Kidnapped

by Dee Henderson

  The rooms on this floor were huge but odd shaped—walk-in closets and bathrooms and angled storage spaces and even a laundry drop to the floor below. Luke hit walls as he walked around, listening for an echo. A six-by-eight room with a small restroom. That meant plumbing and power. “Sharon described a three-by-three entrance to the room.”

  “It’s got to be visible if only by walls that don’t make sense.”

  “This place is an architectural nightmare. What was he doing, trying to avoid a straight line?” If there was missing floor space taken from the rooms, Luke didn’t spot it as he tried to calculate angles. “Where’s the attic entrance?”

  “I’ll find it,” Marsh said.

  Caroline was here somewhere, probably bleeding to death, and he couldn’t find her. Luke headed for the stairs and leaned over the railing. “Henry, what about the other homes this guy owns?”

  “Teams are sweeping them now. First reports are like this place—no one home and no sign of a white van. His staff says he left for a meeting in Atlanta.”

  “I’ll buy that when someone locates him. We need to find that van, Henry.”

  “Frank could have been lying.”

  “We finish this search, then we grab Frank and those diamonds, and you let me have first crack at talking with him.”

  “We’ll talk about it.”

  “The attic entrance is down here,” Marsh called.

  Luke headed back down the hall to meet him. “Someone get me another flashlight!” He’d handed his to the sharpshooter searching the grounds.

  * * *

  Where are you, Caroline?

  Luke crawled on his belly to yet another point along the joining of the rafters and wall, shoving back insulation. Plumbing could not be hidden nor electric and cable wiring. The warrants didn’t allow them to break into walls without at least a suspicion they had found the room location, but they could follow the trail of building arteries leading to that room. Luke peered down with the light.

  “Anything?” Marsh called.

  “No. If they didn’t make the easy-to-reach tap-ins up here and drop wires down the existing walls, they had to splice in the wiring somewhere.”

  “Henry wants to trip breakers and isolate the wiring to the safe room that way.”

  “It would take an electrician hours to prove there’s another outlet on the line. It would be faster to prove the cable wiring has been sliced into to add in another TV,” Luke guessed. Both would take time they didn’t have. He crawled backwards until he rose to a crouch and walked back to the attic entrance. He walked down the folding stairs.

  “Sharon said second floor, but I don’t see how they built a room in the attic given the floor plan of this place. It would be crazy for him to keep her at his own home,” Marsh said.

  “It’s crazy to try and kidnap someone.” Luke used a towel from the guest bathroom to wipe insulation fibers off his arms, the fibers sticking to his sweaty skin driving him crazy with the itch.

  “I’m not done with that basement. It’s all concrete walls and floor, and they could have built a second false wall down there,” Henry said, joining them. “We can try and chase plumbing from down there.”

  “Unless someone can find the entry door, this search will take too long.” Luke could hear the officers working to find it, moving furniture and tapping on the walls. “Where are Frank and the diamonds?”

  “Heading east on I-16 and staying below the speed limit they tell me. The units tracking it by air are hanging two miles back.”

  “Let’s go get him. He knows where that room is. He knows where Caroline is. He might not want to talk, but I’m willing to bet we can make him talk.”

  “Frank isn’t going down without a fight. And the tactical units will want to take him down in as remote an area as possible.”

  “I’d settle for driving up behind him and slamming into his back bumper.”

  “We only get one shot at him, Luke. It would be better to watch him, make sure Caroline is not with him, let him lower his guard and think he got away. The odds improve if we try to take him after he stops to sleep.”

  “We don’t have that luxury of time. He’s our only link to Caroline, and she’s been out there too long.” Luke looked at his watch. “Another twenty minutes?”

  Henry nodded. “The dogs are searching the grounds now; that will give them enough time to walk the house.”

  “I’m going up with Joe to get another look at the area from the air.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Luke closed his eyes as another flare burst in the air, turning the night brighter than the day for a brief moment. He raised the binoculars again. “Joe, what are we missing?”

  “If there is a white van in this area, then it’s parked inside a garage or warehouse, or so deeply buried in the woods it’s going to turn up when they clear this land to turn it into another subdivision. The officers canvassing the neighbors have so far come up with nothing helpful.”

  “This is a dead end.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Frank spun us a line. Ten million dollars for a lie.” Only Luke would have gladly paid the price to have Caroline back.

  “I disagree.”

  Luke glanced over, surprised.

  “Frank probably told the literal truth,” Joe said. “The guy who hired him owns 8754 Logan Road, and Caroline is in the back of a white van. Only Frank left the white van somewhere else.”

  Luke bit back a curse, thinking about Frank’s games. “You’re probably right.”

  “We need to go get him.”

  “Set us down. It’s time I had a heart-to-heart with Henry on how to proceed.”

  “While you caucus, I’ll get this bird refueled. Let him know I can take three with me.” Joe set down on the road east of the house on Logan Road. Luke unclipped restraints and stepped out. He waved Joe on and headed toward the house.

  He found Henry in the driveway. “Anything?”

  He shook his head. “Dogs are still working the rooms, but they haven’t alerted for Caroline, and by this point they should have.”

  “Let’s go get him, Henry.”

  He walked over to his car and retrieved his map. “He’s still traveling on I-16. The strike team wants to take Frank here, where traffic narrows to two lanes to cross this bridge. They propose causing a traffic jam at the bridge just before he arrives to slow him down and to eliminate the passing traffic. When his car comes to a rolling crawl in the line of cars, they’ll come in on both sides of the vehicle to yank him from the car before he realizes they’re even there.”

  “If Caroline is in the car with him . . .”

  “They’ll move fast, Luke. Do you want to be there? Joe can get you there with a few minutes to spare.”

  What he wanted and what was best were two different things. “Just take him alive. He dumped Caroline somewhere around here, Henry, I’m convinced of that. I’m staying in this area. We just have to know where to search.”

  “We’ll take him alive.”

  * * *

  Luke picked up the headset and settled into the copilot seat of the police helicopter. “Joe, head back toward the drop site where Frank picked up the diamonds.”

  “You don’t want to be at the takedown?”

  “What I want is to be on top of where Caroline is when they radio in with where Frank actually left that white van. Henry is sealing this place until tomorrow morning and sending the dog teams on to search the other properties Fromm owns. This area is covered. I think the van is somewhere near that quarry where that red flag was planted. How else would Frank know about that deserted area unless he’d been out there recently?”

  Joe nodded. “The drop site it is.”

  * * *

  Jason couldn’t stand to pace in the small room. Hitting his head again on the low ceiling, he punched it with his fist. He shoved back a spilled stack of videos and sat on the short bed again, pulling the nearest plastic tote over and reaching in for the f
irst food item he saw.

  The potato chips were stale. He tossed the bag aside and looked at his watch. 2:12 a.m. They had to have left by now. He hadn’t heard anything since coming into this room, but surely he could risk opening the door. He couldn’t stand to be in here any longer.

  He climbed over to the door out of this room and slid his hands across the smooth steel plate to get traction and push it up. He couldn’t budge it. The steel plate had dropped into place and wedged itself into the frame.

  Jason stepped back and looked at the door, considering the problem. He had to get that metal plate to move, the direction didn’t matter, just enough movement to force it up again. He looked around the room for something to pry with and found what would work as a hammer and chisel. He went to work on the corner of the framing.

  He scraped his knuckles and drew blood. The wood refused to move. He felt a shiver of dread. Forget the door. He’d get out another way. What had Sharon been doing as she tried to escape? He looked around the small room, stepped into the small bathroom, and realized she’d been chipping away at the tiles beneath the sink, following the pipes. “Great. This is going to be doable in the next decade.”

  If he couldn’t get the door to open, then he had to get into the walls. He turned and kicked the tiles and the wall, shaking the pipes and getting pieces of the wall to break away. With the fourth kick, the pipe broke, and cold water began to spray across the room.

  No one could hear him as he cursed the mess. The water would run through the floor and soak through the ceiling and destroy his art collection in the room below him. If the cops had already left the home, it would be hours until his housekeeper came. They’d find him after the damage was irreversible.

  Ignoring the water, he set to break into the wall to get himself out.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Luke tried to search while they flew over the land. The helicopter spotlight illuminated the tops of trees and the open fields momentarily as it passed over them, but outside the circle of light the area was near black. Homes in this stretch of ground were few and far between. “How many flares are left?”

  “Twenty-three. I brought along extras.”

  “Why don’t you head north toward the river.”

  Joe nodded and changed directions.

  “Thank you for not saying we’re flying randomly with no hope of spotting a white van this way.”

  “Hey, when you don’t know where to look, looking anywhere is progress,” Joe replied. “It would take two hundred search teams to cover these woods with any level of decent coverage.”

  “Luke.”

  He picked up the radio. “Go ahead, Jackie.”

  “Sharon is getting . . . I’m worried about her. Is there anything we can safely do that would be helpful?”

  “They are going in now to apprehend Frank.”

  “She knows.”

  “Put her on, Jackie,” Luke requested.

  “Hold on.”

  “Luke, it’s Sharon.”

  “Hey, lady.” Luke didn’t have adequate words to convey the emotions he felt. “I’m sorry, Sharon. We don’t know where Caroline is. The leads have gone nowhere . . .”

  “Luke, where are you now?”

  “Flying up near where the diamonds were delivered.”

  “Come home.”

  “Sharon—”

  “They’ll grab Frank, the task force will put him in a room for the next day trying to get him to admit where he left the van, and you’ll stay out there slowly dying without knowing where to look for Caroline. Come home. Wait for news with us here, with family.”

  The reality of what she said compelled him to agree. “I love you, lady. I’ll stay out here looking a while longer, until Joe needs to refuel, then I’ll be home.”

  “Thank you.”

  Luke set down the radio and lifted his hand from it slowly. “Send up another flare, Joe. Let’s search the riverbanks.”

  * * *

  The water reflected back the light but gave away none of its secrets. The banks of the river were crowded with trees and the occasional fishing dock where a flat boat was tied up, marking a nearby farmhouse.

  Luke rubbed his straining eyes and lifted the binoculars again. The moving ground and the motion of the helicopter left a disorienting sense of vertigo whenever he paused to think about it. The waiting ate at him. He wished Jackie were along, her occasional comments breaking the silence and keeping alive his hope.

  “Luke.”

  He snatched up the radio. “Go ahead, Henry.”

  “We just got word from the strike team.” The pause lasted a beat too long. “I’m sorry, Luke. Frank’s dead.”

  His breath stopped. “Repeat that.”

  “He put a .22 to his chest and pulled the trigger before they could get the car door open. He must have had the handgun resting in his lap as he drove.”

  Luke absorbed the news and, with a hand grown stiff, depressed the button. “Caroline?”

  “Nothing, Luke. The car was empty. The diamonds are in Frank’s jacket pocket, and the vehicle has temporary plates. It looks like a new purchase. They didn’t find so much as a gas receipt inside. We’re at a dead end.”

  “Okay, Henry.”

  Luke set down the radio, feeling like a very old man.

  “Luke?”

  “Take me back to Sharon and Mark’s home. It’s over, Joe.”

  “You don’t want to search at least while we have flares and fuel?”

  To say no would be giving up. To say yes would be futile. There wasn’t anything else to have faith over. When Caroline was finally found, it would be by accident years from now, long after a broken heart had killed him and put him in the grave.

  The thought of facing Benjamin’s tears was too much to bear. “We’ll search until the flares and fuel are gone.” He strained for breath for the words. “Let’s retrace the path of the diamond drop.”

  Joe changed course.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Caroline wished she had been able to write her essay for the kids. She found herself oddly awake again, not aware she had been sleeping, just suddenly awake and looking at the roof of the van. What were they going to think when their teacher died only a few weeks into the school year? Who would they bring in to teach her class? Who would help them understand how to still have hope when life suddenly turned dark?

  The discomfort had faded to a distant pain, and her thoughts felt clear. Had her life mattered? It was ending in an odd way, at such an early time. She’d touched a few years of students’ lives, helped Sharon, loved on Benjamin. It wasn’t such a bad life; it just stopped without much to show for it. She wished she had folded and put away her laundry. Someone would be opening her dryer to find her most personal clothing.

  Caroline smiled as she thought of all the bits and pieces of her life that would embarrass her to now have someone see. The letters on her desk, the bills, the mementos she had found worth keeping that someone else would hardly understand.

  Luke, I sincerely hope you’re the one to find the pot-sticker sticks. I don’t think Sharon would understand why they are beside the few cards you sent me.

  It wasn’t so bad, loving Luke. She closed her eyes content to let herself drift through the memories of their time together. Her only regret was that there weren’t more of them to hold on to tonight.

  * * *

  Did life come with second chances? The pain pulled Caroline from the memory of Luke’s first kiss back to the present and the headache growing in intensity. It would be so nice to have the last months to live over again, to be more patient with herself and kinder to Luke. Relationships took so many turns through high moments and low. If she had it to live over again, she wouldn’t mind nearly as much about his shift-to-work modes.

  More candy sticks, Christmas presents, movies, and kisses for no reason whatsoever . . . She smiled at the thought. She was dating Luke, for as long as it lasted, as many turns as the relationship took. She’d chosen
a long time ago, that night walking around the carnival. He was her choice. If God gave her a second chance, she was going to tell him so.

  The desire to rub her nose was intense, as was the knowledge that to lift her bound hands that high was beyond her. She tried to shift the gag enough to get a breath around the cloth but couldn’t do it. The headache came as much from where the knot on the gag pressed against the back of her head as it did from the physical assault to her system in the last hours. There wasn’t a good way to move. She lifted one foot and eased an inch to the left to take a bit more pressure off her back. Flies would come with the morning, and this misery would be more than she could bear.

  She refused to go there. Tomorrow’s troubles would take care of themselves. She was no longer with Frank, and she was certain he would not return. That left the van to be found by searchers or accidentally by a local resident. It was a big vehicle to be left abandoned. She tried to think about Benjamin and Sharon. The doubts crowded in. She’d risked everything to give Benjamin his mom back, and she didn’t know for certain that Sharon had made it. Would her sister even understand why she had done it?

  Her vision clouded and she took a painful breath, struggling not to cough. Surely Sharon would understand.

  Come on, Luke. I need you here.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Luke!” Joe pointed south as another flare burned white and bright, turning the area briefly into day. “I think we’ve got something.”

  Silent tears had been clouding his vision for the last forty minutes. Luke blinked them away to clear the image in the binoculars. The trees repeatedly blocked and then cleared from his view, leaving him with only an impression of what he was seeing. “That’s a vehicle,” he confirmed.

  Joe brought them to a hover at the treetops, holding at as much of an angle as he could so the helicopter didn’t block the view. Luke’s heart jumped. “That may be a van, and it definitely used to be white. Can you get me down there?”