Beyond Revenge (The Ransom Series) (11 page)

I smile and wipe the fresh tears from
my eyes.  I look up to see both Robert and Cindy watching me intently, Robert
barely
maintaining an even face
while Cindy dabs at her eyes with a
tissue.

“Jack’s with her,” I say reassuringly,
setting the letter down on the table.  “I think she’s telling us he’s taking
care of her, and more than just for the baby.  He’s there supporting her
through this.  She’s in good hands.”

Cindy nods at me, trying to smile but
holding back a sob.

Robert looks deep in thought, staring
blankly at the letter on the table before looking back up at me.  “You’re sure
we can trust him?  You’re absolutely positive he hasn’t been working with Mark
this whole time?”

“He’s a good man.  He was genuine when
he said he wanted to help me and Morgan escape.  He said…”
 
Synapses start firing rapidly in my brain.  A trigger goes off
within me, connecting my current train of thought with the discovery in the
envelope.  My eyes go wide.
 
“He said he had a place
in the mountains where he could hide us, somewhere Mark didn’t know about.  But
what if
Mark
did?  Or what if Jack suggested it knowing
that he told me about the place?  Maybe he wanted us to find them there.”

Excitement and purpose overtake
Robert’s entire expression.  “Where is this place?  What do you know about?”

I think for a moment, and that’s all
the time it takes for my heart to sink back down to where it was before the
arrival of Morgan’s letter.  “Nothing.  He didn’t tell me anything about it,
only that it’s in the mountains.  I didn’t even think at the time to ask him
for
details
.  I was more concerned about getting Morgan away from
Mark first.”

“It’s okay,” Robert says encouragingly. 
“It’s something.  We can have the pine needle and the letter analyzed
. 
I
n the meantime
,
I want you to rack
your brain for any
places
you can
think of
where Jack might have a hidden house in the mountains.”
 
Robert carefully folds up the letter and places it with the
envelope in the second evidence bag.  He takes both bags with him and grabs his
keys, badge, and gun from the counter.
 
“I’m going to
get these to the lab.  Let’s talk in my office when I get back, Leo.  I want to
see if we can come up with any leads before the end of the night.”

The confidence and enthusiasm spilling
out of Robert absorbs into me across the room.  For the first time in weeks
,
I’m feeling the effects of optimism in my blood
and
some of the life returning to me.  I feel Morgan’s love and hope in
the words she wrote to me and
her parents and in the clues she managed to pass along to us.

She’s given me reason to move forward,
and I will embrace it and never let it go.

The light is within my grasp again, and
I won’t lose sight of it.

I won’t lose her or our baby.

Her Fortitude

∞

Beauty.

It is her, inside
and out.

Strength.

It fuels her,
radiates from her, becomes her.

Determination.

To have the will
to survive.

To strive for love
in the face of evil.

To embrace life
with purpose.

With fortitude.

To endure.

∞

I’ve been staring at these maps for almost
a day, marking cities where Mark and I met up with Jack or where I knew Jack
had been from the stories he loved to tell of his travels.  I’ve been running
through both my own notes and Robert’s notes of timelines of events in Mark’s
business, highlighting anything
that I know involved
Jack. 
I’ve tried putting all the pieces together in my brain
,
but I’ve come up with nothing so far, and I’m fucking frustrated
by it.

Leaning back in the chair, I
run
my hands through my hair
and squeeze my eyes shut.  When I
open them and look up to the rough pattern on the white ceiling
,
I hope that when my eyes return to the papers in front of me
something will jump out and give me some insight into Jack’s mind.  Where the
hell would he have
a
hidden
house
in the mountains?

I haven’t ruled out anywhere yet.  The
entire country–hell, the entire world–could be possibilities.  He could have
picked any state, any city, or it could be completely off the map,
somewhere
so remote that it would be impossible to find even with
satellite imagery.

A soft knock at the door to the office steals
my attention.  Cindy peeks in hesitantly.  “Sorry to interrupt.”

I sit up in the chair and turn around
to face her.  “No, it’s fine.  Come in.”

As she walks in, she smiles briefly at
me sitting in her husband’s chair before scanning her eyes across the papers
and maps spread out on the desk with the laptop buried
beneath
them.  She carries a coffee mug with her, the steam rising from it
enticingly.  “I thought you could use some coffee, though I’m not sure where
you’ll put it with all this.”

I gratefully accept the mug from her,
holding it between my hands and absorbing its warmth as I take a few sips and
make a place for it on the desk.  “Thank you.  This is just what I needed right
now.”

“Good.”  Cindy smiles and steps back,
absorbing the view of the desk once more.  It looks like she has a million
questions.  She’s on the verge of spilling them out
,
but she almost seems afraid to speak.

I can’t watch her stand there and not
be concerned.  “Are you okay?”

She nods slightly and takes a deep
breath.  “Sorry, I’m fine.  It’s just…”  She steps back another foot to the
wall, putting her hands back to its surface and leaning against it.  “What was
it like all that time without
your
family?  Back when
you were with him.”

It’s hard not to show
in my
expression
how much her question throws me off.  It’s not
really something I want to think about or answer, so I counter her question
with another question.  “You’re worried about what Morgan’s going through?”

She nods hesitantly.  “I’m afraid she
feels alone and unloved.  I know you say this Jack person is with her and that
he can be trusted, but that’s not like having family there with her.  He’s not
you
,
or me, or Robert.  She doesn’t have us there to
support her, and God only knows what Mark is doing to her on a daily basis.”

Tears start to fall down Cindy’s cheeks
as she speaks, though overall she’s maintaining control of her emotions
heroically given the nature of this conversation.

I try to give her a reassuring smile and reinforce it
with words. 
“She knows we’re looking for her and that we’d
be there for her if we could.  Jack will take good care of her in our absence.”

I glance to the wall and catch a
glimpse of a framed photo of the Whitford family smiling together on a beach. 
I don’t know why, but seeing Morgan so happy in that picture makes the raw
honesty come out of me, for better or worse.

“
When
I was
growing up with Mark
,
I did somewhat have a family. 
His wife and daughter made me feel like I was part of a family again, and I
really cared about them.  If it weren’t for them, I may not have lived through
dealing with Mark each day before he went to prison.”

Cindy gives me a sympathetic look, but
I don’t want her pity.  It’s not entirely clear to me why I’m telling her about
my past, but it feels good to talk about it.  Morgan is the only person I’ve
been this honest with about my history, and even she doesn’t know the whole
story.

“Did you love her?”

“What?”
 
I’m
completely taken aback by the question.

“Mark’s daughter.”  She pauses, looking
uncomfortable.  “You
r
eyes sort of lit up when you
mentioned her.”

My lips part in shock
as I stare
blankly
at the woman standing in front of me.

The house phone rings beneath the layer
of papers on the desk, causing me to jump in my seat.  I dig under the papers
and see Robert’s name come up on the caller ID.

I immediately answer it on
speakerphone.  “Robert?”

“California.”

“Wait, what?”

“She’s in California.  God, she is
fucking brilliant, Leo.”

I inhale a sharp breath and look to
Cindy, whose
lips are parted in shock
.

“The pine needle,” Robert continues,
rushing through his words, “it’s from a Coulter pine.  It’s a tree that grows
in the coastal mountain regions of California.”

It’s impossible not to be skeptical of
news this good.  “They’re sure about this?  Can we really narrow our search
area down that far?”

“The guys at the lab didn’t want to
tell me until they were completely sure.  It’s a solid lead.”

I’m completely speechless.  Cindy
’s
now
beaming a gorgeous smile that lights up her face in a way
that is so reminiscent of Morgan’s features.

It takes a few moments
,
but Robert’s new information finally sinks in.  I yank out the map
I was working on, accidently knocking a few sheets of paper to the floor.  With
a quick fold
of the map,
I’ve reduced my area of
possible locations from the entire country down to one state.

“I’ll get right on this.”  I pull the
laptop closer to me, disturbing even more of the loose papers on the desk.  “We
need as much information as we can get on any specific locations for this
tree.”

“Already done.  The lab gave me a full
report on this tree and its locations and growing conditions.  I’ll be there in
five.  We can go over everything then.”

I can hear the excitement in his
voice.  The hope that we actually have a shot at finding Morgan is as vibrant
as ever in her father, and I want to embrace that feeling for myself, too.
 
“Okay.  We’ll be ready.”

After I
click o
ff
the
speaker
phone
,
Cindy and I start collecting the extra papers on the desk, forming
them into a disorderly pile in the corner of the room.  When it’s done and the
desk is mostly clear
,
we turn to each other
with
smiles spreading across both our faces as we both seem
to realize the huge step we’ve just taken in the search for Morgan.

Cindy throws her arms around me,
pulling me into a tight hug.
 
“One step closer, Leo.”

I’m still not used to Cindy showing
this kind of affection toward me, but despite my discomfort
,
I try to let her embrace me and let myself embrace her back.  “It’s
really good news.  This is just what we needed.”

We pull back from each other
. 
Fresh
tears fall down Cindy’s face, but she’s still grinning
from ear to ear.

A
door slams shut elsewhere in the
house
,
and moments later Robert rushes into the
room
, greeting his wife and giving her a brief kiss before placing the
paperwork in his hands on the desk.  I move Robert’s
office
chair over
for
him and pull up his spare
wooden chair from the other side of the desk for myself.

Robert sits down and immediately starts
turning pages.  “This is the report.  We should mark the areas it talks about
on the map and then research from there.  We should contact hospitals and
doctors’ offices in those areas
just
in case there
have been any complications with Morgan.  I think that should be our first
step.”

“Agreed.  It’s a good start.”

It’s the best news we’ve had in weeks. 
We finally have some semblance of a plan, and Mark is none the wiser for it.  We
don’t have to worry about what we do causing Morgan more pain.  Robert can use
his skills as a detective to get us where we need to go to find her.  He’ll
narrow it down.  He’ll find a way.

We will prevail.

Cindy braves the long hours with us,
bringing cup after cup of coffee as we work into the night printing off
detailed maps of the specific regions near the middle and southern parts of the
California coast where the Coulter pine can be found and researching names
and places in and around those regions.  Our scope of search is significantly
smaller than it was this morning.

We search public records and Robert’s
police database for any documentation in California that could possibly tie to
Jack Pearce
or an alias he’s used in the past
. 
The
more I think about it, though, the more I realize that Mark wouldn’t risk
keeping Morgan at a location that wasn’t his.  He’d pick somewhere completely
new, a place solely of his choosing and known only to him.

We
quickly move on to
mak
ing
lists of hospitals, doctors’
offices, and OB
/
GYN clinics in and around the areas of
interest.  We identify every medical supply company in the state to check and
monitor for purchases consistent with the supplies and medical devices needed
for a home birth.

I feel like we’ve made progress, but we
still have a long way to go. 
We’re in a better position with a much
smaller search area but no closer to a definitive location for Morgan.

We need something else.  Just one more
piece to the puzzle could be enough to help us figure this out.

“What about the envelope and letter?” I
ask Robert.

He
turns
his
head
toward me
, clearly hearing my question
even
though his eyes never leave the laptop screen he’s been glued
to for hours.  “What do you mean?”

“Did the lab find anything on
them
?”

“No
, nothing of value yet
.
 They
’re
still awaiting some chemical test results
.
  I had them
focus on the pine needle first.
”  He tosses the plastic
evidence bag over to me.  “Feel free to take a look, but I think you’ve already
uncovered everything there is to know about them.”

It’s not clear to me what I’m doing,
why I feel like I could possibly get anything else out of these pieces of paper
when a police lab
hasn’t
found
anything yet
, but I slowly open the bag anyway and peek inside.

I’m immediately hit with the
tiniest
hint of something familiar,
a scent
that I’ve known for years.  At first I have trouble placing it, and
then it hits me.
 
“Cigar smoke.”

Robert looks at me with confusion. 
“What are you talking about?”

I bring the bag
close
to my nose again, just to be sure.  The scent is
barely
there, but my familiarity with it makes the smell
unmistakable. 
“The envelope and letter have been closed up in this bag
, and now it
smells a little
like the kind of cigar Jack uses.”

“So it’s confirmation that Jack
’s
with her?  We already knew that.”

“You don’t get it.  Cigars are the one
thing Jack can’t live without, and he only uses a specific brand.  One way or
another, he or Mark will buy more of these cigars.  We can track them with it.”

I see the understanding slowly work its
way into Robert’s face.  “This could work.”

“We need to find all the cigar shops in
the state.  We can send them pictures and descriptions of Mark and Jack.  All
we need to do is pinpoint a location they’ve been to
,
and
that will take us miles
further
than we’ve come up
until this point.”

With a relieved grin spreading across
his face, Robert reaches out to my shoulder and grasps it firmly.  He nods at
me appreciatively, seeming to have some difficulty finding his words.