The Traitor's Pawn

by Lisa Harris

  “Yes. He didn’t sign in, but one of the orderlies spoke briefly to him. I’m sorry I didn’t catch it last night, but we had a patient code, and I was busy most of the evening.”

  “That’s fine, Wendy. It’s not your fault. I appreciate your taking the time to call me.”

  She hung up the phone, then quickly pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt before slipping down the hallway to the guest room where Jack was sleeping.

  She knocked on the door once, then again a few seconds later, waiting impatiently for him to answer.

  He opened the door, yawning. “Bree . . . is everything okay?”

  “I’m sorry to wake you up, but I just got a call from River Oaks, where my grandmother lives. My father was there last night, visiting her.”

  “Okay.” He ran his fingers through his mussed-up hair. “Meet me downstairs in ten minutes.”

  Fifteen minutes later they were in the car, headed up I–37 toward San Antonio.

  Aubrey gnawed on one of her fingernails, a nasty habit she’d picked up in college. “What if this is nothing more than a wild-goose chase, or even worse, some kind of trap?”

  “We’ll know before we get there. I’m sending in a colleague of mine to check the security camera footage there to see if we can find out what car he’s driving. With law enforcement looking for him, he won’t get far.”

  She hoped he was right. Needed him to be right. Because all she could think about was that Papps was still in ICU, and now there was a chance her father had put her grandmother in danger.

  Jack reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m going to make sure your grandma’s safe.”

  She nodded, appreciative of his presence.

  “Tell me more about her,” he said.

  Aubrey smiled. “She was always my favorite grandmother. Nana taught dancing classes until she was in her early seventies, and never backed away from an argument.”

  Jack laughed. “I bet she had a colorful life.”

  “She did. Her mother named her Mary, after silent-film star Mary Pickford. Nana said that when she was a little girl, she was really shy. She got good grades in school but was terrified to speak up in class. Her mother took her to the movies to see actors like Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, all those guys, but Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were her favorites. She wanted to dance just like Ginger. My great-grandmother enrolled her in a dance studio, and she found her passion. After World War II she opened up a small dance studio in the suburbs of Dallas where she taught until she started having children. Once all her kids were grown, she went back to work, teaching dance.”

  “Quite a woman.”

  “She always had time for me. Even taught me the Charleston when I was in junior high. It was amazing how she was able to boost my confidence.”

  Jack’s phone rang, interrupting their conversation. “Mark. Thanks for calling me back.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “I’ve got you on speaker. I’m in the car with Detective Aubrey Grayson right now, headed your way.”

  “I wish I had more for you. We went through the security tape. Ramsey did come by River Oaks last night. Video footage has him walking in the front door at a few minutes past seven and leaving thirty minutes later. He spoke to one of the orderlies here, Jerry Hart, who stopped Ramsey and spoke briefly to him.”

  “What about a license plate or make of the car he was driving?”

  “We didn’t get that, but we’ve started going through the footage from a restaurant across the street, hoping something might pop up.”

  “Thanks, Mark. Let me know if you find anything else.”

  Aubrey frowned. So they had nothing other than a verification that he had been there. That wasn’t enough. She checked her text messages in case she’d missed his response to her message that she needed to see him. No reply. She couldn’t even be sure if he’d read it.

  It was ten o’clock by the time they walked into the memory care facility. Familiar feelings of sadness swept through her. Half a dozen patients sat in their wheelchairs in the lobby, staring out the windows or at the floor as another day drifted by. They were in a constant state of waiting. Waiting for medicine. Waiting for meals. And hoping for the off chance that someone might remember them and stop by for a visit.

  Her conversation with Jack had brought good memories but also the familiar feelings of loss, knowing she’d never watch her grandmother dance the Charleston again. She’d never again receive an encouraging card from Nana. The resulting loss felt like a physical ache. It always struck her how easy it was for society to forget that these were men and women who had once led productive lives. They’d started families and businesses and fought in wars to protect their country. They’d watched grandchildren and great-grandchildren come into this world, only to now sit wrapped in a shroud of the past.

  They stopped at the front desk to sign in and were greeted by a familiar face. “Aubrey . . . it’s good to see you. Your grandmother will be happy to see you.”

  Aubrey held up the sack she was carrying. “Or at least she’ll be happy to have her favorite pudding. How is she, Tammy?”

  “About the same, but she’s always smiling. Always happy. She keeps asking where Gillian is.”

  “Gillian was her sister,” she told Jack. “She died about ten years ago, but she doesn’t always remember that.” Aubrey tapped her fingers on the desk. “I understand my father visited last night?”

  “He did. Wendy told me you might be stopping by. The local FBI’s been here as well.” Tammy’s smile vanished. “Is there a problem I need to know about?”

  Aubrey glanced at Jack, then gestured for him to explain.

  “I’m Special Agent Jack Shannon. I’m an old friend of Aubrey’s, but I’m also with the FBI. We’re needing to talk to Mr. Ramsey as soon as possible. I know that the FBI has already been here looking at video footage, but we’d like to look at it as well.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’d appreciate that. Thank you.”

  “It will take a few minutes for me to get it set up again. If you’d like to see your grandmother while you wait, I’ll come get you when it’s ready.”

  Aubrey looked up at Jack. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “She enjoys the sunroom in the mornings,” Tammy said.

  “That’s a great idea. Thank you.”

  Aubrey recognized the familiar scent of Nana’s rose lotion as they walked into her room. When they had moved Nana into the nursing home, Aubrey had spent an afternoon making the space personal and familiar by framing and hanging family photos on the walls.

  There was a nurse in the room, standing over Nana in her chair.

  “Hi . . . I’m sorry to interrupt . . . We’re here to visit Mary. I’m her granddaughter.”

  The nurse took a step back and smiled. “It’s nice to meet you. I just came in to give her her morning meds.” He had a pleasant English accent.

  Nana took the pills and handed the empty cup back to the nurse.

  “I’ll leave the three of you to visit,” he said. “Is there anything you need?”

  “We’re fine. I think we’re going to take her out to the sunroom for a few minutes.”

  “I know she’ll enjoy that. She’s been watching birds from her window.”

  Aubrey knelt beside her grandmother. “How are you doing today, Nana?”

  Nana smiled at the window where Aubrey had put up a bird feeder last spring, but there was no sense of recognition.

  Aubrey pulled the pudding cups out of the sack. “I brought you a present. Tapioca pudding.”

  Nana’s face lit up.

  “Just don’t eat them all at once.” Aubrey laughed. “You don’t want to ruin your beautiful figure.”

  Nana’s smile broadened. “I was a dancer.”

  “You remember?”

  “I remember dancing in the attic with Gilly.”

  Aubrey set the pudding on the bedside table. �
�Gilly was your sister, and the two of you used to dance.”

  “I remember Gilly. I want to see her.”

  “I know you miss her, Nana.”

  “Where is she?”

  Aubrey hesitated. “She’s not here right now, but I brought someone with me I’d like you to meet. His name is Jack.”

  Her grandmother looked up at Jack and smiled. “‘Jack Sprat could eat no fat . . .’”

  “‘His wife could eat no lean.’” Jack finished the sentence for her with a big grin on his face.

  Nana looked surprised. “You know the nursery rhyme?”

  “Of course I do. Kids used to tease me growing up.”

  “They used to always tell me, ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?’”

  “‘With silver bells and cockle-shells, and pretty maids all in a row.’”

  “I like you,” Nana said. “Though I’m really not contrary.”

  “I’m sure you’re not at all.”

  Nana turned back to Aubrey. “I like this young man. Are you going to marry him?”

  “Marry him?” Aubrey laughed. “No, Nana. He’s just an old friend of mine who wanted to come visit you with me. Would you like to go out to the sunroom and look at the garden?”

  “Yes, but I’m tired today. Too tired to dance. Too tired to play.”

  “Maybe some sunshine will help. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day.”

  Nana yawned. “Gilly loves the sunshine too. Maybe she can come with us.”

  “I’ll come with you, if you tell me about your sister,” Jack said, pushing her wheelchair toward the door.

  “She lives near here. In a big yellow house. She’s my oldest sister, but she hasn’t visited me for a long time. I don’t know why. Why doesn’t she come see me?”

  “She would if she could, Nana.”

  “Do you remember the house? There was a . . .” Nana searched for the word.

  “A swing?” Aubrey offered as they started down the hallway.

  “Yes, a swing. Can Gilly come with us? I haven’t seen her in such a long time.”

  Their conversations always went in circles. The same questions asked over and over.

  The sunroom had large windows overlooking well-kept lawns.

  “Nana, do you remember Charles?” Aubrey asked.

  “Do I know him?”

  Aubrey sat down next to her and pulled out her phone. “He’s your son. Remember? Here’s a photo of him.”

  “Charlie. Yes . . . I know Charlie. He sends me postcards when he goes on trips.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  Nana pulled out a handful of postcards from the flowered pouch attached to the side of the wheelchair. “I keep them with me.”

  Aubrey glanced through the stack of cards dating back several years. Paris . . . Berlin . . . Beijing . . . They were an itinerary of where her father had been.

  “Can I look at them?”

  Nana nodded. “He likes to travel.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “I went to Paris with my mother when I was sixteen.”

  It always seemed strange how the memories of decades long ago were clearer than what she’d had for breakfast this morning. It was all a part of slowly sliding out of this life and into the next, but the difficult process made Aubrey realize that the woman she’d known growing up was gone forever. And asking her questions about her father’s visit was more than likely going to be futile.

  “Nana . . .”

  But her grandmother had fallen asleep.

  One of the nurses walked into the room wearing dark blue scrubs and pushing her medicine cart.

  “There you are, Mary,” she said before noticing Nana was asleep.

  “She seems extra tired this morning,” Aubrey said.

  “I just need to give her her pills, then you can let her go back to sleep.”

  “Her morning pills?” Aubrey felt panic bubbling as she glanced at Jack. “One of the nurses already gave them to her a few minutes ago when we first arrived.”

  “Are you sure?” The nurse headed back to the computer on her cart. “There must be some mistake. I take care of her wing every morning and came looking for her here when she wasn’t in her room. What did the other nurse look like?”

  Aubrey’s heart pounded as she looked back at her grandmother. Something was very wrong.

  “He was about five ten, blond hair pulled back,” Aubrey said. “I’d never seen him before.”

  “We have several male nurses, but none that match that description.”

  Aubrey looked at Jack. “We need to call 911 and get her to the hospital.”

  Jack already had his phone out.

  Aubrey knelt down next to her grandmother. “Nana . . . Nana, I need you to wake up.”

  Nana opened her eyes. “I’m too tired.”

  “I think she’s been drugged,” Aubrey said. “I have no idea what he gave her, but he gave her something.”

  The nurse started checking Nana’s vitals while Aubrey told her exactly what had happened.

  “Until we do a tox screen, I won’t be able to tell you what he gave her, but from her symptoms, it looks like it was some sort of sedative. Her blood pressure has dropped a little and her breathing is shallow. If that’s all it was, she should be okay once it wears off.”

  But if that wasn’t all it was?

  “There’s an ambulance on the way now,” Jack said.

  Aubrey stood up. “This is insane, Jack. They came after my grandmother. What were they planning to do with her? If we hadn’t shown up when we did . . .”

  He glanced at her. “I don’t know what they’re planning, but now there’s a second problem as well. Now they know where you are.”

  “That’s the least of our worries. We’ve got to help Nana.”

  “I’ll put in a call and get a couple agents to guard her room, both in the hospital and then when she returns here. We’ll track down whoever is behind this. But I’m also going to do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

  Aubrey felt the room begin to spin. She grabbed on to a chair to steady herself, anger raging inside her, quickly taking the place of fear. Whoever was after her had somehow managed to hurt the two people in the world she loved the most, and she didn’t know how to stop them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THEY NEEDED TO FIND out who had drugged Bree’s grandmother. Jack watched as the manager typed in the time stamp on the nursing home’s surveillance system, starting thirty minutes ago, in the hallway outside her room.

  “Fast-forward slowly,” Jack said, describing the man they were looking for.

  At the fifteen-minute mark, Jack motioned for her to stop. “There he is. Entering her room with the pills.”

  He watched it play out. Thirty seconds later he and Bree entered the room. The man talked with them for thirty seconds, then he left, managing to avoid any clear shots of his face. But unfortunately for him, they didn’t need the footage to be able to identify him.

  “Do you have any cameras outside?” Bree asked. “Any of the parking lot? We need to see what he’s driving.”

  “Give me a second . . .” The manager switched to another camera, then pulled up footage of the parking lot after the guy left Mary’s room.

  They waited for him to emerge from the building. “There he is.”

  “I think his goal was to enter without anyone seeing him and take her,” Bree said. “He was hoping by the time someone discovered she was missing, he’d be long gone.”

  Jack could hear the panic in her voice. Two of the staff plus a security guard were with her grandmother right now, ten feet away from them, waiting for the ambulance that had been called. He’d encouraged Bree to stay with her, but Bree had said there was nothing she could do right now. She’d insisted on helping him find whoever was behind this.

  “Here we go,” the manager said. “Looks like he got into a white van.”

  “What about the license plate?” Bree asked.

 
; “I can try to zoom in, though I’m not sure our system is good enough to pick it up.”

  Jack drummed his fingers on the desk while he waited. The camera zoomed forward.

  Bingo.

  The license plate number came into view.

  He picked up his phone and called his contact at the local FBI headquarters in the city. “Kate, this is Special Agent Jack Shannon again. I need you to put out a BOLO for this vehicle, and I want you to also try and track it down for me using city surveillance cameras.”

  Jack gave her the model and license plate number of the white van that had left the facility.

  “I’m on it, sir.”

  “What’s the ETA on my backup?” Jack asked.

  There was a slight pause on the line. “I’m estimating another minute, sir.”

  “Give them directions to escort the ambulance to the hospital and stay with our victim until I get there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And call me the minute you locate the vehicle.”

  He hung up and heard the wail of a siren getting louder outside. “There’s the ambulance now. Kate said our backup should be here in a minute.”

  Bree went to say goodbye to her grandmother.

  His cell phone rang.

  “Kate, what have you got?”

  “The van’s stolen, but I’m working with OnStar to track it. Right now they’re heading south toward the Riverwalk.”

  Jack signaled at Bree while Kate gave him the location. “We’re on our way. Keep us updated.”

  Backup arrived as he and Bree reached the parking lot. Jack quickly made sure they knew what to do, then unlocked his car. Bree slid into the seat next to him and he started the engine.

  “They’ll keep her safe.”

  She stared out the window as he backed up. “I know.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, headed toward the location where the van had last been spotted. Thankfully, Jack was relatively familiar with the city, having spent three months in San Antonio working on a joint task force between local PD and the FBI.

  “Seeing Nana always brings back so many memories. Like how much she loved to bake,” Bree said, breaking the silence between them. “She always made the best cherry pie with cherries from the trees in her backyard. I remember standing on a chair watching her rolling out piecrust when I couldn’t have been more than four or five. There was always homemade fudge and caramels for Christmas dinner along with all the trimmings. And she also made the best homemade jams. She was a stay-at-home mom who kept the books for my grandfather’s gas station. She wore hats on Sunday to church, and never went out without her stockings.” Her voice broke. “I’m sorry . . .”