Thread of Suspicion

by Susan Sleeman

  “No, please. At least let them call for an ambulance.”

  He ground the barrel into her skin. “Get the phones. Now.”

  Wincing in pain, Derrick dug his phone out of his pocket and dropped it into the bag. Dani leaned over the backseat and Echo moved with her. She found Kat’s phone on the floor.

  “Kat,” she whispered. “I love you, sweetie. Please be okay.”

  “Wasn’t that sweet.” Echo jerked her backward.

  “I love you, Derrick,” she cried out as Echo hauled her out the door and toward his vehicle.

  “You, too, Twinkie.” The sadness in Derrick’s voice opened the dam and tears dripped down her cheek.

  Father, please, she begged. Get help here as soon as possible. I can’t lose either one of them.

  SEVENTEEN

  General Wilder met Luke at his office door. His usual no-nonsense expression was replaced by sympathy. Not good. Wilder rarely wore emotions on his sleeve, and his expression told Luke all he needed to know. SatCom was finished.

  “I’m sorry for bringing you all the way over here,” Wilder said, not even offering for Luke to take a seat. “I just met with committee members and they voted to extend a contract to Security-Watchdog tomorrow.”

  Luke’s stomach tied in a gut-wrenching knot.

  He’d lost.

  His dream was over.

  He waited for the feeling of failure to settle in. To hear his father’s voice again, but it didn’t come.

  No guilt. Not a bit. Sure, hurting his staff and failing in his promise to Hawk stung, but his only emotion now was sadness. Deep, fatiguing sadness.

  In one sweep of the committee’s strong arm, thoughts of a relationship with Dani evaporated. Poof. Right before his eyes. Gone. He cared so much about her. Deeply and helplessly, and he wanted to be with her, but he’d wait to pursue her until he found himself on solid ground.

  “Baldwin,” Wilder said.

  Luke shook off his melancholy and pulled back his shoulders to bid the general goodbye. “I appreciate all the chances you’ve given SatCom. And for the many times you’ve gone to bat for us.”

  “I wish we could have parted under better circumstances.” Wilder clapped Luke on the back and shook his hand with an iron grip. “I’m sure there will be future contracts for you to bid on.”

  “Of course,” Luke replied, though he was sure SatCom was done for. “Take care.”

  On the way out of the U.S. Naval and Marine Corps Reserve facility, Luke grabbed his cell phone from security. He noted the text light blinking, but he was in no mood to deal with it, so he shoved the phone into his pocket. He’d check the text once he got to his car, where he could lick his wounds in private.

  He strode across the lot, nearly running to get away from the awful truth of losing the contract. The sun shone brightly on him. The warmth usually improved his mood, but he didn’t care.

  Kat’s words flashed into his brain. God’s timing is perfect.

  Was it? Was he supposed to ignore the failure of his company, not to mention his penniless status, and tell Dani how he felt? God certainly didn’t want that for Dani, did He?

  “No way,” Luke mumbled, and slid into his car.

  He sat there, hands on the wheel, wondering what to do next. His phone beeped, reminding him of the text, so he dug it out. At the sight of two messages from Dani, his heart crumbled over his situation. He pressed the icon.

  Meeting with Computer Care’s building owner on the way to the safe house. He has the name and location of Computer Care’s owner. Will keep you updated. Hope the meeting went well with Wilder.

  Good. They had a lead. He moved to the second message.

  Network was hacked again today. Tim traced it to a local address. Heading over there after our meeting. Call me when you’re free.

  His company and Dani might be lost to him, but they might still be able to put the person responsible for the sabotage behind bars. Hoping for good news, he dialed Dani’s number. The phone rang five times and went to voice mail. In case she was still in a meeting, he sent her a text and waited for a reply. Time ticked by. No response. He dialed Kat. Same response. Five rings and straight to voice mail. Worry cut a path through his heart, and that niggle of warning he’d developed as a SEAL burrowed into his brain. If Dani was in trouble, Natalie might be, too.

  He didn’t have Derrick’s number or he’d be dialing him already. He did have the restricted number for the safe house. He could check on Natalie and Cole, or Ethan could give him Derrick’s number. He made the call.

  “Cole Justice,” he answered warily.

  “It’s Luke. Is Natalie okay?”

  “Fine. Why?”

  Luke sighed a quick breath of relief over his sister, but worry for Dani kept his stomach in a knot. “Dani and Kat were on the way to meet with the building owner for Computer Care and they aren’t answering their cells. My gut says something’s wrong. I don’t have Derrick’s number. Either give it to me or call him.”

  “Hold on,” Cole said patiently, though Luke had been testy. “I’ll call him on my cell.”

  Luke heard Cole moving in the background. A few short moments later, he came back on the phone. “No answer with Derrick. I sent all of them a 911 text. One of them is bound to respond.”

  Luke waited, but as each second ticked by, his gut tightened more.

  “No response,” Cole said.

  “Something’s definitely wrong.” Luke started his car as his mind flew over what to do.

  “I concur. We need to find them.”

  “Dani’s files should hold the building owner’s name. I’ll call Tim to look at them and get back to you.”

  Luke disconnected and dialed his partner. No answer. Not unusual for Tim. He preferred to communicate through text. Luke wasn’t going to mess around with Tim not responding. He sent a 911 text. As he waited, he pointed his car out of the lot so he was ready to move.

  Tim hadn’t responded by the time Luke reached the road to the security gate. Luke slammed a fist on the wheel.

  Where was everyone?

  He glanced at his watch. His assistant would be gone for the day. Luke had no choice but to head back to the office to look. He was at a minimum thirty minutes away from the office, but depending on traffic, it could take nearer to an hour.

  “Too long,” he mumbled, and pressed Dani’s icon on his phone again. Only three rings this time and no answer.

  Luke wound through traffic and merged onto I-5. When he saw the brake lights ahead, he knew his only hope of getting to the office on a timely basis was to give up on his self-reliance and ask for God’s help to get him through the traffic. And while he was at it, he needed to put Dani in God’s hands and know He would care for her. Something Luke had little experience doing of late.

  * * *

  Echo forced Dani into a metal chair in an old abandoned warehouse. Holding his gun against the back of her head, he twined thick ropes around her body and tightly lashed her to the chair.

  Fear climbed up her throat and threatened to choke her. How would anyone find her here?

  The address Tim had given her was in this area of town. Made sense that Echo would take her to a place he frequented. Hopefully Kat and Derrick were all right and they’d think to look at the address she entered in the GPS, then send someone to rescue her. Her heart constricted at the thought of leaving them behind. She’d alternated praying for her siblings on the drive here with asking this creep to let her go. Echo hadn’t spoken a word since he’d dragged her away from Derrick. He’d simply held his gun to her side and forced her to drive his crumpled vehicle.

  “There,” he said, and came around the front.

  He pulled the mouthpiece out. All hopes for making it out of this situation alive vanished. If he was going
to let her hear his real voice, he planned to kill her.

  Father, please help me.

  With a sweeping bow, Echo ripped his mask free and smiled down on her.

  “Tim?”

  “In the flesh.” He bowed again, and when he came up, his eyes were glazed and foreign to the man she’d come to know this week.

  “How? Why? I don’t understand.”

  He smiled, then his lips twisted in a derisive smirk. “You soon will, my sweet. You soon will.”

  * * *

  Luke slid his card down the reader and jerked the office door open. The building was empty and dark. Taking the stairs two at a time, he charged up to his office. The wall clock said it had taken him thirty-two minutes to arrive. Not that he needed to look at the clock. He’d been staring at his watch for the past half hour. That is, when he wasn’t honking his horn and fighting his way through heavy traffic.

  The table where Dani’s computer usually sat held only a notepad. Everything else was gone. Of course it was. She’d have taken her computer and all her files to the safe house with her.

  “Think.” He pounded his head.

  Maybe she’d written the address or the man’s name on the notepad. He’d seen on television how investigators rubbed a pencil over the pad to see what had been written. It was worth a try. He took the pad to his desk, where he found a pencil in his drawer. He rubbed it across the paper, and the name Anthony Jackson became clear.

  Anthony Jackson was Hawk and Tim’s stepfather. Was he the owner of Computer Care’s building? If so, was it a coincidence or was Tim involved in this somehow?

  Maybe Jackson knew where Dani was going after their meeting. Luke grabbed Tim’s file and dialed the emergency number listed next to his stepfather’s name.

  “Jackson,” he answered gruffly.

  “This is Luke Baldwin. I’m Tim Revello’s partner and need some information from you.”

  “Make it quick, Baldwin. I’m getting on a plane.”

  “I’m trying to locate an investigator working for me,” he said. “Her name’s Dani Justice and I think she had a meeting with you.”

  “She did, but she never showed.”

  Gut-wrenching, immobilizing worry dropped on Luke like a thousand-pound weight. “She needed to know who rented the Computer Care building.”

  He snorted. “Just like Tim not to tell you that he had a business on the side.”

  “So Tim owns Computer Care?”

  “Yes.”

  Shocked, Luke fell back in his chair. Could Tim be a killer, and did he have Dani? If so, Luke had to get to her. “I need your office address.”

  He barked out his address. “Now, if you don’t mind, my pilot’s waiting.”

  Already on his feet, Luke disconnected and quickly got into his car, squealing onto the road. At a stoplight, he punched the address into his phone’s GPS.

  The phone asked him to turn his GPS on, and his heart sank as he remembered the night Dani had told him to turn it off. A night when she’d been safely in the arms of her family. Now because of him she was in danger. Maybe fighting for her life. He could only hope that she’d taken the same route or he might not make it to her before Tim hurt her or, worse yet, killed her.

  God, please, I don’t deserve Your help here, but let me get to Dani on time.

  * * *

  Tim knelt in front of Dani and tied her feet to the chair.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  “You wouldn’t give up. No matter how many times I warned you, you kept digging. If you’d gotten to my stepfather before he left town, I’d never have had time to disappear.”

  “Anthony Jackson is your stepfather?”

  “Surprise.” He grinned again. “My mother married him a few years ago, and he wants to be ever so helpful to me.”

  “But I thought a hacker named Echo was behind all of this.”

  “Surprise again.”

  Could Tim really be Echo?

  The past few days ran through Dani’s mind. She saw nothing to link him to the notorious hacker. “You expect me to believe you’re Echo?”

  “In the flesh.”

  She could hardly wrap her mind around the news.

  “Prove it.”

  His eyes filled with pride as he shared intimate details of Grace’s murder. Details only her killer could possess.

  Unbelievable. She’d been working side by side with the man who’d killed Grace. Her stomach roiled and she had to swallow hard to settle it. “Why are you doing this to Luke?”

  “Simple. He killed my brother. Maybe not physically, as in, he pulled the trigger, but he was in charge of their mission. It was his responsibility to make sure communications were secure. He should’ve died, not Hawk.”

  “So all the time you worked with Luke you planned to betray him.”

  “Of course.” He laughed, and it floated up into the rafters. “When one of the owners from Security-Watchdog put out feelers in the hacking community, ‘Echo’—” he paused and put air quotes around his screen name as if he was a different person “—jumped at the chance. What better than to exact my revenge, to get paid to do so and do it right under Luke’s nose?”

  “You got paid to do your dirty work.”

  “I know, right? Icing on the cake. And now I’ve stashed away enough money to get out of the country.” He rubbed his hands together. “But first we need to make sure Luke doesn’t wind up with his happily-ever-after.”

  “You’ve already tanked his company.”

  He came to his feet, a hot, angry look taking control of his eyes. “Ah, but I haven’t killed the woman he fancies himself in love with, now, have I?”

  * * *

  Luke turned onto the road where Anthony Jackson’s office was located. Ahead, he spotted an ambulance and two police cars. An officer stood in the road directing traffic.

  Luke craned his neck to get a look at the cars. An SUV the same color as Derrick’s had been T-boned by another vehicle that seemed to be missing.

  Luke’s heart sank as he slowly inched forward with the line of cars ahead of him. “Keep it together, man.”

  The officer held up his hand and the cars in front of Luke stopped. He pressed his brakes and studied the scene carefully. He spotted a man sitting on the curb. Derrick?

  “Oh, no,” he mumbled, and slammed his shifter into Park, then jumped out.

  He raced toward the woman he was certain was Kat, sitting on the bumper of the ambulance. A man Luke thought to be Mitch hovered over her.

  The officer stepped in his path and Luke shoved him off.

  “That’s gonna cost you a night in jail,” the officer said.

  “Let him be,” Mitch called out. “He’s one of us.”

  The officer let him go and Luke charged over to Kat. “Where’s Dani?”

  Kat shook her head and tears flowed down her cheeks.

  “Derrick saw a man with a black mask take Dani at gunpoint,” Mitch said. “Medium build, about five foot eleven, wearing a ski mask. We have a possible address but can’t be sure it’s correct.”

  “Explain.”

  “Dani got a text from Tim telling her the network was hacked,” Kat said, looking dazed. “We think Echo lured us out here so he could stop us from getting to the man we were going to see.”

  “Tim is Echo,” Luke said.

  “What?” Kat exclaimed.

  “Long story I don’t have time for now. Has anyone gone after Dani?”

  “I just got here,” Mitch grumbled. “And I needed to check on my wife first.”

  “Derrick wanted to go, but the medics needed to tend to his wound,” Kat said. “Ethan’s staying with Natalie, and Cole’s on his way.”

  “Where’s the address T
im was sending you to?”

  “I don’t remember it exactly, but Dani put it in the car’s GPS.”

  Luke didn’t wait for anything else but flew to Derrick’s car. He punched the GPS button and the address popped up on the screen. He entered it into his phone and retraced his steps.

  “I’ll get a unit on the way to the address,” Mitch called out. “And I’ll call Cole to give him the address.”

  Luke wanted to yell out too little too late, but if Dani had been trapped and injured in a car, he’d have taken a moment to make sure she was all right, too. He couldn’t fault Mitch for loving his wife.

  Luke climbed back into his car and swung around the officer directing traffic.

  “Hey,” he yelled.

  Once clear, Luke floored it. If they chased after him, all the better. He’d have help in freeing Dani.

  * * *

  “Be right back, sweet thing.” Tim picked up a torch from the corner of the room and lit it, then exited.

  Fear inched up Dani’s back, but she fought it down as she struggled against her restraints. The ropes held tight around her chest and legs. Her only hope was to free her hands. She dug at the hard knots but couldn’t move them even a fraction of an inch.

  She searched the space for anything to help and spotted a rusty shelf bracket dangling from the wall. The end had been snapped off, leaving a sharp edge. She thrust her weight forward, moving the chair an inch. Good. She could move across the room and grab the bracket, then slice through her ropes.

  She thrust again. Moved an inch or less. She dug deep for strength and kept jerking her body ahead until she was just a few feet from the wall. Her muscles screamed from exertion, but she heard Tim’s footsteps coming back and knew she had to keep moving or she wouldn’t have another chance.

  She took a deep breath and lurched hard. Her chair wobbled and she fought to keep it upright.

  She teetered for a few seconds, then lost her balance and her chair plummeted to the floor. She jerked her head up so it wouldn’t hit.