by S J Grey
Maxine was next. She drove onto the start of the bridge, and Emma saw Caleb in her camera in the distance. “Still there,” she said.
“Fuck. They’re underneath,” said a man’s voice.
What? Who was that? There was a squeal of voices over the radio link, with several people speaking at once.
“TJ, please repeat.” Lin sounded as confused as Emma was.
Maxine was a couple of car lengths away from Caleb. He was clearly visible in her camera. He turned around, as though someone called his name, and then he was gone. Over the edge. Head first.
Chapter Forty
“Oh my God. Did he jump?” Maxine’s shock was clear over the radio link. It was followed by another squeal, as several people tried to communicate at once.
“Stop.” Lin raised her voice, her gaze flicking from one screen to the next in turn. “Jonathan. Report.”
“He’s gone. He’s just not there.”
“TJ. Report.”
His camera was moving rapidly, heading along a dusty track parallel with the bridge, and down towards the river bed. “The fuckers were underneath the bridge, hanging on ropes. They must have a boat. One moment.” The car was turning slowly. “There. See them?”
An inflatable boat zoomed away at high speed, water arcing up on both sides as it cut along the river, heading inland.
Emma squinted at the image on the screen. There were at least four people in the boat. One had to be Caleb.
“How did he get in there? Get closer, TJ.” Lin continued to scan the images.
“The ropes are still dangling,” he said. “See them? They were waiting on the concrete supports, and must have tugged him over the edge, then rappelled down. It’s not that far, only fifteen metres. It’s high tide and deep water. God dammit. We didn’t think of that.”
“What the hell just happened?” Mark’s frustration was clear across the radio. “Lin, report.”
“We lost him. They were waiting underneath in an inflatable.”
“Heading to sea? Is Frederic tracking the signal?”
“They’ve gone inland, boss,” said a nearby voice. “They’re moving fast. They can’t get far, though, even at high tide. Can you move to intercept?”
Lin pulled up a high-detail map of the Otaki area and ran her finger along the river. “The airstrip,” she said, at the same time as Emma pointed at it. “Take Otaki Gorge Road.”
The airstrip was where the kidnappers made their first call from. Did they have a plane waiting? Could Mark and his team get there in time?
“Damn it to hell. The Gorge road is closed for resurfacing.” Mark’s voice rang out over the radio. “Find me another route, Lin, and find it now.”
“Head south,” she said. “Old Hautere Road. You can get to the airstrip from there.”
One by one, Mark’s team responded. Meanwhile, Frederic was tracking Caleb’s position. “He’s at the airstrip,” said Frederic. “How close are you?”
“Close,” said Mark. “Am I looking for a road to take or just a track?”
“It’ll be a footpath.” Lin studied the map. “Accessible with care.”
“Roger that.”
Everyone had a job to do except Emma. She could only watch and listen, while her stress levels went through the roof.
“I can see a light aircraft taking off,” called out TJ. “Did we miss him?”
“One moment,” said Frederic. “Yes. He’s moving east again and rising in the air.” He pushed back from his computer. “Merde,” he muttered to himself. “So near, and yet so far.”
“We check out the location anyway,” said Mark. “This may be where the Blackthornes are being held.”
There was a slim hope that Mum and Dad might be there right now, and Emma would love some good news. She waited in an agony of uncertainty.
“I’m here,” said Mark, and the others called out their locations. “There’s not much. There’s a hangar and what looks like a workshop. Let’s check it out. Frederic, keep tracking their location in the air.”
It was a few minutes before Mark spoke again. “We’ve got nothing. Our only potential witness was taking an extended tea break when the last plane took off. Sounds legit, but Devin and Maxine will stay behind and take his statement. I’m heading back to base.”
Emma couldn’t sit quietly and wait. Pacing up and down was more likely to wear a track in the carpet than anything, but at least she was moving.
Lin sat hunched over the desk, flicking through screens and responding to the radio.
What about Mum and Dad? “They lied,” Emma said aloud, to anyone that might be listening. “They said they’d release my parents, but they haven’t.”
“Not necessarily,” said Lin. “If they were dropped off somewhere without cellphones, your parents would need to find someone, to call for help. They might not call 111 for the police, in case it puts Caleb in danger. Who would they phone instead?”
“Me.” Emma paused in her endless walking. “They’d call me, but on my regular cellphone.” She felt like smacking herself in the head. “The phone sitting at Mum’s house. I have to go find it.”
“Nah huh. Boss says you stay right here.” Lin was firm. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
They might be phoning her, right now, while she wasted time arguing about it. “You have radio contact with Mark, so ask him what to do. Please.” Emma had seen the horror movies where the hapless heroine tried to save the day and was turned into mincemeat. How many times had she shouted Too Stupid to Live at the screen? More than enough. She wasn’t that dumb as to try and sneak out by herself. Not when there was an unknown contingent of Russian bad guys potentially watching her every move.
“Mark’s back, with the others.” Lin gestured to the screens, to the dashcams showing the office block, and as they parked the cars.
Mark was grim faced when he limped into the reception area, where Emma waited for him. “You saw what happened?”
She nodded.
“We underestimated them, but the signal tracker is working. We’ll find him. Any news on Geoff and Sandra yet?”
“No. Can you take me back to their house, to pick up my phone? It’s the one they’d call if they needed picking up from somewhere.”
“Damn, but I didn’t think of that.” He leaned against the wall, one hand gripping his thigh.
He must be feeling the pain, if he no longer tried to cover it up. Close to, he was pale, with shadows under his eyes. She felt a wave of longing for the Mark she fell in love with. Before she knew about the lies.
“You’re one smart cookie, Emma Blackthorne,” he said, pride in his voice and undeniable heat in his gaze. “The police might still be there. We can ask them to check your phone.”
“Why would the police be there?”
He grimaced. “Shit. I don’t think I told you.”
“Told me what?” What new horror was this going to be?
“They had orders to arrest them, in order to get the burner phones, so we could find you and Caleb.”
“Wait. What? Arrest my parents?” She laughed at the ridiculousness of the statement. But he was serious. It wasn’t funny anymore. “You’re not joking.”
“No.”
This was a nightmare. “You did that? You told the police about the burner phones? Nobody else knew.”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Em.”
“I felt sorry for you for a millisecond.” She held up her right hand, the thumb and forefinger a tiny distance apart. “Now I’m mad at you again. How dare you? You broke my trust.”
“It was the only way to get to Caleb. The only quick way.”
The other members of his team clattered past them, but Emma stayed there with Mark. She had no idea what to say to him.
“I’ll contact DS Miller and see if he has anyone there.” Mark gave her one final, searing gaze, before he hobbled into the main office.
It didn’t take long for Miller to update them. His officers were no longer at her
parents’ house and had not taken her phone. There was no sign of it or Geoff’s phone. The only ones they’d found and taken were Sandra’s regular cellphone and her burner.
“Dad probably had his when he was… taken.” Emma tried not to break down when she said that horrible word. “Mine is probably still there. The idea was to leave it at home, so if anyone tracked its location, they’d think that’s where I was.”
Mark gave her a tiny smile. “I reiterate what I said about you being smart.”
Not smart enough, she wanted to say. I still fell for your bullshit. She was over whining, though. She wanted to do something practical.
Mark continued. “So while we’re waiting for news, why don’t we head out to your Mum’s and grab your phone? If you don’t want to be alone with me, I can ask one of the others to take you.”
Here was the chance to actually do something. “I’m fine with you. Let’s go.”
Chapter Forty-One
How did Emma go so long, believing he was an accountant? There was so much she wanted to know about him, but he wouldn’t be drawn into answering her questions.
There was something else she needed to talk about, though, and this was a good time for it. “Do you think they were bluffing about watching me?”
God. Just the thought of it made her gut churn.
“I’d like to say yes, that it was a bluff, but I think they will. And there’s little we can do to stop them.”
She wrapped her arms tightly over her stomach, hugging herself. It was the closest she could manage to curling up in the foetal position, while sitting in the front seat of Mark’s car. “What can we do?”
“There’s obvious stuff, which you do anyway. Stay off social media. Keep your personal laptop scrupulously clean against viruses and hack attempts. Turn off the location services function on your phone.”
“Anything non-obvious?”
He glanced at her. “Heavy duty stuff comes next. Going into hiding, change of identity, and so on. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”
“That would be pretty heavy.”
“And there’s one other thing, but you might not like the idea.”
Worse that completely changing her identity? “Go on.”
“It’s more a precaution than anything. You carry one of the tracker prototypes. It doesn’t activate until you swallow it, and I’d make sure we keep a channel open, so that we’d see within minutes if you did.” He flashed her a quick smile, but it looked forced. “It’s not as though you’d swallow it by accident.”
How did she feel about that? “Yes. I could do. Assuming that I have time to take it out of its packaging, of course.”
“It looks like an over-the-counter pain reliever at first glance. We could disguise it in a blister pack without too much difficulty. Just don’t take it for a hangover by mistake.”
“Okay—to carrying it.”
“Thanks. It would give me some peace of mind. It’s a worst-case scenario, of course. When Geoff and Sandra are home safe, and we move in to pick up Caleb, we should take down the kidnappers at the same time.”
“I hope so.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
They drove further, leaving the small town of Waikanae behind as they headed up into the hills. Emma had always loved where her parents lived, for the space and privacy it offered, but now she saw it in a new light. Private was another way of saying nobody-else-nearby. Few streetlights. No passing traffic. Plenty of hiding places, for people to spy on them.
She shivered, and Mark noticed.
“Hey.” He reached out and squeezed her hand. “We’re doing everything we can. The idea about checking your phone was brilliant. They might be waiting somewhere, for you to pick up a message.”
“I wish this was all over. I’m trying to focus on everything being normal again. You know? Looking forward to spending Christmas with them, with Mum cramming too many decorations on the tree and Dad insisting on a gazillion strings of lights all around the garden.” Her lips trembled. “I want them to come home,” she whispered.
“I know, love. I do too.” He turned her hand over and tangled their fingers together.
It gave her a sliver of comfort. “You’re not forgiven, just so you know,” she told him.
It gave her a jolt, to see both Dad’s truck and Mum’s car parked outside their house. Like this was a usual day, and she’d walk in to find them hanging out at home.
Mark turned the car through one-eighty degrees, before pointing back up the drive and killing the engine. “Do you have your key for the front door, or should we go around the back?”
“I have my key.” It was shoved into the back pocket of her jeans.
They walked up to the door, and it hurt how almost-normal it felt. She could pretend Mum would come to greet them, while Dad brewed tea and talked to the cats. Christ, she had to check the cats were okay and Minerva hadn’t gone stir crazy locked in her room.
The house was quiet inside, as she knew it would be. It was weird, how it could feel so empty. Jake and Elwood strolled down the hallway to greet her, followed by Minerva. “Min. You’re running free.”
“Sandra must have let her out. She was loose when the police arrived.” He glanced at Emma. “I was here then, before you ask. And in a complete change of subject, where is your phone likely to be?”
She looked up at Mark, from where she crouched to fuss the cats. “I asked Dad to lock it in the safe.”
Mark leaned against the wall, one hand massaging his thigh. “Another brilliant idea, Ms. Blackthorne.” He adopted a bad Scottish accent.
Emma shook her head and fought her smile. “If that was supposed to be Sean Connery, it was pretty lame.” That was Mark’s brilliance, that he could make her smile even when she felt like crying. “It was the logical option. It’s where he keeps all his important stuff.”
“Like his shotguns?”
“No, they’re in his gun safe.” She picked up Minerva for a snuggle and stood again, to face Mark. “Did he show them to you?”
“Kind of. He pointed one at me and told me to leave. He changed his mind, though.”
Yeah, Dad threatened to do that. She loved her parents so much. “I need to feed the cats while we’re here.” Emma released Min, and the cat pranced ahead, following the other two into the kitchen. “See, I mentioned food, and they know what that means.”
Mark chuckled and reached for her hand again. “I’ll do it. You go grab your phone.”
“Okay.” She gave his fingers a squeeze before releasing them.
The office was in the opposite direction to the kitchen, and she went further into the depths of the house. The safe was under Dad’s desk, and she tapped in the PIN—her birthdate—and popped the door open. There was her phone, sitting on a pile of document folders, right where she left it. It was still switched on, and she checked for recent calls. Two yesterday—one from Si and one from DS Miller. Nothing else.
Her heart sank. She was a fool for believing that the kidnappers would actually release her parents.
A thud sounded from the kitchen.
“Emma, get out. Run.”
She spun on her toes, her heart clattering like a dozen horses on cobblestones. That was Mark shouting. Dear God, what did he find?
“Ru—”
His shout was cut off mid-word, and Emma froze. Someone was here. Mark wanted her to leave. To run away, like a frightened mouse.
Wasn’t going to happen.
She jammed the phone into her back pocket. What was she going to do?
Dad’s keys hung on a hook above his desk. She grabbed them and rifled through them for the ones she wanted. His truck, for one. She shoved that in her pocket and found the loop with the keys to the gun safe. The safe was double locked and had a four-digit PIN, but she should remember the combination.
Dad made sure both she and Mum were safe to use his shotguns. He wouldn’t keep guns otherwise. And while Emma balked at hunting rabbits or possums with him, she was happy
to occasionally practice aiming at the targets he set up in the woods.
The gun safe was hidden inside a built-in wardrobe. Emma threw the doors open. Her palms were damp, and she fumbled with the keyring. Come on. Which key was the top lock, and which was the bottom one? She jammed a key in the top but it didn’t go in fully. Damn, that was the wrong one. She tried the other, and it turned.
There was no sound from Mark. Was he okay? Please, God, don’t let him be hurt again. And whoever was there, would know Emma was in the house. She had to hurry.
The second lock opened easily. What was the PIN? She hovered her fingers over the keypad and took a breath. Closed her eyes for a moment. Don’t try to remember it.
Yoda.
Nine. Six. Three. Two.
The safe gave a soft beep, and the locks disengaged. She tugged the heavy door open.
Thank all the saints, both shotguns were here, along with a stack of boxes of cartridges. Mum grumbled about them being stored in one place and why Dad didn’t keep a separate ammo safe, but Emma was glad for it.
She dug into an open box of cartridges and pulled out a handful, which she dropped into her jacket pocket, and then another. She needed a minimum of six for the Mossberg.
Dad liked his shotguns and had two different ones. The Mossberg Maverick pump-action and a classic over-under Nikko. She liked the Mossberg. Smaller and lighter, the pump-action made a satisfying noise when you racked each shell. Also, it could hold six cartridges at once, which today sounded like a very good thing.
Would Mark know how to handle a gun? Bearing in mind everything she now knew about him, the answer to that was probably yes. She tugged out the second gun, the Nikko, and then closed the safe again. It auto-locked. Her pockets were filled with keys and shells, but she crammed the safe keys in too.
Take both guns with her? No. Best to leave one here, but unloaded, of course.
She left the Nikko behind the office door, and then hefted the pump-action into a comfortable position.
Why wasn’t she petrified? Maybe that was down to adrenaline, or maybe because she was fighting back this time. Her hands were dry, and her fingers were steady.