“Yeah, that’s the term I’d use, too,” Brandon added.
Cole thrust a hand back through his hair. “So, a couple men and a driver, right?”
“Yes, the driver never gets out of the van. They put her parents into the back—ungently I might add—and take off,” Brandon said.
“Their street is a cul-de-sac, and they have the last house on the lane, so the chances that their neighbors saw something is low. Were the men wearing ski masks?” Cole asked.
“Yes, all of them. Just like with Madalina,” Damon said. “And here’s something else. This didn’t happen around the same time tonight that they took Madalina. The time stamp is late this afternoon. They abducted her parents in broad daylight.”
“There’s no other reason for them to take Madalina and her parents unless these people think that they can force confessions and information out of them,” Cole said. He cursed under his breath.
“This is my take. They probably grabbed her parents first, questioned them or something, then went for Mad,” Brandon said. “These guys might be using her parents as incentive.”
“That’s a politically correct way of saying that they’re using her parents as blackmail.” Cole stopped near the door. He agonized over Wesley and Juniper’s disappearance on top of Madalina’s abduction. The Maitlands were passive, nonviolent people, unused to extremes of this nature. “And you’re likely right. Send that footage to Thaddeus and have him start to work on it. We’re missing something here. We’ve got to get some answers before it’s too late.”
Before Madalina and her parents lost the only upper hand they had.
Wesley and Juniper Maitland sat back-to-back in wooden chairs, hands secured behind them. Madalina saw that their ankles had been trussed as well, severely restricting their range of motion. Her mother’s pinched expression hinted at pain bordering on agony. Wesley remained stiff and stoic, but the flush of color under his skin indicated he was in a good amount of discomfort. The gag prevented either from talking to each other. A few discolorations on her mother’s forearms and one cheek suggested she’d fought back as hard as she was able to at the time of the abduction; Madalina couldn’t tell from this vantage point if her father had suffered injuries of his own. She didn’t see any obvious wounds or blood.
Stop and think. How can you free them? Pushing back the panic and shock, Madalina concentrated on the layout of the room, on the placement of doors, and on how likely it was that someone would enter right in the middle of her parents’ rescue. Did it matter in the end? She wasn’t leaving here without her mother and father. She had to try, despite the risk that she might wind up a prisoner again herself.
Reaching over, she tried the handle on one of the french doors.
Locked.
Of course it was, she thought. Nothing about this would be easy.
Unable to pick locks, she thought she would have to find another way into the house and double back to this room. Not an optimal plan, she knew, but she couldn’t simply kick in the french doors or break the glass. In the still of the night, the noise would amplify and gain someone’s attention.
Going in through another entrance put her at greater risk of recapture, however, a thing she wanted to avoid at all costs. She couldn’t help her parents if the men caught her again.
A brief survey confirmed there were no extra windows leading into this particular room. It seemed to be an informal sitting area of sorts, with a view of the patio and ocean beyond. She’d glimpsed a few pieces of bleached wood furniture and a large painting on the wall, but no other access points from out here in the courtyard. In desperation, she considered using a buffer between her hand and a pane of glass in the french door. She could all but see the lock, which made it tempting to try and bust the glass despite the noise. There were cushions on some of the chairs out here, and a few folded towels on a table. If she cracked the glass with the towel pressed against the pane, would it muffle the sound enough? Shards would fall inward from the impact and clatter against the tile.
Rushing past the double doors, she hurried along the side of the house, one hand on the stucco exterior to provide a guide. She encountered another window and, after listening for signs of the men inside, tried to pry the window open.
Locked. It didn’t budge.
Two more windows on the same side of the house also proved to be locked.
The half wall surrounding the courtyard ended at the corner of the home, and she debated climbing it to investigate further. There could be an open door to a kitchen or an office or something like it nearby. But the farther she got from her parents, the more she worried they would come to harm in her absence.
She wanted them out of the house now.
Doubling back, she snatched a towel off a table and took it to the side of the french doors. It was now or never. Do or die. She couldn’t shake the sense of urgency to free her parents from captivity.
Unfolding the towel until it was only doubled, she pressed the material against the pane and, without waiting, used the point of her elbow to jab at the glass. A muffled thump was her only reward. The glass didn’t break.
For a moment, she fretted it was bulletproof or shatterproof.
She tried again, this time with more force.
The glass cracked and fell inward. Even from the outside Madalina could hear the pieces landing noisily on the tile floor. Throwing the towel aside, she reached in and felt for a lock. Encountering a simple dead bolt above the handles, she flipped it and went in.
Time was of the essence. There wasn’t a second to waste.
CHAPTER FOUR
Cole departed Madalina’s parents’ home after a final, cursory check. Climbing into his car after a quick glance at the street, he stabbed the key into the ignition and started the engine. He paused for a moment, just one moment, to take a deep breath and calm himself. His agitation and fear couldn’t be allowed to overwhelm him. Nor his anger. It boiled beneath the surface like dragon fire, waiting for the right time to strike.
He berated himself on the drive back to Whittier. Why hadn’t he gone to the shop like he’d wanted to? If he’d known sooner that Madalina had wound up working alone, he would have. This might not have happened—although he acknowledged that there wasn’t anything he could have done about her parents. He suspected that whoever was behind the abductions knew about him, though, and had struck when he wasn’t around. Clearly, the men had foreknowledge of the situation and all the players involved.
Arriving home a short time later, he pulled into the garage and stalked into the house. Brandon met him in the kitchen.
“Find anything useful over there?” Brandon asked.
“Nothing that gives us a clue to where they are or who took them. The security video is our best evidence. Thaddeus call back with any news yet?” Cole headed through the house for the stairs with Brandon at his flank.
“Not yet. I’ve been alternating between the search and watching the grounds. They got Madalina and her parents. It doesn’t seem likely that they’d want you, too, but you can’t ever tell,” Brandon said.
“Yeah, not likely. They know I’d go to war to get Madalina away from them.” The conversation made Cole’s mood darker.
Damon was still at the computers when Cole entered the upstairs office. His brother looked to be totally engaged in several monitors running video feeds and other data.
“I’m scanning gas-station video in the area around here and near Madalina’s parents’ house. It’s a long shot, but they had to get gas somewhere, at some point,” Damon said.
“And they wouldn’t have gotten out to pump and pay for it without removing their masks, which would possibly give us facial features to use.” Cole disregarded the chairs in front of other monitors. He was too antsy and edgy to sit for long periods of time. He needed to be active. Needed to be moving.
“Exactly,” Damon said. “Thaddeus and Samuel are investigating, too. Looking for chatter on the net about the dragons.”
; “It’s not going fast enough—” Cole paused when his other cell phone rang. The one he kept in his office for private conversations with his father’s company or his brothers. It couldn’t be hacked or listened in on. “Yeah?”
“It’s me,” Thaddeus said. “We’ve finally got a lead on the license plate.”
“What is it? Gonna put you on speaker.” Cole pressed a button and tipped the phone out so his brothers could hear.
“It took some time to ferret out the hidden numbers, but we got a match to a van registered to a man in Ventura. The owner is Harold Clark. He’s thirty-five, unmarried, lives in a small two-bedroom home. His occupation is listed as ‘mechanic.’ The interesting thing is that he served in the military, so he’s definitely got the skills to abduct someone and protect himself,” Thaddeus said.
Cole was already moving. He went straight to the tall gun safe in his office and flicked the combination lock until the door opened. Damon and Brandon shut down sensitive sites on the computers to join him. Each man donned a dark vest over their everyday clothes and packed the extra pockets with weapons and ammunition. The vests had holders for guns, which came next.
“We’re on it. Were you able to find any video feed from the neighborhood? What’s it like? Gated, other side of the tracks, what?” Cole asked.
“I had to pull up a street view. It looks to be an older one-story home in a tract of the same. Not bad-looking houses, but not the multi-million-dollar areas, either. Definitely not gated. It’ll take you about an hour and a half from where you are if you push it,” Thaddeus said.
“It’ll take me less than that,” Cole muttered. “We’ll call with an update. Use this phone if you get more information for us.”
“Good luck.”
Cole ended the call and pushed the phone into his pocket. He glanced at his brothers. “We’ll talk tactical plans when we’re on the road.”
“Right on. Let’s pay a visit to old Harold boy and see if he’s been engaging in extracurricular activities,” Brandon said, patting his vest one last time before following his brothers out.
“Mmerrrmmna!”
Madalina put a finger to her own lips to quiet her mother’s muffled surprise. She wasn’t sure it mattered after the breaking glass. Rushing to her parents’ side, she gently tugged at the gags, then crouched to start working on the rope around their wrists. “How badly are you both injured?” she whispered as she frantically pried at a knot.
“We’re so sorry, Maddy. We couldn’t give them the information they wanted. We didn’t have it,” Juniper whispered.
“Don’t worry about our injuries,” Wesley grunted. “There are four of them—”
“I know.” Madalina succeeded in releasing her mother’s binds, both wrist and ankle, and turned to her father. “Let’s just get out of here. We can discuss it later. Mom, listen for sounds that we’re about to get company.”
Juniper shuffled to one of two doors and put her ear to the wood. She rubbed her chafed wrists and straightened her shirt. “Nothing yet.”
Madalina had trouble with her father’s rope. The knot was tight, as if he’d been struggling against it, making it worse instead of better. A fast search through the drawers in the furniture turned up nothing to cut the binds. Returning, she pried harder, frustration hitting a peak. “Dad, it’s stuck. I can’t get you loose.”
“Take your mother and go. Get yourselves out of here while you can,” he said in a low, gravelly voice.
“No.” Madalina wouldn’t hear of it. She wasn’t leaving her father behind. The men might kill him out of sheer anger at being thwarted.
“You don’t have any time. Get out of here,” Wesley insisted. “They come around every half hour or so to check on us.”
“I’m not leaving you.” Madalina switched to her father’s ankle ties. Those came apart easier and she freed his feet. “We’re almost there.”
“I think I hear something,” Juniper said with a quiet gasp. “Someone’s coming.”
Bending a fingernail back with the effort to unravel the knot, Madalina glanced worriedly at the door, then back to her task. She couldn’t fail now. Not when they were so close to escape.
“Mom, take that painting off the wall and whack the crap out of whoever comes through the door.” Panic made Madalina desperate. “Then grab his gun if he has one.”
Silence reigned in the room. She knew she’d probably shocked her parents with her demands.
“Madalina—”
“Mom. Just do it.” Madalina managed to loosen the knot.
“But it’s a huge painting. I can’t lift it by myself.”
Madalina realized her mother was right. The heavy gilt frame probably weighed fifty or more pounds by itself. “Use your chair, then. Give it a good swing. Aim for the head.”
Juniper, looking rumpled with her short salt-and-pepper hair askew, came back for her chair. Madalina glimpsed her mother handling the chair with firmness but also hesitation and knew that her mom might not be able to do enough damage with it. Leaving her father, she traded places with her mother, taking a hard grip on the chair.
“Go back and get that knot undone. I’ll do this,” Madalina whispered. She urged her mother on, watching Juniper hurry to Wesley and crouch to attack the ropes. He was struggling, wrenching at his wrists in a desperate attempt to get free.
Madalina took a defensive stance just behind the door. She heard the vague sound of voices, low and masculine, somewhere beyond. Getting closer.
This could go badly if you miss. Don’t miss. Despite the gentle night breeze blowing through the open french doors, Madalina felt a prickle of sweat bead her brow. Stress amped up her heartbeat as she prepared to fight, adrenaline sending tingles over her scalp and down her spine.
“Maddy, I got it!”
Madalina didn’t need more prompting than that. She wedged the chair under the doorknob and spun toward her parents. Wesley was on his feet, already herding Juniper toward the courtyard, with one hand gesturing for Madalina. He needn’t have bothered to hurry her. She knew they were seconds from discovery, and loitering wasn’t an option.
Fleeing onto the patio, Madalina took the lead and led her parents toward the half wall. She planted a hand and skimmed over to the other side, thankful that the wall was low and manageable. Just as Wesley came over after Juniper, Madalina heard a shout, a bang, then a crack and crash.
Their abductors had broken through the door and discovered them missing.
“Hurry! Run!” Madalina bolted for the corner of the house, dodging palm fronds and other bits of foliage growing alongside the walkway.
If they could make it to the front of the house, she thought their chances were good to get help from neighbors. To make enough of a ruckus that someone would notice.
Ahead, a dark figure rounded the corner of the house, blocking the path to the street.
“Stop right there,” a menacing voice said, “or I’ll shoot.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Cole navigated the roads and freeways of Southern California like a man possessed. The cities were mostly quiet at this very late hour; traffic was at a minimum. He utilized the lack of cars to his advantage, speeding along a route highlighted on his GPS that would ultimately lead them straight to Harold Clark’s door. Despite the danger of being pulled over by a cop for speeding, Cole cut down the hour-and-a-half travel estimate considerably.
Harold Clark’s house sat in a well-maintained, older section of town, where the homes were all one-story stucco with clay tile roofs. Palms, birds-of-paradise, and other tropical foliage added to the appeal of the neighborhood, while foothills rose dramatically in the background.
Cole parked one house away from their main target and killed the engine. Disembarking with practiced stealth, he led his brothers along the sidewalk, moving quickly toward Harold’s driveway. He didn’t see any lights on past the windows, indicating that whoever was inside was either asleep or had darkened the house on purpose. He also had to concede that
Harold Clark might not be home at all.
Gesturing for Damon to cross the driveway and check the larger windows in the front, Cole took Brandon across the driveway for a wooden gate to the back. With no lock or other obstruction in his way, he accessed the backyard with ease. Cole discovered that all the windows were shuttered by blinds or curtains. He couldn’t see inside, couldn’t get a bead on Harold.
Meeting up with Damon near the back door moments later, he discovered that Damon had no luck getting a visual on the occupants, either. Cole spared a few minutes to pause and solidify his plan. He’d been hoping to see or hear Madalina or her parents through the windows. It would better justify breaking and entering to the suits at his father’s company if there were known hostages. His father’s company had special dispensation to make arrests and rescue hostages under extreme circumstances.
Cole considered this an extreme circumstance.
But what if this Harold character was innocent and had nothing to do with the gang that had abducted Madalina? Those other men could have stolen the vehicle—although Thaddeus had checked and there hadn’t been a report filed.
“You thinking we should try the front door option and knock?” Damon asked, as if reading Cole’s mind. The brothers worked together so often that they knew what the other was thinking. Most of the time.
“Yeah. If we scare the crap out of an innocent civilian, go in guns blazing, and this guy has no idea what the hell is going on—it won’t go over well.” Cole made a snap decision; backing away from the patio, he led the way around to the front, all the while listening for signs or sounds of distress from inside. Jogging up four stone steps, he approached the door and rapped hard, then rang the doorbell urgently. If there were four men with hostages inside, he imagined there would be a sudden scramble and other telling noises.
A Dangerous Tryst (The Inheritance Book 3) Page 4
