by Webb, Debra
“You have a comment you’d like to make, Senator O’Neal?” Joe inquired, feeling smug with the victory coursing through his veins.
“I think we understand each other,” O’Neal said flatly.
“Very well.” Joe pushed to his feet and offered his hand. “I’ll consider it done.”
The two dazed senators rose from their seats, each taking a turn to, without conviction, shake Joe’s hand. He knew with complete certainty what they wanted to do was climb across his desk and strangle him, but that wouldn’t happen. This conversation would never leave the room, yet the ramifications it carried would move a certain bill through the Senate.
Joe had the one thing he needed on both men. And he intended to use that information to the fullest possible extent. For the good of the country, of course.
When the two had exited his office, Joe resumed his seat and scanned the messages his secretary had given him prior to the impromptu visit. The very idea those two would think for a second they could talk him out of his stand was absurd. He wasn’t in the habit of backing off or of looking the other way. He needed this bill to move forward without interference for reasons O’Neal and Fletcher, as well as the rest of the country, could never know.
Joe’s smile slid back into place. He liked the feeling of power that surged through him each time he considered how close he was to his ultimate goal. A very large debt would finally be settled. The buzz of the intercom snapped him from his pleasant reflections. “Yes, Connie.”
“Senator, there’s a man on line one for you. He...” She cleared her throat. “He identified himself as a police detective. He says it’s an emergency.”
Joe let her off the hook with a distracted, “That’s fine, Connie.” He’d asked her to hold his calls, but this sort of interruption couldn’t be helped. He punched the blinking light that would connect him to line one. “Joe Adams.”
He never referred to himself as senator. It sounded incredibly pompous. While he couldn’t deny a good dose of arrogance in his attitude these days—what politician didn’t possess at least a little—Joe still remembered his upbringing. He’d grown up on a farm in a tiny town in Virginia that wasn’t even on the map today, much less forty years ago when he’d watched his first presidential address. He’d known what he wanted then and there.
“Senator Adams, this is Detective Aaron Kline from Alexandria PD.”
“Yes, detective, how can I help you this afternoon?” As he waited for the detective to continue, Joe leaned back in his chair and considered whether he should take his family out to dinner tonight. He felt like celebrating.
“Sir, I’m afraid I have some difficult news.”
The grave sound of the detective’s voice yanked Joe back to full attention. “What’s happened?” he heard himself ask, as if someone else were speaking. The transformation required only a mere fraction of a second... the tone of the detective’s voice more than his words awakened long slumbering demons. Instantly, the vivid image of his wife and daughter flashed in Joe’s mind, sending a trickle of apprehension through him.
Not again. The urge to wail those two words very nearly overwhelmed him. He couldn’t bear that kind of pain again. Before he could stop it, snippets of memory from six years ago tumbled one over another in his brain, resurrecting a haunting devastation that tore at his heart.
“Sir, I’m sending someone to pick you up and bring you to the precinct. Your wife will be waiting here for you. We’ll go over all the details together.”
His wife... not his wife and his daughter... not his family.
“Dear God, man, just tell me what’s happened!” Fear exploded inside him, rupturing the thin veneer of propriety, leaving behind agonizing dread. Blood roared in his ears, the sound echoing the nooo trapped in his throat.
“Sir,” the detective said solemnly, “your daughter is missing. We don’t know yet—”
“I’m on my way.”
Joe didn’t bother listening to the rest of the detective’s grim statement. He wasn’t waiting and it didn’t matter why or how or what the cops did or didn’t know yet.
It only mattered that his daughter was missing.
There must be a mistake. God wouldn’t be that cruel. He wouldn’t let this kind of tragedy strike twice in one lifetime.
It had to be a terrible mistake.
Chapter 5
Washington D.C., Special Services Division
Metropolitan Police Department, 7:45 p.m.
The briefing had ended an hour ago. The members of the Task Force had wandered out of the conference room knowing no more than they had when they’d arrived. Sarah stayed behind, studying the six faces posted on the case board. The children were four and five years of age. All were from homes of privilege and wealth. Yet not a single ransom demand had materialized in any of the cases, not even after hefty rewards were offered.
A scowl worked its way across her forehead. Six innocent children. Six sets of parents ready, willing, and perfectly capable of handing over enormous sums of cash, but no takers.
And no bodies.
Two weeks had elapsed since the first child went missing. If money were the motivation a ransom demand would certainly have been made well before now. The MOs were consistent. Each child had been nabbed during the course of a routine activity on a day that was in no way out of the ordinary—with the exception of the abduction. One moment the little boy or girl was there, the next he or she was gone. Vanished.
The parents in each case had been cleared of suspicion. Friends and relatives had been endlessly scrutinized without discovery of a single pertinent detail. Nothing. Not the first indication that the kidnappings were carried out by anyone even remotely connected to the families existed. The families were not linked by school or church or by personal or professional relationships.
Since the victims were both male and female that marginally narrowed down the type of predator. Most child predators preferred one or the other. The ages of the victims appeared to be a part of the selection process. There was no pattern in hair or eye color or other physical attributes. Poor health had not served as an element of elimination since one child had recently developed a rare form of leukemia.
Sarah forced away the whispers of dark memories that attempted to invade her head. Focus. You have to focus. She stretched her neck and rubbed at the tension there. Every imaginable possibility that might connect the children had been considered and none had been found. Age and wealth appeared to be the only common factors. Anyone who might have seen or heard anything in recent weeks had been interviewed. Did the parents argue? Was the child happy? Were there hidden financial woes? The same questions had been asked over and over. Was there a life insurance policy? What was the long-term prognosis in the case of the child suffering from ill health? Had the doctors said anything that may have led the parents to believe the child would be better off dead?
There was no evidence to gather and analyze, except for one apparent slip up. After the fourth victim had been abducted, a male size ten shoeprint had been lifted from the scene. That was it—one shoe print and nothing else.
The person or persons behind the abductions were professionals. The unknown subjects, unsubs as the feds called them, were in and out in a flash. No signs of struggle or force. No fingerprints left behind, not the first hint of DNA, and no witnesses. There was no apparent pattern to the locations selected and no emerging hypothesis as to who might be next.
Bottom line, they were desperate for any kind of evidence.
Sarah heaved a sigh. If they didn’t find any evidence the children might never be found.
Like Sophie…
A shudder went through her. As hard as working this investigation was for her on a personal level she refused to give up. She needed to do this. She wanted to find these children alive. Maybe it was a pipe dream, but she was hanging on.
Part of her desperately needed to prove she could still handle this type of investigation with the same relentless determin
ation she did all others. Chief Reginald Larson had almost said no when she asked for the case. He probably would have if he’d known then it would turn into a multi-jurisdiction task force investigation. A lot was riding on her ability to get the job done—for her and, more importantly, for the children.
Won’t make up for not finding your own daughter.
Sarah blocked the taunting voice and concentrated on the faces on the timeline. Where were these children being kept? Assuming they were still alive. What was the purpose of the abductions, if not for money?
Every member of the Task Force agreed that the children were either being used for perverse sexual services, or were being sold for other even more terrifying purposes. One of the first motives considered, given the ages, was that the children had been taken for their organs but that didn’t make sense in the case of the sick child. Since the child had been snatched from the hospital there was no way the unsub didn’t realize the child was ill. Whoever was behind these puzzling abductions had been too meticulous to screw up that badly.
The FBI’s official stand on the case, as of this evening’s briefing, was that the children were more likely victims of human traffickers. In light of how well planned and rapidly executed the abductions were no one wanted to go with the theory of a single serial predator.
There was no denying the unsub was smart and organized, it was the motive that truly worried Sarah. She allowed that last realization to echo through her. She’d known his kind before... had prayed she never would again.
You failed that time, Sarah. Why on earth would you believe you could succeed now?
She pushed the thought and the fear aside. The shrink she’d stopped making time for six months ago would warn Sarah that she was venturing into dangerous territory. After all, three months in a posh treatment center and nearly four years of hit-or-miss therapy hadn’t fixed her.
You must allow yourself to grieve, Sarah.
She didn’t want to grieve. She wanted to work.
Sarah squared her shoulders. “I can do this.” She said the words out loud, listened as they resonated in the empty room. All she had to do was keep looking and she would find the thing they were all missing.
No matter that everyone else had called it a day she couldn’t go yet. She had to try just a little longer. Maybe something... anything she’d overlooked during all those interviews and hours of studying reports and verifying facts would bob to the surface. Every hour that passed without a break in the case lessened the likelihood the children would be found, alive anyway.
That part was killing her.
“Sarah?”
She turned away from the timeline as Chief Larson entered the conference room. “I won’t be here much longer.”
Sarah expected him to remind her that working fifteen-hour days wouldn’t help anyone, least of all her. One of these days she was going to remind him that he kept the same hours himself. If it wasn’t good for her it wasn’t good for a man so close to retirement either.
Larson studied the board for a long moment before he finally spoke. “We may have number seven.”
Her pulse rate bumped into a faster rhythm. “Where?”
“Alexandria. The locals have started a grid search already. Crime scene unit’s been dispatched. The parents are being interviewed right now.”
Sarah squeezed her eyes shut for one brief second. Please let him have made a mistake this time. “Do you have any other details?”
The chief’s broad shoulders slumped a bit. As tall and strong as he was he looked as weary and defeated as Sarah felt. “Age five, female. Snatched from the park practically under her nanny’s nose.”
Nanny. Another child of a wealthy family. Sarah raked a shaky hand through her hair, wishing she’d worn it up and out of the way today. “I don’t suppose he left any evidence behind?”
“Nothing we know about yet.”
“Nothing is all we have,” she said tightly, her anger stirring. “Except a damned size ten male athletic shoe and we don’t even know for certain if it belongs to the unsub.”
The chief paused to draw in a mighty breath. “Well, Detective,” he said, “I’m afraid this one only gets worse.”
Sarah stilled. Larson rarely referred to her as detective and usually only when things were going to hell in a hurry. “How so?” she demanded, her fingers curling into hard balls at her sides in hopes of holding onto the anger. She needed the anger to keep her going.
“The little girl’s name is Katie Adams.” One eyebrow winged toward his thinning hairline in punctuation. “As in Senator Joseph Adams’ one and only child.”
Sarah shook her head. “The media’s going to have a field day with this one.”
They needed the community helping, not panicking. Having a well-known politician’s personal life dissected in the news outlets would shift the focus away from the search for missing children.
“There’s nothing we can do about that, unfortunately.”
“If those kids are still alive and our guy gets scared...” She didn’t have to say the rest. Larson understood all too well what would happen then. The unsub would disappear and the children would be lost.
The chief rested his grim gaze on hers. “It’s late, I know, but Captain Andrews wants you to go to Alexandria PD and interview the parents tonight.”
John Andrews was the Task Force commander. Each detective and agent on the Task Force was assigned to a particular aspect of the investigation. For Sarah, it was the family interviews. She, better than anyone, could empathize with the devastated parents. She’d been there.
What was she thinking? She was still there.
You can lie to everyone else, Sarah, but you can’t lie to yourself.
“I’ll head there now.” The hour didn’t actually matter. If Sarah went home, the chances she would sleep were negligible at best.
“Tread carefully with this one, Sarah. Keep in mind that Adams is not just a parent, he’s a U.S. Senator.”
“Got it, Chief.”
For a couple of minutes after Larson left Sarah stood there gazing at those sweet, innocent faces. “All we need is one break and we’ll find you.”
The promise she hoped she could keep echoed in the empty room as she walked out.
Chapter 6
Alexandria, Virginia, Police Department, 9:20 p.m.
Sarah flashed her ID at the duty officer’s desk. “I’m here to see Detective Kline. I believe he’s expecting me.”
The sergeant checked his notes and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” He pointed down the corridor to the left of his desk. “The elevators are that direction. Third floor. You’ll find Kline in the conference room. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you.”
For a Friday night the place was pretty quiet. She pressed the call button at the bank of elevators. It wouldn’t be that way at any of the Districts in D.C. Sarah preferred the hustle and bustle. It kept her mind off the past and the emptiness that waited for her at home. Staying busy was the only therapy she needed, in her opinion.
The elevator doors opened and she stepped inside. Of course, neither her shrink nor her boss saw eye to eye with her on the matter. Her husband hadn’t either. They hadn’t agreed on much near the end. Maybe that was why he’d left.
Not true, Sarah. You made him leave.
Sarah closed out that line of thinking as the elevator bumped into motion.
The scene in the third floor conference room was one Sarah knew far too well. She’d witnessed that look of absolute horror and disbelief on more faces than she cared to remember. She still saw it in the mirror every morning. A child was missing. No parent wanted to believe it could happen to them.
“Detective Cuddahy.” Aaron Kline stood the moment he looked up and saw Sarah in the open doorway. He gestured to the man cradling his wife against his chest at the end of the conference table. “This is Senator Joseph Adams and his wife Laura.”
The senator nodded. The wife never looked up.
&
nbsp; Kline indicated the chairs lining the table. “Have a seat and we’ll update you on what we have.”
As Sarah suspected, they’d found nothing. The team would go back out in the morning, but she doubted they would find anything. The nanny had looked away for mere seconds and the child had disappeared. She’d been wearing pink shorts and a polka dot blouse with a pink ribbon in her long blond hair. She had blue eyes like her mother and a vivacious personality like her father. The last part had come from the mother who managed to choke out the words. Pictures and other necessary items to assist in the investigation had been collected from the Adams’ home already.
“Senator, ma’am,” Sarah said to each in turn. “I know this is hard. It’s undoubtedly the hardest thing you will ever have to face, but right now I need you to listen carefully to what I have to say. The only way I can help your daughter is if you help me.”
A stiff nod from the senator and a vacant stare from the wife was her response.
Sarah remembered the detective who’d said those same things to her. His voice had been somber, but his eyes had given him away. He’d known when he said the words that Sophie was gone for good. Sarah would never see her daughter again. The ability to interact with her husband would slowly but surely deteriorate. Her life would never be real again. Nothing, except work, would ever matter to her again.
Everything he hadn’t told her had come to pass.
“The first forty-eight hours after an abduction are the most crucial,” Sarah went on, exiling the painful memories to that dark place where they belonged. “My questions will be direct and to the point. I need you to answer each one to the best of your ability.” She reached into her bag and retrieved the audio recorder. After placing it on the conference table, she pressed the record button and settled her gaze back on theirs hoping to relay a semblance of calm organization.
“I’m taping this interview so we can listen to it over and over as we search for evidence that will facilitate our investigation in finding your daughter.”