by Kylie Brant
Hope lit up Althea’s watery eyes as she turned her attention on Macy. “Do you think at that point he’ll call? Let us talk to our daughter?”
Whitman answered before she could. “Reid’s specialty is forensic linguistics. Examining this message and any others that might be forthcoming could give us valuable information about the identity of the person we’re dealing with.”
“You mean Nick Hubbard?”
Whitman’s eyes flickered at Stephen Mulder’s terse question. “Right now it looks like he’s involved. Although it’s entirely possible he isn’t acting alone.”
Mulder gave a jerky nod, and the expression on his face was terrible to see. “And he was here because of me. I gave him a job.” It was his wife’s turn to comfort him, as she took his hand and laced their fingers together. “I brought him into our lives.” His voice cracked on that, and he dropped his head, battling for composure.
The sight of her husband’s grief seemed to strengthen something in Althea. She lifted their linked hands and pressed a kiss against his, the gesture filled with tenderness. Her face was still streaked with tears, but her voice was steady as she stood, tugging at her husband’s hand so he’d join her. Her words were directed at Macy. “Do what you’re trained for, Ms. Reid. Help lead them to the bastard who took my baby. And we’ll do the only thing left to us right now.” Gently she turned her husband toward the door. “Pray.”
The room was silent behind them as the couple exited the room. Macy concentrated fiercely on the message on the computer screen, willing away the tight knot in her throat.
“I’m assuming Mulder is willing to pay the amount and won’t have trouble getting the cash together.” Kell’s voice was the first to break the quiet.
Whitman scowled and glanced at Agent Pelton, who was seated beside him. “He indicated he was willing. But I don’t know that that will be the process I’ll be suggesting. It depends on what the demands are regarding the payment.”
“His finances appear to be in order,” Pelton said matter-of-factly. The whipcord-lean man tapped a sheaf of papers on the table before him. “At least there’s nothing that the forensic accountants have found that would indicate a sudden shortage of money. The fact that such a sizable amount was demanded might mean the kidnapper had some insight into the Mulders’ holdings.”
She was surprised when Whitman leveled a look at her. “What do you think?”
“It’s possible,” she said honestly, staring at the computer screen again. “Certainly someone close to the family or affiliated with the store empire would realize their worth. But Mulder is listed in the Forbes ranking of top twenty wealthiest Americans every year. Ten million isn’t an unreasonable demand for someone who has researched the family, even a stranger.”
Whitman gestured toward the computer. “What can you tell us from that message?”
“It’s brilliant,” she said with a tinge of bitterness. “The threat included is more devastating than death. It plays on these parents’ worst fear. That was deliberate.”
Agent Travis crossed the room to read the screen over her shoulder. “The message contains two contractions. That suggests a native English speaker, right?”
“And the wording used.” Pelton scribbled in the margin of a page in front of him. “Extension. Lucrative. Sounds like someone educated.”
It took effort—a great deal of it—for Macy to restrain a wince. “Not necessarily. Vocabulary can be consciously chosen to create a certain impression. So can the use or absence of contractions. I’m going to be looking for patterns in the syntax, which is much more unconscious, and therefore less easily disguised.”
Agent Pelton frowned. “I was involved in a trial just last year where a forensic linguist was called in. His testimony focused on the wording of the defendant’s alleged confession. He didn’t say anything about syntax.”
She sent him a small smile, even as her jaw clenched. Now was not the time to get into a lecture on stylistics vs. research-based forensic linguistics. “I rely on a scientifically researched author-identification database formed from hundreds of ransom and suicide notes.”
His expression still doubtful, Pelton sent a sideways glance toward Whitman. “Still . . .”
“It has a five to six percent error rate,” she responded crisply. “I’ve been qualified as an expert witness in thirty trials to date. As a matter of fact, I’ve got another trial appearance in two days in Chicago.” The agent shut up at that. She met Whitman’s gaze squarely. “I can also do a threat assessment on the note, although the error rate for that is greater. More like fifteen percent.”
“To determine whether the author intends to follow through on the selling the girl if the ransom doesn’t come through?”
She nodded, her attention returning to the screen consideringly. “Like I say, the inclusion of that particular phrasing is calculated. But that doesn’t mean the threat isn’t real.”
“It might also be included to throw us off track.”
Like everyone else in the room, her attention switched to Kell. He wore a thick navy sweater with jeans today, the informality of his dress a stark contrast in the room full of suit-clad men. He gave a nod toward the computer. “That threat strikes fear into the Mulders’ hearts, yeah. But it also makes us think immediately of pedophiles. It might have been deliberately included to lead us astray. Make us think of the last kidnapping and focus our energies there. Nothing in Hubbard’s background suggests he’s a girl lover.”
“Doesn’t have to be,” Pelton shot back. “He just has to have connections to a human-trafficking ring.”
“Why don’t we give Macy a chance to work her magic and we might have a better idea of what we’re looking at,” suggested Travis.
To her chagrin he gave her a surreptitious pat on the shoulder before moving away. From the angle of Burke’s brow, the gesture hadn’t been lost on him. The agent’s attitude was slightly alarming. Maybe she’d overdone the helpless female this morning when she’d switched folders. Mentally, she kicked herself for letting Kell talk her into concocting that episode with Travis earlier this morning.
“I’ll need samples of written communication from everyone you want to check as a match for the author of this note.” She nodded toward the computer. “Have your techs gotten into Hubbard’s computer yet? If I had access to his sent e-mails, I could compare them to this note.”
“I’ll get someone on it right away. How long does it take to run each of these tests?”
She lifted a shoulder. “After I diagram the samples, the author identification will require about ten minutes for each. Just the time it takes to scan the written communication into the database and run the match. The threat assessment will take longer. About two hours.”
The assistant director looked thoughtful. He’d gotten rid of the dreadful brown suit, but the navy one he wore now was just as ill fitting. “And it needs to be written communication? Transcribed notes of the interviews we conducted, for example, wouldn’t be appropriate?”
“They wouldn’t be as valid. The notes wouldn’t be a verbatim duplication of what was said, and the rhythm and patterns of people’s written speech often differs from their oral speech.”
Whitman gave a short nod. “We’ll start with written communications from Hubbard and the Mulders. Then we’ll see about getting samples from the rest of the employees. The lawyer, Alden, was here that evening. The accountant, Lance Spencer. Mulder’s executive secretary, Tess Amundson. We should be able to get samples from them from Mulder’s computer, as well. We’ll have enough for you to start with when you return this evening.”
He riffled through the stack of pages on the table before him. His face looked flushed, although it wasn’t particularly warm in the room. Macy had been chilled since she first stepped off the jet. Although Virginia had its share of cold weather, there was something about the difference in altitude that made the Colorado temperature seem even more frigid. “Here’s a list of the owners of each of th
e phone numbers listed on Hubbard’s cell and landline LUDs.” She got up to take her copy from him. “We’ve identified all of the numbers except for one, and that just might turn out to be the one belonging to a partner or accomplice.”
“Trac phone?” Kell suggested. “Or satellite?”
“Not a SAT phone.” Whitman dropped heavily back into his seat, as if the act of leaning across the table to hand out the sheets had exhausted him. “More likely it’s some kind of disposable. We’re still digging. The last call that came from it was logged on Hubbard’s cell phone at twelve oh two A.M. the morning the girl was kidnapped. From the time logged, it’s doubtful the call was answered.”
“Could have been some sort of signal,” Agent Travis suggested.
Whitman gave a slight nod. “Whoever the number belongs to, there are frequent calls, beginning about three months prior to the kidnapping.”
A flicker of interest sparked inside her. An operation of this scope would take plenty of advance planning. “Is there a pattern to those calls?” At Whitman’s look, she went on, “Do they all come late at night, like the last one, or different times during the day? How long do they usually last? Are they logged on both phones, or just the cell?”
He consulted the pages again before answering. “There’s one call from that number on the landline January fifth, ten minutes after a call had been logged on Hubbard’s cell. The rest all went to the cell.” He went silent for a moment as he skimmed the pages. “Looks like they range in length from a few minutes to over a half hour. And all but two of them occur after seven o’clock P.M. There are fifteen in all. And Hubbard called that number, from his landline and cell, a total of twenty-one times.” There was a slight rustle of papers as he shuffled them together and looked up.
“I assume you’ve tried calling the number.”
Whitman looked testy at Kell’s suggestion. “Of course. But it hasn’t been answered. At any rate, we’ll keep with it. You, Reid, and Travis take this list of contacts and track down every person and place Hubbard called in the last couple months. And swing by his house again to get his tax returns. I want to match some figures to his bank account records. Let’s see results today. We’ve been given a timeline, people.”
His impassive façade cracked, for just a moment, and Macy saw a hint of bleakness in his eyes. “We’ve got five days.”
Chapter 6
She watched the man from beneath her lids. And to think at first she’d thought he looked so ordinary. He was spooky, and not just because of the knife. He reminded her of a dead rat one of the stable cats had killed. The teeth on the rodent had been bared, and it had still looked vicious, but its eyes had looked shiny and dead.
The man’s eyes looked like that, too. Like he was dead, but his body didn’t know it.
They settled on her now, and a chill broke out over her skin. She was still wearing the pajamas he’d taken her in, and a thick blanket. But it wasn’t the cold that gave her goose bumps whenever he looked at her. It was those eyes. Pale brown. Almost tan, really. Light like his hair and skin.
Cooper had been a disgusting nasty man. But he had looked nice. Normal, even. This guy didn’t look normal. And even a little kid half her age would realize just by looking at him that he wasn’t nice.
“Anyone ever tell you it’s rude to stare?”
“Anyone ever tell you it’s rude to kidnap people?” The words came without her thinking about them. Horrified, she stopped, barely breathing, waiting for his reaction.
He smiled, and that just made him look creepier. Like a dried-up fish on the beach, eyes flat and staring and lips stretched out in a wide grin. “I liked you better when you were scared. You should be scared, kid. You and me, we got business to conduct up here.”
Her skin prickled, and her stomach cramped. She could feel her palms going damp and the familiar dread sliding over her like a wet dark curtain. Oh please, oh please, oh please . . .
“Are you going to fuck me?” It was as if someone else had taken over her speech. Over her brain. It had been like that after a while before. When Cooper had stolen her away. And every time he’d touched her like that, there had been less of her left. And more of the girl she heard now. The one who was too numb to care about anything.
The one who had learned to stop feeling at all.
His gaze flicked over her once. Twice. Then, as if bored, he looked away. “You got no tits.”
The relief streamed out her in a long loud sigh, and he looked back at her, the boredom gone now. In its place was that expression he’d worn when he’d first shown her the knife. “What are you feeling now? Right now?” he demanded. When she didn’t answer, he pulled out the knife and sprang from the lawn chair, striding across the cramped space to yank her up by the shoulder. “Tell me or I’ll gut you like a rabbit. Right now!”
She shrank away from him. He was so freaky! And then he let go of her so suddenly she got tangled in the blanket and fell to the floor. But then she wasn’t scared anymore. Not at that moment. Because all of a sudden she realized exactly what he meant. What he wanted.
“You don’t feel anything, do you?” He stilled, staring at her with those creepy eyes. “That’s why you keep asking me those questions. But my answers don’t matter. You can’t feel someone else’s feelings just by hearing about them.”
“Shut the fuck up.” He went back to the chair and dropped down on it. Picking up the remote, he clicked on the TV that sat on the cot he slept in.
“I thought my feelings were gone once, too,” she whispered. Wiggling under the blanket was a struggle with her hands tied but all of a sudden she was cold again. So cold. Slowly she scooted the stool back until her shoulders pressed against the wall. “I wanted them to be. After a while, when things are so bad that you’d rather be dead . . . you get sort of numb.”
She knew he was listening. He was staring at the staticky TV. But he didn’t turn up the volume. “I thought I’d be numb forever. And I wouldn’t have cared.” It had been so much easier when she hadn’t felt anything. Not when she saw her parents again. Not when they’d moved across the country to the big house with the tall walls that hadn’t kept this man out.
She drew a deep shuddering breath and drew up her knees, dropping her forehead to rest upon them. “I wish I could be like that again.”
“Adam?”
Macy’s attention snapped to Kell. He was frowning as he pressed the phone closer to his ear. “The connection sucks. It sounds like you’re in a tunnel.” He paused for a moment and then chuckled. “That’d explain it, then. You got my e-mail last night?”
Sending a glance in Travis’s direction, she realized he was listening, too, although he pretended not to be. To distract him, she said, “If you ever get tired of doing all the driving, you just have to mention it. I wouldn’t mind switching off. I’m sure Kell wouldn’t either.”
He lifted a shoulder, meeting her gaze in the rearview mirror. “Thanks, but I’m familiar with the area. Neither of you are. Probably not used to these driving conditions either.”
Kell’s voice had dropped. It was too bad, she reflected, that Adam had chosen a time to call when they had no privacy. Although Kell had mentioned e-mailing him last night. Hopefully he’d been able to share any information then that he wouldn’t be able to with Travis in the car. Like the way Whitman was trying to keep them out of the investigation.
“We have snow in DC,” she responded belatedly. “Of course, it’s not like here. No one out there seems to know how to drive in it. It shuts down traffic.”
“You have to have experience with these road conditions,” Dan said earnestly. “The most common mistake people make is to use too much brake.” To illustrate his words he braked suddenly, and the car fishtailed. Macy clamped the armrest and strove to coax her stomach back down out of her throat. “That and they don’t know how to counter steer.” He palmed the wheel expertly and straightened the car to the middle of the lane again. “Helps, too, to have studded tires.”
“Good to know,” she managed weakly.
Kell slipped his phone back in his coat pocket and looked over the backseat at her. “Getting a driving lesson?”
“Might come in handy.” She raised her brows at him quizzically.
“Raiker is finishing up the prison interviews. He left Terre Haute for last.”
Her stomach gave a quick vicious twist. It took effort to make sure her reaction didn’t show in her expression.
He was continuing. “He’s got Abbie and Ryne combing Charleston following up on the lead Cooper gave Raiker. They’ve focused on the friend he claimed he shared Ellie’s photos with. The guy’s a known kiddie lover. Just served a warrant at his place. The Robels will keep us posted with the results of that search.”
“Robels?”
She responded to Travis’s question automatically. “Abbie and Ryne are two of Raiker’s operatives.” Although Ryne was a relative newcomer. A former detective for the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan PD, he and Abbie had met over a case they’d shared down there. Afterward, Ryne had left the department to be closer to the woman he’d fallen for. Although Raiker wasn’t a big believer in love, he knew talent when he saw it. He’d offered Ryne a job the first time he’d met him. Five offers later and Ryne had finally taken him up on it.
“They’re married? Don’t see that a lot.”
“There are about sixty million couples in the U.S., give or take. Seems common enough to me.”
Sounding sheepish, the agent said, “No, I mean law enforcement types. I don’t know any couples working for CBI. At least, not as agents.”
“Probably because they know the odds of a marriage lasting and decide to forgo the inevitable.” Slouching as far down in his seat as the seat belt would allow, Kell opened the file Whitman had given them with Hubbard’s phone records.