by Dale Mayer
Gerard, Amelia Rose’s father, would be devastated. She couldn’t help but think this nightmare was due to his massive global business dealings. His media company had morphed into a worldwide media and information services company, distributing content, including book publishing, digital RE services, cable network programming, and pay-TV. Yet even though he ran his massive conglomerate from his base in England, the transplanted New Englander was, at heart, first and foremost, a family man. Nurse had sat at the dinner table with them every night.
It was very American of the entire family, but Nurse had loved it. So did Lorelei. She loved the continuity of the generations, and she loved the loyalty and affection shared between one another. Only it had suddenly shifted and not in a good way. Amelia Rose was desperately struggling to come to terms with their new reality. Lorelei could only hope the message she had managed to send off had been received. She’d taken that chance, while they were in the last hotel, with one of the cleaning ladies who had been new. Lorelei had quickly passed her the note with her plea for the cleaning lady’s help, and now all Lorelei could do was wait.
At present, in their new location, no such opportunity had presented itself. Just then the door opened. She froze, the child still sleeping in her arms. One of the men came in, noted the sleeping Amelia Rose, and his face softened. That was a good-enough sign. He nodded and quickly turned and left. But then anybody who was used to dealing with children knew they were much easier to handle if they had sleep. And Amelia Rose definitely needed sleep. Then again Lorelei did too.
She closed her eyes and laid her head against the wall. A bed sat beside them, but Lorelei couldn’t get up while carrying the child in her arms. Lorelei wasn’t that strong. And she didn’t want to drop Amelia Rose, so this is where they were. They’d both sleep better though, if Lorelei could get them onto the bed.
Except she’d do anything to keep the girl asleep. Amelia Rose was exhausted and heartbroken. This had been too much for the young preteen on the brink of puberty. She was sheltered yet worldly, ever fascinated by her father’s massive media enterprise, yet kept out of its day-to-day business. She was deemed too young, although the girl had a brilliant mind. Still, she spent many fun hours in her father’s office, soaking up the atmosphere of his big business. She was due to inherit a sizeable portion of the company when the time came. But not until her father’s passing. In the meantime, Gerard ran the business with an iron grip on its total control.
Lorelei couldn’t help but think that had something to do with this kidnapping. Where there was big money … someone was always trying to steal it.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Her heart sank as she watched the doorknob turn.
The door opened again.
Chapter 2
The same man walked in, and he was accompanied by two different men—not dressed in suits, like some of the others, yet not in combat uniforms either, like some of the rest. They wore jeans and T-shirts, and they gently swept Amelia Rose from Lorelei’s arms and laid her down on the bed.
Half expecting them to do something horrible, Lorelei scrambled to her feet and raced over, hoping they wouldn’t separate them. Amelia Rose had been through too much. These men, or maybe the other men—she no longer knew who was who—had killed Nurse in front of them after holding Mary captive and beating her. She was harmless, but they hadn’t cared. Amelia Rose had screamed and cried out, struggling to get free, only to collapse in Lorelei’s arms.
It had all been about lessons, making sure Lorelei and Amelia Rose learned theirs.
They’d already escaped once, hence the punishment to Nurse.
The punishment had been anything but fair.
Still, the girls had learned their lesson.
Now with Lorelei standing protectively over the sleeping Amelia Rose, the men were already backing out of the room, and the door was closed and locked behind them. Grateful for that much, Lorelei laid on the bed beside her charge and closed her eyes. She kept thinking of ways that they could escape, ways that Lorelei could get the word out again. To let Gerard know. He was powerful, had money and friends in all different kinds of places—and obviously enemies too.
It wasn’t even thinkable that something like this had happened. Gerard was supposed to meet them at Island Retreat, a favorite resort where they’d planned a family holiday. Well, except not with Wendy, Amelia Rose’s mother. But Gerard—or Poppy, as Amelia Rose called him—would join them. The girl had been beside herself with joy. She loved her poppy. Lorelei and Amelia Rose had come a few days early with Nurse, and then they’d been snatched up and moved to a different hotel.
They’d all escaped soon afterward, but Nurse had ordered the two girls to go one way, and Nurse would go another, hoping all would find help and would gather later today. Yet when Lorelei and Amelia Rose had returned to their original hotel, they found Nurse Mary held there as a prisoner. It had gone downhill from there.
Now they were in this new hotel. At least Lorelei assumed it was a hotel since she could see green foliage everywhere out the window. They were in a decent-size room, and it had that hotel feel to its sheets—which made a noise when you laid down. The beds were solid though, almost too solid to be comfortable.
As she lay here on the bed, Amelia Rose sniffled in her sleep and reached out in a panic.
Immediately Lorelei wrapped her arms around her charge and whispered against her ear, “It’s okay. You’re fine.”
Only when Amelia Rose took a deep, tremulous breath and sank back into a sound sleep could Lorelei do the same.
They arrived twenty minutes to noon, Thai time. Right on schedule. After a mixture of military transportation—flights, speedboats, cruisers, and helicopters—Griffin was here, and Jax was still with him. It’s a good thing they’d eaten well at the beginning because food had been scarce afterward as they had been secreted away for most of their travels.
They had no instructions as they were dropped off on a wharf in one of Thailand’s poorest areas. With their duffel bags over one shoulder, the two of them strode ahead to find a place to make their headquarters. They hadn’t gone ten feet when Griffin’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out and found an address texted to him. He checked it out online, lifted it so Jax could see what came up, and then hit the Map icon on his cell. The location was two miles ahead and down about six blocks. Both of them set off in the direction of their next stop. As they walked up to the address, they found a tourist-type hotel.
Griffin frowned. It wasn’t their usual place. The two walked inside to see several clerks busy with tourists checking in. A man from a side office stepped forward and motioned for them to join him. They walked in, sat down on the chairs, and gave him hard glances while he shut the door, and no one ever exchanged a word. The fake IDs were handed over. The man quickly typed away on his keyboard, printed off several forms, and gave them keys. “Here you go, Mr. Honeycutt. Mr. Harris.”
Then he opened a safe and handed a stack of money in the local currency to each of them. After that, he got up, opened the door, and sent them on their way. “Enjoy your stay.”
Stuffing the money in their pockets and holding the keys in their hands, they followed the man’s instructions up to their two rooms. They entered both, dropped their bags, and Griffin unlocked the connecting door. Jax pulled out a small device from his duffel bag and quickly scanned both rooms. He nodded. “They’re clean.”
“Interesting,” Griffin said. He looked around, instinctively checking corners for video cameras and anything that might have passed the bug detector. As much as they tried to stay up on technology, it was hard to. Especially when it came to anything available in North America because China was often way ahead. He walked over to the window and took a look at the streets outside. Their beds were turned down, as if the men were ready to sleep, but it was just after noon, so that wouldn’t happen.
“Do we have any intel on timing or where our kidnap victims are located?” Jax asked.
Griffin shook h
is head. He sat down at the table and pulled out his laptop. “We need food too.”
Jax nodded. “I’ll scrounge up some.”
Griffin raised one finger, thinking about it, and then said, “Get enough so we don’t have to go back out today for more.”
“Are you hoping to make a move on her today?”
“I want to do some reconnaissance tonight,” he said. “In the dark, after we have a chance to get a better location of where she is. If an opportunity presents itself, then we’ll take it, but that’s not likely.”
“We can do that,” Jax said. “I might do a little bit of looking around myself while I’m out.”
“Do that,” he said. Just then his phone buzzed. Jax stopped while Griffin looked at the latest message. “Check your phone. Make sure you got these photos.”
The photos were a new set, more up-to-date, of both the girl and the tutor, plus a less clear photo of the nurse.
Jax checked his phone and said, “Got it.” Then he quickly disappeared out the door.
Griffin pulled up the Mavericks chat window and typed into the box. Intel on kidnappers’ location? We’ve landed.
He searched online for histories on the victims, the people they were looking for, starting with Amelia Rose, who was probably the main target for the kidnappers, given who her father was. The one thing about intel was, you never knew what was important until you found it. Not a whole lot was to be found on any of these three kidnap victims—a strategic move on the part of Gerard, for sure—but then a link popped up in his chat.
He quickly clicked on it to see full background files on Mary, the nanny, Amelia Rose, and Lorelei, the tutor, completely making his last ten minutes spent online useless. In these reports, he had everything from birth date to favorite color and the outfit the little girl wore when kidnapped, as well the private school she once attended and the reason why she had a nanny and a tutor now. Apparently there had been an incident at her private preschool, and she’d been tutored ever since. She appeared well-adjusted and intelligent, though on a short leash by her protective father.
He opened the chat window asking for any updates as he studied the photo.
The chat immediately said that Mary’s body had been found at the hotel where the three had gone missing.
He sucked in his breath as he stared at that message. A murder upped the stakes to critical. And why her unless she was going to hamper their progress. She was older and not in the best of health. That alone was going to have a huge impact on Amelia Rose. Emotionally and psychologically as the reports said she was close to both her nanny and tutor.
“Poor girl,” he whispered. She was small and fair with a china-doll look and blue eyes and ringlets. He shook his head and sighed. “Yeah, that’s not troublesome at all.” She was the epitome of what a lot of people considered the perfect face. She had a cherubic innocence. And, for that, he had to hope the kidnappers hadn’t had a chance to touch her yet.
Then he read the file on the tutor. She was part of a marine family and had gone her own way to become a teacher.
“At least you’re not part of the Mensa group,” he said. “That would be a little bit too much to handle a second time around.” He’d gone a lifetime without meeting anybody with an IQ like the two people in their last case. It was fascinating, but, at the same time, as he read through Lorelei’s folder, he had to wonder if she was just as brilliant, also a genius, but who had simply never been tested. She was fluent in three languages but could read and speak in five.
“Still not all that incredible,” he said, downplaying it. He could handle three languages himself, but that was it. Plus, so many people born in European countries were multilingual and never thought anything about it. However, she also was licensed to teach in the arts and sciences. Her file spelled out all her upper-level university work and diplomas received.
“Interesting,” he muttered as he kept going through the update. And that’s when he found what he was looking for. After all her degrees had been earned, the last one as she had turned twenty-three, a big hole appeared in her background history, until she moved from the States to England seven years ago, when she was twenty-five. Followed by confirmation of her hire by Gerard as a tutor for his daughter, some five years ago, when she was twenty-seven.
Frowning, he returned to look at Lorelei’s photo and asked, “What did you do after your college graduation before moving to England? And what did you do during those first two years in the UK before hiring on with Gerard?” But then she’d been young. Maybe after graduating, she had spent a year backpacking in the States or abroad. Who knew? Or two years with the Peace Corps. Or on a church mission. Still, he shook his head. Any of those suppositions would have been unearthed by the clever Mavericks team.
He quickly went back to her file and brought up another photo of her face. It wasn’t beautiful or angelic like the child’s, but still Lorelei had something strikingly attractive about her. It was the determined look in her face, the stern lines to her jawbone and cheeks. This woman wouldn’t be taken lightly. But she was also somebody who had plans and would go wherever her plans took her, regardless of other people’s opinions. If he was less than kind, he would have said she had a stubborn tilt to her chin, as if whoever took the photo had had to coax her into sitting still long enough. And her eyes had a glint in them as if to say, “Do your worst.”
And he was fascinated. Why didn’t you ever marry? He checked her photo again. She was definitely pretty enough to catch many guys’ attention. And the background check on her proved she was plenty smart. The fact that she was collateral damage in this kidnapping of Amelia Rose was one thing, but, added to that, Griffin had to rescue them both. He couldn’t lose either one of them. Lorelei was needed in order to keep the young girl in a decent mental and emotional state. The tutor could be a huge help moving forward as the child dealt with this adversity. So he couldn’t just learn about one victim. He had to learn about both.
By the time Jax returned to their rooms and came over to his side with large containers full of street food, Griffin had a pretty good grasp on the two people they were going after here. So he had asked the chat box for background on the father, since his daughter’s kidnapping was more than likely to target her mega-rich father. The Mavericks team had already anticipated this and sent the file immediately after his request.
The father was a little bit more elusive, but he was a newspaper mogul, used to getting his own way. As a big business owner, he was stubborn and likely arrogant as hell. This was his third marriage and his daughter was his third living child. His first marriage had produced a son, who was killed at the age of two when both father and son were kidnapped. Kidnappers never captured. Griffin stalled when he read that. How do you ever get over that loss?
His second marriage had produced two offspring, both sons, and they were set to take over the business. But then they were much older, already in their thirties. Gerard Whitaker was in his sixties, and, from the look on his face in the photo that Griffin had been sent, Gerard wasn’t an easy man to get along with, not with his hawkish nose, stern countenance, and hard eyes.
So either his relationship with his daughter was one similar to how he’d probably raised his sons, with lots of discipline and a lack of affection, or it had been the complete opposite, and she’d been the apple of his eye. Griffin leaned toward that. He moved his laptop off to the side, smiled up at Jax, and said, “Do you have enough money?”
Jax nodded. “Yes. We’re good to go. And, no. Nobody’s seen the girl or women.”
Griffin nodded. “It was taking a chance asking. I did find out one disturbing bit of news. The nanny’s body has shown up at the hotel. She’s been shot. No suspects at this time.”
“Jesus.” Jax stared. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“None of us were,” Griffin said grimly. “But it’s upped the ante now. Asking about the missing woman could set off another killing.”
“I doubt it, it was all very
casual. That’s all right,” Jax said. “They showed me pictures of their kids, so I brought out the photos of the girl and her tutor. I said I was here visiting them and how proud I was of their accomplishments.”
Griffin laughed. “Yeah, nothing like family pride to set in. It does make me wonder how it affected the father’s sons, though, at the thought of him having another family and a daughter.”
“Give me the rundown.”
Griffin quickly shared the information he had found online and recapped what he had been sent and said, “I just want to make sure we can write off the sons on our list as being behind this.”
“So neither of our kidnap victims are married to some political type in Thailand?” Jax asked.
“I highly suspect that any political angle has nothing to do with the kidnapping, but we can’t knock anything completely off our radar at this point. The kidnappers had said that she’d been married, but is that even legal?”
“In Thailand, you can probably buy a marriage for five bucks,” Jax said grimly. “And child sex workers start as young as newborns.”
“So the marriage angle was about rape of a child?” Griffin’s stomach twisted at the thought. “That’s just sick.”
“The pedophiles are. It doesn’t stop them from coming over here and abusing the locals for money because they can. And here, sadly some of the parents throw their kids into the industry just to make money so they can have more themselves.”
Griffin shook his head. “I know all this to be true, but I don’t want to sit here and focus on them. Otherwise I’ll go on a rampage and free all these child sex workers out there.”
“And you know they’ll just kidnap another thousand to replace them. It’s a messed-up world.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Then he dove into the food, not stopping until he was halfway through the first carton. He slowed down and said, “Hmm, it’s not bad.”