To Catch a Thief

by Christina Skye

  Nell couldn’t seem to hear anything more. Her hands shook and the cell phone dropped somewhere in the grass.

  Another prick at her ear.

  The ground tipped hard.

  Cold fingers caught her as she fell.

  DAKOTA GLARED at the side door of the pub, then looked back at Izzy. “What is taking her so long?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. Sometimes women need time for whatever it is they do.” Izzy crossed his arms, watching two sheep wander past a little stone fence.

  Dakota checked his watch, then strode toward the side door. He heard a plane overhead and the quiet hum of a passing truck.

  No screams. No reason for the sudden prickling at the back of his neck.

  The corridor inside was empty. He knocked on the bathroom door and called Nell’s name, then looked inside.

  The bathroom was empty.

  DAKOTA SPRINTED back outside, checking the parking lot while he waved to Izzy. “She’s gone. Damn it, she was here four minutes ago.”

  “I’ll look inside.” Teague was already moving. “Check the far side of the building.”

  Everything looked normal until Dakota came to the back service entrance. He bent down, frowning at the marks of three pairs of shoes in the grass.

  One of the prints belonged to Nell.

  Beside the print he saw the glint of metal. Her cell phone was still open, and he lifted it carefully, scanned the LED screen and saw that a call was in progress. In seconds he was listening to the muffled, recorded message left on her own voice mail.

  Her voice sounded thready and anxious.

  “Eric, what was in the syringe…”

  Another voice came, this one male. “I had to help them…”

  Eric. Her climbing partner.

  “Teague, over here.”

  Dakota scanned the nearby fields. Two furniture trucks lumbered past, half hidden by a tall hedgerow. He jumped the small stone wall as Teague emerged around the side of the pub.

  “The furniture trucks.”

  “I’m on it.” Izzy looked down as his cell phone rang. “Yes, sir. Lieutenant Smith is on his way. He’ll be at the chopper in ten minutes.” He snapped the phone shut. “I’ll find her, Dakota. You need to catch that chopper.”

  Dakota watched a red dairy van turn at the far side of the square. “Teague, she must be—”

  Izzy pulled out a Sig Sauer. “Let me do my job, Dakota. You go do yours.”

  Dakota watched him jump in and gun his black Range Rover, fishtail onto the road and race after the furniture trucks. Nell had to be close. He could feel it.

  And he had to leave her.

  Because the mission always came first.

  Fury warred with every feeling. His hands fisted.

  And then, though it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, he buried his feelings, grabbed his gear bag and pulled out his keys.

  Izzy had forced the two furniture trucks off the road and a police car siren was just sounding in the distance as Dakota drove away to meet his chopper.

  AS THE OPPOSITE corner of the village, a Federal Air truck moved down a long lane hidden by hedgerows. The driver knew his orders.

  The woman’s motionless body was hidden beneath a neat layer of baskets and freshly cut flowers. Every box was tagged and invoiced for delivery to a luxury flower shop in London.

  Nell’s climbing partner appeared to be asleep in the front passenger seat. A single blow to the head had halted his stammering protests.

  The driver drove without haste. He was to dump the American man, bound and gagged, at the bend of the river ahead and continue north to meet his waiting transport.

  He would be in Scotland with the woman before noon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN she’s not there?” Dakota had been sidelined while the military pilot made preparations for takeoff, checking gauges and completing final paperwork.

  Fighting anger, he tried to work through scenarios of what could have happened to Nell. “I saw her, Izzy. It can’t be more than ten minutes ago. She said she was going inside for tea.”

  “They must have been waiting nearby. Maybe they triangulated the cell phone call she received and were watching the area.” Izzy’s voice was clipped. “She started recording a message and dropped the phone, which was damn smart. It was Eric, her climbing partner. He’d been watching her for several months, even during your climb up in Scotland. He could be reporting to Gonsalves, or someone working for him. Her father might have had second thoughts, or maybe they want her expertise for the auction. She’s a one-stop shop for conservation assessment or authentication of the painting.”

  “Get her back,” Dakota said harshly. “I don’t want her anywhere near that auction.”

  “Working on it. I’ve got people at every major intersection between here and the airport in Hastings.”

  “The chip,” Dakota said. “Her transmitter should still be in place. Why can’t you bring up a signal?”

  Silence.

  “Talk to me, Teague. Damn it, that transmitter was checked out. Ryker said it could withstand direct immersion in water, electrical short circuits and temperature spikes. Why can’t you track her?”

  “There’s no need to yell,” Izzy said quietly.

  “Who’s yelling?” Dakota saw the pilot turn and stare at him oddly. He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “If anything happens to her—”

  “It won’t. I won’t let it. And her chip signal stopped at the same time she vanished. Hold on.”

  Dakota heard muffled voices, and Izzy returned. “One of my people reports that a truck driver saw Nell speaking to someone. By the description, it was Eric Burson. She walked out into the parking area with him, a Fed Air truck pulled up, and when our contact glanced back Nell was gone. That’s as much as we have. I’ve got an alert out covering this area and all Fed Air trucks will be stopped. The bad news is that they could have some kind of radio frequency and electrical shielding for their vehicles. We know the Koreans have come up with a powerful portable system.”

  “Which would explain the loss of her chip signal once she was inside the truck.”

  But Dakota wasn’t thinking about electrical shields or Korean electronics. All he wanted to know was that Nell was safe. He glared at the helicopter, torn between duty and emotion, every soldier’s frightening scenario come to life.

  He couldn’t think about Nell. If the October 12th terrorist group bankrolled thirty-five million into a secret offshore account, there was no telling how many more people would die in bombings and kidnappings. But he couldn’t walk away without assurances either. “Teague, she’s…” He took a sharp breath. “She’s in my life now. Find her.”

  “I’m on it. Repeat, I will track her down. Meanwhile, your orders remain operational. Is that clear?”

  Dakota’s jaw locked. Fury seethed up. But then he closed down, the way he had to close down.

  He knew the facts. No one could do a better job of tracking Nell than Izzy would. Dakota didn’t like it, and his mind and being rebelled, but the soldier took charge and forced the man aside. “Understood. I’m boarding now.” His voice hardened. “Keep her away from that auction, Teague.”

  “That’s a roger, Navy. I’m on it.”

  Teague didn’t make promises lightly. He would deliver, Dakota knew.

  All he could do now was climb aboard the chopper without looking back.

  JORDAN MACINNES WOKE with the taste of blood in his mouth. When he tried to sit up, every muscle screamed as if he’d been kicked for a few hours.

  Not kicked. Hit with a Taser.

  Groggy, he inched onto his side. Images of Martim Gonsalves’s remote security device flashed through his muddled mind. What had happened to send the man into a fit? Had the worker really been an embedded spy? And if so, for whom? Brutal and paranoid, Gonsalves had decided to strike first and ask questions later.

  His stomach roiling, MacInnes fought his way upright, bracing his bac
k against cold stone. He was in some kind of cell, his hands cuffed. Water trickled nearby.

  He heard a small movement and saw a glint of light. A door creaked somewhere beyond his range of vision, and a man peered in, shining a light across the narrow cell.

  Jordan saw that there was nothing else in the space. No bed, no chair. No way to escape.

  “Let me out. I need to speak to Mr. Gonsalves. I—”

  The man walked away without any sign of interest.

  MacInnes closed his eyes, sagging against the rough stone wall. They’d taken his shoes and his belt and his watch. He didn’t have a clue how long he’d been unconscious. Thankfully he’d hidden his cell phone before he’d gone to see Martim or he’d be dead now.

  As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw the outline of a second cell across from his. A dark form lay unmoving on the floor.

  “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Can you hear me?”

  There was no answer.

  Ignoring the burning pain in every muscle, MacInnes struggled to his feet. He reached along the iron bars until he felt the outline of the lock.

  Solid metal. With time, he could pick it, but he had no idea when his jailor would return. His fingers moved through the darkness, then closed around the heavy metal chain woven in and out through the steel bars.

  No time.

  Leaning over, MacInnes began to cough violently, his body rigid. It was easy to make the sound realistic, easy to appear as if he was choking because his pain was real. So was the blood that he coughed up. Quickly, he pried off the porcelain cap at his left molar.

  When the outside door opened again, he was huddled in the corner, shaking, struggling to breathe. “I n-need to see Martim. Now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  THEY FOUND the empty express truck abandoned nine miles away from the pub. Izzy’s men had responded to a call from a local couple, out walking their Pomeranians when they saw the truck angled into a ditch. The inside of the truck was filled with flowers and boxes, all tagged for delivery, but no businesses existed with the names on the boxes.

  The bad news? No sign of Nell.

  Izzy was searching the ground near the truck, looking for fallen bits of paper or other clues when his laptop, open inside the Land Rover, whined a noisy alert. He sprinted back to the car, scrolled through two screens and watched a cursor blink, heading northwest.

  Nell’s chip was broadcasting again. According to Izzy’s laptop screen, she was approximately fifteen miles away, somewhere in southern Surrey. Izzy frowned as he checked the GPS and noted her rate of speed—135 miles per hour.

  Light aircraft. Probably a small, private charter. Now he had a location. He triggered a receiver plugged into the dashboard of the Land Rover and tuned the unit, listening to the crackle of static. With Nell’s chip operational again, he could activate the tiny transceiver in the chip’s outer housing.

  He worked the dial until the static cleared. Abruptly the drone of motors filled the Rover, followed by the sound of voices, barely audible over the motor’s throb. Izzy tinkered a little more, then pulled on headphones to listen.

  “She still out back there?”

  “Like a zombie. Don’t know what they gave her, but it must be heavy-duty stuff. How long till we pass Gatwick?”

  “Clear in ten minutes.”

  “Any contact from the west?”

  “Nada. All quiet.” A man laughed. “Easiest money I ever made. With luck, I’ll be knocking back a Guinness Extra Stout in Portree by six.”

  Static crackled. “—idea who’s paying our tab?”

  The other man cleared his throat. “Better not to ask. This bunch is touchy about questions. Foreign, that’s all I know, but U.S. dollars are U.S. dollars anywhere. What’s that engine reading?”

  Izzy flipped a button, replaying the muffled conversation, which soon veered into an argument about whether Manchester United would trounce Sheffield in the following week’s playoff games.

  Shifting his earphones, he opened an encrypted cell phone, dialing an old friend at the British Department for Transport. In minutes he would have airplane ID and flight plans, along with name of the owner.

  Time for Plan B, he thought gravely.

  NELL WASN’T ASLEEP, though she hadn’t moved for at least twenty minutes. She heard two men talking, their conversation unclear over the whine of the motors. She had woken to find her legs and feet bound, a blanket over her body as she huddled in the cramped backseat of a small plane. She was still dazed from whatever they had given her in the syringe, but with every minute her thoughts grew clearer.

  She forced herself to stay calm. Dakota and Izzy would be looking for her, but she wouldn’t wait around to be rescued. She had to be headed to Scotland, given the bits of conversation she had picked up. Portree was the capital of the Isle of Skye, so their final destination must be close. Once she was at the castle, she could use her knowledge of the layout to find her father. Assuming that the castle was where they were taking her.

  She was still in shock at the memory of her climbing partner’s betrayal. Eric had always been easygoing, and he’d never broken any laws that Nell knew about. If anything, he had been overprotective on their many climbs together. But you never really knew the people around you.

  Nell frowned. She was certain she knew Dakota after only a few days spent together. She knew the force of his will and the weight of his sense of duty. She never doubted that she would see him again or that somehow they would make a future together.

  But first she had to escape.

  Thunder crackled somewhere to her left. The airplane dipped slightly, then hammered its way north.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Isle of Skye

  Northern Shore

  DAKOTA FLOATED in the cold water, one brown speck among hundreds. Wind tossed the gray swells, rocking the ocean kelp bed beneath him.

  With a camouflaged pair of Zeiss binoculars at his chest, he rose and fell on the restless waves, watching the castle that loomed above the nearest headland.

  The SEAL opened to the patterns of weather and sky, noting the movements of the castle’s security teams and timing their rotations, watching late-afternoon cloud patterns and changing tidal flows. All those factors would come into play that night.

  Tilting the binoculars, he studied the castle’s rear wall. He had climbed the far corner a dozen times in his mind, pulling himself silently up toward the high parapet. Now two guards crossed the crenellated wall, and another guard passed on a lower tower. All carried radios and binoculars and used them frequently, he noted.

  Professionals. Dakota turned his head, picking up high heat readings in two outbuildings attached to the east side of the castle. The heat indicated some kind of heavy equipment in operation there. The doors were guarded by three uniformed men carrying automatic weapons.

  He watched every movement at the compound, settling into the terrain, listening to the cries of passing seabirds. He had already verified the best point to enter the water pipes that connected to the moat after making certain neither the pipes nor moat had regular guard surveillance.

  The water stirred beneath him, rocking the kelp bed. A thirty-foot basking shark raced past, fin breaching the surface, dragging Dakota along in the force of its wake. The sudden violent turbulence in the water reminded him that nothing was ever final, and the best plans could be shattered in an instant.

  He cradled the waterproof binoculars, waiting for the wake to recede. He made his mind still as the gray water and racing clouds, watching his target. There were things he hadn’t told Nell or Draycott, under orders from Ryker. The mission was not what she or anyone else believed. Only Izzy knew the full scope of his dangerous assignment.

  As Dakota drifted in the cold waters, he thought about his orders and how to negotiate the rocky slope between duty and honor.

  NELL CAUGHT the smell of the sea as they carried her out of the airplane. She was careful not to move, fei
gning sleep while rough hands shoved her into what appeared to be a cold metal compartment. She resisted the urge to fight, knowing it would be useless against the three men she had heard talking after the plane landed.

  She heard the roar of a motor and realized she was inside the trunk of a car. Even locked away, she caught the rich tang of the sea. Her elbow hurt and she winced as the car bumped over pitted roads.

  When the car finally slowed, Nell made certain that her jacket was pulled up and her hair covered her face. She didn’t open her eyes until she was lifted outside. Seabirds wheeled overhead as she took a quick glance and saw gray walls looming on a rocky slope, while the dark curve of the ocean yawned in the distance.

  Scotland.

  Then she was inside the walls, carried up a long set of steps and tossed onto a small bed.

  The heavy wooden door banged shut and a metal lock rang loudly as it was snapped in place.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER two black limousines circled to the end of the castle’s gravel driveway. Uniformed guards opened the doors and ushered in the first group of arrivals. None of the well-dressed “guests” seemed surprised that the guards were heavily armed, and no one protested when their bags and bodies were searched for weapons.

  NELL’S DOOR SHOOK. She kept her eyes closed as the handle turned.

  Hard fingers gripped her hair and yanked her upright. “Time to wake up. Someone wants to see you.”

  Nell kept her movements slow, as if she was still groggy. She heard the tap of footsteps.

  “Nell, wake up. Honey, what have they done to you?”

  She stiffened as she heard her father’s voice. Opening her eyes, she saw his ashen face. He looked ten years older, gaunt and worried yet trying not to show it.

  Nell reached out a trembling hand, unable to speak with the force of her emotions.

  “Are you hurt? What did they do?”

  She shook her head. “I—I’m fine. A little bruised maybe.” Despite all her efforts, her eyes filled with tears. “You’re alive,” she whispered. “I was so afraid…”