Or worse.
“Are you okay?” he shouted.
“Yep.”
They hit the end of that street and he recognized how close they were to the main tourist area, El Caminito.
“Car’s along here.” Lucy pointed right, chest heaving, eyes bright, cheeks flushed.
Despite her acrobatics, she seemed completely unfazed. Max was impressed. This was not the same woman who’d stood with her head bowed in the ambassador’s apartment.
Adverse conditions brought out the best in some people. Maybe it was as simple as she needed her job, and her boss was a bit of an asshole. Whatever the cause for the difference, there was much more to Lucy Aston than first met the eye.
He liked it.
They didn’t stop running, even though noise of pursuit had faded away. When they reached the harbor, Max was grateful to see the Mini intact. Lucy jumped behind the wheel and removed the steering lock while Max slid into the passenger seat. He considered throwing the gun he’d confiscated into the harbor. He had no desire to leave it lying around the streets to be picked up by children, nor did he want to deal with the local authorities and make a report. Instead, he tucked it under Lucy’s passenger seat. It was evidence. It might connect the people who’d pursued them to the kidnap case, although that was unlikely.
They were probably a bunch of local thugs. They’d noticed his and Lucy’s presence pretty damn quick and had probably been searching for them around the barrio. He bet whatever vehicle had been parked in that alley yesterday had been equally observed and catalogued. Maybe a local cop had a source they could leverage for more details—like a license plate.
Lucy reversed fast in a wide arc, and he braced his arm against the dash. Then she buzzed down her window and held out a bill for the kid who stood gaping at them with an angry expression on his face as though he expected them to leave without paying him.
“Muchas gracias.” Lucy thanked him.
The kid vanished by the time Lucy buzzed up the window and pressed her foot on the accelerator. They shot forward.
The ringing of a phone interrupted the sounds of them both catching their breath.
“Want me to answer that for you?” asked Max.
Lucy frowned in confusion. “That’s not my phone. I thought it was yours.”
Max dug his cell out of his pocket. “Nope.”
“Oh, crap.” Lucy dragged her purse strap over her shoulders and handed him her bag, driving one-handed. “It’s the phone Abigail Blanco gave us.”
Max unzipped her purse and pulled out the device, still inside the baggie.
“Don’t say anything.” He pressed the answer button. Put the call on speaker. “Hello? You’re speaking to Max. Who’s this?”
He opened a voice recording application on his own cell phone to catch as much information as possible.
“I have the women.” The man on the end of the phone spoke in English. The voice was electronically disguised, which matched the almost military-level sophistication of the initial abduction. But some voice encryption was easy for the experts to disentangle. “I want ten million US dollars for each hostage by noon tomorrow or they both die.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Max’s tone was deferential not scathing. Genuinely requesting assistance, trying to get the kidnapper involved in solving his problems. “Of course, I want the girls back safely, but even if the families had that amount of money, how can I assemble that much cash—twenty million US dollars—overnight? Especially when all the banks are closed.” He texted Eban what was going on.
Lucy’s eyes were huge with shock at the fact he was arguing with the hostage taker. Always assuming it was the kidnapper, which Max would never take for granted.
He caught her gaze and gave her a smile to reassure her he knew what he was doing. This was a proven method of negotiation even though it probably appeared unsophisticated.
She blinked and turned her attention back to the road.
“I don’t care how you do it, but if you want to see them alive…”
“I do want to see them alive. I will do everything within my power to get you all the money we can raise, but you must understand that to find even a fraction of that amount will require the ambassador to sell her house in the US, which will take time, and it still won’t be ten million dollars. What else can we do to reach a fast and peaceful settlement?”
“The US government will pay.”
Max laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. He was trying to diffuse the tension. “The US government will not pay a ransom. The US government will not even officially allow families to negotiate with kidnappers.”
“You lie. They say that on the news but, in private, they pay.”
“Not the US.” Or the UK, for that matter. “The American government will not pay a ransom. It would put US personnel and their families all over the world at increased risk. The ambassador is willing to talk to you anyway. She wants her daughter back unharmed, as do Irene Lomakin’s parents. But we need time to raise funds and we also need to know the girls are safe and unharmed.” Which was now the kidnappers’ problem.
Was the man on the phone in the place where he was holding the girls? He couldn’t be that stupid and yet stranger things had happened.
Max could hope. He waited silently on the open line. The longer the call went on, the more likely the FBI or local authorities would be able to trace it back to at least one cell tower. However, he didn’t want the guy to hang up.
After a few more seconds, Max decided to reengage. “The ambassador doesn’t have ten million dollars, but I know she has ten thousand US dollars in cash available right now. Today.”
FBI headquarters had couriered that money to the embassy last night to use as a potential tracking method. The bag contained an electronic beacon, and the serial numbers of all the bills were logged into a system that allowed agents to track the distribution of the money. The money bag actually contained thirty thousand dollars, but Max was a negotiator and never started at his highest number. “I can bring that ten thousand US dollars to a drop-off point right now. Then you let the girls go, and we can all go home and enjoy the holidays.”
Ten grand was a low anchor, but one that might be tempting enough for kidnappers already overwhelmed by the magnitude of what they’d done. Someone with regrets might say fuck it. Ten grand for grabbing a couple of girls off the street and holding them overnight was a good day’s work, especially in a country where the US dollar had value, and poverty was rife.
“Ten thousand?” The man sounded pissed. “That is all they are worth to you?”
Lowering the man’s expectations to something that might actually be reasonable was part of the process. Why kidnappers across the globe always demanded ten million as a starting point was a product of watching too many Hollywood movies and certain poorly implemented UN resolutions.
“Catherine Dickerson and her husband are not wealthy people, but they will do anything they can to get their daughter and her friend safely home. Before we can deliver any money, we’ll need to know both girls are well and that I’m talking to the right person.”
The man made an impatient sound. “I will call again tomorrow morning. Be ready to pay a lot more than ten thousand dollars or I will send them both back to their parents, piece by piece.” The man rang off.
Max stared at the phone which had gone dead. Clicked off his recording app. Texted Eban that the call had ended.
“You think it was wise to argue with him?” Lucy asked, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. They were well out of La Boca now. On their way to the center of town.
“It’s a case of wearing the kidnappers’ mindset down to a more realistic number.”
“You said the US government did not pay ransoms,” she said pointedly.
“And yet here I am, negotiating the deal.”
Lucy huffed out a quiet laugh.
Max called CNU and passed on the cell number and carrier information and uploaded the audio
recording to the cloud where Eban could access it and make sure it was passed on to the right people for analysis. From now on, the FBI would be able to record calls and use this number to talk to the kidnappers, presuming the locals didn’t have a problem with that.
So far, they seemed happy to pass the buck on the negotiation front, probably so they weren’t blamed if anything bad happened to the girls. The political fallout from the kidnap and murder of the US Ambassador’s daughter would be massive.
Max put those thoughts out of his mind. He would do everything in his power to rescue both girls and not just because Kristen’s mom was a diplomat.
“Do you want to go back to your hotel or the embassy?” Lucy asked, speeding up Av 9 de Julio, obviously having taken the scenic route to La Boca and now the fastest route home.
He dug around in his pocket and pulled out the other evidence bag. He slid the ring out onto the lip of the envelope so Lucy could see. “Recognize this?”
She glanced at it, and her expression hardened. “It looks like one of Kristen’s. She wears a stack of them on two different fingers, but I might be mistaken.”
Max slid the thin ring back into the paper bag and put it into his pocket. “If you’re heading to the embassy, drop me there, please. Otherwise, drop me somewhere I can grab a cab.”
“I’m heading back to the office. I still have a lot to do.”
And that was mainly thanks to him.
“I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time today, Lucy. I’ll brief the ambassador and then clean up a bunch of loose ends.” He held up the cell phone in the plastic bag. “This explains why they didn’t call before now. The cell wasn’t receiving a signal while in the old lady’s freezer.”
“You think she’ll be all right?” Lucy’s fingers clenched tightly around the leather steering wheel. “Abigail Blanco?”
“I hope so. The men who chased us might have not seen us enter her house.” He couldn’t get the woman protection without revealing her name, and he wouldn’t break his promise to her.
“I’ll get the kidnappers’ cell number rerouted to a desk in the Legat’s office so that the Dickersons are completely removed from the negotiation process. Last thing we need is the family going rogue. The FBI will be recording everything from now on. Then I need to courier the cell and the ring to the lab at Quantico overnight so they can run forensic tests.”
“You’re not going to hand them in to the local police?” Lucy’s stare was divided between him and the road.
He noticed suddenly how pretty she was with her hair drawn back and small tendrils escaping to softly frame her face.
He shook his head. “Local police already processed the crime scene and…honestly? I don’t want them shaking down the area and finding Abigail. There’s nothing to be gained unless we have some reason to believe the old woman is involved.”
“How do we know she’s not?”
“We don’t, but her DNA will probably be on that cell and also inside that Ziplock. I’ll ask my colleagues at CNU to dig into her background without alerting Argentine authorities. Confirm her ID. See who she’s related to and to keep an eye on her bank balance.”
Lucy pressed her lips together as if saddened but resigned to the fact the woman could be involved in this plot and playing them for fools.
They arrived at the gates of the embassy. They both showed their passes to security, and she drove inside the embassy grounds and pulled up in a designated parking spot and cut the engine.
He opened the door.
“Don’t forget the handgun under my seat,” Lucy said wryly.
“I want to send that to Quantico too. See if the lab techs can pull anything off it, or if ballistics can link it to any known crimes in the area, but I doubt that’s going to fly with Legat Powell.”
“You don’t think the local police can be trusted with that either?”
Max laughed softly. “I don’t know. I hate to let go of evidence. I’ll ask Powell if he has any trustworthy contacts in the police force here. I’m not keen to explain about our run-in or how I got the weapon. Are you?”
Her eyes widened as she seemed to recall the way she’d dropkicked that man with the knife. It had been pretty bad-ass, but it also didn’t fit with the woman in the ugly, brown suit.
“Not really,” she admitted softly. “How do you plan to get the gun through security?”
“I don’t suppose you have any surgical gloves or large-sized FBI evidence bags on you, do you?”
“As it happens…” Lucy canted her head and fluttered her lashes, “no.”
Max grinned at her. “Then I’ll call Brian Powell to come down here with those supplies.” He checked his watch. It was well after five. “Or whoever is left in the office.”
Immediately, her demeanor changed from open smiles to blank features.
He remembered the man’s scathing comment earlier and the way he’d leered at her when she’d turned up in spandex. Then he recalled the rather awesome self-defense moves Lucy had pulled in the alleyway. A sheet of icy calm settled over him.
If Lucy was the victim of a past sexual assault, it would explain so much.
“I know I asked you earlier, but do you have an actual issue with Powell?”
She raised her chin and held his gaze. “He’s not my favorite person.”
“Did he ever give you cause to worry about your personal safety?”
“Who? Brian?” Her snort was derisive. “No. He’s an egotistical jerk who’s an old-school sexist. But he’s never given me reason to be worried that he might hurt me. Why?”
“No reason. Okay then.” He fished the weapon carefully from under the seat. He’d already touched the grip, which was unfortunate but necessary under the circumstances.
She looked at him holding the weapon, then toward the side entrance where US Marines guarded the door.
“You can’t stand in the parking lot clutching that thing.”
“Because I’m Black?”
“Well, that definitely doesn’t help, but they’d be suspicious of anyone. It’s their job.”
She had a point.
Her fingers ran around the leather steering wheel. “How about I leave you my car keys so you can wait here until one of your colleagues arrives. Hand the keys in to security when you’re done, and I’ll pick them up on my way out.”
She dangled the keys in the air until he opened his palm. She dropped them.
“Thanks. Hey, I don’t suppose you fancy a drink and some food when you’re done…”
She gawked at him.
Max raised his hands. He didn’t want her getting the wrong idea. “Purely platonic to celebrate the holiday.” He wasn’t looking to start anything down here. His life was complicated enough, plus Lucy might have a boyfriend or even a family in Buenos Aires. He knew nothing about her. Not to mention he wasn’t interested in her except as a colleague, but he found himself hoping she’d say yes.
She held herself still as she watched him, searching his face for the true intentions behind the words. Then she said almost regretfully, “I’m sorry. I’m probably not going to be done for a few hours.”
“Me neither.”
She opened her mouth to probably say no, but he laughed and climbed out of his seat to stretch his legs. He turned and leaned down to look at her inside the car.
“It’s no sweat, Lucy.” He kept his voice level and calm, wondering why he’d even asked, except there was something about her that intrigued him. She was interesting. He enjoyed spending time with her. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me today, especially that dropkick.”
A look of surprise swept over her features, and then she choked on a laugh. “Well, it was a pretty awesome dropkick.”
“Damn straight it was,” Max agreed.
“Sorry,” she sighed tiredly and leaned her head against the back rest. “It’s been a long day, and I don’t socialize much.”
No mention of a husband or kids. No ring on her finger. H
e frowned. Why come on a foreign service posting if you didn’t socialize much? He didn’t ask. Patience and silence were two of his best friends.
She dug into her purse and placed her business card on the dash. “Call me when you finish up tonight. If I’m still around, I might take you up on that drink. Then again, I might not. It is Christmas, after all.”
“No pressure either way. I can get a cab back to the hotel.”
She got out of the car, walked away, then called over her shoulder. “Don’t forget to lock up my baby, Hawthorne. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
Max grinned and tried not to admire her figure as she headed into the embassy. He really was not interested in Lucy Aston for anything except work. Likelihood was, he’d need her help again soon, whether she liked it or not. Least he could do was buy her a drink.
Chapter Nine
Irene could hear the men arguing about her again, though they’d been quiet for most of the day. They’d put a cloth bag over her head, but the ties had come loose, and she’d been able to lift it up and look around. They’d chained her to a massive cast-iron radiator in a bedroom that was empty except for a double bed with a bare, stained mattress that had stuffing falling out of it. Mouse droppings covered the floor.
She was careful not to jingle her chains too much as she had to assume they might hear her the same way she could hear them. She wanted them to forget about her existence if at all possible.
The floor was unforgiving hardwood which meant her butt hurt. This room was bigger than her bedroom at home. Ceilings were higher, the edges trimmed with crumbling plaster cornices. Walls were water stained, some lath and plaster showing where chunks had fallen off. The windows had wooden shutters pulled closed. Some of the slats were broken, and afternoon light seeped through. There was another wooden door on the other side of the room. She didn’t know if it led to a closet or maybe a bathroom, which she desperately needed as she’d been holding it for hours.
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