Johnny's dark eyes glittered with surprising emotion. "I remember."
As they stared at each other, it felt like the anger shifted, eased. Was it possible the good part of Johnny was still inside this hard, ruthless criminal?
She had to appeal to that side. "Look, you can hate me for what I did. You can hurt me. I don't care. I just need to find Hayley."
"I don't have her, Bree."
"Come into the light. Let me see your eyes."
He straightened and moved away from the desk, stopping a foot away from her. Their gazes met for a long tense moment. So many emotions ran through her. He had lied to her before. But he wasn't lying now.
"Oh, God," she whispered. "You're telling the truth. But if you don't have her, who does?"
"I don't know."
She wanted to ask him to help her, but if Johnny found Hayley, he would never give her back.
On the other hand, what choice did she have? If anyone could find the kidnapper, it was probably him.
A loud crash came from the hallway. A shout. Then a grunt and a heavy thud.
Johnny started for the desk, for the gun, but he didn’t get there.
The door burst open, and her heart jumped into her throat as Nathan barreled into the room, tackling Johnny to the ground.
Eighteen
Bree stared in shock as Nathan and Johnny fought with each other, fists flying, bodies rolling around on the ground. She wanted to help Nathan, but she couldn't do much with her hands behind her back. While she suspected Nathan had taken out whatever guards were in the hall, there would be more men coming. Johnny always had plenty of backup.
She moved toward the desk, thinking if she could find something to cut the ties, she could free her hands and get Johnny's gun, which was still on the desk. Or at the very least, she could put his gun out of reach, so he couldn’t use it on Nathan.
But she'd barely taken a step when two men rushed into the room, pulling Nathan and Johnny apart.
One of them shoved Nathan up against the wall, while the other slugged him in the face.
"Stop," she cried. "Stop."
But they weren't stopping; they were going after Nathan, and he was no match for two of them. Blood was coming out of his nose, and he grunted as one of the men slammed him in the gut.
Johnny got to his feet, blood dripping down his face as well, murderous intent in his eyes.
"Make them stop, Johnny," she begged.
"Why would I do that?" he yelled.
"Because this isn't about him; it's about our daughter." She stepped in front of him, putting herself between him and Nathan. "We need to find Hayley, and we're wasting time."
"He went after me," Johnny argued, his gaze raging. "No one goes after me."
"He thought you had Hayley. But you don't. Someone else does. Please! Nathan can help us."
She could see the battle going on in Johnny's gaze, but finally, he put up a hand.
"Stop," he said sharply.
Nathan slid down the wall as the two men backed off. She didn't know how badly he was hurt, and she wanted to run to him, but she didn't want to infuriate Johnny any further.
Nathan struggled to get up, but his right eye was swelling, and blood was still coming out of his nose.
"You always needed others to do your dirty work, Johnny," Nathan said, obviously not worried about infuriating Johnny. "Now, you stoop to kidnapping kids."
It was her turn to talk Nathan down. "Stop it, Nathan. Johnny doesn’t have Hayley."
Nathan gave her a look of utter disbelief. "He's lying. He always lied to you, and you always believed him. You're doing it again."
"He's not lying—not this time."
"He's playing you."
"I never played her," Johnny interrupted.
"You dragged her down in the mud with you," Nathan returned.
"And you couldn't stand that she picked me and not you."
"This isn't getting us anywhere," she said, cutting into their argument. "We need to bring a little girl home. Can we just focus on that?" She only gave them a second to think about it, and then she plowed ahead, turning to Johnny. "Calvin Baker made a ransom demand from Hayley's father yesterday. They met at the silos. I shot him in the shoulder. Someone else made the kill shot from a sniper position. They had to be a really good shot. They shut Calvin up before he could be interrogated. You say he's not working for you. But you can find out who he was working for, can't you? Because whoever that is has our daughter."
"I could ask some questions."
"Then do it. I don't believe this is just about me anymore," she added. "This is about revenge, and I think it's on both of us."
Johnny's hard gaze met hers. "Stay here." He took his gun off the desk and waved his men out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
After Johnny left, she ran to Nathan's side, wishing she could throw her arms around him. "I'm so sorry. We need to get you to a hospital."
"Forget about me. I'm fine."
"You're not fine."
"Doesn't matter. Do you really believe him, Bree?"
She looked into his eyes, needing him to see past his anger for Johnny. "I do. He didn't know anything until yesterday when he was questioned by the FBI. But before he comes back, I need to get my hands free. Can you help me?"
"Of course." Nathan got to his feet and ransacked the desk, pulling out a pair of scissors and cutting through the tie binding her wrists.
She shook out her hands in relief.
Nathan met her gaze. "Johnny's men kidnapped you. They tied you up and brought you here, and you want to trust him?"
"I don't have a choice. We need to fight fire with fire, and Johnny can find out who Baker was working for."
"You're making a deal with the devil."
"I know. If Johnny helps me find Hayley, he might try to take her."
"He will take her—it's not a question of might."
"Then we'll fight to get her free of him, but at least she'll be alive, and that's what's most important right now." She paused. "Do you know where we are?"
"Auto shop on Hudson," he said tersely. "I guess this is one of his businesses now."
"How did you find me?"
"Sierra told me where she thought you would be."
"She helped you? That's shocking."
"And maybe also a little too easy. Perhaps she thought Johnny would kill us, and she could get rid of us both at once." He pulled out her phone and handed it to her. "I found this in the parking lot."
"I wanted you to know I hadn't run out on you. I knew you'd come looking for me."
"I should have gone into the salon with you."
"Let's not look back." She put her phone in her pocket and glanced toward the closed door. "Where do you think Johnny went? Why did he just disappear like that?"
"Beats me," he said, wiping the blood off his face with the back of his sleeve.
"We need to get you out of here," she said decisively. "Johnny might go after you again."
"Or I'll go after him," he said darkly.
Her phone buzzed, drawing her attention away from him.
A text message.
Her heart stopped as she opened the message and saw a photo of a little girl tied to a chair, tape over her mouth, terror in her eyes, and the word daughter scrawled across it. "Oh, God." She felt sick to her stomach.
Nathan took the phone out of her hand and enlarged the picture while she fought to keep the bile from rising in her throat.
A few deep breaths put her back into control. "Any clue to where she is?" she asked.
"I think she's at Howard School."
"Is that place still around?"
"Yes. Like so many other abandoned buildings in that neighborhood."
Howard had once been an elementary school, about a mile from their high school. It had been condemned a long time ago after toxic spills from a nearby factory had infused the soil.
"Every few years, the city tries to sell it to someone," Nathan a
dded. "But its location in a run-down industrial area and a low-income neighborhood has made developers uneasy that the area can ever be revitalized." He paused. "It's another place from our past."
She met his gaze. "We all used to go there in high school. We got into a lot of trouble there."
"It's also where Johnny beat the crap out of me."
"No," she breathed.
"Yes. He did a lot of beatings there—like the one Stix went to prison for."
"The kid from Northwestern."
"The one you gave Johnny an alibi for."
"The night of the fashion show," she murmured. "Oh, my God—the newspaper photo was from that show. I didn't put it together. I should have figured that out sooner."
"This is about that night," Nathan agreed.
"Revenge," she breathed. "Against both Johnny and me."
"Which means that it's either Stix or the kid from Northwestern behind this."
He'd no sooner finished speaking when another text came in. They read it together: Come alone. If you're not here in fifteen minutes, she's dead.
"Let's go," Nathan said.
As they ran toward the door, gun shots echoed from the shop below, followed by shouts and more firepower.
"What the hell is that?" she asked, as Nathan managed to break open the door.
"No idea," he yelled. "But there's a fire escape off the storage room. It's how I got up here."
She ran down the hall, staying close to Nathan. More shots were fired. It sounded like they were coming from an automatic weapon.
Nathan grabbed her hand and pulled her into a small room, then pushed her toward the window. She climbed over the sill and made her way down the fire escape as fast as possible.
When they reached the ground, they took off running, dashing between buildings and down alleys to where Nathan had hidden his truck. It sounded like a war back at the auto shop, and she didn't know what to think about that. But thankfully, they were out. Now they just had to save Hayley.
Nathan gunned the engine, as they took off. She looked in the side view mirror for any sign of a tail, but there wasn't one.
"If Johnny doesn't survive whatever is going on back there, he won't be able to help us," she said.
"Maybe that's the point."
Her phone buzzed again, and she saw another text coming in. This time it was a video message. Hayley was facing the camera and no longer tied to the chair. She looked right into the camera and said, "Mommy, please come and get me. I'm waiting. Hurry."
It was the first time she'd ever heard her daughter's voice and tears streamed out of her eyes. She played the message again, her heart twisting in agony. "I know she's not talking to me; she's talking to Lindsay, to her mother, but it still hurts."
Nathan put his hand on her leg. "Hang in there, Bree. We're going to get her."
"I know I'm going to see Hayley; I just don't know if I'm going to be able to rescue her," she said, overwhelming fear running through her. "I'm afraid whoever has her is going to kill us all."
"We won't let him. As I recall, there are at least three entrances to the school and a lot of broken windows. There will be multiple ways to get in and out."
"I'm sure there will be multiple guards watching those doors and windows, too. It's not going to be easy."
"We've never had easy. We've always beaten the odds."
She met his gaze. "You're right. We've been through a lot together."
"And we'll do this together, too."
"I have to go in alone, Nathan."
"I understand that. But I will not be far behind. You saw what happened to Mark yesterday when he went by himself. He'd be dead if it wasn't for you."
"I've been thinking about that." She opened a new text on her phone and typed in a lengthy message.
"Who are you writing?"
"Agent Tracy Cox, my Chicago nemesis, but also a good agent. I want you to send this as soon as I get out of the car. I want the kidnapper to think he's getting his way at first, so you have to keep out of sight. I'm sure he knows by now that you're working with me."
"I can stay hidden."
"I'll probably have a ten-minute head start before the agents show up. Hopefully, I won't need them. But if I do, I have to trust they'll come in the right way."
He pulled the truck around a corner and turned off the engine. The school was still out of sight, but she knew exactly where it was. These were the streets of her youth: the dark, barren, depressing, run-down neighborhood which she'd somehow managed to survive once. She had to make it twice.
She looked over at Nathan. "This is it."
"Be careful, Bree. I don't want to lose you."
"I don't want to lose you, either." She gently touched the side of his bruised face. "Don't be a crazy-ass hero."
"Don't worry about me. Go get your daughter."
She leaned over and gave him a kiss, then got out of the truck and ran down the street.
* * *
Nathan watched Bree leave with tremendous misgivings, but he reminded himself that she was trained for situations like these. She'd just never had her daughter's life at stake before. But she would keep it together. She was smart, tough, and determined.
And he would be right behind her.
He sent her text to the FBI and then got out of the truck. He went in the opposite direction from where Bree had gone. Fortunately, there weren’t many people out. A lot of the buildings in this area had been destroyed by a fire several years ago, and others were either out of business or closed on the weekend.
Howard School was three blocks away and located next to the river. It should have been a picturesque location, but it wasn't, and on this gray, gloomy day, he felt nothing but foreboding.
The school had been one of their favorite places to get into trouble or shelter them from the snow or get drunk on a hot summer night. The police and the city would periodically try to lock the building down, keep people out, but it never lasted long.
The truth was that no one cared about this part of the city; they never had. Maybe one day the whole area would be redeveloped, but that was a long way away. For now, the abandoned buildings, many filled with dangerous asbestos and inhabited by rats, would continue to be a blight on the city.
It wasn't a coincidence that Hayley was here. The school was where Johnny had conducted business. It could be Stix behind the plan, or the kid Johnny had almost killed for stealing his drug business. It could even be Sierra. She'd told him earlier that she'd saved him by calling in the fire department. She'd known where Johnny was then.
Maybe Sierra was behind the whole thing, he suddenly wondered. What if she'd found out Bree had had a kid with Johnny? What if she'd wanted to torture her former rival? What if she'd wanted to get rid of the one person who could take Johnny away from her—his daughter Hayley?
The way the kidnapper had played on Bree's emotions seemed almost feminine in nature, not that he wanted to discredit women, but another woman might certainly know that Bree's most vulnerable point would be the loss of her child. And Sierra had known Bree when she was in her teens. She'd probably known about the shelter. She'd definitely known about the fashion show, because she'd been jealous of Bree's photo in the paper.
But would Sierra really go against the man she'd loved for years? The man who had probably financed her salon and was letting her live the life she always wanted?
Frustrated, he decided to put the guessing aside. He was probably going to find out soon enough. What he needed to worry about was how to enter the school without being seen and how he was going to save Bree and Hayley.
As he neared the building, he kept a wary eye on the windows and doors facing him.
All was quiet. He couldn't see anyone moving behind the broken windows.
The building backed right up to the water, just a narrow cement path between the structure and a low retaining wall.
He hid behind the adjacent building, waiting and watching for a long minute. There were no guards out
side, but who knew how many people were waiting inside?
Time to find out.
He didn't head to one of the doors, instead aiming for a window on the ground floor. There were plenty of those around, and he didn't think they could guard all of them. Hopefully, he was picking the right one.
Nineteen
Bree walked past the large sign that said No Entry and warned of legal prosecution for trespassers, a sign she'd ignored many times before.
The lock and chain on the front door of the school had been sawed off. It didn't look to be a particularly old lock, maybe that had been recent, but when she entered the building, a nasty stench made her gag. Rats scurried away as she stepped over broken bottles, discarded needles, and other garbage.
She moved into the hallway and looked both ways. There were three classrooms on the left plus the principal's office and three classrooms on the right. In front of her was the multi-purpose auditorium. There were stairs at both ends of the hallway, leading up to the second floor, where six more classrooms could be found as well as restrooms.
She'd been in every single one of those rooms at one time or another. She'd even climbed out onto the flat-top roof that overlooked the river. She could do this. She could find her daughter.
Pausing, she listened for some sign of life.
Why was it so quiet?
She could hear her heart pounding and felt like a sitting duck. A shooter could come out of any of the classrooms or the offices or the auditorium, and she would have no escape.
But she didn't think she was going to die that fast.
The game was coming to a climax, and she could do nothing but play along.
The sound of crying made her pulse race. It sounded like it was coming from the auditorium.
She ran forward, pushing through the large door at the back of the room. The rows of seats had long since been taken away, and huge chunks of the ceiling now covered the floor. There was more garbage in this room, and it was cold and dark with barely any light coming from the boarded-up windows.
Reckless Whisper KO PL B Page 21
