by Sandra Brown
“What do you say, Ted?” she asked. “Will you do this for your family? Let me in so we can talk.”
“And when the cops show up?”
“I’m former FBI. I can talk to whoever’s in charge. They’ll listen to me. And they won’t put my life in danger. You’re a lot safer if they know you’re holding me at gunpoint than you are if I’m standing out here in the hall.”
“Fine.” That obviously prompted his cooperation. “Stand behind me,” he ordered his ex-wife and son.
A rustle as they complied. Sloane took that time to drop her tote bag and snatch her BlackBerry, changing the ring status from silent to loud.
“I’ve got a gun on Claire Hedgleigh,” Ted announced to Sloane through the door. “So if you try anything…”
“I won’t.”
A hard click, and the door opened a little—enough so Ted could scrutinize Sloane, and Sloane could see the woman Ted grasped before him, his pistol pressed to the side of her head.
“Turn around,” Ted ordered.
Sloane pivoted slowly, hands raised, so he could see she had nothing to use as a weapon.
“Why do you have a BlackBerry?”
“To talk to the FBI and tell them to hold their fire. I’ll put it down as soon as I’m inside. I won’t touch it unless you let me.”
That seemed to satisfy him. He angled his head slightly. “You two wait outside,” he told Kim and Sam. In one motion, he flung open the door, pushed his family out, and yanked Sloane in. He slammed the door shut, then leaned past her and flipped the bolt.
“Put down the phone,” he commanded Sloane. He waited until she’d complied. “Now talk. My plan was to take my family and get away before the cops got here. Now this bitch—” he jabbed Claire’s forehead with his pistol “—screwed everything up. How do I get out of here without killing her?”
“To begin with, you think about your wife and son.” Sloane was assessing him as she spoke. He’d been drinking, but he wasn’t drunk. He was average height and build. With her skills in Krav Maga, she could take him easily. All she needed was the right opportunity.
“You’re not a killer,” she continued. “You proved that by releasing the guests. Plus, your son is obviously fond of Claire. How do you think he would react if you shot her? He looks up to you. You’re his dad.”
That caused a slight softening of his jaw.
“Let me negotiate with the FBI,” Sloane suggested. “I’ll convince them to hold off while you reunite with your family.”
“And then what? They’ll storm the place and take me away the minute I’m not holding you and Claire at gunpoint.”
Sloane drew a slow breath, as if she were struggling with a big decision. “If I were still with the Bureau, I’d say yes. But I’m not. And, like I said, I think families should be together.” Another pause. “I assume you have an escape route?”
Ted nodded.
“Good. Then use it. That phone is going to ring any second. At that point, I’ll know the agents are in place. I’ll keep them talking. You take your family and run. I’ll buy you enough time to get away. In return, you leave Claire and me here, unharmed. Fair enough?”
He scrutinized her warily for a long time. “Yeah,” he said at last. “Fair enough. But I’ll be taking my gun with me. So if you decide to change your mind…”
“I won’t.” Sloane’s gaze flickered to Claire, hoping against hope that what Derek had just told her about the clairvoyant was true. If there was ever a time to pick up on life-or-death energy, now was it.
Claire gave an almost-imperceptible nod.
At the same time, Sloane’s phone rang. No surprise. Her ten minutes were up.
Quizzically, she looked at Ted, waiting for permission.
“Get it,” he directed.
She squatted slightly, reaching behind her and groping for her phone. On cue, Claire whimpered as if in pain and sagged. Reflexively, Ted’s head snapped around toward Claire.
In two lightning-quick strides, Sloane was on him. Simultaneously, her arm came up and she turned sideways so the trajectory of the gun would miss her if Ted took a shot. With her right hand she grabbed the top of the gun’s barrel while her left hand came up under the slide and grip, completing the trap. She snapped the gun up and back, intentionally breaking Ted’s trigger finger.
He gave a scream of pain and released Claire, who darted away the instant she was free. With Claire out of danger, Sloane yanked the gun from Ted’s hand, moved back and rotated the weapon until it was aimed directly at him.
“On the floor,” she ordered. “Slowly. Hands behind you.”
“You lying bitch!” he managed, clutching his throbbing hand.
“I said get down. Now.”
Her laser stare convinced him. He did as he was told.
“Claire, answer my cell,” Sloane instructed, walking over and straddling Ted from behind, shoving the gun in his back as she grabbed his wrists. “Tell Agent Fitzpatrick I’ve neutralized the offender. His team can take it from here.”
* * *
Derek made his way through the crowd, pulling Sloane to him as he gave a relieved but exasperated sigh.
“Only you,” he muttered, wrapping his arms around his wife. “A honeymoon hostage negotiation at gunpoint. I don’t have to tell you how many Bureau rules you broke.”
Sloane leaned back, her lips curved into a teasing smile. “I’m not back at Quantico yet. So breaking the rules doesn’t count. Only the outcome does. I’d say things turned out right.”
“And I’d say you’re going to age me before my time.”
A twinkle. “I know a way to keep you young.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Derek shot her that sexy grin of his. “Shall we get back to the honeymoon, Mrs. Parker?”
“Lead the way, Mr. Parker.”
* * * * *
SPIDER’S TANGO
William Simon
The premise is brilliant. When I realized what the conflict was, I thought, “Oh, my God!” It’s scary on numerous levels. ~SB
Here’s a piece of advice you won’t find in any manual, leaflet, monograph, self-help book, or national talk show: when an agent with the FBI’s Violent Crimes Unit opens an email, then spends the next ten minutes vomiting in the men’s room, do not under any circumstances lean across the desk and look at the screen…
* * *
At 4:00 a.m., the FBI’s Cyber Crime Division looks like any other office space, despite the inventive imaginations of Hollywood screenwriters. Computers and computer equipment dominated the floor, but it’s hardly the high-tech toy-land television would have us believe.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I walked in, Visitor badge clipped to my hastily snatched laptop bag, after receiving an abrupt cell phone call from the man standing in front of me.
“Kidnapping,” Jeff Keyes, the Special Agent in Charge of the office replied. “Missing child.”
My nerves twisted. Missing children were the worst.
“You have the manpower to handle that,” I said, referring to a time not so long ago when the CCD consisted of individuals who could turn a computer on and not much else.
We came to a stop in front of a double cubicle. Four monitors connected to four computers, their screens flashing with data. A woman with ash-blond hair was there, her fingers flying across the keyboard.
She paused and stood.
My heart kicked into an off-key but sincere version of the William Tell Overture. I couldn’t help smiling.
“Supervisory Special Agent Elizabeth Canton,” Jeff said. “Nicholas White.”
Her eyes flashed. “Nicholas.”
“Beth, it’s nice to see you.”
“You’ve met?” Jeff asked.
Beth looked at him, then back to me. “I knew him when his last name was Bianco,” she said. “He’s my ex-husband.”
Jeff’s eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t know you’d ever been married.”
“For about three hours,” I said before
Beth could reply. “In college. It was a long time ago.”
“Elizabeth’s the Behavioral Analysis Unit Coordinator out of Quantico,” Jeff explained. “She was here yesterday, giving a class.” He broke off and nodded his head at a younger man who walked in. “This is R. P. Bristol, Violent Crimes, recent transfer from Washington.
“Nicholas is an outside consultant,” Jeff told them both. “The Bureau uses him for, uh, special incidents.”
“I’ve heard your name,” Bristol said to me as we shook hands. “One of your cases is textbook at Quantico.”
Beth rolled her eyes, turning back to the screens. Something I couldn’t quite decipher played across her face as she pretended to ignore me completely.
The tension in the air between us was hard to miss. She was probably struggling with the urge to leap over the cubicle and have her way with me.
As the song says, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
“We’ve narrowed the video feed to the city, but no farther,” she said, all business. “Running through a tri-proxy, and from there it’s random. The Vesuvius, Buckingham’s and Altair’s, all three hotels offer free wireless. Then it all rotates again. It hasn’t landed long enough to grab it.”
A crude map of Las Vegas came on-screen. A red line kept moving, breaking off and starting over, an electronic Mobius strip.
On the left monitor a photograph came up on-screen, a posed school photo.
“The victim?” I asked.
“She and her parents came through the city yesterday, on the way to visit grandparents. As near as we can tell, the abduction occurred this morning, around 2:00 a.m.,” Beth said.
The child’s face rang a bell, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“Thirty minutes ago, this showed up on the internet,” she said.
I looked at the screen.
The little girl was in a Winnie the Pooh sleeper, sitting in a chair. The video quality was excellent. A wide leather strap held her in place.
She looked so tiny, so terrified.
The focus shifted to reveal an adult, height indeterminate, dark pants, white dress shirt and a full-face Frankenstein monster mask.
“Step right up!” he crowed as the features of the mask remained frozen. His voice was distorted but understandable.
“For auction tonight,” he continued. “One fresh young thing, guaranteed! Opening bid is forty million dollars! Think about it,” the creature went on. “For a mere forty million, you can own everything! Absolutely everything! You control it all, baby, all! If any police are watching this, don’t waste time trying to get a voiceprint. You won’t get a thing.”
“The website didn’t exist until half an hour ago,” Beth said. “The video plays, the address changes. Plays again, another change.”
An agent yelled into the room, “It’s happening!”
A television screen in the conference room showed an empty conference room waiting for people to arrive. “Nicholas—” Jeff turned to me “—this is closed circuit, direct link from Washington, eyes only. You understand?”
I nodded. On the screen, a distinguished-looking man came into the room, his eyes raw from lack of sleep. Or from crying.
I realized why I had almost recognized her, and glanced over at Jeff.
He nodded and whispered, “His granddaughter.”
A voice came over the speakers. “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
* * *
“‘Any attempt to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, she dies,’” the President read from a sheet of paper in front of him. “‘Any anything, she dies.’”
“What’s the Twenty-Fifth Amendment?” someone in the back asked.
“The President has the ability to remove himself from office if he deems it necessary,” Beth explained.
Jeff stepped closer to me, his voice dropping even lower than before. “Her name is Angela Frazell.” Jerking his head at the screen, he continued. “His daughter married some big-shot financier.”
“I remember now. It was a big society wedding, lots of press. What about the Secret Service?” I asked.
“Three agents assigned to the family are dead. The Service is looking to drink this guy’s blood when they get their hands on him.”
“What’s he trying to do?” I asked, jerking my thumb toward the other monitor.
“He’s selling her,” Jeff told me. “To the highest bidder.”
At my puzzled look, he continued. “This isn’t a child-porn thing,” he said, referring to past incidents we’d worked on together. “He’s gotten bids from al Qaeda, Red Brigade, Afghanistan and Beirut.”
“Terrific.” A terrorist group holding the president’s granddaughter hostage.
“I spoke with the director personally—she classed it Code Black. You were my first phone call.”
Code Black was Bureau slang for Gloves Off. It was a major step for an organization that prided itself on following the rules.
“Thanks. I think.”
“We’re good…you know that. You helped put together the Cyber Crime Division at Quantico,” Jeff said. “But this is beyond words.”
Agent Bristol was in front of a computer screen. “We’ve got an email, guys,” he said as he clicked the mouse before anyone could stop him. “It’s headed ‘If You Think I’m Kidding.’”
Bristol turned pale, his eyes bulging. Making an odd noise in the back of his throat, he flew out of his chair and sprinted for the men’s room.
No one said a word.
I’ve done a few stupid things in my day. According to Beth, doing stupid things is a specialty of mine.
In the interest of maintaining my status as Idiot of the Year, I leaned over and looked at the screen.
* * *
This is evidence, I told myself, using it as a mantra. This is data, nothing more. Only evidence. This is just evidence.
I jammed my hands into my pockets so no one would see them trembling.
The little girl in the photo wasn’t Angela.
She’d been someone, though.
Beth slid into the seat Bristol had vacated so abruptly, smothering her own shock.
“Print it out,” I said. “Headers, route info, everything. Get one of the tech guys in here and freeze that computer.” I was aware she knew procedure, but I couldn’t seem to stop talking.
She glanced at Jeff. “For the interim,” he said softly, covering his own emotions, “in this area, if it comes from Nicholas, it comes from Almighty God. Okay?”
She nodded, and a couple of mouse clicks later, she handed me the papers.
I took the last page, the one with the photograph on it, and without looking deliberately fed it into a nearby shredder.
I just needed a copy of the email to work from, and had no desire to see that image again in this lifetime.
What was left was:
From: [email protected]
Subject: If You Think I’m Kidding
Date: October 31, 5:25:47 AM PST
Received: from xm 2120.in.gotcha.com
(xm2.in-fec.whodaman.iamyerdaddy.com([218.41])
Bristol came back, looking embarrassed.
No one said a word about what had happened.
“He’s clever,” I said. “It says ‘whitehorehouse’ instead of ‘whitehouse.’”
“Which means?” Beth asked.
“He’s routing all over the place, but skilled enough to do his own headers,” I told her. “He’s making all this up in the original email. By the time it reaches us, it’s so scrambled there’s no telling where it came from.”
“Anything else?”
“He’s having fun, being cute,” I said. “He wants us to know he’s smarter than we are, there’s nothing we can do. His kung fu is better than ours. We can use that against him.”
I headed for a private area. “I need a secure network line,” I told Jeff over my shoulder. “No firewall, total isolation. I need room to move.”
Beth
followed me. “You’re on to something.”
“Maybe, but not enough to go into it yet.”
She leaned against a desk, folded her arms and looked at me. Almost as tall as me, stunningly beautiful, cheekbones that could cut diamonds. “Nicholas, right now, I’m willing to listen if you tell me it’s invaders from Mars.”
“How did we get here?” I asked her as I set my case on the table.
“What do you mean?”
“Last time I saw you,” I said, unpacking my laptop, “you were going to be an actress.”
She bit back a laugh. “I was an actress. Two straight-to-video slasher movies. Victim Number Four in the first one, the Unsuspecting Wife in the second.”
“Have to start somewhere.”
“No nudity limited my options,” she said. “I realized it wasn’t for me, so I went back to Virginia, finished law school and applied to the Bureau.”
“No nudity?” I echoed. “I don’t recall you as the shy type.”
Her cheeks reddened. “You were an exception. In a lot of ways.” She stared at me for a moment, and then said, “I transferred to Quantico a year ago. Here I am.”
“Older yet wiser, one assumes.”
She neatly turned the tables. “And you? When did you change your name?”
“The day we signed the papers, I came back for a bit. If your last name’s Bianco and you call Vegas home, people jump to wrong conclusions,” I said as I powered up the computer. “Moved to Houston a while back. I came back this week on vacation.”
“Just happened to be here?”
“Pretty much, yes. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Are you married?” she asked, ignoring my comment.
“One broken heart per lifetime is sufficient, thank you.”
“Nicholas…”
“I’m sorry, that was out of line,” I said. “Ancient history.”
Silence hung between us for a moment.
“You’ve done well,” she said. “I’m surprised we haven’t crossed paths before.”
“It’s a big Bureau,” I replied, not looking at her. “I’ve had some luck.”