Chapter Six
“Do you have the video?” the man known as Rip asked the person on the other end of the phone. His nerves were fraying, and he wanted this damn thing over as soon as possible.
“I’m insulted you even ask,” Nando answered. “We’re getting ready to email it in a minute.”
“This has to be timed just right,” Rip reminded him. “Hit all the key people as simultaneously as possible.”
“Just be sure to play your part,” Nando ordered.
“Get off my back, okay? I have more at stake here than you do.”
“Just making sure there are no slip-ups on your end. You know what you have to do. This has been discussed over and over. The plan is made. Follow it.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s just get this over with.”
Rip snapped the cell phone shut and tossed it onto his desk. Waiting for the two men from the Phoenix Agency hadn’t done a lot for his nerves, and their conversation had been even worse. He just hoped he’d pulled it off. At least he wasn’t the only one they were focusing on. And maybe they’d think him the least likely one, if he was lucky.
Shit!
Never in his life did he think he’d be in bed with a drug-dealer-cum-kidnapper. But a rampant taste for high-priced call girls and any form of gambling had put him financially between a rock and a hard place. Little did he know his habits had been carefully noted, and he’d been targeted. Since when did drug dealers become entrepreneurs in the world of crime? Rip thought they just sold drugs and killed people.
At that last thought his stomach cramped. If Eli Wright or any of the people with him were murdered, the police wouldn’t stop looking until they had their answers, no matter who they caught in their net. He could only be invisible for just so long.
Shit!
Once he got out of this, he was taking his share and leaving for an isolated island someplace, no matter what.
Picking up his mug of coffee, he went to stand by the huge window facing east, gazing at the view below and waiting for the next step in this disaster to take place.
Mike made sure Kat was fully settled in the cabin before heading into the cockpit. She’d been checking her cell phone constantly just in case somehow she’d missed a call from Mari.
“Your phone’s rung several times,” Mike pointed out. “Is it possible some of them were from her, and she somehow got cut off?”
Kat shook her head. “I have a special ringtone for her, a favorite song of hers. I’ve just let everyone else’s go to voice mail.”
“Someone’s spending a lot of time trying to reach you.” He tried to make a joke of it, but he’d noticed her checking the caller ID, then letting the calls go to voice mail. He couldn’t help wondering who she was trying so hard to avoid.
“No one important,” she told him, but her mouth had tightened.
Mike had given Faith a knowing look that said, Take good care of her, as he made his way up front.
He was very worried about Katherine. The anxiety about her sister was almost making her physically ill. Faith had told him she’d only pretended to eat one of the doughnuts while he and Mark were out shaking the trees. When he tried to tempt her with some of the snacks he kept on the plane, she just shook her head.
“Maybe later,” she said.
He knew she was still worried about the current instability of her psychic gift. She’d tried to see Vivi Alderson again before they left, but the woman wasn’t at home. So now, in addition to everything else, the one thing she might be able to contribute to their search was wobbly. And how was he going to help her with that?
His brain told him he should wait until this was all over before telling her how he felt about her. But he had a gut feeling that right now it might be just the thing she needed. If he could get her to believe him.
Tonight, he told himself. He wasn’t waiting one minute longer to make sure this relationship was where it should be.
“I don’t like the brother any more than I did the vice president,” Mark commented once they were in the air. He was riding in the copilot’s seat as he usually did when the two of them flew together.
“Neither do I,” Mike agreed as he piloted the Phoenix plane toward the west coast.
“While you were doing the preflight check, I called Andy,” Mark told him. “I gave him Pelley’s name, Post’s, and Rand Prescott’s. We know Prescott had offered Eli the sue of is house for his business meetings since he wasn’t going to be there. Andy discovered Prescott is coincidentally in San Antonio on business, which is why his house is available. He called the man’s office, figuring he’d try the simple method first, but they refuse to tell us where he’s staying. I told him to get into the registration records of every hotel from San Antonio to Austin and get me a location. Then I want him to hack into every piece of electronic equipment he can find that they’re attached to. I especially want to know about cell calls and emails.”
Mike gave a humorless chuckle. “If Uncle Sam knew how easily the Dragon can suck up cell phone calls, they’d bury us somewhere deep in their underground facility in Colorado, and no one would ever hear from us again.”
“Or else pay us a ton of money and threaten us to keep our mouths shut.”
“Neither is acceptable,” Mike reminded him. “This is our little secret, just like Andy is.”
“Let’s hope our boy genius can work his magic. I have a feeling we don’t have a lot of time.”
“You don’t suppose they’re all involved somehow, do you?” Mike tossed the idea out. “The brother and the vice president? And even somebody else? Like this Rand Prescott, who so conveniently was able to lend his house to the Wrights?”
“Anything is possible, I guess, but it seems pretty farfetched.”
“Not any more than some other things we’ve worked on.”
Kat unbuckled her seat belt as soon as they were in the air and leveled off, stretching muscles stiff from accumulated tension. She couldn’t sit still, but pacing wasn’t going to do her much good. She smiled her thanks at the cup of coffee Faith handed her.
“I’m not very good company,” she apologized.
She just couldn’t make idle conversation right now. On top of her overwhelming concern for Mari, she had more than two dozen missed calls from Brent Fontaine. She didn’t even want to listen to her voice mail. She was sure everything in the mailbox was from him, and the last thing she wanted to hear right now was his voice. She’d spend a lifetime regretting her rebound relationship with such a narcissistic egomaniac.
Faith waved a hand dismissively in the air. “Not to worry. You’ve got plenty on your mind.”
Despite everything, Kat was more than curious about this very self-possessed woman who seemed to be taking everything in stride.
“You’ve done this a lot,” she guessed.
“Go on missions with the guys?” Faith chuckled. “Hardly. But I got my baptism by fire when Mark was still with Delta Force, his mission was blown, and he was captured by a terrorist arms dealer. The mental connection we have is what saved him.”
“Mike told me about it. How the only messages Mark could get out were telepathic ones to you. And that you were a rampaging tiger, fighting the government, who wanted to sweep everything under the rug, and getting Phoenix to rescue him.”
“That was enough excitement for me,” Faith grinned. “But then Dan met Mia, and we decided with both of us having psychic abilities it might be time to set up a Psi department in the agency.”
Kat sipped at her coffee. “And how is that working out?”
“We’re basically just getting it off the ground,” Faith explained, “trying to figure out how each person’s psychic gift can fit into a given situation. And then, of course, there’s Kelly, Rick’s wife, and her psychic dog.”
“That I have to see.” Katherine actually laughed, something she hadn’t been doing for the past twenty-four hours.
“I’m between books right now,” Faith went on, “and Mark thought if we got separated doing whatever we had to, our mental communication might be of some help.”
They sat in silence for a while, neither woman wanting to speculate on what they might find when they landed. Finally Kat put her empty mug in the cup holder and stretched again.
“I’m going to try one of your aunt’s exercises now,” she told Faith. “Then I’m going to see if I can do a remote viewing session in the plane.”
Faith lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t you need a dark, quiet place for that?”
“I think I can make it work here if we can dim the lights. The engine hum is actually quite soothing.”
“I’ll get the lights.” Faith walked over to the cabin wall and turned a round button set into the paneling. The lights obediently dimmed almost to nothingness.
Kat sat cross-legged on the couch and tried to empty her mind of everything. A tiny smile tilted one corner of her mouth as she realized no matter how much she pushed everything away, Mike D’Antoni’s face hung stubbornly on her mental image screen.
She was still amazed at how quickly and easily he and Phoenix had stepped into the situation. Especially since things between the two of them were still unresolved. But then maybe this was one way he was showing her how much she meant to him.
He’d changed during the past two years. He seemed more settled, less flamboyant. Before he’d been the go-to-hell flyboy, willingly taking on every dangerous assignment Phoenix had offered. Not that he didn’t do that now—he just did it with a quiet control she hadn’t seen before.
Or maybe she’d just chosen not to look. When he’d bailed on her, it was easier to label him as a user, an adrenaline junkie, than to try to look behind the wall he always kept around himself.
But this time she hadn’t seen the wall at all. The one that said “Caution,” not knowing which way to jump with her. There was an openness she knew hadn’t been there last time. The sex had been great from the start. No, stupendous. Off the charts. Every joining was spontaneous combustion.
But it hadn’t gone any deeper than that, at least on Mike’s part. So when he’d disappeared, she’d pulled up her socks and tried to wipe him from her mind. The problem was she couldn’t get him out of her heart. And Brent Fontaine had given her more heartburn than relief.
But this time. Ah, this time, she saw something that hadn’t been there before. The coincidence of running into him in a strange city had to mean something, didn’t it?
Not now. Get out of my head, Mike. I have important things to do.
And then he was gone, and all she saw was a blank space, empty, nothing there.
Concentrate, she told herself, when she felt her muscles relax.
And so with the plane humming along at thirty thousand feet, she placed the sheet of paper with the San Diego coordinates on it in front of her, projected her mind, and tried to bring back the scene.
This time the first thing that hit her was glittering sun, blindingly bright as it reflected off the nearby water. A small building sat at its edge, its red canopy reaching out to the curb. But the scene was fractured, like an image on her television screen when bad weather distorted the signal.
She focused harder, shutting everything else out of her mind, and without warning the scene changed. Now she saw a blurry image of a road again, leading nowhere. A piece of a chain-link fence intruded, then the vague outlines of two figures in an SUV.
Bang!
A blinding explosion, like a burst of sunlight. And then, like always, the picture suddenly came into sharp focus, the image solidly framed in the lens of her mental camera. Frozen.
“Oh my God.” She didn’t even realize she’d spoken until Faith touched her arm.
“Kat? Are you all right?”
Kat turned, shaking, and she had to swallow twice before she could speak. “We have to tell the guys right away. I’m sure the security guards have been killed and their vehicle blown up. The Wrights’ car, too, but no bodies there. It happened on some deserted road in San Diego.” She unfolded her legs and stood up. “I have to let Mike know. He can have someone find out, right?”
“Absolutely,” Faith agreed. “Come on, let’s go up front.”
Both men were grim-faced when Kat described what she’d seen.
“We’ve still got more than an hour before we land.”
Mark picked up a satellite radio sitting in a slot in the console. “Let me call the guy on the SD police force we met last time we were out here. Maybe he can fill in some of the blanks.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Kat. “Maybe we’ll be lucky, and what you saw has nothing to do with what’s happening with us.”
“Lord, I hope so.” But she was far from convinced.
“Everyone should be receiving the email any minute,” Nando said, his voice rough-sounding over the cell connection. “El Jefe has laid down the timetable. You will all get a call on your cell phones first, giving you the code to decrypt it and directing you all to check your computers.”
“Are you sure this is the right way to do this?” Rip asked, voicing the feeling of unease that had been growing.
They’d discussed this ahead of time, and Nando had insisted.
More people to confuse everyone, he’d said. Besides, wouldn’t it be logical to contact the brother-in-law, the executive vice president, and the man whose house the Wrights were to stay in? Wouldn’t all of you be wondering why they hadn’t shown up? And wouldn’t all of you have access to the kind of money we’re asking for? Or appear to?
“Trust me,” Nando told him now. “I’m absolutely right about this.”
”But calling in the FBI? No matter what you say, that’s just a death wish. We won’t have the opportunity to move as freely as we need to.”
“Listen to me.” Nando’s voice sounded as if he were talking to a child. “Even when people are instructed not to inform the FBI, they do it anyway. People will notice the Wrights are missing and ask questions. When that happens, the authorities will think it strange if you do not do this. You are playing a part. Play it well, amigo. There is no way they can touch us, so it’s merely an exercise to make yourself look good. All of you.”
“The FBI always says don’t pay the ransom, you know,” Rip reminded him.
“But they can’t stop you. You know I’ve been through this before. Trust me. But no local police. They always want to be heroes. If you follow the plan, there won’t be a problem.”
“And what about these people from the Phoenix Agency?” Rip persisted. “I don’t like having them mixed up in this.”
“Pah,” Nando said, dismissing them. “A minor annoyance.”
“Don’t let your arrogance make you careless,” Rip warned. “These people can be dangerous, and I have more to lose here than you do.”
“Then you’d better not make a mistake.” Nando’s voice was suddenly cold and sharp.
Rip punched the Off button with more than usual vehemence and stared at his computer screen. In a moment he saw a little icon pop up in the corner. He hovered the cursor over it for a long moment, then, taking a deep breath, he clicked on it, typed in the code he’d been given, and the email opened.
And there it was.
The short video scrolled across his screen, then stopped, but he’d seen enough. The group was filthy and looked tired, but they were still unharmed. Thank God. He desperately needed this money, but not at the expense of someone’s life. He hoped.
The message in the email was simple: We have the Wrights, and it will cost to get them back. Details to follow.
He played the video three times, searching for . . . what?
Finally he picked up his phone again and dialed a number. When the voice answered on the other end, he said, “I don’t know exactly how to say this, but I just got an email that scared the hell out of me.”
There was a long pause, then the voice said, “I think I just got the same one. What the hell have we done?”
They’d left their senior partner, Dan Romeo, to follow up with Harry Lombard and make sure the SDPD didn’t sit on their hands. The calls to the plane from both Dan and the San Diego police brought news both good and bad. The cop Mike spoke to said they’d only recovered two dead bodies, plus one unconscious and in bad shape. He put the plane on autopilot while he went back into the cabin to talk to Kat.
“The SD police are on it,” he reported. “After we ‘convinced’ them that they should hustle their butts to check into something involving Eli Wright.” He gave them what details he had. “But it gives us hope the Wrights and Mari are still alive, wherever they are, or we’d have found their bodies, too.”
“Where were the Wrights last seen?” Faith asked.
“Last anyone can recall, they left the restaurant, Il Maggiore, after lunch and headed off, safe and sound.”
“Did they mention to anyone they were taking a detour before heading back to the airfield?” Mark put in.
“The cops are questioning the people from the restaurant, and so far no one remembers anything. But not all of the staff is at work yet, either.”
Kat gripped the arms of the chair she was sitting in. “How did they find the two bodies?”
“The police used helicopters as well as ground teams to search the area. They found the burned-out hulks of two SUVs on a road to nowhere. Two bodies inside one of them were badly burned, dead from gunshots.
“It’s the security guards,” she said at once. “It has to be. Eli always has two from the local corporate staff wherever he goes. Besides, I focused on the coordinates and had the images of the Wrights and Mari firmly in my mind. If it isn’t them, then it’s the guards.”
“They also found Len Randolph, the young man from the local Wright office who I’m told was acting as their chauffeur.”
“Oh God.” Kat bit her knuckles. “Is he—”
Mike shook his head. “No. He’s alive, although badly injured. But he’ll make it.”
Kat’s breath came out in a whoosh. “Thank God for that.”
“And Harry Lombard?” Mark asked.
“Apparently as soon as Pelley called him he started rattling cages, too. He’s completely freaked out about the whole thing. It’s not too cool to lose your boss, especially one as rich and high-profile as Eli Wright.”
“I just wish I could get a sense of where they are.” Kat twisted her hands together in a gesture of despair.
Mike reached out to impulsively take them in his, worried at how cold they were. And shaking. He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “Jesus, you’re freezing.” He looked at the woman sitting next to Katherine. “Faith, can you fix her a cup of tea? And there’s some brandy in that cupboard over the counter. Don’t be stingy with it.”
“I’ll be fine,” Kat insisted. “Please don’t worry about me.”
Despite the fact that they weren’t alone, Mike leaned forward, tugging her toward him, “You’ve been avoiding this since this morning, and I’m not letting you back away anymore.
He felt her shock as he kissed her full on the lips, an open-mouthed kiss that breathed heat into her. As the flame of his tongue swept through the welcoming cavern, he felt the chill begin to ease from her and her body settle down. He didn’t care who was watching them. Kat needed him, whether she wanted to verbalize it or not, and he had to show her that he had no plans to bail on her, no matter what.
The sound of Faith clearing her throat brought him back to reality. He looked up to see her smiling, holding a steaming mug in her hands.
“Tea, anyone?” she joked.
Kat blushed, pulling her hands from Mike’s to take the mug from Faith, but he touched her cheek one last time.
“I need to get back up front,” he told her. “Will you be okay?”
“I’ll make sure she is,” Faith told him.
“I’ll put on the sign when we get ready to land. I radioed ahead for a vehicle, and the cop I spoke to sent me the address where he’s going to meet us. Then we’ll take it from there.”
As Mike made his way back to the cockpit, he did his best to show neither his anger nor his unsettled feelings, but all his instincts were telling him the shit was about to hit the fan.
Eli had made sure everyone drank one full bottle of water and ate some of the tortillas. Hunger and dehydration wouldn’t do any of them any good, and he didn’t know when anyone would bring them food and drink again. They were all sticky with the heat, soaking Eli’s handkerchief with the tepid water from the faucet to blot themselves in turn.
He was extremely proud not only of his family but also of Mari. Everyone was doing their best not to complain, but he could smell the fear in the hut and see the anxiety on their faces. As he put himself through a series of exercises to keep himself in shape, he tried to figure out who the video could be going to. Who could have masterminded such a thing? Because this was no random kidnapping. The men behind it had to know how much he was worth and who they could get the money from.
They had no way to communicate with the outside world, of course. The men who’d taken them had kept the women’s purses and stripped his pockets of everything they contained. So no cell phones.
The first thing he wanted to find out was where they were, at least generally.
“Lissa?”
“Yes, Daddy?”
“Come here. I’m going to boost you up on my shoulders.”
She scrambled up from the corner where she’d been sitting next to her mother.
“Look out that little window and tell me what you see.”
He balanced her as she got into place, then rose, holding her legs and finally helping her to stand. It was a bonus that she was a cheerleader, limber, and used to this kind of action.
“A bunch of men,” she told him. “Dark hair. Some of it long. Sitting under a tree off to the side. Oops!”
She started to teeter, and Eli gripped her ankles harder.
“Just sitting?” he asked.
“Eating lunch, I think. They all look like Emilio Calderon.”
Calderon was the man who ran the Wright International Agrico office in Mexico. Lissa had met him the few times he’d been at their house.
So.
Mexico?
“What does the landscape look like?” he asked.
“A big yard where some native grasses have been cut down. Mountains off to the right that I can’t tell too much about. Maybe trees on them. Big trees in the yard.” She adjusted her feet for balance again. “Oh. One of the men is sitting on an overturned box. I can just make out some of the letters. M-A-Z-A . . . That’s all.”
“Okay, princess. Down you go.”
“What do you think?” Sydney asked anxiously.
“Mexico,” he told her. “Most likely Mazatlan. They flew us here on a plane that had a Mazatlan Textiles logo on it. And everyone we’ve had contact with is Mexican.”
“God.” She rubbed her face. “How will anyone find us here? And what does a textile manufacturer want with us?”
As quietly as he could, trying not to upset anyone more than they already were, he said, “The company is a front. I believe the main business is drugs, and we’re somewhere on the estancia of a major drug lord.”
“Oh my God.” She drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “They’ll never let us go free.”
“Not true,” Mari broke in. “This may actually be good news. I’ve read about kidnappings like this, and the drug lords almost always let their victims go.”
“But we can identify them,” Lissa protested.
“Only the low-level people,” Eli reminded her. “And the cartel leaders don’t care about keeping their identity secret. Our government hasn’t been able to touch them, so why should they care?”
“I think the men you saw in the yard, Lissa, are just workers on the place,” Mari told her. “Not part of the guard detail.”
“I’m just trying to figure out who worked with the cartel on this.” Eli scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “Someone had to set up us, feed them information.”
At that moment they heard wood rattle, and the door slammed open. Pedro pointed his gun in a semicircle around the room, making sure he could see everyone in there. Everyone did their best not to react, but he frowned as if he’d caught them at something. His eyes raked each person from head to foot.
“I hope you haven’t been plotting anything here,” he said. “There is absolutely no way for you to escape. You will do as I say until . . . whatever.”
Eli stepped forward. “Until what? I want to know where we are, what you want, and how long you plan to keep us. And who’s behind all this.” He clenched his fists. “I demand to see him right now.”
“Demand, huh?” Pedro laughed, a derisive sound, then without warning reversed the rifle and slammed the butt into Eli’s stomach. He doubled over, pain shooting through every nerve in his body, barely able to keep from throwing up.
“Eli! My God.” Sydney hurried over to him, trying to help him.
“I’m okay,” he told her in a choked voice. “Don’t say anything.”
But he knew his wife and saw her look up at the man looming over her. “You didn’t have to do that. Why did you hit him?”
Pedro slapped her, a big ring he wore slashing open the skin on her cheek.
“Shut up, or you could get worse.” He looked over his shoulder. “Bring the stuff in. They won’t give us any trouble.”
The same man who had brought them things before carried in another tray filled again with bottled water and more tortillas. Pedro motioned for him to set it on the floor, then leave.
“We’ll be back for your next big video scene very soon,” he told them, then spat on the floor. “Clean yourselves up.”
The door slammed shut, and the bolt dropped into place. Lissa, crying silently, went to help with her father. Mari wet the community handkerchief and cleaned Sydney’s face as best she could.
No one said a word, but they were all aware that things had suddenly gotten worse. And maybe they wouldn’t get out of here after all.