A week passed. The phone numbers gave the FBI leads on where Christopher had been, but opened up nothing on where to search next. A flurry of calls to the tip line and a number of sightings in the Detroit area looked promising, but turned out to be merely a man with a similar appearance to Christopher Cox. The search grew quiet again.
Bryce reached over and turned on the light at his end of the couch. Charlotte was sitting beside him, watching a movie, but not much of her attention was on the film as she didn’t bother to forward through the commercials. Bryce stroked her hair, and she turned to glance up at him. “What’s on your mind?” he asked quietly.
She didn’t answer for a long moment, then sighed. “He’s going to kidnap someone else, Bryce. Christopher wasn’t sure if the money was really there or not, so he sent someone to check it out. Now he knows I was telling the truth. He’s not going to walk away from five million dollars. He’ll do what he knows, and he will snatch a child.”
Charlotte reached over and intertwined her hand with his. “If he snatches a little girl, calls the FBI, and tells me to send the five million to him to get her back, he knows I will do it. I’ve set someone else up for heartache with my foolish attempt to draw him out. I should have never sent that note. I’ve put something in motion that can only end in tragedy. And I don’t know what to do.”
Her scenario was one of a few John already had gamed out for what might come next. Christopher was an unpredictable man, but with a pattern of kidnappings that had proven profitable to him. Bryce hadn’t talked about them with Charlotte, because talking about the what-ifs only set her up for things to worry about outside her control. But he should have, he realized now, as she had been doing so on her own, coming to the same point.
He shifted and encouraged her to lean against him so he could put his arm around her. “Charlotte, he might, and if he does it’s going to be a hard day, but we’ll deal with it together,” Bryce told her, keeping his voice matter of fact. “If something happens, at least we have the means to end it quickly. For now, we pray he gets caught. That is something we can do.”
“I’ve been praying that for the last month, and it’s become urgent this last week. My heart is going to break if God doesn’t answer this prayer.”
“Pray for what you want, Charlotte, and trust that God hears you. Then step off a cliff and trust His answer. I don’t know what God is going to do in this situation, but I trust Him and what He decides.”
“It’s really that easy for you?”
Bryce thought about it before he answered, “In this case, yes.”
She finally nodded. “I wish I had your confidence.”
Bryce hugged her. “Borrow some of mine.”
Three nights later John walked through the back door with Paul Falcon behind him. Bryce was fixing dinner.
“There’s news,” John said. “Where’s Charlotte?”
“Right here, John.” She joined them from her studio, a magazine in hand.
Bryce turned down the heat under the skillet and reached for a towel to dry his hands. “There’s trouble?”
“Some good news, some bad,” Paul replied. “How are you doing, Charlotte?”
She shrugged. “Wishing this was over.”
“Let’s see if we can now make that happen,” Paul said with a smile. He looked over to John. “Your conversation, I think.”
John nodded, tugged a letter out of his pocket. “You’ve got mail, Charlotte, sent to you via your sister’s address. It’s from Christopher Cox.”
She pulled in a breath as she paled. Bryce held out his hand, and she willingly took it, moved into his space. Bryce rested his arm comfortably around her shoulders and turned his attention to John. “Not something I expected to hear. What does it say?”
John opened the letter and pulled out a single page, laid it on the counter for them to read as he summarized. “He’s threatening to snatch a child unless you deliver the five million to him. He wants the money taken to the bus depot in Wilmette. It’s a known Madoni family drop-off location. The good news—Christopher hasn’t snatched anyone yet. The even better news—this is an interesting move with some risk to him. His greed is making him vulnerable. He’s playing a bluff without the leverage of a missing child.”
“The bad news?” Bryce asked.
John and Paul looked at each other, then John said, “A warning about no cops this time, and he wants Charlotte to deliver the money.”
Bryce felt Charlotte flinch.
“He’s messing with you, Charlotte,” Paul said quietly. “The whole point of using the Madoni family to move the money is the fact Christopher doesn’t have to be anywhere in the area where the cash is first delivered. He takes delivery of the cash somewhere else in the city. He’s simply manipulating you.”
She blew out a hard breath. “He’s doing a good job of it. He could be watching from someplace to see if I show up, though.”
“He doesn’t know what you look like. Beyond a woman of your age, he won’t know if it is an undercover cop delivering the money or if it’s really you. It’s been nineteen years since he last saw you. It would be nice if he was there, watching the delivery, as it gives us a chance to spot him and catch him. But I doubt that’s going to be his play.”
“He’s not asking for her to do something when she gets there? Take a phone call, follow directions to somewhere else?” Bryce asked, not liking where this was heading but trying to figure out the layers of it.
“No, just deliver the bag of cash as checked luggage on a bus trip,” John answered. “Paul’s people have confirmed the supplied ticket is one where the barcode and the text generate different data. It’s how this particular bag will get misrouted to the Madoni family out of all the bags being loaded. The one thing we’ve been weighing is the possibility Christopher could have a security question in place, something only Charlotte would know how to answer. Answer the question right, they accept the bag. Don’t have the answer to the question, the delivery gets rejected.”
“That possibility is handled easily enough by having an undercover cop wired for audio both directions,” Paul put in. “If she needs to know the answer to a question, you feed that answer to her over the audio earpiece she’s wearing. We need your assistance, Charlotte, but we do not need you delivering the money. Just for you to be someplace in the loop and listening to what’s going on.”
Bryce, watching her expressions change, realized the impact this was having and tightened his hold. Fear was fighting with an equal resolve to face doing this. She looked at him. “What if he asks something I don’t remember?”
“You say that,” Bryce replied.
Charlotte looked between Paul and John, focused her attention back on Bryce. “What do you think?”
“He’s toying with you, Charlotte. He wants the money. Who delivers it is immaterial. He’s just got a chance to manipulate you again, and he’s using it.”
She sighed. “It feels that way too.” Charlotte looked at Paul. “All right, so you use an undercover cop, and all I need to do is be there in case you need an answer that would be unique to me.”
“Yes.”
“I can do that,” Charlotte agreed.
Bryce knew that was the right answer, but one that would give her many uneasy moments in the days ahead. Bryce shifted the conversation away from Charlotte. “Assume the money is delivered by someone standing in as Charlotte. The Madoni family then delivers the cash to Christopher. Where does that get us? Christopher is in the wind again. Can we pay the Madonis enough they would tell us where that hand-off is going to take place?”
“That’s the real play,” Paul replied. “Having Charlotte—our stand-in—delivering the money to the drop-off point is a distraction Christopher is using to tie up resources. He knows we’ll have to put cops on the ground around the delivery site on the slim chance he might be there watching. The place we have to focus on is where the Madonis take the money and where they hand it off. We can attempt to follow the mon
ey to that point, which can be nearly impossible, or we figure out how to get them to tell us where that hand-off location will be.”
“You’re thinking a hefty enough payment might get the Madonis to tell the cops where that hand-off will be?” Bryce asked.
“They might be willing to sell the information to John,” Paul said. “They are in business, and Christopher is a liability to them right now. They don’t turn down customers, but neither do they want the scrutiny that being involved with a high-profile fugitive brings. It risks too many of their own people being arrested as the money is moved around.”
“Will Christopher actually be there to take the hand-off or will he have someone else picking up the cash on his behalf?” Charlotte asked.
“My personal guess, he will have someone else pick up the money,” Paul replied. “He would want one more courier in the loop before the cash reaches him. My guess is he’ll want to be outside the Chicago area the entire time this plays out.”
“So the real plan is to follow whoever picks up the money from the Madoni family,” Bryce said, “and hope he leads back to Christopher?”
“Yes.”
“When is this supposed to happen?” Charlotte asked.
“It’s an open-dated ticket for a weekend bus route between Wilmette and St. Louis. The next window for making that delivery is this Friday night.”
“When you get the five million from the house, John,” Charlotte said, “we should think about putting another note in among the cash. It wouldn’t hurt to lay the groundwork for another reason Christopher should be in touch with us after this, on the possibility this attempt to catch him fails.”
“A good idea, Charlotte.” John folded the letter and slid it back into the envelope, handed it to Paul. “We’ve been waiting for another break in the case, and we just got one.”
Charlotte nodded and attempted to smile. “At least it’s only a threat rather than another actual kidnapping.” She turned to Paul. “Whatever happens, the priority has to be to make sure either Christopher gets his money or that he’s caught. Something that leaves him free but doesn’t get the money to him only raises the real likelihood he will grab a child to demand his five million in ransom.”
“We see the situation the same way,” Paul agreed. “This is a defensive move, paying him now to try and keep anyone else from becoming his victim. We won’t lose sight of that larger objective.”
Bryce looked at John. “Make any offer you think is necessary to get the Madonis to cooperate.”
“I’ll call you with the number,” John said.
The police van smelled of sweat and stale coffee. Charlotte leaned back in the chair they had assigned her, wanting to stretch, wanting to get up and pace. Bryce caught her eye and offered a reassuring smile. He was watching security monitors to help canvass the people coming and going from the bus depot, looking for any sign Christopher was watching events unfold. John was out in the crowd, standing near the pillar that demarked the baggage claims area for those arriving. There was no sign of Christopher Cox. But the tension in her back was knotting her muscles.
Paul joined them in the van. “We’re about ready to deliver the money. Any concerns?”
The FBI agents monitoring the surveillance indicated all was a go. Paul took a chair beside Charlotte. “Whenever you are ready, Rita.”
Charlotte watched the agent with the money head into the bus depot and make her way through the crowds, join the line to check-in and drop off the bag. The video feeds were good, and the audio strong enough they could pick up the conversation of the couple next to Rita in line as if they were standing there in person. The van was quiet during the five minutes it took for Rita to reach the front of the line. She offered the ticket that had accompanied Christopher’s letter. The clerk scanned the ticket barcode.
The bag of cash was hoisted onto the scale, and the clerk generated a baggage barcode with the destination and weight. “You’ll be on bus seventeen, leaving from lane five, departing in twenty-four minutes. Your ticket has an extra item checked that you’ll be traveling with an infant. For the boarding records, I need the name of the child.”
Paul touched his mic. “Rita, use Connor Hewitt.”
The agent said Connor Hewitt.
The clerk typed it in, then reached down to the printer, retrieved two boarding passes, handed them to Rita. The bag of cash disappeared on the conveyer belt into the back of the bus depot. Rita took the boarding passes and headed toward the departing passenger waiting area.
“That’s it?” Charlotte asked, disappointed.
“The money is delivered,” Paul replied with a smile. He pointed to the next screen. “Watch the tracker in the baggage. My guess, the bag leaves the building in the next two minutes.”
Paul’s phone rang.
John, on video standing by the pillar, lifted his phone as he looked toward the security camera. “Paul, Phil Madoni just called me. The hand-off is happening at the Gorum airfield outside Winetka in two hours. It’s a short-runway airport serving small planes.”
Paul got up from his seat. “The money is now officially in play.”
“Christopher is going to fly the money out of the area?” Charlotte asked.
“Sounds like it. We need to shift surveillance to the airport.”
Rita rejoined them in the van. “There was no sign anyone in particular was watching for me or watching where I went.”
“We thought this would simply be a distraction, and it was,” Paul said.
“He wasn’t here.” The realization began to calm Charlotte’s nerves. A hand settled on her shoulder, and she glanced back to see Bryce had moved to stand behind her. She met his gaze and half laughed. “I was a basket case the last few days for no reason.”
“You had a good reason,” he said, his hand squeezing gently.
“There goes the money,” the agent monitoring the bag said. He merged the tracking data with the security camera and pointed to a white van exiting the back of the bus depot. “That van. And now our trackers just went dead. They probably tossed the bag in a lead-lined safe as they all blinked out at the same instant.”
“Keep a car on that van. Let’s stay with the money as long as possible.”
John entered the van. “What’s the plan from here?”
“It’s likely Christopher will be using a courier to pick up the cash and fly it to where he is,” Paul said. “A small plane can land nearly anywhere if you ignore FAA regulations on what makes an appropriate runway. We’ll watch the money be delivered at the airport and follow the plane by radar and a couple of aviation assets of our own to track where it goes. The delivery is in two hours, so add another two to five hours to that for it to be handed off by the pilot somewhere.”
“Paul, we don’t need to be involved from this point on,” Bryce said. “I’ll have John drop Charlotte and me off at the house, then he can join you at the airport.”
“That would be best. I’ll keep you apprised as this unfolds.”
Bryce followed Charlotte into the kitchen. “Are you disappointed?”
“I had gathered my nerves to have Christopher do something, want something. It feels strange to have the evening end like this.”
“Christopher wants his money more than he wants to come after you—a fact for which I’m very relieved. He’s a threat to you and Tabitha, but one we can still contain.”
Charlotte walked over and hugged him, rested her head against his chest. Bryce was startled enough by the move it took a few seconds for him to raise his arms to encircle her, and then he simply closed his eyes and enjoyed the moment.
“I was afraid this letter, this request, was going to be the first move of an obsession,” Charlotte whispered, “that he would be there with a need to see who I was today, that he’d take a dangerous risk just to see my face. I was so scared someone would see him in the crowd.”
“He played on your nerves, but he wasn’t there.”
Charlotte nodded. She finally st
epped back, smiled at him, and looked at the time. “I’m going to go stretch out for a few hours, force myself to close my eyes and try to sleep, to see if I can shake this headache.”
“I’ll wake you when there is news,” he promised.
Bryce tapped on Charlotte’s door, carrying a mug of tea for her. She had stretched out, but it didn’t look like she had been able to do more than intermittently doze. “They’re still tracking the small plane. It left the airport heading northwest.”
She set aside the brush she was using and glanced at the dawn lighting the sky. “Where is it now?”
“Near Fargo.”
She walked over to accept the tea. “Wide open spaces, a couple decent highways. Once daylight breaks, a pilot can tell from the air if there’s a cop car in the area,” Charlotte guessed.
“The pilot will be able to land, hand off the cash less his cut, and be back in the air within fifteen minutes,” Bryce confirmed. “Christopher has a decent plan for getting the money delivered to him.”
“The cops will be too far away to see and track Christopher’s vehicle.”
“I think the net that closes over the area once the pilot lands is going to be tight enough to catch Christopher,” Bryce said, more confident than Charlotte about what would unfold. “A remote location also means not many vehicles are out on the roads.”
“Where’s John?”
“In a plane about two miles behind the one being tracked. Weather is good. John will be able to see and track any vehicle leaving the area of the exchange. The pilot should have landed while it was still dark if he wanted to better protect the hand-off.” Bryce thought she still looked a bit bruised from the emotions of the last few days, so he changed the subject. “Care to come join me for breakfast? You should try to eat something.”
“Sure.” She followed him downstairs. The newspaper had arrived, so while they ate bacon, eggs, and toast, they passed back and forth sections of the newspaper and filled another thirty minutes.
Bryce’s phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket. “You’re on speaker, Paul.”
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