by Cat Connor
I don’t think I hid the shock I felt fast enough. I remembered the ‘friend’ requests; I’d assumed it was some assistant who added everyone with Grange in their music preferences, no matter how far down the list it was.
I stopped the treadmill before my feet forgot to move. I could not believe he knew who I was. He was the super-famous lead singer of Grange. Everyone knew who he was.
“You and your husband opened the Butterfly Foundation; I thought that was an amazing thing to do.” He continued, “I was at a fund raiser in DC for your Foundation. You read some of your poetry.”
Speechless.
Utterly speechless.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I croaked. Okay was way too big a stretch. As far as I could tell, I was in the midst of one hell of a hallucination.
He grabbed two bottled waters from the refrigerator by the window and handed one to me. “Maybe we should sit down,” Rowan said, holding out his hand to take mine.
I let him help me. It wasn’t as if I had a choice. My legs were about to give way. An electric charge passed from my hand to his. He grinned.
As soon as I stepped off the treadmill, I let go his hand.
We walked together to a sitting area. He undid the screw top of the water bottle in my hand and handed the bottle back to me. Our fingers brushed. Static flew.
“That’s twice,” he said. Several long drinks later, I noticed a sudden volte face from angry, to feeling like a complete idiot. He was still talking.
“Tell me about your poetry.” He leaned towards me. “Are you still writing? I loved the book.” Rowan sat back, then leaned forward again. “The raw energy, the pain, the power and the feeling of hope; some poems filled me with absolute joy and others with despair.” His hands punctuated his words. The impact of his words was greater with his expressive movements.
He loved our book.
Shut up!
I gulped down some more water. His voice carried on exalting our praises, terrifying me with direct quotes. I could feel Mac cringing from his grave.
Surely I wasn’t sitting in a hotel gym about to discuss our pathetic poetry with a rock star? Things like that do not happen in real life.
I nodded like a retard and failed several attempts at coherent speech but decided I was in the midst of a psychotic break, which comforted me.
He launched into another poem,
“Stolen …
When the world is done,
lost in time too tired to run,
a safe place came to be …
Feeling your words surround me,
letting tears cascade …
Hoping my dues in life are paid.”
Ice formed in my veins.
I stopped him hoping my voice didn’t shake as I said, “I’d rather you didn’t quote that one.”
The last time I’d read that poem was when Hawk scrawled parts of it over bloody crime scenes.
Rowan Grange reciting that poem scared me. Frosty blood clogged my arteries as my mind tossed up lines of poetry ringing the carnage of the crime scenes. I tried to concentrate on the song lyrics I could still hear in my head but somehow they made it worse. He looked around the room.
“Is your husband here with you …?” His voice trailed off as he looked at me with the slow dawning of someone with both feet in his mouth. “He was killed … I’m sorry … I remembered the news broadcasts once I’d opened my mouth. Oh Lord, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, me too,” I replied, forcing air into my stiff lungs. Death is such a conversation stopper. I tried to divert him from the awkwardness. “Did you really like our stuff?”
“Yes,” he said with a grin. “I have a copy of your book with me. Would you sign it?”
He was so sincere and so normal that should’ve been the point at which I woke up. There was no logical explanation for this rift in reality.
Why would someone like him want my autograph?
Mac’s voice rang in my head, ‘Go with it Ellie. It’ll be okay. It’s all about the music.’
It was almost too much. I was well used to having an extraordinary life but that much crazy was beyond my comprehension.
“Would you? I didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the Butterfly Foundation fundraiser, or I would’ve asked you to sign it then.”
“Absolutely.” Sure why not? None of this is real.
“I’d like to hang out with you again sometime.”
There it was again, the speechless thing. I hoped I smiled but I suspected it was more like a grimace.
“You wanna run some more?” he asked.
I shook my head. I wanted the floor to swallow me whole.
“What room are you in?” he asked, looking around as if searching for something.
“Ten twenty three.” I followed his eyes as they stopped on a desk by the door.
“We’re on the same floor,” he said. “Wait right there.”
Rowan sidestepped several pieces of exercise equipment and made his way over to the desk, paused for a few seconds then came back carrying a piece of paper which he gave to me.
Two phone numbers. One New York landline and one cell phone.
Before the floor opened up in time-honored fashion, I pulled a card from the pocket in my sweat pants and passed it to him.
Rowan looked up from the card and in that gap in time, I saw a deep knowledge and an understanding of life in his eyes. I wondered for a brief moment where the hell he found it.
“Your cell is global?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Mine too, makes it easier for everyone.”
No doubt it does.
Then he said, “I’d like to get together and discuss a few ideas when we both have more time.”
All the words fell out of my head. He’d done it again.
Mac would’ve laugh so hard if he could’ve seen how speechless I’d been rendered by this guy.
Sure, I’ll get together with Rowan Grange … just as soon as hell freezes over. I could imagine his management and publicist having a conniption over any involvement with the FBI.
The urge to write brewed and seethed the more I thought about Mac. His ghostly hand reached out from beyond the grave and smacked me upside the head. My life snapped into place so loudly I was sure he’d heard.
“Meanwhile, I have a job to do.” I tapped the piece of paper.
With a bottle of water in my hand, I headed out the door.
“Enjoy the rest of your workout,” I called over my shoulder.
Nine
What Happened To You
On my way to my room, words swirled in some semblance of order. I hurried through the door heading right for the bedroom. It was still early. Not even nine in the morning yet. I struggled to remember what day it was and eventually recalled it was Tuesday.
Doc, Sam and Lee were still reading files. I paused for a second and looked at them. Doc wasn’t around before I was kidnapped. A movie clip ran in slow motion through my mind, I was wrong. Doc was there when Cassie died. He was around before I was kidnapped. But he couldn’t have known the name of the cop who was supposed to meet us – he wasn’t Delta A then. But I knew who did – going there would be worse than anything else I’d ever done.
Lee called out, “How was the run?”
Spell broken.
“Good. Showering!” I replied and closed the bedroom door behind me. Not Sam and Lee, they’re family.
I scrabbled through the nightstand and retrieved a legal pad and pen. On the paper I wrote,
Gone.
It culminated in the end
Dripping off the edge of life
The ooze that was primordial slime
Is all that’s left at the end of time.
Full circle?
Does it matter?
The words glared at me, full of rage and despair. They were not what I wanted to see at all. I slid the pad and pen back into the drawer. I was hoping for something with less darkness and despair an
d more rainbows. It occurred to me that I might not be ready for rainbows yet, so I set my sights on grayish clouds instead. A bit of lightning would add color. I dropped the piece of paper with Rowan’s phone number on my bed. I doubted it was even him I spoke to. The whole thing was too bizarre. Ten minutes later, I emerged from the shower, clean and refreshed. The piece of paper was still there. Rowan Grange knew the poem Hawk used. I stored both his phone numbers in my phone. It’d make it easier to get hold of him should anything else come to light. Mac’s voice reiterated his earlier comment, ‘It’s all about the music.’
The team was still going over files, comparing ours with the New Zealand Police files. Looking for something that would point us to where Hawk was or where he’d strike next or even confirm it was him. This guy was good; I doubted we’d find him by tracking his past but we had to start somewhere. My techies back home sent a list of New Zealand-based servers, which had shown up during the time-consuming ping and traces I had requested.
With a blue marker pen, I wrote the missing girls’ names in bold print on a clean piece of paper. Tasha Cravino, Samantha Rowe, Abbey Jenkins and lastly, Nicola Gallagher. They had to have something in common.
The first three girls didn’t have a Foundation link but little Nicola’s mom was in a psychiatric facility. Sam handed me coffee and file summaries.
“This is not going as well as we hoped,” he said, yawning.
“I gathered that,” I replied as I opened the file and simultaneously sipped the hot coffee. “We gotta stop this before the real killing starts.”
What we’d seen so far was nothing, compared with how messy and horrific the killing was last time we tangled with Hawk.
“Hey, Sam. There is something linking these kids. We have to find out what it is.”
I leaned forward and tapped a few keys on the open laptop on the coffee table.
“What would bring Hawk to Christchurch at this time of year?” I asked, generally.
“Schools are out, summer holidays over here,” Sam said.
“Yeah, but schools are out everywhere in New Zealand … not just Christchurch. Why Christchurch?” I grabbed the files on the first two missing kids. I intended to add them to my mix and give them a good stir. I flipped through the files. “There is no mention here of either girl coming to Christchurch, or going away, at all. But we don’t know if those questions were asked.”
The problems we faced needed consideration. The girls were all about the age of the airport mob, within two years at least, which put them smack into tween land. Not quite a teenager but not a little kid. Young teens were an odd bunch, susceptible to major crushes and hysteria. It seemed a bit strange to me that such young girls liked an older band like Grange.
“How to catch a pre-teen girl without too much fuss …?” I muttered aloud. “Lee would’ve had no trouble at all convincing any of those airport kids to go somewhere with him.”
“How to catch a kid whose main caregiver is bipolar …?” Lee said. “Try a little kindness. Even without looking this good … shit, even Sam could convince a kid to go with him.”
Sam grinned. “Thanks bro.”
“I have a feeling that Foundation link with Nicola is not the whole story. There is something else. She’s the only one with a bipolar mother,” I said, feeling a nicotine craving insidiously asserting itself.
Some days I still wanted a cigarette. This was one of them.
“You think Hawk is using the concert?” Lee said. His lip curled into a disgusted snarl.
How very Elvis of him.
“It’s entirely possible. Shit, if I were him, I would,” I replied. “If I was after teens I’d be haunting concerts all over the world or maybe I’d just be a Catholic priest.”
Mac’s words echoed in my head. ‘It’s all about the music.’
“Let’s hope you never go to the dark side,” Lee said.
Doc seemed to be watching me intently, though I couldn’t think why. I wiped my hand across my mouth, maybe it was toothpaste residue.
“Not sure about the age range they expect at these things though. Do young teens have the money for stadium concert tickets? Wouldn’t they be fairly pricy?” I said. “If I was hunting little girls I’d be chasing that Beiber kid’s fans, not Grange ones.”
“Now you got me trying to remember how much I paid last time I went to a concert.” Lee paused for thought. “I think I paid about a hundred and ten. What’s that over here?”
Sam tapped at his laptop keys then said, “That’s about a hundred and forty-four NZ dollars.”
“So the answer would be … probably not. Their folks maybe obliging or even taking them along with them,” Doc suggested.
I leaned back in my seat and smiled. “How does a band that’s been together seventeen or so years have such a diverse fan base?”
Doc got into the swing of things and offered more input, “Here’s a thought – these kids have actually grown up with the music. Their parents probably listen to it.”
“Okay, so thinking about the crazy airport fans … and the longevity of the band, it’s possible that young teens will be attending the show,” I added.
From Christchurch, Hawk could fly direct to the Middle East; we knew from the last time we tango’d this guy traveled regularly to the Middle East. That seemed to be a plausible reason for picking Christchurch last, so maybe it wasn’t concert related.
“Phone!” I demanded. Sam dropped my cell into my hand. I called Misha.
“Privet! Ellie.”
This time he beat me to it.
“How strong is Hawk’s connection with the Middle East?”
“I think very. My feeling is his mother is Russian. We think his father is Arab but we have no proof. He has Syrian ties also.”
“Can you find out where his father is from and if Hawk still has close Arab ties? It might help us stop the girls leaving this country.” I paused to think then said, “Has there been any activity at the orphanages?” Hawk had used orphanages in Russia to hide kidnapped children. We suspected he was also conducting the sale of children via the orphanages.
“I have surveillance in place. No one is reporting anything, no unusual activity so far.”
“It may not be unusual, Misha. That could be why it’s so hard to spot.”
“Da, you have a point. I’ll take a trip out there myself and I will call on the other matter as soon as I know. Where are you now?”
“We’re in Christchurch, New Zealand.”
“Last known destination for Hawk was Christchurch, New Zealand, but we do not know if that is reliable.”
“I think it is. I have the techs at the Foundation compiling a list for you of all ISPs that have logged onto the Foundation servers from Europe; they might match up with those seventeen missing kids. You should have it soon but I don’t think it will help. I think he’s using music – concerts to be more accurate – I just don’t know yet how he’s making first contact with the kids.”
“Dosvidanija.”
I hung up. Sam and Lee waited for me to speak.
“Why would young girls like those at the airport follow an established band like Grange?”
“By ‘established’ you mean ‘old’, right?” Sam replied.
“Yeah. They’re not exactly a boy band or what I would’ve considered a band tweens would like.”
“True,” Lee said.
“Maybe they’re looking for sugar daddies,” I said with a smile. “Or just daddies. These kids have no fathers in their lives.”
Doc shook his head slowly. “You astound me, Conway.”
I moved on. Plans were forming; ideas were flowing. “Now, let’s get this show on the road. Do they do Amber Alerts here? Are they in place? If not, find out what they do instead and do it! We need to blanket the media with pictures. I want pictures at the airport – posters would be good too. I want it so you can’t turn around in this town without seeing these kids’ photos with a big freaking caption that reads ‘missing c
hild.’ Get me an interview time with that mother. I don’t give a shit how bad a state she’s in, I need to talk to that woman. I want to know what music these kids listen to. Who their friends are. Where they spend every second of every day. National media should be encouraged to run stories on these children: on the off chance they’re not in Christchurch but en route. Get onto Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, any other networking site that kids hang out on. This isn’t a big country: our odds are good for finding four missing teens.”
I paused and looked at Lee. “We need Sean O’Hare; he knows more about the system here.” Initially I wasn’t entirely comfortable with Sean O’Hare showing up and offering his assistance. There were things about Sean my team thought were rumors but I knew were true.
He was ex-CIA. Sean O’Hare took part in assassinations, renditions and anti-terror operations all over the world. We’d worked together before. Believing someone within the FBI was feeding Hawk, I knew Sean was someone I wanted on my side. We shared a common past but no one, not even Sean, knew it. I had firsthand knowledge of what we called renditions. The act of removing someone from one country and relocating them to another, without anyone knowing, was not a foreign concept to me. Because of that, I was also quite familiar with black sites – some call them secret prisons – and they’re generally outside the U.S. territory. Sometimes people disappear forever. Sometimes people deserve to disappear forever.
I looked at Sam. “Embassy – Sam, notify them of our position with this investigation. We are going to need logistical support to find these children and the full cooperation of NZ Police. Assure them we will do our darnedest to keep police safe. Officially, I’m calling this situation with the missing kids a probable extension of the Virginia Butterfly murders. Our Unsub is suspected of crossing international borders with minors and as such, Delta A is now fully involved and directing the cases.” As I spoke, Captain Picard appeared in front of me, we morphed into one.
There I was on the bridge of the Enterprise looking at Commander Riker as words spun from my mouth, “Make it so, Number One.”
Sam was typing on his laptop he looked up and grinned. “Number One? Star Trek interlude, Ellie?”
“I said that aloud, huh?”