Serious Risks

by Rachel Lee

  Jessica shouldn’t miss that, wouldn’t want to miss it. And he couldn’t… Could he?

  “Arlen?” Caro Granger’s voice floated down the hall. “Let’s go. The judge will see us in chambers in twenty minutes.”

  He started down the hall to her. “All I want to know is, are you confident?”

  Caro smiled. “You bet. It’s in the bag.”

  An hour later, stepping off the elevator near his office, Arlen found himself thinking that perhaps the strangest thing about this morning was that he was already looking forward to telling Jessica about it. Another one of those things he’d missed without realizing it. He wouldn’t be able to share any official information, of course, but he could tell Jessie about Judge Harris, a surprisingly funny little man with an unabashed interest in war stories.

  Did he really want to resume his old life, coming home each evening to an empty, silent apartment?

  As soon as he stepped into the Bureau offices, he was swamped by demands and plans. A number of cases appeared ready to come to a head, and in order to set up the kind of constant surveillance he wanted on Stratton and Dobrocek, he needed to request some additional agents. By the time he was finished with all of that it was noon, and he reached for the stack of phone messages Donna had handed him.

  By the time he reached Jessica’s message it was ten after twelve, and he swore under his breath. He might, if he was lucky, make it to the Corner Pub in twenty minutes. By then she might have given up and left. Nor was the Pub the kind of place you could call and get a message to a guest.

  He swore again and grabbed his suit jacket from the coat tree in the corner. “I’m heading out on business,” he told Donna as he passed her desk. “I should be back in an hour.”

  The Pub parking lot was crowded, and he had to park at some distance from the door. He spied Lisa Gonzales parked not too far from a Toyota that looked like Jessie’s. Was Jessie’s, he realized as he scanned the license plate. Good, she was here, and Lisa was on her tail. Everything was all right.

  There was a line at the door as people waited to be seated, but he passed it up and went to look for Jessie. The Pub had four different guest rooms, and not until he had walked through them all was he convinced that she wasn’t there. Had there been even one empty table, he might have thought she was in the ladies’ room, but every table was full.

  She wasn’t there. The certainty crept into his bones like a winter chill, and the back of his neck prickled. Measuring each step so he wouldn’t run, he walked out of the restaurant and headed for Lisa Gonzales. She saw him coming and leaned over to unlock the passenger door for him.

  “Have you seen her come out?” was Arlen’s abrupt first question.

  “Come out? No, her car’s still here.” Instantly concerned, Lisa frowned at him. “What’s wrong, Arlen?”

  “She’s not in there. Did she come alone?”

  “No. She came with a man. Brought him, actually. They looked like they were friends.”

  The prickling of his neck had become a squeezing of his stomach as tension gripped him. “What did he look like?”

  “Thirty-five, I guess, slightly balding, dark hair with thin fuzz on top. Average height, beer bellied. Wearing brown slacks, a yellow short-sleeved sport shirt and a brownish tie. Ordinary, Arlen. You’d never give him a second look.”

  Leaving Lisa to wait for Jessie in case he missed her, Arlen recrossed the parking lot, faster this time, no longer caring if he was conspicuous. An objective part of his mind—the portion that had kept him sane throughout the interminable months of Lucy’s illness—warned him that he was in danger of letting emotion override control.

  Arlen hated to lose control. There were a few—a very few—times in the past when he had lost his iron control, and the results hadn’t been something he was proud of. Warning himself, however, didn’t much help. Fear for Jessica rode him like a whiplash.

  Once again he checked all the rooms, this time looking for the balding man in the yellow shirt as well as Jessica. Ten minutes later he was convinced. She wasn’t here. One last time he scanned the final room, hoping against hope. The last time he’d felt like this was when his daughter hadn’t come home from a school football game at the appointed time. Then it had been a simple misunderstanding. This time he knew he wasn’t going to be so lucky.

  None of the waiters he collared could remember having seen Jessica or her companion come or go. There were so many customers that after an hour people faded into the mists of memory.

  By one-thirty it was absolutely certain that Jessica hadn’t returned to work or gone home, nor had she called in with an excuse. She had vanished without a trace.

  By two o’clock it was certain that one of her coworkers had vanished with her. Frank Winkowski was the man in the yellow shirt and he, too, had failed to return to work or call in.

  By seven that evening the Bureau offices looked like the command post of a small army. Extra communications stations had been set up to deal with the growing number of agents who were arriving to assist. Men and women milled around, awaiting their assignments. Operators manned the phones and radios. Several coffee urns had been set up in one corner, and somebody had thought to order a tray of doughnuts from a local bakery.

  All the necessities, Arlen thought with a bitterness that shocked him even in his nearly numb state. Excitement. He’d been an agent long enough to know what a welcome event a case like this was. The big ones came so rarely. A double abduction and espionage. All the ingredients for a headline-making case. A chance for young agents to step out of mediocrity.

  Taking a slug from his own mug, he turned his back on the confusion and stepped into the relative silence of his own office.

  Jessica.

  Without evidence to the contrary, he feared she was dead, and each passing hour made it more likely. He really, honestly didn’t think he could survive it. The thought came to him calmly, shrouded in the muffling numbness that had taken over that afternoon, and he pondered it while sipping his coffee and staring uptown toward the lighted beauty of the state capitol.

  Well, of course he cared about her. He cared about her as he would care for any close friend, but no more. He couldn’t allow himself to care any more than that. Because he couldn’t risk the pain again. He couldn’t risk this. God, wasn’t once enough for any lifetime?

  He found himself hoping terrible things, hoping that death had come swiftly, painlessly. That she hadn’t been raped…God, not that! She was so young, so innocent, so… Dear God!

  He found himself praying for things he wouldn’t be able to bear because there were things he would be able to bear even less. Because mercy at this point was a dark and ugly thing, a matter of speed and precision, not a matter of kindness. He’d seen enough death to know the darkest, the worst, the ugliest, that man could do. Imagination didn’t even enter into it. He had Dantean memories from hell to paint pictures that shredded his soul.

  “She must have discovered something.”

  Phil’s voice drew Arlen out of his morbid thoughts.

  “Looks that way.” Arlen turned from the window, from the night back to artificial day. Why did they have to put these awful fluorescent lights everywhere? “Somebody must have heard her call me, because she told me she’d be at the restaurant shortly after twelve, but Lisa says she got there with this guy at a quarter to.”

  “Maybe somebody asked her for a favor, so she went early. Most of us can’t refuse a favor.”

  “I guess.”

  “Anyway, I wanted to tell you, they’re ready to trace any calls to us here, any calls to Winkowski’s house, and any calls to Kilmer’s house. You said you were going to be there? With Mahaffey at Kilmer’s place?”

  Arlen nodded slowly. “Yeah. I can always hope this is an old-fashioned kidnapping. That somebody thinks they can bargain with us for something.”

  Phil’s expression was concerned. “That’s not likely, Arlen.”

  “I know that.” Arlen rubbed the heel o
f his palm against his temple. “I’ve got one hell of headache, and I don’t think it’s going to get any better. Nothing from her coworkers?”

  Phil shook his head. “They’ve been questioned and re-questioned. All they know is that Kilmer and Winkowski were the first two in this morning, and both were hard at work when the others arrived. Security says Winkowski arrived exactly six minutes before Kilmer.”

  Phil pulled out a pocket pad and checked it. “According to the log entry the security system keeps, Winkowski punched in his door code six minutes before Kilmer punched hers in. She logged onto the central computer at precisely 7:43, eight minutes after she called here. And she logged off the system at 11:30. Winkowski logged off at 11:27. Between those times, everyone claims they noticed nothing unusual at all.

  “Front-desk security noted the two of them leaving through the main entrance at approximately 11:35. Nobody paid real close attention, though, because they’re both readily recognized by the day shift. Jordan, one of the guards, says he noticed only because Kilmer was laughing at something, and he says he’s never seen her laugh before.”

  But I have, Arlen thought. I’ve seen her laugh, and it’s a beautiful sight. A beautiful sound.

  “Anyhow,” Phil continued, “Lisa saw her come out with Winkowski, looking like two good friends, and they got into Kilmer’s car. Lisa tailed them to the Pub and watched them both enter the restaurant by the front door at exactly 11:45. And that’s it.”

  Just like that, two people had disappeared as if they had never been.

  Arlen shook his head grimly. “I told Jessica Kilmer to trust me, Phil. I was wrong.”

  “Maybe not,” Phil said. “Maybe not.”

  Arlen simply looked at him from hollow eyes.

  Ed Marcel poked his head around the corner. “Arlen? The phone at Kilmer’s place has rung three times in the last hour. Mahaffey says they’ve hung up every time she’s answered it.”

  Arlen grabbed his suit jacket and tugged it on. “I’m going. Give me a radio, Ed.”

  The numbness was settling over him again, this time more deeply. Coldly. He could almost hear the click as his feelings turned off, one by one. He couldn’t afford to care. He couldn’t afford the risk. It was as simple as that.

  Arlen had spent a lot of time in Jessica’s house during the past two weeks, but beyond his first impression of her bedroom, he hadn’t really looked at it. Wandering through it now, he ignored Colleen Mahaffey’s attempts at small talk and looked, really looked.

  What he saw was an emptiness that seemed to carve a gaping hole in his own heart. Once, when he’d remarked that somebody must have left her a whole houseful of furniture, she had said casually that she’d bought everything in the house, that none of it was inherited. He’d heard it then as a kind of pride. Now he saw it entirely differently.

  Oh, God, he thought, and tried to pull another layer of numbness around himself. He’d thought of her house as a nesting thing that women do. Lord knew he’d seen enough of it with Lucy—sudden bursts of frenetic energy during which furniture would be rearranged dramatically, or old curtains would vanish to be replaced by new, or she would do whatever else occurred to her to pretty up their home. Sometimes it would be something as small as a single new acquisition to bring a spot of brightness to a corner. Such storms had barely rippled his existence. It was something Lucy did, just as he drank his beer from a bottle and his coffee from a mug.

  And until this moment that was how he’d viewed Jessica’s house. Now, each old photo, each doily and antimacassar, every lovingly polished piece of scarred furniture held a different message. Jessica had made her home, and it was empty. She had built her nest, and there was no one in it.

  Arlen drew a deep breath, trying to loosen the sudden tightness in his chest. These thoughts were getting him nowhere, accomplishing nothing at all. With an almost conscious inward tightening, he clamped down on the volcanic feelings he couldn’t afford.

  Colleen Mahaffey’s voice intruded. “I made coffee, Arlen. Want some?”

  “Yeah.” Turning, he tried to give her a businesslike smile. “Just as long as it’s not in those flowered china teacups of hers.”

  “I found some mugs.”

  The set of heavy brown mugs Jessie had bought when he’d confessed he hated to drink coffee from a teacup. Memory caught him on the cusp between one breath and the next as he recalled the delighted sparkle in her eyes when she’d presented him with those mugs. A coffee mug was a very personal item, to Arlen’s way of thinking. It took time to find one with exactly the right feel in the hand and at the lip, and when a mug person found one, he clung to it for dear life. Jessie hadn’t understood that, but when he saw the pleasure in her bright brown eyes, that hadn’t mattered. He had started drinking out of those damn brown mugs.

  “Arlen?”

  Again Mahaffey had caught him locked in the grip of a flood tide of memories and feelings he didn’t want. Damn it, he’d known Jessica for less than two weeks. She couldn’t possibly mean so much….

  “Thanks,” he said, taking the mug.

  “You know Jessica Kilmer pretty well, huh?” Mahaffey asked, retreating to the counter behind her. She lifted her own mug, watching him over the rim.

  “Yeah.” Damn it all, he thought. Mahaffey had probably picked up on things he didn’t want to know himself. “Since she called to report the theft of a classified document a couple of weeks ago.”

  He turned away and went to look out the window beside the kitchen door. His car was there, parked behind his Harley. Jessica had offered to let him keep the bike here so he wouldn’t have to get it out of storage whenever he wanted to ride. It would be safer here than in an apartment-house parking lot, she felt. It was here, saying a lot of things he hadn’t—couldn’t—say himself. Maybe he ought to hang a sign in the Bureau offices, and silence all the speculation. Agent Coulter has very stupidly gotten involved with someone who came to him for help, and now she’s in trouble, and maybe…

  An oath escaped him under his breath, but Mahaffey heard it. Suddenly her hand was on his arm, and it didn’t matter that he was in charge of this operation and she was a relatively young agent from another field office who hadn’t even met him until forty minutes ago.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It has to be hell.”

  Without looking at her he nodded, grim lipped. He was glad she didn’t try to offer any false reassurances. They were both professional enough to know that with each passing minute Jessie’s chances diminished.

  The phone rang shrilly, as piercing as a gunshot. Arlen’s gray eyes briefly met Colleen Mahaffey’s blue ones. Just a glance of recognition. Without a word, he went to answer it. If the kidnapper wouldn’t speak to a woman, then Arlen knew who he wanted to speak with.

  “Coulter,” he said steadily into the receiver. Everything inside him solidified into ice.

  “I have her,” said a muffled voice. “She’s okay.”

  “Let me talk to her.” Calmly. Coolly. Not a tremor.

  “No. Start figuring out how to get me out of the country in one piece. And don’t make me nervous.”

  With a click, the kidnapper disconnected, leaving Arlen listening to a hum that suddenly sounded like a death knell. Turning, he looked at Mahaffey. She was on another phone, the one the FBI had had installed, a separate line. She lifted a finger. “The trace got it,” she said. “I’m waiting for the address.”

  Arlen’s heart slammed once, hard, and he drew a shaky breath as he hung up the phone. The same technology that made 911 so effective might now save Jessie’s life, but he didn’t allow himself to hope. Hope was a risky thing.

  “It’s a phone booth at the corner of Alma and Winter,” Mahaffey said. “There’s a police cruiser in the vicinity right now. They’re going to check it out.”

  “He’ll be gone.” Arlen was certain of it with a conviction that sat in his gut like lead.

  “Maybe someone noticed him,” Mahaffey suggested hopefully. “Maybe someon
e saw which way he headed, or what he was driving. Maybe we’ll find out who he is.”

  “I know who he is.” Arlen spread his city map on the kitchen table so he could look for the intersection of Alma and Winter. “It’s Frank Winkowski.”

  Mahaffey raised both eyebrows. “Winkowski might be a victim, too.”

  “The more I think about it, the more I doubt it. Winkowski could stick a gun in Jessica’s ribs in that crowded restaurant and get her to walk out an emergency exit with him without making a scene. The chances that a man could do that with two unwilling victims in a crowded place are so slender that I doubt any sane person would try it. He’d wait for a more auspicious time to abduct them. No, I really think Winkowski did it. The question is why.”

  Arrangements to get him out of the country. Well, that was about as clear as you could get, Arlen thought as he bent over the map. Winkowski evidently thought he had been exposed, or was about to be. But how the hell had he gotten that idea?

  In the middle of the Corner Pub, Frank Winkowski had suddenly slipped his arm around Jessica’s waist and hauled her up tight against him. Startled, she had looked up at him, and then she’d felt the hard poke in her side.

  “I’ve got a gun on you,” Frank had said. “Walk toward that exit.”

  It never occurred to her to doubt him. His hand was tucked against her side in such a way that she easily believed he held a small pistol. He had taken her out to the back parking lot, led her to a car and put her in behind the wheel. Then he’d climbed into the passenger side and pulled a bigger, uglier, meaner-looking gun out of the glove compartment. Pointing it at her, he had told her to drive.