Los Angeles Offices of Mastiff Security

Los Angeles, California

 

“It was a private plane!”

Durango looked up as Andres came marching into his office just after dawn. “What was a private plane?”

“That call that came to my cell phone. Tech finally tracked it back to a private plane that’s based out of a private airport here in California.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope. Just got the report not five minutes ago.”

Durango walked around his desk and snatched the report from Andres’ fingers. Sure enough, the call had traced back to an onboard satellite phone from a Gulfstream G650. A damn impressive aircraft.

What the hell was Wren doing on it?

“Tell me again what you heard when you picked up?”

“A man’s voice asking who someone was calling. And Wren’s voice…but I’m not quite sure what it was she was saying. Something about the office, I think.”

“But it was Wren’s voice. You’re sure?”

“I’m positive.”

“Is there any way to get the serial numbers for the plane from this? To prove which plane the call came from?”

“There can’t be many of those planes flying out of this area.”

“This is California, Andres. Everyone has one of these jets.”

Andres looked discouraged, but Durango wasn’t. He knew someone who worked for the FAA. He’d find out which plane this came from if it took bribing the guy to do it.

“This is good work, Andres,” he said. “At least we know she’s still alive. I’m not sure what to make of the exchange you overheard, but I’m going to take it as confirmation that she is still being held against her will.”

“What do we do now?”

“We keep looking. Delaney’s had to have left a trail somewhere.”

Andres just nodded, exhaustion suddenly evident in his eyes. Durango was suddenly aware that he’d had the man working for twenty-four hours straight.

“Hey, go home. See your wife and daughter, get some rest. I’ll call you if something comes up.”

“I’m good. Just an hour on my couch, and—”

“You just got married, man. Go home and visit your wife.”

Andres nodded, gratefulness written all over his face. Durango watched him leave before falling into Wren’s office chair, his eyes moving to study the report on the plane again. There was nothing they could really use there, just the fact that she’d flown on a private plane from one place to another. How was that supposed to help them?

She’d called Andres. Was it a call for help, or did she believe she was free to leave? Had she called him to ask him to save her, or did she call him to ask him to take in the mail? If Durango were kidnapped, his first call would go to Gracie or his father. Why had Wren chosen Andres? Durango knew they had a personal relationship. Was that the reason? Did she feel she was closer to him, that she could trust him better, than her roommates or her siblings? What about her father?

It didn’t quite make sense.

“Where are you, Wren?” he once again asked the empty room.

“If she could answer, I’m sure she would have by now.”

Durango looked up, more grateful than he could ever express to see Gracie’s familiar face. She smiled almost shyly as she crossed the room to him, lying across his open lap as she fell into his open arms. He held her close for a long time, taking strength from her familiar scent. He felt like he hadn’t spent nearly enough time in her presence over the past few days, so wrapped up in this mystery that he’d been neglecting her. But she was always there, just off to one side, always waiting for the moment when he really needed her.

Wasn’t that what love was all about?

“I love you, babe.”

“You’re going to love me more in a minute.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible.”

She giggled softly even as she pulled away from him, moving to sit on the edge of the desk. “I talked to some buddies at the FBI, and then to some others, and then to a guy with the U.S. Marshals Service. I think you’re right about this Delaney fellow.”

“He’s in witness protection?”

“He was. I don’t have confirmation yet, but I’ve been talking to the people who would know, and they’ve told me that he had a letter from the Marshals Service when he applied to Quantico that raised a lot of eyebrows. Some wanted to send him packing, others wanted to pick his brain to answer a few difficult-to-discuss questions that victims often deal with.”

“Victims? Victims of what?”

She shrugged. “No one could give me a straight answer. But most of them seemed to think it had to do with a serial killer. Someone told me that he’d heard he was related to someone who’d been a prolific killer in the nineties. Someone else told me that he was just related to a victim of a serial killer.”

“You don’t know which?”

“No. But I’m waiting on a call that could reveal it all.”

Durango nodded slowly. “Doesn’t really matter which it is, does it? One way or the other, it makes sense with the materials we found in his garage. The man’s been researching serial murder cases since he joined the FBI. Some of the cases we found date back to the seventies. Others are as recent as 2005.”

“Why do you think he was doing it?”

“I don’t know. He could have been trying to identify the killer. Or he could have been trying to learn how to emulate him. I’m hoping for the former, but fearful it could be the latter.”

“You honestly think an FBI agent would be capable of murder?”

“It’s not unheard of.”

Gracie nodded, but there was a look in her eyes that was familiar.

“No, don’t do that,” he said, getting up and moving to the windows, watching the city come alive below him. “Don’t give me that puppy dog look. I know it too well.”

“You don’t think your experience with Billy might have tainted your view of the world just a little?”

Durango wanted to groan. Gracie knew exactly what he’d been through over the past eight or nine years. The murder of his fiancée on a day that should have been celebratory; the ugly trial that followed, destroying his career and his reputation beyond repair; the murders that began following him around two years later; the accusations, his arrest, and then the ultimate revelation that it was his trusted brother behind it all. She was by his side through everything that followed, the ugly press circus, the damage to his father’s reputation and business, the struggle to keep their lives from utterly imploding. They were good now, a year later, but it had shown him how tenuous life, reputation, and security could be. And that trust was a joke only idiots believed in.

There were three people Durango trusted now: Gracie, his father, and his good friend and employee back in Illinois, Axel.

She moved up behind him, her hand resting on his back as she moved to stand beside him.

“You went through an ordeal, no one denies that. It was awful, the things Billy did to you. But that doesn’t mean everyone is a psychopath who only wants to wreak as much destruction as possible on the world and those he loves.”

“Then why did he kidnap her?”

“We don’t know he did. It’s possible they’re both under the influence of someone.”

“There’s no evidence that there’s anyone else with them. There were only two sets of towels used in the bathrooms of the house, only two sets of clothing left behind, one hers, one his. There were only two sets of fingerprints.”

“But—”

“He took her. I don’t know why, and I don’t know if she’s truly with him against her will. But I know that he doesn’t have the most honest of intentions for her.”

“How do you know that?”

“Have you seen pictures of her mother?” He turned and snatched a file folder from the top of the desk and pulled out two photos, one of Elizabeth Thomas and one of Wren Ryland. “Do you see the resemblance?”

“It’s…pretty amazing.”

“Yeah. And her mother’s picture was on one of those boards at his house. How do we know that her contacting him about the murder, her getting involved with him, didn’t set off some sort of fetish? How do we know he didn’t take her because he wants to reenact her mother’s murder with her as the victim this time?”

“And how do we know that they’re not just off investigating her mother’s murder like she told her roommates she was planning to do?”

“Why hasn’t she answered her cell phone? Why hasn’t she called in?”

Even Gracie had nothing to say to that.

“If we go into this without looking at the darker possibilities, we could make a fatal mistake, and Wren will be the one to pay for it. We don’t want that.”

“Of course not.”

“I will find her, and I will find her alive.”

“I know you will, babe,” she said, dropping the pictures on the desk and sliding into his arms, her hands coming up to touch his face. “I know you will. But you won’t do it if you let yourself get too tired. Come home. Sleep for a little while.”

“Home?”

She rolled her head, sighing softly. “Jackson’s. We stay there so often, it’s beginning to feel like home.”

“I’m sorry. I know I promised we wouldn’t have to spend so much time here.”

“It’s okay. Wherever you are is home to me.”

He groaned, suddenly realizing what a lucky man he really was. He kissed her, drawing her hard against him, her familiar body molding to his like they were meant to be together. He wasn’t sure what he would do if it were she who’d gone missing, she who was running all over the country with a man who could be a saint or the next notorious serial killer.

He was pretty sure he’d never come back from losing her. There’d been too much loss in his life these past years. He wouldn’t survive it.

He wasn’t quite sure when he’d walked over that line, when he’d gotten to that point with any other woman. But even as he realized that he felt things for her that he thought he’d never feel again after his Sarah died, he also realized that what he felt for Gracie went beyond what he’d known with his fiancée. He’d survived Sarah’s passing. Barely, but he did survive.

Gracie…there was no surviving without her.

“Let’s get married,” he said, the words falling from his lips before he had a chance to consider them.

“What?” She pulled back, shock clear in her eyes as she stared up at him. “Did you just—”

“I don’t know why I waited so long to ask. But I don’t want to wait any more. I want you to be my wife today. Now.”

She laughed, a bit of hysteria slipping from her lips as she stared at him like he’d just announced he was Mork from the planet of Ork.

“I just…I can’t risk ever losing you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, moving close to him again. “I thought we covered that last year.”

“We did. But now I want to make it official. I want to always know you’ll be there, and for you to know you’re stuck with me even if you change your mind at some point down the road.”

She groaned. “I won’t change my mind.”

“Then marry me.”

“Okay.”

He laughed, suddenly wide awake and filled with a sort of energy he couldn’t contain. “Let’s go, then!”

“Now?”

“No point in wasting time!”

Her laughter followed him through the building, and it was the best thing he’d heard in a very long time.