Tracing a Kidnapper

by Juno Rushdan

  “Are you hurt?” He wasn’t sure if the sound had been caused by pain or fatigue.

  “I banged up my shoulder. Nothing serious.” She brushed long strands of hair from her face and turned away from him, draping her jacket across a chair.

  Blood stained the back of her white silk blouse. “You’re bleeding.”

  She twisted her chin over her shoulder, trying to inspect the injury, but she’d need a mirror to see it. Her gaze flickered up, meeting his, then higher to his head. “So are you. Aren’t we a pair?” Madeline smiled weakly, a brief upturning of her mouth, her posture relaxing, her face open.

  The sight of her like this warmed him, banishing the heart-stopping image of that van hurtling toward her.

  Not for a single second had she shown a hint of fear.

  Right now, she still looked tough as iron, but also shockingly vulnerable. An appealing contradiction.

  For all her beauty, brains, nerves of steel, not to mention her incredible magnetism, it was astonishing to think she didn’t have someone special in her life.

  Such a pity.

  Madeline cleared her throat and looked away. “It’s late. I’m going to get cleaned up.” She grabbed her jacket and headed down the hall to the bathroom.

  There were plenty of fresh towels in the washroom since it was the one Emma used, but no medical supplies. He went to the kitchen and retrieved the deluxe family first aid kit. Then he made an ice pack and took it to the hall bathroom.

  Jackson knocked.

  Madeline eased the door open. She had removed her silk blouse and was standing in slacks and a black sports bra—the kind that didn’t look like underwear or flaunt a ridiculous amount of cleavage. The women at his gym paraded around in far less.

  “Thought you could use some Neosporin and a bandage,” he said.

  “You have blood dripping down your face, and you’re worried about me?” She opened the door wide. “Get in here and sit down.”

  Jackson stepped inside, passing behind her to the other side of the sink. With the two of them inside, the bathroom seemed to have gotten smaller, growing far too cramped. He cast a glance at the black semiautomatic in the holster on the vanity. It looked out of place beside Emma’s Disney-themed toothbrush and her hand towel with a picture of a unicorn.

  Madeline bent over, lifting the cuff of her torn pant leg. He shouldn’t have been surprised at the sight of a second weapon strapped to her ankle. The special agent came across as a woman who was always prepared. She tugged at the Velcro fasteners. The gun was more compact than her Glock. The polished nickel gleamed when she set it on the counter.

  He closed the lid to the toilet and sat. Holding the medical supplies, he was now eye level with her chest. His gaze slid over the swell of her breasts, her sculpted arms, taut abs and wicked curves that showed the discipline of someone who rarely missed a workout.

  Clenching his hands, he curbed the urge to touch her, but he was so physically aware of her that it was like walking barefoot in the grass under a power line that sent a tingling rush under your skin.

  He didn’t mean to let his mind go there, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it.

  “A good host takes care of his guest first,” he said, breaking the silence and meeting her gaze.

  Her eyes softened, and something sparked between them. Something warm. Something deep. Something strong.

  “I’m not a guest.” She sorted through the bag, taking the antiseptic and gauze. “I’m working.”

  Jackson fought for air as she stepped closer, leaning in until her breath brushed his face. He studied her features, trying to figure out what about them he found so captivating. Was it her high cheekbones, the flawless golden brown complexion, her well-defined lips or those riveting eyes, which seemed to see straight into his soul? Maybe everything—the whole was definitely greater than the sum of its parts.

  He had never been attracted to weak women, no matter how pretty or charming.

  There was nothing weak about Madeline. She was a force to be reckoned with.

  She dabbed at the bloody gash on his forehead with a cotton swab, patting the skin gently. The tantalizing fragrance of her, vanilla and roses, stole into his lungs with each breath. He always loved the way women smelled, but her scent was so enticing that every muscle in his body tightened.

  He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the sensations he knew he shouldn’t have, but the absence of sight made it more difficult for him to think of anything else.

  “You won’t need stitches,” she said, and he opened his eyes. She tore into a packet of butterfly bandages, closed the cut by holding its edges together and applied them. “You should put ice on it. Keep the swelling down.” Turning, she chucked the gauze away in the trash.

  The abrasion on her back was red and raw. Road rash from the pavement.

  “Let me clean the scratch on your shoulder for you. It looks pretty bad.”

  “I can handle it.”

  Sure, if she was a contortionist.

  “You’re not used to accepting help from others, are you?” he asked. When she didn’t respond, he said, “Quid pro quo. Only fair.”

  She studied him, her face a blank mask. Tension stretched between them, making the space in the bathroom feel even tighter before she nodded and faced the sink. “All right.”

  As he wiped at the blood, working toward the abrasion, she watched him in the mirror.

  The second he touched the cotton swab to the ragged flesh, her spine stiffened, and she sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Sorry.”

  She grabbed onto the counter. “Don’t worry about it,” she whispered.

  Brushing the antiseptic over the scraped area, he worked quickly. Her shoulders remained tense and a muscle flexed along her jaw.

  He added a dab of Neosporin to the tender scrape, grabbed a piece of gauze and ripped off several sections of medical tape.

  “Almost done.” Taping the gauze over the injury, his fingers grazed her warm skin. Silky soft.

  In the mirror, her mesmerizing gaze found his and didn’t waver. Electric awareness shot down his spine, lighting up nerve endings along the way. Time suspended, and the primal attraction between them was undeniable.

  He let his fingers stretch until his palms glided over her skin above the shoulder blades. Her muscles relaxed, her body softening, leaning into him. Something he didn’t want to acknowledge and was helpless to suppress coiled through him. A dangerous combination of darkness and desire.

  “Jack—”

  His phone chimed, and the sound had them jerking apart.

  A new message!

  He snatched the phone from his pocket, his pulse in overdrive.

  Madeline spun around and looked at the screen alongside him.

  No video. I’m in charge. Not you. Not the FBI. This is all you get. Make your resignation official.

  With another chime came a grainy picture of Emma. She was in a room, sitting on a bed with a gray wool blanket. Newspaper covered the wall behind her. Emma’s brown eyes were wide with fear. Tears stained her cheeks.

  “She’s alive,” he muttered. Thank God. Then a horrible thought struck him like a bolt of lightning through his chest. “Do you think he hurt her? She’s been crying.”

  “Tears are natural. She misses you, home, everything familiar.” Madeline put a hand on his forearm, and the sudden tightness in his chest eased. “She’s scared, not hurt.”

  He wanted to believe that. Needed to. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  He needed to contact the ETC PR team and have them draft a statement. “Once I make my resignation official, you don’t think he would...” The words stuck in his throat. He couldn’t bring himself to say the worst thing imaginable.

  “Emma’s going to be okay. Look on the floor. There’s a Happ
y Meal container. On the bed—a doll, coloring book, crayons. She’s in fresh clothes.”

  A pink sweat suit.

  Why hadn’t he noticed any of those things until Madeline had pointed them out?

  “If her kidnapper wanted to hurt her, they wouldn’t go to the trouble of feeding her, giving her things to play with. Changing her clothes.” She tightened her fingers on his arm and squeezed a little. “Emma’s going to be okay,” she said again, as if the statement needed reinforcing, and perhaps it did.

  Madeline took out her phone, made a call and put it on speaker.

  The phone rang twice. “What’s happened?” Miguel said.

  Madeline relayed the message and details about the picture.

  “We’ll have a copy of everything at the office from the tap,” Miguel said. “I can get Liam on it. Just to let you know, Dash hacked into the CCTV. There are no traffic cameras in Madison Park or the surrounding area, but the police found the van abandoned under an overpass near I-5. It had been torched.”

  Would they be able to lift fingerprints off a burnt vehicle?

  “Damn it. Another dead end.” She pressed a palm to her forehead. “The picture needs to be analyzed. I want to know everything. Which newspaper is on the walls, clothing brand, any shadows, reflections, absolutely everything,” she said with a desperation that echoed Jackson’s own.

  “You’re not saying anything that I don’t already know,” Miguel said. “We’ll analyze every single inch of it. No stone left unturned.”

  Madeline nodded. “We have to find a solid lead. And soon.”

  Chapter Eight

  The elevator doors whispered open on the top floor of ETC headquarters. The hallway was carpeted in pale beige. The walls were light green. Miguel Peters stepped off promptly at nine and proceeded to the vice president’s office. The outer wall and its door were glass.

  Natascha Campbell rose before he’d gotten through the door.

  The rest of the room was paneled in wood. The door to Phillips’s office was wooden, blocking the interior from sight. As though ugly secrets were hidden inside.

  “Good morning.” Natascha walked out from behind her desk with a smug smile.

  Miguel took in the young woman. Once again, she wore a gray suit: the jacket and pencil skirt fit snug across her slender figure. But this time, her auburn hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail that sharpened her features, making her look even younger today. Perhaps twenty-six. She was centerfold pretty, something he hadn’t noticed in the previous day’s chaos.

  Natascha picked up the phone and pressed a button. “Agent Peters is here.”

  Miguel strained to hear the response but couldn’t pick up so much as a murmur. The office door and walls were thick.

  Interesting.

  On the center of her desk was a copy of the press release ETC had issued earlier, regarding Jackson’s resignation.

  Natascha hung up the phone. “He’s ready for you.” Smile widening, she led him across the room and opened the door.

  Miguel stepped into an enormous room that was lavishly equipped with furniture. His gaze swept across the table near the window, potted plants, a sofa, Andrew Phillips and his lawyers.

  Plural.

  ¡Mierda!

  One lawyer would be a pain. A team of lawyers would be a problem.

  “Can I get you a coffee, Agent Peters?” Natascha asked.

  Before Miguel could open his mouth to respond, Phillips said, “He won’t be staying long enough for coffee.”

  We’ll see about that.

  Natascha left, shutting the door behind her.

  Miguel sat in the chair facing the desk, beside a gentleman in an expensive suit. The man was gray haired and thin and colorless as though the years had leached the life from him.

  “George Grohs.” The older man extended his hand but not to shake. A business card was proffered in between his fingers. “Mr. Phillips’s attorney.”

  Miguel took the card. Across the middle The Grohs Law Group was printed. “You’re not ETC corporate counsel?”

  “No, we’re Mr. Phillips’s personal attorneys.”

  Big companies such as ETC often had a legal team deeply involved in various aspects of operations from exploring groundbreaking new products, supporting growth, to managing legal risks. Providing counsel for a vice president wasn’t unusual.

  But Phillips’s going outside company channels to bring in his own team was highly suspect.

  The other two, a man in a navy suit and a woman in red, who Grohs neglected to introduce, stood flanking Phillips on either side of him behind the desk.

  This was more than a precautionary measure. Phillips was scared for some reason. Enough to hire outside representation that had cost him a pretty penny.

  Dressed in a pin-striped tailored suit, tanned to an unhealthy degree, dark hair slicked back with too much mousse, Andrew Phillips shifted in his seat, not appearing nearly as confident as his assistant. A green smoothie in a clear plastic container sat untouched on his desk. The top half of the paper wrapper still covered the straw. “Agent Peters. None of us at ETC know what to think, what to say. We’re all still reeling from what’s happened.”

  Funny. He didn’t appear distraught in the least.

  “Mr. Phillips,” Miguel said, sliding the business card into his pocket, “I’m going to record this interview and give you your rights.”

  The VP squirmed in his chair, smoothing a hand back over his hair.

  Miguel set a recorder in plain view on the desk and recited the Miranda rights. Then he asked, “Where were you yesterday afternoon when Emma Rhodes went missing?”

  The woman tapped Phillips’s shoulder, a light press of her hand.

  “I can’t say exactly.” Phillips looked down and away. “Because I don’t know when she was taken.”

  “Let me clarify. Where were you between twelve thirty and one thirty yesterday afternoon?” Miguel asked.

  Phillips shrugged. “Working. Somewhere in the building.”

  “Somewhere?” Miguel repeated. “You don’t know where you were?”

  “I’m a busy man. There was a lot going on yesterday. So many moving pieces.”

  Miguel took brief notes on his phone as well in case he needed to follow up on anything during the interview. “What were you working on?”

  Another whisper in the VP’s ear, this time from the blue suit.

  “I was preparing for my trip to Spokane,” Phillips said.

  Taking a deep breath, Miguel tried to tamp down his growing frustration at Phillips getting coached by lawyers. What was he hiding? “Why weren’t you downstairs at the Family Day event?”

  “I was for several hours at the beginning, but I’m single and not all of us had the luxury of taking the entire day off.”

  “Many employees have characterized your relationship with Jackson Rhodes as contentious.” Miguel studied him. “Would you say that’s accurate?”

  The prune-faced attorney sitting in the chair crossed his legs. “My client can’t speak to the opinion of others. Move on.”

  Miguel cut his eyes from the shark of a lawyer back to the executive. “Do you like Jackson?”

  “We’re not friends, if that’s what you mean,” Phillips said.

  “Are you enemies?”

  The woman in red leaned in and spoke low in the VP’s ear.

  “We’re on the same team with a common goal.” Phillips flashed a shaky grin, his beady eyes gleaming. “The success of ETC.”

  “Did it make you angry to see someone fifteen years your junior promoted over you?”

  Phillips made a small sound, a little breath of distress. “It didn’t put a smile on my face.”

  “You’re the only person with something to gain by Jackson resigning,” Miguel said with straining patience.

/>   “I didn’t hear a question for my client,” Grohs said.

  Miguel gritted his teeth. “Do you find it suspicious that the kidnapper’s one demand was for Jackson to step aside, effectively giving you the promotion you were passed over for?”

  Both attorneys flanking Phillips leaned in at the same time, but he raised a palm silencing them. “I’m suspicious of lots of things. All-you-can-eat buffets, hotels with low ratings, that some prizefights are fixed. I can go on endlessly about my suspicions.”

  Irritation snapped through Miguel, but he didn’t let it show on his face or in his voice. “Do you find it suspicious that you’re the only one to benefit?” he asked again.

  “Have the FBI considered that maybe the kidnapper’s ulterior motive is to make my client look bad?” Grohs asked.

  “No,” Miguel said, deadpan, keeping the intensity of his focus lasered on Phillips. “We have not.” With the lawyers buffering every response, this was futile. Miguel began to consider a different approach, a change in tactics. “Andrew, have you considered there’s a six-year-old child missing? She’s alone and scared and wants to go home.”

  The vice president’s chair creaked under his weight as he shifted back. “Look, I feel bad for Jackson—honestly I do. I wouldn’t wish what he’s going through on my worst enemy. I assure you I had nothing to do with the disappearance of his daughter.”

  “That’s enough,” Grohs said. “My client has shown considerable courtesy in giving you this much of his time. I think this interview is over.”

  If this was courtesy, Miguel hated to see contempt.

  Relief poured over Phillips’s face, and he picked up his smoothie for the first time, removing the wrapper from the straw and taking a sip.

  The more Miguel thought about it the less likely it seemed that Andrew Phillips cast the spotlight of suspicion on himself by kidnapping the kid and then taking Jackson’s job.

  But an irrefutable fact remained. Phillips was hiding something that required legal representation, and Miguel wanted to know what it was. “Actually, we’re just getting started. And since I’ve been so courteous as to come to Mr. Phillips’s office rather than giving him no choice but to answer questions in mine, I’ll have that coffee now.”