Freeze Frame

by Judith Rochelle

  “What is it, kitten?” He slid his chair closer to hers.

  “Look.” She pointed to a paragraph on the page. “This says Sinaloa lies in the foothills of the Occidental Range of the Sierra Madres. In the last viewing session, I saw just a vague hint—shadows, really—of hills beyond the hut.” She looked around at everyone. “They could possibly be right near the Sierra Madres.”

  “Is there any way for you to get a closer location? Anything that might give us a clue?”

  “Yes. Can we find any photos, maybe aerial shots of those hills? Maybe I can piece it together.”

  Mark immediately searched on his laptop and brought up three shots, which he saved side by side. Turning the screen toward Kat, he asked, “Is this enough for you to go with?”

  “It might be. I want to give it a try.”

  “Okay. Let’s move all this stuff off the table and turn down the lights,” Mike told the others.

  In minutes Kat was seated at a clean table, only a sheet of paper and a pen in front of her and the screen with the three photos. The others stood off to the side, giving her the space she needed. As always, she took a deep breath to center herself, then consciously opened up her mind.

  This time the picture came together almost immediately and the vegetation she’d thought was some time of coastal prairie grass came into sharper focus. She drew in a breath. She’d see pictures of this plant before. Marijuana, stretching as far as her eye could see. The hill behind it came into sharper relief ’til the darkness took over again.

  She was ready to scream with frustration but suddenly another image flashed across her brain. A cathedral, illuminated by spotlights, its spires reaching up high into the sky. Kat blinked her eyes but the picture refused to go away. Furiously she began to sketch what she’d seen—the cathedral, the street circling it, a man in a cassock and miter standing at the door.

  Then it too, was gone but this time she was excited.

  “Turn on the lights,” she told Mike. “Hurry.”

  Faith and Mike went around turning the lamps back on while Mike sat beside her again, taking her hand. “Did you ‘see’ something?”

  “Look.” She pushed the paper toward him. “A cathedral. Here’s what it looks like. How many cathedrals can there be in Sinaloa? And not too far from the Sierra Madres.”

  Mark was already typing into the search bar on the laptop and paging through the links that came up.

  “Got it,” he said. “The town of Culiacán. It’s the capital of Sinaloa and has a cathedral there.” He looked up. “And you can see the mountains from there.”

  “Okay.” Mike reached for the other laptop. “Let’s get as much information as we can. If Herrera has his estate there, you know it won’t be in the town but farther out by the mountains.”

  “I saw marijuana too,” Kat remembered. “What I thought was native grasses before are really marijuana plants. So they’d have to be pretty far out from town, right?”

  “And in a fairly humid area,” Mike agreed. “To provide the soil for the plants. “That should narrow it down.”

  “Too bad we can’t call up the local chamber of commerce and ask them where the Herrera estate is located,” Faith said with a wry grin.

  “My guess,” Mark said, “is Herrera pours enough money into the town and has so many of the local police on his payroll, they wouldn’t tell you even if it was in the middle of main street.”

  “But there is something we can do,” Mike told the others. “We can do a flyover and get the lay of the land from the sky. I’ll check and see what kind of air traffic is common over that area and figure out the best way to blend in. The problem is being able to see much from the altitude at which we’ll have to fly.”

  “I’ll call Andy.” Mark took out his cell phone. “He’ll be able to get that kind of info for us. I wish we had the helo here for when we need it.” He grinned at Mike. “Too bad you can’t fly two things at the same time.”

  “What would you use it for?” Kat asked.

  The men exchanged a look. “Dropping into the area to extract the hostages.”

  Kat’s eyes flew wide open. “You’d just go in after them like that?”

  Mike grinned, “It’s what we do, kitten.” He looked at Mark. “I wish we had more than just the two of us, though. One person can’t get them all out. Even two is skimpy. And I’ll probably be flying a rented helicopter, which won’t help.” He snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute. Ed should be back from that short hop to the Keys for that little job we had to do. I’ll get him to bring the helicopter out here. Let me call him.”

  Kat knew that Ed was Mike’s brother and was also a pilot. Mike had told her that, even though Ed wasn’t a partner he was still an integral part of the Phoenix Agency operations. He’d also told her that while there were other pilots who flew for Phoenix, the key projects were always handed off to Mike or Ed or both. And he liked knowing he had his brother to back him up.

  Mike paced impatiently until the call went through, then paced even more while he was talking to his brother. Kat got a bottle of water from the minibar and drank from it thirstily, waiting for Mike to finish.

  “Okay,” he said at last, the call completed. “Ed will be here in the morning. He’s too beat to fly tonight. Besides, dawn isn’t the best time to do our flyover if we want to blend in with whatever traffic Andy turns up for us. That would raise the suspicions we aren’t looking for.”

  “He’ll land at the same airport where the plane is, right?” Mark asked.

  Mike nodded. “He expects to have wheels up at seven, which should get him here about eleven thirty. That means we need to get some sleep ourselves and be ready for anything new Andy sends us first thing in the morning.”

  “We haven’t heard from the feds or Ron Pelley,” Mark reminded everyone. He looked at his watch. “It’s nine o’clock. You’d think someone would have given us a courtesy call by now. To keep Katherine in the loop if for no other reason.”

  “They don’t want us involved at all,” Mike said, irritation framing his words. “And they know if they contact Kat directly she’s only going to tell us about it.”

  “I say we call them anyway. Keep them on their toes. The method for paying the ransom should have been sent by this time. I want to know what the arrangements are and how they plan to retrieve the hostages.”

  “Okay. Just don’t rattle the cage too hard. We don’t want them to start watching us at this point.”

  “I’ll be cool.” Mike pulled a slip of paper form his pocket and began punching in Ron Pelley’s number.

  * * * * *

  As soon as Pelley answered his cell, he checked his computer and opened the email addressed to him. Immediately Delaware checked to make sure the other men had received similar emails and was told they had.

  He looked at the latest picture and what he saw turned his stomach. This was just senseless brutality. No one had refused to pay the ransom. None of the three men contacted had even caused a problem. So why rough up the hostages? Just for kicks?

  “Try replying to them again,” he told Pelley.

  “Why? It won’t go through.”

  “Just do it, damn it,” he said through gritted teeth. He nodded to the tech sitting beside the desk, who typed commands on a keyboard sitting in front of him.

  Pelley typed a message and hit the Send key. Immediately he got the same bounce-back notice.

  “I told you,” he snapped.

  Delaware looked at his tech but the man shook his head. “They’re shutting down on the other end as soon as the email goes. Maybe even deleting the email address and just reinstalling it to send each message.”

  “So you can’t find out where it’s coming from?”

  “Not unless they stay on longer after they send their message.”

  The email was, once again, very brief, outlining the next step in the process of ransoming the hostages.

  “Bearer bonds,” Delaware said, reading the email again. “Wel
l, now we know how he plans to get around wire transfers.”

  “I don’t understand,” Pelley said, reading the email. “Why the hell does he want bearer bonds?”

  “Because he’s smart,” Delaware told him. “Whoever this is, he knows we can easily check wire transfers, find out not just where the money comes from but also who receives it. That’s why he doesn’t want the money just transferred into an account.”

  “I thought all accounts were numbered? That the owners had anonymity?”

  “We can still trace the transaction. Eventually that money’s going to have to find a home and we’ll be there with a welcoming committee. But it could take forever and by the time we identify the account holder, that person could be long gone. He avoids all that with blank bearer bonds that anyone can cash.”

  Pelley frowned. “Won’t the same thing happen with bearer bonds?”

  Delaware shook his head. “They can cash these anywhere in the world. Any time they want to. We’d need an army of agents to cover every bank to catch them exchanging the bonds for money.”

  “They still haven’t told us how and when they want us to make the exchange. Damn it.” He smacked his fist on the desk. “I’ve got enough liquid cash together now but I can’t get the bearer bonds taken care of until morning. They have to know that. And how are we supposed to get the bonds to them without you guys waiting to pick off whoever receives them?”

  “Because if they follow the pattern,” Delaware explained, “that person will just be a gofer. The hostages won’t be released until the leader of whichever cartel is doing this safely has them in his hands.”

  “Can’t you follow the gofer?”

  “Not if they split over the border. And I promise you they won’t be using any border crossing with uniformed guards and legal processing.”

  Delaware took a moment to check with Carver and Hopewell again to get a fix on their situations. Their men were just waiting to see if they needed to help gather the ransom together.

  “But Post is beginning to come unglued,” Carver told him. “I hope he doesn’t spring a leak before this is over.”

  “I’m still trying to get more information on him. We know he and his sister didn’t have the best relationship but he doesn’t seem like he’d have the balls to set up something like this.”

  “We’re going to have to let these guys go to bed pretty soon, you know.”

  “I know. I’ve got trap and trace setups on their home phones as well as business now. The calls are coming in on their cells. Have Post set his computer to forward. Prescott’s only got the one with him and I’ll take care of things on this end.”

  “Long night, huh?”

  “I’m sending someone to relieve you for the night. He can bunk on Post’s couch. Ditto for Prescott. That’s all we can do for the moment.” He hung up and turned back to the man he was monitoring.

  “It’s late,” Delaware told him. “If you want to go home I’ll take you and you can forward your emails to your home computer.”

  Pelley shoved away from his desk, stood up and stuck his hands in his pockets. His face was lined with fatigue and his temper had shown itself in his last few comments. Delaware himself was beginning to feel the strain of the situation but in his job he was used to long period of waiting. Besides, he wasn’t personally involved.

  “You don’t think we’ll hear from them again tonight, do you.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No,” the agent said, being completely truthful. “They know you can’t do anything until morning. We’ll keep monitoring everything just in case.”

  He studied Pelley’s posture, his rigid stance. The reports on him that he’d received from his office hadn’t raised any red flags. He carried no more than the usual amount of debt, seemed to have Eli Wright’s full confidence and didn’t have any bad habits. That they’d been able to trace. Something just didn’t smell right here but they couldn’t turn up what it was.

  Delaware ground his teeth. His calls to the agents babysitting Prescott and Post had them all in agreement on this. The agents in the office were working overtime to try to find any hook at all but it was like reading blank paper.

  Another thing his gut told him was this was definitely the work of a drug cartel but which one? He’d called his contact at the Drug Enforcement Agency and asked him to send him whatever he had that might be helpful but it wasn’t a lot. Several DEA agents had been killed trying to get the goods on the various cartel leaders, the Mexican government had protested United States interference in the workings of their country, so their hands were basically tied.

  Meanwhile things were not looking up for the hostages. The only comfort he could take was that they were still alive.

  “Can you trace the origin of these emails?” Pelley asked, breaking into the agent’s concentration.

  Delaware looked at his tech person trying to work magic with his supercomputer.

  The man shook his head. “They don’t stay on long enough for me to get a trace. And they’ve got so many anonymous servers layered in there, they’re gone before I can even get any kind of lead. Whoever’s handling this for them, we ought to try to hire him.”

  “Thanks,” Delaware snorted. He turned back to Ron Pelley. “How quickly can you get the bonds together in the morning?”

  “Within an hour after the financial institutions open. I can run it through my own account, although I’m sure the guy I deal with will have more questions than I want to answer.”

  The FBI agent nodded at the computer. “The email says you’ll be contacted again at ten in the morning. That means whoever this is knows the process you have to go through. You’d better be sure you have everything together by then. You know, they’ve been very clever about this whole thing. The way their email is set up, you can’t send a message back to them.”

  “Right. I tried it and it just bounced right back.”

  “So there’s no way to be sure they’ll even turn the hostages over when they have the money.”

  Pelley went to stand by the window, looking out at the black night sky lit up by headlights and street lamps. “Isn’t that your job, Agent Delaware? To go in and make sure we get them back safe and sound?”

  “Under normal circumstances, yes. But this isn’t normal. Assuming we’re right and this is a drug cartel operation, we’re having trouble even finding out which cartel is responsible. And like I said, going into Mexico is not an option.”

  Pelley turned to look at him. “So why are you hanging around me all this time if there’s nothing you can do?”

  Anthony Delaware studied the other man’s face. “To keep you honest, Mr. Pelley. To keep you honest.”

  * * * * *

  “I don’t like it one bit,” Mike said, closing his cell phone. “Both Pelley and the FBI agent were very evasive. Pelley said very little, letting the fed do most of the talking. All he said was they have things in hand and your sister and the Wrights should be returned in the morning.”

  “Do you think they’re telling the truth?” Kat asked, hope rushing through her. “Should be doesn’t sound very encouraging.”

  The look in Mike’s eyes was enough to squash it. “I think there’s a fifty-fifty chance that will happen. But we have no idea what’s really going on at their end, or how well the FBI can manage anything outside the borders of this country.”

  “We’ll just proceed on our own, then,” Mark said.

  “Wait, here’s another message from Andy.” Faith had closed the Hallorans’ laptop but an email was coming through on Mike’s.

  Kat couldn’t hide her gasp as she looked at the latest photo of the hostages. “My god, what are they doing to them?”

  Mike hugged her to him, squeezing her shoulders. “That’s the reaction they want,” he told her. “It helps to keep the mark off balance and speed up the ransom process.”

  She swallowed tears, determined not to break down but the sight of the people in the video, battered and bruised, was almost more than
she could bear.

  “They want bearer bonds,” Mark pointed out. “That means they don’t want to leave any traceable prints with wire transfers.” He looked at the others. “It also means they’ll send someone for the pickup and there’s no guarantee how or when the hostages will be released.”

  They all looked at each other.

  “And there’s no guarantee that the hostages will be released,” Kat repeated, her throat tight. “That’s what you said, right?”

  “Forget about them,” Mark told her. “We’re going to take care of this ourselves. And I promise you, Katherine, the Phoenix Agency will bring them home safe and in one piece.” He looked at Faith. “Let’s go back to our room and give these people a little privacy. I’ll check with Andy and see what more he’s found out about the three men receiving the emails. Someone’s got a secret hidden somewhere. The cartel used it to pressure him into helping set this up.”

  “If you get anything tonight,” Mike said, “and I mean anything, call us no matter what time it is. And have Andy monitor the investment accounts of all three men.” He looked at Kat. “We want to make sure they aren’t throwing a red herring at us.”

  Picking up the stack of printouts, Mark and Faith headed for the door. “Everyone get a good night’s sleep and we’ll meet for breakfast in our suite. Work out some options while we wait for Ed to get here.”

  The Hallorans left then, Faith giving Kat a hug before following her husband out the door. Kat was doing her best to hang onto her nerves but she was so terrified for her sister and so impatient with the inability to just leap right into things she thought she’d explode.

  “Here.” Mike handed her a small cut glass tumbler with a dark liquid poured over ice cubes. “The best bourbon money can buy. Come sit down on the little bench here, sip your drink and let me see if I can work some of the tension out of those muscles.”

  She let him lead her to the vanity bench in the bedroom, taking a healthy swallow of bourbon rather than a sip and nearly choking on it.

  “Hey, hey, hey! Easy there.”

  “Sorry.” She wiped her eyes and sipped more slowly. “I just feel as if I’m going to fly apart any minute. All I can think of are those pictures and the terrible way Mari and the Wrights are being treated.”