His Personal Mission

by Justine Davis

  He didn’t blame her, now. Looking back, he could see her reasons, from her point of view, were good ones. He had been too young, too carefree. Too focused on having fun, taking little seriously. And most of all, she’d been right that he took his family for granted. Nothing had taught him that more soundly than the past week.

  So where did that leave them now? Would she give him another chance? She’d kissed him back. Oh, yeah, she’d kissed him back all right. She—

  Again he nearly yelped when the undergrowth barely three feet away moved and Rand rose up before him. With a quick shake of his head, he gestured back up toward the road. Moments later they were back at the car, Rand was shrugging off the jacket he didn’t really need on this warm day, and Sasha, amazingly, came over and took Ryan’s hand once more.

  “Sorry, Ryan,” Rand said. “It’s not the place.”

  “But the gun, the dog,” he began, stopping when Sasha’s fingers tightened around his. The contact helped him focus, calm down a little.

  “Oh, there’s reason for them,” Rand said. “But it’s not porn.”

  “How could you tell, from outside?” Sasha asked.

  Rand opened the leather case he’d just taken from around his neck. He took out an odd-looking piece of equipment that looked sort of like the binoculars but bigger, with a single, flat-screened viewer instead of two eyepiece lenses, dials and an odd array of other controls attached.

  “One of Ian’s newest babies,” Rand said.

  “Infra-red?” Sasha asked.

  “No,” Ryan answered, recognizing the piece. “It’s based on millimeter wave technology. Like the newer stuff they use at airports.”

  Sasha’s brows rose. “You mean the stuff that can see through your clothes?”

  “More important,” Rand said, “through the sign they were using to mask the window. Ian’s got it fine-tuned and enhanced enough it can even see through some walls. It’s a great tool.”

  “As long as you’re the good guys,” Sasha said, sounding a tiny bit wary.

  “Good thing we are, then, isn’t it?” Rand said with a smile as he put the device back into the locker.

  “What did you see?” Ryan asked; he’d already accepted Rand’s assessment that this wasn’t the place. Such was the reputation of Redstone Security.

  “They’ve got a major pot farm going in there.”

  It seemed anti-climactic after all the tension and evil imaginings.

  “Now what?” Ryan asked dispiritedly.

  “We keep going,” Sasha said firmly.

  “Yes,” Rand agreed. “I talked to Kate as soon as she got out of her meeting. She has a friend who works at the college, in the offices. She called her, and I’m going to meet with her, ask about the possibles.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m going to have to hustle to make the agreed time.”

  “What about that?” Sasha asked, nodding toward the driveway that led to a hemp smoker’s dream. “Are you going to tell the police?”

  “Later. They’re not going anywhere, and Trish comes first.”

  And that, Ryan thought, was why he loved Redstone.

  Sasha knew Ryan was disheartened. She, too, had thought they’d found what they’d been looking for. As they got back in the car after Rand had left for his meeting at the school, she pondered what to do next.

  “Shall we follow him to the school?” she asked.

  Ryan shrugged. “Why duplicate? There must be something else we can do.”

  “This afternoon we can go back to the café, talk to some of the kids who maybe might remember this sleaze,” she said.

  “And in the meantime?” he asked as he started the car and turned to head back to the highway.

  “I’m thinking,” she said.

  And she was. This case was more difficult because Trish wasn’t a child, where people instinctively paid more attention to anything unusual. It was more difficult because she’d come here apparently voluntarily, so she wouldn’t have stood out or likely made a fuss until it was too late.

  “Let’s go back by the other house,” she finally said. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, just that it had stuck in her mind and been niggling at her even as they’d thought they’d struck gold.

  “The landscaper’s paradise?”

  “Yes.” Interesting, she thought, that he assumed that was the one she’d meant. But the guy with the broken leg eliminated the other one. Unless, of course, he was faking it. Or had a partner, an accomplice.

  Don’t overly complicate it, she told herself. Time enough for that later if things start to look that way.

  Ryan drove silently, and Sasha noticed he wasn’t checking the GPS for directions, but doing it from memory. She was a bit amazed; what they’d thought they’d found would have blasted all this out of her mind if it had been her own sibling in trouble.

  But then, Ryan Barton had an exceptional brain. She’d always known that.

  He also had an exceptional mouth. Among other things.

  Heat flushed her face, and she turned her head to look out the passenger window, not wanting him to see. He’d become too perceptive. He’d probably guess the source of her blush.

  By the time the car slowed as they neared the expansive, perfectly maintained yard, she was back in control.

  For a moment she simply sat, looking at the geometric pattern, the mirroring of one side to the other, the absence of even the slightest weed or bit of moss in a place where fighting them was a constant battle. Nothing had changed. There was still no sign of the car that had led them to this address, and no sign of anyone at home.

  “It’s too perfect,” she murmured as she stared.

  “Too much work,” Ryan said. “I hope they pay somebody to do it.”

  “And if they do, can you imagine the instructions?”

  “Probably start with the words immaculate and scrub brush and go downhill from there.”

  Sasha gave him a smile as she nodded in agreement with his quip. He was doing well, she thought, handling the disappointment of not finding Trish at the guarded compound in a way she wasn’t certain he’d have been capable of two years ago.

  Or perhaps she’d simply underestimated him, assumed that the surface charm and lightheartedness was all there was, and had never truly looked at the foundation it was built on.

  “So what kind of person demands such perfection?” she asked.

  Ryan’s brow furrowed. “A control freak?” he suggested.

  She glanced at him. “Maybe. Or…someone who needs control here because he’s out of control somewhere else?”

  Ryan went very still. “I hadn’t thought of that. That the perfect garden might be…a sign.”

  “Of an imperfect mind?” She looked back at the garden. “Perhaps a public display for someone with traits not so suited for public display?”

  “Or maybe someone who doesn’t have those traits himself, but is living with someone who does?”

  Sasha turned sharply. “And reacting to that? Oh, now there’s a thought.”

  Ryan looked pleased at her words, as if they’d warmed him somehow. The idea that she had the power to do that warmed her in turn. When this was over, when Trish was safe…well, they’d just have to see.

  “Merits a closer look, given all that,” Sasha said, and opened the car door.

  Ryan was right beside her. They walked around the house, peering in the windows, most of them masked with lacy curtains that made Sasha think of her mother’s love of things Victorian. From what they could see, the interior matched the exterior, immaculate, with not a book or magazine visible, let alone out of place. The furniture gleamed like polished metal, even in the dim light of the closed-up house.

  “There could be an inside room, without windows, that we can’t see,” Sasha said as they completed the circuit.

  “I don’t think so,” Ryan said. “Judging from the rooms we could see, the only windowless room is that one bathroom we could see into through the kitchen. Given the footprint of the house, and
the size of the rooms, I don’t think there’s any unaccounted-for space.”

  Bless that computerlike brain, Sasha thought.

  “Unless there’s a basement,” she said. Ryan winced. She didn’t blame him; it was such a horror-film cliché. “But as damp as it is up here, I’m not sure they do full basements much.”

  “And there’s no outside access.”

  She didn’t mention that for the kind of purposes they were talking about, outside access would be a detriment.

  “I want a closer look at the greenhouse,” she said.

  The building was solid wood at one end, with an extended greenhouse of Plexiglas panels nearly fifteen feet long. It wasn’t locked, and they stepped inside. It was as carefully kept as the rest of the premises, even the gravel beneath the potting bench at one end scrupulously clean of spilled soil.

  “Nuts,” Ryan muttered as they walked between the carefully tended plants in various stages of growth.

  “I’m betting the moment a plant starts looking tired, out it goes, to be replaced by an understudy,” Sasha said, waving at the length of the plant tables.

  The shed end of the building was in the same immaculate order. And there was no place to hide anything. They walked toward the last building on the property, the garage. There was a small side-entry door that she tried, a little surprised that it opened. Sasha looked around at the empty space, the tidy cabinets and a floor so clean you’d never know you were in a garage.

  “Perfect as the rest,” Ryan said. “But…”

  “Something?” she asked after a moment.

  He shook his head, then stepped into the garage. He looked around, although there was nothing Sasha could see to really look at. But when he came back to the door, she saw an expression on his face that told her to be quiet until he worked out whatever he was thinking. He stepped outside and walked to one side of the garage, then backed up a few feet and simply looked.

  Sasha closed the small door and followed.

  “Ryan?” she finally asked, unable to wait any longer.

  “It’s too long,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s at least eight feet longer on the outside than the inside space.”

  Sasha’s pulse picked up. She didn’t ask if he was sure. She knew he was.

  They hurried toward the back of the garage.

  “There,” Ryan said, pointing at the side wall. Sasha looked, saw a faint change in paint color, fresher against faded, as if one section had been painted more recently.

  There was no sign of a door or any other kind of entry, only a lean-to, three-sided structure against the back wall, the kind put up for storage of garden tools. They walked toward it.

  Ryan stopped dead two feet away. When he spoke, it was nearly a whisper. “It’s locked.”

  She saw the shiny hasp and padlock on the door. And instantly got why he’d sounded like that. “And nothing else was. Not the greenhouse, the shed or even the garage.”

  He nodded.

  “Let’s check Rand’s toolbox in the back. Maybe there’s something we can pry it open with.”

  If the illegality of that even occurred to Ryan, he ignored it. “Never mind that,” he said. “Just find me something I can use as a screwdriver. I’ve got a Swiss Army knife on my own key chain, but it’s back at Rand’s place.”

  “Hang on,” Sasha said, smothering a grin she was afraid was inappropriate at this moment. She ran out to the car and grabbed her brightly colored felted bag, digging into the bottom as she ran back. As she arrived back at where Ryan was tapping on the sides of the lean-to, she was pulling out her own key chain. With her own little red knife hanging helpfully next to her car key.

  Ryan looked at it, then at her. In that moment something passed between them, something that was acknowledgment and promise, something that made her pulse kick up yet again.

  He went to work, and Sasha quickly saw what he was going to do.

  “A hasp like this is only as good as what it’s fastened to,” he said as he got the first screw holding it to the wooden door going. The little knife did a quick job, and within a couple of minutes, the shiny padlock was still holding, but the hasp was no longer fastened to the door. It swung open freely.

  For a moment, Sasha thought it had all been for nothing. There was an assortment of typical garden tools lined up neatly in a rack on the garage wall, and apparently nothing else in the shed.

  “A second set?” Sasha said, recalling the similar tools they’d seen in the greenhouse shed.

  “These have never been used,” Ryan said. She looked closer, saw he was right; these bore no scratches or marks or any sign of ever having touched dirt. “And why lock these up, but not those?”

  She heard Ryan’s breath catch.

  “Camouflage,” he said, and began to move the tools away from the back wall. Sasha wasn’t sure what he meant, but helped him set them aside. And then she saw it.

  “Ryan!”

  She pointed downward. About three feet from the ground. He leaned forward, saw what she had seen. A hinged door. Almost like a doggie door, only larger. Larger enough for a person.

  Even a stocky, beefy-shouldered man.

  Ryan was on his knees in an instant, pulling at the door. The man had apparently counted on the outer lock, for this was only latched. In seconds Ryan had it open and was scrambling through.

  “Trish?”

  She heard him yell it, so knew before she got inside after him that his sister wasn’t immediately in sight. But the paraphernalia of the Web site was.

  Lights, camera, action, she thought grimly as she looked around. And at one end of the room was the computer setup, from where he likely ran his little enterprise, and lured unsuspecting girls into his web.

  “Damn it!” Ryan’s frustration echoed off the walls of the apparently unoccupied room. “Where is she? What did he do with her? And where is he, did he run, is he—”

  “Hush!” Sasha said, holding up a hand. Ryan stopped his tirade midstream.

  And there it was again, a faint thud and a barely perceptible rattle.

  “Again, so we can find you!” Sasha yelled to the room.

  There was no voice, but the thud came again, twice. Louder this time, leading them to the back corner. Hidden from the rest of the room by a stub wall was a small closet, maybe four by four, with a door secured by a dead bolt on the outside.

  Ryan got to it before she did. He twisted the knob and yanked the door open.

  The girl was lying naked on the floor, her arms and ankles bound together with duct tape. The silver stuff was also over her eyes and mouth. She was obviously terrified, and had clearly been crying. She was bruised in several places and bleeding from more than one scrape.

  But she wasn’t dead.

  And she wasn’t Trish.

  Sasha sat in the backseat with Courtney—the girl had told them her name after Sasha had painstakingly peeled the duct tape from her mouth, trying to cause the least pain possible—rocking her gently, simply repeating, “It’s over, you’re safe,” knowing it would take time for the girl to accept. She had her arm around quivering shoulders wrapped in the first-aid blanket from Rand’s well-stocked locker.

  She had found the locker also contained some latex gloves, and had donned them in an effort to preserve any evidence that might be on the tape. She’d sensed the change in Ryan goat that moment; he knew enough to realize why she was doing it, and the tacit acknowledgment that this was a crime scene. She guessed he also knew this was no longer going to be a private investigation, and no longer only about Trish. She knew she didn’t need to explain the up and down sides of that. It was enough that he had to deal with the disappointment of not finding his sister.

  “I’m calling Rand,” Ryan said. “If I know Redstone, he’s got some juice with the sheriff, and it would be better if he made the call.”

  Sasha nodded, and he walked away a few feet with cell phone in hand. This was going to be complicated. Since Trish had bee
n lured across state lines, they could even end up with the feds involved, although she knew the laws in the area of adult Internet luring were a bit murky, and different from state to state.

  She appreciated that Ryan seemed to realize he should keep his distance from the traumatized girl. Courtney had barely managed to tell them her name.

  But now she seemed, if not calmer, at least more inclined to talk, and Sasha knew they had limited time before the authorities arrived and took it all out of their hands. Using every bit of her training and knack for empathy, she encouraged Courtney to talk. And although she was difficult to understand through her weeping, Sasha was able to figure out that she, like Trish, had just turned eighteen, and she’d been in the clutches of their Internet predator only since yesterday. Not that the girl knew it—she said she’d been locked up in that closet with the tape over her eyes when not actually forced to pose for his lewd photos—and had no idea how much time had really passed.

  Ryan came back, done with the call to Rand. “He’s on it. Making the call and on his way here.”

  “The police?” Courtney asked, making a visible effort finally to control her sobbing.

  “They’ll be here. And they’ll notify your family.”

  “Oh, God—” a hiccup interrupted her as she choked back another wail “—my mom’s gonna freak.”

  “Your mother will just be glad you’re safe,” Sasha assured her.

  “I was so scared.”

  “Of course you were. It was horrible.”

  “I thought he was real. Gentle, sensitive. He was like a poet, you know?” A fresh wail broke from her.

  “He was very, very good at this, Courtney. You weren’t the only one who bought it.”

  “I know.” She shivered violently. “That’s why I was so scared. I knew he’d had another girl here, before me.”

  Even though he was a couple of feet away, Sasha sensed Ryan go rigid. Don’t talk, she urged him silently, afraid it would destroy the fragile effort Courtney was making to stay in control.