“All right,” Daniel said with a sigh. “Thanks. I’ll be honest – I don’t believe Elias is behind this. My suspicion is that a lot of the talk is because he keeps to himself. When he and a woman part ways, it doesn’t happen on the public stage, which frustrates our gossipmongers.”
A smile twitched at the corner of Abbot’s mouth. “Can’t think who you’d be talking about.”
Daniel’s tension released in a chuckle. Either of them could name eight or ten Cape Trouble residents who lived to be the first to hear a juicy nugget that could be embroidered before being sent on its way. Human nature, he knew, but too often a destructive form of it.
“Those rumors,” he said. “Any hint where they started? An angry woman? A domestic violence call made by a cop who didn’t keep his mouth shut?”
Appearing troubled, Grissom shook his head. “By the time I heard anything, it was general knowledge.”
Daniel nodded. “If we can find a witness able to swear Elias was where he said he was all morning, all of this is irrelevent.” Except, he couldn’t help thinking, for Hannah Moss, who some would say trusted Elias Burton beyond what common sense should tell her.
Uneasy on the one hand, Daniel also couldn’t help remembering the look he’d seen on Elias’s face when he realized Hannah did trust him – and when he’d held her as she cried.
*****
When he heard the engine and looked to see an SUV he recognized as belonging to Daniel Colburn, Elias went immediately to the door to forestall both doorbell and the puppy’s resultant happy hysteria. He’d coaxed Hannah into lying down half an hour ago. If there was any chance at all she’d dozed off, he was damned if he’d let anything wake her.
Officer Krieger jumped up. “Is someone here?” He was smart enough to keep his voice down.
“Your boss.” Elias picked up Jack-Jack and wrapped his hand around the puppy’s muzzle before he opened the door and nodded at the police chief, almost to the porch. “I’m hoping Hannah is asleep.”
“Ah. Why don’t you come on out here, then? Krieger, I want you on patrol. Everyone else is hunting witnesses.”
“But—” The young officer’s gaze darted to Elias.
“Mr. Burton can answer the phone if it rings. Assuming—” Daniel raised his eyebrows at Elias “—he intends to stay?”
They’d have to cuff him to drag him out. “I do,” he said flatly.
A reluctant Krieger departed, clearly eaten up by curiosity. Watching him go, Colburn grimaced. “I’m feeling old today.” He nodded at the porch steps. “You mind if we sit down?”
“No.” Elias assumed that if Colburn intended to arrest him, he wouldn’t have sent his officer away. He waited until the police car had backed out of the driveway and driven away before setting Jack-Jack down and letting him sniff in the flowerbed.
Both settled on the porch itself, Colburn with his legs stretched to reach the concrete walkway, Elias planting his feet two steps down. He kept his eye on the damn puppy, wishing Hannah hadn’t insisted on keeping him close right now.
“You’re cleared,” Colburn said directly. “We found a young guy who is camping with a couple of friends on the bluff a little south of where you were set up. Late morning, he decided to take a walk on his own. He passed you, went all the way to the resort, then saw you still in the same place when he came back.” He paused, his mouth tight. “He also saw someone parking your Land Rover, getting out and walking away, in the direction of the lodge.”
Adrenaline shot through Elias. “Someone?”
“Unfortunately, all he had was a glimpse. Didn’t have any reason to be interested. He was exploring the dunes, and is pretty sure the driver didn’t see him. The man wore jeans and a black hoodie, with the hood up.”
“That son of a bitch,” Elias growled. “He kept up the disguise in case he wasn’t as alone as he thought he was.”
“Right.” Colburn hesitated, his jaw muscles knotting. “He was carrying a hefty duffel bag. The witness thinks that’s why the guy caught his attention at all. The duffel bag seemed strange, and so did wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up on a sunny June day. The high today is only seventy, but still. And, by the way, there was no sweatshirt in your vehicle. Either you’re wrong and didn’t bring one, or the kidnapper kept it.” He sighed. “The witness heard a car driving out a minute later, but he’d wandered behind a dune and didn’t see it. He says it didn’t stop, just went on by and left.”
Elias rubbed a hand over his face. He dreaded Hannah hearing this. “Ian had to be unconscious.”
“I’d say so. Carrying a squirming duffel bag any distance would have been high risk. The witness is a college kid, but I was impressed with him. If he’d seen anything like that, I think he’d have taken action. He’s upset that he didn’t.”
“No idea whether the kidnapper turned north or south?”
Frustration carving grooves in his forehead, Colburn shook his head. “You know how much traffic there is on the highway midday in the summer. The witness looked at his watch, by the way. The timing is right for the kidnapper to have thrown Ian in the back and driven straight to the resort to exchange vehicles. What we’ll do now is search for anybody who might have seen the Land Rover in that window of time. I think this has to be connected to the secret admirer crap, and I’m convinced the man lives locally.”
“Hannah knows him,” Elias agreed.
“You do, too,” Daniel Colburn said, his blue eyes steady. “He doesn’t like you.”
That’s what the guy from the tire shop said. The echo shook Elias.
He lived with unease so familiar it had become like the background hum of an electrical appliance. He was suddenly aware how discordant the sound, the feeling, was.
I knew better than to get involved with Hannah, he thought, even though his fear made no sense. She’d been the target, only her, until this bizarre attempt to incriminate Elias.
But, however irrational, the belief he’d screwed up persisted. Bad things happened to people he cared about. Too many of them had ended up dead. None of those deaths had been his fault, but his gut didn’t buy what his head knew was true.
He was meant to be alone.
“I need to get out of here.” Elias was on his feet without having made a conscious decision to stand. He’d been wrong – to protect her, he had to leave. “Can you get somebody here to stay with Hannah?”
Without moving, Colburn studied him, assessing him in a way that made Elias edgy.
“Don’t you think it’s too late for that? This SOB isn’t going to just drop Ian off and send Hannah flowers because you’re not in the picture anymore. You pissed him off, sure. He may especially dislike you. But sooner or later, he’d have gone off the rails anyway. Even if she didn’t start seeing another man, she wasn’t receptive to him. He wouldn’t be able to deal with the rejection.”
“However it happened, I’m a focus of his rage, too. If me backing off would help—” Elias’s throat closed as he battled competing needs. For all the force of his certainty that he brought trouble with him, he didn’t want to leave Hannah. He didn’t trust anyone else except maybe Daniel Colburn – and Daniel had too much else to do to stay with her.
“Sit,” Daniel said. “Let me ask you something.”
Instantly wary, Elias nonetheless turned his head. “Shit. Where’s the puppy?” At his whistle, Jack-Jack bounded around the corner of the house. This time, Elias let him inside, waiting only a second after closing the door to be sure he didn’t begin to whimper. Then he resumed his seat.
Daniel said, “You’re the one who put me on the trail of a woman here in Cape Trouble who had a secret admirer.”
“I didn’t know much.”
“I’ve done some research. I learned there was a second one, also before my time.”
Elias only nodded. The memory had been no more than a scratch of alarm when he saw Hannah’s shock after opening the gift that day in the bookstore.
The police chief continued, �
�I’d convinced myself Lori Dressler’s secret admirer wasn’t the same man as Hannah’s, but I’m second-guessing myself now.” He described what had happened to the poor woman, fleshing out Elias’s recollection. “You didn’t know her?” he asked, apparently casual.
Interrogation disguised as information sharing. As little as Elias liked being the target, he appreciated that Colburn was being thorough for Ian’s sake.
“I must have heard the name from whoever told me about the crap she went through, but it didn’t sound familiar then, and still doesn’t.” He frowned. “You said she worked at an escrow company? Which one?”
Colburn told him, and Elias shook his head. “We used Coastal when I closed on my house.”
“What about Beth Stanford?”
Again Elias shook his head. “Unless it’s a married name?”
“No. I looked into her history. She graduated from Newport High School, did her two years at the community college there. Held a couple different jobs but never went too far from home.”
He braced himself. “What happened to her?”
“Like Hannah’s, her first few gifts were typical – chocolates, a romantic comedy on DVD, that kind of thing. After a while, her admirer got mad, probably because she hadn’t figured out who he was and therefore wasn’t responding the way she was supposed to. He gave her a bouquet made up of poisonous flowers and leaves. Not long after, she had an arson fire at her rental house. Packed up and moved home to Newport.”
“You tracked her down?”
“I did. Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell me anything new. The whole thing gave her the creeps. Her word. Fortunately, her secret admirer wasn’t obsessed enough to follow her, assuming he knew where she went.” He paused. “She was a redhead.”
Elias breathed an obscenity.
“That may not mean anything,” Daniel said. “Lori Dressler was a brunette.”
The silence felt thick.
Colburn rolled his shoulders, his tension suddenly not as well hidden. “Hannah turning to me may have played a part in the escalation.”
Was this display of guilt supposed to make him feel better about his own role in Hannah’s ordeal? Elias wondered. “You aren’t the one he set up to take the fall.”
“True. But part of what he accomplished was to set us at odds. That might have given him a little extra pleasure.”
“It might,” Elias said after a moment. “What I don’t understand is why he took Ian.”
“Best way to hurt her.”
“He can’t bring Ian back.” The words left his throat raw.
“Unless he was wearing a mask. We assumed he was hiding his face from the camera, but it might have been the mask.”
God, he hoped the cop was right. Even so, underlying anger still roiled. “If you’d seen that, you might not have been so quick to believe it was me.”
Colburn turned a glare on him. “Would you really want me to have shrugged and said, ‘Nah, I know Burton, couldn’t have been him’?”
His own anger fell flat. “Put that way…no.”
“I had to check you out.”
Elias could only nod.
“I never believed you were the kind of man who’d do something like this. But if we’re right and we know this guy… Who is he? I’ve encountered most people in town. Some I like, some I don’t. But I don’t see any of them as this twisted.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw, his frustration evident. “I have an officer trying to pin down where the men on Hannah’s list were while Ian was being kidnapped, but it hasn’t been very helpful yet. The only one we’ve eliminated—”
A phone rang. Feeling the vibration, Elias looked down. Not his ringtone - Hannah’s. Didn’t have to mean anything. Her friends had been calling. Still, his heartbeat accelerated.
He pulled her phone out of his pocket and tilted the screen so Colburn could see it, too. No name, only a number with an area code he didn’t recognize.
It could be bad if he answered.
He leaped to his feet and tore into the house, Colburn at his heels. “Hannah! Are you awake?”
“What?” She came out of the bedroom and stumbled over the puppy, barely regaining her balance. Her hair was wild, her eyes still swollen – or swollen again. “What is it?”
“Call,” he said tersely, and thrust the phone at her.
She took in the number and raised a terrified gaze to Elias’s. Then, on the next ring, she took a deep breath, touched the screen and said, in a voice that shook only a little, “Hello?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Hello?” The phone trembled against Hannah’s ear. Not the phone – it was her hand that was unsteady.
“I have your son,” said a muffled voice.
Oh, dear God, it was him, the monster who had stolen Ian.
“Where is he? He’s a little boy! Have you hurt him?” She was nearly screaming at the end.
“I haven’t hurt him, but I may if…” He kept talking, but however she strained, Hannah couldn’t make out what he said. Thank God the call was being recorded through some kind of app Daniel had downloaded.
“I…I’m having trouble hearing you.” She didn’t look away from Elias, who had a hand on her shoulder and his head tilted to listen.
“Try harder.” That was almost crisp, and not as muffled. It was also coldly angry.
Making him mad wasn’t smart. Daniel had advised her if a ransom call came in to let the kidnapper feel he was in control. The initial hysteria – she hadn’t been able to help herself, and he had probably expected that. Even enjoyed it.
Her stomach roiled. “Tell me what to do.”
“I expect three hundred thousand dollars in various denominations. Non-consecutive serial numbers. If it’s marked in any way, the boy dies.”
She let out a sound like a sob. Ian. Oh, God, Ian. “Three hundred thousand dollars,” she whispered. Again her voice rose. “I don’t have ten thousand!”
He said something. All Hannah could make out was “Ian’s father”. He thought Grady was rich. Terrified, she wondered if Grady really did have that kind of money lying around. And if so…would he relinquish it for a son he hadn’t bothered to see in a year?
“Do not contact the police. If I see police at the drop—” she strained to hear “—the boy dies…call tomorrow. Set time.” And he was gone.
The phone dropped from her hand and clattered to the floor. Hannah’s knees folded. She was going down, too, until strong arms caught her.
Terror snatched her with sharp teeth. Your boy will die. Will die…will die…will die.
“Hannah!” A sharp voice. Elias’s, she thought.
She struggled to surface. She was lying down, she discovered. It had to be the sofa. Yes. And there he was, his knees touching her. He sat on the coffee table, bent protectively over her. A hand that trembled the way hers had earlier stroked hair away from her face. He was afraid, too, she saw, but for her. The pale eyes that could be so icy with indifference had clouded with anguish.
“I’m sorry,” she managed.
He made a sharp exclamation. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. That son-of-a-bitch—” His voice had descended to a growl.
Daniel Colburn sat down beside Elias on the coffee table. “Hannah, I couldn’t hear most of what he said.”
Do not contact the police. If I see police…your boy will die.
She fought to sit up. “He said no police! You have to leave, now. Please go. Please. If he sees you—”
“Hannah.” Elias again, cupping her cheek, his eyes steady. Touch and gaze, he became her anchor. “Whoever he is, he knows the police are searching for Ian. If he’s watching your house, he already knows Daniel is here.”
She processed that. “That means he isn’t watching the house, or he would have waited.”
“He won’t assume you called Daniel if he finds out. Everyone in town knows about the search.”
Yes. She just had to keep the police away from the ransom drop. Which meant they couldn’t know
when and where it was. She had to make sure they weren’t watching her. Her head bobbed. “It’s better if you go now,” she told Daniel. “He said no police or…or Ian will die.”
“Those were his exact words?”
He wasn’t listening to her. “Please. Please.”
Elias moved suddenly to the sofa, sweeping her up and settling her within the secure circle of his arm. He pressed a soft kiss to her temple. “Let him help, Hannah. You trust Daniel, don’t you?”
Her teeth chattered. Trust. Did she trust—?
“I can help from behind the scenes,” Daniel said, sounding both calm and compassionate. “But here’s our goal: we need to see him pick up the money. It’s our only hope if he doesn’t release Ian. Do you understand?”
New horror blossomed in her. “You think…he won’t?”
“We don’t know if Ian has seen him, or heard his voice well enough to identify him. Probably this is a straight-forward kidnapping for money, but…” The police chief hesitated, glancing sidelong to Elias.
Elias responded by turning her face to be sure she was looking into his eyes, hearing him. “This almost has to be your secret admirer, Hannah. He’s angry at you.” His jaw muscles worked. “He’s angry at me. So we can’t be sure money is all he wants.”
Hannah knew everything they were saying was true. She wasn’t usually stupid enough to cling to a naïve kind of hope, but right this minute she wasn’t sure she could bear to let go of the belief that all she had to do was collect enough money, and Ian could come home.
All she had to do. Her heart spasmed in new terror. Not her, Grady. What if he refused?
Daniel studied her. “There’s something else I need to say. I’m no expert on kidnapping. The FBI has a unit dedicated to crimes against children with a major focus on kidnapping. We should bring them in.”
Whisper of Revenge (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 4) Page 11