A Father's Desperate Rescue

by Amelia Autin

  She sighed and shook off those thoughts, then returned to the task at hand. In addition to mapping the GPS coordinates embedded in the pictures, she laid out a grid, a timeline of sorts for the two kidnappers—the one staying with the girls, as well as the one who’d been calling Dirk from the beginning and tracking them yesterday.

  She charted the ransom drop points. Victoria Peak. The Hong Kong Museum of History. The Tian Tan Buddha. The Tsim Sha Tsui Clock Tower and the Kowloon Public Pier. All tourist destinations that could be researched on the internet, but...details displaying knowledge of someone who’d been there. Which made sense, since one of the kidnappers was a Hong Kong native—that tong tattoo nailed it.

  She added in the other little things they knew, such as the sound of the Star Ferry boat whistle that Dirk heard in the background of the second call. And the fact that the second, third and fourth sets of ransom instructions had all been timed to allow Dirk to return from the previous ransom delivery, so he’d be there to receive them. Again, something the kidnappers might be able to research on the internet, but...

  “Pattern,” she muttered. “Somewhere there has to be a pattern.”

  She’d already confirmed with the head office of the delivery firm that the sender had paid extra to ensure the deliveries were made at specific times, but other than that it was a dead end. The man who’d left the envelopes for delivery had worn gloves, concealing sunglasses and—she was pretty sure—a wig. He’d paid cash. The envelopes and their contents had been dusted for prints by another of Mei-li’s friends—she’d called in a favor. But nothing. She hadn’t expected anything once she heard the man who’d dropped off the envelopes was wearing gloves, but it had been worth a shot.

  Her mind kept circling back to the pattern she was missing. Some kind of connection between all these seemingly random things.

  The geotagging embedded in the pictures of Dirk’s daughters kept niggling at her. Central. Tai O. Mong Kok. The middle of Victoria Harbour—although she discounted that as one of those camera GPS glitches. Aberdeen. “Why Aberdeen?” she asked herself. It didn’t seem to make sense. None of these places were close to the airport. But then...the kidnappers hadn’t intended to hang around Hong Kong for days and were having to improvise.

  Her smartphone signaled an incoming text message, so she dragged her phone out of her purse. Parts delivered, she read. Repairs underway.

  Thnx, she replied.

  A minute passed. DD didn’t spend the night in his hotel, was the next text.

  Her lips twitched into a smile. Someone was worried about her. Someone who knew she hadn’t had a serious relationship since Sean all those years ago. Someone who’d been Sean’s best friend. Someone whose life had been irrevocably changed by Sean’s death, just as hers had been.

  She texted back, I know.

  I know you know. But do you know what you’re doing?

  Yes.

  Two minutes went by, then three. He killed a man.

  And you didn’t? she shot back.

  Justified! was the prompt response, and she knew by the exclamation point she’d touched a nerve.

  Same for him, she typed.

  There was a long pause before, As long as you’re sure.

  She smiled again and replied, I’m sure.

  She thought that was the end of it, but then, TB under observation. Thought you should know.

  It didn’t take her more than a couple of seconds to decipher whom he meant by TB—Terrell Blackwood. Not that she thought there was anything to be uncovered about the man who’d engineered the kidnapping by putting him under observation, but still...

  Thnx, she typed again. Knew I could count on you.

  The doorbell rang twice more while she tried to put the texts out of her mind and concentrate on her work, but it was nearly impossible because her mind kept circling back to the conversation. The last text concerned her the most. Terrell Blackwood had tried to kill Dirk once before. She’d seen the scar last night as she’d lain in his arms, and she knew Dirk’s surgeon had been correct—an inch to the right, and Blackwood would have stood trial for murder, not attempted murder. If this kidnapping failed—Oh, God, she prayed, it has to fail—then Blackwood could set his sights on Dirk again.

  “That is not going to happen,” she whispered, a fierce note in her voice. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  Eventually Mei-li gave up trying to concentrate. She hadn’t spotted the pattern, the connection, not yet, but she would try again later. Because it was there—she knew it.

  * * *

  The day dragged torturously for Dirk, with no ransom instruction delivery. No phone call from the kidnappers. And, worst of all, no photo of Linden and Laurel proving they were still alive. He tried not to envision their lifeless bodies somewhere, but as the hours passed the mental picture kept slipping insidiously into his consciousness no matter how damnably hard he tried to suppress it.

  The words I’ll pay the money! roared through his mind time and again. Just tell me where!

  He’d called the banker Mei-li had put him in touch with as soon as the bank opened that morning, putting him on notice Dirk would be wiring the ransom that day. But the hands of the clock moved inexorably toward closing time with no word. Nowhere for Dirk to wire the money to.

  He chafed unbearably at the delay. And it didn’t help that his suite was full of people waiting with him—Rafe, Mike, Chet and Vanessa—all talking in hushed tones, all watching him with guarded eyes, all afraid to voice the question in the back of everyone’s mind—why haven’t we heard anything?

  But the person he needed most wasn’t there. Mei-li had gone out midmorning with Patrick to drive her, promising to return the instant Dirk heard anything. “You can’t leave,” she’d told Dirk. “But there are some things I need to check out.” She hadn’t told him what those things were, and she hadn’t returned yet. But there’d been no reason to call her...except that he needed her. And he was damned if he’d ask her to come back just for that. Whatever she was doing was important, or she wouldn’t be doing it.

  It would have been easier to bear the waiting if she’d been with him, though. Not that she could have done anything to make the kidnappers contact him, but...just being with her gave him hope.

  We’ll get them back, she’d told him, and the unshakable faith in her voice that they’d rescue his daughters had kindled his faith, too. She’d cried for him when he couldn’t cry for himself—he could still see the tears wet on her face. She’d told him, You’re a good man, and had made him believe it. You cannot know what you would have done if he’d dropped the knife! reverberated in his mind. She’d brought him back from the depths of despair time and time again. Not just where Linden and Laurel were concerned, but helping him deal with the loss of his wife, too, to put it in perspective.

  He needed her with him.

  But she wasn’t there.

  * * *

  Mei-li was in Tai O, GPS in hand, staring at a stilt house built out over the water’s edge. “That’s the location,” she murmured to herself, double-checking the coordinates she’d keyed in. Then she quickly snapped a couple of pictures with her smartphone.

  The house looked derelict and abandoned. But then, in some ways, so did those on either side, although the clothes hanging on the lines told her they weren’t vacant. She took a deep breath, then approached the front door of her target house and knocked. No one answered. After a minute, she knocked again, harder this time. She waited, but again no one came to the door.

  A woman came out of the house on the left, a clothes basket balanced on one hip. She saw Mei-li and called out something in a dialect Mei-li didn’t understand. When Mei-li shook her head, the woman said in broken Cantonese, “They moved. Two years ago, you understand?”

  Mei-li walked toward the other woman, asking, “No on
e lives here anymore?”

  The woman couldn’t have been more than thirty, but her darkened teeth and weathered skin made her look older. “No. Not to live. No.”

  The way she answered the question made Mei-li ask, “But someone was here, yes? Two nights ago.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a red banknote. “What can you tell me about them?”

  The woman’s eyes gleamed at the sight of the hundred-dollar bill, and she set the laundry basket down. “Two men, one a gwai lo. They arrived after dark and left before sunrise.”

  “But you saw them arrive.” When the woman nodded, Mei-li asked, “Did you see them leave?” Another nod for an answer. “Was there anyone else with them, either coming or going?” A vehement shake of the head was the only response. “Could you see if they were carrying anything, either when they arrived or when they left?”

  “Hai,” the woman replied. “In and out. Long bags, gray green, with straps.” She held her hands out to show Mei-li the size she meant. “Smugglers, I thought. Drugs, maybe. I made sure they didn’t see me.”

  Mei-li almost asked if the woman had called the police, but realized that was highly unlikely. No one in this small community would want to have it come out they’d informed to the police for fear of reprisals, especially if drugs were involved.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  The woman hesitated, and Mei-li knew there was something. She slid her hand into her purse and brought out another red hundred-dollar bill. She folded the two together, then fixed her attention on the other woman.

  “My son woke me in the night,” the woman blurted out. “A bad dream. I had just gotten him to sleep again when I heard...” Her face took on a puzzled expression. “It sounded like a child crying next door. But then it stopped. I told myself it was a cat, because how could it be a child? There were only the two men in that house.”

  A chill ran through Mei-li, but all she said was, “M’goy,” as she handed over the banknotes.

  She glanced at the house once more, then turned and walked back over the footbridge to where Patrick waited with the Rolls. Her smartphone was out, and she was texting. Forensics team, she typed. Tai O. Pictures to follow. Then she added the GPS coordinates. When she was done, she emailed the pictures she’d taken of the abandoned house.

  Patrick took one look at her face as he held the door for her and asked only one question. “Hai?”

  “Hai.”

  Mei-li checked her watch, wondering why Dirk hadn’t called her, and turned the ringer on her cell phone back on. She hadn’t wanted anything to interrupt her while she’d been reconnoitering, but her phone hadn’t buzzed, either. So she called him.

  “Dirk?” she said when he answered on the second ring.

  “Yes, Mei-li?”

  “I thought you were going to call me when—”

  He cut her off. “No reason to. The wire instructions never arrived.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.” Just one word, but she could hear the tight anger and frustration embodied in his voice. Like a lion straining at the leash.

  She tried to think of what she could say to reassure him. “Let me check with my contact at RMM. Could be the repairs on the plane aren’t finished. If I were the kidnappers, I’d wait until the very last minute this time, just in case something else goes wrong.” She took a breath. “Think about it. I’m sure if they’d known they were going to be trapped here, they wouldn’t have mentioned Terrell Blackwood’s name to you the first time they called.”

  “Makes sense,” Dirk said, calmer this time.

  “I’ll let you know if I find out anything. And I should be back in an hour, unless traffic is bad.”

  There was a long silence at the other end, and she thought he’d hung up without saying goodbye, but then he said, “I’m in the study now. I...there are too many people in the other room to say what—” He stopped as if he didn’t know exactly how to say what he wanted to say.

  “I know,” she told him, tenderness welling up in her. “I understand. I’ll be there as soon as I can. And I have some good news for you. I found the house where the kidnappers stayed in Tai O.” She dashed off a text after she hung up with Dirk, a question that was swiftly answered. Repairs delayed. Critical part damaged in transit.

  Her lips curved in a smile of admiration. She didn’t know how RMM had done it, but somehow they’d sabotaged one of the parts necessary to repair the plane. She quickly texted Dirk to let him know, then sat back and rode the rest of the way in silence, trying to put all the pieces together.

  She’d located the house where the kidnappers had stayed in Tai O, but she still didn’t know why they’d chosen to stay there. And she didn’t know why they’d left after only one night. She’d conjectured that the first night—the night of the typhoon—the kidnappers and the little girls had stayed in an apartment in Central belonging to one of the kidnappers, but had moved to Tai O the second night. A conjecture that was now confirmed.

  She’d already followed the GPS coordinates from the first photo—the one from the night before last—to an apartment building in Central, and with the altitude she’d almost been able to pinpoint which floor. But that only meant the apartment in question could be one of fifty on each floor. And even if she were able to take geotagged photos in each of those apartments, she wasn’t sure the GPS coordinates would be that precise.

  The photo from Tai O had been taken very early in the morning. That matched the time stamp on the photo as well as the eyewitness account that the kidnappers had departed before dawn. But the next photo had been taken in Mong Kok. Why? Especially since the last photo of the night had been taken in Aberdeen.

  She’d tracked down the Mong Kok location, too, before heading to Tai O—a street-level massage parlor with residential units above it in a seedier part of town. Patrick had refused to let her get out of the Rolls to investigate further. “Triads,” he’d said firmly, accelerating away from the building as best he could on the crowded street.

  The photo with the erroneous GPS coordinates could have been taken anywhere. But if their ultimate destination when they’d left Tai O was Aberdeen, with a stop in Mong Kok for some reason...it was very likely that was where it had originated. And Aberdeen wasn’t all that far from Mong Kok—an hour by bus, but only a half hour or so by cab.

  “All we need is one more photo to nail it down,” she whispered to herself. “Then we’d know they’re in Aberdeen.”

  “Did you say something?”

  Mei-li caught Patrick’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Just thinking out loud.”

  So many loose ends to wrap up, she thought. She’d already turned over all the info she had to RMM. They had the resources to follow through on those investigations—she didn’t. And if she and Dirk managed to rescue his daughters, they’d get the police involved, too...after the fact.

  They were close to breaking this case wide-open. She sensed it. All they needed was one more piece of information. One more clue. One more break. Please, God, Mei-li prayed. Just one more break. That’s all I’m asking, just one more break.

  Dirk was wrong. God wasn’t out to punish him. God was on their side. He’d already incapacitated the plane, forcing the kidnappers to improvise. Now it was up to them to capitalize on it.

  Chapter 19

  Dirk had already dispensed with his bodyguards’ services, telling them that since it was too late to wire the money to the kidnappers, they might as well call it a night. Vanessa had left with Chet, packing a little overnight bag, just as she’d done last night. Looks like I’ll be needing a new nanny for Linden and Laurel, after all, Dirk thought. Assuming—no! he told himself firmly. I’m not going to think along those lines.

  But it was hard not to. Especially since there’d been no word from the kidnappers since early this morning. The te
xt Mei-li had sent about the damaged plane part had helped. That, and her theory that the kidnappers would wait until their getaway plane was ready before they had him wire the ransom. But it was still difficult to stay positive. Still difficult to keep his imagination from working overtime.

  When the doorbell finally rang, Dirk rushed to answer it. And, just like this morning, the first thing he did was pull Mei-li into his arms.

  When he finally let her go, she had that dreamy-eyed look he loved seeing on her face, knowing he’d put it there. But then she said, “I have so much to tell you.”

  “First, tell me if you had dinner. Then, tell me where Patrick is.”

  “No, I haven’t eaten, but that’s not important. Patrick’s parking the car. I told him I’d ask you if you need him anymore tonight, and if you don’t, I’ll text him he can go home.”

  “I don’t think we need him, do you?” Dirk was already moving toward the kitchen. “And I ordered room service for you. It’s in the fridge.”

  She followed him to the kitchen. “I don’t think so,” she said, and Dirk knew she was referring to the need for Patrick. He glanced at her after he put a plate in the microwave and pressed one of the auto buttons, and saw her dashing off a text. When she was done she asked, “What am I having for dinner?”

  “I wasn’t sure what time you’d get back, so I played it safe—baked chicken and shredded pork from Spring Moon.” One corner of his mouth curved up in a self-deprecating grin. “I figured it would still be okay after microwaving.”

  Her smile at the fact he’d thought of her warmed him. But then, everything she did warmed him, so that wasn’t news. They stood there, staring at each other like lovesick fools until the microwave dinged. Dirk grabbed a pot holder and removed the plate, then swiped the silverware wrapped in a cloth napkin that had been sent up with Mei-li’s dinner off the kitchen counter. “Come on,” he told her as he headed for the dining room. “We can talk while you eat.”