Blank Slate

by Olivia Saxton

  “We were in an apartment building lobby. Couldn’t start firing off. Would have brought on too much attention,” Clive explained.

  “You guys could have taken her with you and took care of it before you brought the girl here,” Hugo said with slight irritation.

  “Easy, H,” Carter soothed. “Sounds like they still got away clean.”

  “Yeah, no one saw our car, and that old lady barely knew English,” Lucas said.

  “I want my mommy,” Keisha whined on the sofa.

  “Hey, hey,” Carter soothed as he approached her. He got down on his knees in front of her. “You’ll see your mom. I just got to find her first.”

  Keisha looked like she was about to cry. Her pouty bottom lip trembled.

  “I’m Carter. You’re Keisha, right?”

  “Yeah,” she moaned.

  “I know your mom, and I’m going to get her back for you. Then all three of us are going on a trip.”

  “What kind of trip?”

  “To a big city your mom used to live in. She loved it there, and she wants to go back – and she wants to take you with her.”

  Keisha nodded. “Yeah, she said we were going on a trip after she did something.”

  “Yeah, she called me to help you two get there.”

  “Why isn’t Izzy coming? Why did those men leave her?”

  “Oh, was she your babysitter?”

  “Yeah,” she moaned out.

  “Well, we’ll see if we can find her, too, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “What you got in the bag?”

  “My dolls.”

  “You can play with them if you want. It’s okay. I want you to be happy here.”

  She nodded. “I’m really hungry.”

  “Yeah, she said that thirty minutes ago,” Lucas said dryly.

  Carter turned to look at him. “Then why didn’t you get her something to eat?”

  “We ain’t got no money,” Clive said.

  “What happened to the advance I sent you?” Hugo asked.

  “We got bills like everyone else,” Clive replied.

  “Get the room service menu and order some food. They’ll put it on the room bill,” Carter said, then turned back to Keisha. “You can have whatever you want to eat.”

  “Okay,” she replied. She didn’t sound as scared as she was before.

  “Let’s get these out for you so you can play before dinner comes,” Carter said as he pulled her dolls out of the bag. “That sure is a pretty vest you got on. Did Mommy get that for you?”

  “Yeah. We went into a store that had all these guns in it. I’d never been in a store like that before,” she said as she picked up one doll.

  “Oh yeah? How’d you like it?”

  “It was okay, but they didn’t have any food like the other stores Mommy takes me to.”

  He chuckled. Lana had thought ahead just in case that wacko doctor tried something screwy. “Well, it’s a nice vest. I have to talk to my friends for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay.” She started to brush one of the doll’s hair.

  Carter stood and approached his men. “The way you guys talk, Lana doesn’t know she’s missing, so we’ll have to call her before she freaks out and alerts the cops.”

  ****

  Lana and the officer stood outside of the ER entrance. She didn’t have time for this. She wanted to get back to Keisha.

  A row of flashing lights could be seen coming toward them. At first, she thought they were ambulances, but then she saw blue lights among the sea of red. Her mouth dropped open at the sight of two black vans, five SUVs, and three cop cars pulling up to the entrance.

  This is overkill, even for Alec.

  Men in black pants and vest started hopping out of the SUVs. Alec and Bruce hopped out of one of them. Alec jogged to her. They hugged each other.

  “Alec, what is all this? What’s going on?” she asked.

  He guided her away from the cop and to one of the SUVs. “I read your letter. Lana–”

  “I’m sorry I put it in there, but I wanted you to know as soon as possible.”

  “I know, and I understand, but we have a problem,” he said in a grave tone. “Lana, Keisha never made it to my apartment. She’s been kidnapped.”

  “No! That’s impossible. I dropped her and Izabella off right in front of your building. I watched them walk through the doors.”

  “I’m sure you did, honey, but two guys ran into the lobby while they were waiting for the elevator. Izabella tried to fight them, but to no avail.”

  A horrified shriek left her throat as her limbs went limp. Alec wrapped his arms around her. He quickly guided her to the back of a van with the doors open.

  “Hey, guys, we need to get out of the emergency zone to clear a path for the ambulances!” a man yelled.

  Everything looked blurry, but Lana could hear doors closing and motors running. The van she was in started to slowly move. Alec rode beside her. They went to the end of the parking lot where there were empty spaces.

  “Who would kidnap her?” Lana wailed. “Damien is on the run, and if it was him, Izabella would have said so.”

  Alec looked at her. “My money is on Carter. He’s the only one who would have an interest in her because of you. My neighborhood is pretty safe with the exception of the occasional break-in.”

  She placed her hand over her forehead. “Of course it would be him. But why now? He could have grabbed her months before this.”

  “Airport security found Damien’s SUV in one of their parking lots. The driver’s side window had been smashed, and his suitcase had been ransacked. Carter is here, and his boys grabbed Damien thinking you and Keisha were with him. I doubt they knew he had shot one of your neighbors. But, if they have him, they know now.”

  “Oh, good Lord,” she groaned. As far as she was concerned, Damien could rot in hell, but she wanted her child back. “I thought I had put him off long enough to get us both to safety. But Alec, Carter thinks Keisha is his. He won’t hurt her.”

  Bruce approached them. “Hey, the boss wants to temporarily set up here. When we get the call, we will be able to go to any location in a quick amount of time since the hospital is in the middle of the city.”

  “The call?” Lana inquired.

  “He’ll call you, Lana,” Alec said. “We just have to wait.” Then Alec looked behind him. “Lana, this is Earl.”

  She turned around to see a man whose skin was light bronze. He was average-sized, and his cheeks were like a chipmunk’s. “Hi,” he said. He was holding a tiny device that looked like a computer chip.

  “Hi,” Lana said back.

  “Earl is our tech expert on the surveillance team,” Bruce said.

  “Lana, what I’m holding is a tapping device. It goes into a cell phone’s charging portal. It will record and trace any phone call received.”

  “When Carter calls, we’ll be able to pinpoint his whereabouts,” Alec said.

  Lana handed Earl her cell.

  They waited for what seemed like forever. During that time, Lana met some more agents, including Alec’s boss, who did his best to reassure her that her little girl would be with her for Christmas. Alec was trying to keep it together, but there were times Bruce had to pull him over to the side. Lana had gotten restless and went inside the hospital to check on Lacey. Alec wanted to go with her, but his superior thought it was best for him to stay close to the team. His boss had ordered another agent to follow her into the hospital. The staff had told Lacey to go to the OR waiting room.

  Lana caught Lacey up to speed.

  “Oh, Layla,” Lacey groaned. “Don’t worry. If anyone can get her back, it’s the FBI.”

  “I know,” breathed as she continued to clutch the phone.

  The little device Earl attached to her phone beeped, and the little blue light that had been on for the whole time shut off.

  “What is it?” Lacey asked.

  “I’m not sure. This thing had a blue
light on, and now it’s off.”

  Her phone vibrated in her hand. It was from a number she didn’t recognize, but taking into consideration what was going on, she answered it. “Hello?”

  “It didn’t take you long to call the cops,” Carter said simply.

  “Of course I called the cops. My daughter was taken,” she whispered as she looked up at the FBI agent who was standing in the doorway of the waiting room.

  “My tech guy disabled their tracer, so tell them you’re talking to someone else,” he warned.

  The agent started walking toward her.

  “It’s my maid,” Lana said quickly before he got too close. For all she knew, Carter was having her watched.

  He nodded and walked back to where he was.

  “We don’t have much of a window, so I’ll cut to the chase. Come to the Tampa Bay Marina, dock number twenty-three. Go into the warehouse that says Sam’s Fishing House. It’s been closed for a while, so it will look a little rough on the outside.”

  “I want to talk to my daughter first,” Lana said.

  “Don’t you mean our daughter?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, sweetie,” he said. “Come over and say hi to your mom.”

  A moment went by. “Hi, Mommy.”

  “Hey, are you okay,” Lana whispered.

  “Yeah. Oh, Carter wants to talk to you again,” she said.

  “Wait.”

  “She’s fine,” he oozed. “Now, she’s climbing on my lap so she can eat my fries.”

  Lana wanted to vomit at the image that formed in her head. “I see.”

  “You got one hour, and come alone, or . . . well, do I have to say in front of our kid?”

  “No, you don’t, but I got half a dozen cops around me. How am I going to come alone?”

  “You’re smart. You’ll find a way when you put your mind to it, sweetheart,” Carter said. Then the line went dead.

  Lana lowered the phone from her ear, trying to act as normal as possible. She knew they didn’t hear the conversation outside. Mickey was Carter’s tech specialist. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do with a computer or a device.

  “That didn’t sound like your maid,” Lacey hissed.

  “Because it wasn’t. It was Carter, and he definitely has her.”

  “I thought your phone was tapped. Why haven’t those guys swarmed up here when the conversation started?”

  “Carter has a guy who can hack anything. He wants me to meet him at the Tampa Bay Mariana in one hour alone, or I’m not going to like what happens.”

  The blue light came back on her device.

  “I can’t see anyone hurting a three-year-old child.”

  “He won’t hurt her. He thinks she’s his daughter, but he could do something else that would hurt me, like have my mother’s fingers cut off or my sister beat up. Carter can send his men anywhere. So, I’m going – alone.”

  “How?”

  “That’s where you come in. Lacey, I know you are worried to death about Corey, and if it wasn’t important, I wouldn’t ask you during a time like this–”

  “You want me to distract the guy at door,” Lacey stated for her.

  “Yes.”

  “Lana, he’s not some rookie cop who I’ll be trying to talk out of giving me a ticket. He’s an FBI agent. He’ll see through me like glass.”

  “Have you gotten a good look at him? He can’t be more than twenty-three. He probably just got out of the academy.”

  “I doubt it. Why would they have someone inexperienced working a case like this one?”

  “He has to get experience somehow.”

  “Okay, what’s the plan?”

  “I’ll tell him I’m going to the ladies’ room in the hallway. It’s close to a stairwell. It will take me all the way downstairs and outside. I’ll have to round the hospital to get to my car, but it won’t lead me straight to the team downstairs.”

  “Do you have to go past them at all?”

  “Well, they might see me from a distance if they’re paying attention.”

  “They will be.”

  “No, I’ll be careful.”

  Lacey sighed deeply. “Let’s do it before I lose my nerve.”

  Chapter 45

  Alec and Bruce were sitting in the van with Earl and two other guys. Most of the agents that were there were part of their division. Bruce had whispered to a few of the guys that Keisha was his daughter. They were surprised, but they were discrete. The last thing any of them wanted was Blanchette getting wind of it. He would bench Alec in a heartbeat.

  “This is agent Roch. I lost sight of Lana Murphy,” the radio in the van sounded.

  “Shit,” Alec sneered.

  “How the fuck did that happen?” Blanchette said over the airwaves.

  “She went to the bathroom. I was watching the door when Ms. Smith started talking to me . . .”

  As soon as Roch said that, Alec tuned out. He knew what had happened. Lana got Lacey to distract the rookie while she snuck away. She knew where Keisha was, and she was going to get her.

  “I’m heading down a stairwell now. A woman who I met coming up said a woman gave her two hundred dollars for her hat and jacket,” Roch said.

  Bruce blew out.

  Earl got on the radio. “The tapping device hadn’t blinked. There’s no way she got a call. I would have seen it on the monitor, and we would have heard the conversation, over.”

  “Well, something went wrong, because she’s gone,” Roch heaved. It sounded like he was breathing heavy.

  Alec got out of the van. Bruce followed him.

  “Let’s get to the SUV,” Alec said.

  As they hurried to their vehicle, static came across Bruce’s radio. “A white BMW just pulled out on the road,” Roch said.

  “Shit, Bruce, we’ve got to get moving,” Alec said with frustration.

  “She won’t be able to lose us,” Earl said over the radio. “That device has tracking capabilities.”

  “Damn it, Lana,” Alec complained as he got into the passenger side of the SUV.

  “You heard Earl,” Bruce said as he closed his driver’s door. “She’s carrying a tracker, and she doesn’t know it. We’ll catch up to her.”

  “Agent Thomas, send the live coordinates to every unit,” Blanchette ordered over the radio. “Everyone, get ready to move out.”

  “Yes, sir,” Earl said.

  ****

  Lana was five miles away from the marina when she noticed that the light on the FBI device was flashing green.

  She wondered how long it had been doing that and why. Then she realized that they were tracking her. “Shit!” She quickly pulled over and put the car in park. Grabbing her phone, she yanked the annoying piece of equipment out and tossed it out the window. The blue paperboy hat that she had bought off the young lady in the stairwell followed it. She wanted to keep the jacket because it was long in the back. It covered her gun.

  Lana pulled off before the FBI could catch up to her. A guy blew his horn because she had cut him off.

  ****

  The blip on the screen stopped. They were only a mile behind her. But she couldn’t have stopped because they were in the middle of the interstate.

  “Agent Thomas,” Blanchette said over the radio.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It looks like the blip stopped moving, but there is no exit ahead for another two miles, over.”

  “Yes, sir. I . . . I think she figured out what was going on and threw it out the window, over.”

  “Damn!” Alec yelled.

  “All right, boys, put on your thinking hats,” Blanchette said. “Where can someone go in this area to meet kidnappers?”

  Bruce picked up the receiver. “What about the Tampa Bay Marina? It’s only a few miles up ahead. There are some abandon buildings there. Maybe he has the kid in one of those, over.”

  “Not bad,” Blanchette said.

  “That place is huge. It will take us a while to sear
ch it, over,” Troy said over the radio.

  “And what if she’s meeting Mitchell on a boat?” Tommy asked.

  “Agent Styles, pull over before we go through the marina entrance. We have to discuss a game plan, over,” Blanchette said.

  “Yes, sir,” Bruce replied.

  ****

  Lana pulled up to the dock. There were several boats bobbing in the water. She saw the warehouse, but there were no other cars. She figured Carter and his guys parked in the back. Lana looked around as she started walking to the warehouse.

  When she got close to the door, it swung open. It was Hugo and a guy she had never seen before. He was wearing a bandana. “Hey, Lana,” Hugo greeted.

  “What’s up, Hugo?”

  He walked over to her. “You know the drill.”

  Damn. It was worth a try though. Lana put her arms up. “I’ll tell you now I got my one of my old favs in my back pocket.”

  Hugo lifted the back of her jacket and pulled out her engraved revolver. “Thanks for making this easy.”

  “There’s no reason to be difficult. I didn’t come here to hurt anyone. I just want my daughter,” she said. “Besides, old habits die hard.”

  He rounded her. “If you were going to cooperate, why did you call the cops to begin with?”

  “I didn’t know who took her at first. If I knew it was Carter, I would have called him directly. I had his number.”

  Hugo examined her for a moment. “Put your hands down. You look ridiculous,” he joked.

  She dropped her arms.

  “He’s inside, come on,” Hugo said.

  The guy with the bandana didn’t say anything as he kept an eye on her. They entered the warehouse and walked a ways before they got to a large doorway. It was a warehouse with empty shelves. The place smelled like dust.

  Lana stopped in her tracks when she saw Damien. His hands were tied behind his back around the bottom half of a steel shelf. Carter had his thugs beat him up. His left eye was closed, and his nose was bloody. The side of his cheek was swollen.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t wait until you got here to give him the ass-whooping he deserved, but it couldn’t be helped,” Carter said as he stepped out of the darkness of the warehouse. “He was holding out on some information concerning the night you disappeared.”