Lethal Ransom

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  She landed with a thud and crackle of breaking branches. For several minutes, she huddled in a heap of arms and legs, assessing potential damage to her person and tried to breathe like normal, not like someone who had just run a marathon.

  Certain everything was where it should be, she retrieved her shoe and tied it on, grabbed her purse and began to creep along the base of the house where the camera angle wouldn’t pick up her movements unless someone shifted them. Until Nick or Sean realized she had escaped, they wouldn’t move those cameras.

  At the front of the house, she’d have to cross the open courtyard. She might be seen at that point if anyone was watching the cameras. She might get caught if the deputy marshals sent to collect her arrived as she exited the gate.

  She would certainly be caught if she remained still.

  At the front corner of the house, she took a deep breath and sprinted to the gangway. The dimness between the two apartment buildings, not more than five feet apart, swallowed her up. There were possibly more cameras here. Couldn’t be helped now. She just kept going. The gate was locked. She tapped in the code she had memorized watching Sean and Nick type it, hoping neither had changed it, and exited.

  The street with cars lining both sides lay ahead of her, quiet in the weekday afternoon. She ran across, then used the opposite line of vehicles as cover to the end of the block. Another less busy street, then Lincoln Avenue, which was never quiet. And she could see the “L” station two blocks away. Just two blocks away, and no one had shouted her name yet. No feet pounded after her.

  So as not to draw attention to herself, she strolled with everyone else walking dogs, going for an afternoon caffeine pick-me-up, enjoying the lovely summer day.

  She reached the station still without anyone following her that she noticed. A swipe of her CTA card allowed her through the turnstile and up the steps. She took the elevator to spare her feet, for speed, for concealment. On the platform, the board said a train was due in three minutes. Only three minutes until she would board the elevated train and become nearly impossible to catch.

  “Two minutes until the arrival of a train bound for The Loop,” an inhuman female voice announced over the loudspeaker.

  Kristen glanced over the waist-high railing that was the only barricade between the platform and the ground more than twenty feet below.

  And saw Nick Sandoval headed straight for the station entrance.

  * * *

  With the rumble of the oncoming train fast approaching, Nick vaulted the gate and charged for the steps. If no one stopped him, he would catch the train and prevent it from leaving the station in the event the woman he had seen enter the building moments ahead of him was Kristen.

  “Halt right there, young man.” Of course someone held him up—the station manager. He had the lined face of an older man, but the physique of someone who worked out on a regular basis.

  Nick doubted he would be able to push past this gentleman without causing trouble he didn’t want.

  “Deputy US Marshal Nicholas Sandoval.” Nick held out his credentials.

  Above him, the train rattled into the station, the two-tone door chime sounding, the announcer’s voice declaring the name of the station.

  “There’s a person I need to stop from getting on that train.” Nick sighed as the train’s rumble roared down the stairwell.

  “L” trains didn’t remain in the station for long.

  “Needed to stop from getting on that train,” Nick corrected himself. “Can we stop it before it gets to the next station?”

  “I can try, but the stations are close together here and we only got a minute.” The station manager walked and talked at the same time, heading for his booth.

  But he had to take out his keys and unlock the gate, and then he had to unlock the door. Once inside, he called someone, who insisted, apparently at a manager’s request, for Nick’s credentials again, to know his badge number to verify Nick truly was with the Marshals Service. By the time the information got through, the train had left the next station only half a mile down the track.

  “But we got it stopped at the next one,” the station manager said.

  “Thank you.” Pocketing his credentials, Nick raced back to Gina’s house to retrieve his car, talking to his office the whole way. He and the two marshals sent to collect Kristen Lang met at the station, but Kristen wasn’t among the restless and annoyed passengers. She had either not been on the train at all or had gotten off at the next station. She could be anywhere in the transit system or on foot. With time, they could get her transit records and follow her movements if she was using a registered transit card. He suspected she must be. She hadn’t had time to purchase a short-term ticket.

  But that would take too long. She could hop in a taxi or rent a car before they knew where she was headed.

  Except Nick did know where she was headed later that day.

  “How did you lose her?” one of Nick’s coworkers asked, meeting him back at the carriage house.

  “She went out the bathroom window.” Nick met the female marshal’s gaze. “I didn’t think Kristen would fit through that window or want to risk the drop to the ground from that height. It’s about twelve feet.”

  “She wanted free in a bad way.” The female deputy marshal held out her hand. “I’m Stephanie Kelly and this is Marcos Segovia. You’re Sandoval, I presume.”

  “You presume right.” Nick speared his fingers through his hair, knowing it would now be standing on end. “I should have guessed she was up to something when she was so calm about you two coming to take her to a safe house.”

  “The question now is how do we find her?” Segovia said.

  “I wish that wasn’t easy.” Nick climbed the porch steps, the other two marshals behind him.

  “How?” Segovia asked.

  “She’s going to meet her mother’s kidnappers.” Nick rang the doorbell.

  Sean arrived to open it immediately. “Didn’t catch up with her?”

  Nick didn’t answer the obvious.

  Sean stepped back so they could all enter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t put cameras outside the bathroom window. It just seemed wrong, and that window is pretty small and high up.”

  “Not small and high up enough,” Kelly said. “Do you want to call the office or should I, Sandoval?”

  “I already have. I’m waiting for Callahan to call me back.”

  Not waiting with any anticipation. As his six-year-old nephew would say, You’re in big trouble.

  All he had to do was watch over one quiet and anxious female, to keep her safe from harm, and he had let her go.

  He had failed again to protect someone with whom God had trusted him.

  “She’s going to be at the exchange point tonight,” Nick said.

  His phone rang, and he repeated the words to his boss.

  Callahan said a great deal about Nick losing another lady he was supposed to keep safe. Even if Michele hadn’t officially been Nick’s responsibility, her death surely had been, no matter what others tried to tell him. Callahan, Nick’s boss and Michele’s father, made disparaging comments at least once a week, solidifying Nick’s personal conviction about his incompetence as a marshal.

  He should be given no more responsibility than watching the metal detectors in the courthouse.

  “You aren’t competent enough to handle more than watching the metal detectors in the courthouse,” Callahan echoed Nick’s thoughts, “in someplace like Franklin, Tennessee, or maybe Brownsville, Texas.”

  “Yes, sir.” Nick’s neck and ears scorched.

  His colleagues and brother-in-law might not be able to hear Callahan, but they were laughing at his discomfort.

  “We can catch up with her tonight if we don’t before then.” Nick tried to defuse his boss’s temper.

  “Does she have her phone?” Callahan aske
d. “We can triangulate it.”

  “No, sir, I have it.”

  Nick wanted to sink into Sean and Gina’s basement.

  He remembered how. She had written down all those names and numbers to put into a new phone, a burner phone she could buy in a hundred different places in the city.

  “Credit cards?” Nick asked.

  “She used an ATM at Halsted and Clybourn,” Callahan said.

  So she had cash to buy a burner phone and hire a taxi from any street corner, which would be less traceable than using a car service from an app that required a credit card.

  Aware of three pairs of eyes upon him, Nick asked, “What steps would you like me to take now, sir?”

  “I want you here immediately.” Callahan’s tone was uncompromising. “Maybe when you’re explaining how you lost a civilian, you’ll figure out something about how we can stop her from reaching the rendezvous site and messing up our operation.”

  “Yes, sir.” Nick signed off and shrugged. “I’m off to take my punishment like a man.” He snatched his jacket on the way to the door.

  “Sandoval?” Kelly followed him, blocking his path of egress. “Doesn’t this all seem suspicious to you?”

  “All what? The kidnapping of the judge or Kristen escaping?”

  Nick guessed where his coworker was going—the same way as the media. Nick had been able to dismiss the idea of Kristen’s involvement without hesitation that morning, but right then, he wasn’t as sure of her innocence as he had been a few hours ago.

  “She’s behaved with a pretty cool and calculating head for a civilian whose mother was just kidnapped,” Stephanie Kelly said. “Do you think she’s involved?”

  Nick opened his mouth to deny the possibility, but doubts niggling at his brain kept him from the negative he wished to speak. “I think she’s determined to make up for her mother getting kidnapped while preventing those men from taking her.”

  “She can’t be doing that.” Segovia’s face paled. “She’ll get herself and law enforcement killed, if these men are inclined to be that violent.”

  “When you’re looking at decades in prison,” Kelly said, “most men are willing to kill to escape it.”

  “And Kristen was willing to risk a great deal to keep from being locked up in a safehouse.” Nick still sought for an excuse other than guilt to cover her behavior.

  “We have no reason to believe she’s involved,” was all he knew to say.

  It was the simple truth.

  “We don’t know why these men would want her instead of her mother, either,” Kelly reminded them.

  “Seems to me,” Marcos said, “the judge is more important than her daughter any day.”

  “She’s a victim’s advocate. Maybe she helped the wrong person.” Nick turned sideways to edge around Kelly. “I’d better go face the music.”

  “Like your funeral dirge.” Marcos grinned.

  Nick grimaced, called a thank-you to Sean and headed for his car. Traffic was going to be terrible heading into The Loop. It wasn’t terrible enough. He knew what was coming—he was off the case. He didn’t need the aggravation of crawling along Lake Shore Drive with the beauty of the blue lake taunting him against the foreground of snarled traffic to hear his boss yell at him in person.

  But yelled at in person was what he got when he finally reached the office.

  “Your brother-in-law’s house is like a fortress, you told me—” Callahan began without so much as a hello, “—cameras everywhere.”

  “It is. They are.” Nick stood in the doorway, not having been invited in farther.

  “And after you let that one kidnapper go yester—”

  “Excuse me, sir, but my job is to protect the judge and her family, and that was what I was doing. The cops are the ones who—”

  “And you failed to protect the judge and her family.” Callahan was close to shouting. Although the other office doors were closed, Nick didn’t doubt for a moment ears were pressed to the other sides of the panels to listen.

  Nick closed his eyes, expecting to see Michele’s sweet and delicate face. Instead, an image of Kristen with her strong-boned features, deep-blue eyes and yards of blond hair blazed across the insides of his eyelids. Kristen on her own and prepared to meet monsters with only herself as a bargaining tool.

  “Please, sir—” Nick began to explain why he believed Kristen ran. “Kristen would rather—”

  “Be on her own than in our protection?” Callahan cut in.

  “Yes, sir. She is tired of standing by doing nothing after her mother stopped those men from taking her. She feels guilty and wants to be involved—”

  “You got to know her well.” Callahan’s voice held a sneer.

  “I thought I was supposed to, sir.” Nick spoke with exaggerated calm. “She wants—however mistakenly—to meet these men.”

  “Because she’s involved?” Callahan asked.

  “With all due respect, sir, why would she be involved with her own mother’s kidnapping?”

  “To get attention. To get money out of her parents. Because she’s angry with them. There’s a dozen reasons why a daughter might do something like this.”

  “But—” Nick stopped, unable to find a single argument.

  He didn’t know Kristen that well. He could only go on his instincts that said she wasn’t involved in any criminal manner.

  Yet the media had started it, perhaps with a little help from Callahan, Nick realized, and now the Marshals Service and probably others had continued the idea that Kristen was part of the abduction.

  “If she’s involved,” Nick asked, “why would these men offer to release Her Honor in an exchange?”

  “To make Kristen look innocent,” Callahan suggested.

  “That’s a weak reason, sir.”

  “We can’t overlook the circumstances that point to Kristen’s involvement, including her running off today.”

  “But—”

  “Go home,” Callahan ordered. “Report to the courthouse tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.” Though he flinched as if each word were a blow, Nick knew better than to argue.

  In silence, he left the doorway, exited the building. Moments later, he was headed to his apartment in Old Town. It was small, a mere studio flat, but big enough for his needs since he was rarely there. He could take the “L” or even walk to work if he liked. He only drove his car on the days he headed to the suburbs to have dinner with one of his numerous family members who had taken upon themselves the task of feeding him, the only unmarried sibling.

  This afternoon, the apartment looked no larger than a shoe box, too high off the ground, too stagnant in its recirculated air-conditioned air. He wanted the freshness of the woods, of the breeze off the lake.

  He wanted to find Kristen.

  He was ordered to begin work at the courthouse as usual the next day. But Kristen was at large that night. Finding her before the rendezvous was going to be nearly impossible, but just maybe he could stop her right at the rendezvous.

  He knew Callahan would have something similar in play, but maybe she would listen to Nick. He thought they were building some sort of rapport, a hint of trust.

  “Except she ran away from you,” he reminded himself aloud.

  What he was about to do could get him fired. No, it would get him fired if Kristen was involved in the abduction and not a victim. Nick didn’t think she was part of these men’s scheme, but everyone else did, so he had to stop her before she tangled herself worse than she already had. Maybe if he could rescue her, he would make up for failing to rescue Michele.

  Knowing his livelihood—the career he had planned for as far back as he could remember—was on the line, he gathered some things together and made his plans to stop Kristen at the rendezvous, if not before.

  SIX

  Kristen wai
ted out the afternoon in the public library mere blocks from the courthouse. She figured no one would find her there, or even think to look for her anywhere in The Loop. With multiple floors and numerous nooks and crannies, the library proved a quiet and safe refuge from anyone wanting to harm her, which included the US Marshals Service.

  She considered it harm, even if they considered it her safety. They wanted to lock her away like she was the criminal. For all she knew, the media was right and someone high up in the service did believe she was a criminal, that she had helped kidnap her mother.

  But getting away from pursuit had been easy. Easier than she’d expected—so easy that finding her might be simple as well.

  After seeing Nick approaching the “L” station, she’d hopped on the train, then exited at the next station and descended to street level to catch a bus. Stopping trains wouldn’t take much effort for law enforcement. Buses weren’t so easy. They had to figure out which one she took, so she switched buses three times, stopping along the way to get cash from an ATM and buy a burner phone. Her trip downtown took her nearly two hours with all the stops and switches, but she was still free.

  She needed a plan for getting her mother free.

  “Too little to go on.” She murmured the words to the purse-sized notebook open on the table before her. She tapped the eraser of her pencil on the lined page. “Too little.”

  A couple other patrons glanced her way, then quickly looked somewhere else. They would think she was just another odd person spending her time in a public place.

  She needed to not act too oddly. Oddity drew attention and that was the last thing she wanted.

  And thinking of attention, she needed to cover her hair. She could do nothing about her height, but her height plus her long, pale blond hair drew attention.

  She ducked into a discount store and bought a baseball cap and hair bands. Braided, her hair wasn’t as noticeable, especially beneath the cap. She considered sunglasses, but not for the evening. But she did buy a hoodie. June nights could still be chilly outside the city or by the lake.