He kept his focus on the taillights of the oversize black SUV. He doubted they’d suspect a tail, but Noah hung back just in case. He’d checked each of their home addresses, and it was soon clear that they weren’t headed to either of their homes, or to the office. It was almost as if they were just driving around with no planned destination.
They suddenly made a right turn and Noah wondered if he’d been made. He took his time taking the corner and spotted them a few car lengths ahead. They continued down the road, so they weren’t trying to ditch him. A few turns later, and Noah knew they were driving to northeast Portland. Gang area.
Noah slowed more, even though adrenaline urged him to speed up. They finally pulled into a parking lot at a vacant mall with boarded-up windows.
Noah drove past, found a secluded spot to park and grabbed night-vision binoculars from the trunk. He zoomed in on their vehicle. Michael sat behind the wheel. Randall was in the passenger seat, talking on his phone. Another car rolled into the lot—a smaller, silver SUV. The brothers got out. The driver of the SUV, a short Latino man, did, too. He went directly to the brothers to frisk them. Nuevo muscle, which meant their leader was in the car.
Noah grabbed his phone to call for backup when it vibrated in his hands. Skyler. She was with Darcie.
He pressed Talk. “Skyler?”
“It’s Darcie,” she said, her tone dire. “She’s missing.”
“What do you mean she’s missing?” he nearly shouted before he remembered his location and controlled his voice.
“We know she wouldn’t leave on her own, so best we can tell someone took her.”
“How? Why didn’t you stop them?” he snapped.
“We didn’t see it happen.”
“Why in the world not?”
“Because we were respecting Darcie’s wishes. Isabel had been irritable and moody all day and Darcie thought it was the stress of the situation getting to her. So Darcie decided to take Isabel and Woof down to the basement for a change of scenery and asked us to stay upstairs.”
When Noah had called in earlier to check on Darcie, Skyler had told him about the puppy.
“And what happened?” he asked, barely able to breathe.
“Isabel told us Woof got out of the fence in front yard. She went after him. She didn’t see Darcie follow her, but after that, she couldn’t find Darcie. We found a Nuevo blue bandana outside the gate, so we think Darcie trailed Isabel into the yard and was abducted.”
Their conclusion made sense. At least most of it. “How could anyone find the safe house?”
“Isabel again, I’m afraid.” Skyler sighed. “Turns out Pilar brought Darcie’s iPad, and Isabel played an online game on it. We think the creep used the phone company to track her signal back here.”
“But I told Pilar no computers.”
“She didn’t realize that included a tablet.”
Noah slammed a fist to his leg. “I should have been more specific with her.”
Movement ahead caught Noah’s attention. He saw another Latino get out of the vehicle and approach the Kerrs.
Noah needed to get off the phone and put his full focus on the meeting going down in front of him. But to do so, he’d have to forget about Darcie. Sure, there was the hope that tailing these guys led him to her location. But that was only a hope. The people who abducted her could have taken her to another location to kill her. Or worse yet... No, he couldn’t think about the worst thing that could have happened. Not and go on living himself.
* * *
Fear nearly pulled Darcie into the pit of despair, but she’d managed to keep her head and gather as much information as she could from her abductors’ conversation. Her attacker’s name was Gonzalo. His accomplice was Felipe.
Now there were two of them. Both with big weapons.
They acted like this was a walk in the park. Calm. Joking. They spoke in Spanish, gesturing at her often and laughing as they drove toward the outskirts of Portland. She didn’t waste time wondering what they found so funny. It really didn’t matter.
What did matter was what they were planning to do with her. She was surprised after all the times they’d tried to kill her that they didn’t just shoot her and dump her body. Instead, once they were out of sight of the safe house, they’d bound her wrists and ankles and covered her mouth with duct tape.
She’d tried to ask them what was going on. Why they’d taken her. Why they wanted to kill her. But with the tape it all came out mumbled and only made them laugh.
Gonzalo’s phone rang.
“Chico,” he said to his buddy and punched his speaker icon.
“¡Hola!” he answered.
“I have told you to speak English,” the heavily accented voice said. “You need the practice, or you’ll be nothing more than an enforcer for the rest of your life.”
“Sorry, jefe,” Gonzalo said.
“Boss. Say boss,” Chico snapped out. “Do you have her?”
“S—yes. We have her.”
“Good. Good. Bring her to me.”
“But je—boss. The others will soon discover she is gone and will be coming for us. We can’t risk—”
“It is my decision what we can risk. Bring her to me. Now!”
Gonzalo ended the call and a string of angry-sounding Spanish words raced from his mouth. Felipe tried to pacify him. She took some pleasure in his unease, but she didn’t waste time dwelling on it.
Gonzalo was delivering her into the hands of the boss, and that couldn’t be good. Couldn’t be good at all. She had to focus on finding a way to escape before they reached their destination.
* * *
Noah had followed the men who’d met with the Kerrs until he could get Judson to take over tailing them. Now he pulled into the safe-house driveway where a large Klieg light illuminated the forensics staff scouring the area. They were looking for clues to help find Darcie. Large. Small. Anything to lead them to her.
Rage simmered in Noah’s gut. He’d failed her. Big-time. And he would be the one to find her. He shot through workers to the porch, where Archer stood, a scowl on his face.
“Man, I’m sorry.” The pain in Archer’s eyes reinforced his frustration.
“No time for apologies,” Noah said, trying to keep a hold on his own emotions. “Just give me the facts.”
Archer gestured at the yard. “As you can see forensics is working the scene. Jake’s reviewing traffic cams back at county, hoping to pick up the car that her abductor used. And in the investigation, the only item still outstanding is LK Design’s financial files. Skyler picked them up and she’s reviewing them.”
“Okay, so we’ve basically got squat.”
“Basically.”
“I’m going to talk to Skyler. Let me know if they find anything out here.” His heart heavy, Noah stepped through the door and found Pilar sitting on the sofa, her hands folded in prayer.
“Detective Noah,” she said, coming to her feet. “I am so sorry I have caused this to happen.”
He squeezed her hand. “If anyone’s to blame it’s me. I should have made sure you knew not to bring the iPad.”
“We can’t waste time placing blame,” Skyler said from behind her computer at the dining table.
He crossed over to her. “Anything?”
“Files were encrypted,” she replied without looking up. “And it took me all this time to break the encryption, but I’m deep in the records now.” She pointed at the screen. “Look. Do you see that name?”
Noah stared at the screen. “Rocket Cycles. Someone else connected to the Nuevos.”
Skyler clicked through a few more pages and sat back. “LK Design is laundering money by using money mules.”
Noah didn’t need Skyler to explain that a money mule was an unsuspecting person wh
o moved money through their own bank account and back to the criminal to make the money appear legitimate.
“I know this name, LK Design,” Pilar said from the other room. “It is my employer.”
They both spun to look at Pilar.
“What do you do for them?” Noah’s words rushed out with the intensity of a discharged bullet.
Isabel recoiled, her eyes widening in fear.
“I’m sorry, Pilar,” Noah said. “I didn’t mean to yell. I’m not angry with you. Just tell us about your job.”
“I book graphic-design jobs for freelance designers.”
“How?” Noah asked, making sure he didn’t sound so demanding this time.
“My supervisor emails me listings from companies who want advertising campaigns, but he is too busy to do the work. He then asks freelance designers to bid on projects and he supervises them for a cut of the contract. I post the jobs on a website for that purpose. After the bids come in, I consult an approved list of designers and assign the job to one of them.”
“Any particular order that you use to assign the designers?”
“Yes, a Ramon Flores has top-priority status and he gets first pick always.”
“Flores?” Noah shared a look with Skyler.
“Is there something about Ramon that I should know?” Pilar asked.
Noah shook his head. “What do you do next?”
“I receive payment from the company in a bank account set up under my name, and then I transfer the money to another bank account, minus the commission I make for posting it.” She smiled. “A simple job, is it not?”
Simple. Hardly. This was definitely a classic money-mule scheme. She was laundering money and she didn’t know it. Likely for the Nuevo gang. Noah didn’t have the heart to tell her that she was the connection they had all been looking for and the reason Darcie was in so much trouble.
* * *
Gonzalo dragged Darcie from the car by the wrists. With her ankles bound together, she couldn’t balance and she hit the ground hard. Pain radiated through her shoulder and down her arm, sending tears to her eyes, but she bit down on her lip to keep from crying. She wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
“Up,” Gonzalo shouted at her, but with the bindings, she couldn’t get to her feet.
He mumbled something under his breath that she suspected was a Spanish curse word, then sliced through the tape on her ankles with a foot-long knife. She got to her feet and he placed the knife at her throat.
“Do not try to escape or I will cut you.” He slashed a hand across his throat, and his lips cracked in a wicked grin that sent additional fear racing to her heart.
She knew a large knife in the hand of a maniac like Gonzalo could cause terrible pain. She’d treated horrific injuries on the job. If he used that knife on her, she’d be dead in a moment.
He shoved her forward, and she dragged her feet, searching the deserted parking lot for a way out. They’d stopped at a strip mall in front of a Rocket Cycle store. One of Tom’s bike shops sat next door as they led her to the slaughter and the ironic twist almost made her give in to hysterical laughter.
Felipe unlocked the door and Gonzalo pushed her inside. Felipe hurried through a maze of motorcycles toward the back of the building. Darcie knew the boss was waiting for her behind the door, and as Felipe opened it, she came to a stop. Her heart pounded hard. Sweat beaded on her forehead, her hands clammy.
Father, no, she prayed. Don’t let this be the last door in life that I walk through.
EIGHTEEN
Pilar, Archer and Skyler sat at the dining table while Noah paced. Archer and the criminalists hadn’t located any lead besides the bandana. All that told them was that the Nuevo gang had Darcie. Jake and the other FRS members were on the way to the safe house and once they arrived, they’d mount a search for Darcie. To do so, they had to figure out how Pilar’s role as a money mule was connected to Darcie.
“Seems to me,” Archer said, “the hit list suggests that the Nuevos think the people on the list were possible snitches.”
Noah stopped moving and let the idea run through his brain. “Makes sense, but how does Darcie fit in the group? She didn’t work for LK Design or even know anything about them.”
Skyler sat forward. “If they tracked all log-ins to their computer network, when Pilar started using Darcie’s iPad, they would’ve noticed a change in the login IP and investigated it. And we know they can trace it back to Darcie through the phone company.”
“But why wait so long to try to kill her?” Pilar asked, then shuddered. “I have used her iPad for weeks now.”
“I suspect it’s a matter of numbers,” Skyler said. “To move the kind of money the gang needed to clean, it would need a large number of mules. Which means many log-ins to their network. It would take time to go through their server logs to track down the unknown IP address.”
“Then, as Archer said,” Noah added, “once they discovered Darcie’s association with the FRS, they’d likely think she was involved in investigating them, and was the source of their problems.”
Archer nodded his understanding. “So they started following her to see if they could determine what she was up to. Which is why they found her outside your house, Pilar.”
“Yes,” Pilar said. “Yes, they could find her at my home every day as she came to help with Isabel so I could work.”
“Aha.” Skyler pumped her fist, making Pilar jump. “That means the access from the iPad occurred when Darcie was in your house. They had to think the two of you were in cahoots.”
“Ca-what?” Pilar asked.
“Working together to snitch on them.”
Archer frowned. “Then why wasn’t Pilar on the hit list, too?”
Pilar gasped.
“I’m sorry, Pilar,” Archer said. “But it’s a legitimate question.”
“There has to be a logical explanation.” Noah walked the floor, running bits and pieces of the investigation along with what he knew about gangs through his filters. He replayed his department training and briefings, plus conversations with Judson.
“Family. The answer is family.” He spun to face the others. “That’s got to be it. Above all else, gang members prize their fellow gang members, their neighborhood and their family. They would fight to the death to defend them. Family is so important that their code states that you never mess with rival gang members when they are with their family. They extend the courtesy to other families as well.”
“But I am not family.” Pilar twisted her hands together. “Or a member of their gang.”
“Yes,” Noah said, stepping closer. “But you are part of their neighborhood. You have the same ethnic background. And then there’s Isabel. You care for her 24/7, which is something they would respect. As such, I suspect they would first give you the benefit of the doubt and dig deeper to see if you’re involved before acting. Not so with Darcie. She’s an outsider and they’d have no qualms about killing her.” Noah paused and hated to add this last little bit, but it had to be said. “It’s likely they’re still investigating you, Pilar, and they could still try to attack you, too.”
* * *
Gonzalo shoved Darcie into the back room. The walls held shelves filled with motorcycle parts and a small desk with a computer sat in the corner. Her heart raced at the thought of seeing the big boss, but there was no one in the room except the three of them. Felipe scooted past her and pressed on the corner shelf, which slid open, revealing a secret room.
“Wait here while I make sure Chico is ready for us.” Felipe disappeared into the dark.
Her pulse kicked up even higher and panic set in. She couldn’t let them take her in there. If she did, she’d be done for. Now was the time to act. But how?
She remembered a self-defense class
where they taught women to use what you have and what you knew. All she had was Haley’s ring on her finger. It wouldn’t help her get free, but it could work as a clue if Noah was looking for her. She slid it off and palmed it. Her panic escalated. This was the last real memory of Haley that she kept out on a daily basis. Taking it off felt as if she was placing Haley on the shelf. And maybe she was. At least the emotions that seemed to weigh her down. They were gone. This attempt on her life assured that.
“They’re taking too long.” Gonzalo peeked into the opening.
Good. While he’d turned his head, she could place the ring on shelf near the secret door access and hopefully Noah would figure out there was a false wall.
Goodbye, my precious child, she thought as she settled the ring on the shelf. You’ll always be with me. Always.
Now it was time to subdue Gonzalo. She knew medicine. The body. How it worked and reacted. She could use that. When a person was relaxed, which he seemed to be, the midsection was a perfect target to knock the wind out of them, giving her time to run while he recovered.
She moved far enough from Gonzalo to be able to put some force behind her swing. She intertwined her fingers, then spun and aimed a two-handed punch to the space just below his ribs on the centerline of his body. She applied as much force as she could in an upward motion. Like she was trying to push his stomach into his chest.
“Oomph,” he said and doubled over.
She bolted toward the front of the shop. Made it to the door. Twisted the dead bolt. Pushed the door open. Felt the fresh air of freedom on her face. Took a step outside. Breathed deep and took off running. Fast. Down the sidewalk.
Yes, she was going to make it.
An object came out of the dark and tripped her.
She hit the ground. Rolled. Her shoulder, already sore, took the brunt of her fall. The pain sent stars twinkling in her vision. She blinked hard. The object became clear. A foot. A man’s foot.
“Get up,” the guy said as footsteps pounded closer.
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