by Ellen Butler
However, the mention of my sister was a punch to the gut. Not that I’d forgotten, but for all of, what, five minutes, it had been pushed to the periphery.
“I know,” I breathed.
“You need to stay strong and be positive. Have you spoken to your family yet?”
The thought had crossed my mind that I should tell my parents, but I had no idea how to break the horrifying news. So I’d shoved the task aside. I’d had a notion that I could tell the entire story in retrospect—after we’d found Jillian—when life was back to normal. In my head, I’d already had the conversation, it would go something like, “Hey, Mom, so you won’t believe this crazy thing that happened today. . . .” Only, the further we got from the incident, the less and less it seemed everything would be normal.
“I-I don’t know how to tell them.” To my dismay, my voice hitched.
A moment of silence hung between us.
“Do you want me to call them?” he asked quietly. “I can have an agent sent out to their home.”
“Do—do you think we have to?”
“Yes, Karina.” He rarely ever used my name, and even more rarely used it with such concern. Usually when he used my name, he barked it at me in frustration or anger. “She’s their daughter. They have a right to know. And it’s better they hear it now, before they hear it on the news.”
“Oh. My. Gawd.” I put a hand to my mouth. “Is her name on the news?”
“Not her name or picture, the task force is keeping it under wraps and the FBI has clamped down on local press, but the story is out there. It’s only a matter of time before it gets leaked.”
I was not normally one to shirk a duty that had to be done, but for the life of me, I simply couldn’t picture myself getting the words past my mouth with my mother on the other end of the line. “Can you do it?”
“Of course, sweetheart.” Mike also rarely used endearments. His compassion was almost my undoing. “I’ll be in touch. I’m catching the first flight out.”
I swiped at a stray tear gathering in the corner of my eye. “But your training isn’t over until tomorrow.”
“It ended today. Normally, the team goes out for one last hurrah. You know, drinks and dinner. Obviously, I’ll be skipping that.”
“Text me the flight details when you know.”
“I will. Be safe, stay strong. Before you hang up, can you put Batman on the phone?”
“Uh, why?” I asked warily.
A sigh blew at me. “Just put him on the phone.”
“Fine. Here, he wants to talk to you.” I held the phone out, covered the microphone with my thumb, and whispered to Rick, “Don’t tell him where we are going.”
He took the phone. “Rick here. Uh-huh. That’s correct. Yes, we are. I’ve got men following a few leads. Yes, we’re in touch with them. She’ll be safe. Yes, I understand.” Rick gave the phone back to me.
“You want to tell me what that was about?” I asked Mike.
“Don’t worry. I’ll see you soon. Love you.” He hung up.
“Is he flying home?” Rick inquired, flicking on the headlights as the steely dusk descended upon us.
“Yes. He’ll talk to my parents too. What did he have to say to you?” I asked warily.
“He wanted to know if we were doing our own investigation, and he warned me to keep you safe. If you get hurt, he’s holding me personally responsible.”
“Good times,” I said drily.
Rick remained silent for a moment, his jaw clenched and eyes narrowed. “He’s right. If you get hurt, it’s on my head.”
I turned to stare out my window. “If she gets hurt, it’s on mine.”
We’d left the highway and came to a stop behind a line of traffic. Rick, perhaps sensing my urgency, peeled off to the right at the next turn and wove his way through neighborhood streets to get to our destination. Finally, he pulled up behind the white panel van parked next to a lot overgrown with weeds and a house that appeared vacant.
With arms crossed, Josh leaned coolly against the back bumper. He must have been waiting for us and came to open my door.
“Good to see you still alive, Karina.” I held my hand toward him, and he hoisted me out of the seat. I didn’t say anything, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to get out on my own. “Let’s get you into some gear that fits.”
I followed Josh to the side of the van. He knocked twice and Hernandez slid open the door.
“Lift up your arms,” Josh commanded.
“Wait a minute, let me get my stuff out.” I’d been squirreling away my handbag’s worldly goods while we drove over. I pulled out the lip gloss, wallet, phone, sunglasses, pen, hand sanitizer, tissues, and a compact, laying them on the floor of the van. “This vest is really handy. I can see why y’all use them.”
“A compact? Really?” Josh picked the offending item off the floorboards, holding it between two fingers, as if it might bite him.
I snatched it back and answered defensively, “It’s got a mirror, might come in handy if you need to see around a corner.”
His head dipped and slowly shook back and forth, and I’m fairly sure it was accompanied by an eyeroll. He peeled off the bulky vest—a relief to my shoulders and back—and passed it to Rick. “This will be more comfortable. Arms up.”
The new black vest descended over my head, and Josh helped guide my hands through the armholes. When it was on, I twisted and rotated, getting a feel for the bulletproof armor. The lightweight Kevlar fit more comfortably, if a bit snug. It kind of squished my breasts, forming a uni-boob. A small concession I was willing to endure for safety.
“Hey, this one doesn’t have pockets.” I patted the front and sides.
“It’s not a tactical vest,” Josh said, tightening the Velcro straps on the sides.
“But what about all my stuff?” I pointed to the pile.
“Here, she can have the belt.” Hernandez held out a nylon belt with all sorts of pouches and pockets.
My eyes widened. “Oh-ho!” I snatched it out of his hand. “Look at that, it’s got a gun holster. Like the old west.” I wound it around my waist and tightened the buckle, but to my disappointment it was too big. If I let it go, it would have fallen to the ground.
“Here.” Josh undid the buckle and slid off some of the pouches, including the one for the gun.
“So, no gun?” I asked.
Josh paused, but it was Rick who answered, “Do you want one?” The man had to walk on cat feet because I hadn’t heard him return from his car. It took every effort not to jump.
Staring at Rick, I recalled a conversation we’d had, not so long ago, when he’d encouraged me to learn to handle a gun. I didn’t want one then, but today I gave that Ruger some serious thought. Perhaps it was because back then, the threat had been less tangible. Today, I’d been physically attacked, and my sister taken. The need for vengeance was more palpable. I glanced between Josh’s frowning mien and Rick’s blank face. Rick was perfectly willing to arm me, Josh clearly had reservations.
“Perhaps not. I might end up shooting one of you accidentally,” I replied with resignation.
Josh continued removing the gun holster, then tightened the belt so it fit snug beneath the vest. “By the way, where is your stun gun?”
I grimaced with regret. “It’s in my drawer at the office. I forgot to put the damn thing back in my purse.” Something I did regularly. I couldn’t take it into any of the buildings on the Hill, so it often got left behind in a drawer or the glovebox of my car.
“You can have a taser if you want,” Hernandez said distractedly.
A taser? How I wished I’d had a taser a few hours ago. “I’ll take a taser.”
Rick retrieved the little black device, explained how it worked, and stuck it into one of the holsters on my right hip.
The belt didn’t have a good pocket for my sunglasses, so I put them on my head. “Okay. Now what?” I planted my feet shoulder-width apart and put hands on my hips. “What are
you grinning at, Joshua? Don’t I look like a badass?”
“Get in the van,” Rick intoned.
I climbed in and peeked over Hernandez’s shoulder to see what held his attention on the monitor. “What are you watching?”
“Drone footage.” His hands manipulated a joystick and buttoned controller. The drone circled a red brick rambler.
“I don’t think that’s our house. Sadira said it had dark green or black shutters. This one doesn’t have shutters,” I said.
Hernandez raised the drone over the roof and moved on to the next house, with mustard siding and brown shutters.
I shook my head. “Huh-uh.”
The drone turned catching a glimpse at the home across the street before rotating back to the mustard home.
“Hold up, stop.” I gripped his forearm. “Go back to the house across the street.” The camera shifted. “Right there. Zoom in on the car in the carport.” The back of a black Lincoln Navigator came into focus with a license that read, RTZ-333. “Guys! Get in here!”
Josh and Rick had moved away from the open van door; they now clambered in to see where I pointed on the screen. Their invasion made for tight quarters, which got even tighter when someone shut the door.
“I thought you said there were no plates on the car,” Josh stated.
I ignored him and grabbed Hernandez’s forearm. “Can you get closer and show me the hubcaps?”
The drone flew downward and one of the back tires came into view. “Spinney wheels,” I breathed. “Show me the back bumper. There was a scratch to the left of the license plate holder.” The SUV flew out of sight. “Your other left.”
Hernandez zoomed in and slowly moved the camera across the back bumper, halting on the wiggly scratch that marred the shiny bumper’s surface. “That’s it! That’s it! Hernandez, you found it!”
“Your nails,” Hernandez bit out.
“Oh, sorry.” I released him, leaving behind little halfmoon indents on his russet skin.
“Run the license plate,” Rick directed at Josh, who reached past me to grab a tablet. “Hernandez, check the backyard for signs of a dog.”
The drone zoomed up over the roof of the house. Light from inside spilled onto the back patio, where a man stood smoking a cigarette and talking on a phone. A bistro table with two chairs and an umbrella sat on the concrete, but the man didn’t use the seating, instead, he paced back and forth.
“Do we have audio?” Rick asked.
“No. This isn’t the MAV,” Hernandez replied.
“What about infrared?” Rick peered closer.
“Switching to infrared.” Hernandez pushed a button and the screen suddenly turned into a rainbow of colors and outlines. The man on the back patio lit up blood orange and the tip of his cigarette burned a deep cranberry red.
“Looks like we’ve got two people in the room off the patio. Someone is lying down in the back bedroom. There’s something, wait—” Hernandez hovered near the front entrance. “I can’t tell— maybe a pet in a crate or closet? It’s not moving, whatever it is.” He spun the drone in a different direction. “There is probably a basement, but I can’t get infrared down there.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Concrete block is too thick,” Josh replied.
“Check the structure in the back,” Rick recommended.
The drone flew past the smoking guy to hover over the back shed. “No heat signatures in the rear structure.”
“The license plate doesn’t exist.” Josh held out the tablet for Rick. “It looks like it was on a list of plates to be destroyed two months ago.”
Rick’s eyes scanned the information, then turned to me. “Are you sure about the scratch on the bumper?”
“I was this close” —I held my hands six inches apart— “to that damn bumper. Believe me, it’s the car.” I may have exaggerated, but I wasn’t mistaken about the squiggly line. It stood out against the black paint, and I remember reaching for Hector’s foot as it was hanging directly above the scratch. “Don’t forget, the spinney wheels too.”
The drone had returned to the house; after flying over the carport and finding no red-blooded humans, Hernandez returned to hover over the unmoving heat signature in the back bedroom.
“Do you think that could be my sister?” I asked to no one in particular. When I didn’t get an answer, I peeled my gaze away from the screen. Rick pinched his lip and looked stern, Josh noncommittal, Hernandez just continued watching the screen, moving the drone slowly around the house, trying to get a peek in the window. He flicked a switch and the drone feed returned to normal. The window was blocked by a mish-mash of black and hot-pink poster board duct-taped together, filling every gap.
“Can you get a clear shot of the subject on the back deck?” Rick asked.
“Not without coming level and risking discovery,” Hernandez replied. “Do you want me to try?”
Rick shook his head. “No, bring it back. We’ll send in the MAV. I want audio. If the back door is open, we can get inside.”
The drone rose high above the rooftops, flying at a fast clip back to the van. Hernandez’s mastery with the drone impressed me. My brother received a drone for Christmas a few years ago. We all had fun taking turns with it in an empty field. I ran it into the only tree in the field, and my sister crash landed twice. It wasn’t as easy as it looked. However, Josh diverted my attention from Hernandez’s skills when he opened a miniature box that he’d pulled out of a small metal briefcase. Inside lay a dragonfly-looking insect.
“What is that?” I pointed.
“The MAV. Micro-air vehicle,” Josh replied. Gently, he removed the dragonfly from its protective nest of foam and laid it in his palm. “Robotic bug. Literally the fly on the wall.”
“It has camera and audio?”
“Yes.”
I swallowed. “That’s so disturbing. I saw one of those in a movie. I thought they were a Hollywood myth. Can anyone get a hold of one of those?”
“Right now,” Josh said as he placed the fly back in the box, “the US government holds the patents on MAVs like this.”
“So how did you get it?”
Nobody answered. I should have known. “Don’t tell me, a gift from the CIA?”
No response. A gentle tap on the roof of the van had me starting in fear. “What was that?” I whispered.
Unconcerned, Rick slid the door open and retrieved a black, four-rotor drone about the size of a turkey platter. He tucked it into a box next to the console. Hernandez placed the drone’s remote controller alongside it. From the dragonfly’s briefcase, he retrieved a USB drive and stuck it in the computer. Rick and Josh were moving around the limited space of the van, while Hernandez loaded the dragonfly’s software onto the computer, and I realized everyone was doing something except me.
I was in the way.
I should have offered to go sit up front, but I didn’t want to miss anything to do with the drone.
Finally, Josh drew open a hatch in the ceiling of the van, hereto unnoticed by me, and placed the dragonfly on the roof. “She’s ready when you are.”
With a soft flapping sound, we had liftoff. Hernandez put on the headphones with one earpiece halfway off and stared at the screen, manipulating the MAV with the mousepad and a couple of keystrokes. The camera angle was a bit different from the other drone, but Hernandez seemed to have no problem adjusting to the new viewpoint. A few minutes later, the MAV landed gently on the umbrella. The man was still smoking and pacing, but no longer on the phone. He turned and paced toward the drone. He had a teardrop tattoo beneath his eye, short, dark hair, and a scar along his chin. I caught my breath, fearful the drone would be discovered. The boys in the van, however, seemed so sure of the technology that they didn’t even blink.
“Do you know him?” Rick asked. I shook my head. “Get a still frame. Once we get a good shot, Josh can run it through facial rec,” Rick ordered.
A phone rang loud in the small space, and I let out a startled y
elp.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
With a scowl, Rick slid the door open and exited the van to take his call, closing the door behind him.
The MAV’s view was limited, but up in the corner, I noticed the screen door had been left open about a foot. “Can the MAV get through that opening?”
Hernandez shifted the bug to get a better shot. “Yes.”
The scarred man put his phone to his ear, grabbed a cigarette out of the pack and lit up.
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“He’s talking to his girlfriend,” Hernandez said with a glance back over his shoulder, and our noses almost touched. “Some space, pequeña ave. There’s a stool over there,” he said, pointing.
“Oh, sorry.” I stepped back. “Why do you keep calling me little bird?”
“Your name is Cardinal,” Josh said in a flat tone.
“Oh, right.” I pulled the stool over and took a seat. “What are we waiting for?” I whispered. “Why aren’t you going inside?”
“I’m waiting for him to turn away,” Hernandez said in a normal voice. “They can’t hear us, you know.”
My face turned hot. I glanced at Josh. “Do you have a hit on facial rec?”
Josh shook his head. “Not yet.”
“How long does it take?”
“It could be hours.”
“Hours? But—”
“This isn’t television. When the computer is done running, it might give us a dozen possibilities,” Josh said drily.
“A dozen?”
“Or more, then we’ll go through them one by one.”
Disillusioned, I returned my attention to Hernandez’s screen. Smoke wafted past the bug’s camera, and finally, the man moved away from the table. I spotted the gun tucked in the back of his pants as he turned away. Hernandez’s face tightened and he grunted before moving the MAV skillfully through the narrow opening.
I held my breath. “Don’t you worry the people will be alerted by the noise?”
Hernandez shook his head and flipped the closest headphone out toward me. Gunfire and booms blasted through the earpiece. The couple on the brown couch were watching an action movie on a large flat screen television at full volume. Hernandez landed the dragonfly on a nearby, dying plant. A girl lay half-reclined on the couch, her feet in the man’s lap. Her long black hair hung stringy around her shoulders, and she wore a white sweatshirt that read Juicy and a pair of white capri leggings. Cellulite rippled through the thin material. Her black eyeliner was smeared, giving her the look of a panda, and she seemed to be watching the show in a daze. The man wore a dark T-shirt and jeans, and one black-booted foot lay perched on the glass coffee table, which was littered with a half empty pizza box, four sodas, paper plates, a bag of white pills, and a big silver gun. Tattoos scattered up the visible parts of his arms, but none displayed across his face or bald head.