Chapter 16
Sipping her bourbon slowly, Devon made it last until halfway through the session with Logan. She switched to hot tea, and Logan pushed more cookies on her. She nibbled on them as he asked questions to pull out everything she remembered about the last four years as it related to her father.
He had just called for a break when his cell phone rang.
“Yeah, Avery? What? Okay.” He looked at Devon. “She wants me to put this on speakerphone.” He tapped the speaker icon and placed the phone on the table between them. “Okay. You’re on.”
“Devon? You there?”
“I am.” She tightened her hands into fists. “Did something else happen?”
“First, let me get this out of the way. I sent Sam to the dock to see if she could get anything else out of Gary. She flashed a little money and his tongue loosened up.”
“And?”
“A little surprise here. When he told us two men had been asking about Graham Cole? We thought it was the cartel thugs.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No, it was our two buddies from Cole International.”
“What the fuck?” Logan shook his head. “They were in town long before they made themselves known to us.”
“Uh-huh. It could even have been them showing up that hastened Cole’s disappearance. If in fact they went to see him.”
Logan wanted to pound something. “This whole thing just keeps getting more convoluted.”
“No kidding. Anyway, Graham Cole said he’d call me, but only on a phone that is secure and not a cell phone. Too easily traced. And…”
“And what?” he prompted.
“He wants to talk to Devon.”
“To me?” She almost squeaked the words. “Really?”
“He wants to explain, he says. He never expected this to happen. You’ll have to bring her here so we can use the secure Vigilance line.”
“She’s pretty wiped, Avery.”
“Do we want to get this done or not?” she reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, when?”
“As soon as you can get here.”
“Got it.”
“Also, Cole agrees with our DEA plan, too, so I put a call into my contact. He’s in Tampa and he’s on his way.”
“So are we,” he assured her and hung up.
“I can’t believe this.” Devon scrubbed her hands over her face. “What did Avery mean, she might want you to take me someplace else?”
He took her hands and pulled her closer to him. “When all the cards are on the table, she may decide you’re safe out of this war zone completely. Someplace where Moreno has no idea you are.”
She leaned into him for a moment. “It’s like a nightmare that never ends.” She sighed, then moved away from him. “Okay. Let me just wash my face and throw on some shoes and I’m ready.”
Before they left the house, he made sure the alarm was properly set and synced with his watch. He looked carefully as they headed down the drive and onto Seacliff Road, but he didn’t see any cars. Although by now it was dark and with no street lights out here they’d be easy to miss. He’d just have to be hyperalert.
“I’m going to stop and get gas. I’m lower than I like to be.” There was a gas station conveniently at the end of the road at the turn into town, but Logan bypassed it.
“You missed the gas station.”
“I know. But that corner is kind of isolated and on two sides the roads are heavily treed. I want one with more people around and a lot of lights.”
She glanced over at him. “You don’t really think they’d make a try for me here in town, do you?”
He grunted. “No? Have we seen anything so far that tells us they’re afraid of being caught?” Then he reached over and took her hand. “Don’t worry. I plan to take excellent care of you.” Then he softened his voice. “In more ways than one.”
She squeezed his hand, and said in a soft voice, “I know. I trust you.”
He drove to a convenience store just one block off Main Street, but still well lit, and pulled into one of the pumps. There was more traffic here, too, more people around.
“This should just take a few minutes.”
“Okay.”
He climbed out of the truck and locked the doors. He had pulled up as close as he dared to a pump that he could make a quick exit from. He swiped his credit card, selected his gas, and began to pump. There was hardly any room between him and the truck, and as he pumped he constantly looked to the left and the right.
God, he thought, the fucking pump was so slow. Or maybe it was just his edginess and impatience.
A car with two men in it pulled into a pump in the next lane but they didn’t seem to pay any attention to him. Then a car with a woman in it pulled in behind him. She looked to be having some kind of trouble with the pump. His brain automatically cataloged them from force of habit, although they all looked harmless enough. Still, he’d learned that what looked harmless was often lethal.
Hurry up and get the fuck out of here.
His pump had just shut off and he’d replaced the nozzle when here she came, in jeans and a T-shirt with ridiculously high heels and a perplexed look on her face as she studied something in her hand.
“I hate to bother you,” she said, “but I have a problem here.”
“Ask inside. Someone there can help you.” He started to move away from her.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, and brought up her hand.
As the jolts of electricity stabbed through him and he fell, he thought, Taser. He wanted to tell Devon to get the hell out of there but he couldn’t speak.
Then blackness washed over him.
* * * *
“Logan.” A voice came at him out of the dark. “Logan, wake up.”
He forced his eyes open but everything was blurry. The first thing he realized was he wasn’t at the gas station. Whose voice was that?
“Avery?”
“Oh, thank God he’s awake.” He could hear the relief in her voice.
He squinted, trying to focus. “Where the hell am I?”
“At Vigilance.” Mike Perez’s voice. “How do you feel?”
He tried to sit up, then fell back. Every muscle in his body felt as if he’d been kicked by a horse. Even his bones hurt. There was a sharp pain in his side but when he slid his hand down to see what it was, Avery grabbed it and pulled it away.
“Don’t touch. There’s a bandage there.”
He tried to frown but even his forehead hurt. “From what?”
“You were hit with a Taser,” Mike told him. “A heavy dose. We had to get an EMT here to remove the barbs.”
“Shit.” Again the scene flashed back to him. “Devon. Where the fuck is Devon?”
Avery just looked at him. “I’m sorry, Logan. She’s gone.”
“Dead?” He felt as if the electricity had jolted his heart. “Please tell me she’s not dead.”
“No.” Mike crouched down beside him. “But she’s gone. We figure Moreno has her.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Can you tell us what happened?” Avery asked.
He told them about stopping for gas, picking a well-lit station. The two cars that pulled in after he did. The woman who asked for his help.
“She had the Taser, but her hand covered most of it until the last minute.” The nausea he felt had as much to do with Devon missing as with the aftereffects of the electric shocks. “Those two guys in the other car. Shit.”
“Sam made the owner of the convenience store let her watch the security tape. Too bad we couldn’t catch the license plate of the car that parked behind you. And the woman knew enough to look away from the camera. We’ve got sort of a picture of the guy who took Devon but none of us know who he is. Sheri’s going to take a look.”
“Where’s my truck?”
Avery shook her head. “Gone, with Devon in it. They obviously had one of those electronic things that unlocks vehicles.”
With Mike’s help, he finally managed to pull himself to a sitting position.
“Get me some aspirin,” he told Avery. “How long have I been out?”
“An hour. When you didn’t get here in a reasonable amount of time, I tried calling you. I didn’t get an answer so we pinged your cell phone’s GPS. When we got to the gas station, two people were trying to revive you.”
“Could they tell you anything?”
“No,” Mike answered. “They were busy with their own stuff. Oblivious, like most people.”
“Sheri’s got an APB out,” Avery told him. “So does the sheriff, and he asked the highway patrol to keep an eye out. We have no idea where they’d take her.”
“And Tweedledum and Tweedledee at the B and B?”
“Also gone.”
I promised to keep her safe and I let her down. If she dies, it’s all on me. Someone should just shoot me.
“You get one minute for a pity party,” Mike told him, as if reading his mind. “Then we’ve got work to do if we’re going to get her back.”
“How the hell did they know you’d be at the gas station?” Avery asked as she helped him to his feet.
He took a moment to fight back the nausea and get his balance. He’d had worse than this in Iraq, he reminded himself. And a light bulb went on in his scrambled brans.
“Cash Breeland.”
“What?” Avery and Mike both stared at him.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. He’s a friend of Graham’s. Probably his best friend here. And…wait for it…owns Arrowhead Bay Community Bank. We were looking for a conduit? There it is. And he could have made the hospital badge, too. Damn.” He smacked his forehead. “Why didn’t I think of this before? Because I’m stupid.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Logan,” Avery told him. “I think we all made the mistake of thinking nothing like that would be based in sleepy little Arrowhead Bay.”
“Which is why it’s the best place for it,” Logan said. “Fucking damn. My gut told me there was something weird with him. I should have listened to it. I bet he had cars watching for us to leave the house, no matter how long they had to wait. I just made it easy for them.”
“You know when we checked him out he came up clean, on first sweep.”
Logan made a rude noise. “As good as he’s been at covering up cartel money I suspect he’d do the same for himself.”
“I’ll call Sheri and get her to make a little visit to him.” Avery reached for her phone, dialed Sheri, and relayed the information to her.
“I guarantee you he’s not home.”
“But maybe we can get something from his wife. What about Cole?”
“He’s waiting for our call. He’s already texted me twice.” Avery twisted her lips in a grimace. “He’s not very happy with us. By the way, when we found you, I decided some things couldn’t wait. I called my DEA contact, Chuck LaValle, and gave him the info on SMX. He said with that they could move right away. But they will need whatever else we have to help with the case.”
“Then let’s hope Graham Cole still wants to play ball with us.”
* * * *
“They’re into my money,” Moreno screamed.
Vato held his cell phone away from his ear. Shit.
“What do you mean, they’re into it? How could they be into it? It’s covered up six ways from Sunday.”
“Your fucking friend Graham Cole has given them the information, that’s what.” His voice grated on Vato’s nerves. “They froze SMX Group assets.”
Vato felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. “That’s impossible.”
“Don’t tell me impossible. It’s happening. We monitor those accounts all the time. They’re set up to give us an alert if anything like this happens. I want my money back. Now.”
Vato dropped into a chair, forcing himself to be calm. How the hell had this happened? He’d made it very plain to Graham what would happen if he tried to pull back from the arrangement or monkey with it in any way. For a while it had strained their relationship. Then one day, it was as if a switch had been flipped. The man had decided to go with the flow. His own coffers were being enriched, although not as much as Moreno’s. But he liked his lifestyle and the corporation was doing well.
How was Vato supposed to know it was all an act? That Graham was collecting and storing information, bit by bit, that he could one day use as a weapon? Some fancy financial maneuvering would be required, pronto, to save any of the cartel’s money. Even then nothing was guaranteed. Maybe he could find out where Graham was and hide away there himself.
“Calm down, Cruz. I’ll get on it right away. You know we have some emergency traps in there.”
“I want that man,” Moreno snapped. “And I’m going to get him. You’ve gotten rich on our relationship. If you want to keep that lifestyle and stay out of jail, here’s what I want you to do.”
When Vato hung up, he had his assignment, one that he’d have to figure out a way to execute under the circumstances. And do it fast. He opened his desk drawer and took out the little pouch he kept for situations just like this. He stared at it for a long moment.
Fuck!
How had he allowed himself to reach this point where he was no better than Moreno? Where he was about to do something that went against every sense of reason?
Because I fell in love with the money.
At first it has been a game, a way to use the smarts he’d acquired all these years. Manipulating Cole International. Getting their own people in place. And now he was in it up to his neck. He had no idea how he was going to accomplish his task, considering the circumstances, but he had a feeling his own life was on the line. Maybe he’d have just a little bit of luck come his way and he could do what he had to. But he was sick to his stomach just thinking about it.
* * * *
Graham booted up the computer and went to his anonymous e-mail. The icon in the status bar told him he had a message waiting. He clicked on it, and when the e-mail opened, his hand froze on the mouse. For a moment he was afraid he’d have a heart attack. Had he caused this? Dear God. All he’d wanted to do was keep them away from Devon.
“It does not pay to fuck with me, mi amigo. We will trade her for you, and everything you have on the cartel. Watch for instructions. Meanwhile, keep this picture as a reminder.”
There was a photo of Devon sitting in a chair, hands and feet bound and a blindfold across her eyes. Propped against her body was a newspaper with today’s date. How the hell had he done this when she had a bodyguard? And a highly regarded one if what he’d found out was true.
Graham wanted to scream, to smash things, to throw the computer against the wall. Every possible scenario ran through his brain, none of them good. One thing he did know, whatever he had to do, even if it meant sacrificing his own life, he had to get Devon away from this maniac. It took a supreme effort to get his rage under control. He swallowed back the bile that surged in his throat and tried to clear his brain, to think what to do.
He was smart enough to know he couldn’t handle this by himself, and to realize he had only one real choice. First he hit Reply to the e-mail.
“I’ll take the deal, you piece of shit, but if one hair on her head is harmed, you are dead and so are all your people.”
Next he fetched a new burner phone from his stash and plugged in Avery March’s number.
“This is Graham Cole,” he said when she answered. “I’ve made a huge mess here and I need help.”
* * * *
Logan watched as Avery disconnected the call to Graham Cole. She’d had it on speaker so they could all hear. He was seized with a vicious desire to try to find the man and smash his face in, except it was really his own face he should be pounding. This whole disaster was his fault. He should have taken Devon to Vigilance first, then gone to get gas. It was a rookie mistake and he wanted to shoot himself for making it. He felt so sick he was afraid he’d vomit right there on Avery’s fancy rug.
“Logan.”
Her sharp voice, like the end of a stick, grabbed his attention.
“What?” He sat up straighter in his chair.
“Get your shit together, will you?” she snapped. “We’ll deal with mistakes later but right now we don’t have time for self-flagellation.”
“Damn it to hell. They have Devon, right?”
“Hold on.”
Avery studied her cell. When it chimed an incoming message, she accepted it and held up the screen for him to see. When he saw the picture of Devon, bound and gagged, a pain lanced through him so sharp he nearly doubled over.
“God.” He raked his hands through his hair. “If she dies, how will I ever live with myself?”
Amanda and Devon. Two women he’d failed.
“Cut it out,” Avery said. “I told you we don’t have time for this. We have to get Devon back and we need you to do it. Just pull up your big boy pants and get with the program.”
She was right. Wasting time beating himself up wasn’t going to resolve this situation. He’d have plenty of time afterward to go somewhere and hide. He certainly couldn’t go back to Vigilance. Or to Devon. Not when he was responsible for this disaster. Not that she’d want to see him anyway.
He sucked it up and with the discipline of long years, pulled himself together. He almost welcomed the pain that still lingered, a reminder that he had one goal now—get Devon back.
“Okay. Where are we and what do we need to do?”
“I told Graham we’d come up with a plan. They want to exchange her for him. We’re going to help him do that, only we’ll be calling the shots. Let’s put this plan together.”