Cut to the Bone

by Ellison Cooper

  “When do you leave?” Sayer finally asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Nana said with gentle finality. “I’m actually going to ride with Adi to the airport. We’re both off on big adventures. Maybe Adi can choose a college and I can save the world.” Her eyes glowed with excitement. “Sorry to spring this on you just as a big case is ramping up. Want to talk about it?”

  Sayer blinked at the change of subject, but realized that Nana was done discussing her trip. “Dead teenage girl, D.C. cop shot and killed when he interrupted the killer.” Sayer kept it vague.

  “Oh, no.” Nana put a hand to her chest with genuine horror. “Well, you’ll catch whoever did it.”

  Sayer drained the beer and thought about getting a second when her phone rang. When she saw Ezra’s name on the screen, her heart skipped a beat. She knew it was something big for him to call at this hour.

  “What’ve you got?” she barked into the phone.

  “I’ve got a possible ID on Jane Doe and it’s a doozy. It’s from social media so it’s not confirmed, but well, just take a look. I’m sending you a link now.”

  Sayer pulled out her laptop and flipped it open. The link to a social media site opened to a photo of a teenage girl in safety goggles and a lab coat. Her rosy cheeks arched above a genuine smile, eyes scrunched into crescents of joy. The girl held up a test tube in one hand. Beneath the photo, the caption said, “Won another STEM fair. Atlanta here I come!”

  “This girl looks exactly like our Jane Doe,” Sayer said softly.

  “The social media algorithm agrees. I plugged her photo into a bunch of sites and she was an immediate hit.”

  “Rowena Chang,” Sayer read her name out loud.

  “I’ve dug into her background a little bit. Rowena is seventeen and attends the science magnet high school in D.C. No record. From her social media account, it looks like she’s quite the scientist. Won local and regional STEM fairs in the chemistry division.”

  “Let’s get in touch with her family. How long has she been missing? Where did she go missing from?” Sayer was already standing up, ready to head back to Quantico.

  “Hang on, there’s more,” Ezra said.

  Sayer stopped at the tremor in his voice.

  “Click on the second link I sent.”

  Another photo loaded on her screen featuring a group of teens standing in front of a large silver bus. They were all smiling, overnight bags slung over their shoulders. On the side of the bus, a banner said, STEM is the future! in bright bubble letters. Sayer found Rowena Chang leaning against the bus at the back of the group.

  Sayer’s heart lurched when she saw the date and time. “This was posted barely twelve hours ago.”

  “Yeah, this is where it gets … complicated. I’ve followed the links to other kids tagged in the image. All of these kids got on a bus chartered by the D.C. public school district heading for some kind of science and technology competition down at Georgia Tech. From what I’ve been able to piece together, the parents all dropped their kids off at Wilkerson High and the bus left around four thirty yesterday afternoon. Apparently the plan was to drive through the night to Atlanta.”

  Sayer stared at the photograph. She counted twenty-four kids, twelve girls and twelve boys. “Do we know for sure that Rowena actually got on the bus?”

  “Yeah, I found a photo one of the kids posted of her literally on the bus.”

  “So, the bus left at four thirty heading south. Between then and seven, someone managed to abduct and kill Rowena, dumping her back up in the city by nine thirty.”

  Sayer paused, not even wanting to ask the question. “What about the other kids on the bus?”

  “None of the kids from the bus have posted anything on social media since 5:00 P.M. yesterday.”

  Sayer and Ezra sat in silence on the phone together. There was no way an entire busload of teenagers hadn’t posted anything on social media for that long.

  “None of them have been on social media at all?” Sayer said, knowing perfectly well what that probably meant.

  “Not since a bunch of them posted similar photos of the bus leaving. I looked it up and they should’ve arrived in Atlanta about an hour ago.”

  “You call to see if they made it?” Sayer asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

  “I called the competition organizers at Georgia Tech and the hotel where the contestants are all staying. The bus never arrived.”

  “Jesus. Are you telling me that something happened to an entire busload of kids?” Sayer had never before experienced the sensation of the ground falling away from beneath her, but now the world felt like it was tilted on edge, dropping away. “No one’s reported them missing?” she asked softly.

  “Not that I’m seeing. But they’re all high school seniors and they were supposed to arrive in the middle of the night. An hour or two late wouldn’t be that unusual and maybe their families weren’t expecting to hear from them until morning?”

  “All right.” Sayer paused, trying to organize her thoughts. “We need to figure out exactly what’s going on here. I’ll be back at Quantico in forty minutes. I need you to call the school district, check in with the bus company, make sure the kids are actually missing. If we’re right, we need … shit, I’m not even sure what we need.”

  “We need a bigger task force,” Ezra said.

  “Yeah. If you confirm that the bus and all these kids are missing, I want you to trigger the Child Abduction protocol.” Sayer rocked back in her chair, overwhelmed by that thought. “I’ll call Director Anderson to authorize a massive task force. I need someone gathering information on all those kids. The bus driver. Any other adults with them. But first, find out if we really have twenty-three missing students.”

  “Got it,” Ezra said with clipped efficiency. “See you when you get here.” He hung up.

  Sayer let herself stare at the faces of the twenty-four children about to get on the bus. Their casual body language, the confident lift of their heads, their smiles reflecting the radiant optimism of teenagers looking ahead to their own bright futures.

  Heart heavy, Sayer woke Adi up for a quick goodbye and gave Nana a hug before racing out to her motorcycle.

  Body buzzing as she screeched away from the curb, the true magnitude of the case hit Sayer. If all of those children were truly missing, she was about to be in charge of the largest child kidnapping case ever handled by the FBI.

  FBI COMMAND CENTER, QUANTICO, VA

  News of the mass kidnapping went off like a bomb.

  FBI child abduction emergency protocols were triggered and a whirlwind of activity was automatically set in motion. Barely forty minutes after Ezra confirmed the kidnapping, Sayer paced at the head of the large command center usually reserved for national emergencies. The room began filling with agents gathering for the emergency task force meeting triggered by the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment.

  As people kept filing in, Sayer realized that she was suddenly leading a task force of more than fifty people. This was going to be more like steering a cruise ship than a sports car.

  Ezra had a photograph of the teenagers posing in front of the charter bus up on the screen at the front of the room.

  “All right, let’s get started.” Sayer held up her hands, quieting the room. “We’ve confirmed that this bus carrying twenty-four high school students from the D.C. Public School District, one adult chaperone, and one bus driver, is missing. None of the passengers nor the bus have been heard from since 5:00 P.M. last night and it’s 4:00 A.M. now, so they’ve been missing for eleven hours. Let’s get on the same page so we can figure out what’s next.”

  Sayer indicated for Ezra to put up the next photo, which showed Rowena Chang in safety goggles and a lab coat.

  “It appears that someone hijacked a bus with twenty-four high schoolers on it and, unfortunately, we’ve already found one of the kidnapped children dead.”

  Ezra clicked to the aerial photo of Rowena Chang while Sayer summarized the case.
>
  “So, first thing we need to figure out—what the hell is going on? Is this an attack on the D.C. school district for some reason? A ransom attempt? Are the kids being sold into slavery as we speak? Or is this a terrorist attack? Some kind of hijacking?” Sayer began to pace. “Maybe Rowena Chang was the primary target. But then why take the whole busload of kids? Ezra, where are we on family notifications?” Sayer realized her thoughts were bouncing around like a pinball.

  “Looks like we’ve contacted almost all twenty-four families.” Ezra looked up from his open laptop. “We’re asking them to head here now.”

  “We have a family liaison to work with them?” Sayer asked, looking around the room.

  A plump, pale-skinned woman with graying hair and a warm smile stood up. “I’m the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment family liaison. Agent Robbins.” She waved, looking like a soccer mom in an ill-fitting black suit.

  Sayer tried not to look too relieved. She always felt responsible for working directly with the victims’ families, but this case was just too big and moving too fast. One girl dead and twenty-three kids missing was not the kind of case she could cowboy alone.

  “All the families are D.C.-based,” Agent Robbins continued. “Normally, for a kidnapping we would set up at their houses, but because we have so many families involved here, we’re asking them to come to Quantico so we can centralize everything. When I last heard, they only had one or two notifications left.”

  Sayer realized that they were about to have two dozen terrified families to wrangle. She drained her coffee, hoping for a jolt of energy for what was about to be a very long haul. “Are you able to manage the families once they arrive?”

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s my primary role as family liaison,” Robbins said. “I’ve already set up a block of rooms for them at a nearby hotel so they don’t have to drive back up to the city if things … take longer than expected. I’ve arranged for a conference room here where they can gather with access to snacks, water, coffee, and grief counselors. We’ve got a separate room for the Chang family so they aren’t in the room with the missing children’s families. I’ve got agents preparing to trace any communication attempts made. If this is a ransom kidnapping, we’ll be ready for calls, emails, or any other way the kidnapper might try to communicate with them. Can I have four or five agents assigned to me for family interviews? We need to start creating a file on each missing child. You know, gather history and detailed descriptions. I also need to send someone to each house to remain there for the duration.”

  “Someone at each house?” Sayer asked. “In case a ransom demand is delivered directly?”

  “Yes, and that way they can look around to assess if any family is connected somehow. Or if one of the kids comes home,” Robbins confirmed.

  “That makes sense. You can have five agents working with you on interviews and let’s get local law enforcement assigned to each house. The D.C. Police Department has already offered help so let’s get uniforms on that. Let me know once the initial intake interviews with the families are done.”

  “Will do.” Robbins smiled so encouragingly Sayer could see why she had the job she did.

  “Okay, PR?” Sayer asked.

  A young, very eager-looking man in a bright blue suit jumped up. “Media liaison, ma’am.”

  Sayer hated being called ma’am, but she let it go. “In addition to the Amber Alert, I want to release the description of the bus and the victims to the media ASAP. I want every person in the area watching for that bus. Does that sound right to you?”

  The media liaison nodded vigorously. “Yes, I’ll get a basic description and photo of the bus to the media right now.”

  He typed on his phone as he spoke and Sayer realized that he literally meant right now.

  “That should get the word out to the public.” He looked up. “I’ll be keeping track of the reporting so we know exactly what information is out there. Since you’re the lead on this, Agent Altair, I would suggest you do a briefing at some point. This is going to be a huge story.”

  “Shit. Let’s make sure we manage to get all the notifications done before those poor families are contacted by the media.” Sayer paused, letting herself think about all the families finding out tonight that, instead of on their way to a scholarly competition, their children were missing or, worse, dead. “I assume we have a BOLO on the bus to local law enforcement. What about traffic cameras? Air searches? Does the bus have a tracking device?”

  One of the data techs grimaced. “The ‘be on the lookout’ was issued about twenty minutes ago, but no hits yet. The bus company is low budget. No tracking on their buses. All the local police departments have increased street patrols for the night to keep an eye out. They also all have their choppers up looking. We’ve sent out notifications to all gas stations in the area able to refuel a bus. On the traffic cams, we haven’t been able to locate any footage of the bus yet. Three of us are combing the video feeds from the expected bus route.”

  “Stay on it. Unless the kidnappers get in touch, locating the bus is the best way to find those kids quickly.” Sayer paused, knowing that the unsub was probably already off the streets. “Ezra, what else do you have for us on the kids?”

  “I’m still searching social media, but not much yet.” He pulled back up the photo of the kids in front of the charter bus. The banner hanging on the side screamed STEM is the future! way too cheerfully. “We know that this trip was for the top twelve girls and the top twelve boys from the district-wide STEM fair. Apparently this is an annual Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math competition where the kids can win scholarship money for college. I’ve got the list of names from the school district and I’m using social media to match names to faces, but until the families get here, we won’t be able to do much more.”

  “Dammit.” She pulled out her amber worry beads and rubbed them as she paced in increasingly long arcs. Her father gave her a strand of worry beads as a young girl, and rubbing them became a habit that she used to help her focus. “Okay, what about the cell phone trace? All of those kids must have cell phones we can track.”

  “Waiting on the warrant, should be any second now.”

  All heads in the room snapped to Ezra’s computer when it pinged loudly.

  “Speak of the devil, there’s our warrant. The trace won’t take long.” His fingers blurred as he frantically typed. “Got it!”

  “We found them?”

  Ezra pulled up a map on the central screen. A large red dot pulsed at the center of the map.

  “They’re all together? That seems good,” Sayer said.

  “Yeah, not so much.” Ezra zoomed out. “I mean, they’re all together, but I don’t think that’s a good sign. The phones are all right next to Route 1, just south of Woodbridge, Virginia.” He clicked to satellite view. “The only thing there is an abandoned gas station. Nothing to explain why they would all be there at this ungodly hour of the morning.”

  “That’s not even twenty miles from here.” Sayer looked out at the task force. “Let’s head there now.” She pointed at the field agents. “Six of you meet me there. We need eyes on the ground ASAP. Ezra, send locals that way, but tell them to hang back since it’s a possible hostage situation. And scramble SWAT and hostage negotiation that way. If the kids are there, we might need to extract them.”

  Sayer quickly dismissed the meeting and hurried out to her motorcycle. She looked down at the time. It was clichéd but true—in kidnappings, every second counted, and they’d already lost way too much time.

  ROUTE 1 TO WOODBRIDGE, VA

  Despite the slick roads, Sayer raced toward Woodbridge. At high speed, the cold found its way past Sayer’s helmet, burning her eyes. She conjured up the image of the missing teens.

  One of those kids was already dead, what did that mean for the others?

  She made it to the phones a few minutes before the rest of her team and slowed down to casually roll past the long-abandoned gas station.

&nbs
p; In the bright moonlight, Sayer could tell that no one was inside the squat shell of a building at the center of the small lot. The place looked empty except for a well-kept 1980s Crown Victoria that sat on the edge of the parking lot. Though slightly obscured by a dusting of snow, the old car had a police light stuck to the roof.

  The Crown Vic with a bubble light rolling would look like an undercover cop car. Someone could’ve pulled the bus over, but then what?

  She dialed Ezra. “There’s no one here.” As she spoke, she pulled out her flashlight and scanned the parking lot. A flash of pink caught Sayer’s eye from beneath a small mound of snow near the decrepit gas station. “Hang on.” In the narrow beam of light, she carefully made her way to the pile and brushed away a patch of half-frozen snow. The pink and silver edge of a cell phone encouraged her to clear a bit more and she realized that it was a jumbled stack of cell phones, tablets, purses, and backpacks.

  “Dammit,” she whispered. “I’ve got electronics and bags here. It’s definitely teenager stuff. Cancel SWAT and send an Evidence Response Team.”

  Sayer hung up and muttered, “Dammit,” again. This unsub clearly knew to dump anything they could’ve used to track their movement. The image she was forming of this unsub was terrifying—bold, smart, deadly.

  The rest of the kidnapping played out in Sayer’s mind. The unsub used the fake cop car to pull over the bus. He then boarded and forced the passengers to dump their electronics and carry-on bags. How? Based on the dead DCPD officer, she knew he had a gun. But, even with a gun, controlling a bus full of people wasn’t exactly easy. Despite the single source of DNA on Rowena’s body, maybe there were multiple kidnappers?

  This spot wasn’t more than thirty minutes from downtown D.C. If the bus left at four thirty yesterday afternoon, they would’ve gotten here around five, exactly the same time that the kids all disappeared off social media. Sayer looked down the road. He gains control of the bus, then what? Where did he take them?