropriately detailed in its forensic depictions, and reveals an attention to authentic FBI detection procedures that lets the reader know that the author has done her homework…an engaging and quick read.”
—Library Journal on Boneyard
“Michelle Gagnon’s stellar debut is an edge-of-your-seat story of suspense and intrigue. With a deftly crafted plot and a winning protagonist, Gagnon spins a fast-moving yarn that is certain to keep you up late. We will hear more from this talented newcomer. Highly recommended.”
—Sheldon Siegel, New York Times bestselling author,
on The Tunnels
“Michelle Gagnon has written a tremendously fine debut novel that’s as dark, twisty, and thrilling as the tunnels she so hauntingly describes therein. Expect to sleep with the lights on for at least a week after you’ve relished the final page.”
—Cornelia Read, author of The Crazy School,
on The Tunnels
“A great read. Scarily good. The Tunnels takes you into some very dark places, as a bright new talent takes on old-world horrors and scares the living daylights out of you. It’s The Wicker Man meets Silence of the Lambs.”
—Tony Broadbent, author of The Smoke
and Spectres in the Smoke
“A fast-paced novel that taps into primal fears as it unfolds in real tunnels as well as in the labyrinth of the human mind. Things go down fast, decisions have to be made, and Michelle Gagnon has written characters who are up to it. Don’t read this one when you’re alone in the house.”
—Kirk Russell, author of Deadgame, on The Tunnels
MICHELLE GAGNON
THE GATEKEEPER
For Kate
“Invictus”
(Unconquered)
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
—William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)
Contents
JUNE 25
Chapter One (#ulink_0341c6bf-0d76-5187-9c59-0baa7d8577f0)
JUNE 28
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
JUNE 29
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
JUNE 30
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
JULY 1
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
JULY 2
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
JULY 3
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
July 4
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Author’s Note
JUNE 25
One
Madison Grant leaned over the sink, careful not to get her jeans wet as she applied another coat of gloss. She rubbed her lips together, smacked them once, then dabbed the excess with her fingertip. She examined the resulting pink sheen critically—perfect. Stepping back, she tossed the wand into her purse. It was actually her sister’s knockoff Fendi. Bree would totally flip when she realized it was gone. Hopefully that would distract her from checking for other things that had gone missing, like her driver’s license and social security card. Of course by that time the shit would have hit the fan anyway. Their mom would be so freaked out that Bree’s complaints about a stolen purse would fall on deaf ears. At least that’s what Madison was hoping.
She shrugged on the purse and grabbed the handle of her carry-on. It was their fault for basically ignoring her. Ever since the divorce, Dad was only a voice on the phone, and Mom spent most of the day in her room, shades drawn. And Bree was so busy with her friends, she barely bothered to talk to Madison. No, the only person who really cared about her now was Shane.
Madison flushed at the thought of him. They’d only known each other a few weeks, but she could already tell this was it, her one true love. They’d met online and instantly hit it off. She lived for the sweet texts he sent while she sat in class, bored out of her skull. They had these long, intense IM sessions where they talked about everything: what they wanted to be when they grew up, what their families were like. He was the only person Madison had confided in about how shitty things had gotten since the divorce, how awful it was to be dumped in a new city across the country, how she hated school and everyone in it.
Shane was older, nineteen, in his first year of college at San Francisco State. But he said the age difference didn’t matter since girls were more mature, and he was totally right. Madison was a lot older than sixteen in her mind. And with Bree’s license and social security card, she could get a job. Shane had offered to let her crash with him for as long as she needed to. He hinted that since they’d be spending the rest of their lives together anyway, they might as well get started. When he sent the plane ticket she got so excited, dancing around her bedroom. Then she swiped some of the cash her mom hid around the house and lied about staying with a friend for the weekend. That gave her a few days before they’d realize she was missing. And now she had finally arrived.
It was hard to believe she was about to meet Shane in person. It was going to be perfect, just like in the movies. They’d kiss, he’d look into her eyes and tell her he loved her. She’d work at a cool café in the city while he finished school. Maybe she’d take some classes herself, then eventually they’d get married. They’d have two kids, a boy named Max and a girl named Penelope. Someday she might even call her parents to tell them what a great job she’d done with her life. They’d forgive her for leaving, and everything would turn out the way it should have been all along.
On the other side of the security gate, a guy wearing a cap held a sign that read GRANT. Madison’s jaw almost dropped. Shane must have some serious cash—first the plane ticket, now a limo? Maybe his family was rich. He was probably keeping it a secret to see if she liked him for who hewas, like in that movie where the prince pretended to be a normal guy. Which was silly, she’d love Shane even if he was totally poor. But she had to admit, the thought of living in a huge house was definitely appealing. Better yet she might not have to get a job, she could just hang out all day. Madison repressed a giggle, trying to look serious and adult as she approached the driver.
“Hi. Are you here for me?”
The chauffeur eyed her, and she drew herself up to her full five-seven. “Madison Grant?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes, that’s me.”
The chauffeur motioned for her bag. She followed him to a Lincoln Town Car. He popped the trunk, tucked the suitcase inside, then opened the passenger door. Madison climbed in, impressed by the plush surroundings. There was even a bottle of sparkling water in the cup caddy. She unscrewed the cap and took a swig, then belted herself in. The car eased into the steady stream of traffic leaving the terminal, and Madison settled back against the seat.
“You know where we’re going, right?” she asked after a minute.
The driver didn’t turn his head, just nodded.
Madison was self-conscious. She’d never been in a limo before, but thought there was supposed to be one of those panels between them. Without one, she felt obligated to make small talk.
“So where are you from?” She asked after a short pause.
The driver didn’t respond, and she figured his English wasn’t very good. He looked Russian, at least around the eyes. Madison sipped more of the water. It had a funny metallic aftertaste, probably because it was from France. Her eyelids drooped. The flight had only been six hours, but she’d spent the whole time amped up in what Dad called her “condensed matter” state. It wouldn’t hurt to take a little nap, she decided. After all, she didn’t want to be sleepy the first time she met Shane.
When she awoke it was dark. Madison felt drowsy, disoriented. She wasn’t in the car anymore, and wondered if they’d arrived and the driver hadn’t bothered waking her. If she had been asleep when Shane first saw her that would be totally embarrassing, she realized, mortification jolting her from a stupor. She was on some sort of bed, there was a rough blanket beneath her. Was she in his dorm room? She stood and felt her way across. It was pitch-black, cold, and she shivered in her light sweater. Shane had warned her to pack layers, but she’d wanted to look cute so she’d kept her fleece jacket in her suitcase. She groped until she reached the wall. It was freezing and felt like metal. She rapped on it once, tentatively, then worked her way along it to a door. There was a handle but it was huge, also metal, and didn’t respond to her tugs. Madison bit her lower lip, experiencing a tremor of fear. Something was seriously wrong.
“Shane?” She called out hesitantly. Her voice sounded squeaky. She tried to inject more assurance as she repeated, “Hey, Shane, are you out there? I think I’m stuck!”
There was no response. Madison felt a tear trickle down her face, followed quickly by another. As she slid to the floor and clasped her knees to her chest, she began sobbing in earnest. She was all alone, and no one even knew she was missing.
JUNE 28
Two
Jake Riley leaned back in his chair, crossing his feet on top of his new desk. It was solid oak, and according to the antiques dealer had once belonged to George Steinbrenner. Even if that was bullshit, it was a nice desk, he decided. And the Steinbrenner story would probably impress potential clients.
His office was still filled with boxes. It had taken longer than expected to find a suitable space, commercial rents in New York were through the roof. Even with the exorbitant severance package from Jake’s previous employer, the new company would have to secure some contracts soon. But they’d made the right choice, he thought, gazing through the floor to ceiling windows. After searching the entire borough for an office with room to expand, they’d finally settled in one of the new skyscrapers jutting up around Columbus Circle. Central Park was across the street, and Jake was looking forward to eating lunch there, maybe strapping on his running shoes for a jog on slow days. Although hopefully there wouldn’t be many of those.
He ignored the needling voice that questioned the decision to branch out on his own. Sure, Dmitri Christou had paid him well, but for the first time in his life he was his own boss. And hell, they’d be doing good work along the way. They’d decided to name the company The Longhorn Group, a nod to the fact that both he and his partner originally hailed from Texas. If Jake had his say, The Longhorn Group would quickly become the go-to company for K&R insurers.
K&R was shorthand for “Kidnap and Ransom.” In recent years there had been a sharp uptick in the number of kidnappings of American executives abroad, some figures estimated as high as twenty percent. To secure the release of abducted employees, many companies hired private firms to either negotiate with kidnappers or, failing that, attempt a rescue. South American countries, particularly Colombia, were the most notorious for kidnappings, but plenty took place stateside. They just weren’t widely publicized, since no corporation wanted to put ideas in someone’s head. And despite the increased number of companies signing on for K&R insurance, most operatives trained in negotiation and recovery were busy working security details in the Middle East. Jake was hoping The Longhorn Group would fill that void.
Eventually Kelly might come on board, and they’d be able to work together again. It was a nice thought. Jake picked up the sole item on his desk, a framed photo of her, and gazed at it. It showed her in profile, sitting on a beach, red hair reflecting the setting sun. She always griped about the angle, but then she hated every photo of herself. He thought it captured a side of her that was usually hidden—there was a vulnerability in the way she held her knees that always got him. He set the picture back on the desk. They were officially engaged now, had been for months, but hadn’t set a date. She said work was keeping her too busy, but he knew better. Still, he didn’t mind. She was worth waiting for.
He glanced up at a knock on his door. His new partner, Syd, stood grinning at him. Looking at her, compact in a well-tailored navy suit, every blond hair in place, you’d never guess she had single-handedly brought down one of the most dangerous terrorist cells in Yemen a few years back. Even though she was only in her mid-thirties, she’d been one of the CIA’s best operatives. Lucky for him she’d become so disenchanted with the amoral aspects of Agency work, she jumped at his offer to partner up.
“I think we’ve got something,” she said. Like him, over the years she’d managed to shed her drawl.
“Seriously?” They had just begun meeting with insurers to secure contracts. “That’s great! Did Tennant Risk Services get back to us?”
Syd plopped down on the wing chair opposite his desk. “Nope, not yet. This is a private client.” She paused a beat before continuing. “Actually, it’s kind of a favor for a friend.”
“Uh-oh. We talked about that.”
Syd sighed and wound a strand of hair around her finger. “I know, I know. But this could be a good case to build on. He’s a physicist for a lab that does Department of Defense work. It’s worth considering, anyway.”
“That sounds suspiciously like a pro bono job.”
“He’ll pay us what he can afford. Probably not much, but it’ll be something. Besides, it’ll give us a chance to double-check our operations. Kind of like the soft opening of a restaurant.”
“Uh-huh.” Jake examined her closely. “Just how good a friend is this guy?”
“That’s a long story.” Syd kicked off her heels and set her bare feet on the desk opposite his, settling back in the chair.
“No nylons?” he teased.
She tossed a paper clip at him. “That’s the main reason I’m doing this, so I won’t have to stuff my legs in sausage casings anymore.”
“Benefit of being the boss,” Jake said. In spite of himself, his eyes trailed up to where the navy hem rode above her knees. He forced his focus back up to find her grinning.
Syd wiggled her toes. “See something you like?”
“I wasn’t aware we had a dress code,” he said, gesturing to her suit. Even he could tell it was pricey, Chanel or something like it.
“One of us has to dress like a grown-up, on the off chance that a client comes calling.”
“You kidding? These are my good jeans. And I have it on authority that Bono wears the same T-shirt.”
“I’ll bet. But then, Bono isn’t exactly the first guy you call when a loved one goes missing.”
“Speaking of which.” Jake tapped his finger on the desk. “What’s the story with this guy?”
“His name’s Randall Grant. We met at a conference before I left the Agency.”
Jake frowned. “You’re dating him?”
“Dating is a strong word. Let’s just say, we see each other when we can. Anyway, his kid got taken.”
“His kid? Sounds like an FBI case to me.”
“He can’t call the FBI. Whoever took her wants information on his work.”
“What’s he do?”
“I don’t know specifically, something high clearance. Nuclear stuff.”
Jake let out a low whistle.
“Exactly,” Syd said. “So you can see why he doesn’t want the FBI riding in and screwing things up, Ruby Ridge-style.”
Jake raised an eyebrow at her last comment. She waved it off. “No offense. I’m sure your fiancée is great at her job. But you worked for the Bureau, you know how ass-backwards they can be. Bottom line, they care more about the secrets than the kid. And Randall doesn’t trust them with her life.”
“But he trusts us?”
Syd shrugged. “He trusts me.”
Jake examined the ceiling, considering. His gut was saying this was a bad idea, and he knew better than to question that. Getting involved in a case where you had personal ties was always a mistake. Still, it was a job, and after months of inactivity he was itching to do something besides choosing office furniture.
“Get him on the phone,” Jake finally responded.
“You sure?”
“Let’s hear what he has to say. But he’s got to give us more information, security clearance or not,” he warned her. “And the minute I get a bad feeling, we pull out. Deal?”
“Deal,” Syd said, tucking her feet back in her pumps. “You’re a prince, Jake.”
“Don’t I know it.” He grinned back at her. “Now let’s call your boyfriend.”
Kelly frowned as she took in the scene. Directly in front of her was a memorial to Arizona peace officers lost in the line of duty. The artist had made some interesting choices. The kneeling figure was straight out of a spaghetti western: neckerchief in place of a tie, hat in one hand, revolver at his side. The metal base he perched on jutted out into the points of a star. And on each point rested a different piece of Senator Duke Morris.
A few smears of blood marred the base, but other than that it was clean. Police tape cordoned off the area. Stairs led from the small platform to the State Capitol building, which currently housed a museum. A sign described it as neoclassical with Spanish influences, which explained the shade of salmon rarely seen on government facilities. At the top, a copper dome was dominated by a statue called Winged Victory. It was a strange choice for a body dump site.
As she waited for the crime scene techs to finish, Kelly pivoted. The capitol complex was sprawling. The statue was dead center in the middle of a pavilion, surrounded by modern buildings that currently housed the seat of power. Wide concrete paths penned in browning grass and scraggly bushes, all fighting to survive the onslaught of the desert sun. Late June, and at 10:00 a.m. it was already a hundred degrees. Kelly raised her arm, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow, and wished for the umpteenth time that the FBI dress code allowed shorts.
Agent Danny Rodriguez appeared at her elbow. “They’re still canvassing, but so far no one saw anything. The locals set up a tip line for information, they’re already flooded with people blaming everyone from the president to bin Laden.”
“Great,” Kelly sighed. A high profile murder always drew the crazies. “What about cameras? State Capitol building, there should be a surveillance net.”
“You’d think so, but thanks to budget cuts security was axed. They’ve got cameras focused on the main buildings, but nothing on the plaza. Guess they figured vandals were their biggest threat.”
“They figured wrong.” Kelly squinted against the glare. A two lane road marked by a center divider faced the pavilion. On the opposite side, a park stretched off into the distance. Too much to hope for an ATM or liquor store camera nearby. “Where were the guards?”
“They got two guys, but the Diamondbacks were playing the Yankees.” Rodriguez shrugged.
“So what, they were busy watching baseball?” Kelly eyed him. She was less than thrilled with her new partner. Rodriguez was just four years out of the Academy, young to have been assigned to the elite Behavioral Science Unit. Rumor had it his career was fast-tracked after he ratted out a former partner to OPR, the FBI’s internal affairs division. And Kelly had a sneaking suspicion he’d been assigned to spy on her. Ten months earlier one of her cases had turned into a debacle, and she knew some of the Bureau higher-ups were screaming for her head. Her boss had stood by her, so far at least. Being stuck with Rodriguez reminded her she was on shaky ground.
“Hey, don’t take it out on me. I’m a Mets fan,” Rodriguez joked. He shrunk slightly under her stare. “So what next, chief?”
Kelly watched the medical examiner gingerly lift one of Morris’s legs off the base of the statue. Senator Morris was popular in Arizona, but best known outside it for his draconian ideas about immigration reform. She’d seen him on the talk show circuit last week, railing about how America’s borders needed to be closed entirely. The cop that led her past the tape mentioned that Morris had a good shot at president, then mumbled something about wetbacks before she cut him off. A man like that had probably made a few enemies over the years. And by gruesomely displaying his remains, someone was clearly sending a message.
The leg slipped from the ME’s grasp and bounced along the ground as he fumbled for it. Kelly repressed the urge to roll her eyes. “Family has already been notified, right?”
Rodriguez nodded.
“Let’s go ask them who hated the senator enough to hack him up with a machete.”
Three
Madison shivered. The thin blanket they’d left her barely made a dent in the chill, and she swore it grew colder by the hour. She had no idea how long she’d been here. She usually told time by her cell phone but that had been taken along with everything else. She hoped it was already Monday, and that her family had realized she wasn’t at Cassidy’s house. A tear snaked down her face as she berated herself again for being such an idiot. Everyone knew that creepy older guys had MySpace pages; people weren’t always who they claimed to be. But she’d fallen for the whole Shane thing like a total moron. And now something horrible was going to happen to her.
The worst part was the waiting. She’d screamed for a while, becoming increasingly hysterical until the door had suddenly been thrown open. It was the driver, now dressed in jeans and a filthy sweatshirt. Madison hushed as he approached, shrinking back against the wall. She expected him to start tearing her clothes off, or worse, but he’d just injected her with something that knocked her out again. She’d learned pretty quickly that screaming brought the needle.
Madison couldn’t figure out what they were waiting for. So far no one had hurt her. In fact they brought her food and water regularly, and cleaned out the bucket as soon as she used it. And they’d left her a blanket. Though the light only changed slightly, she could now differentiate between night and day, the room brightened enough that she could make out the dim edges of her surroundings by sight, and the rest by touch.
She was in a ship of some sort, military judging by the dull gray paint job. The room was a steel box, ten-by-ten, with a cot in one corner and a bucket in the other. Other than that there was no rug, chair, or other decoration. She guessed she was being held in the bowels of the ship, she could hear the occasional slap of a wave against the hull. They didn’t appear to be moving, which she took as a hopeful sign. Maybe it was one of those white slavery rings, and they were planning to ship her off to Saudi Arabia. Madison shuddered at the thought. If she was lucky, they’d kidnapped her for ransom, confusing her with the daughter of someone rich. Maybe they’d realize the error and let her go—she’d only seen one guy’s face, and she’d promise not to tell if they just let her go home.
She had tried to pry the door open, hauling the cot frame across the room to use as a lever. But the minute she exerted some force, the sound of a chair scraping against the floor on the other side sent her scampering back. A moment later the door creaked open. The driver came in and glanced at the cot on its side, shook his head and gave her another shot. She hadn’t tried again. Escape was clearly hopeless: there were no windows, and a guard was stationed at the only exit. She was screwed.
The door suddenly banged open. The driver still didn’t speak, but something about the way he looked at her made Madison recoil. She protested as he crossed the room. Without breaking stride he yanked her up and flung her on the cot. She shrieked and clawed at him, “No, oh please God no…” then paused when he didn’t do anything.
He was holding something inches from her face. A flash, then he left the room.
She sat up, puzzled. He’d taken her photo, so maybe this was about ransom. She couldn’t decide if that made the situation better or worse. Madison pictured her parents’ reaction to the photo, and in spite of herself felt a spark of something like satisfaction. Served them right, the way they’d been ignoring her. If she ended up dying some sort of horrible death, it would be their fault.
She dropped back on the cot and crossed her hands behind her head. There would probably be a huge funeral if she didn’t make it out of here. Even her former best friend Jamie, who had totally screwed her over last year, would probably cry. Chris Dinsmore would be completely devastated that he’d never asked her out. They’d get a choir to sing “Ave Maria,” and hundreds of sobbing people would follow the casket through the streets. They’d all regret how they’d treated her.
But she really might not make it out of here. The guy had let her see his face, which wasn’t a good sign. And her parents didn’t have any money. The whole divorce had been a joke with them fighting over air miles; it wasn’t like they had a fortune hidden somewhere. And once the kidnappers realized that…she’d watched enough cop shows to know what would happen. At the thought she started to shake, teeth chattering. Madison drew the blanket up to her neck and tucked the corners under her heels so her whole body was covered. But it did nothing to stop the uncontrollable shivering.
Jake rolled his head to work out a kink in his neck. He didn’t generally mind flying, but the only seat available on such short notice had been in coach, and his body wasn’t designed for middle seats at the rear of the plane. His knees were jammed against the seat back in front of him, high enough that they prevented him from lowering the tray table. He’d tried to work on his laptop, but the kid on the aisle was playing a handheld video game that bleated nonstop, and the woman in the window seat issued a heavy sigh every few minutes. Another kid hung over the seat in front of him, staring at him while she picked her nose. All in all, the experience was making him seriously reconsider starting a family. Maybe he and Kelly could get a puppy and call it quits.
As they taxied to the gate, the flight attendant announced information for connecting flights, and the woman beside him grumbled something unintelligible. Jake hunched over, waiting for the slow file off the plane to proceed far enough for him to grab his carry-on. Once out of the Jetway he glanced at his watch and flipped open his cell phone.
“Frank? Yeah, sorry about that. My connecting flight at O’Hare was delayed. Where am I meeting you?”
Five minutes later, Jake was stationed in front of a bank of monitors. Frank, an old Agency buddy of Syd’s, shifted nervously at his elbow. Apparently he’d done something bad enough to get shuffled down the ranks of Homeland Security to airport detail. Jake couldn’t imagine what kind of heinous act would result in such a reassignment. Screwing the president’s dog, maybe. Hard to believe anything less would matter to the CIA.
“I can give you a few more minutes, man, but that’s it.” Frank’s eyes shifted from the screens to the door in a constant cadence, like he was watching a tennis match. “Shift change is in a half hour, and I got plans tonight.”
Jake jabbed a finger at the screen. “That’s her right there. Pause and rewind five minutes, then go forward slowly.”
Frank obliged, working the elaborate controls. A few other men were scattered around the room. After their initial appraisal they’d pointedly ignored Jake, which was fine by him. Although it didn’t instill much faith in airport security, he thought, watching them peck away at phones and BlackBerries, periodically casting a token glance at the monitors.
They watched in silence as Madison Grant made her way from a restroom near the gate to baggage claim. The angle changed as Frank shifted from camera to camera. Jake had to admit, he was good at this. Had the tapes cued up and ready to go when he arrived, and despite the employees, the technology itself was state-of-the-art, HD quality.
“Pretty girl,” Frank said. “What’d she do?”
Jake eyed him, not liking his tone. Maybe that’s what the CIA had found so offensive. Syd had fed Frank some backstory about a CI they were tracking. Not very plausible, but then Frank obviously wasn’t the type to ask questions when enough money changed hands. That level of pliability was also not a good sign for air travel, Jake thought. Maybe he should take the train home.
“Zoom in,” Jake said, as Madison approached someone. Big guy, looked yoked even from this angle, six-five easy. A cap obscured his eyes, and the hands holding the sign were large and meaty. Jake frowned as they exchanged a few words, then watched Madison follow him out of the building. The film switched to a line of cars stacked at the curb. Madison climbed into the rear of a sedan. Jake frowned as it drove off.
“Can you get me a printout of that guy, and of the plate?”
Frank shrugged. “Yeah, no problem. Technology is a beautiful thing.”
Jake didn’t respond. He leaned back against an empty console as Frank shuffled to the printer. So Madison Grant hadn’t been snatched, she’d been lured. Not surprising, he’d done plenty of dumb shit himself at that age. And whoever she was meeting must have money, curbside limo service didn’t come cheap. He’d have Syd run the plates, but he doubted that would give them anything. This smelled professional. Someone had spent enough time developing a relationship with the girl that she didn’t hesitate to jump on a plane. And if Syd was right about the dad’s job, there were high stakes involved. Jake shook his head. He was liking this less and less by the minute.
“Here you go.” Frank handed over a stack of pictures.
Jake flipped through them quickly. It didn’t look like there was enough of the guy’s face to run through facial recognition software, but there was a nice close-up of Madison. She was a pretty girl, light hair, big smile. She appeared sweet and trusting and more than a little naive. And right now, she was probably in some shit-hole, scared to death.
“Crap,” Jake said, shifting the photo to the bottom.
“What?” Frank asked.
“Nothing. Thanks for your help.” They shook hands and Jake walked out, blinking in the fluorescent glare. Even without looking at it he could still picture the photo. It was as if Madison was challenging him to try and forget about her. Jake tucked the stack into the outside pocket of his carry-on and headed for the car rental courtesy shuttle. He already knew there was no walking away from those eyes.
Four
Kelly adjusted the surgical mask over her mouth. Rodriguez was growing progressively paler as the medical examiner peeled the skin back from the senator’s face. And she had to admit, she was enjoying his discomfort. Kelly had sat in on more autopsies than she could count. It wasn’t the sort of thing you got used to, exactly, but she’d developed coping mechanisms. Plus this wasn’t a victim that inspired the warm fuzzies. Kids were still tough, she preferred to come in at the end for those results. But this guy, the more she found out about him the less she liked. Not that he deserved to be hacked up, but Duke Morris didn’t inspire a lot of sympathy.
The ME had arranged him on the table like a jigsaw puzzle. Morris’s feet were splayed out, arms and legs canted at angles that would have been impossible were his skeleton intact. A disassembled mannequin, Kelly thought. And an ugly one at that.
Under the glare of the overhead lights his skin was pale, suggesting he spent more time on the Beltway than in his home state. A protruding gut attested to plenty of pricey dinners, and his body was covered with an alarming amount of hair. His eyes and mouth were closed, and the hair plugs along his forehead stood out in stark relief. Kelly flipped open the file. On top was a professionally taken photo of Morris in front of an American flag, robust and strong, grinning obsequiously at his constituents. He possessed that air of smug satisfaction common to men who took money and power for granted.
“So officially, gunshot wounds were the cause of death?” Kelly finally asked. Over the years she’d learned that MEs came in all shapes, sizes and levels of ability. This one didn’t seem half-bad, but whether it was the pressure of working on such a high-profile corpse or his own habitual pace, this autopsy was taking a hell of a long time. She pulled back the sleeve of her surgical smock to check her watch: nearly 5:00 p.m. Her stomach growled, reminding her that they’d missed lunch.
The ME peered up at her. “Yes, I’d say so. Two to the back of the head, fired at a downward angle.”
“Execution style,” Rodriguez noted faintly.
“Any way to tell how long they waited before using the machete?” Kelly asked.
The ME shook his head. “No blood around those wounds, so he was definitely dead. That would put it anywhere from a few minutes after his heart stopped beating to several hours. Time of death was around midnight last night.”
Kelly nodded. That matched what they knew about the senator’s schedule. He’d attended a fundraising dinner at the Hilton in downtown Phoenix. His wife thought that afterward he’d gone to a private men’s club, but according to his credit card receipts Morris had actually whiled away those hours with a blonde from a local escort service. And not for the first time, according to both the lovely, gum-snapping Trixie and a trail of charges on his government-issue card. Kelly repressed a sigh—politicians, always so predictable. Apparently stamina wasn’t one of Morris’s strong suits. After spending less than half an hour in the room, hotel cameras captured him strolling out the lobby doors while adjusting his tie.
If the ME was right, Morris had been waylaid somewhere between the hotel lobby and the lot where his Cadillac was parked. And the next time he was seen, it was in pieces in front of the capitol building.
“I voted for him,” the ME said contemplatively as he draped the sheet over Morris’s body.
Kelly closed the file. “I hear he was a real pillar of the community. When will you have the full report?”
He shrugged. “A few hours. Initial tox screen shows he’d had a few drinks, but no illegal substances or anything that points to him being drugged.”
“Make sure to scan for everything and fax the results to this number.” Kelly handed him a card and left the room, tossing her mask and gloves in a bin.
“I’m kind of surprised you let the hooker go,” Rodriguez grumbled as they strolled back out to the lot.
“Why?” Kelly asked.
“She might have been in on it.”
Kelly tilted her head to the side. “But then why not drug him in the room and take him out the back stairs? No cameras there, and it would have been easier than trying to grab him on the street.”
Rodriguez shrugged noncommittally. “I’m just saying,” he said. “She smelled funny to me.”
“She’s a prostitute, they don’t usually smell very good,” Kelly replied wryly. She slid into the driver’s seat and glanced at him across the interior. Rodriguez’s face was still too round for his body, definitely a former fat kid who’d worked off the residual pudge in the gym. A few more years would probably take care of that. He wasn’t much taller than her, maybe five-nine, and his high cheekbones and light eyes pegged him as closer to a Spanish-Mexican lineage than a Mayan one. Based on his file she knew he was twenty-seven years old, had entered the Academy straight out of Princeton, and spent his childhood in Los Angeles. Aside from that, not much there. Which lent further credence to the OPR rumors. His constant second-guessing of her decisions was irritating. Plus, every time he called her chief it was getting harder not to smack him.
“So what next, chief?” he asked casually.
Kelly gritted her teeth. “Don’t call me chief.”
“You prefer boss?”
Kelly decided not to get drawn into a pissing match, dinner was coming up and she didn’t want to lose her appetite. “You make any progress on those gang files?”
Rodriguez shrugged. “The machete thing has been popular in L.A. for a few years, originally started by the Salvadoran gangs like MS-13. But then it caught on with everyone else—there have been incidents with immigrants from Sierra Leone, Somalia, Mexico. It’s a cheap weapon, and chopping someone into bits sends a pretty strong message. There weren’t any tags near the bodies, and according to the local Gang Task Force no specific group or gang is claiming responsibility. Which is kind of weird. Something high profile like this, you’d figure folks would be coming out of the woodwork to build their street cred.”
Kelly shook her head. “Probably not with something this big. A mayor, maybe, but a senator? They’d have to know the government would throw their whole weight behind this one. Death penalty for sure.” Which made her wonder again why she’d been assigned such an important case. Either the brass had more faith in her skills than they’d let on, or they knew this was a stinker. Still, it gave her a team of fifty agents doing everything from running down Morris’s staff history to canvassing door-to-door. With that kind of man power, she wasn’t complaining.
“Maybe ballistics will turn something up.”
“Doubtful. Shot with a .45, no casings, and you heard the ME—the bullets ricocheted around his skull, they’re a mess. If we find the gun we might get a match, but I’d be surprised if it turned up.” Surprisingly clean for a gang hit, Kelly mused, unless they were well organized or got extremely lucky. Now that they had a rough idea where Morris had been snatched, Kelly had a team of agents combing through video surveillance footage from 10:00 p.m. to midnight. That was their best shot, to get a grainy image of a license plate, anything that would provide a lead. Barring that, without a specific group claiming responsibility, her list of suspects ranged from environmentalists to illegals to single parents, all of whom Morris had recently managed to piss off.
Rodriguez’s cell buzzed an electronic version of some pop song. He flipped it open and barked, “Rodriguez!”
Kelly shifted irritably, waiting for him to finish. Until they got reports from the ME and the tape squad, there wasn’t much more they could do. Time to call it a night. She repressed a yawn and idly wondered whether room service would be available at the hotel. She’d love some Mexican food—she could almost taste a burrito dripping with cheese and guacamole.
Rodriguez snapped his phone shut, a triumphant expression on his face. “We got the gun.”
“What?” Kelly snapped awake.
“Phoenix P.D. got an anonymous tip today about a local MS-13 stash house. They raided it, turned up a stack of weapons. And one of them is a .45.”
“There are a lot of .45s out there. How do they know it was used in our killing?”
“Because it had Duke Morris’s name right on it.”
“What, literally? We inventoried his guns, everything was accounted for.” And what an armory it had been: the entire wall of Morris’s study was a display case with everything from handguns to paramilitary weapons. All registered legally, his wife hastened to point out, and licenses backed that up. Had the fighting ever gone house to house, Duke Morris would have been ready.
Rodriguez shook his head. “Not this one. Gift from a grateful lobbyist. It’s a beautiful 1911, bone handle with his name carved in it. Phoenix P.D. already checked with the wife, she said he probably hadn’t gotten around to registering it yet.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it just slipped his mind. And he was in the habit of taking it to fancy dinners?”
“This is Arizona, Agent Jones.” Rodriguez looked bemused. “Carrying concealed is considered a God-given right in these parts.”
“Remind me never to move here. Jesus.” Kelly furrowed her brow. And they wondered why the gun fatality rate was through the roof. “So whoever snatched him shot him with his own gun?”
“And then that gun turned up in an MS-13 stash house,” Rodriguez concluded. “MS-13 loves machetes. They’re questioning the gang members downtown, said we could observe if we like. Looks like this case might be open-and-shut after all.”
“Looks like it,” Kelly said. She punched the Phoenix Police Department’s address into their GPS and silently kissed her burrito goodbye. While she waited for the machine to calibrate their course, she nudged away the feeling that something was off. Hell, she was due for an easy one, Kelly reminded herself. And the less time wasted on a scumbag like Morris the better, as far as she was concerned. It made sense: a gang composed primarily of illegal immigrants targeted a loudmouth who was making their lives difficult. Still, she’d feel a lot better with a confession, or footage of them hauling an overweight senator into a van.
Randall Grant was clearly having a bad day, Jake thought as he took the man in. Honestly, he was having a hard time understanding what Syd saw in the guy. Tall and thin, slightly gawky-looking. Maybe under normal circumstances he had a sparkling personality.
But these were obviously not normal circumstances. He looked hollowed out, shoulders slumped, bags under his eyes, the portrait of the tormented father. They sat across from each other in a nondescript café on the outskirts of Livermore. Initially Jake was glad they weren’t meeting in one of the coffee franchises that dominated the Bay Area, but after a sip of espresso he’d changed his mind. Say what you will about Starbucks, he thought. At least they were consistent.
“So why don’t you want to get the FBI involved?” Jake asked. Randall had spent the first ten minutes rambling on about his daughter, including too much information about his divorce and the dance classes she used to take. None of it had direct bearing on the case, but he seemed unable to help himself. Jake wondered whose brilliant idea it was to trust Randall with government secrets, if he spilled this much personal information over a cappuccino.
Randall shook his head violently. “Can’t do it. The people who took her said they had someone high up in the Bureau, that they’d know if I called in outside help. And the minute I did, they’d kill her.”
“And you believed them?” Jake asked, skeptical. It sounded like an idle threat. What better way to keep parents from calling the authorities than to sow distrust of them?
“Did you ever hear of Operation Snow White?” Randall asked.
Jake shook his head. “Nope. Some sort of poisoned apple scheme?”
Randall glared at him through red-rimmed eyes. “I was hoping Syd would be here.”
“I’m sure you were. Unfortunately, I’m the one who needs convincing before we agree to help you.” Jake raised an eyebrow.
Randall sank an inch lower in his chair. “Operation Snow White was initiated by the Church of Scientology back in the seventies. They wanted to purge any records that cast them or L. Ron Hubbard in a bad light. By the time it was discovered, they’d placed operatives in over a hundred government agencies in more than thirty countries. It was the single largest infiltration of the U.S. government in history. They denied it, but I have it on good authority that the FBI was one of those agencies.”
“So, what? Scientologists took your daughter?” Jake had to fight an urge to laugh, he had a sudden mental image of Tom Cruise and John Travolta carting off a struggling girl in a duffel bag.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just saying, such a thing isn’t outside the realm of possibility.”
“Background checks are a lot more intensive post 9/11,” Jake pointed out. “It’s a whole different ball game now.”
Randall shrugged. “Who says their guy wasn’t already inside? Anyway, I couldn’t risk it.”
“And what exactly do they want from you, in exchange for her life?”
Randall rubbed his eyes with one hand. His jaw was stubbled with at least a day’s worth of growth. “I can’t tell you. It’s classified.”
“You’re considering handing whatever it is over to the kidnappers. So I don’t see the harm in telling me what they’re looking for.”
“Does it really matter?” Randall met his eyes sharply. “Would knowing help you find her?”
Jake shrugged. “Hard to say. I just don’t like going into a case blind. I’m kind of puzzled that they didn’t just snatch you. If you’ve got what they need, why take your daughter instead?”
“Because it’s not like I have it in my head. They need me to requisition things, pinpoint certain…materials…then gain access to transport records. And they want it done over a period of time.”
“So whatever they’re after, they want a lot of it, is what you’re telling me.”
“Essentially, yes.”
“But you can’t say what.”
Randall shook his head. Jake tilted back in his chair and eyed him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something off about this. “Remind me which department you’re with?”
Randall smiled slightly. “Advanced Defense Capabilities. But Syd would have told you that.”
“Right, Advanced Defense. Any chance that has something to do with nuclear defense? Or are you folks still working on Star Wars?”
“Like I said, Mr. Riley…”
“Right, I know, you really can’t say. And you did your postgrad work in physics?” Randall didn’t answer, dropping his gaze to the table. Jake watched him closely. “What makes you so sure that Madison was abducted? Maybe she ran off with this Shane guy she was e-mailing.”
Randall pushed a photo across the table, keeping his eyes averted. Jake held it up for a better look. It was a close-up shot of Madison Grant, eyes wide and terrified, printed off a JPG onto regular computer paper. She was lying down against a nondescript gray background.
“When did this come in?” Jake looked up sharply.
“This morning. It was in my work account.” Dr. Grant buried his face in his hands and rubbed his cheeks hard. “No one outside the facility has that e-mail address. And I mean no one, any personal exchanges are strictly forbidden.”
“But they had it. And that got you even more spooked,” Jake said. “I need you to forward this to me.” He considered for a moment before continuing, “This isn’t proof of life, you know.”
“What?” Randall looked puzzled.
“Proof of life. Usually in a kidnapping, they have the victim hold up a newspaper so we know they’re still alive, or were on the day the photo was taken.”
“So you’re saying what, that Madison might already be dead?” The anger in Randall’s voice was overlaid by fatigue.
“Not necessarily. But we need to push for that on the next contact. How have they been getting in touch with you?”
“They sent me a phone.” He fumbled in his pocket and dug out a generic cell, the disposable kind available in any drugstore.
Jake flipped it and pulled off the back panel: no SIM card, which meant it would be nearly impossible to clone. Someone was being very careful. “Funny they didn’t just text you the photo,” Jake mused, handing the phone back. “And I’m guessing hitting the call return button doesn’t work.”
“The number is blocked. I even had one of the lab guys see if they could trace it, but nothing. Maybe the phone company…”
Jake shrugged. “I’ll give it a shot, but chances are they’re calling you from the exact same thing, a prepaid cell that gets tossed when the minutes are gone. And if they’re really smart, they paid cash for it. Tough to even triangulate those.”
Randall slumped lower in his seat. One more bit of bad news and he’d be on the floor, Jake thought.
“So you’re saying there’s nothing you can do,” Randall mumbled.
“Nope, not saying that at all. But it sure as hell won’t be easy. And not knowing what they’re after doesn’t help.” Randall started to speak, but Jake waved him quiet. “We’ll leave that for now. What’s our time frame?”
“They said it would be in stages. I’m supposed to go to work, pretend everything is normal, and get them the information.”
“How do you get it out of the lab?”
“Flash drive.” A pained expression crossed Randall’s face. “To get it out undetected, I have to—”
Jake cut him off. “Trust me, that sounds like ‘need to know,’ and I’m not feeling the need right now. So you’re getting them something this week?”
“It might be information, or it could involve rescheduling some…things. They haven’t told me yet.”
Jake eyed Randall coldly. The guy was scratching at some ketchup that had congealed on the surface of the table. “So tell me, Doc. You’re a smart guy. Say you do everything they ask you to. I’m guessing you’ve got a pretty good idea what the end result would be, right?”
Randall paused, then nodded without lifting his eyes.
“All right. So what are we talking here? How bad could it be?”
Randall waited a long time before responding. His eyes swept the room, taking in all the people with their cardboard cups, laptops and cell phones. He slowly shook his head. “It depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Let’s just say they could do a lot of things with what I give them. All of which could result in significant loss of life.”
“What, hundreds of people?” When Randall didn’t respond, Jake raised his eyebrows and asked, “Thousands?”
“Maybe. That’s why you need to find Madison soon. Because I can’t allow them to get their hands on what they’re looking for. No matter what.”
In spite of himself Jake was shaken by the finality in Randall’s eyes. If it came down to it, he was willing to sacrifice his daughter. And the only thing standing between him and that outcome was Jake and Syd. Bad odds, any way you looked at it. Jake cleared his throat. “So. Looks like I better get to work, huh?”
Dante Parrish ran a hand over his bald scalp, the stubble reassuring against his palm. No need to be nervous, everything was going better than expected. Still, he always had to gather himself before opening the large mahogany door. Most people would find that surprising: at six-five, two-fifty, Dante wasn’t easily intimidated. But Jackson Burke could make him quake.
Dante rapped twice with his huge knuckles, then turned the knob. Inside was the kind of office he used to think only existed in movies: plush carpets, fancy paintings on the walls, sweeping views of downtown Phoenix. An enormous desk dominated the room, mahogany, like the door. Aside from that and two small armchairs, there were no other furnishings. As always, Dante was momentarily awed by the fact that somehow he had ended up here. His reflection was cut short when the man behind the desk slammed down the phone. In spite of himself, Dante jumped.
Jackson’s cheeks were flushed, although it was hard to tell whether he was angry or excited. In Dante’s opinion, the most remarkable thing about him was that until he opened his mouth, you wouldn’t look twice at him. Brown hair, gray eyes, just under six feet tall. Completely average-looking. But then he started talking. Jackson had one of those voices that could “charm a cat off a fish wagon,” as Dante’s mother used to say. Within ten minutes of meeting him, Dante had been willing to lay down his life for the man.
“So how are things on the front?” Jackson swung around the desk, propping himself on the edge as he motioned for Dante to take a seat.
“All good so far, sir,” Dante said, picking his words carefully. He’d never made it past eighth grade, and every time they spoke he felt that disparity keenly. Not that he was stupid, just a different kind of smart. The kind of smart Jackson could use, like he always said.
“Excellent. Saw the news today, looks like our ducks are falling in a row.” Jackson raised his hands and mimicked firing a gun, then bellowed a laugh. Dante joined him.
Jackson cut it off abruptly. “Did you see the new census reports?”
Dante shook his head, and Jackson looked mildly disappointed. He tossed a folded paper across the desk and pointed at a headline halfway down the page. “See? Says right there that there haven’t been this many illegals since the 1920s. And back then they were mostly white. Ten more years of this, Spanish will be our first language. Not on my watch, no way no how.”
Dante nodded in agreement. “We won’t let it happen, sir.”
“Damn straight we won’t. So I want you to personally stay on top of this Grant thing, make sure there are no screwups. I’m counting on you, Dante. Don’t let me down, boy.”
Dante saluted. Jackson acknowledged it with a nod, then turned to face the view. Dante was halfway to the door when Jackson spoke again. Without glancing back, he said, “Never forget, this is a war we’re fighting.”
“I won’t forget, sir.”
Five
Kelly gazed through the glass wall of the observation room. Four MS-13 gang members were arrested in the house raid. Despite the fact they’d been armed to the teeth, SWAT managed to extract them without any bloodshed. Kelly pictured the four of them scattered through the house, three on the couch, one in the kitchen making nachos in a surprisingly domestic gesture. The confusion and disarray as flash bang grenades followed battering rams through both front and back doors. The four of them on the ground, eyes blinded, ears ringing, hands being cuffed. She almost envied the SWAT team. Their goal was simple: get in, get your guys, get out. What she dealt with was much messier.
She examined the putative leader of the gang, Marco Guzman. He was older than she’d expected, maybe late twenties, a testament to his survival skills. Gang tats rode up his neck and down his arms, framing a carefully buttoned blue-and-white shirt. Close-cropped hair and a face marked by a trim goatee and hooded eyes. Clearly Guzman was no stranger to interrogation rooms, he looked right at home.
His lawyer sat beside him. Despite the fact that he looked like a teenager, according to the local cops he’d developed a reputation for himself as the local MS-13 consigliere.
Kelly gathered herself. A successful outcome for this interview was highly unlikely. She was dealing with a seasoned criminal and an adept lawyer. Three hours of grilling by Phoenix P.D., and Guzman had only admitted to knowing there were steak knives in the house. The stacks of guns had apparently escaped his attention. Still, she had to give it a shot.
She entered with Rodriguez at her heels. She wasn’t crazy about having him sit in, but he spoke Spanish, which would come in handy.
“Good evening, Mr. Guzman.”
“Call me Psycho,” he said. His voice was different from what she’d been expecting, smooth with a slight trace of an accent.
Rodriguez rattled something off in Spanish. Guzman leered at him and shot back a response.
“Let’s stick to one language, shall we?” Kelly said.
“He was asking what my momma was thinking, naming me that,” Guzman said, smiling at her. He had probing eyes, and Kelly leveled her gaze to meet his. “I warned him not to mention my momma again, or—”
The lawyer said something sharp. Guzman clammed up, sucking his teeth loudly.
“It says here your momma named you Marco,” Kelly said, one eyebrow raised. “Seems like a perfectly good name.”
Guzman shrugged. “So call me that. Don’t make no difference to me, Roja.”
Kelly fought a flush over his reference to her red hair. “I’m FBI Special Agent Jones, this is Agent Rodriguez. We have some questions about one of the items found in your house.”
Guzman shrugged. “Not my house, Agent Jones.”
Without glancing up from his BlackBerry the lawyer said, “As my client informed the police, he was visiting that house today solely to watch a baseball game. He has no knowledge of any weapons being stored there.”
“No? Hard to believe, when there were handguns on the table behind him in the living room.”
“You know what’s psycho, is you showing up,” Guzman said. His lawyer threw him a hard glance, but he ignored it. “ATF, sure, but you got no business with guns.”
“This one, we do.” Kelly slid a photo of Duke Morris’s gun across the table.
He glanced at it. “Looks like a chica’s. Yours?”
Kelly shook her head. “No, Mr. Guzman. That gun belonged to a murder victim.”
He shoved the photo back across the table. “Never seen it.”
“You sure? Because it was used to kill a U.S. senator this morning,” Rodriguez said.
The lawyer’s head snapped up, as if he were a retriever who had just caught a scent.
Kelly tried to conceal her irritation. She had hoped to lull Guzman into complacency, so he might slip up and say more than he should. Now that Rodriguez had revealed their endgame, there was no way he would give them anything. “Got your attention now?” Kelly asked.
“I’d like a minute to confer with my client.” The lawyer said with finality.
She tried anyway. “Mr. Guzman, Senator Duke Morris was murdered late last night. Ballistics indicate that his own gun, this gun, was used in the killing. And then it turned up in your stash house.”
Guzman just shook his head. His eyes had cloaked over, dark and impenetrable. Shark eyes. “Don’t know what you’re on about, Roja. I was watching a game.”
“MS-13 likes to use machetes, don’t they, Marco? That’s your calling card. Morris was hacked to bits—”
“This interview is officially over.” The young lawyer stood, pushing his chair back so violently it tipped over. The noise was loud in the small room.
Kelly and Rodriguez exchanged a glance. The lawyer couldn’t force them to leave, but chances were he’d put a muzzle on his client and they wouldn’t get anything regardless. Kelly gathered up the file and motioned for Rodriguez to follow her.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” he grunted as the door closed behind them.
Kelly threw him a look. She wouldn’t chew Rodriguez out with a suspect in hearing range, but once they were alone he was in for it. She shrugged and said, “I wasn’t expecting much.”
“Shame they couldn’t pull any prints off the weapon.”
Kelly didn’t answer, her eyes still fixed on the door. The lack of forensic evidence bothered her. She didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with gangs, but assumed they weren’t generally known for their attention to detail. “Did they track the tip about the stash house?”
Rodriguez cocked his head. “I don’t know. Why would they?”
“It would be good to know if it came in from a concerned citizen, a rival gang, or someone else. Maybe even a former member who’s currently on the outs. Someone like that could prove helpful.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Rodriguez looked dubious. “I heard the only way out of MS-13 is a casket. But I could ask around.”
“Great.” Kelly looked at him pointedly. “The sooner the better, I’m thinking.”
“What, now?”
“No time like the present.”
“What about this?” He jerked his head toward the interview room.
“I’ve got this under control,” Kelly said. “Like you said, not much here anyway.”
“All right,” Rodriguez grumbled. “I’ll try to track it down.”
“Keep me posted.” She watched Rodriguez slump away. Kelly had worked with a motley assortment of partners over the years. Based on his bad attitude and lack of initiative, she was consigning Rodriguez firmly to the bottom of the pile.
Of course, when they first worked together it took time for Kelly to trust Jake, so maybe there was hope for Rodriguez yet. Although Jake’s weakness was a cavalier attitude coupled with reckless disregard for authority. Rodriguez seemed just plain lazy.
Kelly realized she was fingering her engagement ring. She bit back a smile, picturing Jake on one knee in their hotel room, cobbling together a proposal after she accidentally discovered the ring. She hadn’t seen him in a few weeks. He was busy moving into his new office space, and she’d been tied up by a case in Florida. If this lead panned out, they might be able to spend the holiday weekend together. Kelly spun the ring around her finger with her thumb. It still felt oddly heavy, strange that after ten months she hadn’t adjusted to the weight of it.
The door to the interview room opened and Kelly quickly tucked her hand in her pocket. The lawyer poked his head out, saw her standing there and ducked back inside. After directing some final instructions in Spanish at Guzman, he stepped out and closed the door.
“So I guess we’re done in there,” Kelly said.
The lawyer’s eyes flicked to her. He was slight, maybe five-six. His suit was well cut but not flashy. Aside from a simple watch with a ragged leather band, he wore no jewelry. Whatever the gang was paying him, he didn’t spend it on clothes and accessories. He saw her examining him and grinned. “You like the watch? It was my father’s.”
He held it out. The battered face was so stained by time it was hard to distinguish the numbers.
“Nice,” she said.
He laughed. “You’re so polite, Agent Jones. It’s a piece of junk. But it helps me remember why he came here, why so many still come every day. Reminds me there’s nothing back there for me but junk.”
“Oh.” Kelly wasn’t sure how to respond, the intimacy in his tone made her uncomfortable.
He leaned in and said, “Here’s the thing about Guzman. He’s no genius, but a gun that killed a senator? Even he isn’t stupid enough to leave something like that lying around.”
“And yet he did,” she pointed out. “Unless you expect me to believe they were just enjoying the big-screen TV.”
The lawyer’s mouth twisted in a smile. “I have no comment on that, outside of what I’ve already told you. But the gun you mentioned is something of a special case.”
“Really,” Kelly said drily.
“Hypothetically, let’s say that particular weapon was brought in by someone else.”
“Who?”
“Some wannabe named Emilio. They tolerate him as an errand boy, but he’s not Salvadoran, so…” The lawyer shrugged, puckering the shoulder fabric of his suit.
“And he gave them Morris’s gun? Am I supposed to believe he shot him, too?”
The lawyer shrugged. “Maybe he thought it would get him initiated.”
Kelly narrowed her eyes. “Or maybe your client clued in to how serious this is, and he’s trying to deflect the blame on someone outside the gang.”
“Yeah, but a senator?”
“A senator who was avidly anti-immigration and was raising a lot of fuss in the media about closing the borders. That wouldn’t be good for their business, if I’m not mistaken.” Kelly knew that the gangs’ lifeblood was the stream of guns and drugs from the south. More stringent legislation might have made smuggling trickier.
The lawyer shrugged again. “Hey, I’d be skeptical, too. But I gotta say, I know these guys.” He leaned closer, and Kelly smelled onion and something spicy on his breath. “They’ll go to the mats if they think another gang is infringing on their territory, but getting political? They’re not big CNN fans, you know? I bet half of them couldn’t name the president, never mind some senator.”
“Maybe they were under orders from someone else. MS-13 is a national organization, right?”
The lawyer shifted his briefcase to the other hand. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said carefully. “But if it was, most groups would probably be individual cells. Kind of like al Qaeda. Crediting them with a national mission statement, something on this organizational level…” He flicked his eyes down the hall as a sheriff approached, then back to Kelly. “Let’s just say if that’s the case, what you’re dealing with is something entirely new.” He lowered his voice and said, “And I haven’t heard anything about it. Trust me, I would have.” He flashed a smile and shook her hand. “Adios, Agent Jones. Hopefully next time we meet under cheerier circumstances.”
Kelly watched him stroll away before turning back to the interrogation room. Through the small window she watched Guzman carve his name on the underside of the table with a ballpoint pen. The lawyer was right; “Psycho” didn’t appear to be a criminal mastermind. Which didn’t eliminate the possibility that someone else was pulling the strings.
She headed back to the squad room. On the way Kelly wondered who might have gotten an MS-13 “cell” involved in a killing like this, and what they hoped to accomplish. If anything, this worked against their goals. In the wake of Morris’s death, anti-immigration groups were organizing rallies and right-wing talk show hosts were treating it like Christmas and the Rapture all tied up in one. If someone had done this to shut Duke Morris up, they’d made a terrible error. Dead, his voice was carrying louder than ever.
JUNE 29
Six
Randall Grant hunched over the steering wheel, drawing deep breaths to steady himself. These past few days had been hell, starting with the frantic, incoherent phone call from Audrey, drunk as usual. He could hear Bree yelling in the background and assumed it was one of their usual fights, that he was being called in to arbitrate. But when he’d finally puzzled out what she meant, her broken voice wailing, “She’s gone!” over and over, a cold ball settled in his stomach. They’d carried through on their threat, snatching the most vulnerable member of his family.
The impotence was the worst part. After hanging up he’d stormed around the apartment in a rage, fantasizing about bursting into rooms and mowing down the people who took his little girl. By midnight he’d come to his senses and sat down to weigh his options. His division answered directly to the Department of Homeland Security, one call to them and the full resources of the U.S. government would have been mustered. The problem was, in that scenario he’d be placed on full lockdown. Every conversation would be monitored, and no movement would go unnoticed. In the grand scheme of things, it was in the DHS’s best interest to protect what he knew. The loss of a teenage girl would be tragic, but not their first priority. He’d be hauled off to a safe location while Madison had a gun to her head. With Syd, at least they had a shot at recovering her, before…
Randall stopped himself from picturing her broken and dead and God knows what else. And it would be his fault, her blood on his hands forever. He could still see Madison’s stricken expression when he explained that she’d be relocating to New York, and he’d see her when he could. Which hadn’t been as frequently as he’d hoped, not after the promotion. It had been over a month since his last visit, and that one had been disastrous. For a long, awkward weekend they all barely spoke. He’d chosen activities that were far too young for them, he realized belatedly, trips to the Museum of Natural History and the USS Intrepid. He’d lost touch with what teenage girls enjoyed. On Sunday night he’d secretly been relieved to drop them off. Randall cringed at the memory.
He was such an idiot. He should have stuck it out, just a few more years and both girls would have been in college. Then he and Audrey could have gone their separate ways without all this drama. But it was far too late for that.
Randall squared his shoulders and climbed out of the car carrying the travel mug. All his work materials were on-site. After a spying debacle a few years ago, the facility had increased security measures exponentially. Now anyone with access to highly classified material was forced to work in two-man teams. Not only were they supposed to keep an eye on each other’s computers and filing systems, they were actually expected to take a piss together. Fortunately the scientist he was paired with had a prostate problem. After a few awkward weeks at the urinals, Barry asked if Randall would mind ignoring that particular rule. Which made acquiring the first part of what the kidnappers wanted much easier than it should have been. It was probably why they targeted him in the first place.
The lab complex was sprawled across acres, dozens of nondescript buildings painted a muted brown that melded into the barren landscape. It was a desolate section of the East Bay. The town proper had sprung up to service the facility, rows of coffee shops and cafés that closed at nightfall, leaving only a few neon-lit bars blinking desolately in the darkness. Randall had accepted a job here straight out of MIT, back when he and Audrey were newlyweds. The salary had been far above what any university was offering, the work promised to be groundbreaking with nearly limitless funding, and they could afford a house nearby. At the time it had been a no-brainer. Looking back, he wished to God he’d accepted that position at Berkeley, where at worst he’d be responsible for the lives of a few lab rats.
At the entrance to the facility Randall nodded to the guard and held his ID card up to the scanner. After a brief pause it buzzed, and he strode down a long fluorescent hallway. The security became progressively tighter—to get into the inner sanctum, as people jokingly referred to it, he’d have to pass palm and retinal scans. Rumor had it that one of the other departments was working on a blood analysis machine. Randall hoped he wouldn’t still be here when going to work involved a daily needle prick.
Once in his office he relaxed. Barry wasn’t there, but an identical travel mug on his desk issued steam. Which meant he was already taking bathroom break number one, of dozens to come. A guy with prostate problems should cut out the caffeine, Randall thought as he waited for his computer to boot up.
A stream of numbers flew on-screen, coordinates pinpointing the location of loose nuclear fissile material worldwide. He and Barry had spent months cataloging this data as the U.S. government belatedly dealt with the fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as the mass amounts of radioactive waste produced by everything from medical equipment to offshore drilling. It was staggering that no one had recognized this potential threat until 9/11 jarred everyone’s consciousness. And now Randall was part of a team that tracked radioactive waste, ensuring that it ended up at the appropriate facility, either to be safely disposed of or reutilized. Which in reality made him a glorified administrator with a Ph.D. in radiation physics.
Randall shook his head, unscrewed the base of the coffee mug, and removed the flash drive. He hit a few buttons to call up the data.
Initially there had been a fuss over the mugs, too. A memo had gone out insisting that everyone consume company coffee from the canteen. Based on the outcry that followed, they might as well have suggested drinking tainted Kool-Aid. Getting between scientists and their espresso was a fatal error, and in the end the brass made a concession: as long as everyone brought in standardized, company-issued mugs, outside coffee was fine. Mugs that apparently had been all too easy for someone to manipulate.
Randall glanced over his shoulder before popping the flash drive in the port. The download would only take a minute, but he was antsy. There had been a close call yesterday, and he got the feeling Barry knew something was up. He’d been struggling to act normal, but it was just that, a struggle. He’d blamed it on lack of sleep due to residual stress from the divorce. A lifelong bachelor like Barry didn’t question that.
An icon popped up. Randall quickly slipped the flash drive out, inserting it into the mug’s base just as the door clicked open.
Barry squinted myopically at him. “Everything okay?” he asked hesitantly. His stringy hair was wet where he’d combed it over his bald spot, and his sweater had a mustard stain near the collar.
“Fine, Barry. Just didn’t sleep well again.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear it.” Barry shuffled to the desk beside his. In a space that small it was like being crammed in a cockpit together. “Did you see they moved up the date of the Texas shipment?”
Randall’s ears pricked up. “I didn’t have time to look at it yet. Any idea why?”
Barry shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe there’s another storm coming.”
“Hurricanes are usually in the late summer and fall, Barry. It’s June.”
“Right, right,” Barry mumbled, staring at his monitor.
Randall had to fight the urge to throttle him: an IQ of 165, and he was useless unless you were discussing primordial radionuclides. Sometimes Randall suspected they were both being punished for some transgression. Initially, he’d taken this assignment as a break from researching, to give himself time to recover from the divorce. They’d given him a big speech, too, about serving his country, blah, blah, blah…
Thankfully they had almost finished laying the groundwork, and once that was accomplished the day-today monitoring would be handled by computers. Of course, there was a good chance he’d be under arrest for high treason by then.
Randall tapped some keys and a map of the United States appeared, with different-colored dots identifying which materials were being stored where. He zeroed in on the spots off the Gulf Coast, offshore drilling rigs that used radiography cameras to analyze lengths of pipe. As newer cameras came online, older ones were retired, along with their low level radioactive source material. As he watched them blink, the ball in his stomach sunk an inch lower. This was just what the kidnappers were looking for, the right materials in the correct amount. And they were due to be transported imminently. Suddenly their timing made sense; they had known, somehow, that this shipment was coming. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise, and as a scientist he eschewed belief in chance.
Randall chewed his lip. Part of his job involved overseeing the transit of loose materials from one facility to another. He was in charge of constructing a safe route skirting all densely populated areas and providing the most defensible means of transportation. The kidnappers wanted him to change that route at the last minute to divert iridium-192 sources. Randall gritted his teeth as the dots flickered at him. He’d have to pray that Madison was found before the shipment was set in motion.
Madison struggled with the back of the console, prying it open as carefully as possible. She’d managed to work loose a metal coil from her cot, fashioning it into a makeshift screwdriver. But the tiny screws were proving tricky to undo, and she was panicked by the possibility of stripping one. For this to work, she needed the console more or less intact.
After repeated sessions of begging, she had finally convinced Lurch (as she’d christened the driver) to dig through her luggage for a fleece jacket, her face medication, and her Nintendo DS Lite. Madison now understood why prisoners went nuts in isolation. She almost looked forward to when Lurch cracked the door and slid in a tray of food, or came to empty her bucket. If she wasn’t mistaken he was lingering, too, and by her calculation there had been two straight days without a shot. When he opened the door she jabbered at him, a steady stream of information about her life, her old friends, her parents, anything to get him to stay an extra minute. Despite the fact he still hadn’t spoken to her, Madison was pretty sure he understood English. Maybe she was flattering herself, but if he was forced to kill her, now at least he might feel badly about it.
But Madison wasn’t counting on his generosity continuing. A few times she’d heard a low murmur outside the door, Lurch talking to at least one other person. He definitely wasn’t the brains behind this operation. And if whoever was in charge found out about the DS Lite, chances were it would be snatched back and the needle would return.
The final screw popped loose and rolled away. She scrambled after it, trapping it with her palm. There was a bang on the other side of the door, then the bolt scraped. Lurch jutted his head in, a frown marring his features.
Madison held the console in both palms, leaning back against the end of the cot. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “What? Did you miss me?”
He scanned the room, paying particular attention to the floor. After a minute, he grunted and closed the door. As the bolt slid back into place, Madison released a sigh. The screws were digging into her palms, and she tucked them in her jeans pocket. If she’d known she was going to be in the same clothes for days on end, she would’ve worn a sweatsuit on the plane. These were her nicest pair of jeans, but nice didn’t exactly equal comfort. She waited several beats, straining her ears. She knew Lurch was probably rethinking the decision to give her the console, and she needed to move quickly on the off chance he would take it back.
Unlike her father and Bree, she hadn’t gotten the physics gene. Every time she tried to wrap her head around certain theories, it felt like she was being sucked into a black hole. However, from a relatively early age it had been clear that she had exceptional mechanical skills. At six she’d been able to fix most of her friends’ electronic toys when they stopped working, and every year she’d been the runaway winner of the state science fair.
Madison and her father had even built a robot once. She’d been the youngest participant ever in Robot Wars, a series of steel cage matches between remote-controlled robots that ended when there was only one left in the ring. The two of them drove to San Francisco for the competition. They’d named their entry “Maxwell’s Law” (her father’s idea). They had to settle for second place after their robot’s rotary saw fell off in the final round. But her father had been so proud, he told everyone that his daughter had built the machine herself out of scrap metal, he’d hardly been involved.
Madison was startled to find a tear slipping down her cheek. She wiped it away, agitated, and focused on the task at hand. She’d almost left the console at home, not wanting Shane to know that she was secretly hooked on “The Legend of Zelda.” Thank God she’d decided there was only so much a person could sacrifice for true love. She wondered if Lurch had been the one e-mailing her, pretending to be Shane. At the thought she started cracking up, and bit her lip to stifle the giggles. She didn’t want him poking his nose back in, not now.
Handheld consoles had come a long way from when she got her first Game Boy. Thankfully, Lurch didn’t appear to know that. This particular model had been a birthday gift from her dad, a next generation prototype that wouldn’t even be on the market for another year. Like all the newer systems, it had Wi-Fi capabilities for multiplayer online games. Of course, an accessible wireless network had been too much to hope for. She’d done a search immediately, but the only one in radius was secured and she was no hacker. She’d made a halfhearted stab at passwords to amuse herself, typing in Addams Family, Lurch, and, with a pang, Shane’s girl. No luck, she’d need the proverbial million monkeys tapping away for years to crack it. And she didn’t have that kind of time.
Fortunately, there was one more feature of the unit that Lurch had overlooked: a GPS transmitter. It was an add-on that worked by comparing the signals received from several satellites, then running a complex set of computations to triangulate the results and produce a set of coordinates. Unfortunately, the thick metal hull of the ship prevented access to most satellite signals. Luckily Madison had spent the past few months studying an alternative.
In 2006, when GPS devices started glutting the commercial market, the U.S. government became concerned that military receivers might be lost in the barrage of white noise. The military relied upon a GPS system for navigation and targeting, and any compromise of that system could prove catastrophic. To protect themselves they launched new satellites, with “boosted” signals that were only available to the Department of Defense. Madison’s last science fair project had been disqualified, thanks to her claims to have tapped into the new satellite systems. At a conference with the school principal, her father had explained that scientifically speaking there was no way she could have done it, and her mother had grounded her for a month. The principal still gave her funny looks whenever she passed him in the hall. They all thought she was trying to get attention, still reacting to the divorce.
Well, yeah, maybe she had been. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t done it. After conducting experiments with her iPhone all over the city, Madison discovered a rogue signal. Honestly it hadn’t been all that hard, just time-consuming. And once she had that signature down, all she had to do was find it again.
If she could tap into it and recalibrate her DS Lite’s GPS to send a signal rather than receive it, maybe someone would be able to track her down. She just hoped one of her moron family members remembered the console.
Her tongue jutted out the side of her mouth as she concentrated, squinting in the dim light, carefully manipulating the interior components. Madison was careful to touch the plastic exterior each time to ground it. She’d have to reconfigure the power settings, too—it would be a race against battery life at the end. She just hoped someone out there would be listening.
Seven
Jake forced himself to tear off a bite of turkey sandwich. He was trying to eat healthier these days, a losing battle for a guy reared on steak and lots of it. All those months of setting up the new business had kept him out of the gym, and he recently realized with alarm that his six-pack was morphing into a two-pack. Kelly had teased him, grabbing his middle and riffing about the slow march of time and declining metabolisms. Well, screw that. Jake Riley wasn’t giving in without a fight. Even if that meant switching to light beer and turkey.
He was in one of the ubiquitous sandwich factories lining the Berkeley campus, trying to get his mouth around a sandwich so stuffed with sprouts they should have named it the “Colon-Cleanser.” The place buzzed with students grabbing a bite between classes. Their tie-dyed shirts and Birkenstocks reminded him of when he first met Kelly, during an ugly case at a university. At least in the end something good had come out of it.
As he took in the fresh faces he experienced a pang: Madison Grant wasn’t much younger than these kids, another two years and she might have been among this crowd. He hoped to God she’d still get the chance, but based on the day he’d had so far, things were looking bleak.
The pressure was compounded by the fact that if Randall was telling the truth, more than just Madison’s life hung in the balance. Jake preferred to think he was just blowing smoke up their asses, trying to make sure they did everything possible to find his daughter. But a small voice in the back of his head argued that Randall was scared enough to risk his job and reputation by trusting them rather than Homeland Security. The lab he was working in had produced most of the major advances in military hardware in the past century, along with biochemical weapons that could wipe out civilization as we know it. And whoever had stolen Madison Grant was a pro: not only were they good at covering their tracks, there were almost none to speak of.
Syd and what he referred to as her “shadow network” had diligently run down every lead, no matter how tenuous. There was a moment of excitement when the license plate trace turned up a limo company based in South San Francisco. But that died down fifteen minutes later, when Syd got a faxed copy of the stolen car report. And ten minutes after that they learned that the final destination of the Lincoln Town Car had been a chop shop in Oakland. It was currently being returned to the limo company owner in pieces.
Jake had immediately headed over to the chop shop, driving through a section of Oakland that closely resembled war-torn Beirut. A few guys were hard at work on an Escalade. It took a few hundred to convince them he wasn’t a cop, and a few hundred more to find out where they got the car. If they were telling the truth, when they showed up at work three nights ago it was sitting in front of their garage, keys in the ignition, like a gift from the gods. And they knew better than to question it.
Syd had considered calling in a favor, trying to get the remaining parts dusted for prints, but Jake convinced her otherwise. They’d probably end up with the oily imprints of a few grand theft auto felons. Whoever possessed the car before them was too careful to be that sloppy, it had probably been detailed inside and out before materializing in Oakland. Syd was running a background check on everyone at the limo company in case it was an inside job, but so far they’d turned up clean. So he was sitting here choking down a sandwich while he waited for Syd to call.
Jake rubbed his face. They had two leads left to follow: the shadowy image of the driver’s face, and the mythical Shane’s e-mail account. At the moment he wasn’t holding out much hope for either. Facial recognition software was notoriously unreliable even when you had a good image to work with, and good didn’t describe what they had. As for the e-mail address, computers weren’t his thing, but he knew that any hacker worth his salt could bounce messages through dozens of servers worldwide, rendering them untraceable.
Jake’s phone buzzed and he tossed the sandwich back on its biodegradable plate, strewing a comet trail of sprouts. “Hey, Syd. What have you got?”
There was a pause before she replied, “Not much, I’m afraid. All the texts trace back to a disposable phone. I managed to track down its batch number. It was sold to a Walgreens distributor in the Bay Area, but from there it could have gone to a dozen different stores. And whoever purchased it probably paid cash.”
“So the number kept switching?” Jake asked. “Why wouldn’t that make Madison suspicious?”
He could almost see her shrugging. “Don’t know. She’s a bright girl—according to Randall she’s some sort of mechanical genius—but he must have given her a rational explanation.”
“What about the e-mails?”
“Same deal. Bounced all over the damned place, last location we got was somewhere on the Caspian coast.”
“Which country?”
“Turkmenistan.”
Jake’s brow furrowed. Could this be the link? Maybe some foreign power stole the kid to force Randall to share intel. It would certainly explain the level of organization, and the deep pockets. Syd’s voice interrupted his train of thought. “What’re you thinking?”
“You worked that part of the world, right?”
There was a lengthy pause. Officially they’d decided not to discuss past cases unless absolutely necessary. As far as Jake was concerned, this was the exception to that rule. Apparently Syd agreed, because after a moment she said, “I was stationed in Tbilisi for a few months.”
“That’s a little off the grid, isn’t it?”
“Way off the grid. Officially we were afraid that some of the decommissioned nuclear arms weren’t being appropriately monitored and might fall into the hands of rogue nations. Unofficially, I was being punished for not sleeping with my boss when he asked me to.”
Jake decided to ignore that last part. “What do you think? Any chance we’re dealing with a group that’s trying to get hold of some nukes?”
Syd went so long without saying anything, Jake was concerned he’d lost the connection. “Hello?”
“I’m still here. I’m just thinking.”
“Ah, Christ. You know something,” Jake said. “What the hell, Syd—”
“Nothing specific, I just…I’ve got some idea what Randall has been working on these past few months. And it might tie in with that.”
An image of the driver’s face flashed through Jake’s mind. Big white guy, could definitely be Slavic. “Great. I agreed to take this case, against my better instincts, as a favor to you. And you keep me in the dark. That’s it.” He resolutely pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “Call Randall, tell him I’m getting on a plane. You want to help him, come out here yourself.”
“Jake, wait—”
“Nope. I’m done, Syd.”
“All right.”
Jake paused at the door to the sandwich shop, rental car keys in hand. It wasn’t like Syd to give in so easily. “Bullshit.”
“What?”
“I don’t believe for a minute you’re letting me off the hook.”
“No, you’re right. I promised that the minute it smelled bad, you could back down. Besides, if this Turkmenistan thing is the real deal, I can follow up just as well from here. The Bay Area part of this operation seems dead in the water anyway. Just because she got off a plane there doesn’t mean anything, she could be on a container ship halfway to China by now.”
Jake had thought the same thing, but there was something about her tone he didn’t trust. Besides, if they’d wanted Madison on a container ship, it would have been just as easy to yank her from the East Coast. Even easier, maybe. The truth was that despite his posturing, he wasn’t ready to ditch Madison Grant yet. He walked to the car, as if physically calling Syd’s bluff. “Okay. So I’ll head to the airport.”
“Perfect. Oh, one thing…”
Jake grinned. He knew it wouldn’t be that easy. “Yeah?”
“Randall’s getting nervous, he’s starting to think she might already be dead.”
“Yeah, well. He has a point.”
“Right, I know. I was just wondering if you could stop by his place and talk him down from the ledge. Give him some tips on what to say next time, how to ask for proof of life. That sort of thing.”
Jake repressed a snort at the thought of Randall Grant attempting to negotiate proof of life on his own. “You’re a piece of work, you know that, Syd?”
“What?” she asked innocently.
“I’ll hang around to make sure Randall doesn’t screw this up. But if I get the sense that either of you is jerking me around again, that’s it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Syd said smugly. “You’re out of there, I know.”
“Next time I’ll mean it.”
“Sure you will. Oh, and Jake? Give Randall a big kiss for me.”
“Go to hell. And keep running that facial recognition software. All that bragging about your tentacles extending everywhere, and so far you’ve given me a crappy chop house.”
“Hey,” Syd said, wounded. “That was a good lead. I had to pay off a slew of people for that one.”
“A name, Syd. We need something to go on.”
“Gotcha. The shadow network is on it.”
Jake hung up. Shadows was right. He felt like that was all he’d done so far, chase Madison’s shadow. He glanced back at the sandwich shop and considered grabbing another turkey club for the road, then decided against it. He’d seen an In-N-Out near Randall’s house, and if anything could help clarify his thought process, it was a one hundred percent all-beef American burger. Sprouts weren’t going to cut it on a case like this. Better save the diet for later, he decided.
Kelly skidded to a halt, breathing hard. On the other side of a six-foot-high fence a dog barked frantically. She jumped up and caught a glimpse of a Doberman chained to a pole, lunging at flannel and ragged jean shorts. She skirted the edge of the house, yelling into her radio, “Rodriguez! He’s back on Van Buren Street!”
Her breath was loud as she ran. Turning the corner, she caught a glimpse of Emilio Torres tearing across the street, stopping a cab short. Jesus, he was fast. No more than twelve or thirteen by her estimate, and small for his age. It didn’t help that he knew this neighborhood like the back of his hand. He could probably dodge them for days in here.
Kelly tore after him. After a morning of paperwork she’d decided to investigate “Psycho’s” claim that a hanger-on gave them the gun. The lawyer had provided Emilio Torres’s name and address. She didn’t expect the lead to pan out, but eliminating it would strengthen the prosecution’s case against the gang at trial. So after lunch she and Rodriguez knocked on Torres’s door, only to have the kid bolt at the sight of them. If Kelly knew she’d be dealing with a runner, she wouldn’t have ordered the grande burrito.
They’d been chasing Emilio for over ten minutes, from the back of his grandmother’s house down countless streets and alleys. Every time they thought they’d lost him, he’d pop up again. On the plus side, he didn’t appear smart enough to go to ground and stay there.
He bowled over a guy walking his pit bull and sent a Chinese food delivery man flying in a tangle of spokes and handlebars. Kelly almost sprawled on top of them. She vaulted over with a gasped apology and continued running.
Emilio glanced over his shoulder and saw her gaining. She caught a look of panic in his eyes. Kelly was ten feet behind him now, the beginnings of a cramp in her calf muscle. Sweat poured down her back, it had to be over a hundred degrees and she was getting dizzy. Emilio’s blue-checked flannel shirt trailed behind him as he sharply changed direction, turning right. She was hard on his heels, halfway up the block when a dark form hurtled out of the alley. It slammed into the kid hard. Both figures flew into the street. The screech of brakes pierced the air as an old Buick jerked to a halt. Kelly edged around it, slowing her pace, ignoring the tirade spilling out of the driver’s open windows. Rodriguez and Emilio lay in a tangle on the ground.
“Jesus, Rodriguez,” she said, grabbing the kid’s hands. He’d risen to his knees, prepared to bolt again. With one smooth gesture she knocked him flat and cuffed him. “You both could’ve been killed.”
“Little son of a bitch would’ve deserved it,” Rodriguez said, standing slowly and brushing himself off. The knees of his trousers were torn, and he raised his hands in supplication. “Christ, look what he did to my pants!”
“I didn’t do nothing, fool,” Emilio spat as Kelly yanked him to his feet. He was tiny, just over five feet, wearing baggy jean shorts, an enormous flannel shirt over a white undershirt and a blue-and-white Colts hat cocked to the side.
“Shut up, you little punk,” Rodriguez grunted.
“Agent Rodriguez,” Kelly said warningly. “Save it.”
“I got nothing to say to you,” Emilio sulked.
Kelly looked him over: too young to even be shaving. She repressed a sigh. “Your grandma seems like a nice lady, let’s have her join us. We need an adult present to question you anyway.”
“I ain’t answering no questions, bitch. I don’t disrespect the colors.” He jerked a thumb at his baseball cap.
Rodriguez rattled off something in Spanish, and Emilio responded with a tirade, struggling against the cuffs to get in Rodriguez’s face. Kelly pulled him back.
“Stop it, both of you,” she said sharply. “Not another word until we get him back to the house.” She cast a warning glance at Rodriguez. Anything said by a minor without a legal guardian present would be inadmissible. And she was hoping the grandmother might prove helpful. The woman had been shocked to find them on her doorstep, and judging by the way she called for Emilio, she didn’t tolerate back talk. With any luck her presence would cut down on his posturing.
In silence they proceeded down the street. The guy with the pit bull had righted himself, and as they passed by he muttered something. Emilio paled noticeably and jerked sideways as the pit bull growled. Kelly pursed her lips and wished for the hundredth time that she’d opted for Spanish instead of French in high school.
Dante fidgeted. His crew had been stuck in the warehouse for three days, and they were becoming increasingly restless. All twelve sat around a table playing endless games of five-card stud. They were almost indistinguishable, a solid mass of shaved heads and prison tats, clad in identical uniforms of black T-shirts and jeans.
Composed of three four-man teams, each was only privy to part of the plan. He was the only one holding all the proverbial cards. They knew enough, though, to potentially make it rain down cops and Feds. For that reason Jackson wanted them kept in complete isolation, to prevent a screwup on the magnitude of the KKK one in 1997. Back then a small group of Klansmen almost succeeded in torching a natural gas processing plant in north Texas. It would have been spectacular if they’d succeeded, could’ve taken out thousands and brought a lot of attention to the cause. But one of the morons got cold feet, and in swept the FBI. Jackson was too smart to allow something like that to happen.
One of the crew suddenly launched to his feet, scattering chips as he exploded in a stream of expletives. The guy he was yelling at stroked a knife clipped to his belt but remained seated. Dante frowned, debating whether or not to intervene. The other men tilted back in their chairs, watching with interest. One of them, Jimmy, glanced at Dante and raised an eyebrow.
When the first guy kicked back his chair, sending it skittering across the cement floor, Dante stood. They both caught the motion out of the corner of their eyes and paused. He approached the table slowly. These were hardened guys, between them they’d clocked decades in some of the country’s toughest penitentiaries. But there was a clear pecking order in the Brotherhood, as respected as any military rank, and in this room he was king.
“Cut the shit,” Dante said, voice low.
He eyed them, waiting. The second guy shrugged and muttered an apology that sounded more like a challenge. The troublemaker took longer to back down. Thanks to his enormous blond handlebar moustache he was nicknamed “Hulk,” after the wrestler. A full minute passed before Hulk turned, retrieved the chair, and straddled it.
“It’s been a long week,” Dante said when they’d settled down. Murmurs of assent. One of the other guys had gathered up the cards and was shuffling them. “I’m thinking it’s time to blow off a little steam.”
“Thought you said we couldn’t go anywhere,” said Hulk.
“We can’t.” Dante held up a hand to stem the tide of groans. “But I got a few girls cleared by management. One phone call and they show up to party.”
“No shit?” Hulk stroked his moustache. “How old? ’Cause I like ’em young.”
No surprise there, Dante thought. “Young enough. You know the rules, though.”
“No worries boss. I don’t need her mouth for talking,” someone chimed in, and everyone laughed.
Dante made the call. The girls were fresh meat, caught coming over the border by the local militia. They were supposed to report all illegals to Border Patrol without engaging. But this unit contained some of Jackson’s most avid supporters, and they were happy to provide whatever was needed, whether that meant gathering up a few women or ignoring a duffel bag tossed over the wall. Dante wasn’t really worried about the men talking—the language barrier would prevent that, and besides, the girls were headed to a pit in the desert afterward. They’d keep the boys occupied for a few days. And by then they should have their marching orders.
The thought reenergized him. It had taken years to set this thing in motion. Hard to believe that by this time next week, they’d be guiding the nation back on its true path.
Dante headed to the opposite end of the warehouse and ran a hand along the side of a truck. Two others just like it lined the back of the room, waiting to be called into commission. He allowed himself a small smile as a whoop from the card table signaled the arrival of the girls.
Eight
“It’s not like that.” Randall sighed. “I send a text when I’ve got something for them, and they respond with instructions on where to drop it off.”
“So you’ve never spoken to an actual human?” Jake pressed. He’d persuaded Randall to leave work a few hours early so they could talk. Randall’s apartment screamed bachelor pad. It was a small, cluttered one-bedroom. The walls were bare, and aside from the futon couch and a tiny TV on a rickety table, there was little in the way of decor. Clearly Randall didn’t subscribe to any Martha Stewart publications.
“Once, when they first contacted me. I thought it was a joke at first.” He paused, examining his hands. “It never occurred to me that my family might actually be in danger.”
Jake thought that for a smart guy, at times Randall was staggeringly clueless. Maybe a bus driver could be nonchalant in the face of such threats, but it should’ve given a guy working at a top secret government lab pause. Still he nodded sympathetically. “Sure. What did he look like?”
“He was a big guy, white, bald. Wore a hat and sunglasses, so it’s kind of hard to say. Lots of tattoos.”
“Interesting.” Eastern European gangsters mapped their entire criminal life on their bodies with tattoos. “Any accent?”
“He wasn’t foreign, if that’s what you’re asking. Southern, I think, but I’m not sure which state.”
“Okay.” Jake paused to think. Maybe a foreign operative trained to mimic American accents. Or a mercenary who lived stateside. “You sent your ex and daughter off to stay with a relative, like we discussed?”
“Yes, they went yesterday.”
“And didn’t tell anyone where they were going, right?”
Randall nodded.
“So back to the million dollar question. Any idea who took Madison?”
“I told you—”
“Because now we think it might be someone from one of the former Soviet bloc countries.” Jake watched him closely, but nothing seemed to register. “Turkmenistan, maybe.”
“Turkmenistan? But that doesn’t make any sense.” Randall’s brows furrowed.
“Look, Randall. I don’t know much about your work, but I’m guessing it has something to do with nuclear materials.” When Randall didn’t respond, Jake had to fight the urge to throttle him. “Without getting too specific, you should at least be able to tell me that much. Otherwise how the hell am I supposed to figure out who took Madison?”
A shadow crossed Randall’s features. Reluctantly, he nodded.
“So maybe an extremist group in Turkmenistan is trying to get hold of some for an attack against the United States,” Jake concluded.
“I don’t know,” Randall said slowly. “There’s more loose material over there, and it’s less tightly monitored. Plus most of those groups want to target Russia proper.”
“So a Muslim sect in one of those countries. Maybe one with links to al Qaeda.”
“Possibly.” Randall turned the thought over in his mind. “The thing is, port control here is one of the things we’re doing right. Every single shipping container in and out of the U.S. undergoes a radiation scan. They’d need help from someone working Customs, not me.”
Jake shrugged. “Maybe they’ve got that, too. Sure you can’t tell me exactly what they’re after?”
Randall considered carefully before speaking. “I think you’re on the right track. Not necessarily with the Eastern European connection, but the other thing…yes.”
“All right then, we’re making progress.” Jake clapped him on the shoulder. Randall smiled weakly in response. Jake pressed a little harder with his fingers and locked eyes with him. “And you have no other theories?”
Randall shrugged off his hand. “Nothing. Like I said, it could be anyone. I think they contacted me because I have access to what they need.”
“How many others have the same access?” Randall’s eyes shifted away again. “C’mon, Randall, I spent some time working for the government, I know what is and isn’t a state secret. How many?”
“It’s just so hard to trust anyone anymore,” Randall mumbled. He examined his fingers. “Four people total. It’s a small project.”
“And what do you know about the other three?”
“Why?”
“Because whoever took Madison obviously knows about your access, and if you’re right, only a handful of people in the facility are privy to that information. Going on that assumption, they selected you as the most likely to cave—nothing personal,” he said, raising a hand to stifle Randall’s protest, “but it’s true. So we need to figure out why they targeted you in particular. Do the other guys not have families, or gambling debts, anything that could be used against them?”
Randall scratched at a spot on the couch. “I don’t know. It’s not a very social environment.”
“Well, consider that your assignment. I want everything you can find out about the other guys in your department. Also, get me a list of everyone who has any idea what your work entails. If you’re right, someone at the facility pointed them in your direction. We find that person, the trail could lead back to Madison.”
“All right.”
A hint of hope in his voice, for the first time in days. Jake hoped it wasn’t misplaced. “When will you have what they’re looking for?”
Randall shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Soon. I already have most of what they’ll need.”
“And what are you supposed to do next?”
“Text them this code and wait for a response. I was about to do it when Syd called and said you’d be stopping by.”
“What’s the code?”
“I’m supposed to say everything is great.” Randall’s jaw tightened as he said, “Using the number eight. I suppose that’s their little joke.”
“Joke in what way?”
“In making me send something a teenager might write.”
“It’s smart, actually.” Jake mulled it over, then said, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Write, Everything is ok. They’ll be forced to respond, and you demand to talk to someone.”
“I’m not so sure—”
“You have to trust me, Randall. Remember, right now they need you. Unless they’re idiots, they’re not going to hurt your daughter until they get the information. And we’re going to use that to buy ourselves some time.”
“How?”
“There’s this ancient Malaysian board game, men versus tigers. The men win if they can surround the tigers and block their movements. Right now, that’s our game plan.”
“Yeah?” Randall eyed him skeptically. “How do the tigers win?”
Jake pulled off his jacket. “Too many questions, Doc. Just pay attention while I go over everything.”
Kelly winced as Emilio sustained another cuff to the head. He sullenly sank deeper into the chair as the middle-aged woman beside him let loose with another tirade. Kelly had no idea what was being said, but the tone was clear enough. Even Rodriguez looked mildly uncomfortable.
When they arrived at the door with Emilio in tow, still trying to jerk out of their grasp like a fish on a line, his grandmother grabbed him by the ear, dragged him to the couch, and launched into an impressive verbal assault. It was rare for someone under five feet tall to be intimidating, but Celia Torres was the exception to the rule. It took a few minutes to get a word in edgewise. When Kelly asked her to come down to the station, Celia’s brow darkened with fury. She cast a menacing look at Emilio, snatched an enormous purse off the counter, and marched out to their bu-car. In the backseat en route to the station, Emilio had opened his mouth twice to speak. Each time he was silenced with a sharp look from Celia. Kelly was concerned that upon arrival they might discover that Celia had summoned a lawyer for her grandson.
But then they got into the interrogation room. Apparently Celia had more than a rudimentary understanding of how to play bad cop, along with a strong flair for theater, neither of which she was afraid to use. Whenever Emilio had the audacity to say something in his defense, she went so completely ballistic they almost had to call in assistance. And the minute Rodriguez mentioned a gang connection, Celia spent ten minutes threatening to do things to Emilio that apparently didn’t bear translating.
After an hour of this, Emilio was a far cry from the posturing punk they’d chased down. His chin quivered, eyes filled with tears. Celia had switched tactics and was mumbling to him in Spanish. Rodriguez occasionally leaned over to translate. “She’s saying he broke her heart,” he mumbled. “Man, she’s good.”
Kelly had to agree, it was an Oscar-worthy performance. Clearly someone watched a few too many telenovelas. But it was having the desired effect on Emilio.
Celia finally sat back and said thickly, “He ready to answer your questions.”
“Great.” Kelly sighed, feeling like she’d been through the wringer herself. “So, Emilio. Where were you yesterday morning?”
“In school.”
“School says you never showed. We called and checked.”
A small growl from Celia. Emilio avoided her eyes. “Yeah, okay. I didn’t go.”
“Where were you?”
“Sí, Emilio. What was so important you miss school, break a promise to your abuelita?” Celia hissed.
“Nothing.” Emilio shrugged. “I just…I didn’t feel like going, yo.”
Kelly held up a hand to stave off Celia’s response. “Here’s the thing, Emilio. There was a raid on an MS-13 house in your neighborhood yesterday. I’m guessing you heard about it?” He shrugged noncommittally. “One of the guns we found was used in a serious crime. And they’re claiming that gun came from you.”
Emilio paled visibly, and Celia sucked in her breath. “Guns! No no no, not my Emilito.” She cuffed him across the head. “See the trouble? This why I tell you, stay away. But no, you want to wear everything blanco and azul.” She shifted her attention back to Kelly. “These boys, the gang? Filthy Salvadorans. I always tell my Emilio to stay away.”
“Well, Emilio didn’t listen. We found his fingerprints inside the house. And on the weapon.” Rodriguez threw a closed file on the table. It would be hours before forensic results came in, but they didn’t have to know that.
“Where’d you get the gun, Emilio?” Kelly pressed.
“Stole it, bitch,” he spat, recovering some of his bravado. Celia inhaled sharply, brought back her palm and slapped his face.
“Mrs. Torres! You need to control yourself. If you strike Emilio again I’ll have to call in child services,” Kelly said sharply. She really didn’t want to do that, since with a caseworker sitting in they’d get far less compliance.
Celia nodded tersely.
Rodriguez leaned across the table. “Stole it from where?”
Emilio shrugged. Kelly caught a flash behind his eyes. Shame? Embarrassment? She leaned in. “See, Emilio, here’s my problem. I’ve got a group of gang members who are going down anyway saying you brought them a gun. And that gun was used to kill someone.”
“Jesús Cristo.” Celia whispered under her breath, crossing herself. Emilio’s face went a shade paler.
“But I find it hard to believe you would be stupid enough to kill someone, then give that weapon to Guzman knowing it might shift the blame onto him. You understand what I’m saying, Emilio? Because that’s how it would look. I bet that right now, they’re thinking you set them up.”
Emilio blanched completely. Sitting there, hair sticking out in tufts, he looked small and very young. And absolutely, completely terrified.
“You said you stole the gun, rata. Gotta arrest you on that.” Rodriguez leaned across the table, balancing on his knuckles. “And since it was used in a murder, that sends you to intake, not Juvenile Detention. Guess who else is spending the night in intake?”
“Tell them, Emilito. Tell them it’s not true.” Celia was rigid, facing straight front. Tears snaked through the heavy powder on her cheeks.
“It’s not true.” Emilio said in a small voice.
“Qué?” Rodriguez held a hand to his ear. “Didn’t hear you, Emilito.”
“It’s not true,” Emilio said. “I didn’t steal the gun. I found it.”
“Where?” Kelly asked.
“Outside their house. I was there yesterday, hanging around.” He glanced sidelong at Celia, who glared back. “Sometimes they give me stuff to do, but they were all still sleeping. I was sitting on the steps, and I saw it.”
“Saw what?” Rodriguez asked.
“The gun, okay? I saw the handle sticking out from under the steps. Like someone tossed it there.”
“Then you went inside and told them you stole a gun, and were giving it to them?” Kelly asked.
Emilio shrugged. “Yeah. I knows it wasn’t theirs, since it was all fancy and shit. Figured it was worth some cash. They always blowing me off, calling me a naco. Thought if they saw I was serious, they’d bring me in.”
Kelly was tempted to cuff him herself. “What’d they say?”
Emilio colored. “They asked where I got such a bitch-ass gun. They kept it, though,” he said defensively.
“Did you see anyone when you found the gun, or earlier? Someone who looked like they didn’t belong there?”
Emilio cocked his head to the side. “What, like white people?”
“Anyone who looked out of place,” Kelly said.
Emilio slowly shook his head. “Didn’t see no one or nothing.” His chin jutted out.
“What will happen to my Emilito?” Celia asked, lip quavering.
Kelly exchanged a glance with Rodriguez. “Hard to say. But I’d call a lawyer.”
Jackson Burke gazed out his office window. Dusk was falling, sending shadows marching through downtown’s glassy steel columns. The Phoenix skyline wasn’t as impressive as New York or Dallas, but he intended to change that. Soon enough there would be plentiful opportunities for rebuilding.
He sighed. Getting to this point had demanded tremendous time and energy, not to mention financial resources. Thanks to a family fortune he’d multiplied a thousand-fold, cash flow wasn’t an issue. That and a lack of vision were where so many operations had gone astray in the past. But in the end, all his efforts would be worth it. He’d seen the potential, realized what the growing numbers of converts could accomplish if their man power was properly harnessed, disparate groups united in one cause. Now, after more than a decade of planning, he was close to accomplishing that goal. He just needed the last few dominoes to fall into place.
The phone on his desk beeped, and Jackson frowned. His assistant knew he relished these few moments alone at the end of each day. For her to interrupt, something serious must have happened.
He lifted the receiver and listened for a moment before saying, “All right, put him through.”
As Dante spoke, Jackson’s expression hardened. He picked up a rock from the Zen garden on his desk and kneaded it between thumb and forefinger. “I see. And how did you respond?” Another burst of chatter. Jackson thought for a moment, then said, “It’s time to make Grant understand the seriousness of the situation. Do whatever is necessary.”
Nine
Madison awoke in the dark. Despite becoming somewhat acclimated to her surroundings, the shock of waking in a strange place never failed to throw her. Every time she went to sleep, deep down she harbored the hope that perhaps this was one of those dreams within a dream, where you only thought you were awake. She always fell asleep hoping to open her eyes and see her bedroom.
Not this time. She drew the thin blanket up to her shoulders and tried to still her shivering. Wherever they’d taken her was cold for June, and for the millionth time she wondered where she was. Back home on the East Coast, summer was in full swing. Central Park was lush and overgrown, the grass still green after recent rains. It felt like forever since she was there. Madison had skipped the last day of school, and spent that Friday hanging out by the pond exchanging texts with Shane and tossing her lunch to the geese. How long ago was that now? One week? Two? She’d started tracking the days, it had been at least three since they took her. But considering how many times they’d injected her with drugs at the beginning, she could have been whacked out for weeks. She wondered what the hell they wanted, and why it was taking so long. And if anyone was ever going to clue in to her GPS transmitter.
She groped under the mattress and pulled out the DS Lite. Even on the lowest power setting, she was down to the last bar. Madison chewed her lip. Maybe she could ask Lurch to bring her the power cord, it was with the rest of her stuff. Or she could give it to him to charge. That was riskier—he might decide not to give it back. She didn’t think he’d be able to tell it had been altered, but whoever was with him might be shrewder.
Suddenly, the groaning of metal indicated that the door was about to open. She hurriedly tucked the DS Lite back in its hiding place and flipped over to face the wall, regulating her breathing to mimic sleep. A shaft of light sliced the room, casting a silhouette on the wall facing her. Madison drew in her breath sharply. Whoever had come for her, it wasn’t Lurch.
“I know you’re not sleeping,” he said. His voice was gravelly, like he was getting over a cold.
Madison’s stomach clenched. Slowly, she rose to a seated position and turned. His face was cast in shadow, and she squinted in the light. “What time is it?” she asked.
He chuckled. “Time for us to get acquainted, kitten.”
“Sorry, Kel, you’re fading in and out. They’ve got crap reception here.” Jake plugged an index finger in his opposite ear and squinted at the lights below. The sprawling lab facility was visible from Randall’s small deck. Some buildings were floodlit, others hunched in the dark. Ironic that so close to the epicenter of the world’s most cutting-edge technology, he couldn’t get a cell signal to save his life. Maybe they had some sort of jamming apparatus.
“I said, I’m still in Arizona.”
“Well hey, we’re nearly on the same coast. Wanna meet for a late dinner in Bakersfield?”
“No way Bakersfield is the halfway point,” Kelly snorted.
Jake could picture her nose crinkling as she said it. He smiled. “All right then, Denver.”
“Wow, your grasp of geography is impressive,” Kelly laughed.
“Hey, keep in mind I was living abroad for years. How much longer are you there?”
“Tough to say. Right now the chief is ready to call it, blaming everything on this street gang.”
“But you’re not buying it?”
There was a pause. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “These are bad guys, but this seems beyond them. Unless we come up with a more direct tie to the senator, they don’t seem the type to be making a political statement, you know?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t sound like it.” Jake recognized the note of frustration in her voice. The Bureau always wanted high profile cases solved quickly, even if that meant arresting the wrong person.
Not Kelly, though. If that happened, it would eat at her. Even if this gang had been killing nuns and schoolkids on a daily basis, she’d hate to see them locked up for something they didn’t do. It was one of the things he loved about her.
He caught himself hoping she’d be forced to compromise. Something like that would practically guarantee her departure from the FBI. Then the endless debates over her job and where they should live would be forced to a conclusion. He experienced a pang of guilt at the thought and forced some cheer into his voice. “Don’t worry. It’ll work out.”
“Maybe.” She sounded disconsolate.
“Rodriguez still riding you?”
“I feel like I’m babysitting.”
“Yeah, but you felt that way about me, too, right?”
“I still do.” Her voice brightened at the teasing.
“So should I be jealous?”
“Of a twenty-seven-year-old who’s driving me nuts?” Kelly laughed. “Sure, go ahead. I think he has a fiancée, though. He mentioned something about getting married in the fall.”
“Yeah? I love fall weddings.”
There was a long pause before Kelly said, “How’s everything going for you?”
“Wow, you’re becoming the master of the segue.”
“I can’t handle wedding talk right now,” she said. “Did you get any clients signed on? One of us deserved a good day at work.”
Jake shifted uncomfortably. As a concession to Syd, he’d told Kelly he was scrounging up business with Silicon Valley venture capital firms. He hated lying to her, yet another reason why things would be easier if she joined The Longhorn Group. “Mine was okay, I guess. This is a lousy part of the state, nothing but strip malls and parking lots. I feel like I keep getting off the interstate in the same place.”
“Drum up any business?”
“Maybe. Got some leads.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about heading to Costa Rica after this wraps up. Want to tag along?”
“A few weeks into a new job and already he needs a vacation.” Kelly laughed. “Your work ethic is truly awe inspiring. Don’t you have to be around in case any of these leads pan out?”
“Nah. Syd’s a closer, she loves dealing with the clients. Besides, we still haven’t taken a real vacation together.”
“What about Vermont?”
“You mean that first weekend we went away together, two years ago?”
“It counts.”
“It took almost the entire weekend just to get you in my room.”
“I didn’t hear you complaining at the time.”
“That was only because—” Jake’s call-waiting beeped. He glanced at the number: Syd. “Kelly, my love, I’ve gotta go. Syd’s on the other line, it might be important.”
“Okay.”
She sounded despondent, and Jake’s heart lurched. He hated that after all this time they still hadn’t found a way to be together for more than a few days. “Costa Rica. Think about it.”
“I will. Love you.”
Jake clicked over to Syd’s call. “Please tell me you’ve got something.”
“Who’s your favorite person?”
“Depends. Give me a reason.”
“I got a match on the face.”
“Really?” Jake straightened. “The driver?”
“Yep. The facial recognition software worked. We were lucky the shot was more or less head-on. And let me tell you, getting access to that database was a bitch.”
“I’m sure.” Jake considered asking how she’d done it, then figured he probably didn’t want to know. Infiltrating government databases was definitely frowned upon. “Let me guess. Ukrainian.”
“Not even close. You’re going to love this. Winner of the creepy kidnapper prize of the month is Marcus Krex. ‘Mack’ to his friends.”
“Krex doesn’t sound Eastern European.”
“Give the man a prize!” Syd sounded gleeful, and Jake was glad to hear it. This case had been beating them both up. “Born and bred in Stockton, California. Krex doesn’t even have a passport, he’s never left the country, at least not legally.”
“So the e-mail router was meant to throw us off track.”
“Apparently. But based on his sheet Mack isn’t tech-savvy.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Petty crimes starting as a juvie, graduated to grand theft auto and burglary, closed out his career nicely with a stretch in Corcoran for armed robbery. Paroled less than a year ago.”
“Jesus.” It was nice to finally have a name to go on, but the fact that Madison was snatched by a hardened criminal wasn’t the best news he’d heard all day. At least Krex hadn’t been convicted of a sex crime—thank God for small favors. “How did this guy not qualify for the three strikes law?”
“Grandfathered out. But he will, if he’s caught one more time.”
“Where is he now?”
“Kept his nose clean, as far as I can tell. His parole officer said Krex was coming in every week, passed all the drug tests, seemed to be a model citizen. But he missed last week’s appointment. He’s been so good, the PO didn’t worry. He was going to report him if he missed this week.”
“When’s his appointment?”
“Tomorrow morning, 8:00 a.m. His PO said he’d be happy to sit down and review the case file.”
“I’ll get on the road first thing tomorrow. Who knows, maybe Krex will even show.”
“That would make our lives easier,” Syd said drily. There was a long pause.
“Syd?”
“Yeah, I know you’ve gotta go. I was just wondering. How’s Randall holding up?”
“You talked to him.”
“Right, I did.” She sighed. “I’m shit at this sort of thing.”
“Shocking.” Jake grinned. “Fortunately you’ve got a relationship master like me to ask for advice.”
Syd barked a sharp laugh before asking, “You think we’ll get her back?”
Jake gazed across the landscape. The moon hovered above the buildings, casting them in stark relief. “Maybe. But we’re probably going to need more firepower. If we find out where they’re keeping her, we should call in the cavalry.”
She thought it over. “It might jeopardize the operation.”
“I don’t think we’ll have a choice.”
Jake clicked the phone shut and went back inside. Randall sat at the desk tucked in a corner of the living room, staring in horror at his computer monitor. The tinny speakers played a garbled soundtrack that sounded like pigs squealing.
“Jesus, Doc, what the hell are you watching?” Jake crossed the room in long strides. A video filled the screen. It was a close-up of Madison, eyes wide with terror, head whipping back and forth in torment as she screamed.
Kelly ran a hand through her hair as she hung up the phone. Jake had sounded unusually sketchy ever since he abruptly flew to California. There was no reason for him to stress over business meetings with executives, he thrived on that sort of thing. Then there was his Costa Rica suggestion, a prototypical Jake Riley reaction—when you’re on a bad case, plan a trip. He clearly had no idea how predictable he was.
It bothered her that he felt the need to lie, she’d rather hear that he couldn’t discuss the case. She could respect that, there were certainly details of her work she didn’t share. Lying just fed her doubts. Kelly spent a good chunk of her day getting misled by people, the thought of facing the same at home was unbearable.
After the interview with Emilio, she and Rodriguez had spent a couple of hours going over the files to see if they’d missed anything. At 6:00 p.m. they met with the rest of the task force, who reported that the tip line and canvassing had produced the usual band of loonies and conspiracy theorists. Barring any new developments, they’d charge Psycho and his friends with the Morris murder in the next couple of days. Kelly sent everyone home, figuring they’d earned a good night’s sleep.
At least they were in a decent hotel. She propped the pillows against the headboard and flipped through TV channels. All the local news stations were running elegiac montages of Duke Morris’s career. A former exterminator-turned-public official, there were shots of him holding a rifle at an NRA meeting, glad-handing at a rally, practically spitting into a microphone as he gripped a podium. Kelly had the TV on Mute, but based on his demeanor she guessed he was ranting about his pet issue, immigration reform. Within a day or two something else would shove the Morris story off the national media’s front pages. Arizona would hold out longer, but once arrests were made and the governor appointed a new senator, it would be over.
Kelly knew that her superiors were keeping a close eye on her work in this case. She’d be expected to toe the party line if they forged ahead with the MS-13 connection. Even if the gang was guilty, if she uncovered a real connection between them and Morris, her boss would want it buried. And then she’d have to decide what to do.
The camera cut to a studio anchor, one of those interchangeable blondes with perfect hair. Kelly watched her lips move, and idly wondered how they always found a shade of lipstick that exactly matched their suits: hers was peach. The camera cut to a man. A banner at the bottom of the screen announced him as “Jackson Burke, lifelong friend of Senator Duke Morris.” He looked vaguely familiar, although Kelly couldn’t place him. She clicked the volume up to catch what he was saying.
“…the real tragedy here, Dawn, is that we lost a man who grasped the true threat our nation faces. Since 9/11, our government has spent so much time focused abroad, we’ve completely forgotten about the dangers right here at home. Our military is stretched to the limit, our debt is spiraling out of control, and we have thousands of illegals streaming over our borders every day. Some of those people come here looking for a better life. But others clearly intend to do us harm.”
“What kind of harm, Mr. Burke?”
“We keep hearing about how al Qaeda is trying to sneak in a bomb, so they can destroy the democratic principles that this great nation was founded on. But the real threat is more insidious. I’m talking about cartels, multinational gangs whose sole purpose is to flood our schools and streets with drugs. And God knows what else they’re bringing over with them. Guns? Bombs? In California, felons get away with murder, literally, because of so-called Sanctuary laws. Just last week a young Honduran man was released from jail even though the authorities knew he wasn’t here legally. Next day, he killed an entire family in a home invasion robbery.”
“And what would you propose, Mr. Burke?”
“In honor of my good friend Duke Morris, I’m starting a new lobbying firm. We’re going to put some pressure on those honchos in Washington, ask them to get the National Guard back here to do what they should have been doing all along—guarding our borders. Stem the tide, before natural-born Americans wake up to find that Spanish has become the first language and their kids are now the minority…”
Kelly turned it off with a snort. She’d grown up on the East Coast, and spent most of her adult life in New York and Washington, D.C. She knew that immigration reform was a major issue for a lot of Americans, but she lived at a remove from it. Here, it seemed to taint everything. The murder of Duke Morris by machete had inflamed passions. Editorials in the regions’ papers screamed for ICE raids and mass deportations. Protests and counterprotests were sparking up everywhere. There was a sense that the whole region was about to explode in retaliatory violence.
Kelly’s cell rang. She checked the number and frowned before answering. “Yes?”
“Jones, I’ve got some bad news. Emilio didn’t make it.”
“What?”
“The processing instructions got screwed up—instead of juvie he was sent to intake. Someone shivved him.”
Kelly squeezed her eyes shut, an image of Celia’s tear-streaked face flashing through her mind. “Jesus, Rodriguez. One of the MS-13s?”
“Nope, another guy. White. Guard said it was probably race-related. Tensions are high, with all the shit that’s been going down.”
“Crap.” Kelly kneaded her forehead. “Have you told McLarty yet?”
“Technically, we had handed him over to Phoenix P.D., so…”
Kelly’s eyes narrowed. “So, what?”
“So he wasn’t our responsibility anymore.”
Kelly was surprised at the coldness in his voice. Sure, Emilio had been a little punk, but he was just a kid. She wondered if this was residual rage over the chase earlier that day, or something deeper. “I doubt Celia will agree.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe she should have kept better track of him.”
Kelly was too tired to argue about it. “Anything else?”
“Nope. Just wanted you to know.”
“Good night, Agent Rodriguez.”
He’d already hung up. Kelly readjusted the pillows and lay down, reflecting on the day. Crazy that she lived in a world where a twelve-year-old dreamed of joining a gang. Crazier still that they might offer him the best prospects. Public schools were a mess, jobs were tight, and for a kid growing up in a tough neighborhood, chances of survival, never mind success, were slim. Maybe Emilio was just another casualty of the American Dream. The confluence of events that landed him in an interrogation room could be considered inevitable, based on statistics alone. If not today, maybe five or ten years down the line he would have found himself in the same situation, dying from a blade shoved in his gut.
Kelly felt responsible regardless. She picked up the phone and dialed. “This is Agent Jones, I’m part of the Morris task force. I’d like a copy of the processing papers for Emilio Torres on my desk tomorrow morning.”
Madison was curled in a ball on top of the mattress. She’d never been in so much pain. The closest was when she’d broken her leg snowboarding, and they trundled her downhill on a sled that jolted over moguls. But that didn’t even begin to compare to this.
She shuddered repeatedly as flashes of what happened darted through her brain. His scary grin as he dragged her down the hall and into a different room, then tied her to the chair. His fumbling hands all over her, tugging at her shirt. She’d shied away, screaming, but he yanked out her bra straps and attached wires to them. Then the pain, so bad she blacked out. And Lurch in the background with a camera, recording it all.
It seemed to go on forever. It was still dark outside, and she wondered if she’d lost another day.
Madison felt like she’d been beaten all over, every limb, every joint ached. For the first time she confronted the full gravity of her situation. All along in the back of her mind she’d maintained this elaborate fantasy. Commandos storming in and putting a bullet through Lurch’s brain. They’d tell her she was so smart, so brave. Deep down she never doubted that someone was coming to save her.
Now she could see how childish that fantasy was. Sometimes there was no happy ending. Sometimes people just died. She almost laughed aloud at how pathetic her GPS transmission was. Ridiculous, really—the world was full of signals now, a never-ending stream bouncing along every wavelength, a constant din. And yet she’d managed to convince herself that her little signal, from a DS Lite no less, would filter through. It was completely absurd.
Madison realized she was shuddering again. She drew a deep breath. No more imagining who would show up at her funeral, no more pretending this was a nightmare she would awaken from. She was done with all that. All she could do now was hope they never brought her in that awful room again.
JUNE 30
Ten
Jake lifted a corner of the mattress and grimaced at what was underneath. Mack Krex’s living quarters redefined the term hellhole. A dank eight-by-ten-foot room in a boardinghouse so far on the wrong side of the tracks they weren’t even visible in the distance. The only furnishings were a caved-in bed and a rickety pasteboard bureau propped against the wall. Honestly, a cell would have been preferable, Jake thought. At least it would’ve been clean.
“Pretty foul, huh?” Mack Krex’s parole officer grinned at him, rocking back and forth on his heels. “No fast-food joint pays enough for a place without rats.”
Jake wasn’t in the mood to joke around. He hadn’t been able to forget Madison’s tortured face all morning. “I called the manager at Plucky Chicken. He said Krex quit a few months back.”
“Yeah? Huh.”
“But he’s current on the rent here. Paid three months in advance.”
The guy shrugged, and Jake narrowed his eyes at him. The PO stood about five-six, wearing a short-sleeved button-down shirt, skinny tie, cheap shoes. His scraggly goatee was a misguided attempt at trendiness, and the beginnings of a potbelly hung over his belt. He looked fifty but was probably closer to thirty-five.
“Doesn’t bother you that Krex might have backslid?”
“Maybe he got a gig under the table, working the door at a club. Some of them do that, and Mack’s a big guy.” The PO held up a hand defensively. “You want to see my caseload? I can’t babysit these guys 24/7. He showed for our meets, and his piss was clean. Far as I’m concerned he’s a success story.”
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Michelle Gagnon
From the moment sixteen-year-old Madison Grant is abducted, an unthinkable terrorist plot is set in motion–pitting Special Agent Kelly Jones against her most powerful adversary yet.The kidnapper's ransom demands aren't monetary…they come at a cost that no American can afford to pay. As Kelly's fiancé, Jake Riley, races to find Madison, Kelly is assigned to another disturbing case: the murder and dismemberment of a senator. At first the two cases don't appear to be related.But as Kelly navigates her way through the darkest communities of America–from skinheads to biker gangs to border militias–she discovers a horrible truth. A shadowy figure who calls himself The Gatekeeper is uniting hate groups, opening the door to the worst homegrown attack in American history.
Praise for
MICHELLE GAGNON
“Boneyard is a winner!
A compelling page-turner that pays due attention to the human heart. It’ll keep you up all night.”
—Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author
“A stellar work of mounting suspense and terror. Ritual murder, ancient magic and buried secrets all blend seamlessly in this debut mystery by a major new talent. Not to be missed!”
—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author,
on The Tunnels
“I defy anyone to read the first chapter of Boneyard and put the book down. With a cast of deftly drawn characters and a beautifully resonant setting, Boneyard is pure reading pleasure-creepy, terrifying and utterly believable. I recommend it with great enthusiasm.”
—Douglas Preston, New York Times bestselling author
“The Tunnels starts out scary and only gets worse, or—if you like frightening thrillers—better. Michelle Gagnon is a fresh and confident new voice in crime fiction. An auspicious debut.”
—John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author
“Gagnon’s plot is fast-paced, appropriately detailed in its forensic depictions, and reveals an attention to authentic FBI detection procedures that lets the reader know that the author has done her homework…an engaging and quick read.”
—Library Journal on Boneyard
“Michelle Gagnon’s stellar debut is an edge-of-your-seat story of suspense and intrigue. With a deftly crafted plot and a winning protagonist, Gagnon spins a fast-moving yarn that is certain to keep you up late. We will hear more from this talented newcomer. Highly recommended.”
—Sheldon Siegel, New York Times bestselling author,
on The Tunnels
“Michelle Gagnon has written a tremendously fine debut novel that’s as dark, twisty, and thrilling as the tunnels she so hauntingly describes therein. Expect to sleep with the lights on for at least a week after you’ve relished the final page.”
—Cornelia Read, author of The Crazy School,
on The Tunnels
“A great read. Scarily good. The Tunnels takes you into some very dark places, as a bright new talent takes on old-world horrors and scares the living daylights out of you. It’s The Wicker Man meets Silence of the Lambs.”
—Tony Broadbent, author of The Smoke
and Spectres in the Smoke
“A fast-paced novel that taps into primal fears as it unfolds in real tunnels as well as in the labyrinth of the human mind. Things go down fast, decisions have to be made, and Michelle Gagnon has written characters who are up to it. Don’t read this one when you’re alone in the house.”
—Kirk Russell, author of Deadgame, on The Tunnels
MICHELLE GAGNON
THE GATEKEEPER
For Kate
“Invictus”
(Unconquered)
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
—William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)
Contents
JUNE 25
Chapter One (#ulink_0341c6bf-0d76-5187-9c59-0baa7d8577f0)
JUNE 28
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
JUNE 29
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
JUNE 30
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
JULY 1
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
JULY 2
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
JULY 3
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
July 4
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Author’s Note
JUNE 25
One
Madison Grant leaned over the sink, careful not to get her jeans wet as she applied another coat of gloss. She rubbed her lips together, smacked them once, then dabbed the excess with her fingertip. She examined the resulting pink sheen critically—perfect. Stepping back, she tossed the wand into her purse. It was actually her sister’s knockoff Fendi. Bree would totally flip when she realized it was gone. Hopefully that would distract her from checking for other things that had gone missing, like her driver’s license and social security card. Of course by that time the shit would have hit the fan anyway. Their mom would be so freaked out that Bree’s complaints about a stolen purse would fall on deaf ears. At least that’s what Madison was hoping.
She shrugged on the purse and grabbed the handle of her carry-on. It was their fault for basically ignoring her. Ever since the divorce, Dad was only a voice on the phone, and Mom spent most of the day in her room, shades drawn. And Bree was so busy with her friends, she barely bothered to talk to Madison. No, the only person who really cared about her now was Shane.
Madison flushed at the thought of him. They’d only known each other a few weeks, but she could already tell this was it, her one true love. They’d met online and instantly hit it off. She lived for the sweet texts he sent while she sat in class, bored out of her skull. They had these long, intense IM sessions where they talked about everything: what they wanted to be when they grew up, what their families were like. He was the only person Madison had confided in about how shitty things had gotten since the divorce, how awful it was to be dumped in a new city across the country, how she hated school and everyone in it.
Shane was older, nineteen, in his first year of college at San Francisco State. But he said the age difference didn’t matter since girls were more mature, and he was totally right. Madison was a lot older than sixteen in her mind. And with Bree’s license and social security card, she could get a job. Shane had offered to let her crash with him for as long as she needed to. He hinted that since they’d be spending the rest of their lives together anyway, they might as well get started. When he sent the plane ticket she got so excited, dancing around her bedroom. Then she swiped some of the cash her mom hid around the house and lied about staying with a friend for the weekend. That gave her a few days before they’d realize she was missing. And now she had finally arrived.
It was hard to believe she was about to meet Shane in person. It was going to be perfect, just like in the movies. They’d kiss, he’d look into her eyes and tell her he loved her. She’d work at a cool café in the city while he finished school. Maybe she’d take some classes herself, then eventually they’d get married. They’d have two kids, a boy named Max and a girl named Penelope. Someday she might even call her parents to tell them what a great job she’d done with her life. They’d forgive her for leaving, and everything would turn out the way it should have been all along.
On the other side of the security gate, a guy wearing a cap held a sign that read GRANT. Madison’s jaw almost dropped. Shane must have some serious cash—first the plane ticket, now a limo? Maybe his family was rich. He was probably keeping it a secret to see if she liked him for who hewas, like in that movie where the prince pretended to be a normal guy. Which was silly, she’d love Shane even if he was totally poor. But she had to admit, the thought of living in a huge house was definitely appealing. Better yet she might not have to get a job, she could just hang out all day. Madison repressed a giggle, trying to look serious and adult as she approached the driver.
“Hi. Are you here for me?”
The chauffeur eyed her, and she drew herself up to her full five-seven. “Madison Grant?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes, that’s me.”
The chauffeur motioned for her bag. She followed him to a Lincoln Town Car. He popped the trunk, tucked the suitcase inside, then opened the passenger door. Madison climbed in, impressed by the plush surroundings. There was even a bottle of sparkling water in the cup caddy. She unscrewed the cap and took a swig, then belted herself in. The car eased into the steady stream of traffic leaving the terminal, and Madison settled back against the seat.
“You know where we’re going, right?” she asked after a minute.
The driver didn’t turn his head, just nodded.
Madison was self-conscious. She’d never been in a limo before, but thought there was supposed to be one of those panels between them. Without one, she felt obligated to make small talk.
“So where are you from?” She asked after a short pause.
The driver didn’t respond, and she figured his English wasn’t very good. He looked Russian, at least around the eyes. Madison sipped more of the water. It had a funny metallic aftertaste, probably because it was from France. Her eyelids drooped. The flight had only been six hours, but she’d spent the whole time amped up in what Dad called her “condensed matter” state. It wouldn’t hurt to take a little nap, she decided. After all, she didn’t want to be sleepy the first time she met Shane.
When she awoke it was dark. Madison felt drowsy, disoriented. She wasn’t in the car anymore, and wondered if they’d arrived and the driver hadn’t bothered waking her. If she had been asleep when Shane first saw her that would be totally embarrassing, she realized, mortification jolting her from a stupor. She was on some sort of bed, there was a rough blanket beneath her. Was she in his dorm room? She stood and felt her way across. It was pitch-black, cold, and she shivered in her light sweater. Shane had warned her to pack layers, but she’d wanted to look cute so she’d kept her fleece jacket in her suitcase. She groped until she reached the wall. It was freezing and felt like metal. She rapped on it once, tentatively, then worked her way along it to a door. There was a handle but it was huge, also metal, and didn’t respond to her tugs. Madison bit her lower lip, experiencing a tremor of fear. Something was seriously wrong.
“Shane?” She called out hesitantly. Her voice sounded squeaky. She tried to inject more assurance as she repeated, “Hey, Shane, are you out there? I think I’m stuck!”
There was no response. Madison felt a tear trickle down her face, followed quickly by another. As she slid to the floor and clasped her knees to her chest, she began sobbing in earnest. She was all alone, and no one even knew she was missing.
JUNE 28
Two
Jake Riley leaned back in his chair, crossing his feet on top of his new desk. It was solid oak, and according to the antiques dealer had once belonged to George Steinbrenner. Even if that was bullshit, it was a nice desk, he decided. And the Steinbrenner story would probably impress potential clients.
His office was still filled with boxes. It had taken longer than expected to find a suitable space, commercial rents in New York were through the roof. Even with the exorbitant severance package from Jake’s previous employer, the new company would have to secure some contracts soon. But they’d made the right choice, he thought, gazing through the floor to ceiling windows. After searching the entire borough for an office with room to expand, they’d finally settled in one of the new skyscrapers jutting up around Columbus Circle. Central Park was across the street, and Jake was looking forward to eating lunch there, maybe strapping on his running shoes for a jog on slow days. Although hopefully there wouldn’t be many of those.
He ignored the needling voice that questioned the decision to branch out on his own. Sure, Dmitri Christou had paid him well, but for the first time in his life he was his own boss. And hell, they’d be doing good work along the way. They’d decided to name the company The Longhorn Group, a nod to the fact that both he and his partner originally hailed from Texas. If Jake had his say, The Longhorn Group would quickly become the go-to company for K&R insurers.
K&R was shorthand for “Kidnap and Ransom.” In recent years there had been a sharp uptick in the number of kidnappings of American executives abroad, some figures estimated as high as twenty percent. To secure the release of abducted employees, many companies hired private firms to either negotiate with kidnappers or, failing that, attempt a rescue. South American countries, particularly Colombia, were the most notorious for kidnappings, but plenty took place stateside. They just weren’t widely publicized, since no corporation wanted to put ideas in someone’s head. And despite the increased number of companies signing on for K&R insurance, most operatives trained in negotiation and recovery were busy working security details in the Middle East. Jake was hoping The Longhorn Group would fill that void.
Eventually Kelly might come on board, and they’d be able to work together again. It was a nice thought. Jake picked up the sole item on his desk, a framed photo of her, and gazed at it. It showed her in profile, sitting on a beach, red hair reflecting the setting sun. She always griped about the angle, but then she hated every photo of herself. He thought it captured a side of her that was usually hidden—there was a vulnerability in the way she held her knees that always got him. He set the picture back on the desk. They were officially engaged now, had been for months, but hadn’t set a date. She said work was keeping her too busy, but he knew better. Still, he didn’t mind. She was worth waiting for.
He glanced up at a knock on his door. His new partner, Syd, stood grinning at him. Looking at her, compact in a well-tailored navy suit, every blond hair in place, you’d never guess she had single-handedly brought down one of the most dangerous terrorist cells in Yemen a few years back. Even though she was only in her mid-thirties, she’d been one of the CIA’s best operatives. Lucky for him she’d become so disenchanted with the amoral aspects of Agency work, she jumped at his offer to partner up.
“I think we’ve got something,” she said. Like him, over the years she’d managed to shed her drawl.
“Seriously?” They had just begun meeting with insurers to secure contracts. “That’s great! Did Tennant Risk Services get back to us?”
Syd plopped down on the wing chair opposite his desk. “Nope, not yet. This is a private client.” She paused a beat before continuing. “Actually, it’s kind of a favor for a friend.”
“Uh-oh. We talked about that.”
Syd sighed and wound a strand of hair around her finger. “I know, I know. But this could be a good case to build on. He’s a physicist for a lab that does Department of Defense work. It’s worth considering, anyway.”
“That sounds suspiciously like a pro bono job.”
“He’ll pay us what he can afford. Probably not much, but it’ll be something. Besides, it’ll give us a chance to double-check our operations. Kind of like the soft opening of a restaurant.”
“Uh-huh.” Jake examined her closely. “Just how good a friend is this guy?”
“That’s a long story.” Syd kicked off her heels and set her bare feet on the desk opposite his, settling back in the chair.
“No nylons?” he teased.
She tossed a paper clip at him. “That’s the main reason I’m doing this, so I won’t have to stuff my legs in sausage casings anymore.”
“Benefit of being the boss,” Jake said. In spite of himself, his eyes trailed up to where the navy hem rode above her knees. He forced his focus back up to find her grinning.
Syd wiggled her toes. “See something you like?”
“I wasn’t aware we had a dress code,” he said, gesturing to her suit. Even he could tell it was pricey, Chanel or something like it.
“One of us has to dress like a grown-up, on the off chance that a client comes calling.”
“You kidding? These are my good jeans. And I have it on authority that Bono wears the same T-shirt.”
“I’ll bet. But then, Bono isn’t exactly the first guy you call when a loved one goes missing.”
“Speaking of which.” Jake tapped his finger on the desk. “What’s the story with this guy?”
“His name’s Randall Grant. We met at a conference before I left the Agency.”
Jake frowned. “You’re dating him?”
“Dating is a strong word. Let’s just say, we see each other when we can. Anyway, his kid got taken.”
“His kid? Sounds like an FBI case to me.”
“He can’t call the FBI. Whoever took her wants information on his work.”
“What’s he do?”
“I don’t know specifically, something high clearance. Nuclear stuff.”
Jake let out a low whistle.
“Exactly,” Syd said. “So you can see why he doesn’t want the FBI riding in and screwing things up, Ruby Ridge-style.”
Jake raised an eyebrow at her last comment. She waved it off. “No offense. I’m sure your fiancée is great at her job. But you worked for the Bureau, you know how ass-backwards they can be. Bottom line, they care more about the secrets than the kid. And Randall doesn’t trust them with her life.”
“But he trusts us?”
Syd shrugged. “He trusts me.”
Jake examined the ceiling, considering. His gut was saying this was a bad idea, and he knew better than to question that. Getting involved in a case where you had personal ties was always a mistake. Still, it was a job, and after months of inactivity he was itching to do something besides choosing office furniture.
“Get him on the phone,” Jake finally responded.
“You sure?”
“Let’s hear what he has to say. But he’s got to give us more information, security clearance or not,” he warned her. “And the minute I get a bad feeling, we pull out. Deal?”
“Deal,” Syd said, tucking her feet back in her pumps. “You’re a prince, Jake.”
“Don’t I know it.” He grinned back at her. “Now let’s call your boyfriend.”
Kelly frowned as she took in the scene. Directly in front of her was a memorial to Arizona peace officers lost in the line of duty. The artist had made some interesting choices. The kneeling figure was straight out of a spaghetti western: neckerchief in place of a tie, hat in one hand, revolver at his side. The metal base he perched on jutted out into the points of a star. And on each point rested a different piece of Senator Duke Morris.
A few smears of blood marred the base, but other than that it was clean. Police tape cordoned off the area. Stairs led from the small platform to the State Capitol building, which currently housed a museum. A sign described it as neoclassical with Spanish influences, which explained the shade of salmon rarely seen on government facilities. At the top, a copper dome was dominated by a statue called Winged Victory. It was a strange choice for a body dump site.
As she waited for the crime scene techs to finish, Kelly pivoted. The capitol complex was sprawling. The statue was dead center in the middle of a pavilion, surrounded by modern buildings that currently housed the seat of power. Wide concrete paths penned in browning grass and scraggly bushes, all fighting to survive the onslaught of the desert sun. Late June, and at 10:00 a.m. it was already a hundred degrees. Kelly raised her arm, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow, and wished for the umpteenth time that the FBI dress code allowed shorts.
Agent Danny Rodriguez appeared at her elbow. “They’re still canvassing, but so far no one saw anything. The locals set up a tip line for information, they’re already flooded with people blaming everyone from the president to bin Laden.”
“Great,” Kelly sighed. A high profile murder always drew the crazies. “What about cameras? State Capitol building, there should be a surveillance net.”
“You’d think so, but thanks to budget cuts security was axed. They’ve got cameras focused on the main buildings, but nothing on the plaza. Guess they figured vandals were their biggest threat.”
“They figured wrong.” Kelly squinted against the glare. A two lane road marked by a center divider faced the pavilion. On the opposite side, a park stretched off into the distance. Too much to hope for an ATM or liquor store camera nearby. “Where were the guards?”
“They got two guys, but the Diamondbacks were playing the Yankees.” Rodriguez shrugged.
“So what, they were busy watching baseball?” Kelly eyed him. She was less than thrilled with her new partner. Rodriguez was just four years out of the Academy, young to have been assigned to the elite Behavioral Science Unit. Rumor had it his career was fast-tracked after he ratted out a former partner to OPR, the FBI’s internal affairs division. And Kelly had a sneaking suspicion he’d been assigned to spy on her. Ten months earlier one of her cases had turned into a debacle, and she knew some of the Bureau higher-ups were screaming for her head. Her boss had stood by her, so far at least. Being stuck with Rodriguez reminded her she was on shaky ground.
“Hey, don’t take it out on me. I’m a Mets fan,” Rodriguez joked. He shrunk slightly under her stare. “So what next, chief?”
Kelly watched the medical examiner gingerly lift one of Morris’s legs off the base of the statue. Senator Morris was popular in Arizona, but best known outside it for his draconian ideas about immigration reform. She’d seen him on the talk show circuit last week, railing about how America’s borders needed to be closed entirely. The cop that led her past the tape mentioned that Morris had a good shot at president, then mumbled something about wetbacks before she cut him off. A man like that had probably made a few enemies over the years. And by gruesomely displaying his remains, someone was clearly sending a message.
The leg slipped from the ME’s grasp and bounced along the ground as he fumbled for it. Kelly repressed the urge to roll her eyes. “Family has already been notified, right?”
Rodriguez nodded.
“Let’s go ask them who hated the senator enough to hack him up with a machete.”
Three
Madison shivered. The thin blanket they’d left her barely made a dent in the chill, and she swore it grew colder by the hour. She had no idea how long she’d been here. She usually told time by her cell phone but that had been taken along with everything else. She hoped it was already Monday, and that her family had realized she wasn’t at Cassidy’s house. A tear snaked down her face as she berated herself again for being such an idiot. Everyone knew that creepy older guys had MySpace pages; people weren’t always who they claimed to be. But she’d fallen for the whole Shane thing like a total moron. And now something horrible was going to happen to her.
The worst part was the waiting. She’d screamed for a while, becoming increasingly hysterical until the door had suddenly been thrown open. It was the driver, now dressed in jeans and a filthy sweatshirt. Madison hushed as he approached, shrinking back against the wall. She expected him to start tearing her clothes off, or worse, but he’d just injected her with something that knocked her out again. She’d learned pretty quickly that screaming brought the needle.
Madison couldn’t figure out what they were waiting for. So far no one had hurt her. In fact they brought her food and water regularly, and cleaned out the bucket as soon as she used it. And they’d left her a blanket. Though the light only changed slightly, she could now differentiate between night and day, the room brightened enough that she could make out the dim edges of her surroundings by sight, and the rest by touch.
She was in a ship of some sort, military judging by the dull gray paint job. The room was a steel box, ten-by-ten, with a cot in one corner and a bucket in the other. Other than that there was no rug, chair, or other decoration. She guessed she was being held in the bowels of the ship, she could hear the occasional slap of a wave against the hull. They didn’t appear to be moving, which she took as a hopeful sign. Maybe it was one of those white slavery rings, and they were planning to ship her off to Saudi Arabia. Madison shuddered at the thought. If she was lucky, they’d kidnapped her for ransom, confusing her with the daughter of someone rich. Maybe they’d realize the error and let her go—she’d only seen one guy’s face, and she’d promise not to tell if they just let her go home.
She had tried to pry the door open, hauling the cot frame across the room to use as a lever. But the minute she exerted some force, the sound of a chair scraping against the floor on the other side sent her scampering back. A moment later the door creaked open. The driver came in and glanced at the cot on its side, shook his head and gave her another shot. She hadn’t tried again. Escape was clearly hopeless: there were no windows, and a guard was stationed at the only exit. She was screwed.
The door suddenly banged open. The driver still didn’t speak, but something about the way he looked at her made Madison recoil. She protested as he crossed the room. Without breaking stride he yanked her up and flung her on the cot. She shrieked and clawed at him, “No, oh please God no…” then paused when he didn’t do anything.
He was holding something inches from her face. A flash, then he left the room.
She sat up, puzzled. He’d taken her photo, so maybe this was about ransom. She couldn’t decide if that made the situation better or worse. Madison pictured her parents’ reaction to the photo, and in spite of herself felt a spark of something like satisfaction. Served them right, the way they’d been ignoring her. If she ended up dying some sort of horrible death, it would be their fault.
She dropped back on the cot and crossed her hands behind her head. There would probably be a huge funeral if she didn’t make it out of here. Even her former best friend Jamie, who had totally screwed her over last year, would probably cry. Chris Dinsmore would be completely devastated that he’d never asked her out. They’d get a choir to sing “Ave Maria,” and hundreds of sobbing people would follow the casket through the streets. They’d all regret how they’d treated her.
But she really might not make it out of here. The guy had let her see his face, which wasn’t a good sign. And her parents didn’t have any money. The whole divorce had been a joke with them fighting over air miles; it wasn’t like they had a fortune hidden somewhere. And once the kidnappers realized that…she’d watched enough cop shows to know what would happen. At the thought she started to shake, teeth chattering. Madison drew the blanket up to her neck and tucked the corners under her heels so her whole body was covered. But it did nothing to stop the uncontrollable shivering.
Jake rolled his head to work out a kink in his neck. He didn’t generally mind flying, but the only seat available on such short notice had been in coach, and his body wasn’t designed for middle seats at the rear of the plane. His knees were jammed against the seat back in front of him, high enough that they prevented him from lowering the tray table. He’d tried to work on his laptop, but the kid on the aisle was playing a handheld video game that bleated nonstop, and the woman in the window seat issued a heavy sigh every few minutes. Another kid hung over the seat in front of him, staring at him while she picked her nose. All in all, the experience was making him seriously reconsider starting a family. Maybe he and Kelly could get a puppy and call it quits.
As they taxied to the gate, the flight attendant announced information for connecting flights, and the woman beside him grumbled something unintelligible. Jake hunched over, waiting for the slow file off the plane to proceed far enough for him to grab his carry-on. Once out of the Jetway he glanced at his watch and flipped open his cell phone.
“Frank? Yeah, sorry about that. My connecting flight at O’Hare was delayed. Where am I meeting you?”
Five minutes later, Jake was stationed in front of a bank of monitors. Frank, an old Agency buddy of Syd’s, shifted nervously at his elbow. Apparently he’d done something bad enough to get shuffled down the ranks of Homeland Security to airport detail. Jake couldn’t imagine what kind of heinous act would result in such a reassignment. Screwing the president’s dog, maybe. Hard to believe anything less would matter to the CIA.
“I can give you a few more minutes, man, but that’s it.” Frank’s eyes shifted from the screens to the door in a constant cadence, like he was watching a tennis match. “Shift change is in a half hour, and I got plans tonight.”
Jake jabbed a finger at the screen. “That’s her right there. Pause and rewind five minutes, then go forward slowly.”
Frank obliged, working the elaborate controls. A few other men were scattered around the room. After their initial appraisal they’d pointedly ignored Jake, which was fine by him. Although it didn’t instill much faith in airport security, he thought, watching them peck away at phones and BlackBerries, periodically casting a token glance at the monitors.
They watched in silence as Madison Grant made her way from a restroom near the gate to baggage claim. The angle changed as Frank shifted from camera to camera. Jake had to admit, he was good at this. Had the tapes cued up and ready to go when he arrived, and despite the employees, the technology itself was state-of-the-art, HD quality.
“Pretty girl,” Frank said. “What’d she do?”
Jake eyed him, not liking his tone. Maybe that’s what the CIA had found so offensive. Syd had fed Frank some backstory about a CI they were tracking. Not very plausible, but then Frank obviously wasn’t the type to ask questions when enough money changed hands. That level of pliability was also not a good sign for air travel, Jake thought. Maybe he should take the train home.
“Zoom in,” Jake said, as Madison approached someone. Big guy, looked yoked even from this angle, six-five easy. A cap obscured his eyes, and the hands holding the sign were large and meaty. Jake frowned as they exchanged a few words, then watched Madison follow him out of the building. The film switched to a line of cars stacked at the curb. Madison climbed into the rear of a sedan. Jake frowned as it drove off.
“Can you get me a printout of that guy, and of the plate?”
Frank shrugged. “Yeah, no problem. Technology is a beautiful thing.”
Jake didn’t respond. He leaned back against an empty console as Frank shuffled to the printer. So Madison Grant hadn’t been snatched, she’d been lured. Not surprising, he’d done plenty of dumb shit himself at that age. And whoever she was meeting must have money, curbside limo service didn’t come cheap. He’d have Syd run the plates, but he doubted that would give them anything. This smelled professional. Someone had spent enough time developing a relationship with the girl that she didn’t hesitate to jump on a plane. And if Syd was right about the dad’s job, there were high stakes involved. Jake shook his head. He was liking this less and less by the minute.
“Here you go.” Frank handed over a stack of pictures.
Jake flipped through them quickly. It didn’t look like there was enough of the guy’s face to run through facial recognition software, but there was a nice close-up of Madison. She was a pretty girl, light hair, big smile. She appeared sweet and trusting and more than a little naive. And right now, she was probably in some shit-hole, scared to death.
“Crap,” Jake said, shifting the photo to the bottom.
“What?” Frank asked.
“Nothing. Thanks for your help.” They shook hands and Jake walked out, blinking in the fluorescent glare. Even without looking at it he could still picture the photo. It was as if Madison was challenging him to try and forget about her. Jake tucked the stack into the outside pocket of his carry-on and headed for the car rental courtesy shuttle. He already knew there was no walking away from those eyes.
Four
Kelly adjusted the surgical mask over her mouth. Rodriguez was growing progressively paler as the medical examiner peeled the skin back from the senator’s face. And she had to admit, she was enjoying his discomfort. Kelly had sat in on more autopsies than she could count. It wasn’t the sort of thing you got used to, exactly, but she’d developed coping mechanisms. Plus this wasn’t a victim that inspired the warm fuzzies. Kids were still tough, she preferred to come in at the end for those results. But this guy, the more she found out about him the less she liked. Not that he deserved to be hacked up, but Duke Morris didn’t inspire a lot of sympathy.
The ME had arranged him on the table like a jigsaw puzzle. Morris’s feet were splayed out, arms and legs canted at angles that would have been impossible were his skeleton intact. A disassembled mannequin, Kelly thought. And an ugly one at that.
Under the glare of the overhead lights his skin was pale, suggesting he spent more time on the Beltway than in his home state. A protruding gut attested to plenty of pricey dinners, and his body was covered with an alarming amount of hair. His eyes and mouth were closed, and the hair plugs along his forehead stood out in stark relief. Kelly flipped open the file. On top was a professionally taken photo of Morris in front of an American flag, robust and strong, grinning obsequiously at his constituents. He possessed that air of smug satisfaction common to men who took money and power for granted.
“So officially, gunshot wounds were the cause of death?” Kelly finally asked. Over the years she’d learned that MEs came in all shapes, sizes and levels of ability. This one didn’t seem half-bad, but whether it was the pressure of working on such a high-profile corpse or his own habitual pace, this autopsy was taking a hell of a long time. She pulled back the sleeve of her surgical smock to check her watch: nearly 5:00 p.m. Her stomach growled, reminding her that they’d missed lunch.
The ME peered up at her. “Yes, I’d say so. Two to the back of the head, fired at a downward angle.”
“Execution style,” Rodriguez noted faintly.
“Any way to tell how long they waited before using the machete?” Kelly asked.
The ME shook his head. “No blood around those wounds, so he was definitely dead. That would put it anywhere from a few minutes after his heart stopped beating to several hours. Time of death was around midnight last night.”
Kelly nodded. That matched what they knew about the senator’s schedule. He’d attended a fundraising dinner at the Hilton in downtown Phoenix. His wife thought that afterward he’d gone to a private men’s club, but according to his credit card receipts Morris had actually whiled away those hours with a blonde from a local escort service. And not for the first time, according to both the lovely, gum-snapping Trixie and a trail of charges on his government-issue card. Kelly repressed a sigh—politicians, always so predictable. Apparently stamina wasn’t one of Morris’s strong suits. After spending less than half an hour in the room, hotel cameras captured him strolling out the lobby doors while adjusting his tie.
If the ME was right, Morris had been waylaid somewhere between the hotel lobby and the lot where his Cadillac was parked. And the next time he was seen, it was in pieces in front of the capitol building.
“I voted for him,” the ME said contemplatively as he draped the sheet over Morris’s body.
Kelly closed the file. “I hear he was a real pillar of the community. When will you have the full report?”
He shrugged. “A few hours. Initial tox screen shows he’d had a few drinks, but no illegal substances or anything that points to him being drugged.”
“Make sure to scan for everything and fax the results to this number.” Kelly handed him a card and left the room, tossing her mask and gloves in a bin.
“I’m kind of surprised you let the hooker go,” Rodriguez grumbled as they strolled back out to the lot.
“Why?” Kelly asked.
“She might have been in on it.”
Kelly tilted her head to the side. “But then why not drug him in the room and take him out the back stairs? No cameras there, and it would have been easier than trying to grab him on the street.”
Rodriguez shrugged noncommittally. “I’m just saying,” he said. “She smelled funny to me.”
“She’s a prostitute, they don’t usually smell very good,” Kelly replied wryly. She slid into the driver’s seat and glanced at him across the interior. Rodriguez’s face was still too round for his body, definitely a former fat kid who’d worked off the residual pudge in the gym. A few more years would probably take care of that. He wasn’t much taller than her, maybe five-nine, and his high cheekbones and light eyes pegged him as closer to a Spanish-Mexican lineage than a Mayan one. Based on his file she knew he was twenty-seven years old, had entered the Academy straight out of Princeton, and spent his childhood in Los Angeles. Aside from that, not much there. Which lent further credence to the OPR rumors. His constant second-guessing of her decisions was irritating. Plus, every time he called her chief it was getting harder not to smack him.
“So what next, chief?” he asked casually.
Kelly gritted her teeth. “Don’t call me chief.”
“You prefer boss?”
Kelly decided not to get drawn into a pissing match, dinner was coming up and she didn’t want to lose her appetite. “You make any progress on those gang files?”
Rodriguez shrugged. “The machete thing has been popular in L.A. for a few years, originally started by the Salvadoran gangs like MS-13. But then it caught on with everyone else—there have been incidents with immigrants from Sierra Leone, Somalia, Mexico. It’s a cheap weapon, and chopping someone into bits sends a pretty strong message. There weren’t any tags near the bodies, and according to the local Gang Task Force no specific group or gang is claiming responsibility. Which is kind of weird. Something high profile like this, you’d figure folks would be coming out of the woodwork to build their street cred.”
Kelly shook her head. “Probably not with something this big. A mayor, maybe, but a senator? They’d have to know the government would throw their whole weight behind this one. Death penalty for sure.” Which made her wonder again why she’d been assigned such an important case. Either the brass had more faith in her skills than they’d let on, or they knew this was a stinker. Still, it gave her a team of fifty agents doing everything from running down Morris’s staff history to canvassing door-to-door. With that kind of man power, she wasn’t complaining.
“Maybe ballistics will turn something up.”
“Doubtful. Shot with a .45, no casings, and you heard the ME—the bullets ricocheted around his skull, they’re a mess. If we find the gun we might get a match, but I’d be surprised if it turned up.” Surprisingly clean for a gang hit, Kelly mused, unless they were well organized or got extremely lucky. Now that they had a rough idea where Morris had been snatched, Kelly had a team of agents combing through video surveillance footage from 10:00 p.m. to midnight. That was their best shot, to get a grainy image of a license plate, anything that would provide a lead. Barring that, without a specific group claiming responsibility, her list of suspects ranged from environmentalists to illegals to single parents, all of whom Morris had recently managed to piss off.
Rodriguez’s cell buzzed an electronic version of some pop song. He flipped it open and barked, “Rodriguez!”
Kelly shifted irritably, waiting for him to finish. Until they got reports from the ME and the tape squad, there wasn’t much more they could do. Time to call it a night. She repressed a yawn and idly wondered whether room service would be available at the hotel. She’d love some Mexican food—she could almost taste a burrito dripping with cheese and guacamole.
Rodriguez snapped his phone shut, a triumphant expression on his face. “We got the gun.”
“What?” Kelly snapped awake.
“Phoenix P.D. got an anonymous tip today about a local MS-13 stash house. They raided it, turned up a stack of weapons. And one of them is a .45.”
“There are a lot of .45s out there. How do they know it was used in our killing?”
“Because it had Duke Morris’s name right on it.”
“What, literally? We inventoried his guns, everything was accounted for.” And what an armory it had been: the entire wall of Morris’s study was a display case with everything from handguns to paramilitary weapons. All registered legally, his wife hastened to point out, and licenses backed that up. Had the fighting ever gone house to house, Duke Morris would have been ready.
Rodriguez shook his head. “Not this one. Gift from a grateful lobbyist. It’s a beautiful 1911, bone handle with his name carved in it. Phoenix P.D. already checked with the wife, she said he probably hadn’t gotten around to registering it yet.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it just slipped his mind. And he was in the habit of taking it to fancy dinners?”
“This is Arizona, Agent Jones.” Rodriguez looked bemused. “Carrying concealed is considered a God-given right in these parts.”
“Remind me never to move here. Jesus.” Kelly furrowed her brow. And they wondered why the gun fatality rate was through the roof. “So whoever snatched him shot him with his own gun?”
“And then that gun turned up in an MS-13 stash house,” Rodriguez concluded. “MS-13 loves machetes. They’re questioning the gang members downtown, said we could observe if we like. Looks like this case might be open-and-shut after all.”
“Looks like it,” Kelly said. She punched the Phoenix Police Department’s address into their GPS and silently kissed her burrito goodbye. While she waited for the machine to calibrate their course, she nudged away the feeling that something was off. Hell, she was due for an easy one, Kelly reminded herself. And the less time wasted on a scumbag like Morris the better, as far as she was concerned. It made sense: a gang composed primarily of illegal immigrants targeted a loudmouth who was making their lives difficult. Still, she’d feel a lot better with a confession, or footage of them hauling an overweight senator into a van.
Randall Grant was clearly having a bad day, Jake thought as he took the man in. Honestly, he was having a hard time understanding what Syd saw in the guy. Tall and thin, slightly gawky-looking. Maybe under normal circumstances he had a sparkling personality.
But these were obviously not normal circumstances. He looked hollowed out, shoulders slumped, bags under his eyes, the portrait of the tormented father. They sat across from each other in a nondescript café on the outskirts of Livermore. Initially Jake was glad they weren’t meeting in one of the coffee franchises that dominated the Bay Area, but after a sip of espresso he’d changed his mind. Say what you will about Starbucks, he thought. At least they were consistent.
“So why don’t you want to get the FBI involved?” Jake asked. Randall had spent the first ten minutes rambling on about his daughter, including too much information about his divorce and the dance classes she used to take. None of it had direct bearing on the case, but he seemed unable to help himself. Jake wondered whose brilliant idea it was to trust Randall with government secrets, if he spilled this much personal information over a cappuccino.
Randall shook his head violently. “Can’t do it. The people who took her said they had someone high up in the Bureau, that they’d know if I called in outside help. And the minute I did, they’d kill her.”
“And you believed them?” Jake asked, skeptical. It sounded like an idle threat. What better way to keep parents from calling the authorities than to sow distrust of them?
“Did you ever hear of Operation Snow White?” Randall asked.
Jake shook his head. “Nope. Some sort of poisoned apple scheme?”
Randall glared at him through red-rimmed eyes. “I was hoping Syd would be here.”
“I’m sure you were. Unfortunately, I’m the one who needs convincing before we agree to help you.” Jake raised an eyebrow.
Randall sank an inch lower in his chair. “Operation Snow White was initiated by the Church of Scientology back in the seventies. They wanted to purge any records that cast them or L. Ron Hubbard in a bad light. By the time it was discovered, they’d placed operatives in over a hundred government agencies in more than thirty countries. It was the single largest infiltration of the U.S. government in history. They denied it, but I have it on good authority that the FBI was one of those agencies.”
“So, what? Scientologists took your daughter?” Jake had to fight an urge to laugh, he had a sudden mental image of Tom Cruise and John Travolta carting off a struggling girl in a duffel bag.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just saying, such a thing isn’t outside the realm of possibility.”
“Background checks are a lot more intensive post 9/11,” Jake pointed out. “It’s a whole different ball game now.”
Randall shrugged. “Who says their guy wasn’t already inside? Anyway, I couldn’t risk it.”
“And what exactly do they want from you, in exchange for her life?”
Randall rubbed his eyes with one hand. His jaw was stubbled with at least a day’s worth of growth. “I can’t tell you. It’s classified.”
“You’re considering handing whatever it is over to the kidnappers. So I don’t see the harm in telling me what they’re looking for.”
“Does it really matter?” Randall met his eyes sharply. “Would knowing help you find her?”
Jake shrugged. “Hard to say. I just don’t like going into a case blind. I’m kind of puzzled that they didn’t just snatch you. If you’ve got what they need, why take your daughter instead?”
“Because it’s not like I have it in my head. They need me to requisition things, pinpoint certain…materials…then gain access to transport records. And they want it done over a period of time.”
“So whatever they’re after, they want a lot of it, is what you’re telling me.”
“Essentially, yes.”
“But you can’t say what.”
Randall shook his head. Jake tilted back in his chair and eyed him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something off about this. “Remind me which department you’re with?”
Randall smiled slightly. “Advanced Defense Capabilities. But Syd would have told you that.”
“Right, Advanced Defense. Any chance that has something to do with nuclear defense? Or are you folks still working on Star Wars?”
“Like I said, Mr. Riley…”
“Right, I know, you really can’t say. And you did your postgrad work in physics?” Randall didn’t answer, dropping his gaze to the table. Jake watched him closely. “What makes you so sure that Madison was abducted? Maybe she ran off with this Shane guy she was e-mailing.”
Randall pushed a photo across the table, keeping his eyes averted. Jake held it up for a better look. It was a close-up shot of Madison Grant, eyes wide and terrified, printed off a JPG onto regular computer paper. She was lying down against a nondescript gray background.
“When did this come in?” Jake looked up sharply.
“This morning. It was in my work account.” Dr. Grant buried his face in his hands and rubbed his cheeks hard. “No one outside the facility has that e-mail address. And I mean no one, any personal exchanges are strictly forbidden.”
“But they had it. And that got you even more spooked,” Jake said. “I need you to forward this to me.” He considered for a moment before continuing, “This isn’t proof of life, you know.”
“What?” Randall looked puzzled.
“Proof of life. Usually in a kidnapping, they have the victim hold up a newspaper so we know they’re still alive, or were on the day the photo was taken.”
“So you’re saying what, that Madison might already be dead?” The anger in Randall’s voice was overlaid by fatigue.
“Not necessarily. But we need to push for that on the next contact. How have they been getting in touch with you?”
“They sent me a phone.” He fumbled in his pocket and dug out a generic cell, the disposable kind available in any drugstore.
Jake flipped it and pulled off the back panel: no SIM card, which meant it would be nearly impossible to clone. Someone was being very careful. “Funny they didn’t just text you the photo,” Jake mused, handing the phone back. “And I’m guessing hitting the call return button doesn’t work.”
“The number is blocked. I even had one of the lab guys see if they could trace it, but nothing. Maybe the phone company…”
Jake shrugged. “I’ll give it a shot, but chances are they’re calling you from the exact same thing, a prepaid cell that gets tossed when the minutes are gone. And if they’re really smart, they paid cash for it. Tough to even triangulate those.”
Randall slumped lower in his seat. One more bit of bad news and he’d be on the floor, Jake thought.
“So you’re saying there’s nothing you can do,” Randall mumbled.
“Nope, not saying that at all. But it sure as hell won’t be easy. And not knowing what they’re after doesn’t help.” Randall started to speak, but Jake waved him quiet. “We’ll leave that for now. What’s our time frame?”
“They said it would be in stages. I’m supposed to go to work, pretend everything is normal, and get them the information.”
“How do you get it out of the lab?”
“Flash drive.” A pained expression crossed Randall’s face. “To get it out undetected, I have to—”
Jake cut him off. “Trust me, that sounds like ‘need to know,’ and I’m not feeling the need right now. So you’re getting them something this week?”
“It might be information, or it could involve rescheduling some…things. They haven’t told me yet.”
Jake eyed Randall coldly. The guy was scratching at some ketchup that had congealed on the surface of the table. “So tell me, Doc. You’re a smart guy. Say you do everything they ask you to. I’m guessing you’ve got a pretty good idea what the end result would be, right?”
Randall paused, then nodded without lifting his eyes.
“All right. So what are we talking here? How bad could it be?”
Randall waited a long time before responding. His eyes swept the room, taking in all the people with their cardboard cups, laptops and cell phones. He slowly shook his head. “It depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Let’s just say they could do a lot of things with what I give them. All of which could result in significant loss of life.”
“What, hundreds of people?” When Randall didn’t respond, Jake raised his eyebrows and asked, “Thousands?”
“Maybe. That’s why you need to find Madison soon. Because I can’t allow them to get their hands on what they’re looking for. No matter what.”
In spite of himself Jake was shaken by the finality in Randall’s eyes. If it came down to it, he was willing to sacrifice his daughter. And the only thing standing between him and that outcome was Jake and Syd. Bad odds, any way you looked at it. Jake cleared his throat. “So. Looks like I better get to work, huh?”
Dante Parrish ran a hand over his bald scalp, the stubble reassuring against his palm. No need to be nervous, everything was going better than expected. Still, he always had to gather himself before opening the large mahogany door. Most people would find that surprising: at six-five, two-fifty, Dante wasn’t easily intimidated. But Jackson Burke could make him quake.
Dante rapped twice with his huge knuckles, then turned the knob. Inside was the kind of office he used to think only existed in movies: plush carpets, fancy paintings on the walls, sweeping views of downtown Phoenix. An enormous desk dominated the room, mahogany, like the door. Aside from that and two small armchairs, there were no other furnishings. As always, Dante was momentarily awed by the fact that somehow he had ended up here. His reflection was cut short when the man behind the desk slammed down the phone. In spite of himself, Dante jumped.
Jackson’s cheeks were flushed, although it was hard to tell whether he was angry or excited. In Dante’s opinion, the most remarkable thing about him was that until he opened his mouth, you wouldn’t look twice at him. Brown hair, gray eyes, just under six feet tall. Completely average-looking. But then he started talking. Jackson had one of those voices that could “charm a cat off a fish wagon,” as Dante’s mother used to say. Within ten minutes of meeting him, Dante had been willing to lay down his life for the man.
“So how are things on the front?” Jackson swung around the desk, propping himself on the edge as he motioned for Dante to take a seat.
“All good so far, sir,” Dante said, picking his words carefully. He’d never made it past eighth grade, and every time they spoke he felt that disparity keenly. Not that he was stupid, just a different kind of smart. The kind of smart Jackson could use, like he always said.
“Excellent. Saw the news today, looks like our ducks are falling in a row.” Jackson raised his hands and mimicked firing a gun, then bellowed a laugh. Dante joined him.
Jackson cut it off abruptly. “Did you see the new census reports?”
Dante shook his head, and Jackson looked mildly disappointed. He tossed a folded paper across the desk and pointed at a headline halfway down the page. “See? Says right there that there haven’t been this many illegals since the 1920s. And back then they were mostly white. Ten more years of this, Spanish will be our first language. Not on my watch, no way no how.”
Dante nodded in agreement. “We won’t let it happen, sir.”
“Damn straight we won’t. So I want you to personally stay on top of this Grant thing, make sure there are no screwups. I’m counting on you, Dante. Don’t let me down, boy.”
Dante saluted. Jackson acknowledged it with a nod, then turned to face the view. Dante was halfway to the door when Jackson spoke again. Without glancing back, he said, “Never forget, this is a war we’re fighting.”
“I won’t forget, sir.”
Five
Kelly gazed through the glass wall of the observation room. Four MS-13 gang members were arrested in the house raid. Despite the fact they’d been armed to the teeth, SWAT managed to extract them without any bloodshed. Kelly pictured the four of them scattered through the house, three on the couch, one in the kitchen making nachos in a surprisingly domestic gesture. The confusion and disarray as flash bang grenades followed battering rams through both front and back doors. The four of them on the ground, eyes blinded, ears ringing, hands being cuffed. She almost envied the SWAT team. Their goal was simple: get in, get your guys, get out. What she dealt with was much messier.
She examined the putative leader of the gang, Marco Guzman. He was older than she’d expected, maybe late twenties, a testament to his survival skills. Gang tats rode up his neck and down his arms, framing a carefully buttoned blue-and-white shirt. Close-cropped hair and a face marked by a trim goatee and hooded eyes. Clearly Guzman was no stranger to interrogation rooms, he looked right at home.
His lawyer sat beside him. Despite the fact that he looked like a teenager, according to the local cops he’d developed a reputation for himself as the local MS-13 consigliere.
Kelly gathered herself. A successful outcome for this interview was highly unlikely. She was dealing with a seasoned criminal and an adept lawyer. Three hours of grilling by Phoenix P.D., and Guzman had only admitted to knowing there were steak knives in the house. The stacks of guns had apparently escaped his attention. Still, she had to give it a shot.
She entered with Rodriguez at her heels. She wasn’t crazy about having him sit in, but he spoke Spanish, which would come in handy.
“Good evening, Mr. Guzman.”
“Call me Psycho,” he said. His voice was different from what she’d been expecting, smooth with a slight trace of an accent.
Rodriguez rattled something off in Spanish. Guzman leered at him and shot back a response.
“Let’s stick to one language, shall we?” Kelly said.
“He was asking what my momma was thinking, naming me that,” Guzman said, smiling at her. He had probing eyes, and Kelly leveled her gaze to meet his. “I warned him not to mention my momma again, or—”
The lawyer said something sharp. Guzman clammed up, sucking his teeth loudly.
“It says here your momma named you Marco,” Kelly said, one eyebrow raised. “Seems like a perfectly good name.”
Guzman shrugged. “So call me that. Don’t make no difference to me, Roja.”
Kelly fought a flush over his reference to her red hair. “I’m FBI Special Agent Jones, this is Agent Rodriguez. We have some questions about one of the items found in your house.”
Guzman shrugged. “Not my house, Agent Jones.”
Without glancing up from his BlackBerry the lawyer said, “As my client informed the police, he was visiting that house today solely to watch a baseball game. He has no knowledge of any weapons being stored there.”
“No? Hard to believe, when there were handguns on the table behind him in the living room.”
“You know what’s psycho, is you showing up,” Guzman said. His lawyer threw him a hard glance, but he ignored it. “ATF, sure, but you got no business with guns.”
“This one, we do.” Kelly slid a photo of Duke Morris’s gun across the table.
He glanced at it. “Looks like a chica’s. Yours?”
Kelly shook her head. “No, Mr. Guzman. That gun belonged to a murder victim.”
He shoved the photo back across the table. “Never seen it.”
“You sure? Because it was used to kill a U.S. senator this morning,” Rodriguez said.
The lawyer’s head snapped up, as if he were a retriever who had just caught a scent.
Kelly tried to conceal her irritation. She had hoped to lull Guzman into complacency, so he might slip up and say more than he should. Now that Rodriguez had revealed their endgame, there was no way he would give them anything. “Got your attention now?” Kelly asked.
“I’d like a minute to confer with my client.” The lawyer said with finality.
She tried anyway. “Mr. Guzman, Senator Duke Morris was murdered late last night. Ballistics indicate that his own gun, this gun, was used in the killing. And then it turned up in your stash house.”
Guzman just shook his head. His eyes had cloaked over, dark and impenetrable. Shark eyes. “Don’t know what you’re on about, Roja. I was watching a game.”
“MS-13 likes to use machetes, don’t they, Marco? That’s your calling card. Morris was hacked to bits—”
“This interview is officially over.” The young lawyer stood, pushing his chair back so violently it tipped over. The noise was loud in the small room.
Kelly and Rodriguez exchanged a glance. The lawyer couldn’t force them to leave, but chances were he’d put a muzzle on his client and they wouldn’t get anything regardless. Kelly gathered up the file and motioned for Rodriguez to follow her.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” he grunted as the door closed behind them.
Kelly threw him a look. She wouldn’t chew Rodriguez out with a suspect in hearing range, but once they were alone he was in for it. She shrugged and said, “I wasn’t expecting much.”
“Shame they couldn’t pull any prints off the weapon.”
Kelly didn’t answer, her eyes still fixed on the door. The lack of forensic evidence bothered her. She didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with gangs, but assumed they weren’t generally known for their attention to detail. “Did they track the tip about the stash house?”
Rodriguez cocked his head. “I don’t know. Why would they?”
“It would be good to know if it came in from a concerned citizen, a rival gang, or someone else. Maybe even a former member who’s currently on the outs. Someone like that could prove helpful.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Rodriguez looked dubious. “I heard the only way out of MS-13 is a casket. But I could ask around.”
“Great.” Kelly looked at him pointedly. “The sooner the better, I’m thinking.”
“What, now?”
“No time like the present.”
“What about this?” He jerked his head toward the interview room.
“I’ve got this under control,” Kelly said. “Like you said, not much here anyway.”
“All right,” Rodriguez grumbled. “I’ll try to track it down.”
“Keep me posted.” She watched Rodriguez slump away. Kelly had worked with a motley assortment of partners over the years. Based on his bad attitude and lack of initiative, she was consigning Rodriguez firmly to the bottom of the pile.
Of course, when they first worked together it took time for Kelly to trust Jake, so maybe there was hope for Rodriguez yet. Although Jake’s weakness was a cavalier attitude coupled with reckless disregard for authority. Rodriguez seemed just plain lazy.
Kelly realized she was fingering her engagement ring. She bit back a smile, picturing Jake on one knee in their hotel room, cobbling together a proposal after she accidentally discovered the ring. She hadn’t seen him in a few weeks. He was busy moving into his new office space, and she’d been tied up by a case in Florida. If this lead panned out, they might be able to spend the holiday weekend together. Kelly spun the ring around her finger with her thumb. It still felt oddly heavy, strange that after ten months she hadn’t adjusted to the weight of it.
The door to the interview room opened and Kelly quickly tucked her hand in her pocket. The lawyer poked his head out, saw her standing there and ducked back inside. After directing some final instructions in Spanish at Guzman, he stepped out and closed the door.
“So I guess we’re done in there,” Kelly said.
The lawyer’s eyes flicked to her. He was slight, maybe five-six. His suit was well cut but not flashy. Aside from a simple watch with a ragged leather band, he wore no jewelry. Whatever the gang was paying him, he didn’t spend it on clothes and accessories. He saw her examining him and grinned. “You like the watch? It was my father’s.”
He held it out. The battered face was so stained by time it was hard to distinguish the numbers.
“Nice,” she said.
He laughed. “You’re so polite, Agent Jones. It’s a piece of junk. But it helps me remember why he came here, why so many still come every day. Reminds me there’s nothing back there for me but junk.”
“Oh.” Kelly wasn’t sure how to respond, the intimacy in his tone made her uncomfortable.
He leaned in and said, “Here’s the thing about Guzman. He’s no genius, but a gun that killed a senator? Even he isn’t stupid enough to leave something like that lying around.”
“And yet he did,” she pointed out. “Unless you expect me to believe they were just enjoying the big-screen TV.”
The lawyer’s mouth twisted in a smile. “I have no comment on that, outside of what I’ve already told you. But the gun you mentioned is something of a special case.”
“Really,” Kelly said drily.
“Hypothetically, let’s say that particular weapon was brought in by someone else.”
“Who?”
“Some wannabe named Emilio. They tolerate him as an errand boy, but he’s not Salvadoran, so…” The lawyer shrugged, puckering the shoulder fabric of his suit.
“And he gave them Morris’s gun? Am I supposed to believe he shot him, too?”
The lawyer shrugged. “Maybe he thought it would get him initiated.”
Kelly narrowed her eyes. “Or maybe your client clued in to how serious this is, and he’s trying to deflect the blame on someone outside the gang.”
“Yeah, but a senator?”
“A senator who was avidly anti-immigration and was raising a lot of fuss in the media about closing the borders. That wouldn’t be good for their business, if I’m not mistaken.” Kelly knew that the gangs’ lifeblood was the stream of guns and drugs from the south. More stringent legislation might have made smuggling trickier.
The lawyer shrugged again. “Hey, I’d be skeptical, too. But I gotta say, I know these guys.” He leaned closer, and Kelly smelled onion and something spicy on his breath. “They’ll go to the mats if they think another gang is infringing on their territory, but getting political? They’re not big CNN fans, you know? I bet half of them couldn’t name the president, never mind some senator.”
“Maybe they were under orders from someone else. MS-13 is a national organization, right?”
The lawyer shifted his briefcase to the other hand. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said carefully. “But if it was, most groups would probably be individual cells. Kind of like al Qaeda. Crediting them with a national mission statement, something on this organizational level…” He flicked his eyes down the hall as a sheriff approached, then back to Kelly. “Let’s just say if that’s the case, what you’re dealing with is something entirely new.” He lowered his voice and said, “And I haven’t heard anything about it. Trust me, I would have.” He flashed a smile and shook her hand. “Adios, Agent Jones. Hopefully next time we meet under cheerier circumstances.”
Kelly watched him stroll away before turning back to the interrogation room. Through the small window she watched Guzman carve his name on the underside of the table with a ballpoint pen. The lawyer was right; “Psycho” didn’t appear to be a criminal mastermind. Which didn’t eliminate the possibility that someone else was pulling the strings.
She headed back to the squad room. On the way Kelly wondered who might have gotten an MS-13 “cell” involved in a killing like this, and what they hoped to accomplish. If anything, this worked against their goals. In the wake of Morris’s death, anti-immigration groups were organizing rallies and right-wing talk show hosts were treating it like Christmas and the Rapture all tied up in one. If someone had done this to shut Duke Morris up, they’d made a terrible error. Dead, his voice was carrying louder than ever.
JUNE 29
Six
Randall Grant hunched over the steering wheel, drawing deep breaths to steady himself. These past few days had been hell, starting with the frantic, incoherent phone call from Audrey, drunk as usual. He could hear Bree yelling in the background and assumed it was one of their usual fights, that he was being called in to arbitrate. But when he’d finally puzzled out what she meant, her broken voice wailing, “She’s gone!” over and over, a cold ball settled in his stomach. They’d carried through on their threat, snatching the most vulnerable member of his family.
The impotence was the worst part. After hanging up he’d stormed around the apartment in a rage, fantasizing about bursting into rooms and mowing down the people who took his little girl. By midnight he’d come to his senses and sat down to weigh his options. His division answered directly to the Department of Homeland Security, one call to them and the full resources of the U.S. government would have been mustered. The problem was, in that scenario he’d be placed on full lockdown. Every conversation would be monitored, and no movement would go unnoticed. In the grand scheme of things, it was in the DHS’s best interest to protect what he knew. The loss of a teenage girl would be tragic, but not their first priority. He’d be hauled off to a safe location while Madison had a gun to her head. With Syd, at least they had a shot at recovering her, before…
Randall stopped himself from picturing her broken and dead and God knows what else. And it would be his fault, her blood on his hands forever. He could still see Madison’s stricken expression when he explained that she’d be relocating to New York, and he’d see her when he could. Which hadn’t been as frequently as he’d hoped, not after the promotion. It had been over a month since his last visit, and that one had been disastrous. For a long, awkward weekend they all barely spoke. He’d chosen activities that were far too young for them, he realized belatedly, trips to the Museum of Natural History and the USS Intrepid. He’d lost touch with what teenage girls enjoyed. On Sunday night he’d secretly been relieved to drop them off. Randall cringed at the memory.
He was such an idiot. He should have stuck it out, just a few more years and both girls would have been in college. Then he and Audrey could have gone their separate ways without all this drama. But it was far too late for that.
Randall squared his shoulders and climbed out of the car carrying the travel mug. All his work materials were on-site. After a spying debacle a few years ago, the facility had increased security measures exponentially. Now anyone with access to highly classified material was forced to work in two-man teams. Not only were they supposed to keep an eye on each other’s computers and filing systems, they were actually expected to take a piss together. Fortunately the scientist he was paired with had a prostate problem. After a few awkward weeks at the urinals, Barry asked if Randall would mind ignoring that particular rule. Which made acquiring the first part of what the kidnappers wanted much easier than it should have been. It was probably why they targeted him in the first place.
The lab complex was sprawled across acres, dozens of nondescript buildings painted a muted brown that melded into the barren landscape. It was a desolate section of the East Bay. The town proper had sprung up to service the facility, rows of coffee shops and cafés that closed at nightfall, leaving only a few neon-lit bars blinking desolately in the darkness. Randall had accepted a job here straight out of MIT, back when he and Audrey were newlyweds. The salary had been far above what any university was offering, the work promised to be groundbreaking with nearly limitless funding, and they could afford a house nearby. At the time it had been a no-brainer. Looking back, he wished to God he’d accepted that position at Berkeley, where at worst he’d be responsible for the lives of a few lab rats.
At the entrance to the facility Randall nodded to the guard and held his ID card up to the scanner. After a brief pause it buzzed, and he strode down a long fluorescent hallway. The security became progressively tighter—to get into the inner sanctum, as people jokingly referred to it, he’d have to pass palm and retinal scans. Rumor had it that one of the other departments was working on a blood analysis machine. Randall hoped he wouldn’t still be here when going to work involved a daily needle prick.
Once in his office he relaxed. Barry wasn’t there, but an identical travel mug on his desk issued steam. Which meant he was already taking bathroom break number one, of dozens to come. A guy with prostate problems should cut out the caffeine, Randall thought as he waited for his computer to boot up.
A stream of numbers flew on-screen, coordinates pinpointing the location of loose nuclear fissile material worldwide. He and Barry had spent months cataloging this data as the U.S. government belatedly dealt with the fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as the mass amounts of radioactive waste produced by everything from medical equipment to offshore drilling. It was staggering that no one had recognized this potential threat until 9/11 jarred everyone’s consciousness. And now Randall was part of a team that tracked radioactive waste, ensuring that it ended up at the appropriate facility, either to be safely disposed of or reutilized. Which in reality made him a glorified administrator with a Ph.D. in radiation physics.
Randall shook his head, unscrewed the base of the coffee mug, and removed the flash drive. He hit a few buttons to call up the data.
Initially there had been a fuss over the mugs, too. A memo had gone out insisting that everyone consume company coffee from the canteen. Based on the outcry that followed, they might as well have suggested drinking tainted Kool-Aid. Getting between scientists and their espresso was a fatal error, and in the end the brass made a concession: as long as everyone brought in standardized, company-issued mugs, outside coffee was fine. Mugs that apparently had been all too easy for someone to manipulate.
Randall glanced over his shoulder before popping the flash drive in the port. The download would only take a minute, but he was antsy. There had been a close call yesterday, and he got the feeling Barry knew something was up. He’d been struggling to act normal, but it was just that, a struggle. He’d blamed it on lack of sleep due to residual stress from the divorce. A lifelong bachelor like Barry didn’t question that.
An icon popped up. Randall quickly slipped the flash drive out, inserting it into the mug’s base just as the door clicked open.
Barry squinted myopically at him. “Everything okay?” he asked hesitantly. His stringy hair was wet where he’d combed it over his bald spot, and his sweater had a mustard stain near the collar.
“Fine, Barry. Just didn’t sleep well again.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear it.” Barry shuffled to the desk beside his. In a space that small it was like being crammed in a cockpit together. “Did you see they moved up the date of the Texas shipment?”
Randall’s ears pricked up. “I didn’t have time to look at it yet. Any idea why?”
Barry shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe there’s another storm coming.”
“Hurricanes are usually in the late summer and fall, Barry. It’s June.”
“Right, right,” Barry mumbled, staring at his monitor.
Randall had to fight the urge to throttle him: an IQ of 165, and he was useless unless you were discussing primordial radionuclides. Sometimes Randall suspected they were both being punished for some transgression. Initially, he’d taken this assignment as a break from researching, to give himself time to recover from the divorce. They’d given him a big speech, too, about serving his country, blah, blah, blah…
Thankfully they had almost finished laying the groundwork, and once that was accomplished the day-today monitoring would be handled by computers. Of course, there was a good chance he’d be under arrest for high treason by then.
Randall tapped some keys and a map of the United States appeared, with different-colored dots identifying which materials were being stored where. He zeroed in on the spots off the Gulf Coast, offshore drilling rigs that used radiography cameras to analyze lengths of pipe. As newer cameras came online, older ones were retired, along with their low level radioactive source material. As he watched them blink, the ball in his stomach sunk an inch lower. This was just what the kidnappers were looking for, the right materials in the correct amount. And they were due to be transported imminently. Suddenly their timing made sense; they had known, somehow, that this shipment was coming. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise, and as a scientist he eschewed belief in chance.
Randall chewed his lip. Part of his job involved overseeing the transit of loose materials from one facility to another. He was in charge of constructing a safe route skirting all densely populated areas and providing the most defensible means of transportation. The kidnappers wanted him to change that route at the last minute to divert iridium-192 sources. Randall gritted his teeth as the dots flickered at him. He’d have to pray that Madison was found before the shipment was set in motion.
Madison struggled with the back of the console, prying it open as carefully as possible. She’d managed to work loose a metal coil from her cot, fashioning it into a makeshift screwdriver. But the tiny screws were proving tricky to undo, and she was panicked by the possibility of stripping one. For this to work, she needed the console more or less intact.
After repeated sessions of begging, she had finally convinced Lurch (as she’d christened the driver) to dig through her luggage for a fleece jacket, her face medication, and her Nintendo DS Lite. Madison now understood why prisoners went nuts in isolation. She almost looked forward to when Lurch cracked the door and slid in a tray of food, or came to empty her bucket. If she wasn’t mistaken he was lingering, too, and by her calculation there had been two straight days without a shot. When he opened the door she jabbered at him, a steady stream of information about her life, her old friends, her parents, anything to get him to stay an extra minute. Despite the fact he still hadn’t spoken to her, Madison was pretty sure he understood English. Maybe she was flattering herself, but if he was forced to kill her, now at least he might feel badly about it.
But Madison wasn’t counting on his generosity continuing. A few times she’d heard a low murmur outside the door, Lurch talking to at least one other person. He definitely wasn’t the brains behind this operation. And if whoever was in charge found out about the DS Lite, chances were it would be snatched back and the needle would return.
The final screw popped loose and rolled away. She scrambled after it, trapping it with her palm. There was a bang on the other side of the door, then the bolt scraped. Lurch jutted his head in, a frown marring his features.
Madison held the console in both palms, leaning back against the end of the cot. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “What? Did you miss me?”
He scanned the room, paying particular attention to the floor. After a minute, he grunted and closed the door. As the bolt slid back into place, Madison released a sigh. The screws were digging into her palms, and she tucked them in her jeans pocket. If she’d known she was going to be in the same clothes for days on end, she would’ve worn a sweatsuit on the plane. These were her nicest pair of jeans, but nice didn’t exactly equal comfort. She waited several beats, straining her ears. She knew Lurch was probably rethinking the decision to give her the console, and she needed to move quickly on the off chance he would take it back.
Unlike her father and Bree, she hadn’t gotten the physics gene. Every time she tried to wrap her head around certain theories, it felt like she was being sucked into a black hole. However, from a relatively early age it had been clear that she had exceptional mechanical skills. At six she’d been able to fix most of her friends’ electronic toys when they stopped working, and every year she’d been the runaway winner of the state science fair.
Madison and her father had even built a robot once. She’d been the youngest participant ever in Robot Wars, a series of steel cage matches between remote-controlled robots that ended when there was only one left in the ring. The two of them drove to San Francisco for the competition. They’d named their entry “Maxwell’s Law” (her father’s idea). They had to settle for second place after their robot’s rotary saw fell off in the final round. But her father had been so proud, he told everyone that his daughter had built the machine herself out of scrap metal, he’d hardly been involved.
Madison was startled to find a tear slipping down her cheek. She wiped it away, agitated, and focused on the task at hand. She’d almost left the console at home, not wanting Shane to know that she was secretly hooked on “The Legend of Zelda.” Thank God she’d decided there was only so much a person could sacrifice for true love. She wondered if Lurch had been the one e-mailing her, pretending to be Shane. At the thought she started cracking up, and bit her lip to stifle the giggles. She didn’t want him poking his nose back in, not now.
Handheld consoles had come a long way from when she got her first Game Boy. Thankfully, Lurch didn’t appear to know that. This particular model had been a birthday gift from her dad, a next generation prototype that wouldn’t even be on the market for another year. Like all the newer systems, it had Wi-Fi capabilities for multiplayer online games. Of course, an accessible wireless network had been too much to hope for. She’d done a search immediately, but the only one in radius was secured and she was no hacker. She’d made a halfhearted stab at passwords to amuse herself, typing in Addams Family, Lurch, and, with a pang, Shane’s girl. No luck, she’d need the proverbial million monkeys tapping away for years to crack it. And she didn’t have that kind of time.
Fortunately, there was one more feature of the unit that Lurch had overlooked: a GPS transmitter. It was an add-on that worked by comparing the signals received from several satellites, then running a complex set of computations to triangulate the results and produce a set of coordinates. Unfortunately, the thick metal hull of the ship prevented access to most satellite signals. Luckily Madison had spent the past few months studying an alternative.
In 2006, when GPS devices started glutting the commercial market, the U.S. government became concerned that military receivers might be lost in the barrage of white noise. The military relied upon a GPS system for navigation and targeting, and any compromise of that system could prove catastrophic. To protect themselves they launched new satellites, with “boosted” signals that were only available to the Department of Defense. Madison’s last science fair project had been disqualified, thanks to her claims to have tapped into the new satellite systems. At a conference with the school principal, her father had explained that scientifically speaking there was no way she could have done it, and her mother had grounded her for a month. The principal still gave her funny looks whenever she passed him in the hall. They all thought she was trying to get attention, still reacting to the divorce.
Well, yeah, maybe she had been. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t done it. After conducting experiments with her iPhone all over the city, Madison discovered a rogue signal. Honestly it hadn’t been all that hard, just time-consuming. And once she had that signature down, all she had to do was find it again.
If she could tap into it and recalibrate her DS Lite’s GPS to send a signal rather than receive it, maybe someone would be able to track her down. She just hoped one of her moron family members remembered the console.
Her tongue jutted out the side of her mouth as she concentrated, squinting in the dim light, carefully manipulating the interior components. Madison was careful to touch the plastic exterior each time to ground it. She’d have to reconfigure the power settings, too—it would be a race against battery life at the end. She just hoped someone out there would be listening.
Seven
Jake forced himself to tear off a bite of turkey sandwich. He was trying to eat healthier these days, a losing battle for a guy reared on steak and lots of it. All those months of setting up the new business had kept him out of the gym, and he recently realized with alarm that his six-pack was morphing into a two-pack. Kelly had teased him, grabbing his middle and riffing about the slow march of time and declining metabolisms. Well, screw that. Jake Riley wasn’t giving in without a fight. Even if that meant switching to light beer and turkey.
He was in one of the ubiquitous sandwich factories lining the Berkeley campus, trying to get his mouth around a sandwich so stuffed with sprouts they should have named it the “Colon-Cleanser.” The place buzzed with students grabbing a bite between classes. Their tie-dyed shirts and Birkenstocks reminded him of when he first met Kelly, during an ugly case at a university. At least in the end something good had come out of it.
As he took in the fresh faces he experienced a pang: Madison Grant wasn’t much younger than these kids, another two years and she might have been among this crowd. He hoped to God she’d still get the chance, but based on the day he’d had so far, things were looking bleak.
The pressure was compounded by the fact that if Randall was telling the truth, more than just Madison’s life hung in the balance. Jake preferred to think he was just blowing smoke up their asses, trying to make sure they did everything possible to find his daughter. But a small voice in the back of his head argued that Randall was scared enough to risk his job and reputation by trusting them rather than Homeland Security. The lab he was working in had produced most of the major advances in military hardware in the past century, along with biochemical weapons that could wipe out civilization as we know it. And whoever had stolen Madison Grant was a pro: not only were they good at covering their tracks, there were almost none to speak of.
Syd and what he referred to as her “shadow network” had diligently run down every lead, no matter how tenuous. There was a moment of excitement when the license plate trace turned up a limo company based in South San Francisco. But that died down fifteen minutes later, when Syd got a faxed copy of the stolen car report. And ten minutes after that they learned that the final destination of the Lincoln Town Car had been a chop shop in Oakland. It was currently being returned to the limo company owner in pieces.
Jake had immediately headed over to the chop shop, driving through a section of Oakland that closely resembled war-torn Beirut. A few guys were hard at work on an Escalade. It took a few hundred to convince them he wasn’t a cop, and a few hundred more to find out where they got the car. If they were telling the truth, when they showed up at work three nights ago it was sitting in front of their garage, keys in the ignition, like a gift from the gods. And they knew better than to question it.
Syd had considered calling in a favor, trying to get the remaining parts dusted for prints, but Jake convinced her otherwise. They’d probably end up with the oily imprints of a few grand theft auto felons. Whoever possessed the car before them was too careful to be that sloppy, it had probably been detailed inside and out before materializing in Oakland. Syd was running a background check on everyone at the limo company in case it was an inside job, but so far they’d turned up clean. So he was sitting here choking down a sandwich while he waited for Syd to call.
Jake rubbed his face. They had two leads left to follow: the shadowy image of the driver’s face, and the mythical Shane’s e-mail account. At the moment he wasn’t holding out much hope for either. Facial recognition software was notoriously unreliable even when you had a good image to work with, and good didn’t describe what they had. As for the e-mail address, computers weren’t his thing, but he knew that any hacker worth his salt could bounce messages through dozens of servers worldwide, rendering them untraceable.
Jake’s phone buzzed and he tossed the sandwich back on its biodegradable plate, strewing a comet trail of sprouts. “Hey, Syd. What have you got?”
There was a pause before she replied, “Not much, I’m afraid. All the texts trace back to a disposable phone. I managed to track down its batch number. It was sold to a Walgreens distributor in the Bay Area, but from there it could have gone to a dozen different stores. And whoever purchased it probably paid cash.”
“So the number kept switching?” Jake asked. “Why wouldn’t that make Madison suspicious?”
He could almost see her shrugging. “Don’t know. She’s a bright girl—according to Randall she’s some sort of mechanical genius—but he must have given her a rational explanation.”
“What about the e-mails?”
“Same deal. Bounced all over the damned place, last location we got was somewhere on the Caspian coast.”
“Which country?”
“Turkmenistan.”
Jake’s brow furrowed. Could this be the link? Maybe some foreign power stole the kid to force Randall to share intel. It would certainly explain the level of organization, and the deep pockets. Syd’s voice interrupted his train of thought. “What’re you thinking?”
“You worked that part of the world, right?”
There was a lengthy pause. Officially they’d decided not to discuss past cases unless absolutely necessary. As far as Jake was concerned, this was the exception to that rule. Apparently Syd agreed, because after a moment she said, “I was stationed in Tbilisi for a few months.”
“That’s a little off the grid, isn’t it?”
“Way off the grid. Officially we were afraid that some of the decommissioned nuclear arms weren’t being appropriately monitored and might fall into the hands of rogue nations. Unofficially, I was being punished for not sleeping with my boss when he asked me to.”
Jake decided to ignore that last part. “What do you think? Any chance we’re dealing with a group that’s trying to get hold of some nukes?”
Syd went so long without saying anything, Jake was concerned he’d lost the connection. “Hello?”
“I’m still here. I’m just thinking.”
“Ah, Christ. You know something,” Jake said. “What the hell, Syd—”
“Nothing specific, I just…I’ve got some idea what Randall has been working on these past few months. And it might tie in with that.”
An image of the driver’s face flashed through Jake’s mind. Big white guy, could definitely be Slavic. “Great. I agreed to take this case, against my better instincts, as a favor to you. And you keep me in the dark. That’s it.” He resolutely pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “Call Randall, tell him I’m getting on a plane. You want to help him, come out here yourself.”
“Jake, wait—”
“Nope. I’m done, Syd.”
“All right.”
Jake paused at the door to the sandwich shop, rental car keys in hand. It wasn’t like Syd to give in so easily. “Bullshit.”
“What?”
“I don’t believe for a minute you’re letting me off the hook.”
“No, you’re right. I promised that the minute it smelled bad, you could back down. Besides, if this Turkmenistan thing is the real deal, I can follow up just as well from here. The Bay Area part of this operation seems dead in the water anyway. Just because she got off a plane there doesn’t mean anything, she could be on a container ship halfway to China by now.”
Jake had thought the same thing, but there was something about her tone he didn’t trust. Besides, if they’d wanted Madison on a container ship, it would have been just as easy to yank her from the East Coast. Even easier, maybe. The truth was that despite his posturing, he wasn’t ready to ditch Madison Grant yet. He walked to the car, as if physically calling Syd’s bluff. “Okay. So I’ll head to the airport.”
“Perfect. Oh, one thing…”
Jake grinned. He knew it wouldn’t be that easy. “Yeah?”
“Randall’s getting nervous, he’s starting to think she might already be dead.”
“Yeah, well. He has a point.”
“Right, I know. I was just wondering if you could stop by his place and talk him down from the ledge. Give him some tips on what to say next time, how to ask for proof of life. That sort of thing.”
Jake repressed a snort at the thought of Randall Grant attempting to negotiate proof of life on his own. “You’re a piece of work, you know that, Syd?”
“What?” she asked innocently.
“I’ll hang around to make sure Randall doesn’t screw this up. But if I get the sense that either of you is jerking me around again, that’s it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Syd said smugly. “You’re out of there, I know.”
“Next time I’ll mean it.”
“Sure you will. Oh, and Jake? Give Randall a big kiss for me.”
“Go to hell. And keep running that facial recognition software. All that bragging about your tentacles extending everywhere, and so far you’ve given me a crappy chop house.”
“Hey,” Syd said, wounded. “That was a good lead. I had to pay off a slew of people for that one.”
“A name, Syd. We need something to go on.”
“Gotcha. The shadow network is on it.”
Jake hung up. Shadows was right. He felt like that was all he’d done so far, chase Madison’s shadow. He glanced back at the sandwich shop and considered grabbing another turkey club for the road, then decided against it. He’d seen an In-N-Out near Randall’s house, and if anything could help clarify his thought process, it was a one hundred percent all-beef American burger. Sprouts weren’t going to cut it on a case like this. Better save the diet for later, he decided.
Kelly skidded to a halt, breathing hard. On the other side of a six-foot-high fence a dog barked frantically. She jumped up and caught a glimpse of a Doberman chained to a pole, lunging at flannel and ragged jean shorts. She skirted the edge of the house, yelling into her radio, “Rodriguez! He’s back on Van Buren Street!”
Her breath was loud as she ran. Turning the corner, she caught a glimpse of Emilio Torres tearing across the street, stopping a cab short. Jesus, he was fast. No more than twelve or thirteen by her estimate, and small for his age. It didn’t help that he knew this neighborhood like the back of his hand. He could probably dodge them for days in here.
Kelly tore after him. After a morning of paperwork she’d decided to investigate “Psycho’s” claim that a hanger-on gave them the gun. The lawyer had provided Emilio Torres’s name and address. She didn’t expect the lead to pan out, but eliminating it would strengthen the prosecution’s case against the gang at trial. So after lunch she and Rodriguez knocked on Torres’s door, only to have the kid bolt at the sight of them. If Kelly knew she’d be dealing with a runner, she wouldn’t have ordered the grande burrito.
They’d been chasing Emilio for over ten minutes, from the back of his grandmother’s house down countless streets and alleys. Every time they thought they’d lost him, he’d pop up again. On the plus side, he didn’t appear smart enough to go to ground and stay there.
He bowled over a guy walking his pit bull and sent a Chinese food delivery man flying in a tangle of spokes and handlebars. Kelly almost sprawled on top of them. She vaulted over with a gasped apology and continued running.
Emilio glanced over his shoulder and saw her gaining. She caught a look of panic in his eyes. Kelly was ten feet behind him now, the beginnings of a cramp in her calf muscle. Sweat poured down her back, it had to be over a hundred degrees and she was getting dizzy. Emilio’s blue-checked flannel shirt trailed behind him as he sharply changed direction, turning right. She was hard on his heels, halfway up the block when a dark form hurtled out of the alley. It slammed into the kid hard. Both figures flew into the street. The screech of brakes pierced the air as an old Buick jerked to a halt. Kelly edged around it, slowing her pace, ignoring the tirade spilling out of the driver’s open windows. Rodriguez and Emilio lay in a tangle on the ground.
“Jesus, Rodriguez,” she said, grabbing the kid’s hands. He’d risen to his knees, prepared to bolt again. With one smooth gesture she knocked him flat and cuffed him. “You both could’ve been killed.”
“Little son of a bitch would’ve deserved it,” Rodriguez said, standing slowly and brushing himself off. The knees of his trousers were torn, and he raised his hands in supplication. “Christ, look what he did to my pants!”
“I didn’t do nothing, fool,” Emilio spat as Kelly yanked him to his feet. He was tiny, just over five feet, wearing baggy jean shorts, an enormous flannel shirt over a white undershirt and a blue-and-white Colts hat cocked to the side.
“Shut up, you little punk,” Rodriguez grunted.
“Agent Rodriguez,” Kelly said warningly. “Save it.”
“I got nothing to say to you,” Emilio sulked.
Kelly looked him over: too young to even be shaving. She repressed a sigh. “Your grandma seems like a nice lady, let’s have her join us. We need an adult present to question you anyway.”
“I ain’t answering no questions, bitch. I don’t disrespect the colors.” He jerked a thumb at his baseball cap.
Rodriguez rattled off something in Spanish, and Emilio responded with a tirade, struggling against the cuffs to get in Rodriguez’s face. Kelly pulled him back.
“Stop it, both of you,” she said sharply. “Not another word until we get him back to the house.” She cast a warning glance at Rodriguez. Anything said by a minor without a legal guardian present would be inadmissible. And she was hoping the grandmother might prove helpful. The woman had been shocked to find them on her doorstep, and judging by the way she called for Emilio, she didn’t tolerate back talk. With any luck her presence would cut down on his posturing.
In silence they proceeded down the street. The guy with the pit bull had righted himself, and as they passed by he muttered something. Emilio paled noticeably and jerked sideways as the pit bull growled. Kelly pursed her lips and wished for the hundredth time that she’d opted for Spanish instead of French in high school.
Dante fidgeted. His crew had been stuck in the warehouse for three days, and they were becoming increasingly restless. All twelve sat around a table playing endless games of five-card stud. They were almost indistinguishable, a solid mass of shaved heads and prison tats, clad in identical uniforms of black T-shirts and jeans.
Composed of three four-man teams, each was only privy to part of the plan. He was the only one holding all the proverbial cards. They knew enough, though, to potentially make it rain down cops and Feds. For that reason Jackson wanted them kept in complete isolation, to prevent a screwup on the magnitude of the KKK one in 1997. Back then a small group of Klansmen almost succeeded in torching a natural gas processing plant in north Texas. It would have been spectacular if they’d succeeded, could’ve taken out thousands and brought a lot of attention to the cause. But one of the morons got cold feet, and in swept the FBI. Jackson was too smart to allow something like that to happen.
One of the crew suddenly launched to his feet, scattering chips as he exploded in a stream of expletives. The guy he was yelling at stroked a knife clipped to his belt but remained seated. Dante frowned, debating whether or not to intervene. The other men tilted back in their chairs, watching with interest. One of them, Jimmy, glanced at Dante and raised an eyebrow.
When the first guy kicked back his chair, sending it skittering across the cement floor, Dante stood. They both caught the motion out of the corner of their eyes and paused. He approached the table slowly. These were hardened guys, between them they’d clocked decades in some of the country’s toughest penitentiaries. But there was a clear pecking order in the Brotherhood, as respected as any military rank, and in this room he was king.
“Cut the shit,” Dante said, voice low.
He eyed them, waiting. The second guy shrugged and muttered an apology that sounded more like a challenge. The troublemaker took longer to back down. Thanks to his enormous blond handlebar moustache he was nicknamed “Hulk,” after the wrestler. A full minute passed before Hulk turned, retrieved the chair, and straddled it.
“It’s been a long week,” Dante said when they’d settled down. Murmurs of assent. One of the other guys had gathered up the cards and was shuffling them. “I’m thinking it’s time to blow off a little steam.”
“Thought you said we couldn’t go anywhere,” said Hulk.
“We can’t.” Dante held up a hand to stem the tide of groans. “But I got a few girls cleared by management. One phone call and they show up to party.”
“No shit?” Hulk stroked his moustache. “How old? ’Cause I like ’em young.”
No surprise there, Dante thought. “Young enough. You know the rules, though.”
“No worries boss. I don’t need her mouth for talking,” someone chimed in, and everyone laughed.
Dante made the call. The girls were fresh meat, caught coming over the border by the local militia. They were supposed to report all illegals to Border Patrol without engaging. But this unit contained some of Jackson’s most avid supporters, and they were happy to provide whatever was needed, whether that meant gathering up a few women or ignoring a duffel bag tossed over the wall. Dante wasn’t really worried about the men talking—the language barrier would prevent that, and besides, the girls were headed to a pit in the desert afterward. They’d keep the boys occupied for a few days. And by then they should have their marching orders.
The thought reenergized him. It had taken years to set this thing in motion. Hard to believe that by this time next week, they’d be guiding the nation back on its true path.
Dante headed to the opposite end of the warehouse and ran a hand along the side of a truck. Two others just like it lined the back of the room, waiting to be called into commission. He allowed himself a small smile as a whoop from the card table signaled the arrival of the girls.
Eight
“It’s not like that.” Randall sighed. “I send a text when I’ve got something for them, and they respond with instructions on where to drop it off.”
“So you’ve never spoken to an actual human?” Jake pressed. He’d persuaded Randall to leave work a few hours early so they could talk. Randall’s apartment screamed bachelor pad. It was a small, cluttered one-bedroom. The walls were bare, and aside from the futon couch and a tiny TV on a rickety table, there was little in the way of decor. Clearly Randall didn’t subscribe to any Martha Stewart publications.
“Once, when they first contacted me. I thought it was a joke at first.” He paused, examining his hands. “It never occurred to me that my family might actually be in danger.”
Jake thought that for a smart guy, at times Randall was staggeringly clueless. Maybe a bus driver could be nonchalant in the face of such threats, but it should’ve given a guy working at a top secret government lab pause. Still he nodded sympathetically. “Sure. What did he look like?”
“He was a big guy, white, bald. Wore a hat and sunglasses, so it’s kind of hard to say. Lots of tattoos.”
“Interesting.” Eastern European gangsters mapped their entire criminal life on their bodies with tattoos. “Any accent?”
“He wasn’t foreign, if that’s what you’re asking. Southern, I think, but I’m not sure which state.”
“Okay.” Jake paused to think. Maybe a foreign operative trained to mimic American accents. Or a mercenary who lived stateside. “You sent your ex and daughter off to stay with a relative, like we discussed?”
“Yes, they went yesterday.”
“And didn’t tell anyone where they were going, right?”
Randall nodded.
“So back to the million dollar question. Any idea who took Madison?”
“I told you—”
“Because now we think it might be someone from one of the former Soviet bloc countries.” Jake watched him closely, but nothing seemed to register. “Turkmenistan, maybe.”
“Turkmenistan? But that doesn’t make any sense.” Randall’s brows furrowed.
“Look, Randall. I don’t know much about your work, but I’m guessing it has something to do with nuclear materials.” When Randall didn’t respond, Jake had to fight the urge to throttle him. “Without getting too specific, you should at least be able to tell me that much. Otherwise how the hell am I supposed to figure out who took Madison?”
A shadow crossed Randall’s features. Reluctantly, he nodded.
“So maybe an extremist group in Turkmenistan is trying to get hold of some for an attack against the United States,” Jake concluded.
“I don’t know,” Randall said slowly. “There’s more loose material over there, and it’s less tightly monitored. Plus most of those groups want to target Russia proper.”
“So a Muslim sect in one of those countries. Maybe one with links to al Qaeda.”
“Possibly.” Randall turned the thought over in his mind. “The thing is, port control here is one of the things we’re doing right. Every single shipping container in and out of the U.S. undergoes a radiation scan. They’d need help from someone working Customs, not me.”
Jake shrugged. “Maybe they’ve got that, too. Sure you can’t tell me exactly what they’re after?”
Randall considered carefully before speaking. “I think you’re on the right track. Not necessarily with the Eastern European connection, but the other thing…yes.”
“All right then, we’re making progress.” Jake clapped him on the shoulder. Randall smiled weakly in response. Jake pressed a little harder with his fingers and locked eyes with him. “And you have no other theories?”
Randall shrugged off his hand. “Nothing. Like I said, it could be anyone. I think they contacted me because I have access to what they need.”
“How many others have the same access?” Randall’s eyes shifted away again. “C’mon, Randall, I spent some time working for the government, I know what is and isn’t a state secret. How many?”
“It’s just so hard to trust anyone anymore,” Randall mumbled. He examined his fingers. “Four people total. It’s a small project.”
“And what do you know about the other three?”
“Why?”
“Because whoever took Madison obviously knows about your access, and if you’re right, only a handful of people in the facility are privy to that information. Going on that assumption, they selected you as the most likely to cave—nothing personal,” he said, raising a hand to stifle Randall’s protest, “but it’s true. So we need to figure out why they targeted you in particular. Do the other guys not have families, or gambling debts, anything that could be used against them?”
Randall scratched at a spot on the couch. “I don’t know. It’s not a very social environment.”
“Well, consider that your assignment. I want everything you can find out about the other guys in your department. Also, get me a list of everyone who has any idea what your work entails. If you’re right, someone at the facility pointed them in your direction. We find that person, the trail could lead back to Madison.”
“All right.”
A hint of hope in his voice, for the first time in days. Jake hoped it wasn’t misplaced. “When will you have what they’re looking for?”
Randall shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Soon. I already have most of what they’ll need.”
“And what are you supposed to do next?”
“Text them this code and wait for a response. I was about to do it when Syd called and said you’d be stopping by.”
“What’s the code?”
“I’m supposed to say everything is great.” Randall’s jaw tightened as he said, “Using the number eight. I suppose that’s their little joke.”
“Joke in what way?”
“In making me send something a teenager might write.”
“It’s smart, actually.” Jake mulled it over, then said, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Write, Everything is ok. They’ll be forced to respond, and you demand to talk to someone.”
“I’m not so sure—”
“You have to trust me, Randall. Remember, right now they need you. Unless they’re idiots, they’re not going to hurt your daughter until they get the information. And we’re going to use that to buy ourselves some time.”
“How?”
“There’s this ancient Malaysian board game, men versus tigers. The men win if they can surround the tigers and block their movements. Right now, that’s our game plan.”
“Yeah?” Randall eyed him skeptically. “How do the tigers win?”
Jake pulled off his jacket. “Too many questions, Doc. Just pay attention while I go over everything.”
Kelly winced as Emilio sustained another cuff to the head. He sullenly sank deeper into the chair as the middle-aged woman beside him let loose with another tirade. Kelly had no idea what was being said, but the tone was clear enough. Even Rodriguez looked mildly uncomfortable.
When they arrived at the door with Emilio in tow, still trying to jerk out of their grasp like a fish on a line, his grandmother grabbed him by the ear, dragged him to the couch, and launched into an impressive verbal assault. It was rare for someone under five feet tall to be intimidating, but Celia Torres was the exception to the rule. It took a few minutes to get a word in edgewise. When Kelly asked her to come down to the station, Celia’s brow darkened with fury. She cast a menacing look at Emilio, snatched an enormous purse off the counter, and marched out to their bu-car. In the backseat en route to the station, Emilio had opened his mouth twice to speak. Each time he was silenced with a sharp look from Celia. Kelly was concerned that upon arrival they might discover that Celia had summoned a lawyer for her grandson.
But then they got into the interrogation room. Apparently Celia had more than a rudimentary understanding of how to play bad cop, along with a strong flair for theater, neither of which she was afraid to use. Whenever Emilio had the audacity to say something in his defense, she went so completely ballistic they almost had to call in assistance. And the minute Rodriguez mentioned a gang connection, Celia spent ten minutes threatening to do things to Emilio that apparently didn’t bear translating.
After an hour of this, Emilio was a far cry from the posturing punk they’d chased down. His chin quivered, eyes filled with tears. Celia had switched tactics and was mumbling to him in Spanish. Rodriguez occasionally leaned over to translate. “She’s saying he broke her heart,” he mumbled. “Man, she’s good.”
Kelly had to agree, it was an Oscar-worthy performance. Clearly someone watched a few too many telenovelas. But it was having the desired effect on Emilio.
Celia finally sat back and said thickly, “He ready to answer your questions.”
“Great.” Kelly sighed, feeling like she’d been through the wringer herself. “So, Emilio. Where were you yesterday morning?”
“In school.”
“School says you never showed. We called and checked.”
A small growl from Celia. Emilio avoided her eyes. “Yeah, okay. I didn’t go.”
“Where were you?”
“Sí, Emilio. What was so important you miss school, break a promise to your abuelita?” Celia hissed.
“Nothing.” Emilio shrugged. “I just…I didn’t feel like going, yo.”
Kelly held up a hand to stave off Celia’s response. “Here’s the thing, Emilio. There was a raid on an MS-13 house in your neighborhood yesterday. I’m guessing you heard about it?” He shrugged noncommittally. “One of the guns we found was used in a serious crime. And they’re claiming that gun came from you.”
Emilio paled visibly, and Celia sucked in her breath. “Guns! No no no, not my Emilito.” She cuffed him across the head. “See the trouble? This why I tell you, stay away. But no, you want to wear everything blanco and azul.” She shifted her attention back to Kelly. “These boys, the gang? Filthy Salvadorans. I always tell my Emilio to stay away.”
“Well, Emilio didn’t listen. We found his fingerprints inside the house. And on the weapon.” Rodriguez threw a closed file on the table. It would be hours before forensic results came in, but they didn’t have to know that.
“Where’d you get the gun, Emilio?” Kelly pressed.
“Stole it, bitch,” he spat, recovering some of his bravado. Celia inhaled sharply, brought back her palm and slapped his face.
“Mrs. Torres! You need to control yourself. If you strike Emilio again I’ll have to call in child services,” Kelly said sharply. She really didn’t want to do that, since with a caseworker sitting in they’d get far less compliance.
Celia nodded tersely.
Rodriguez leaned across the table. “Stole it from where?”
Emilio shrugged. Kelly caught a flash behind his eyes. Shame? Embarrassment? She leaned in. “See, Emilio, here’s my problem. I’ve got a group of gang members who are going down anyway saying you brought them a gun. And that gun was used to kill someone.”
“Jesús Cristo.” Celia whispered under her breath, crossing herself. Emilio’s face went a shade paler.
“But I find it hard to believe you would be stupid enough to kill someone, then give that weapon to Guzman knowing it might shift the blame onto him. You understand what I’m saying, Emilio? Because that’s how it would look. I bet that right now, they’re thinking you set them up.”
Emilio blanched completely. Sitting there, hair sticking out in tufts, he looked small and very young. And absolutely, completely terrified.
“You said you stole the gun, rata. Gotta arrest you on that.” Rodriguez leaned across the table, balancing on his knuckles. “And since it was used in a murder, that sends you to intake, not Juvenile Detention. Guess who else is spending the night in intake?”
“Tell them, Emilito. Tell them it’s not true.” Celia was rigid, facing straight front. Tears snaked through the heavy powder on her cheeks.
“It’s not true.” Emilio said in a small voice.
“Qué?” Rodriguez held a hand to his ear. “Didn’t hear you, Emilito.”
“It’s not true,” Emilio said. “I didn’t steal the gun. I found it.”
“Where?” Kelly asked.
“Outside their house. I was there yesterday, hanging around.” He glanced sidelong at Celia, who glared back. “Sometimes they give me stuff to do, but they were all still sleeping. I was sitting on the steps, and I saw it.”
“Saw what?” Rodriguez asked.
“The gun, okay? I saw the handle sticking out from under the steps. Like someone tossed it there.”
“Then you went inside and told them you stole a gun, and were giving it to them?” Kelly asked.
Emilio shrugged. “Yeah. I knows it wasn’t theirs, since it was all fancy and shit. Figured it was worth some cash. They always blowing me off, calling me a naco. Thought if they saw I was serious, they’d bring me in.”
Kelly was tempted to cuff him herself. “What’d they say?”
Emilio colored. “They asked where I got such a bitch-ass gun. They kept it, though,” he said defensively.
“Did you see anyone when you found the gun, or earlier? Someone who looked like they didn’t belong there?”
Emilio cocked his head to the side. “What, like white people?”
“Anyone who looked out of place,” Kelly said.
Emilio slowly shook his head. “Didn’t see no one or nothing.” His chin jutted out.
“What will happen to my Emilito?” Celia asked, lip quavering.
Kelly exchanged a glance with Rodriguez. “Hard to say. But I’d call a lawyer.”
Jackson Burke gazed out his office window. Dusk was falling, sending shadows marching through downtown’s glassy steel columns. The Phoenix skyline wasn’t as impressive as New York or Dallas, but he intended to change that. Soon enough there would be plentiful opportunities for rebuilding.
He sighed. Getting to this point had demanded tremendous time and energy, not to mention financial resources. Thanks to a family fortune he’d multiplied a thousand-fold, cash flow wasn’t an issue. That and a lack of vision were where so many operations had gone astray in the past. But in the end, all his efforts would be worth it. He’d seen the potential, realized what the growing numbers of converts could accomplish if their man power was properly harnessed, disparate groups united in one cause. Now, after more than a decade of planning, he was close to accomplishing that goal. He just needed the last few dominoes to fall into place.
The phone on his desk beeped, and Jackson frowned. His assistant knew he relished these few moments alone at the end of each day. For her to interrupt, something serious must have happened.
He lifted the receiver and listened for a moment before saying, “All right, put him through.”
As Dante spoke, Jackson’s expression hardened. He picked up a rock from the Zen garden on his desk and kneaded it between thumb and forefinger. “I see. And how did you respond?” Another burst of chatter. Jackson thought for a moment, then said, “It’s time to make Grant understand the seriousness of the situation. Do whatever is necessary.”
Nine
Madison awoke in the dark. Despite becoming somewhat acclimated to her surroundings, the shock of waking in a strange place never failed to throw her. Every time she went to sleep, deep down she harbored the hope that perhaps this was one of those dreams within a dream, where you only thought you were awake. She always fell asleep hoping to open her eyes and see her bedroom.
Not this time. She drew the thin blanket up to her shoulders and tried to still her shivering. Wherever they’d taken her was cold for June, and for the millionth time she wondered where she was. Back home on the East Coast, summer was in full swing. Central Park was lush and overgrown, the grass still green after recent rains. It felt like forever since she was there. Madison had skipped the last day of school, and spent that Friday hanging out by the pond exchanging texts with Shane and tossing her lunch to the geese. How long ago was that now? One week? Two? She’d started tracking the days, it had been at least three since they took her. But considering how many times they’d injected her with drugs at the beginning, she could have been whacked out for weeks. She wondered what the hell they wanted, and why it was taking so long. And if anyone was ever going to clue in to her GPS transmitter.
She groped under the mattress and pulled out the DS Lite. Even on the lowest power setting, she was down to the last bar. Madison chewed her lip. Maybe she could ask Lurch to bring her the power cord, it was with the rest of her stuff. Or she could give it to him to charge. That was riskier—he might decide not to give it back. She didn’t think he’d be able to tell it had been altered, but whoever was with him might be shrewder.
Suddenly, the groaning of metal indicated that the door was about to open. She hurriedly tucked the DS Lite back in its hiding place and flipped over to face the wall, regulating her breathing to mimic sleep. A shaft of light sliced the room, casting a silhouette on the wall facing her. Madison drew in her breath sharply. Whoever had come for her, it wasn’t Lurch.
“I know you’re not sleeping,” he said. His voice was gravelly, like he was getting over a cold.
Madison’s stomach clenched. Slowly, she rose to a seated position and turned. His face was cast in shadow, and she squinted in the light. “What time is it?” she asked.
He chuckled. “Time for us to get acquainted, kitten.”
“Sorry, Kel, you’re fading in and out. They’ve got crap reception here.” Jake plugged an index finger in his opposite ear and squinted at the lights below. The sprawling lab facility was visible from Randall’s small deck. Some buildings were floodlit, others hunched in the dark. Ironic that so close to the epicenter of the world’s most cutting-edge technology, he couldn’t get a cell signal to save his life. Maybe they had some sort of jamming apparatus.
“I said, I’m still in Arizona.”
“Well hey, we’re nearly on the same coast. Wanna meet for a late dinner in Bakersfield?”
“No way Bakersfield is the halfway point,” Kelly snorted.
Jake could picture her nose crinkling as she said it. He smiled. “All right then, Denver.”
“Wow, your grasp of geography is impressive,” Kelly laughed.
“Hey, keep in mind I was living abroad for years. How much longer are you there?”
“Tough to say. Right now the chief is ready to call it, blaming everything on this street gang.”
“But you’re not buying it?”
There was a pause. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “These are bad guys, but this seems beyond them. Unless we come up with a more direct tie to the senator, they don’t seem the type to be making a political statement, you know?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t sound like it.” Jake recognized the note of frustration in her voice. The Bureau always wanted high profile cases solved quickly, even if that meant arresting the wrong person.
Not Kelly, though. If that happened, it would eat at her. Even if this gang had been killing nuns and schoolkids on a daily basis, she’d hate to see them locked up for something they didn’t do. It was one of the things he loved about her.
He caught himself hoping she’d be forced to compromise. Something like that would practically guarantee her departure from the FBI. Then the endless debates over her job and where they should live would be forced to a conclusion. He experienced a pang of guilt at the thought and forced some cheer into his voice. “Don’t worry. It’ll work out.”
“Maybe.” She sounded disconsolate.
“Rodriguez still riding you?”
“I feel like I’m babysitting.”
“Yeah, but you felt that way about me, too, right?”
“I still do.” Her voice brightened at the teasing.
“So should I be jealous?”
“Of a twenty-seven-year-old who’s driving me nuts?” Kelly laughed. “Sure, go ahead. I think he has a fiancée, though. He mentioned something about getting married in the fall.”
“Yeah? I love fall weddings.”
There was a long pause before Kelly said, “How’s everything going for you?”
“Wow, you’re becoming the master of the segue.”
“I can’t handle wedding talk right now,” she said. “Did you get any clients signed on? One of us deserved a good day at work.”
Jake shifted uncomfortably. As a concession to Syd, he’d told Kelly he was scrounging up business with Silicon Valley venture capital firms. He hated lying to her, yet another reason why things would be easier if she joined The Longhorn Group. “Mine was okay, I guess. This is a lousy part of the state, nothing but strip malls and parking lots. I feel like I keep getting off the interstate in the same place.”
“Drum up any business?”
“Maybe. Got some leads.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about heading to Costa Rica after this wraps up. Want to tag along?”
“A few weeks into a new job and already he needs a vacation.” Kelly laughed. “Your work ethic is truly awe inspiring. Don’t you have to be around in case any of these leads pan out?”
“Nah. Syd’s a closer, she loves dealing with the clients. Besides, we still haven’t taken a real vacation together.”
“What about Vermont?”
“You mean that first weekend we went away together, two years ago?”
“It counts.”
“It took almost the entire weekend just to get you in my room.”
“I didn’t hear you complaining at the time.”
“That was only because—” Jake’s call-waiting beeped. He glanced at the number: Syd. “Kelly, my love, I’ve gotta go. Syd’s on the other line, it might be important.”
“Okay.”
She sounded despondent, and Jake’s heart lurched. He hated that after all this time they still hadn’t found a way to be together for more than a few days. “Costa Rica. Think about it.”
“I will. Love you.”
Jake clicked over to Syd’s call. “Please tell me you’ve got something.”
“Who’s your favorite person?”
“Depends. Give me a reason.”
“I got a match on the face.”
“Really?” Jake straightened. “The driver?”
“Yep. The facial recognition software worked. We were lucky the shot was more or less head-on. And let me tell you, getting access to that database was a bitch.”
“I’m sure.” Jake considered asking how she’d done it, then figured he probably didn’t want to know. Infiltrating government databases was definitely frowned upon. “Let me guess. Ukrainian.”
“Not even close. You’re going to love this. Winner of the creepy kidnapper prize of the month is Marcus Krex. ‘Mack’ to his friends.”
“Krex doesn’t sound Eastern European.”
“Give the man a prize!” Syd sounded gleeful, and Jake was glad to hear it. This case had been beating them both up. “Born and bred in Stockton, California. Krex doesn’t even have a passport, he’s never left the country, at least not legally.”
“So the e-mail router was meant to throw us off track.”
“Apparently. But based on his sheet Mack isn’t tech-savvy.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Petty crimes starting as a juvie, graduated to grand theft auto and burglary, closed out his career nicely with a stretch in Corcoran for armed robbery. Paroled less than a year ago.”
“Jesus.” It was nice to finally have a name to go on, but the fact that Madison was snatched by a hardened criminal wasn’t the best news he’d heard all day. At least Krex hadn’t been convicted of a sex crime—thank God for small favors. “How did this guy not qualify for the three strikes law?”
“Grandfathered out. But he will, if he’s caught one more time.”
“Where is he now?”
“Kept his nose clean, as far as I can tell. His parole officer said Krex was coming in every week, passed all the drug tests, seemed to be a model citizen. But he missed last week’s appointment. He’s been so good, the PO didn’t worry. He was going to report him if he missed this week.”
“When’s his appointment?”
“Tomorrow morning, 8:00 a.m. His PO said he’d be happy to sit down and review the case file.”
“I’ll get on the road first thing tomorrow. Who knows, maybe Krex will even show.”
“That would make our lives easier,” Syd said drily. There was a long pause.
“Syd?”
“Yeah, I know you’ve gotta go. I was just wondering. How’s Randall holding up?”
“You talked to him.”
“Right, I did.” She sighed. “I’m shit at this sort of thing.”
“Shocking.” Jake grinned. “Fortunately you’ve got a relationship master like me to ask for advice.”
Syd barked a sharp laugh before asking, “You think we’ll get her back?”
Jake gazed across the landscape. The moon hovered above the buildings, casting them in stark relief. “Maybe. But we’re probably going to need more firepower. If we find out where they’re keeping her, we should call in the cavalry.”
She thought it over. “It might jeopardize the operation.”
“I don’t think we’ll have a choice.”
Jake clicked the phone shut and went back inside. Randall sat at the desk tucked in a corner of the living room, staring in horror at his computer monitor. The tinny speakers played a garbled soundtrack that sounded like pigs squealing.
“Jesus, Doc, what the hell are you watching?” Jake crossed the room in long strides. A video filled the screen. It was a close-up of Madison, eyes wide with terror, head whipping back and forth in torment as she screamed.
Kelly ran a hand through her hair as she hung up the phone. Jake had sounded unusually sketchy ever since he abruptly flew to California. There was no reason for him to stress over business meetings with executives, he thrived on that sort of thing. Then there was his Costa Rica suggestion, a prototypical Jake Riley reaction—when you’re on a bad case, plan a trip. He clearly had no idea how predictable he was.
It bothered her that he felt the need to lie, she’d rather hear that he couldn’t discuss the case. She could respect that, there were certainly details of her work she didn’t share. Lying just fed her doubts. Kelly spent a good chunk of her day getting misled by people, the thought of facing the same at home was unbearable.
After the interview with Emilio, she and Rodriguez had spent a couple of hours going over the files to see if they’d missed anything. At 6:00 p.m. they met with the rest of the task force, who reported that the tip line and canvassing had produced the usual band of loonies and conspiracy theorists. Barring any new developments, they’d charge Psycho and his friends with the Morris murder in the next couple of days. Kelly sent everyone home, figuring they’d earned a good night’s sleep.
At least they were in a decent hotel. She propped the pillows against the headboard and flipped through TV channels. All the local news stations were running elegiac montages of Duke Morris’s career. A former exterminator-turned-public official, there were shots of him holding a rifle at an NRA meeting, glad-handing at a rally, practically spitting into a microphone as he gripped a podium. Kelly had the TV on Mute, but based on his demeanor she guessed he was ranting about his pet issue, immigration reform. Within a day or two something else would shove the Morris story off the national media’s front pages. Arizona would hold out longer, but once arrests were made and the governor appointed a new senator, it would be over.
Kelly knew that her superiors were keeping a close eye on her work in this case. She’d be expected to toe the party line if they forged ahead with the MS-13 connection. Even if the gang was guilty, if she uncovered a real connection between them and Morris, her boss would want it buried. And then she’d have to decide what to do.
The camera cut to a studio anchor, one of those interchangeable blondes with perfect hair. Kelly watched her lips move, and idly wondered how they always found a shade of lipstick that exactly matched their suits: hers was peach. The camera cut to a man. A banner at the bottom of the screen announced him as “Jackson Burke, lifelong friend of Senator Duke Morris.” He looked vaguely familiar, although Kelly couldn’t place him. She clicked the volume up to catch what he was saying.
“…the real tragedy here, Dawn, is that we lost a man who grasped the true threat our nation faces. Since 9/11, our government has spent so much time focused abroad, we’ve completely forgotten about the dangers right here at home. Our military is stretched to the limit, our debt is spiraling out of control, and we have thousands of illegals streaming over our borders every day. Some of those people come here looking for a better life. But others clearly intend to do us harm.”
“What kind of harm, Mr. Burke?”
“We keep hearing about how al Qaeda is trying to sneak in a bomb, so they can destroy the democratic principles that this great nation was founded on. But the real threat is more insidious. I’m talking about cartels, multinational gangs whose sole purpose is to flood our schools and streets with drugs. And God knows what else they’re bringing over with them. Guns? Bombs? In California, felons get away with murder, literally, because of so-called Sanctuary laws. Just last week a young Honduran man was released from jail even though the authorities knew he wasn’t here legally. Next day, he killed an entire family in a home invasion robbery.”
“And what would you propose, Mr. Burke?”
“In honor of my good friend Duke Morris, I’m starting a new lobbying firm. We’re going to put some pressure on those honchos in Washington, ask them to get the National Guard back here to do what they should have been doing all along—guarding our borders. Stem the tide, before natural-born Americans wake up to find that Spanish has become the first language and their kids are now the minority…”
Kelly turned it off with a snort. She’d grown up on the East Coast, and spent most of her adult life in New York and Washington, D.C. She knew that immigration reform was a major issue for a lot of Americans, but she lived at a remove from it. Here, it seemed to taint everything. The murder of Duke Morris by machete had inflamed passions. Editorials in the regions’ papers screamed for ICE raids and mass deportations. Protests and counterprotests were sparking up everywhere. There was a sense that the whole region was about to explode in retaliatory violence.
Kelly’s cell rang. She checked the number and frowned before answering. “Yes?”
“Jones, I’ve got some bad news. Emilio didn’t make it.”
“What?”
“The processing instructions got screwed up—instead of juvie he was sent to intake. Someone shivved him.”
Kelly squeezed her eyes shut, an image of Celia’s tear-streaked face flashing through her mind. “Jesus, Rodriguez. One of the MS-13s?”
“Nope, another guy. White. Guard said it was probably race-related. Tensions are high, with all the shit that’s been going down.”
“Crap.” Kelly kneaded her forehead. “Have you told McLarty yet?”
“Technically, we had handed him over to Phoenix P.D., so…”
Kelly’s eyes narrowed. “So, what?”
“So he wasn’t our responsibility anymore.”
Kelly was surprised at the coldness in his voice. Sure, Emilio had been a little punk, but he was just a kid. She wondered if this was residual rage over the chase earlier that day, or something deeper. “I doubt Celia will agree.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe she should have kept better track of him.”
Kelly was too tired to argue about it. “Anything else?”
“Nope. Just wanted you to know.”
“Good night, Agent Rodriguez.”
He’d already hung up. Kelly readjusted the pillows and lay down, reflecting on the day. Crazy that she lived in a world where a twelve-year-old dreamed of joining a gang. Crazier still that they might offer him the best prospects. Public schools were a mess, jobs were tight, and for a kid growing up in a tough neighborhood, chances of survival, never mind success, were slim. Maybe Emilio was just another casualty of the American Dream. The confluence of events that landed him in an interrogation room could be considered inevitable, based on statistics alone. If not today, maybe five or ten years down the line he would have found himself in the same situation, dying from a blade shoved in his gut.
Kelly felt responsible regardless. She picked up the phone and dialed. “This is Agent Jones, I’m part of the Morris task force. I’d like a copy of the processing papers for Emilio Torres on my desk tomorrow morning.”
Madison was curled in a ball on top of the mattress. She’d never been in so much pain. The closest was when she’d broken her leg snowboarding, and they trundled her downhill on a sled that jolted over moguls. But that didn’t even begin to compare to this.
She shuddered repeatedly as flashes of what happened darted through her brain. His scary grin as he dragged her down the hall and into a different room, then tied her to the chair. His fumbling hands all over her, tugging at her shirt. She’d shied away, screaming, but he yanked out her bra straps and attached wires to them. Then the pain, so bad she blacked out. And Lurch in the background with a camera, recording it all.
It seemed to go on forever. It was still dark outside, and she wondered if she’d lost another day.
Madison felt like she’d been beaten all over, every limb, every joint ached. For the first time she confronted the full gravity of her situation. All along in the back of her mind she’d maintained this elaborate fantasy. Commandos storming in and putting a bullet through Lurch’s brain. They’d tell her she was so smart, so brave. Deep down she never doubted that someone was coming to save her.
Now she could see how childish that fantasy was. Sometimes there was no happy ending. Sometimes people just died. She almost laughed aloud at how pathetic her GPS transmission was. Ridiculous, really—the world was full of signals now, a never-ending stream bouncing along every wavelength, a constant din. And yet she’d managed to convince herself that her little signal, from a DS Lite no less, would filter through. It was completely absurd.
Madison realized she was shuddering again. She drew a deep breath. No more imagining who would show up at her funeral, no more pretending this was a nightmare she would awaken from. She was done with all that. All she could do now was hope they never brought her in that awful room again.
JUNE 30
Ten
Jake lifted a corner of the mattress and grimaced at what was underneath. Mack Krex’s living quarters redefined the term hellhole. A dank eight-by-ten-foot room in a boardinghouse so far on the wrong side of the tracks they weren’t even visible in the distance. The only furnishings were a caved-in bed and a rickety pasteboard bureau propped against the wall. Honestly, a cell would have been preferable, Jake thought. At least it would’ve been clean.
“Pretty foul, huh?” Mack Krex’s parole officer grinned at him, rocking back and forth on his heels. “No fast-food joint pays enough for a place without rats.”
Jake wasn’t in the mood to joke around. He hadn’t been able to forget Madison’s tortured face all morning. “I called the manager at Plucky Chicken. He said Krex quit a few months back.”
“Yeah? Huh.”
“But he’s current on the rent here. Paid three months in advance.”
The guy shrugged, and Jake narrowed his eyes at him. The PO stood about five-six, wearing a short-sleeved button-down shirt, skinny tie, cheap shoes. His scraggly goatee was a misguided attempt at trendiness, and the beginnings of a potbelly hung over his belt. He looked fifty but was probably closer to thirty-five.
“Doesn’t bother you that Krex might have backslid?”
“Maybe he got a gig under the table, working the door at a club. Some of them do that, and Mack’s a big guy.” The PO held up a hand defensively. “You want to see my caseload? I can’t babysit these guys 24/7. He showed for our meets, and his piss was clean. Far as I’m concerned he’s a success story.”
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Michelle Gagnon
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: From the moment sixteen-year-old Madison Grant is abducted, an unthinkable terrorist plot is set in motion–pitting Special Agent Kelly Jones against her most powerful adversary yet.The kidnapper′s ransom demands aren′t monetary…they come at a cost that no American can afford to pay. As Kelly′s fiancé, Jake Riley, races to find Madison, Kelly is assigned to another disturbing case: the murder and dismemberment of a senator. At first the two cases don′t appear to be related.But as Kelly navigates her way through the darkest communities of America–from skinheads to biker gangs to border militias–she discovers a horrible truth. A shadowy figure who calls himself The Gatekeeper is uniting hate groups, opening the door to the worst homegrown attack in American history.