by Karen Rose
Chapter Three
Tuesday, December 24, 11:45 A.M.
Amber chewed on her nail, watching the driveway to the horse farm. ‘Here they come.’
Brock’s hands were white-knuckle tight on the wheel. ‘Shit. There’s even more cars now.’
Before there had been two vehicles – the car that carried Lana, her social worker, and two cops, and the big black Escalade with tinted windows that made it impossible to see how many cops it held. Now they were followed by a pickup truck with Pennsylvania plates. The driver had the look of a cop, too. The passenger was a woman.
‘We should have hit them on their way in,’ Brock said. ‘Dammit.’
Amber didn’t think it wise to say she’d told him so. ‘We’ll have to shoot our way in.’
‘No. Three cars of cops is too many. We’ll wait. Maybe they’re not going the same way.’
‘Brock, we have to get her out now. We might not have another chance.’
He shot her a furious look as he pulled out behind the pickup. ‘Do not tell me what to do.’
‘Then give me one of the rifles. I’ll be prepared to shoot if they don’t separate.’
He reached behind his seat and tossed her one of the semiautomatics he’d brought from the gun locker in their home in Minnesota. ‘Fine. But wait for my signal.’
‘Whatever. She’s on the right side of the car, so slam from the left.’
‘I have eyes,’ Brock snapped. ‘I can see for myself.’
They drove for several minutes, the tension ratcheting higher until the Pennsylvania truck turned at the sign for the interstate going north. The other two vehicles continued.
Brock made a satisfied grunt. ‘Told you so. You would have gotten us killed back there.’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Amber muttered under her breath.
‘Don’t take that tone with me,’ Brock growled. ‘If you’d done your job, we wouldn’t be getting ready to fight the goddamn FBI. You’re a fucking nurse. How hard is it to dope up a six-year-old?’ He was puffing like a bull ready to charge. ‘If you’d shoved a pillow over the face of the sick bitch at the beginning – like I told you to – we’d be rich by now. Hell, you couldn’t even manage to seduce her bastard of a husband. He would have paid through the nose to keep his dying wife from knowing he’d been screwing the help!’ He roared the final three words.
Amber felt the fury boiling inside her. ‘What makes you think I didn’t?’ she asked quietly.
Brock went still and the only sound was the tires on the road. ‘What?’ he whispered.
‘Misha was rich, successful, had a nice body, and didn’t spend all day in a gym showing off to the other losers. He had a job. He spoke four languages. He read books. What makes you think he didn’t want to screw the help? What makes you think the help didn’t want to be screwed?’
Another tense silence. ‘Did you?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Just once.’ Amber’s eyes suddenly blurred with tears. ‘I’d found him drunk out of his mind. He’d just found out that his wife’s treatment wasn’t working. I don’t think he even knew it was me. But somehow Tatiana knew. I thought I’d get fired, but she . . . approved. She was sad that she hadn’t been a real wife to him for so long, because of the pregnancy and then the disease. She knew he had needs. Asked me to fulfill them. I was happy to, even offered, but he wouldn’t. He was devastated that he’d cheated on her even that one time. So there was nothing to blackmail. No dirty secrets. Just one bout of hot, sweaty sex with the blessing of his dying wife,’ she finished bitterly.
A muscle ticked in his taut cheek. ‘I should have gutted him before I killed him.’
That’s when Amber knew she wouldn’t be as lucky as Misha Smirnov. ‘This road becomes very busy in less than a mile. If you’re going to do this, you need to do it now.’
Brock stared dead ahead, twisting the steering wheel viciously. She thought he’d bail on her. And then he gunned it and the Mercedes shot forward like a rocket.
Tuesday, December 24, 11:50 A.M.
Daphne sat at Maggie’s desk, staring at the guitar case. Several times she reached out to touch it and changed her mind. Finally Maggie returned after putting the pony back in its stall.
‘Jump in a cold pool, Daphne,’ Maggie said briskly and opened the case.
Daphne’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of the gleaming wood. Her fingers trembled as she brushed the strings, no longer taut. ‘He’d sit on the porch at night and play his guitar and sing “Edelweiss.” It was my lullaby. Before all the bad things happened, we were happy.’
‘I know. Your mother told me about it. Do you want me to read the letter?’
‘Please.’
Maggie cleared her throat.
‘Dear Daphne, if you get this letter, I wasn’t able to prove my suspicions. Everyone thinks that I hurt your cousin and that I hurt you. That’s not true. I’d die before I’d harm one hair on your precious head. I’m pretty sure I know who did it, though. If I can’t prove it, I plan to run because otherwise I’ll go to jail. Either way, I’ll miss seeing you grow up. I want you to have a piece of my heart. Play it often and remember how much I love you.
Love, Dad.’
Daphne covered her mouth, her tears rolling freely. In her own eight-year-old childish way she’d tried to tell everyone the truth about who’d committed an act so heinous it had robbed her of speech. But her message wasn’t understood and her father had been blamed by the community. ‘He left that night to find the killer and instead he got killed himself.’
Maggie stroked her hair, just as she’d done all those years ago. Just as Daphne had stroked Svetlana’s hair today. Then from a drawer, Maggie pulled an ancient cassette tape player. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes,’ Daphne said through her tears.
Maggie popped the cassette in the player. And then Daphne couldn’t breathe. It was her father’s voice accompanied by his guitar, singing ‘Edelweiss.’ He’d left her a lullaby.
She put her head on the desk and cried until she felt her head would explode, but her soul felt cleansed. Shuddering out a sigh, she sat up to find Maggie watching her with compassion.
‘You know what?’ Daphne asked, sniffling. ‘After all this time, all the terrible things that happened back when I was eight and then two weeks ago . . . It’s like I’d been wandering around and around in the darkness and I finally found the way out.’ She stroked her finger across the gleaming wood of the guitar. ‘You were a torch, Maggie. You helped light my way.’
‘It was one of the highlights of my life, helping you find your way.’
‘Heidi says there aren’t enough equine therapy facilities for the demand. I think we should change that. I think we should help kids find their way. We should start a program here. Now. I’ve got the land. I’ve got the money to buy the horses. I know lots of my ex’s rich friends who’d donate to sponsor kids. We’d need therapists and a director. Would you be the director?’
Now Maggie’s eyes filled. ‘It would be the second best highlight of my life.’
‘Then we need to get started. I guess we have to get certified.’ She grimaced. ‘Paperwork.’
Maggie opened another drawer, this time holding a piece of paper.
It took Daphne a moment to realize what it was. ‘You’re already certified? When?’
‘Two years ago. I knew you’d bought this property for equine therapy, even if you weren’t ready to admit it yet. You had to come to terms with what had happened to you before you could fully heal and help anyone else. I’ve been volunteering in other programs around the city. I know what needs to be done. I’m ready to start.’
Daphne reached out to hug Maggie, but stopped when her cell phone rang. It was Joseph. ‘Joseph,’ she said eagerly, ‘guess what we’re going – ’
‘I’m sorry, Daphne, I need you to listen.’ His voice was strained and Daphne’s heart stopped. ‘The car carrying Svetlana was attacked. One of the agents is dead. So is Heidi.’
�
�Oh my God. Joseph. Where is Lana?’
‘She was taken.’
Oh God, oh God. Breathe. Breathe. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Minor wound, nothing more. I’m in pursuit of the kidnappers’ vehicle. I’ve called for backup at the scene. I want you to stay put and – ’
‘If they have Svetlana, they got what they were coming for. They won’t be interested in me, Joseph. Where is the scene?’ She knew he was hurt worse than he let on when he argued no further. He gave her the address and she wrote it down. ‘I’ll be right there.’
Tuesday, December 24, 12:20 P.M.
‘Shit,’ Amber hissed. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ She looked in her rearview. She’d lost them.
But she’d also lost Brock. She’d left him bleeding in the road. Probably dead.
Oh God. I killed him. Grief and fear and frustration slammed together, a tornado in her skull. She glanced back at the huddled figure in the seat behind her, hate coming in a wave.
‘This is your fault!’ she screamed in English, then switched to Russian and said it again. Svetlana curled tighter into a little ball, making Amber want to smack her so hard . . . But that would leave marks. She wouldn’t get as good a price for a child who had marks.
‘If you’d just gone to sleep like you were supposed to. Where are they? Where is the necklace? The rings? Where are they?’ The brat said nothing, but the baby started to cry. ‘Shut up! Everybody just shut the fuck up!’
Brock was dead and she was screwed. The cops would find her and send her to prison.
‘No. I will get that necklace.’ It was her only way out. Without it, there wouldn’t be enough money to change her face. Wouldn’t be enough to live the good life. Amber deserved the good life. She’d earned it.
The damn jewels weren’t in the Mercedes or anywhere else. The only place they could be was where Svetlana had been hiding when the cops found her. ‘Fine,’ she said out loud. ‘That’s where we’ll go.’
Tuesday, December 24, 12:45 P.M.
Returning from his pursuit empty-handed, Joseph got out of his SUV, nearly numb. The Mercedes was gone. It had too much of a head start for him to catch up. Back at the scene, he could only stare at the car his agents had been driving, now a crumpled bit of metal, shattered glass strewn all over the road.
Oh God. Svetlana was now in the hands of the ‘bad nurse.’ The woman she feared. We promised her she’d be safe. I promised her.
So find her.
The EMTs had arrived, the ambulance’s strobing lights dulled by the noon sun. Joseph caught one of the EMTs by the arm. ‘Where is Agent Stern?’
‘He’s alive. Not great, but alive. They’re airlifting him to the shock trauma center.’
‘Thanks.’ Taking some comfort from that, Joseph made his way to the car, grimly stepping over broken glass. He looked up when he heard his name. Daphne was running toward him, shoving her state’s attorney’s badge in the faces of the cops who tried to get in her way.
‘Joseph!’ She skidded to a stop in front of him, her hands outstretched like she wanted to touch but didn’t know if he’d let her. He drew her close for one hard hug, then took a step back. ‘You’re shot,’ she said accusingly, pointing at his sleeve.
‘I’m all right.’ He moved his arm like a chicken wing. ‘Just a graze.’
‘You tough guys always say that,’ she said, doubt in her eyes.
‘This one really is. This isn’t the problem. The problem is that I lost her, Daphne. I lost Svetlana. The nurse took her.’
‘Then we find her.’ She pointed to the ruined car, briskly businesslike. No pity. ‘Get to work, Carter.’
I love this woman. Knocked back into balance, Joseph began speaking into his cell phone recorder, analyzing the scene, gathering his still-racing thoughts. ‘Agent Stern was driving. Injured, he’s en route to Shock Trauma. Agent Morgan was shot with enough force to send him back into the car.’ Where he lay on his back, eyes wide and unseeing as they stared upward.
Joseph’s mind stumbled. Morgan had been a good man. Keep going. Grieve him later.
‘The first shot hit Agent Morgan’s vest, knocking the wind out of him. The second shot hit him in the forehead. Between the eyes. Social worker Heidi Breckenridge . . .’ He swallowed hard and watched Daphne do the same. ‘She tried to crawl out of the car, tried to grab Svetlana, but sustained gunshot wounds to the shoulder, the leg, and to the head.’
Arm outstretched, Heidi’s body lay across the floorboards of the back seat.
‘Did you see the shooter?’ Daphne asked.
‘Yeah, and you can, too. He’s down there.’ Joseph pointed to a trail of bright red snow that led to the embankment. ‘He’s dead.’ Rot in hell, asshole.
‘What happened?’ she asked quietly, her voice soothing him.
‘We’d left your place. Stern’s car was in front, I was in the middle, and Sophie and Vito brought up the rear. A Mercedes SUV followed behind us.’
‘There’s only one lane, so that they stayed behind you wasn’t automatically a concern.’
‘It should have been a concern. My mind was on the inquiries I’d started out at your barn. I wasn’t being vigilant. Anyway, Vito turned toward the interstate. A minute or two later, the Mercedes roared forward, passing me on the left. A Caucasian female in her mid-twenties was in the passenger seat. She rolled down the window and started shooting at the Escalade.’
Daphne’s eyes shot to the shattered glass. ‘I thought your windows were bullet-resistant.’
‘I obviously need to upgrade,’ he said tightly. ‘I returned fire, the Mercedes sped up, and hit Stern’s car broadside. Forced it to the side of the road, then crashed into it again, stopping so that Stern was trapped behind the wheel. Morgan got out, gun drawn. So did I. The Mercedes’s driver ran to Svetlana’s door, broke the window with the butt of his gun and pulled her out.’
‘Did you shoot at him?’
Joseph made a sound of disbelief. ‘Hell, yeah. Emptied a whole clip. He was wearing body armor and the goddamn guy kept coming. I kept shooting and so did Morgan. I got him twice in each thigh and he kept going. I hit him eight times total and Morgan got off two shots. The guy held Lana as a shield, shooting Heidi when she tried to stop him. Then the female, the one who’d shot at me, screamed that she’d kill the baby. She was out of the Mercedes, her gun pointed at an infant in a car seat. The male had his gun to Lana’s head and demanded we put our guns down.’
‘So you did, of course. That’s standard procedure in that kind of situation.’
‘Yeah, but then the driver walked backward – he had bullet holes in both legs and both arms by this point. He passed Morgan and shot him twice. Then he tossed Lana into the van, closed the door, and started shooting at me. I drew my backup as soon as he no longer had the gun to Lana’s head and shot back at him. Then the woman jumped behind the wheel and started to drive off, leaving him there.’
Daphne blinked. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Shocked the hell outta me and the male driver, too. He grabbed the passenger door, tried to get in while she was driving away. She was all over the road, trying to throw him off. Finally there was another shot – from inside the van. The male falls back, starts to roll, ends up in the snow on the embankment.’
‘She double-crossed him. She is a bad nurse.’
‘So it would seem. I pursued her, but she got too much of a head start. I have a helicopter in the sky searching. The guy had to be on something. No way he could have kept coming like that otherwise. Now we have to find the child.’
‘We promised we’d protect her,’ Daphne murmured.
‘And we will.’ Joseph turned off his voice recorder, checking an incoming text. Yes. Finally a break. ‘We got a hit on the photo we sent to the hotels in Chincoteague. A hotel manager remembers seeing the family. Father registered as Misha Smirnov, mother as Tatiana, the nurse as Amber Knowles. Two children, Svetlana and Zarya. My agent checked with Immigration and they came in on a flight from Moscow four months
ago, headed to Rochester, Minnesota, and the Mayo Clinic, just like you thought, Daphne.’ He looked up, grimly encouraged. ‘We put Amber’s face and a description of the Mercedes all over the wire. Her last name matches the dead shooter – the ID in his wallet says he’s Brock Knowles, of Rochester.’
‘Good. Now we just have to figure where Amber’s gone with those little girls.’
His cell rang. ‘It’s Kate.’ He put her on speaker. ‘What do you have?’
‘I heard about the Mercedes. How is Stern?’
‘Being airlifted. Talk to me, Kate,’ he said impatiently.
‘I got the name of a high-end furrier in D.C. Sells to senators’ wives. I showed him Lana’s coat and he found seams that had been skillfully resewn. In the lining I found about three million in diamonds, emeralds, sapphires made into a necklace, some bracelets, earrings, and a few rings.’
Daphne drew in a sharp breath. ‘That’s what Amber was looking for.’
‘Her parents hid it on Lana?’ Joseph asked, disbelieving. ‘They made her a target?’
‘Probably not on purpose,’ Daphne said. ‘I bet they figured they’d always have their daughters in sight and since it was winter, Lana would always be wearing her coat.’
‘You’ve ID’d the nurse? Excellent. Why didn’t she just take the coat?’ Kate asked.
‘They didn’t know where the jewels were because Lana said the man kept asking her father where. Her father told her to run. He must have known that if they’d found the jewelry then, they’d have killed Lana, too. Her father tried to protect her.’
‘So why snatch Lana now?’ Kate pressed.
‘Because they still don’t know the jewels were in the coat,’ Joseph said. ‘I bet they think Lana hid them when she ran away. She doesn’t know she had them, either.’
‘And they couldn’t find her when she ran,’ Daphne added, the details clicking together. ‘You said the people who discovered the burned car almost missed her because her coat blended in to the snow. When she ran and hid from Amber and Brock, they missed seeing her, too.’