by Robb, J. D.
“Good enough.”
“The director is in contact with the Swedish authorities, and Global. It’s obvious the investigation into Maj Borgstrom’s escape, and the murder of Dr. Filip Edquist—the possible foul play in the death of Dr. Dolph Edquist—were badly bungled. We’ll find out why.”
“Even better.”
“She won’t keep them alive long.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Children are . . . work. Even frightened children who may be cowed into obedience take time and effort. She may kill one. It’s how I would handle it.”
Eve jammed her hands in her pockets, nodded. “Yeah, I was thinking the same.”
“Kill one—halving the time and effort—and allowing her to send proof of life and death to her sister. Bring grief, panic, and a desperation to save the remaining child.”
“And it’s a hell of a scenario.”
“It’s also a logical one.”
“From my take, too. Let’s hope she isn’t logical.”
But the idea weighed on her.
She thought of Stella, the woman who’d given birth to her. If she’d been left alone with Stella, she’d never have survived. Too much time and effort, as Teasdale said. Richard Troy, her biological father, had kept her alive. It hadn’t stopped him from hurting her, raping her, torturing her—but he’d kept her alive because he’d seen her as an investment.
Which direction would Maj Borgstrom take?
She went back into the living area. “Listen up. Teasdale and Slattery will take over for Jenkinson and Reineke. Peabody, contact them, let them know—and tell them to pick up two more of those toys on their way here. We’ll keep communication open and complete between our team and the agents. Everything we know, they know.”
“Agent Slattery and I will afford your team the same cooperation,” Teasdale added. “We’ll move the MacDermits to a safe house in this area, to aid in that cooperation. We are, even now, in contact with Global re the suspect, and any and all information gleaned from that will be shared.”
“I’d like to have one of those boosted units,” Slattery said. “Our location will mean we may be able to pick up a signal.”
“Feeney, show Agent Slattery how that thing works. Peabody, have Jenkinson pick up four of those things. We’ll get a second one to you,” she told Teasdale.
“Callender will show you,” Feeney told Slattery, as he rose and moved over to Eve. “Roarke’s going to get us more data. I don’t know if it’ll add much, but we’ll have it. And he’s coming in.”
“I don’t—”
“I can use him,” Feeney interrupted. “Another big brain wired for e-work. And it’s his toy, Dallas. She’s had those kids better than fifteen hours now, and not a peep out of her.”
“Okay. You need him, you’ve got him. Right now, Baxter, take the unit we have left, take a walk. We’re going to cover the mile radius continually. The kid’s going to try to reach out sometime.”
HE ALREADY HAD, ONCE FROM INSIDE THE FORT, AND AGAIN after Gala tended to his cut. They didn’t have medicine or bandages like at home, but he’d remembered playing war with Daddy. Daddy had been wounded in a battle and showed Henry how to tie a cloth around his arm. He said it was a field dress. It didn’t make sense because it didn’t look like a dress. But the cut felt better when Gala tied a towel around it.
He was afraid she’d cut him with the knife again, or cut Gala. He was more afraid maybe she was an evil witch vampire because she’d licked his blood right off the knife. He’d snuck out of bed one night and seen part of a vid his daddy watched about vampires. And had nightmares after it.
Maybe she’d make him and Gala vampires, too.
They had to get away.
But no one answered when he called out for help.
CHAPTER SIX
Not an apartment, Eve thought as she hammered away at possible locations. Not a condo. Possibly a small building, lower-level unit, but most probably a detached unit, a house.
Somewhere she could get two kids inside without showing up on building security, without worrying about neighbors.
Would she keep the kids restrained? That didn’t seem practical, and wouldn’t explain why she’d taken clothes and toys.
If she bound them, she’d have to let them loose for the bathroom, for food.
“She wouldn’t see a couple of seven-year-olds as a risk, right? She’s bigger, stronger, and kids tend to do what an authority figure tells them. Especially if they’re scared.”
She had, until the end, until the pain and the terror he meant to kill her overcame everything else. But Eve wasn’t sure it applied for all or most, so she glanced at Peabody for confirmation.
“I’ve got a couple cousins who could have taken an adult down and left him begging for mercy when they were seven, but generally? Yeah. The adult’s in charge, in control.”
“So she probably doesn’t have them restrained—or if she has, they’re still free enough to play—or why take stuff? A room, a locked room, closed off—and she couldn’t put a couple of kids in a room near where other people live and work. Windows,” she added. “You could use privacy shields, but it’s risky.”
“A basement?”
“Maybe. A tightly sealed room, probably without windows or boarded and shielded windows. One door’s the smartest. She has to have easy access to it. And it has to be somewhere some bystander couldn’t wander into. We recanvass, a mile radius from the garage. I want officers paying attention to any single residences, any vacant buildings.
“She could, and likely did, walk around this neighborhood. People were used to seeing the sister, and wouldn’t think twice. She probably shopped around here, ate around here. On the recording, the kid said, ‘It says second.’ Second Avenue? He could’ve seen a street sign out the window. Let’s focus there.”
“I might have something.”
Eve shoved up from her jerry-rigged workstation, hurried to Callender.
“We’re getting a lot of little communications. Kids are out of school. In the listening area, we’ve probably got at least a dozen or more playing around with this thing. But I think . . .” She shook her head. “I can’t hold it. It’s weak . . . and it’s gone. I just can’t triangulate, Captain, it’s wavery, and there’s too much interference.”
“Clean it up, boost it,” Feeney ordered. “Let’s see if we can hear the transmission.”
“Working on it. It’s through Trueheart’s boosted unit. Yeah, I got that, cutie,” she said, Eve assumed, to Trueheart. “Hold your position. We might pick it up again. Let me work some magic here.”
Patience straining, Eve waited while Callender worked a keyboard manually. Behind her, Peabody rose to answer a brisk knock on the door. “Keep the nosy out,” Eve snapped. “Come on, Callender.”
“I’m getting it. It’s like trying to pull a whisper out of a hurricane.”
Then Eve heard it, indeed hardly more than a whisper. A knife . . . licked blood . . . make us vampires . . . hurry.
Eve whipped out her comm. “Trueheart, answer him. Keep him calm. Tell him we’re looking for him, but ask him if he can tell you anything about where they are. Anything. How it looks, sounds, smells. Make it fast.”
She heard Trueheart, his easy voice, call the boy by name.
“Hey, Henry, we’re going to find you. It’s going to be okay. Can you tell me where you are? What do you see, Henry, what do you hear? What—”
With her comm open, Eve heard the wavery response.
A room . . . two beds, no windows . . . make us eat cookies. Cake. Cut me. Hurts. Send good witch, hurry . . .
“Henry,” Trueheart began, but even the hum of the transmission dropped away. “He’s gone, Lieutenant. I’m sorry.”
“His battery’s low.”
Eve turned, saw Roarke behind her.
“Yeah.” Feeney hissed through his teeth. “I was afraid of that.”
“It’ll hold a charge for about twenty hours, depending on
usage, but he’s just a boy, isn’t he, and might not have charged it up recently.”
In his elegant business suit, his mane of black hair sweeping nearly to his shoulders, Roarke shifted to study the board. “I’ve seen their faces all over the reports, through the day. And hers.” He looked back at Eve. “I’ve brought some equipment that may add to what you have here, but the problem will remain, I think, the limitations of the toy he has, and the battery life of it.”
“He got through once. He’s going to get through again.”
“He seemed a smart and steady one for his age.” Roarke smiled a little. “We’ll bet on him then. I’ve brought some other supplies. Coffee.”
“Oh thank God.”
“And food’s on its way—pizza,” he added before Eve could object. “We’ll work better with food in us.”
“Everything’s better with pizza,” McNab claimed. “Hey, Baxter, let’s go out and haul in the new toys.”
Roarke took Eve’s hand briefly, squeezed it. “Well then, let’s see what we have.” And shedding the jacket of his suit, moved to join the e-team.
EVE SWITCHED OFF WITH TRUEHEART, TOOK THE BOOSTED unit. She needed the air, needed to walk.
Cold, she thought as the wind kicked at her. The days were colder now, and shorter. This one would be ending soon.
She knew what it was to be a child, alone and afraid in the dark, in the cold.
Using her earbud, she contacted Teasdale to check in.
“No communication as yet.”
“How are they holding up?”
“By a thin thread now. It helped to be able to tell them you’d captured a transmission from Henry. I . . . Yes, Tosha, it’s Lieutenant Dallas. She’d like to speak with you, Lieutenant.”
“All right. Put her on.”
“Lieutenant, please, have you heard any more?”
“Not yet. But I’m out right now, scanning for another transmission. We’re all working on this.”
“Gala. Did he say she was all right? Did he—”
“He didn’t say she wasn’t. We’ve got cops canvassing a mile radius. We strongly believe the children are inside that area, and they’re both alive and well.”
“If Ross and I could come home, if we could try to reach them ourselves—”
“You’re better where you are. Agents Teasdale and Slattery are experienced.” Terrified parents shuddering over her shoulder was the last thing she needed. “Your sister’s going to contact you at some point. You need to be ready. You need to do and say exactly what they tell you. And you need to trust us.”
“They’re just babies. They still believe in fairy tales, and that their daddy can keep the monsters away. Don’t let her hurt them. Please, don’t let her hurt them.”
“Nothing’s more important than getting your kids back safely. Believe it. I promise you, when we have more, you’ll know it. We won’t stop looking for them.”
Eve slipped the comm back in her pocket, covered ground, circled, backtracked. And stood scanning buildings as the day ended and the long night began.
When she rejoined the team she passed off to Reineke. The home, turned crime scene, turned temporary HQ, smelled of coffee and pizza and the carnival lacing of sugar from the donuts Jenkinson had brought in.
It smelled like cop, she thought.
“Peabody, let’s try what worked on the Reinhold case. We’ll generate a map, using the target area. Eliminate high-rises to start. Let’s look for single homes, or smaller buildings with basements.”
“I’ll get it going.” Peabody took a slug of coffee. Sometime while Eve had been walking she’d pulled her dark hair back in a stubby tail. “With Reinhold we knew he’d had only a couple days to secure a location. She’s had a year or better.”
“And Reinhold was days ahead of us,” Eve reminded her partner. “She’s only had hours. The kid said there were two beds in the room, no windows. Not that the windows were shut or boarded or shielded. No windows. And goddamn it, I know he’s just a kid and the intel could be wrong, but we’re going with it.”
“Okay. I got it.”
Roarke walked over, held out a slice of pizza. “Eat.”
“In a minute.”
“You’ve been at this all day. Eat. Take a break.”
“Those kids aren’t getting a break.” But she took the slice. “She knew they were away, the parents. She knew the nanny would let her in, thinking she was Tosha. She didn’t have to kill the nanny. Knock her out, restrain her, get the kids, get out. She killed the nanny because it would hurt the sister more, and because she likes killing.”
She bit into the pizza, thinking, thinking. “The symbol—she carved the pentagram into the nanny, like she did with her father, and later with the doctor she killed. It means something.”
Eve circled around. “Tosha—the mother—said the kids still believed in fairy tales. In her way, so does Maj Borgstrom. Her sign, on her kills. Her need to eliminate her sister so she . . . gains power? I think it’s that as much as the obsession with being the only one.
“She’d had enough time to observe the household, the dynamics of it. I say she knew her sister and the nanny had a strong relationship. Maybe . . . sisterly? I don’t know. I haven’t had time to give the dead nanny any attention. It’s not right. It’s disrespectful.”
“Bollocks.”
“It’s not—”
“It is,” he interrupted. “How long had she tended the children?”
“Over six years. Almost as long as they’ve been alive.”
“And you say she and the mother—and I assume the father as well—had a strong and personal relationship.”
“Yeah, that’s my take from their reaction to her death. It hit hard.”
“Is it your take the nanny—what was her name?”
“Darcia Jordan. She was twenty-nine. She had parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. Two sisters. A niece and two nephews.”
And she berated herself for not giving the dead her attention? Roarke thought.
“Would you say Darcia loved the children, or was it just a job?”
“She loved them. The wit—her friend—her statement, the next-of-kin’s statement, the parents.’ Yeah, she loved the kids.”
Because he could see the frustration and worry, he skimmed a hand over her hair. “And wouldn’t she want you to focus all your time and energy, your skill, on bringing them home safe?”
“I know that in my head, but—”
Before she could evade, and knowing she’d object, Roarke pressed his lips to hers. “You’re standing for her, Eve. And you’ll bring her justice when you bring the children she loved home again.”
“No kissing on duty.”
“I’m not on duty. I’m a civilian.” He smiled at her. “But I do see how shocked the badges in the room are at such a display.”
Since work went on without a hitch—or a smirk—she didn’t have much ground to stand on. But the principal remained. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing some geek work?”
“I have done, and will do. We’re on shifts at the moment, waiting for the boy to transmit again. We should be able to amplify the transmission, and clean out any noise.”
“Can’t we home in on it, like we could on a standard ’link?”
“But it isn’t a standard ’link, is it?” Roarke dealt with some frustration of his own. “He’s just the age group, Henry is, it’s targeted for. Too young for a ’link, too old to settle for a unit that just makes noise, just sets off a recording. He can talk, real time, to his mates down the block, or play games—play games with those friends as well, in real time, or run up his own scores, wait for them to have a go.”
“I know Feeney took one of them apart, but maybe you should. It’s your thing.”
“I didn’t design the bloody toy. I manufacture it. He’s more than capable of sussing out the workings, and I’ve put him together with the design team. All I can do is lend a hand, and a bit more high-powered equipment.”
<
br /> Frustrated, she thought. He was every bit as frustrated as she. They were combing the area, scouting it foot by foot. Generating maps, poring over data and time lines.
But their biggest lead was a seven-year-old with a toy.
“What else does it do? It records, right? He left that disc.”
“It does, yes. Again in a limited way. He could do a bit of schoolwork on it, checking math and letters, playing match games and simple brain teasers, adventure games and the like. He can photograph or—”
“It takes pictures?”
“It does. Rather decent ones considering.”
“Can he transmit them?”
“Ah.” Realization dawned in his eyes. “If he’s learned how, he could.”
“Okay, okay, we can work with that. Peabody, how’s that map coming?”
“It’s coming.”
“Trueheart, work with Peabody.” She turned to Roarke, lowered her voice. “Can you and McNab handle that hardware for a while?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Feeney, Callender, you need to take a shift on the canvass.”
“It’s been nearly two hours since he transmitted.” Callender rubbed her eyes. “He could try again any minute.”
“McNab and Roarke will handle it from here. Geeks walk, too. There’s a twenty-four/seven market near the southwest corner of this block.” She dug in her pocket for credits and cash. Frowned at the amount.
Roarke barely sighed. “How much?”
“I don’t know. Enough for bottled water, tubes—”
“Cherry fizzy!” McNab called out.
“I wouldn’t mind one of those,” Trueheart added.
“Fine, fine, fizzies galore. Show the photos again. Do a sweep, bring back supplies.” When her ’link signaled, she pulled it out, glanced at Roarke. “Thanks. Put in an expense chit.”
“I’ll be sure to do that,” he said dryly, and handed Callender cash.