False Positive

by Andrew Grant

  “Devereaux, where are you?” It was Agent Bruckner.

  “At the Support Services Bureau. Back in Birmingham.”

  “In Birmingham? Excellent. Hold the line. I’m patching in Grandison.”

  There were a couple of electronic squawks in his ear, then Devereaux heard Grandison call out his name.

  “OK.” Bruckner was exuberant. “We have a breakthrough. And Devereaux, you’re about to be one proud dad. Listen to this. Alexandra Cunningham just got a call. From Nicole. She’d found Loflin’s mother’s phone, sneaked away with it while the woman was taking some kind of medicine, and raised the alarm.”

  “Where are they?” Cooper jumped down from the stool and started toward the exit.

  “Nicole didn’t know, exactly. Only that they were in a hotel. It sounds like the woman doped her while she checked in, like she did with Ethan, so Nicole didn’t see any signage. They did go out to get a bunch of swimsuits and stuff this morning, but they came back in through a side entrance, so it was the same problem.”

  “They went shopping for swimsuits?”

  “Right. Nicole said they were on their way to a water park, which is what she picked for her treat. Your ex was a little off the money on that one. Anyway, the officer who was with Alexandra told Nicole to hang up the phone and keep it with her as long as she could, so we could trace it via GPS.”

  “I guess.” Devereaux would have preferred an old school solution. “Why didn’t they tell her to run screaming to the lobby?”

  “Too dangerous for Nicole, and any other civilians who might be nearby. The woman’s armed, dangerous, and unstable. Correct procedure is to locate her, secure the premises, and send in Hostage Rescue.”

  Devereaux didn’t reply.

  “Are you still there, Devereaux?”

  “I am. Give me the address of the hotel.”

  “Wait. I’m being told that the phone’s on the move. It’s on I-20, heading south. That’s consistent with the direction to the water park. Devereaux, listen. Birmingham PD has units en route to intercept. They also have an eye in the sky. They have it covered. And to be sure, we’re coming, too.”

  “That’s good.” Devereaux had just made the turn onto 18th Street, running hard as he zigzagged his way to the City Federal building. “But I’m closer. I’m heading down there myself. Just do me one favor. Have someone call Traffic. Tell them to expect me. I’ll be in a blue Porsche.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Devereaux, wait. This is Grandison. Don’t do that. Stay where you are. In a situation like this, where the subject is driven by ideology, the last thing you want to do is make her feel cornered. If that happens, and she feels there’s no way out, she will kill her hostage. That’s not speculation. That’s a one hundred percent certainty.”

  Chapter Ninety-nine

  The woman pulled out onto the highway and straightaway checked her speed.

  She didn’t want to draw attention to herself. She’d switched the license plates again, but even so a zealous traffic cop might note the color and model of the car she was driving and decide to take a closer look. The level of risk was higher than she was happy with, but there was no alternative open to her.

  At least the girl was behaving better now. She’d still been a little feisty that morning, when they went out to buy the swimming supplies. Making sure she didn’t bolt down one of the long, cluttered aisles in the three stores they visited had been exhausting. And the girl hadn’t been happy about returning to the hotel, either, when the woman needed to change the bandage on her arm for a waterproof one and take her second batch of meds. But since then, the girl had been an angel. A miracle transformation had occurred. It was wonderful.

  The only other frustration was having lost her phone.

  The woman had switched to that one before they reached the hotel, and it was the last of her disposables.

  If only she’d known what was going to happen, she could have bought another at the store.

  Chapter One Hundred

  Wednesday. Late Morning.

  Nicole missing for twenty and three-quarter hours

  Devereaux was burning through the miles that separated him from his daughter.

  He was halfway to the turnoff for the water park, thinking ahead, planning how he’d handle every conceivable trick the woman could throw at him, when his phone rang.

  “Devereaux?” Bruckner sounded concerned. “I have new information. The phone is still moving. The woman didn’t leave the highway at the water park. She’s continuing southbound.”

  “Roger that. I’ll keep on the highway myself. What about her vehicle? Is she still in the black Mercedes? I don’t want to accidently pass her.”

  “Let me check. I’ll get right back to you.”

  Devereaux hung up and eased back slightly on the gas, and right away his phone rang again.

  “Hey, buddy.” It was a male voice, slightly distorted, and it took Devereaux a second to place it as Page’s.

  “Hey. What have you got for me?”

  “I just finished with your girl’s webcams—and the server they were hooked up to—and the news is, we were both right. Like I thought, there’s no way to figure out where she could be right now. I could tell you where she was the last ten times she accessed them, though, if that would help.”

  “It might. Can you email me the details? I’m driving right now.”

  “Can do. No problem. And that leads me to the part you were right about. There’s no way this lady is a Luddite. I’ll give you an example. I traced the location of the last place she accessed the cameras from. Then I looked at what other activity there was from the same IP address at the same time. And guess what I found? She logged on to seven email accounts, each from a different provider. And on top of those, two other sets of webcams.”

  “Spencer, this could be the mother lode. What do the emails say?”

  “I couldn’t possibly hack her accounts without a warrant. That would be illegal.”

  “So what do they say?”

  “They’re mainly to do with deliveries. A weird combination of things. For example, chemicals. Kids’ toys. Decorating supplies. That’s all I’ve found so far.”

  “What was the delivery address?”

  “There were a couple. One is right here in Alabama, a little way outside Birmingham. The other is in Missouri. St. Louis, actually.”

  “Has anything been delivered to the St. Louis address recently?”

  “Not in the last couple of weeks. But plenty in the last year. I haven’t checked all the emails yet, though.”

  “OK. Can you send me those addresses as well?”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  “What about the other sets of webcams? Can you tell where they are?”

  “That would be beyond the power of a regular mortal. So, yes. One set’s here in Birmingham.”

  Page read out an address, and Devereaux’s foot instinctively pressed harder on the gas. The cameras were at Alexandra Cunningham’s house.

  “And the others?”

  “In St. Louis. At the same place the deliveries were being sent to.”

  “This is great information, Spencer. It could make all the difference. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I hope it helps you catch this asshole. In the meantime, I’ll keep digging and—”

  “Spencer, thanks again.” Devereaux’s call waiting was beeping. “Got to go…”

  Agent Bruckner was back on the other line.

  “Devereaux, you need to slow down. The helicopter can see you. You’re only a quarter of a mile behind the woman. She’s ditched the Mercedes, and she’s driving a silver Nissan Armada now. There are four unmarked units ahead of her, and two behind. The ones in front are going to start slowing the traffic. There are people up ahead preparing a fake census point. So hang back, but be ready to move. We don’t know if Nicole will be under any kind of sedation. And remember what Grandison said. If the woman feels her situation is hopeless…”<
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  Devereaux didn’t need Bruckner to finish the thought. He was well aware of the difficulty of extracting a hostage from a vehicle. Especially a child who might be drugged. He just had to hope the guys posing as census-takers were good at their jobs. His daughter was four hundred yards away from him. She was in mortal danger. And all he could do was ease off the gas and trust in a bunch of strangers to save her life.

  Chapter One Hundred and One

  Wednesday. Late Morning.

  Nicole missing for twenty-one hours

  The traffic stowed dramatically.

  It continued to dawdle for another five miles. Then the highway straightened, and they reached a section where the shoulder was wider than usual following the construction of a new section of road. Devereaux passed a temporary sign saying Traffic Census. Pull Over If Directed. Federal Mandate. He sped up, weaving his way past the other vehicles, watching closely for the Armada.

  Devereaux spotted the silver leviathan a hundred yards ahead. It was approaching a pair of officers who were standing at the side of the carriageway, in high-visibility vests. They were holding orange-and-white-striped batons and as Devereaux watched, one of the men stepped forward and directed a car, seemingly picked at random, into one of four pens that had been laid out on the shoulder, using tall fluorescent traffic cones.

  The officer selected another car and waved it across to the shoulder, then stepped toward the Armada. He gestured with his baton. The Armada’s turning-light came on. And its brake lights. It started to move to the right. Devereaux’s foot was poised above his gas pedal, waiting for the woman to swing back onto the highway and surge forward. But she didn’t. She rolled into the rear, right-hand pen. Her way forward was blocked by the first car that had been pulled over. Devereaux stopped behind her, cutting off her only other escape route.

  Devereaux jumped out of the Porsche as one of the officers pulled open the Armada driver’s door. The officer dragged a blond woman in jeans and a jade green tank top out from behind the wheel. He shoved her down on the ground. Started to cuff her. But it wasn’t Loflin’s mother. On the far side of the SUV, the other officer was grappling with a broad, shaven-headed man he’d pulled from the passenger seat. Devereaux registered surprise as he ran forward. He wrenched open the rear door. And saw a small figure curled up on the back seat, hugging a stuffed toy dog.

  It was a little girl.

  But not Nicole.

  Chapter One Hundred and Two

  The woman had to gauge the distance very carefully.

  She had to stop the car close enough to the pay phone so that she could grab the girl if she twigged something had gone wrong with her scheme and tried to run. But the car also had to be far enough away so that the girl wouldn’t overhear the conversation. Then she’d know her scheme had failed. And given her previous behavior, that would be asking for trouble. It was a delicate balance.

  The woman smiled as she waited for her call to be answered. This was one situation where age was on her side. She was old enough to remember life before everyone was dependent on cell phones.

  Losing her last one certainly had its disadvantages.

  But overall it was worth the inconvenience, to have gotten the police off her back. And she was grateful to the girl for that, if nothing else.

  Chapter One Hundred and Three

  Wednesday. Late Morning.

  Nicole missing for twenty-one and a quarter hours

  Devereaux left the census officials to straighten out the mess with the family from the Armada and pulled back onto the highway.

  He had no definite destination in mind but figured that if the woman had sent her phone south for them to follow like obedient puppies, he’d be better off heading north. The next exit was three miles farther on, and with every yard he traveled in the wrong direction Devereaux beat himself up a little more for having let the woman slip through his fingers at the mansion. The negative thoughts were still gnawing at him as he raced down the off-ramp, ready to loop under the highway and rejoin on the opposite side, so he was glad of the distraction when his phone rang again.

  “I know, Cooper. It was a debacle.” It was Lieutenant Hale’s voice this time. “Loflin’s mom won that round. But I don’t want to hear about it. Because it doesn’t matter. We’ve finally caught a break. An eyewitness reported seeing the woman at a hotel, and the location matches with the phone call Nicole made. She said she saw two incidents in the parking lot. First, the woman was hovering around the trunk of a silver Nissan SUV. The witness thought she was trying to steal something, but think about it, Cooper. Where was the woman’s cell phone found? Where exactly?”

  “In the Armada’s trunk.”

  “Right. And the second thing. A few minutes later, the woman got into a screaming row with a kid. A girl, aged around seven or eight. The kid wanted to go to some water park, but the woman was insisting they go with their original plan, and head to an airplane museum.”

  “The Space and Rocket Museum?”

  “No. Some place in Robins, Georgia, called the Museum of Aviation. It’s a fair drive. Two-thirty, two-fifty-ish miles from Birmingham, depending which route you take.”

  “I’ve never heard of the place.”

  “Me neither. But airplane museums have never been my thing.”

  “What about Alex? Does she know if it was a place Nicole had ever wanted to visit?”

  “I haven’t asked her. There are a lot of other calls I need to make, Cooper.”

  “How come it took so long for us to hear about this?”

  “The witness didn’t call right away. She said the thing with the trunk she wasn’t sure about, so she wouldn’t have mentioned it on its own. It was the way the woman and the girl acted around each other that spooked her. There was nothing tangible. Just the way they were yelling. The distance between them. And at the end of the argument, the woman grabbed the girl and almost threw her into their car. A black Mercedes, by the way. There was nothing conclusive on its own, but enough to nag away until the witness found a pay phone and made the call.”

  “She didn’t have a cell phone?”

  “She was an older lady. She said she doesn’t hold with cell phones. She doesn’t own one.”

  “Did you speak to her yourself?”

  “I did. Dispatch routed her through.”

  “What did your gut tell you, Lieutenant? Was she on the level?”

  “I think so. It was noisy and the line was bad but I pressed her hard about the woman, and she gave me a decent description. Take away the hair color, and it tallies pretty close to what the clerk at the Roadside Rendezvous said. And when she got off the phone, I called the hotel she claimed these things happened at. The clerk there confirmed that someone sounding just like her description had checked in late last night. And had been driving a black M-Class Mercedes.”

  Devereaux took a moment to think through what Hale had told him.

  “All right. So what’s the plan? Converge on this Museum of Aviation?”

  “You got it.”

  “OK, Lieutenant. See you there.”

  Chapter One Hundred and Four

  Wednesday. Late Morning.

  Nicole missing for twenty-one and a half hours

  Devereaux entered Robins, Georgia, into the Porsche’s GPS system but after a couple of seconds, when it came back with a choice of two possible routes, he pulled over to the side of the road.

  He was suddenly overcome with the same feeling of discomfort that had hit him at the mansion when he’d spotted the webcam. He felt out of control, like an unwitting participant in an unknown game. The more he tried to shake it, the more he felt the presence of an invisible hand above him, jerking his strings.

  Both of the bold red lines on the GPS screen were pointing more or less southeast from Birmingham. Which was the opposite direction from St. Louis. Where the woman’s second set of webcams was located. And where she’d arranged for chemicals and other odd things to be delivered.

  A coincid
ence? Or another attempt at sending the police and the FBI to the wrong place?

  Devereaux didn’t know.

  Chapter One Hundred and Five

  Wednesday. Afternoon.

  Nicole missing for twenty-one and three-quarter hours

  Devereaux hadn’t traveled out of state very often.

  The few places he had visited, he’d liked. Such as Virginia, with its acres of trees and rolling green countryside. And Chicago, where the insanely cold winter had blown through his thickest coat like it was a vest. Or Arizona, where the crazy cacti that grew wild everywhere made him think he’d been dropped onto a surreal movie set.

  He’d always wanted to see more of the country. A road trip was always near the top of his list of things to do—next year. But as he stared out of the Porsche’s windshield—first as he powered north, past Huntsville again and onward to the outskirts of Nashville, then northwest through the rest of Tennessee, into Kentucky, and finally Missouri, robotically following the instructions barked out by the GPS—Devereaux observed next to nothing.

  The journey took five hours forty-one minutes. He stopped twice for gas. The rest of the time he kept the needle high up on the speedometer. It was north of a hundred for considerable distances, and the portable beacon Devereaux had placed on the dashboard was the only thing standing between him and the dozen traffic cops he’d left floundering in his wake.

  Devereaux was shell-shocked when he arrived at the address Page had given him, reeling from the sustained assault the road noise and vibration had made on his senses. And when he’d recovered enough to properly take stock of his surroundings, he registered surprise, as well. In the past, when he’d thought about St. Louis, he’d pictured Busch Stadium or the Gateway Arch. But now he found himself in an ordinary residential neighborhood. The street was long and slightly curved with wide sidewalks and neat family house after neat family house. Each one was elegantly set back from its broad, landscaped front yard. Some had kids’ bikes and scooters propped up against fences or lying on the grass. The area couldn’t have been further removed from the gothic wilderness where he’d found the woman’s ruined mansion if it had been on another planet.