by Desiree Holt
“We are leaving here,” he told them.
For a minute no one said anything.
Mari wet her dry, cracked lips. “Leaving? Where are you taking us?”
“Shut up,” Enrique growled. He swung his rifle from side to side. “Move. Stand far apart from each other.”
“Wait a minute,” Eli began.
Sydney touched his arm. “Please. Let’s just do what they say. We’ll get through this. We will.”
“Your wife is a smart woman,” Pedro chuckled. Then the smile fell away. “Now move.”
As soon as they were lined up the way he ordered, two more men came into the room, also wearing khaki shirts and pants and the same heavy boots. They carried lengths of rope with them and quickly bound everyone’s hands behind their backs. Then they hobbled everyone’s ankles, leaving only enough play in the rope to allow them to walk in a jerky fashion. One of them took a picture of them, standing there bound and incapacitated, and Mari wondered if they were going to take them out somewhere and shoot them.
But then the men manhandled them out of the hut and she bit down on her lips hard to keep from asking any questions as they shoved them into the black panel truck that had brought them there. They were roughly tossed inside the empty cargo area, doors slammed and in a moment the van began moving down a bumpy road. Mari wondered if she would ever see her sister again.
Chapter Thirteen
Ron Pelley rode in the car with Anthony Delaware, one of four cars doing a “follow and drop” on the signal coming from the envelope with the bearer bonds. One car had finally caught up with the motorcycle and relayed the position back to the others. In staggered movements that car dropped back, another took its place and so on. The motorcycle hadn’t entered the interstate, instead taking side roads.
Delaware had placed a hand radio on the seat between himself and Pelley so they could both hear what was happening.
“I’ve still got him,” the agent picking up the signal on a laptop told him. “Everyone keep heading in the same general direction.”
“No one for more than five or six blocks at a time,” Delaware warned.
He glanced over at the man sitting next to him. He could tell his nerves were on the ragged edge and he had a very bad feeling about what was going to happen next.
“Boss, he’s stopped,” the man with the laptop said, interrupting the agent’s thoughts. “The signal shows him dead ahead of us.”
“What do you see?” Delaware asked.
“He entered the parking garage on Houston Street. We’re gonna have to follow him or we’ll lose him.”
“Just watch yourself,” Delaware warned. “Don’t let him spot you. Go past him and radio back to me. Everyone else fall back and wait for my orders.”
The silence stretched out with no sound from any of the other agents. Finally a voice came over the radio.
“Boss?” The man sounded none too happy.
“Yeah?”
“We…ah…that is, we lost him.”
“What?” Delaware screamed. “How the hell could you lose him? Didn’t you follow him into the garage?”
“Yes and we watched the down ramps while we were going up. I’m telling you, he just disappeared.”
“That is absolutely not possible. Check again.”
“He’s not here,” the agent insisted.
“Damn it all to hell.” Delaware wanted to throw his radio through the windshield. Instead he clicked the Talk button. “Everyone meet me at the garage where we lost the motorcycle. Pull up to the first level and watch for me.”
They went through the place with a microscope but in the end they came up with nothing. They’d been outfoxed.
“He must have had a closed van waiting,” one of the agents said. “Just pulled right into it. It could be sitting on any one of these levels, locked tight and looking empty.”
In the back of his mind Delaware wondered if Pelley had passed along the information about the prototype GPS chip to the other two men. Or even directly to the kidnappers. So they’d know how to block the signal. How the hell was he supposed to find that out?
As they pulled out onto the street again, Pelley’s cell phone rang and a text message popped up on his screen. Cursing, he showed it to Delaware.
You made a mistake. Now everyone will pay. Check for new email.
All the FBI agent could think was, Shit.
* * * * *
Kat tried to control her impatience as they flew along the coast of Baja California toward San Diego. The bobbing sailboats, Jet Skis, ski boats and other watercraft might make a beautiful picture for tourists but she wanted to get where they were going and see if they could find where Mari and the Wrights were being held. All she needed was an approximate area and coordinates and she felt inside that she could “view” a clear picture of what was going on.
They cut east across the coastline, passed over scattered signs of civilization and then up the foothills of the Sierra Madres Occidental Range. Everyone was poised and ready, waiting for the right area to come into view. They’d been in Sinaloa air space for less than twenty minutes when Ed turned around and yelled back, “We’re coming into range, according to your best guesstimate. Get ready.”
Then Kat gave an excited cry and pressed a finger against the window.
“There,” she called, trying to contain her excitement. “Right below us. See it?”
If they hadn’t been looking carefully they might have missed it, hidden among the acres of what could only be marijuana plants and copses of native trees. The red tile roof of what seemed to be a massive estate house peeked tentatively through the foliage, the hint of other buildings scattered at either side of it.
“Got it,” Troy said, working the video camera. Mark was at another window snapping stills as fast as he could.
“See up there on the hill?” Faith pointed. “Oh damn. We’re already past it. I could have sworn there was a small outbuilding up there.”
“It’ll show up on the pictures and the video,” Dan assured her. “I don’t want to take the chance of making another pass and calling attention to ourselves.” He raised his voice and hollered to the cockpit. “Mike. Haul ass out of here right now. Before someone below gets out their own binoculars.”
“Hauling away,” Mike shouted back.
He lifted the nose of the plane slightly, it began a smooth ascent and then they were away from the Herrera land and heading toward the coast.
* * * * *
Lying on the hard metal floor of the van, Eli heard Pedro and Enrique conversing in Spanish in low tones. With a working knowledge of the language, he strained his ears to try to make out what they were saying. It appeared they weren’t being transported very far, just to another area of their captor’s land. He wondered why they were being moved at all. Had someone found out where they were? Tried to rescue them?
No, he would have known if anything like that had happened. But something was wrong. Both the men seemed agitated and he kept hearing the Spanish words for “double cross”, then “ransom”, then “trap”.
What the hell was going on? Who had they contacted for the ransom? It had to have been Ron Pelley. No one else would be logical. So had Ron screwed up somehow? Had he called in the FBI and they had made a mess of things?
He glanced at the women, trying to make themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. Lissa was trying hard to blink back tears, Mari’s eyes were closed but lines of pain scored her face and the long cut along the length of Sydney’s face looked as if it might be getting infected.
Shit!
Wherever they were being taken, he’d have to try to figure something out. Maybe there would be a larger window they could squeeze through. Or maybe…
Before he could finish running through scenarios in his mind, the van jolted to a stop. A minute later the side panel slid open and hands pulled them roughly from the vehicle.
Eli blinked at the building in front of him. It could have been
a duplicate of the one where they’d been held, except this one was completely surrounded by trees. And there were no other men with enormous guns hanging from shoulder straps lounging in the area.
Pedro pulled open the door to the hut and one by one each of them was shoved inside. Eli looked around. The first thing he spotted was the window, high up like the last one but a lot larger. It was protected by trees and foliage, not completely exposed. If he could figure out the guards’ schedule and if anyone was left to keep an eye on things, maybe, just maybe, they had a way out of here.
For right now he just needed to keep everyone’s spirits up and make sure they didn’t deteriorate physically. He wondered idly how long a person could subsist on a diet of water and tortillas.
* * * * *
The first thing Anthony Delaware had Ron Pelley do when they returned to his office was check for the promised email. A sick feeling gripped him as he saw the photo of the hostages, hands bound, ankles hobbled, bruised and damaged and lined up as if facing a firing squad. He could only hope that the threat was implied rather than real and that all the hostages were still alive. He printed out the message, then assembled all the people who had been involved in the ransom drop in Pelley’s conference room.
“As you read this, Señor Rasgon, I remind you that we had a deal. You have stupidly made a bad mistake,” he read from the printout. “Even so, I have outwitted you. But the price is now fifteen million. Five million additional. No more tricks, no attempts to locate the hostages or we’ll be sending you their bodies. We have been forced to move them to a different location. New instructions to follow.”
Everyone sat looking at Ron Pelley.
“What?” He threw up his hands. “I was the one who told you not to play games with these people. Remember?”
“I’d like to know how they were aware of the tracking device,” Mary Alvarez said. She’d been in the original tail car. “You were the only one who knew about it.”
“Maybe they have more sophisticated equipment than the FBI does.” His tone of voice was surly, his posture defensive.
“And who the hell is Señor Rasgon?” Boyd Delco, another agent, threw in. “Is this someone we’re supposed to know? This is the first time a specific name has appeared in any of these messages. Why is he giving us a clue now?”
“An interesting point,” Delaware told them. “Maybe he’s sending a real warning.” He looked at Pelley accusingly.
The man in question snorted. “Not me. You know I’ve been with you every minute. You know that. You even had someone sleep on my couch and you’ve tapped my phones and computers. And I have absolutely no idea who this Señor Whoever is.”
Delaware held his eyes until Pelley looked down, a flush staining his cheekbones.
He’s hiding something but what the hell could it be? If he’s the one who set this up, we’d better find out damn soon. And is Señor Rasgon an alias for whoever set this up?
As soon as he finished with this briefing he’d call his office and have them run it through every database they had access to.
“I can’t think where else it would have come from,” he said to Pelley at last. “If you’ve got any ideas, now would be a good time to let us have them.”
“I don’t understand why we haven’t even been able to find out who the kidnappers are,” Mary Alvarez put in. “We’re running blind here.”
“Don’t think I don’t know it,” Delaware told her. He looked at Pelley again. “If we knew who their contact was, we could squeeze him and find out. I’m not used to a situation where I don’t even know who’s pulling the strings. Maybe identifying this Rasgon will give us some answers. Finally.”
Again he let his eyes travel to Pelley. Despite being allowed to shower and change in his private bathroom, the man looked rumpled and used, strain drawing lines on his face, his hair disarranged from running his fingers through it. The image of the high-powered, high-priced executive had long disappeared. God, he’d love to pin all this shit on him. With great, great pleasure.
“I’m telling you again I don’t know anything,” Pelley snapped. “And besides all this, what’s happening with the people from the Phoenix Agency? Shouldn’t you be calling them? Katherine Culhane’s sister is a hostage and I’m sure she’d like to know what’s going on.”
“The longer I can keep them out of it, the better off we are,” Delaware snapped. . “I hate private agencies sticking their noses into our business.”
“Maybe they don’t like the way we’re handling our end of the business,” Alvarez pointed out in a bitter tone. “Goddamn restrictions and red tape tie us up all the time.”
“That’s the fucking truth,” Delaware muttered. “I can throw government bullshit at them all day but my gut tells me they’re not waiting for us, however. They aren’t the kind of people to take a backseat. I just hope they don’t make a mess of things playing cowboy.”
“What about the rest of the money?” Mary asked, turning to Pelley. “Can you gather it quickly? And turn it into more bearer bonds?”
“It will take a little doing but I can arrange that,” Pelley snapped. “In fact, if you’ll let me go to my office, I’ll get started on it right now.”
“Fine. Mary?” He looked at Alvarez. “Keep him company and don’t let him out of your sight. The rest of you? We’ll start breaking this down and try to figure out what happened.”
“I need to make a quick pit stop,” Pelley said. “Do you want Agent Alvarez to accompany me there too?”
Delaware had to restrain himself to keep from punching the other man. “I think you can handle that yourself. But hell, you must have a bladder the size of a pea. Maybe I should cut off all your liquids.” He made a sound of disgust. “Just make it snappy.”
Mary stopped next to him on the way out of the room and leaned close to him, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Anthony? I can decipher Señor Rasgon for you. We still won’t know exactly who he is but it will narrow things down.”
He tugged her into a corner of the room. “Okay. I’m all ears.”
* * * * *
The hostages glanced around their new prison. Just as they’d thought, it was almost a duplicate of the other one. Adobe walls, dirt floor, filthy, crude bathroom facilities. The first thing Mari did was check to make sure this bathroom had paper towels, wet a batch of them and made sure everyone wiped their faces. She insisted on cleaning the cut on Sydney’s face as best she could, praying that the signs of infection she was seeing were superficial and water would keep it at bay.
Sydney and Lissa seemed at the end of their resources. Eli urged them to sit down, backs to the wall, and close their eyes. Lissa leaned over and put her head in her mother’s lap. When Mari was confident they had dozed off she motioned for Eli to stand in a corner with her. She had assessed the situation much as he had and pointed to the window.
“I saw it too,” Eli said. “If we can figure out the guard rotation, it might be a possibility.”
“What do you think happened?” she asked in a quiet voice. “Do you think there was trouble with the ransom?”
“I wish I knew. I’m still trying to figure out how this whole thing was set up. Someone had to give these people the information on our flight, when we’d be in San Diego, where we’d be eating lunch.”
Mari hesitated a moment before speaking. “I hate to say this but do you think it could be Ryan? I’m sorry but I couldn’t help overhearing the argument in your office when he came to borrow money.”
Eli gave a mirthless laugh. “It’s no big secret. He had a very public argument with Sydney at the country club at a fundraising dinner.” He shook his head. “He blew through his trust fund like an alligator through bait and I don’t know exactly what shape his spas are in. Or what other mess he might have gotten himself into.”
“It’s just so hard to think of him involved in something this despicable.” She shook her head. “Or anyone else, for that matter. I’m just praying very hard that my sister’s
friends can figure something out.”
“I’ve heard the Phoenix Agency is very good,” Eli told her, “but are they this good? No one even knows where we are.”
Mari nibbled on her thumbnail. “You know, my sister, Katherine, could be their ace in the hole.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you. Katherine’s a clairvoyant but with a specific slant to her ability. She does remote viewing.”
“Yes. Now I remember.” Eli rubbed his forehead. “She ‘sees’ things?”
“Right. So like I explained, if she has coordinates, she can ‘view’ the location and tell you what’s happening there. Or she can work from a photo, or sometimes even the photos of the people involved.”
“God.” He blew out a breath. “Let’s hope to hell she can ‘see’ where we are. That may be our only chance.”
“I know that if Katherine can give them the details they want, the Phoenix Agency has what it takes to rescue us.”
“So we should pray for Katherine, right?” His grin was lopsided. “Meanwhile, help me figure out the situation with the guards. If we get any kind of lag time, maybe we can make it through that window and out through the trees.”
“We’ll need a lot of luck,” Mari pointed out. “And then we have to pray we can find someone to help us who doesn’t work for our so-called host before we all get lost and die.”
Eli grimaced. “Hardly a pleasant thought. Okay, let’s see what we can do to help ourselves while sending thoughts and prayers to your sister.”
* * * * *
Kat wanted to shout at everyone to hurry, hurry, hurry until they landed back in San Diego and drove to the hotel. They were barely in the suite she and Mark were sharing before she asked to have the camera unloaded onto the laptop, almost grabbing it from Dan’s hands in her haste.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, pulling back. “I just—”
“It’s okay.” He smiled at her. “We’re all anxious.”
He removed the SIM card from the camera, inserted it in the laptop’s reader and gave it the command to unload. In seconds rows of pictures began unwinding across the screen, more than a hundred all told.