Kate Sherwood - Dark Horse 03 - Of Dark and Bright (18 page)

“Yeah, they were really pretty,” the voice said. “She dropped them in the parking lot. Maybe you can pick them up, if they’re so important to you.”

There were muffled voices in the background, then the man said, “That’s it for this call. I’ll call back in an hour, from a different number. Make sure you pick up.” Then the line disconnected, and Evan was left standing in the hospital corridor, the phone pressed against his head so hard it was crushing his ear, while Dan stared at him in confusion.

“What’s going on?” Dan demanded.

“Call Bill Albanese,” Evan said. He was pretty sure Dan had the number. He hit the button to call back Tat’s cell and talked as he lifted the phone to his ear. “Somebody just called from Tat’s phone. Said he had Tat. Said he’d call back in an hour.”

Dan was searching his own contact list, and then he hit a button and raised his own phone to his ear. “You’re calling her back?” Evan nodded. “Just voice mail, though.”

 

Dan lifted a finger to pause Evan, then spoke into his phone. “Bill, it’s Dan Wheeler. Hang on, Evan needs you.”

 

Dan handed his phone over, and Evan tried to keep his voice under control. “Bill, They’ve got Tat. For real, this time.”

J
EFFlet himself float. He’d been stupid, but now everything was better again. He’d be back on his feet, he’d take care of the boys, and yeah, maybe with Chris’s help, he’d start training them to look after themselves a little. Everything else would work out fine. Everything was good.

He closed his eyes and let himself drift off into dreamland.
Chapter 14

D
AN had driven on the way to the hospital because Evan was bigger, and had been better able to manhandle Jeff into the backseat. He drove on the way
from
the hospital because he didn’t trust Evan behind the wheel.

Dan didn’t know exactly where he was going, but he could follow the GPS’s directions. And Evan was a blur of activity, both of their cellphones gripped in his hands as he tried to get hold of all the people he needed, make all the reports and requests that he could, as quickly as possible. Chris had gone back to coordinate things at the house, with Robyn as his assistant, and Anna had stayed at the hospital with Jeff. Their team was spread as thin as it could be, and Dan didn’t like it. He needed their solid support around him, and he suspected Evan was missing it too.

Dan questioned his reliance on the GPS when it directed him to stop in front of a nondescript three-story brick office building, but Evan hopped out of the car and strode toward the front door, so Dan followed. Apparently this
was
the headquarters for Evan’s security team. Dan had always pictured something a little more futuristiclooking, and maybe something a little more sinister. He saw the row of police cars lined up in the parking lot and took it as the final confirmation that they were in the right place.

He trailed along behind Evan as he charged up the walk, through the front door and across a small reception area. There was a security guard behind a desk who took one look at Evan’s face and hit a button to unlock the door at the back of the foyer. Evan pulled it open without comment and kept moving. Dan had to jog a little to keep up.

Evan hit an elevator button on the way by, but when the doors didn’t open immediately he kept walking and pushed open a door to the stairwell. Up two flights, three steps at a time, and then they were through another doorway and into a busy central room. There were twenty or thirty cubicles, and from what Dan could see each had a row of computer monitors and a human operator with a headset. Dan wasn’t sure if they were watching security cameras or doing something more intricate, and there was no opportunity to ask.

“Evan.” Bill Albanese stepped forward and gripped Evan’s shoulder. “We’re on top of it. We’ve got the team ready to go. We’ll make it work.”

Evan just nodded; his jaw was clenched so tightly he might not even be
able
to speak.

“Come on through here. We’ve got a command center set up. You can meet everybody, and hear what we’ve got so far.” Bill guided Evan toward a door on the far wall, and Dan followed. But when they reached the doorway, Bill turned to face him. “Dan, I’m sorry. I need to ask you to wait out here.”

Evan turned to look at both of them, but Dan just stared at Bill. “What? Why? What if Evan needs me?”

 

“He’s with me, Bill,” Evan said, his voice firm.

“I’m sorry, Evan. But….” Bill looked at Dan, then back at Evan. “Krista Wheeler. Married name Krista Russert. She’s disappeared from the guest house on your property. As near as we can tell, she snuck out a window and walked away through the forest. Surveillance tapes suggest that she was picked up on the highway in a white van. Hospital surveillance shows Tatiana Kaminski being led toward a white van by a woman wearing a hat to cover her face. The woman appeared to be extremely pregnant.” He turned to Dan as if wanting to see his face, then turned back to Evan. “Krista Wheeler is our only suspect in your sister’s disappearance. We can’t have her brother in the briefing room with us while we discuss the case.”

Dan felt ill. What had Krista done? What had
Dan
done, bringing her into Tat’s life? He’d wanted to be the hero, wanted to prove that he really wasn’t a terrible brother. But he hadn’t even proved that. He hadn’t been able to do a damn thing himself, not without Evan’s help, and now Evan was being repaid with betrayal and deception. It was all Dan’s fault.

“It’s not Dan’s fault,” Evan said. The words were so close to his thoughts, and yet so different, that Dan wondered if he’d misheard something somewhere. “He didn’t have anything to with this.”

“I’m sorry, Evan, but we can’t be sure of that. There’s an obvious connection, and it doesn’t make sense to expose our operations to someone who has divided loyalties.”

“Dan’s loyalties are clear. But you’re right, there
is
a connection.” Evan was in his business mode, calm and authoritative. “Dan knows Krista better than any of us, so he may have insight into what the hell is going on. I want him to be part of this so we can use his knowledge.” Evan paused and looked Bill straight in the eye. “There are
no
doubts about his loyalty. He loves Tat, and he’d never let her get hurt.”

“More than he loves his
own
sister?” Bill shook his head doubtfully, but Evan didn’t even hesitate.

“Dan does what he thinks is right. If he knew anything about this, he’d have found a way to stop it, and tried to help his sister at the same time. Dan’s clean, and I want him in the room.” And that was it. Evan moved forward and Bill stepped aside, letting Dan follow. The room hushed, and everyone gathered around the large central table to hear the update.

Dan found a spot standing against the wall, directly behind Evan’s chair. He was close enough, there, if Evan needed him for anything. Close enough to share whatever came.

E
VANhad listened to the team’s update with growing impatience and growing panic. When Bill finally stopped talking, Evan took a deep breath, then said, “So you’re pretty sure Krista was involved. And that’s it. That’s all you’ve got. Krista and a white van.” He turned to look at the various law enforcement officers in the room. “That’s what you’ve got too. You’ve got people out on this, searching and…
looking
? Is that all we’re doing? Just looking around and hoping to find them?”

Sam Dekay, the FBI agent, nodded. He was older, graying around the edges, but his eyes were sharp and clear, and Evan really, really wanted to trust him. “We’re going through the guest house at your residence with a fine-tooth comb. You already had arrangements in place for us to have unlimited access to your telephone and Internet records under certain circumstances, so we’ve been combing through that data since before you arrived. And we have an all-points bulletin out with local, state, and federal law enforcement officers. We’re taking this very seriously, Mr. Kaminski, but right now, we’re low on information.” He checked his watch. “We’ve tried to use the GPS on your sister’s cell phone, but it’s been unreachable; we suspect the phone was either destroyed or had the battery removed. When the next call comes in, we’ll try to trace it back and get a location that way.”

“So until that call comes, we just wait?” Evan didn’t think he could accept that. He needed to do something. Anything. He’d go out and comb the streets himself, if that was all there was.

“I know it seems like we’re not doing much, but this room is basically just for communications. For telling you what the rest of our team is doing. There are a lot of officers who are very hard at work right now, I promise you.”

Evan looked at the phone on the table in front of him. The officers had somehow rewired his cell signal to be received by a landline, to make their recording and tracing more effective, but it made him nervous. He checked his watch; only a few minutes left until the call was expected. What if the phone hadn’t been rewired properly? What if the kidnappers called and got sent to voice mail? Jesus Christ, he shouldn’t have let this happen. He should have… he didn’t know what. Should have stopped them, and said not to mess with anything; he’d give the kidnappers whatever they wanted. He didn’t care about catching them, he just wanted his sister back.

He stared at the phone in front of him, willing it to ring, and he was dimly aware that every other set of eyes in the room was doing something similar. There wasn’t a sound as the seconds ticked away. Then there was movement behind Evan, and Dan’s voice, low and careful. “My phone’s on vibrate, but it’s going off. I don’t recognize the call-back number.”

Jesus. Had Evan’s phone not worked, or had they gone straight to Dan in the first place? Were they going to be pissed off? What was happening?

“Answer it on speakerphone.” Sam Dekay looked around the room, the command clear. “We’ll be silent. If the person on the other end objects, switch speakerphone off and repeat everything that the caller says. We’ve got listening equipment that will pick up their side.”

Dan nodded, his face tense and pale, then hit the screen of his phone and said, “Hello?”

“Danny, it’s Krista.” Evan could recognize her voice, but he’d never heard her sound so tense, and she was whispering as if trying not to be overheard. “You’ve got people listening?”

“Yes,” Dan said. Evan knew that was the right call; Krista would see through a lie, and they’d lose whatever trust she might have in them.

“Good,” she said. “I don’t know where we are; they kept me in the back.” Her voice was still hushed and quick, but she seemed to be trying to be thorough. “It was about an hour’s drive. Maybe a bit more. We’re out in the country, in some sort of cabin. Lots of trees; I think we’re on a mountain. Tat’s okay. But, Dan—they didn’t blindfold her.”

That last line seemed to have significance for Krista, and Evan could tell that the officers in the room were getting something from it too, but Evan had no idea what it meant. Dan looked confused for a moment, then his face got even paler. “Krista, you need to get her out of there. Or….” He looked around the room for help.

“This is an old phone, without GPS,” Krista said hurriedly. “I’ve got to go, or they’ll come looking for me. If I leave the phone on, can you still track it? Can you find us that way?”

Dan looked toward Sam, who had worked his way around the table and was standing next to the phone. “Leave it on,” the agent said. “Try to keep the call going, if you can, so we can hear what’s happening.”

“Shit, I’ve got to go,” Krista said. She sounded truly frightened. “I’ll leave it on. Hurry.”

There was a static-y rustling sound over the line, and Dekay reached cautiously for Dan’s phone. “We’ll mute the call, to be sure we can’t be heard,” he said, and he took the phone gently from Dan’s unresisting fingers. “Stick around, in case she comes back on the line and needs to hear a familiar voice.”

Dan nodded, then turned to look at Evan. Dan’s eyes were wide and green, as if the reality of the situation had just hit him hard. Evan didn’t want to, but he needed to press a little. He needed to know. He reached a hand out to find Dan’s, and their cool fingers twined together as if they were two parts of the same body, reunited and healing together. Evan kept his grip on Dan, but turned to look at Bill. “They didn’t blindfold her….” He reconsidered. Did he really want to know? No, he didn’t want to, but he needed to be informed. “That means that they don’t care if she sees them? Because—”

Bill’s expression was pained, but he finished Evan’s thought for him. “Because they don’t expect her to be around to be a witness.” He moved forward quickly and crouched down to bring his head to the same level as Evan’s. “So this is an important break. We know not to waste too much time on putting the ransom together. We’ll use that as a stalling tactic, of course, but we don’t need to second-guess ourselves about whether a rescue is a good gamble. It is. We know that now, and we’ve got the country’s best working on tracking the call right now. We’re….”

Then the phone on the table rang. Evan had almost forgotten about that. He glanced at Dekay. “Don’t mention Krista,” the agent instructed. “If they bring her up, make it sound like you’re angry at her. Make it sound the way you felt two minutes ago, before she called.”

Evan wasn’t sure that he wasn’t still angry at Krista. At the very least, he was confused. But he needed to focus on the task at hand, so he forced himself to reach calmly for the handset and lift it to his ear. “Evan Kaminski,” he said.

“Evan!” It was Tat’s voice. She sounded ragged from crying, panicked and confused, but alive. “Evan, I’m sorry. Please help me.” And then there was the sound of movement over the phone, and Tat’s cries became muffled and distant. “Tat!
Tat
!”

 

“She’s fine.” The man’s voice was rough, but calm. “And she’ll stay that way once you give us our money. You’ve got—”

“No, wait,” Evan said. He didn’t want to let this son of a bitch run the conversation. “I need to talk to my sister. That could have been….” He tried to control himself when he realized that it was true. “That could have been a recording. I need to
talk
to her, to hear her respond to what I’m saying.”