Web of Deceit

by Susan Sleeman

  The same thought sent Sam’s head into a dizzying spin. “Do you have any cameras on the exit?”

  “Sorry,” Victor said. “This is it.”

  “So all we know is, Rhodes gave her a phone, she left at 2:55,” Quinn said, “and took the south exit.”

  Sam didn’t need this guy to state the obvious. They still hadn’t a clue where Kait was, whose car she was driving, or why she took off. He looked at Nina who was ending her call and willed her to have a lead they could use.

  She said goodbye to Becca and crossed over to Sam. “That was about the pilot I mentioned on the elevator. The one who chauffeured Rhodes. He claims he didn’t know Rhodes was in town and only flew him to San Diego that one time. Our team is bringing him in for additional questioning.”

  “Maybe you should hold off taking him into custody so I can ask him a few questions,” Quinn offered.

  Sam could imagine the kind of questioning Quinn intended, and his offer was tempting, but Nina shook her head. “We play by the rules so nothing bites us in the butt when Rhodes comes to trial.”

  “Then how do you propose we find Kait?” Quinn asked.

  Nina’s phone dinged and she held it out. “Becca successfully hacked Kait’s phone, and that glorious sound you just heard is her texting me the GPS coordinates.”

  “If she’s with Rhodes, and he let her keep her phone,” Quinn said. “He would’ve made sure her GPS was turned off. Which means, she probably doesn’t have her phone.”

  “Or he doesn’t have her,” Sam added, though he knew it was wishful thinking.

  “What about GPS on her car?” Quinn asked.

  “She didn’t use her own car.” Sam lifted a hand to shove it into his hair in frustration, but an agonizing pain quickly brought it back down. “So the phone is our only lead.”

  Nina nodded. “Let’s go get it. Even if she’s not with it, she’s resourceful enough to have left a message on it if she could.”

  Sam kept up with Nina and Quinn on the way to the car, but, despite the pain meds he’d gotten from the nurse before leaving his room, he broke out in a sweat. At least there was a cool evening breeze to keep him from keeling over onto the asphalt.

  Nina grabbed her go bag from the trunk and slung the strap over her shoulder. Good. Sam wished he had his go bag, which was filled with items law enforcement officers needed on the job. Heading into the unknown, they might find the equipment could come in handy. But with Sam’s car still at Kait’s house, they’d have to make do with Nina’s equipment. He didn’t even have a gun and felt naked.

  Nina unlocked the car and tossed her keys to Quinn. “You drive so I can track the GPS signal on my phone.”

  She dropped her bag on the backseat. Sam climbed in next to it, and she took the passenger seat where Sam saw her punch the coordinates into her car’s navigation system. “That should get you there without any wrong turns.”

  Quinn tore out of the parking lot, and Sam rested his head. He still felt woozy, and the car motion nauseated him so he blinked hard, willing it to pass.

  “I’ve located her phone on a street view map. Looks like an abandoned gas station.”

  “A logical place for Rhodes to meet her, I suppose,” Sam said, feeling too sick to sit forward and look at it.

  He heard Nina fumbling with something. “Her phone isn’t moving on the GPS tracker at all.”

  No one spoke, but Sam knew they all worried about the same thing. If Kait was in possession of her phone, she was restrained, injured, or dead, and none of them were willing to put voice to those thoughts.

  Quinn stomped on the gas, sending Sam’s stomach rolling, but he bit his tongue and held on. He wouldn’t stop Quinn or complain. The sooner they got to the gas station, the sooner they’d find Kait.

  Breathing in and out, and concentrating on the rise and fall of his chest, he rested until the female voice on the navigation system announced their destination just ahead.

  “Grab my binoculars from the bag, Sam,” Nina called out.

  He pulled them out, but instead of handing them over, he focused out the side window. Quinn cut off the headlights, and they rolled into the lot that was dark except for a lone streetlight casting a glow onto the rear of the building.

  “There’s a box in Dora paper just like at Kait’s house,” Sam said. “It’s sitting on a barrel near the back.”

  “You think it’s a trap?” Nina asked. “Maybe a bomb?”

  “Doubtful.” Quinn shifted into park but left the engine running. “My research says Rhodes doesn’t have explosives training or experience.”

  “Big whoop,” Sam said. “Anyone can find out how to make a bomb on the Internet.”

  Quinn turned and rolled his eyes. “Thought you wanted to find Kait. Sitting here like scared little girls isn’t going to do that.” He jumped out and marched across the space.

  “Quinn, stop,” Nina called after him. Sam heard the worry in her voice, but if Quinn did, he ignored it and kept going.

  He studied the box for a few moments then lifted the lid and turned to look at them. “Not a bomb. A message.”

  Nina was out of the car faster than Sam, but he managed to grab a Maglite from her bag and follow her without passing out.

  “Guy’s a regular butcher.” Quinn eyed Nina, and Sam could see the SEAL definitely had a thing for her, but she didn’t seem to return the feeling.

  Sam shone the light into the box and paid little attention to the heart. The message lying on top grabbed his attention, and he couldn’t pull his eyes free.

  The clock is still ticking—can you stop me before the countdown ends?

  Before heartless Kait joins the others, her life wrapped up as a present for her sister.

  Fenton shoved Kait down the basement stairs. She searched the dank, airless space for a way out. The narrow room held three glass-block windows, a living area, and a tired kitchenette at the far end of the space. Two doors led to other areas of the basement—maybe with an exterior door? A door for escape? She could hope, anyway.

  Fenton stepped around Kait and gently laid Lily on a sagging sofa. “That’s it, precious. Sleep now. We have a big day ahead of us.” He then focused on Kait.

  Panic raced up her spine. Here it comes. Get ready.

  How did she prepare herself for death? An ugly, mean death like Congdon’s, as Fenton had promised in the car. Her wrists bolted to the floor, the paralysis Marcie had described taking away her ability to fight. Struggling for air. Not feeling it, but her mind knowing it all.

  He walked toward her. She jumped back, and he seemed surprised.

  She held her breath, her body quivering in fear.

  He tucked his gun in his belt, then picked up a photo album and envelope before dropping onto the nearest chair and rubbing his leg. “Sit down, Kait, and quit hovering.”

  Relief flowed through her body, but she fought the urge to sigh out her anxiety and let him see how panicked she was. While he concentrated on his book, she perched on the sofa near Lily and breathed.

  In. Out. In. Out. That’s it. You’re still alive.

  For how long?

  She watched him. Waiting.

  He rubbed his leg again, and his head snapped up, catching her eyes on him. “Enjoying looking at your handiwork?”

  “Mine?” she asked confused.

  “Unfortunately, one of your bullets caught me.” He jerked up his pant leg, revealing an ugly scar running the length of his lower leg. “See what you did? Multiple surgeries in substandard hospitals so you couldn’t find me. Now I have pain every day. Every day, Kait. You know how that makes me feel!” His shrill screeching made Lily shift and blink a few times.

  Kait patted her back until she settled again.

  His dark, angry eyes glared at her. “You disfigured me. I�
��m grotesque.”

  Despite his anger, she had to bite back telling him the scar was the least of his disfigurements.

  He opened and closed his fists, then shrugged and looked at the photo album. He flipped through it, pausing to stare at the pages. Each successive one extinguished the anger in his eyes. With a contented sigh, he removed a picture from the envelope and inserted it in the book.

  Kait desperately wanted to know what he was looking at, but after his outburst, she wouldn’t ask. Instead, she focused on Lily and searched for a way to get them out of this mess. He’d locked the deadbolt at the top of the stairs and shoved the key into his pocket, closing off that escape route. Somehow, she needed to get into the other rooms to check them out. Or maybe find a weapon in the kitchenette, though she doubted he’d be careless enough to leave anything she could use against him.

  He suddenly sat back, a joyful smile playing across his face. He ran his fingers over the page, then snapped the book closed and looked at her. “All this work has made me hungry. Are you hungry, Kait?”

  Her stomach was still roiling, and the last thing she wanted was food, but this could be her chance to search the kitchenette. She stood and put on the best smile she could muster.

  “I could fix something for us. Like a smoky melt,” she said, offering him a snack that Abby had invented for him. “If you have the ingredients.”

  He watched her carefully. His eyes roved over her, his mood shifting yet again. Suddenly, his eyes rolled up, then slid back into place, and he stared at her as if he was memorizing everything about her. He got up and came over to her, his breathing shallow and quick.

  She resisted the urge to back up and waited for him to provide a clue about the weird eye action.

  “Of course, I have the ingredients for our favorite, my sweet Abby,” he said, lifting a hand to touch her cheek.

  Abby. He’d returned to thinking of her as Abby.

  The touch revolted Kait. She wanted to slap his hand away, but he wouldn’t kill Abby, so Kait would play along until she found a way out of this basement. She forced herself not to cringe and looked up at him. His eyes heated up. Desire. He wanted her as his wife. Now. Here.

  She swallowed hard, forcing down the disgust burning up her throat. “I really am hungry. Shall I make the snack?”

  “Yes,” he answered breathlessly, but his heated expression said there were other things he’d rather do.

  She escaped his touch and hurried to the kitchen, glad to scrub away the feel of him on her cheek with her palm. As she searched the drawers for anything to use as a weapon, she hoped Fenton choked on the sandwich. He had to, just had to, before he claimed his husbandly rights, or she became his next victim.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  SAM HAD WASTED precious time crossing the city again to get to the FBI office. He wanted to be out there. Doing something, anything. Looking for Kait. But they’d found Kait’s phone on the other side of the gas station, in the car she’d driven from the hospital. Nina needed to analyze Kait’s phone, and right now, it was their strongest lead. So the three of them had returned to the FBI office.

  In the time they’d been gone, Sulyard had interrogated the pilot. Not that it mattered. He offered no help. Sulyard pulled in every available agent to work the case and was putting pressure on the World of Warcraft attorneys. He’d also sent the SEAL away, and Nina seemed as much relieved as disappointed. Maybe it was a good thing the SEAL wasn’t around. Gave Nina more of a focus while she and the analysts searched Kait’s phone.

  They all needed focus. Especially Sam, who could do little to help in the search except issue an all-points alert for Kait and Rhodes and review case files again. He thumbed through them. The same ones, over and over. For the hundredth time, starving for a lead, finding nothing.

  Disgusted with his inability to help, he jumped to his feet, ignored the lingering nausea, and paced. Kait needed him now. Right now! If she was still alive.

  So what did he do? How did he find her?

  Think, Murdock. Think.

  Nina stepped into the room, and Sam’s gaze went to Kait’s phone in her hand, like clinging to a lifesaver.

  “Take a look at this,” Nina said holding it out.

  She displayed a picture of Rhodes holding Lily. The date/time stamp was just before Kait had disappeared.

  “He has Lily?” Sam asked, his heart plummeting. “Rhodes has her?”

  “Yes.”

  His gaze flashed up to Nina. “You’re sure?”

  “I called the safe house and confirmed.” She met Sam’s gaze, pain radiating from her eyes. “They didn’t know she was gone until I asked them to check.”

  “This is obviously why Kait left the hospital.” His heart broke at the thought of her all alone receiving this picture. Her fear. Her guilt. He should have been there for her. Gone to meet Rhodes instead of her. “Rhodes had to give her instructions on where to meet him. Did you find a text or call from him on her phone?”

  “There’s a call from another burner phone.”

  “So we can’t track him,” Sam said as he tried to wrap his head around this.

  Rhodes has Lily, he repeated to himself, but it still didn’t seem real. The depraved creep had the adorable, beautiful child while Sam sat here berating himself like he’d done the day Danny had died. A child in harm’s way, and he could do nothing about it. Nothing. Again.

  “Any idea how he found the safe house?” Sam asked, dreading the answer.

  “Looks like he did it by taking control of someone’s phone on the task force. We found a suspicious e-mail on Kait’s phone that I remembered receiving. So we checked other taskforce phones, and we think he sent the same spoofed message to everyone.”

  A bad feeling settled over Sam, and he had to concentrate on taking in enough air to ask, “Spoofed means what, exactly?”

  “In a spoofed message, the sender makes the e-mail look like it came from someone else. For example, I could send out a message that looks like it came from your personal account or from the President, for that matter.”

  “How’s that even possible?”

  She arched a brow. “You can’t begin to know how detailed I’d have to get to explain it.”

  “Then give me only what I need for a basic understanding.”

  She pointed at the sender’s e-mail address on her phone. “This e-mail address displayed is a legitimate one that you can find on the FBI website. The e-mail contained a link. If anyone clicked on it, a program would download that allows Rhodes to take control of the phone and give him access to files and communications. Obviously, it didn’t originate at the FBI.”

  Sam stared grimly at the subject line, the hollow pit in his stomach growing. “I got a message with the same heading the other day. But it came from PPB. It asked me to confirm receipt of the message. I thought it was from my department. Protocol requires we respond. I didn’t . . .”

  “You didn’t know it was spoofed, so you clicked on the link.”

  He nodded as a vision of Kait in shackles, a tube running down her throat with Rhodes standing over her flashed before his eyes. A vision that could come true, and now it was looking like it was his fault.

  “Hey.” Nina laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t go blaming yourself for this. You didn’t do anything that thousands of other people don’t do every day. Spoofers are good at what they do. They often send e-mails warning you to be wary of such e-mails and that makes them seem even more legit.”

  “Still, I can tell you think I’m the leak.”

  She lifted a shoulder in a feeble shrug. “Did you communicate with anyone at the safe house after reading that e-mail?’

  Sam didn’t even need to think about it. “I contacted our officer there a couple of times. But I didn’t put the safe house address in a text or even mention it in a
call, so it doesn’t make sense that I led him to Lily, does it?”

  “All Rhodes needed was the officer’s phone number to track his GPS and locate them that way.”

  “If you look at my phone, can you tell if I was the leak?”

  “I can tell if the phone’s been compromised. Without looking at the other PPB phones, I won’t know how many other department phones were compromised, too.”

  “I need to know if I could be the one.” He handed over his phone and curled his fingers, letting his nails bite into his palms. Minutes ticked by as she thumbed through several screens, then her finger stilled midair.

  “Don’t bother telling me. Your look says it all. It could have been me.” Anger pulsed through his veins. Not directed at Rhodes, but at himself for being such an idiot. He’d not only failed to protect Lily from Rhodes, but he led him right to her doorstep. It was his job to protect Lily and Kait. He’d failed. Failed when it mattered most.

  He started pacing again. “Can we use this information to find Rhodes?”

  “Maybe, but the e-mail was routed through so many servers, if we do manage to trace it, it will take days.”

  “What about the picture of Lily?” he asked, grasping at straws. “I remember reading something about a picture showing where it was taken or something like that.”

  “Photos can have embedded geo trackers, but this one didn’t. Rhodes is too smart to leave that feature active when taking a picture.”

  “So now what?” Sam asked, his steps silent on the carpeted floor.

  “We keep working on Kait’s phone and any other lead no matter how small.”

  Sam marched back and forth, his head down. He nearly barreled into Becca when she rushed through the door, waving a stack of papers.

  “WoW’s come through. We have the addresses.” She slapped the pages on the table. “We’ve already confirmed Jae’s research was correct. The names and addresses match Rhodes’s victims.”

  Sam devoured the information until he spotted the man they believed Rhodes killed while they were watching WoW. “Jason Mason. Address is on the west side, but still in my jurisdiction. We need to get over there now.”