Without A Trace (Echo Lake Book 1)

by Amanda Stevens

  “What are you doing here?” Dylan countered.

  Tom turned. “That’s a good question, Rae. And I’m still waiting to hear your answer.”

  “Ask him.”

  “I don’t know what she’s talking about.” Dylan stumbled back, his hands up in front of him defensively. “This is crazy. She’s crazy. I’m telling you I didn’t do anything.”

  “Just stay right where you are,” Tom advised. “If you try to run, it’ll only make things worse for you.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!” Despite the warning, Dylan looked as if he wanted to bolt for the woods. For everyone’s sake, Tom decided he’d better restrain the kid. That didn’t go over well. “I know what you’re doing,” he accused sullenly as Tom snapped on the cuffs. “You’re going to pin everything on me so you can act like a big shot in town.”

  “Nobody’s going to pin anything on you,” Tom said. “This is for your own good so you don’t do something stupid while we talk.”

  Dylan tossed his head back, trying to clear his eyes of an unruly lock of hair. “Are you going to make her tell you why she’s here?”

  “Stop pretending you don’t know,” Rae shot back.

  “Okay, this is getting us nowhere fast.” Tom took Rae’s arm and guided her out of earshot. “He’s right. I need to know why you’re here. The real reason. Stop dancing around and tell me the truth.”

  He could see the gleam of defiance in her eyes as she lifted her chin. “Why do you keep asking me that question? He’s the one you should talk to.”

  “I’m talking to you right now.”

  She snatched her arm away. “You can’t possibly think I had anything to do with Marty Booker’s death, let alone my own niece’s abduction.”

  Tom kept his voice even. “I never said anything like that. But I would like to know why you decided to take a drive out here in the middle of the night. And why you don’t seem to want to give me a straight answer.”

  As if to prove his point, she narrowed her gaze. “Why are you here, Tom? I assume you followed me, but why?”

  “Are you seriously asking me that question right now?” He shook his head. “You’re unbelievable, Rae. Am I going to have to take you in to get the truth out of you?”

  “Take me in? You still have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”

  His voice tightened. “Then tell me. I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on now, but I want to hear you say it. You came here with a backpack. I saw you drop it at the edge of the shaft.”

  “So?”

  “What’s in it?”

  She caved on a shudder. “Ransom money.”

  “Ransom money,” he repeated in a level voice, but a wave of anger washed over him. That was what she’d been up to. This was what she’d been keeping from him. What the whole Cavanaugh family had been hiding from the police. Sophie had been taken for money.

  Which meant the investigation had been compromised from the get-go. There was no way of knowing how differently things might have played out if Tom and his men had been given the facts. He thought of all those wasted man-hours and resources. All those futile interviews and searches. But he tamped down his frustration as he studied Rae’s features in the moonlight.

  “How much?”

  “One million dollars in cash.”

  Tom lifted a brow at the amount. “You came here to make the drop?”

  She nodded miserably. “Those were my instructions. I was to come alone and toss the bag into the elevator shaft from the second floor. When I got up there, I shone my light down into the basement and saw the body. I thought... Well, you know what I thought. And then I saw you and I panicked. I was supposed to come alone, Tom.”

  “How was I to know what you were up to?”

  “You could have trusted me.”

  “Do you really want to open that can of worms right now?”

  Her gaze strayed back to Dylan. “You know what happened after that. You went down into the shaft to check the body and you found Dylan hiding in the basement. He must have been waiting for me to toss down the money. Why else would he be there? Maybe Marty saw too much and Dylan killed him.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” he said, but the kid had looked panicked as hell when Tom had tackled him.

  Rae’s hand crept to her throat. “I never thought of Dylan as being dangerous. He’d seemed troubled to me but was always so quiet and polite. Except his being here can’t be a coincidence. It just can’t be. What are the odds that he and I would both end up here at the same time on the same night?”

  Slim, Tom had to admit.

  She clutched his arm. “If he’s involved in the kidnapping, then he must know where Sophie is. You have to get him to talk, Tom. You have to make him tell us where to find her.”

  “Oh, he’ll talk,” Tom said. “Don’t worry about that. But I’m not through with you yet.”

  “What more can I possibly tell you?”

  “Everything. I’m playing catch-up and we may not have a lot of time. Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out, no matter how small the detail.”

  “The beginning,” she murmured.

  “When did you get the first ransom demand?”

  She didn’t answer immediately, but Tom didn’t get the impression she was stalling. Maybe she was just trying to get everything straight in her head. He liked to think she’d finally seen the light. Her best hope of getting Sophie back alive was to cooperate. She had to trust that he would move heaven and earth to find that girl, but he’d been working all this time with one hand tied behind his back.

  “The first call came in on Friday morning on the landline at the ranch,” she said. “Dad was the only one there. He said the voice was disguised but he had the feeling we were dealing with professionals. They gave him twenty-four hours to put together a million dollars. They said if any of us went to the police, they’d kill Sophie.”

  “Of course they’d say that.”

  “I know.” She gazed up at him in the moonlight. “You can believe me or not, but my first instinct was to call you. Dad and Jackson refused. They reminded me that the police hadn’t been able to find Riley.”

  “My dad couldn’t find Riley, you mean.”

  “Please don’t make this personal. We did what we thought we had to do to protect Sophie.”

  Tom nodded. “I get that. You had to make an impossible decision.” He’d been in that position before, so he did understand. As frustrating as it was to be kept out of the loop, he couldn’t honestly say he blamed Rae and her family for the secrecy. When a loved one’s life was on the line, you did what you had to do to protect them. Who was he to say that he would have behaved any differently? “You said your dad was alone when he took the call. When did you find out?”

  “Later that morning. He called while you were at my house. He didn’t tell me anything over the phone. He just said I should get rid of you and get out to the ranch as quickly as I could. Jackson was already there and Lauren came in a few minutes later. That’s when I was told about the ransom demand. Dad was naturally upset. You can imagine what we were all thinking by that time. But still he managed to call the bank and make all the arrangements. All I had to do was drive into town and pick up the money.”

  Tom gave a soft whistle. “He was able to arrange that much cash that quickly?”

  “We’ve done business with Glen Stafford for years. And we have plenty of collateral.” Rae shrugged. “Dad can be very persuasive when he needs to be.”

  “Still, it’s unusual for a small branch bank like First National to have that much cash on hand. It was almost as if the money had been prearranged.”

  Rae frowned. “What are you getting at? You’re not suggesting Glen Stafford had something to do with the kidnapping, are you?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. Just thi
nking out loud.”

  Rae wasn’t buying it. She gave him a puzzled look before she continued. “I had the money in my back seat when you followed me out to the ranch. I was afraid you’d know something was wrong the moment you saw my face.”

  “No wonder you were so jittery,” Tom said. “You almost jumped out of your skin when the phone rang.”

  “We thought it might be the kidnappers again.”

  Despite Tom’s empathy, he couldn’t help being disappointed in Rae’s lack of faith in him. Which was ridiculous because she happened to be right. This shouldn’t be personal. Still, he felt the need to press her a little. “You walked me out to my vehicle. We had a long talk about trust and yet you never said a word.”

  She gazed up at him earnestly, any hint of defiance or anger long gone. “Because Sophie’s life was on the line! Try to put yourself in my place. She went missing from my home on my watch. I was in no position to go against Jackson’s wishes. She’s his only child. It was his decision to make, not mine.”

  “Even if it put her at greater risk?”

  “There was no way we could know that. It was a gamble either way. But even then, even knowing the risk, I suggested that if we didn’t trust the local authorities—you—we could go to the FBI. They wouldn’t hear of that, either. So it was never about you, Tom.”

  “I guess that’s a relief.”

  She bit her lip. “Look, when this is over, you can berate me all you want. We can go back to being enemies, for all I care, but right now you need to talk to that boy and find out what he knows about Sophie.”

  For all I care. “You and I aren’t done,” he said. Not by a long shot.

  Her instinct was to argue. He could tell by the way she stood so rigidly with hands clenched at her sides, but instead of pushing back, she lifted her head as a breeze from the lake ruffled her hair. After a moment, she seemed to relax. “When I got home on Friday night, someone had been in my house. They left a phone in Sophie’s room and a call came in. The person on the other end told me that if I talked to the police or the FBI Sophie would die. If I didn’t come alone to the drop, I would die.”

  Tom’s voice sharpened. “The voice specifically mentioned the FBI?”

  Her gaze flickered. “Yes. Why?”

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  “They sent a picture of Sophie bound and gagged. Her face was all scratched and bruised.” Rae faltered. “It was meant as proof of life, I guess. Or a warning.”

  “You still have the photo?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’ll need to see it. The phone, too.”

  She nodded. “The photograph was hard enough to take, but the next morning after I saw you at the Fenton ranch, I was texted a video. Sophie was tied to a chair struggling to get free. The position of the window behind her made me think she might be in a basement somewhere. The footage was dark and grainy. It ended with the sound of a gunshot.”

  Tom tensed. “A gunshot?”

  She closed her eyes on another shiver. “You can’t imagine what went through my mind in that moment.”

  “I think I have some idea.” When he’d found his sister lying facedown in the shallow water near the bank, he’d been certain she was dead. He knew about terror. He knew about panic. Any frustration he still felt at Rae’s silence vanished in the face of her anguish.

  “I was so terrified of what might have happened that I didn’t realize at first the sound had come from somewhere in the woods instead of the video,” she said. “That gunshot was a warning to me. They were near and they were watching. Maybe they thought you’d be the one I’d reach out to, so they had to do something drastic to head me off. It worked. I knew then I had to do exactly as they said. They weren’t bluffing. They’d kill Sophie if I deviated from their instructions. They told me to come alone to the drop and now you’re here. He’s here.” Her voice rose as she glanced at Dylan. “I thought I could handle myself in any situation. Keep a cool head and all that. I was so worried about what Jackson might do. He tried to come in my place, but I wouldn’t let him. The kidnappers wanted me. Now I can only imagine how he’ll react when he hears how badly I’ve messed things up.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Rae.”

  “Do you really think he’ll see it that way?”

  Tom kept his tone purposefully measured. “Let’s stay calm and think this through.”

  “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?” She paused to catch her breath. “I think we can both agree our only hope now is Dylan. If he tells us where Sophie is, he can have the money. We have to get her back.”

  “You’re still assuming he’s involved,” Tom said. “I’m not so sure that kid knows anything.”

  “He may know more than you think.” She was back to being cagey again.

  “Meaning?”

  She lowered her voice. “I saw him in town today—yesterday—with Lauren.”

  Tom refused to react. “I thought you said you lost him in Ghost Alley.”

  “I did, kind of. But before I lost him, I saw them together. I couldn’t hear their conversation. Lauren did most of the talking. She seemed very intense. When she tried to touch him, he slapped her hand away.”

  “Are you suggesting the two of them are somehow involved?”

  “I don’t know. But it wouldn’t be the first time an attractive woman seduced a younger man into doing her bidding. If she’s really that deeply in debt from gambling, I can only imagine how far she’d go to save her own neck. And I keep going back to the timing of all this. That Dylan would come out here looking for Sophie at the exact same time I’m making the drop is just too random. Marty Booker must have gotten in the way. Or maybe he recognized Dylan from the night Sophie went missing.”

  “You’ve got it all worked out,” Tom said.

  “Somebody has to.” She looked instantly contrite. “I’m sorry. That just came out. Force of habit, I guess.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” But her words cut deeper than Tom wanted to admit. “Jackson seemed to think that Dylan’s dad might be involved.”

  “Dwight?” Rae scoffed at the notion. “He’s no mastermind. You think he could have come up with something as clever as that game to lure Sophie out here alone? No, it had to be someone who knew about her interest in this place. Someone who knew about Riley. They even took Sophie on the night of a blood moon. That can’t be a coincidence, either.”

  “It’s not a coincidence,” Tom agreed.

  “What do we do now?”

  He scanned the towering facade. So many dark secrets hidden inside that crumbling building. So many ghosts still lurking in all those dark corners. If it were up to Tom, he would burn that place to the ground, but that might serve only to bury the secrets deeper. “As soon as we get some help out here, I’ll send someone back inside to get the money. Not a good idea to leave a million dollars in cash lying around in an abandoned building.”

  “I told you, I don’t care about the money. I just want to find Sophie.”

  “That money is your bargaining chip,” Tom said.

  She pounced on that. “Then you think Sophie is still alive. You think the kidnappers will call again.”

  He glanced back at Dylan. The kid had dropped to the ground and buried his face in his cuffed hands. “If he’s involved, she’s still alive. He seems to have genuine feelings for her. I don’t think he’d let anyone hurt her.”

  “Tom.” She touched his sleeve. A soft touch. An innocent touch. Yet Tom felt a brief surge of awareness in the pit of his stomach. Even after everything that had happened, he still hadn’t managed to quell his desire for Rae Cavanaugh. If anything, this night had made her even more fatalistically attractive to him. How could he not admire a woman who had so willingly put her life on the line for a child who wasn’t her own?

  “What is it, Rae?”

 
“I need to call home. They’ll be worried sick if they don’t hear from me.”

  “Just wait a bit. We’ll go talk to them together.”

  “But if they don’t hear from me, they’ll panic. Jackson may even drive out here to see what happened. Trust me, you don’t want him anywhere near Dylan Moody right now.”

  Tom considered her point and nodded. “Go ahead and call, then. Tell them you’re okay and you’ll be home soon. But don’t say anything about the ransom or Dylan or Marty Booker. Keep things brief. Understand?”

  She frowned. “No, I don’t understand. Why can’t I tell them the truth? They’ll know as soon as I walk in the door with the money.”

  “I’d like to be there when they find out.”

  A light dawned as his words penetrated. “You think someone in my family is involved.”

  “You’re the one who told me about Dylan’s tryst with Lauren,” he pointed out.

  “But she’s not the one you’re worried about, is she?”

  He didn’t answer, just stood there staring down at her in the moonlight. Then they both turned their heads to the sound of sirens out on Lake Road. A few minutes later, the EMTs scrambled up the embankment, followed by a small army of uniformed deputies.

  He started toward them, glancing back when Rae said his name.

  She looked scared and vulnerable with the Ruins looming behind her, but appearances could be deceiving. Rae Cavanaugh was not, nor ever had been, defenseless. Not for the first time, Tom paused to think about her role in all this. Did she also have suspicions about her own family? About someone closer to her than a sister-in-law? Was that why she’d stayed silent?

  Like a taunt, Blaine Fenton’s warning suddenly came back to him. Don’t let that pretty smile fool you, Sheriff. Way down deep, Rae Cavanaugh’s every bit as cunning as her old man.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nikki Dresden, the Nance County coroner, stood at the top of the basement steps and used the back of her gloved hand to swipe back her dark bangs. She was dressed in jeans and Converse sneakers, a far cry from the all-black outfits she’d worn with combat boots in high school. Tom had known Nikki for most of their lives, but they’d never really been friends. Even as a kid she’d been a loner. Then after both her parents split, leaving her to be raised by an aging grandmother, she seemed to have found her tribe in the small group of Goth kids who had sat at the back of the cafeteria, scribbling poetry in black notebooks as they basked in an air of perpetual gloom.