“How do you know they know each other?”
“We found a picture in my house with all of them in it. But that’s not the important part. My parents took a trip to Prague some fifteen years ago. So did his. Right about the same time. We’re thinking they might have gone together.”
“Connor—”
“I know. I’m sure they’re not the only people in New York who went to the Czech Republic around that time. But they all went, and they were all abducted. I’m not saying it has anything to do with the trip. That was a long time ago. But it seems like something to look into, doesn’t it?”
Fair point, Olivia thought. There had never been a ransom call. If the killer was abducting people who knew each other, it might be about something other than money. It was also likely the reason he hadn’t taken Connor. There was a purpose behind this. She felt a small rush of adrenaline, a renewed hope that she could solve this crime. In a normal abduction case, you worked it the best you could, but there was often not much you could do other than wait for a call. If there was a reason behind it, though, you just had to find the reason.
“Anything else?”
Connor seemed to hesitate. “No, that’s it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“All right. Thanks for filling me in. I’ll sync up with the Yorktown PD, and we’ll check this out.”
Connor thanked her as well, and she hung up.
“That took forever,” Erin whined from the backseat, stretching out the word “forever” until she ran out of breath. “Now can we get a treat?”
Olivia glanced at her daughter via the review mirror and smiled. “Sure.”
Erin could be a handful. Even plopped in front of the TV, she didn’t stay still long, so Olivia didn’t get a chance to place any more work calls until after her daughter was in bed. She left a message for the Yorktown detective, asking him to reach out to her in the morning. Then she pulled out her laptop, connected to the NYPD’s VPN, and went to work.
There wasn’t much on Roland Cooper. Just the basics, the sort of public record everyone leaves behind: birth certificate, marriage certificate, credit report (he had four cards and thirty-two thousand dollars in debt between them, not to mention loans for his car and his house). Some traffic tickets, but nothing unusual. She doubted he had anything to do with the abduction, but she would follow up with him tomorrow anyway.
In the meantime, she shifted her attention to Olin’s parents. Mark and Hillary Wilson. Married in 1992. Mark was a money manager for Fidelity. Hillary had worked a few odd jobs over the years—she had campaigned for Al Gore and Barack Obama, spent three months as a receptionist at Save the Oceans, another three months as a frontline activist (whatever that was) for Save the Rainforests—but was, by all accounts, a housewife.
They lived in an affluent Westchester neighborhood in a big house that Mark had inherited from his parents. They were both lifelong New Yorkers and both had attended Columbia University.
Olivia turned her attention to Connor’s parents. She knew a lot about them already, but only the recent stuff. As she dug further into their backgrounds, she learned that while Frank had moved to New York from Alabama when he was twenty-six, Kim had, like Mark and Hillary, grown up in New York and been a student at Columbia. The three had even graduated the same year.
And further digging did indeed reveal all four had traveled to the Czech Republic. The US Customs and Border Protection agency had records for them leaving and returning together. But there had been at least one other person with them.
Before marrying Frank, Kim had been married to a Matthew Jones. She had still been married to him on the date of the trip, and the US Customs and Border Protection agency had a record for him leaving the US on the same day as everyone else.
The only thing was, they had no record of him coming back. Ever.
That had to be a mistake, Olivia thought.
CHAPTER 30
Aden was denied bail. He hadn’t expected the hearing to go any other way.
He was transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center and put in a cell by himself on a high-security wing. He spent little time in it, though. Federal agents of all stripes questioned him for hours on end. They wanted to know the basics, of course: what his plan was, whether he was working alone.
But they also asked other questions. A lot of them.
He said not a word. Not to anyone. Not ever. Even when he was allowed out of his cell for short periods of time, he didn’t speak to the guards or other inmates.
Not until tonight, anyway. Tonight, he asked the guards if he could make a phone call.
The hacker was watching a baseball game when his cellphone rang. The Yankees versus the Bears. The score was three to one, in favor of the Yankees. Seventh inning. It seemed inevitable at this point the Yankees would win. Somehow, that made the world seem a little better.
He glanced down at the cellphone sitting on the sofa beside him. It was a burner. Only one person had the number.
He picked it up.
“You have a collect call from the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Will you accept the charges?”
The hacker hadn’t heard about Aden’s arrest, but that had to be who was calling. Did this mean the plan was off? He hoped so.
“Yes, I’ll accept the charges.”
There was a click and then silence.
The hacker stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the city while he waited to be connected to Aden. His heart sank as he realized he had probably already been connected, that Aden was sitting there quietly on the other end, and he followed the protocol.
“Betty, is that you?”
Another five seconds of silence. Then there was a single long beep, so loud he had to hold the phone away from his ear. It was the sound of someone holding down a key on the phone’s keypad. And that was followed by more silence.
“I think you have the wrong number,” the hacker said, and then hung up.
So much for the possibility that Aden’s arrest had put a stop to his plan. They were still on.
Just do what you have to do. It’s the deal you made.
CHAPTER 31
“Why didn’t you tell Olivia about Dylan?” Olin said, when Connor hung up the phone.
Connor stared at him incredulously. “Dylan’s dad just saw us breaking and entering. The police are probably at his house right now taking a statement.”
“But we didn’t steal anything.”
Connor shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road. “If we told Olivia, she would have to go and talk to her,” he said flatly. “And if she did that, Dylan’s father would likely be there, since she’s underage. My name would inevitably come up. Maybe yours would, too. And if he figured out who we were, maybe looked us up online or something, we’d be fucked.” He turned quickly to Olin and then back to the road. “Besides, what good would it do? It was like you said—she’s just a kid.”
He could tell from Olin’s expression that Olin didn’t like the idea of keeping anything from the police. But Olin had to know he was right.
Neither of them said much else until they pulled into the parking lot across the street from Deerfield Park. Olin’s car was still there.
“I’ll talk to you soon,” Olin said as he got out.
“Sure,” Connor agreed. But he wasn’t sure Olin meant it, and he wasn’t sure he did, either. Having handed everything over to the police that they could, what more was there for them to do? What reason did they have to meet again? At first, their shared pain had seemed like the kind of thing that might bind them together as friends for life. But maybe that was just because they had a common goal. A quest, as it were.
For a little while there, Connor had felt like he might be in control of his destiny (and, by extension, his parents’). Olin had certainly felt the same way.
Now, as he watched Olin get into his BMW and pull away, he was starting to think the whole thing might have just been a way t
o distract himself from the possibility that he would never see his parents again.
He had told himself his parents were alive. But his evidence for that had been flimsy, hadn’t it? Basing his assumption on the finger his mother wore her wedding band was desperate reasoning. Assuming the kidnapper had killed Olin’s parents so the police would think Connor’s parents were dead seemed equally desperate.
He drove back to Austin’s building, barely going the speed limit. He was in no hurry to be anywhere, and felt like even the simple act of turning the steering wheel took all the will he could muster. At one point, coming up to a red light, he thought about not stopping at all. It was a busy intersection. Cars crossed at forty-five, maybe fifty, miles an hour. With no one in front of him, he could sail straight into it, and there was a decent chance he wouldn’t make it out.
But he could also end up paralyzed, and his situation would immediately become worse than it was now. Dead parents. Dead body. All he would have left would be his brain—and all he would be able to do then would be to mourn the loss of both.
Besides, his parents wouldn’t want him to do that. They would be disappointed in him if they knew what he was thinking. You don’t give up on life just because things are hard.
Austin picked up on the change in his mood almost as soon as Connor walked through the door. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. Then, perhaps because he didn’t know what else to do, he ordered them a pizza, calling it comfort food, and put on a movie titled Get Him to the Greek.
It was the type of comedy that might have made Connor laugh a month ago. Tonight he could barely focus on it, and halfway through, he simply stopped trying.
“I’m going to bed,” he told Austin.
Austin seemed disappointed but didn’t put up much of a fight.
CHAPTER 32
Olivia couldn’t sleep. Not well, anyway. She woke up every hour or so and checked the alarm clock to see how close she was to morning. At four a.m., she decided she had slept as much as she was going to. She got up, took a shower. She was anxious to get started.
The US Customs and Border Protection agency still wouldn’t be open for several hours. She was stuck unless she wanted to skip straight to calling the Czech police to see if they knew anything about Matthew Jones. What the hell? Why not?
These days, the US Customs and Border Protection agency digitally logged travel to and from the county. That wasn’t being done when Matthew had gone to the Czech Republic, so it was possible his return trip had been overlooked when the staff was transferring paper records into the computer. As far as she knew, the paper records still existed for just such an occasion. But how long would it take to dig them up? Would she be waiting another day for an answer? Two? And if he had come back, why couldn’t she find an address for him online? Or anything at all, for that matter?
The Czech Republic’s international airport was located in Prague, the country’s capital. She figured it made sense to start with the police there and fan out to smaller cities if she needed to. Since the Czech Republic was five hours ahead of New York, she could start placing her calls now.
She looked the force up online. The first listing she came across was Policie České republiky. It sounded promising.
Olivia dialed the number, then spent half an hour getting routed through officers who spoke varying degrees of English until she finally ended up with Oldrich Kozar. From what she could gather, he had been on the force for some thirty years and, as luck would have it, spoke English well.
“I think I remember this Matthew Jones,” he said. “Hold on while I check something.”
That sounded promising. Olivia was glad she hadn’t waited to speak with the US Customs and Border Protection agency first.
“Yes,” he said. “Here it is. Matthew Jones. Arrested and charged with . . . How you call it? First degree murder, correct?”
Of all the things Oldrich could have told her, she would have never guessed this. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes. Very sure. I remember this case. Matthew Jones killed a woman . . . What was her name?” Olivia heard the detective flipping through pieces of paper. “Heather Callahan.”
“Related to Frank Callahan?”
More flipping pages. “She was his wife.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Detective Forbes, I can assure you we have our facts correct.”
“I’m sorry. I hadn’t meant—”
“It’s okay.”
“Do you know why he killed her?”
“It says here they were having an affair. She wanted to break it off, and he did not. This is . . . common.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, sometimes, these things . . . they happen.”
“What things happen?”
“Things.”
“Murder?”
“Not usually. But, you know, things.”
Olivia suspected he meant assault, and unfortunately things like that did sometimes happen when couples broke up. “Is he still in jail?”
“But yes. Tell me, why are you calling all the way from America about this old case?”
Olivia filled him in on the abductions and subsequent murders.
He grunted. “That’s quite a thing.”
“I know it’s a long shot, but could you review your case files? See if there’s anything in them that might help us figure out what’s happening now?”
“Why do you think that case has anything to do with this?”
Olivia was still in her robe, propped up on the bed, legs crossed. “I’m not sure it does.” She looked at the clock. It was almost six now. Erin would get up soon. “But something ties these abductions together.”
“Okay. I will look. But—how you say?—don’t get your hopes high.”
CHAPTER 33
Like Olivia, Connor woke up almost every hour on the hour. Was he actually at a dead end? Certainly there was something he could do, some clue he had missed. There had to be.
Well, there was one thing.
Dylan.
He could still talk to her, he thought, staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t expect it to bring him any insight. But at least it would focus his mind. “Action is action,” he’d heard someone say once. He hadn’t understood it then. He sure did now. Besides, Dylan knew something about his real father. And maybe his mother. Hoping it might have anything to do with their kidnapping seemed like a stretch, but he should still find out what it was.
But how? After the encounter with Dylan’s father, he couldn’t exactly walk right up to the front door and ask to speak with her.
He would have to do it somewhere else.
That would mean following her. Waking up early (done), driving to her house, trailing her until she was alone. But that all sounded like a terrible idea.
Maybe there was a better way.
Connor sat down at the small mahogany desk in the bedroom and opened his laptop. He didn’t bother to turn on the lamp. He knew his way around a computer almost well enough to work it blindfolded, and the screen cast enough light for him to see the keyboard on the rare occasion he needed to look.
He got the IP address from Dylan’s email (the same IP address he had used earlier to find her house) and employed a technique called banner grabbing to search for open ports. From there, it was just a matter of exploiting the applications that used those ports to find a way in. It took a while. Hacking his way into a stranger’s machine always did. Soon enough, though, he found himself looking at Dylan’s computer just as if he were actually in her bedroom.
He checked her Outlook calendar, hoping for a list of appointments, and found it blank. He wasn’t surprised. That was a long shot anyway. Then he had a better idea, and a little bit of Googling confirmed his suspicion.
When he was done doing what he’d logged in to do, he closed down his computer and slid it back into the bag beside the desk.
Olin would want to be a part of this, Connor thought. He no doubt needed t
he distraction, as well. But Connor wasn’t going to call. It was too early. Besides, this was the kind of information that should be delivered in person. He had no reason to think the police were listening to every call he made. They might not be listening to any at all. But they had installed software on his phone that would let them.
Sure, they had told him he would have to activate the application if he wanted them to hear the call. And at the time, he had taken that statement at face value. But now he had his doubts. For all he knew, they considered him a suspect in his parents’ abductions, and the application was a clever way of capturing not just calls from the kidnapper, but any calls they wanted. Maybe texts, too.
As he pulled a clean pair of jeans and a Ramones tee shirt out of his suitcase, he told himself that was unlikely. If Olivia was monitoring the calls and texts on his phone, she would also be monitoring the ones on his dad’s. She would have already known about Roland.
But then he reminded himself that one could never be too careful.
Connor opened the bedroom door and crept through the dark apartment. His foot brushed against something soft, and he jerked back, his heart hammering, as Austin’s cat bolted into the living room, likely taking shelter under the sofa again.
Once he caught his breath, he continued on to the kitchen. Austin had a spiral notepad and pencil that he used for his shopping lists in a drawer by the stove. Connor took them out, hastily scrawled out a brief note that said he would not be able to come to work today and that he would circle up with Austin later. He had some personal business to attend to.
A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trust Page 12