The man glanced at Max with worry straining every feature. Max flashed his badge.
“The FBI is here. I’m going to have to call you back.” Russell Lomakin disconnected the call and strode over to shake Max’s and Lucy’s hands.
The couple obviously assumed Lucy was also with the FBI. Max didn’t bother to correct them.
“Have you heard anything?” Mrs. Lomakin burst out. “Is Irene okay?”
“As far as I know, your daughter is still alive, but I have no direct proof.”
The Lomakins’ expressions flickered uncertainly.
“I’ve spoken to someone who claims to be one of the kidnappers. Did they contact you?”
Mrs. Lomakin’s eyes shot to her husband. Her hands wrung one another, reflecting internal agony. “They told us not to say anything.”
“Lori,” her husband said sharply.
“What?” Lori Lomakin snapped. “Am I supposed to lie to the FBI now?”
“Yes, if it saves Irene’s life. We’re not even Americans.” The man looked frantic. “If the kidnappers find out we are talking to the cops, they’ll kill Irene. Isn’t that incentive enough to keep your bloody mouth shut?”
Whoa.
Anxiety was ripping these people apart.
Max held up his hands, palms out. “I realize you are both under a tremendous amount of strain worrying about your daughter, but I think I can help. Is it possible to sit down for a few minutes and discuss this?”
Russell looked at his wife, his jaw locked, body tense—a man on the brink of self-destruction. Finally, he nodded.
“I’ll make us some coffee.” Lori Lomakin went to take a step toward the kitchen.
Lucy stood in her way. “Let me do that for you. You stay here and talk to SSA Hawthorne.”
Lori Lomakin’s expression crumbled.
Lucy was good with people. She was still a bit of an enigma to Max, but he got the feeling patience would work in his favor when trying to figure her out. As with lowering a kidnapper’s expectations, eventually Lucy would realize she was stuck with him—at least temporarily—and adjust her reality. And then she might actually begin to enjoy herself again.
He hoped so, anyway.
He followed Russell and Lori outside. A stone patio led to three steps and a long green lawn. Potted plants filled every space in a cacophony of color. A small jacaranda tree in full bloom provided a dappled purple shade.
Max sat on an uncomfortable iron garden chair. Russell and Lori sat close together, but their body language screamed emotional distance.
“Forgive me for asking basic questions, but I’m trying to figure out exactly what I’m dealing with here. How long have you lived in Buenos Aires?”
Russell crossed his arms over his chest. “Four years now.”
Lori Lomakin’s lips pinched and she looked away.
“The girls all go to the International school?”
Again, the terse nod.
Sweat was beginning to form on Russell’s brow. He wore a clean, pink shirt, no tie, and faded jeans. His hair went in every direction as if he’d been grabbing handfuls of it and twisting. Lori looked as if she hadn’t slept or showered since Christmas Eve.
“Irene has been friends with Kristen Dickerson since Kristen arrived here, correct?”
Lori picked at the skin around her cuticles. Max noted she had raw patches around several nails. Even though it must sting, she worried the skin in a compulsive fashion.
“Yeah.” Russell rubbed both hands over his face. “They’re in a lot of the same classes. She and Kristen connected pretty quickly. There’s a group of five girls who hang out together a lot.”
“I assume the British Embassy’s been in touch?”
Russell made a sound somewhere between a snort and a growl. “Some pompous ass came by and said they’d help any way they could, but that the British government does not, under any circumstances, negotiate with kidnappers. He also suggested this was our fault for letting our daughter out on her own and reminded us to be careful when talking to the media.” Russell swallowed repeatedly. “He said the local police have a good record of dealing with these types of cases.” Russell’s voice rose. “But if that is true, why are there still so many fucking kidnappings in this country!”
“He also said we should get as much cash together as we can and pay the kidnappers.” Lori’s voice was level—not with calm but with numbness.
Russell dragged his hand through his hair.
Lucy arrived with coffee on a tray, and her eyes darted around the table with concern.
Max preferred Lucy outside the embassy because she allowed herself to show her emotions whereas, inside the embassy, she was as much an automaton as Lori Lomakin. He wasn’t sure why but intended to figure it out.
He waited for Lucy to distribute the mugs and take a seat.
“What is your company doing about the situation?” Max asked.
Lori’s face crumpled and Russell looked stricken.
“Not a lot.” His voice was bitter.
“Not a lot?” Max mirrored. He waited silently even though he had fifteen thousand questions.
Russell swallowed audibly. “I fucked up.” He laughed, but it sounded like heartbreak. Then the man started to cry, squeezing his eyes shut, silent sobs shaking his shoulders.
Rather than comforting her husband, Lori closed her own eyes and crossed her legs and looked away. Everything about her suggested she was on the verge of snapping.
Max exchanged a look with Lucy and saw the empathy he was feeling returned in her gaze. He didn’t understand. Where was their company’s K&R expert? Where was the negotiator?
It took the Lomakins a few minutes to get themselves back together and Max waited, giving them the space to grieve while he quietly sipped his coffee.
Finally, Russell wiped his eyes with a handkerchief he pulled out of his pocket. Lori took a deep breath and unwound her cramped limbs. She might not have been weeping on the outside, but the woman was wrung dry on the inside.
“Sorry,” Russell said, taking a big swallow of coffee. “I haven’t slept much since this happened.”
“Don’t apologize. I get how stressful this situation must be. What I’m trying to figure out is why isn’t your company helping you deal with this?”
A pained expression moved over Russell’s features. “Like I said, I fucked up. I accepted a new position this month, and my last day at the old job was on Christmas Eve. We hadn’t told the girls yet because we didn’t want to upset them over Christmas.”
“We?” Lori’s face distorted with rage. “You should never have accepted a new job without talking to me.”
Ah, that would explain the animosity.
“But then when do you care about me and the girls when you’re making career plans?”
Ouch.
“I work my ass off so you and the girls can have a good life.”
Max was familiar with this marital dispute. His parents had divorced not long after their version of it.
Lori laughed harshly. “How’s that working out for us now?”
Russell turned away, expression angry and mutinous.
“You do what you want and expect me and the girls to follow along like puppets.”
The fissures in this marriage were becoming gaping cracks.
Max still didn’t understand. “Are you saying that it’s taking time for the companies to figure out which of them is responsible?”
“What he’s saying,” bitterness dripped from every syllable, “is that there is no insurance.” Lori Lomakin’s skin was so pale, Max worried she might faint. Only fear and resentment seemed to be keeping her upright. “The new job is in Brazil and doesn’t start until February. The old job finished the moment Russell left the office for the last time on December 24th. We have no personal insurance that covers this kind of situation because Russ is too much of a cheapskate to buy it. Now look at us.”
“It was six weeks,” Russell said tightly. “We’v
e lived here for four years and never had any trouble. How could I know that kidnappers would target one of Irene’s friends and that Irene would be dumb enough to get involved.” His voice rang off the stone walls that surrounded the garden.
It wasn’t surprising that this was a serious issue between the two of them. Parents of abducted and murdered children often lost each other through the ordeal. Max didn’t think these two would last the week.
But what did that mean for Irene?
“Irene knew you had kidnap insurance through your old company?”
Russell nodded miserably.
It seemed likely that Irene had told the kidnappers that her dad’s company had insurance in an effort to increase her value to her captors. What happened when the kidnappers discovered Irene was mistaken?
They’d assume she was lying.
Would they kill her? Or punish her for what they would see as a betrayal? Max didn’t like this situation at all.
Usually, he’d have had to walk away, but something about the ragged seams of this family bursting with grief, and the fact Irene had only been taken in an effort to rescue her friend, pulled his strings.
“How much money can you raise for the ransom without insurance?” Max tried to keep his voice calm and soothing.
Russell blew air up over his face. “We have stocks and shares we can liquidate to the tune of twenty thousand pounds in the next week or so. The girls all have college funds we can cash out—”
“And how are they going to afford to go to college?” Lori asked with anguish.
“What does it matter if Irene is dead?” Russell sliced back.
Max interceded before they tore each other apart. “I realize how awful this is, but you need to work together for the sake of your daughters, if not your marriage.”
Russell looked at him with shock then, as if he’d never considered his marriage to be a potential casualty of this. Lori’s mouth firmed. She knew. She was already halfway out the door.
“My dad has some money,” she said suddenly. “He might lend us some.”
“That miserly old bastard wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire.”
Lori’s eyes burned. “He’s very fond of all the girls, especially Irene. Says she’s spunky, like my mother was.”
“How do you think Irene will be holding up?” Max asked carefully.
Russell scratched his nose. “She is spunky. If she wasn’t, she’d have left Kristen Dickerson to her fate like the other girl did.”
“It’s always been one of her more endearing traits. She came out of the womb ready for anything.” Lori smiled and finally seemed to let go a little of the overwhelming horror she must be experiencing. “She’s strong and smart. As long as she doesn’t argue with the men who’ve taken her…”
“She probably will though… She argues with me all the time.” Russell slumped. He looked exhausted and on the verge of crying again. These people were way out of their depth.
“We have reason to believe Irene told the kidnappers that you have kidnap insurance through your work.”
Lori went tense again. “What will they do when they find out it’s not true?”
Max didn’t answer her question. “You said they told you not to talk to the police?”
Russell nodded. “They called the landline early this morning. Told me they wanted ten million dollars.” He dropped his face into his cupped hands. “We don’t have ten million dollars.”
These people needed professional help.
“Look, I will do my best to get both Kristen and Irene released by the kidnappers but, officially, I can only negotiate on behalf of any Americans present.”
“You sound British,” Lori argued.
Max inclined his head. “Born and raised, but I had to renounce my dual citizenship when I signed up for the FBI. I will treat the girls as a package deal but, if they release Kristen, then I’m officially done with the case.” That bothered him. It would have bothered any member of the Crisis Negotiation Unit. “I do have a close friend who works in the K&R business.”
“We can’t afford to pay him if we need all our money to raise the ransom,” Russell objected.
“He’s a professional who will save you more than he costs in the long run, but your daughter would be his priority, and he knows how to work with me rather than against me so the kidnappers don’t play us off one another. If he took this case, he would be doing it as a personal favor to me, but I know he’s not going to want to work in a toxic environment.” That sounded harsh, but his buddy wouldn’t put up with childish fights between adults. “You’ll have to work out your personal issues in private at a later date, when the kidnapping is resolved.”
“We can do that,” Russell stated confidently.
It was Lori who Max was looking at. Seeing her thoughts flicker over her features like words in a book. Anger, resentment, finally hope. “We’d be incredibly grateful to have someone helping us. Russell and I have a lot to deal with in our relationship. I called a marriage counselor last week in an—”
“I’m not talking to a marriage counselor,” Russell muttered. “I don’t need fucking therapy.”
“Well, if you don’t attend counseling, we won’t have a marriage to save, but I can’t make you do anything, obviously. It’s going to be up to you.” Lori smoothed her hands down her flower-print skirt. Her voice was quiet and resigned. She seemed to have come to a place of inner calm and understanding, about her marriage at least. “We would welcome this negotiator’s help. Thank you for the offer to talk to him on our behalf. I will call my father and tell him what’s happened. I won’t ask for money because then he’d never offer it. But he might volunteer it once he knows how serious the situation is.”
She held Max’s gaze. “We will do whatever we need to do to bring our daughter home again, SSA Hawthorne. What else do you need to know?”
Chapter Fifteen
“That was intense.” Lucy slipped out of her suit jacket and hung it over the back of her headrest. She felt emotionally drained after that encounter, and she was only a bystander.
It had been bad enough to experience it with Catherine and Phillip Dickerson but at least they were able to get presidents on the phone at short notice. The Lomakins might be upper-middle class enjoying the good life, but without the financial cushion of the independently wealthy or the political connections of the Foreign Service, they were essentially powerless. And the kidnappers had made them too scared to even go to the police.
“Yeah.” Max blew out a breath.
“Where to next?” They both climbed into the Mini and rolled down the windows to release the sweltering heat.
Happy Holidays.
“Argentine Federal Police headquarters at 1650 Moreno Street. I want to take a look at those files on the cases from the Brazilian street gang a couple of years ago.” He gave her a searching look as if he wasn’t sure how she might react to his request.
She resisted the urge to pat down her hair or otherwise fix her appearance.
“I need a trustworthy translator, but the information might include crime scene photographs and descriptions you might find disturbing. You don’t have to do it. I can get someone else assigned.”
Her heart gave a little tumble at the double hit. The fact he considered her trustworthy and the fact he didn’t want to make her do anything she wasn’t comfortable with made him the antithesis of everything else going on in her life right now.
She covered her fluster by adjusting her mirrors. “The ambassador wanted me to help you.”
“I don’t care about the ambassador, Lucy. If it adversely affects you then we’re going to stop, and I’ll figure out a better way.”
Her pulse skipped along her veins like a lovesick fool. Which was dumb. This wasn’t personal. He wasn’t attracted to her. He was simply a super nice guy who happened to inhabit a red-hot body that had inadvertently reminded her she used to have a libido. Not his fault.
She cleared her throat. “It�
�s fine. I have a strong constitution. If the photographs are too graphic, I simply won’t look at them.”
She reflexively gripped and released the leather-clad steering wheel. She’d have to figure out how to give the Russians information that was essentially worthless. She still hadn’t figured out if they’d been the ones to take Kristen, in which case they would want to be kept informed so they could evade capture. It shouldn’t be impossible to feed Felix and his cronies enough information to make it look like she was fully cooperating, but not enough so they could get away with anything.
Max smiled. “I appreciate your help. If you change your mind or it becomes too much for you, let me know. We’ll figure it out. Now if you don’t mind, I need to make a call and beg a favor from a friend.”
He pulled out his personal smartphone while she programmed her Sat Nav. She wasn’t familiar with the federal police building. She thankfully hadn’t had any reason to visit PFA’s headquarters, until now.
She started driving. The streets were busy again with shoppers hunting for bargains.
“Hey, Andy? How you doing, mate?” As Max spoke to his friend, Lucy pretended not to listen. After a few minutes of catch up about mutual acquaintances, Max finally got to the point. “I need a favor.”
He outlined the situation Irene Lomakin found herself in. Told this guy—Andy—that the parents had no insurance but could pay some money toward his salary. Max then offered to pay the difference in the shortfall, but he didn’t want the parents to know.
Lucy glanced at Max in shock.
He met her gaze but didn’t react.
“How soon can you get out here?” He looked at his watch. “That’s great. Thanks, man. I’ll email you the Lomakins’ contact details. The FBI is taking the lead on the case, and I will try to get the girls released as a joint package, but I don’t want things going sideways if Russell Lomakin starts negotiating on the side. He’s a loose cannon I don’t need.”
After another few minutes of chat, Max hung up.
“You’re paying his salary?” Lucy asked.
“Well, not really. I mean I offered, but I doubt he’ll take me up on it. Plus, he won’t be here more than a few weeks. His employer will undoubtedly require him somewhere else in the world in the not-too-distant future. He’ll set everything up and find a local contact to run it through from abroad. It won’t bankrupt me. He owes me a favor from way back.”
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