by Kylie Brant
“They need transportation.” He caught Jackson’s eye, watching the shoppers across the top level from him. Neither Vance nor Baxter would be above carjacking a vehicle, but the Air Wing pilot would notice that kind of activity.
Fists propped on his hips, he tamped down the increasing spike of urgency and tried to predict their actions. He needed to think like Sophie. Consider the killers’ past behavior. Use it to foretell their next move.
He arrowed a look at the security guard. “Have you had any reports of a purse being stolen? Or a set of car keys lost?”
The officer dragged a hand over his sandy crew cut. “Sent a guard to Lisette’s just a few minutes ago. I know, I know, I said I’d use all personnel on the search. But I still have to do my…”
“Where’s Lisette’s?”
The man turned and jerked a thumb behind him. “Turn the corner left when you get there. Second shop on the right.”
Cam took off at a jog. “Keep looking,” he called back to the guard staring after him. He saw the sheriff turning to head his way so he kept going until he found the store the guard had indicated. Walked up to the first clerk he saw. “Did a security guard just come in here?”
“I…” She looked as though she wasn’t sure what to reveal, so Cam dug in his pocket to flash his credentials.
She nodded, pointed to a door in the back of the store. “They’re in the office. It’s Mrs. Newman. She’s a really good customer and this is so bad for business…” Her voice trailed off as he strode away.
Cam showed his credentials again to the guard sitting at the side of the desk, filling out a report form attached to a clipboard. He turned to the woman seated near him. Her carefully made-up face was streaked with tears, and mascara had smudged beneath her eyes. “I’m DCI Special Agent Cam Prescott, ma’am. Can you tell me if you had car keys in your purse? Did you drive here?”
“Yes.” Her expression was startled. “Do they call DCI for stolen purses?”
Ignoring the question, he pressed, “Your car?”
“Yes, yes, I drove. My keys were in my purse. I’ll have to call my hus…” Her eyes grew large. “She asked me that! The woman in the dressing room next to me. I was just telling the guard, I don’t like to accuse anyone, but she barged in my room and…and then we had a conversation about the parking lot and I…dear God I actually told her where I parked!”
“And where was that?”
“West of Younkers. The entrance by the purses. I even told her that,” she moaned. “Oh my God, how can I be so stupid?”
Manipulation. Sophie had mentioned it several times. Baxter was a master at it. “Do you know the make and model of your car?”
A flare of irritation shone in her eyes. “Well, of course I do. I’m not a complete moron, current evidence to the contrary. It’s a red 2014 Toyota Camry. It has a vanity plate. T-A-Z-Z-Y. That’s my husband’s nickname for me.”
He was already on his way on the door, reaching for the cell in his suit coat pocket. “If we find it someone will contact you.”
“Well, I have to say,” the woman could be heard telling the guard, “I never would have expected such excellent service over a stolen purse.”
* * * *
“I couldn’t do anything different. How could I? She took Lisa.” Cody Hansen looked from one face to the other. SAC Gonzalez and Agent Franks were stoic. They’d interviewed all the men taken from the ambulance extensively. Now they’d asked Sophia to speak to the two who had admitted to assisting Vance’s escape. They’d hoped she’d be able to draw out more details. Or at least give an opinion on the veracity of the stories. But Hansen had gone over his story again in her presence and seemed unshakeable on the specifics.
She allowed the empathy she felt to sound in her voice. “You were worried about your wife. Baxter threatened to kill her. What did you think might have happened if you’d gone to the police? Maybe they could have helped. Or found her before it got to this point.”
He shook his head violently. “You don’t know. The pictures she sent…they’re on that phone she gave me to use. She’s got Lisa somewhere dark. Underground it looks like. And she lied to us in the garage. Said directions to where she was would be in the office.” He looked at Gonzalez hopelessly. “But you said there was nothing. I haven’t gotten a picture since yesterday.” His sobs were wrenching. “She went to kill her. I know it. You wouldn’t believe the things she said she was going to do to Lisa. What kind of husband would I have been if I had risked that?”
Sophia tried for several more minutes, but at a cue from Gonzalez she stood. “I know they will do everything possible to find your wife, Mr. Hansen.”
There was no response. He had his head in his hands, weeping.
They walked a short way down the hallway to stand outside another patient room. “Their stories are nearly identical. But Adams claimed Baxter took his son.”
A fist squeezed her heart. Kidnapping women…that had been Baxter’s MO long enough to be unsurprising. Long enough for Sophia to fear for what might have happened to Lisa Hansen already. But a child…
They pushed into the hospital room. Found Daniel Adams gazing straight ahead unblinkingly. At first Sophia worried that the man was catatonic.
She went to his bedside. “Mr. Adams. I’m Dr. Sophia Channing, and I’ve been working on the Vance case. I’d like to talk to you if I can.”
“It was all for nothing.” The man’s voice was dull. He didn’t look at Sophia. Made eye contact with no one. “I risked everything. Everyone. But my boy’s still gone.” Finally he turned his head to look at Maria. “I wouldn’t even care what you did to me. It wouldn’t matter. As long as my son…” His throat worked, as if choking on the words.
“When did you first know he was missing?”
“Two weeks ago. He was playing outside alone. I was in the garage. Our backyard is fenced in. Safe. When I looked out the garage door and didn’t see him, at first I thought he was in the fort part of the swing set. I checked a couple minutes later, but he wasn’t playing. He wasn’t there.”
Shocked, Sophia said, “He disappeared from your backyard in broad daylight?” That was risky. Much riskier behavior than she’d expect from Vickie Baxter.
A dull flush crept up his cheeks. “I…I can’t be sure. He can work the gate. He could have gone around to the front yard on his own. The garage door was down. I wouldn’t have seen him. He’s not supposed to, but we live on an acreage and he’s sort of used to roaming around it.”
In other words it was a secluded property. “How close are your nearest neighbors?”
“The Tindals are a quarter mile south of us.”
Not so risky then, Sophia thought. And Baxter would have scouted the area. Planned how she’d snatch the boy. “Your wife…”
“…died four years ago. Breast cancer.”
She glanced at the DCI agents. A person would have to be made of stone to not be moved by the man’s plight. It was the most horrific choice imaginable. Help release a vicious killer. Or risk sacrificing your son.
“You don’t know where she is.” For the first time heat entered his voice and he directed it at the SAC. “This Baxter. She helped Mason Vance commit the most atrocious murders in the history of the state, and she’s still free. Free to take my son. To threaten horrible things.” He stopped, his jaw clenching. “How could I put my trust in the police when they didn’t know where she was! How could you have found my son?”
“You heard from her yesterday.”
He nodded wearily, as if the brief show of anger had exhausted him. “Every few days. She takes a picture with a newspaper propped against him. He was alive yesterday.”
A terrible sense of hopelessness filled her, as if transferring from the man before her. She knew from Cam’s last message that he hadn’t yet caught up with the killers. She didn’t want to think about what that might mean for this man’s son.
She stayed another fifteen minutes, but Adams said little else. Finally, wi
thout waiting for a cue from either of the agents, Sophia rose. Call it a sympathy break, but she couldn’t force the man to endure anymore today than what he was already going through.
Reaching forward, she brushed his hand with hers. “We’re going to try to find your son.”
He didn’t respond until she reached the door and then his voice was so low so could barely hear him. “She said she wouldn’t kill him.”
The three of them turned, but it was Sophia who spoke. “Baxter promised she wouldn’t?”
“No. She said she’d sell him. To men who use little boys. She described what they’d do to him…what kind of life he’d have.” His gaze rose then, and his eyes looked like a man enduring the fires of hell. “I would have done anything…anything she asked to spare my son that.”
Sophia’s throat was full. “Your son. What’s his name?”
“Henry.” He smiled a little, a fleeting curl of the lips. “Henry Sylvester Adams. A big name for such a little guy.”
The three of them walked out of the room, down the hallway. “What will happen to him? To both him and Hansen?”
“DA’s office will determine whether charges will be brought, but the defense has a pretty solid case for duress.” Gonzalez was not unmoved by the interview, Sophia saw now. “It’d be hard for a jury to find him guilty for his actions when they learn what was at stake.”
“I wouldn’t want to be faced with the choice those two men were presented with,” Sophia admitted huskily. She couldn’t say with any certainty what decision she would have made in their place. And she couldn’t believe a jury—if it came to that—would be unsympathetic.
They headed out the front doors of the hospital toward the parking lot. They’d come in two cars, Maria driving alone while Sophia had accompanied Franks. “Both of them, Hansen and Adams are credible. What they described is Baxter’s standard procedure. Manipulate. Terrorize. Exploit a vulnerability to bend people to her will.” She thought of Cam, on the trail of the two killers, and her voice went husky. “Our loved ones represent our greatest vulnerability.”
“Sheriff’s office has been investigating internally about the events leading up to this morning. The inmate they believe started the diversion, Lavontae Cross had a bundle of fifties hidden inside his mattress. He claimed nearly every time Vance met with his lawyer, he’d fold up a bill and toss it into his cell.”
“You suspect the attorney?” Franks reached into his pocket for his sunglasses. Put them on.
“He got the money from somewhere and the attorney was his only visitor. Ever. Not that we’re ever going to be able to prove a thing, but my point is that Vance isn’t above paying for cooperation.”
Sophia could see where Maria was going with this. “In my judgment, Hansen and Adams were not paid off. Why waste money when you can leverage a weakness?”
They’d reached the cruisers and stood in front of the two cars, but Maria was still talking. “I have a hard time seeing Baxter doing what it takes to keep not one, but two victims alive long enough to pull this off. And they look like they’re in fair shape.”
Although only in her late forties, the SAC was looking every one of her years today, Sophia noted. This case had carved a few more lines in her face. “You think she’d revert to type and engage in torture, as long as she has captives,” Sophia said.
The SAC unlocked the car with the remote. “It’s who she is. We served warrants on the men’s houses, and we already have the cells they claim Baxter gave them, so we’ll have definitive answers soon enough. But I can’t stop wondering about her kidnapping and keeping the victims relatively unharmed…is that out of character for Vickie Baxter?”
“We don’t know what she has planned for them in the end.” As Sophia answered, Franks went around to the driver’s side of his vehicle and unlocked it, sliding behind the wheel. “Or exactly what she’s put them through to date. But Baxter is capable of doing whatever it takes to meet her ends. So no, this wouldn’t be out of character.”
She couldn’t tell if she’d changed the woman’s opinion or not. Likely, like Cam, the woman would wait for the evidence before making up her mind on the veracity of the men’s claims. The SAC nodded and walked to her car. Sophia waited until she’d pulled out before using the space to get in the passenger side of the vehicle Franks waited in.
As he left the lot and pulled out into traffic, she inquired, “Are we going back to the ambulance scene?”
His voice when he answered was amused. “You just want to see how it ends.”
Sheepishly, she nodded. “I do feel like I left in the middle of a movie when we followed the victims to the hospital.”
“It’s slow work. They’ll be at it for hours.” He slowed as the light before them turned red. “It’s being done remotely. With the robot they were able to diagnose the inner workings of the bomb. Pretty crude, from what I was told. The robot is being used to remove parts of its firing train.”
Still a dangerous task. They began to move again. The thought immediately made her wonder how much danger Cam was in right at this moment.
* * * *
Cam met Jackson as he was entering the store. The sheriff immediately turned on his heel to keep pace with him. Cam had already dialed the pilot, and was giving the sheriff a condensed version until the pilot answered. Then he broke off to tell him, “They’re in a red 2014 Toyota Camry.” He spelled the license plate. Would have taken off from the lot on the west side of the mall.”
“How long ago?”
“Five or six minutes.”
“You don’t know what direction they’re heading?”
“I wish.”
“Well, I’ll do a circle.” The man seemed upbeat. “I’ll let you know what I find.”
Cam disconnected only to scroll through his contacts for the next number he needed.
“You doing a BOLO?” the sheriff asked beside him.
“DMPD and Iowa State Patrol. Then I need to update my team.”
He picked up the radio mic. “I’ll do county.” After he’d made the announcement he glanced over at Cam for a second, his face set in determined lines. “This is it. Has to be.”
He didn’t answer, but Cam knew exactly what she meant. There’d been no sightings of the car Baxter had been driving at the gas station. He’d pulled the second Air Wing pilot off that duty when nothing came of it. Baxter hadn’t yet returned to any of the motel rooms they had staked out.
If they didn’t track the couple down in the next hour or two, he was beginning to fear that they never would.
* * * *
Vickie drove around the motel parking lot, looking for a secluded area to leave the car. She found what she was looking for in the portion of the lot reserved for hotel vehicles. Backing into a space between two Econoline vans bearing the motel’s logo, the car was as hidden from view as it was going to get.
They wouldn’t be staying long anyway.
“Room one-thirty-two.” She unzipped an exterior pocket on the backpack and withdrew a packet of motel room cards. She’d written the room numbers on the back, just to keep the damn things straight.
Finding the one she was looking for, she handed it to him. “Give me about ten minutes.” She walked away, turning the corner of the motel and counting windows until she found the one she’d used before. Casting a quick look around and seeing no one, she picked her way through the landscaping and slid the screen and window open.
Backing up to the open window, she braced her hands on the sill and gave a little hop. Then, with legs drawn up, she twirled on her butt until she was facing forward and jumped into the room.