And then Tara noticed the hotel safe in a corner of the closet. Locked. A label on the safe gave instructions on how to remove its key and what the daily rate was for use of the safe. She must have put the laptop in there. Not knowing what she expected to find on the computer anyway, Tara backed out of the closet and went to Lance's bed.
She opened the nightstand drawer and found it empty. Kneeling on the floor, she peered under the bed, which was also free of surprises. Then, on a whim, she lifted the mattress from the frame. Squinting to see into the shadowy space, she was surprised to distinguish a dark object about three feet in. She reached under the mattress and pulled it out.
She was holding a black, leather wallet.
She opened it and extracted an ID. It was a current California driver license belonging to one Lance Archer. In the photo, Lance's hair was a bit longer and he appeared a tad scruffier, but it was definitely him.
The rest of the wallet contained a few credit cards, also bearing Lance's name. No cash. One of his own business cards, touting him as a “Software Solutions Architect.” Nothing else of interest.
Tara closed the wallet and tossed it on the bed. Lance said he'd had his wallet stolen. That's why he couldn't fly commercial. But he's had it all along. Why would he lie about that?
Tara put the wallet back under the mattress and re-made the bed. He obviously didn't want his sister to find it either. He'd caused Kristen considerable expense by having to charter an airplane instead of flying coach.
Why? What else was Lance hiding?
Tara decided that for now she had uncovered enough to mull over. She checked over the room once more to be certain she was leaving it as she'd found it, including a check under Kristen's mattress which turned up nothing—and then went to the front door. After listening and checking through the peephole, she made her exit.
…TTCG35TTGC...
Wednesday, June 17, 8:02 AM
Kristen was relieved to see that the Institute for Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics had already opened its doors for the day. She strode through the institute’s front door and made her way to the same reception desk she’d visited earlier. After learning that Dr. Watanabe, the institute’s Director, was not in, Kristen expressed her desire to have gene sequencing done on another microbial sample. The receptionist said that she would see to it that her sample was processed right away, and then shocked Kristen by saying she was sorry about her father’s yacht.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Kristen asked, looking up from her backpack, from which she had been about to take out the pickle jar sample.
“You’re William Archer’s daughter, right? You were talking with Dr. Watanabe about it when you were here yesterday...”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“It was on the local news this morning that your father’s yacht was found abandoned in Kauai, in the river. The crew was dead inside, but your father was not with them.” Then she added, “I’m so sorry. You mean you hadn’t heard?”
“No, I already knew. I was the one who—” Kristen stopped herself. Maybe the news piece didn’t say who had found the Tropic Sequence. If so, she wanted to keep it that way, since she wouldn’t want to have to explain how she’d known where to look. “Did they give any details?”
“No ma’am, it was just a short little story about how the yacht was found by Kauai police. There was no video or anything.”
Kristen didn’t know if Detective Nikamoto was deliberately withholding information to protect the details of the new investigation, perhaps even trying to make his department look good by claiming credit for the discovery, or if the news station had simply neglected to report the full details of the story. Whatever the case, she was glad her name had not been mentioned.
Kristen thanked the receptionist for the information. Then she pulled the mason jar full of water with the green glowing microbes out of her backpack and handed it over.
Waikiki
Thursday, June 17, 8:05 AM
Tara sat in the window of a coffee shop across the street from the Archers' hotel. Twenty minutes earlier she'd watched Kristen exit the hotel and get into a cab. She'd been expecting this. Kristen had said yesterday that she'd be dropping off the pickle jar sample of seawater at the university bioinformatics lab. Lance was the one she wanted to covertly observe. He'd said that his plans were to sleep all day, but Tara had her doubts.
Those doubts were confirmed when, after ordering a second fruit plate to prolong her occupation of the window table, she saw Lance Archer come walking through the hotel's front entrance at a brisk pace. He wore shorts and a T-shirt with sandals, a baseball cap and sunglasses. He turned left out of the hotel, toward Diamond Head, looking like he knew exactly where he was going.
Tara left cash on the table, grabbed a pineapple slice and casually ambled out onto the street. Looking down the block, she found that Lance was easy to spot because of his red hat. She began to tail him, not worried too much about being recognized because she, too, was dressed as a carefree beachgoer. She wore a black bikini under a purple sarong wrap and a T-shirt with white sandals, a wide-brimmed sun hat and oversized sunglasses. She carried a beach bag in her left hand, and a coral bracelet completed the ensemble.
Tara followed Lance at a distance of about half a block, the sidewalk thick with tourists. Lance kept walking straight ahead, not looking around at all. Tara, who had undergone training in how to follow a subject on foot in an urban setting, walked at a normal pace, waiting lights out rather than jaywalking, generally blending in. Once she even lost sight of Lance, but she didn't panic, just kept walking while looking ahead, using her peripheral vision to check the shops lining the sidewalk in case he'd ducked into one.
His red hat appeared again, though, Lance having made a right turn toward the beach. She waited for the light to change to WALK, laughing to herself as two tourists who jaywalked received an angry horn blast from a motorist turning left, and then she also made the same turn. She continued to follow Lance from a safe distance, turning left onto Kalakaua at the beach, passing a popular bodyboarding spot the local kids called “Walls.” They continued toward Diamond Head to the edge of Waikiki, past the Honolulu Zoo, then past the Waikiki Aquarium, which marked the end of Waikiki proper.
Where the heck was Lance going?
Tara fell back a little as the crowd thinned and the sidewalk narrowed. She passed sprawling banyan trees as well as stands of Australian pines. Suddenly she saw Lance leave the sidewalk into a parking lot. She caught up to the spot where he had turned and kept walking straight while glancing right. He was entering the New Otani Hotel.
Tara waited until he was inside and then followed past a koi pond, up the steps past the porters and into the cavernous, marble-floored lobby. What business could Lance have in this hotel?
And then she saw through the lobby to where the patio dining area fronted the beach, a sign reading, Hau Tree Lanai. She watched as Lance descended the steps to the restaurant and was led by a hostess to a table overlooking the sand. Tara stepped away from Lance’s line of sight while she pondered his choice of destination. Could he just be out having a nice breakfast alone?
Then Tara caught a glimpse of the sparkling water and the dazzling bright sand, and she had an idea. She exited the hotel back out onto the sidewalk and then took the public beach access way to Sans Souci Beach, which fronted the hotel. There, she removed her sandals and walked over the already hot sand out to the middle of the beach until she was in front of the restaurant and she could see Lance’s red cap above the lanai railing.
Then Tara proceeded to unpack her beach bag, like any other tourist. Unlike any tourist, however, her “beach bag” was really a pre-packed disguise accessory filled with eavesdropping and surveillance equipment. The bag was kept ready at all times in the trunk of her Crown Vic. Living in Hawaii, she had already found it useful on several occasions.
Tara put down a colorful towel imprinted with a map of the Hawaiian islands. She took o
ff her sarong and shirt so that she was clad only in the bikini. She lay down on her stomach, in what she thought of as a prone sniper position, on the towel facing the restaurant. Next, after looking at the people laying out nearest to her to be sure they weren’t watching, Tara pulled out a device which looked like a tiny satellite dish with a pistol grip, with earbud style headphones attached.
She set the parabolic microphone, which could pick up soft conversation from a hundred yards away, low in the sand, tenting her bag over it so that it couldn’t easily be seen. Then she put a pair of white earbuds on and powered up the device. She pointed the dish at Lance, who sat by himself. Perhaps he would make a phone call, Tara hoped. But presently a waiter came to Lance and she heard him order a mimosa, which Tara knew to be champagne and orange juice.
Tara smiled, trying to appear relaxed. Lying there in the sand with headphones on, Tara looked to those around her like just another sun worshipper listening to an iPod on the beach.
8:25 AM
Lance sat down at an empty table in the Hau Tree Lanai. At the Diamond Head end of Waikiki, its patrons dined in the shadow of the extinct volcano. This morning the patio was full of hotel guests having breakfast before embarking on a day of sightseeing. The clientele was well-to-do—this hotel was clearly a cut above the discount hotels in the heart of Waikiki that catered to the package deal hordes. It was also an international crowd; there were as many Europeans, Canadians and Japanese as there were Americans.
The beach beyond the patio was already populated, and beyond that, swimmers plied the protected water inside the reef while surfers rode breakers beyond the exposed line of coral where the waves unleashed their stored energy after travelling thousands of miles across the open ocean.
This was not a place Lance would have found on his own. As soon as his sister had left for the sequencing lab, Lance had contacted his Asian associates to request a meeting. He looked up from the menu, casting a nervous glance toward the patio entrance. His associates had seen the news reports about the scuttled yacht found in the Kauai river, and had agreed to convene immediately, giving Lance the name of the establishment he now found himself in.
He looked to the door again, then at his watch. His contacts were late. A waiter asked Lance if he needed more time. He ordered a mimosa; he wanted something stronger, but decided that the mimosa would not look out of place here at this early hour.
Then a pair of Asian men appeared suddenly at Lance’s table, wearing some kind of exercise outfits with designer sunglasses—getups that blended in with this environment. He hadn’t seen them come in because they’d used a side entrance instead of the main breezeway from the hotel as Lance had. They took seats on either side of him, and Lance bid a good morning to Mr. Left and Mr. Right.
“This morning is anything but good,” Right began without preamble. Left nodded in agreement, and then they had to pause as the waitress returned with Lance’s drink—earning Lance a frown from Left—and took their orders. The Asians ordered croissants and fruit with bottled water, while Lance went for the local favorite of Portuguese sausage with eggs, two scoops of rice and gravy. Then the waiter left them alone again. Lance tried to start things off on a light note.
“No fugu on the menu here, or I would have ordered that. What’s the point of eating something if it can’t kill you, right?”
Left looked out at the ocean while he spoke. “The cholesterol and fat in sausage and eggs will kill you slowly and surely over the years, if you eat them enough. Danger is everywhere, my American friend. It seems you have yet to impress upon yourself this fact.”
Lance sipped from his champagne flute, staring at Left though his sunglasses which he now wore constantly during the day to hide his swollen eye. Right started in on him in earnest.
“How is it that your sister knew where to look for the yacht?”
This simple though not unexpected question sent a chill up Lance’s spine. In fact, it would not be incorrect to say that he’d lost a good deal of sleep over it last night. He knew that to mention the messages his father had been “sending” would be a showstopper for the arrangement he’d entered into. His father’s captors would abort the deal—just vanish into thin air with his father. If they let him live at all, Lance thought.
He could think of no plausible way for his sister to have figured out on her own that the Tropic Sequence had met its end in Kauai—and with such certainty that she’d staked her own time and money on a chartered plane and then a rented boat to see if her hunch was correct. It was obvious that something had led her right to it.
Lance had considered saying that Tara singlehandedly deduced the yacht’s whereabouts. But the very fact that Lance had been travelling around with an FBI agent would make his associates more than a little nervous, and he wasn’t yet sure they knew of her involvement. The local TV news reports had only mentioned Kauai Police, not the FBI. Won’t bring up Agent Shores unless I have to.
He started shaking his head before any words left his mouth. He turned to face Right.
“It was that guy Dave. I need to use the bathroom. I’ll be right back.” Lance got up from the table. The man on his left started to ask a question but Right indicated for him to wait. After Lance had walked back up into the hotel, the two kidnappers conferred with one another.
“He seems emotionally distracted,” Left said.
“That is to be expected. His situation is not good.”
“But do you think he knows about Marissa? If he somehow found out after our deal that she is involved—”
“No. It is not possible. Do not worry about that. Let us focus on our immediate threat—Dave Turner.”
On the sand, Tara's mind was racing to keep up with these new developments. Lance set up a meeting with these Chinese guys. He's lying to them about Dave. She wanted badly to take a picture of Lance and the two Chinese with the digital camera now in her beach bag, but she decided it wasn't worth the risk of ending this new flood of information by being spotted. And…Marissa? The name sounded vaguely familiar. Where had she heard it? Her mind raced to place it in connection with the case.
Suddenly Tara heard a voice repeat itself, and she realized that a man was talking to her. She looked up to see a twenty-something Hawaiian-looking surfer type, carrying a surfboard, wearing only board shorts. “Eh there, watcha listening to?” He smiled broadly, staring down at her.
Instantly Tara assessed him and found him to be just a guy who thought he was hitting on some random girl at the beach. Annoyed at the interruption to her eavesdropping, Tara pulled out one earbud and replied, “Just a talk show. Sorry but I'm kind of busy now, okay?”
The guy gave her a shaka sign and smiled again, moving off toward the water. “You ever want to learn how to surf, you let me know, yeah?” She chuckled as she pictured herself coming into the F.O. with her hair still wet, stashing a surfboard in the corner of her office.
Tara replaced the earphones and again focused on Lance's table, where even she, in her role as an FBI agent having seen a steady parade of human wreckage for the last six years, heard the conversation take a decidedly disturbing turn.
…CGAC36GAAA...
Lance, seated once again at the table after returning from the restroom, had the undivided attention of his dining companions.
“Dave Turner? The same Dave your sister hired to scuba dive with?” the man on Lance’s right asked.
“Yes,” Lance said. “And by the way, some of those shots were a little too close out there on the boat. I mean, I can see how you want to discourage them from pursuing this, but—”
“Silence!” Left said. “You will answer our questions now.”
Lance gulped down his mimosa.
“What did they find during their dive?” Right asked.
Lance was carefully formulating a response when their server appeared with breakfast. He ordered another mimosa. After the plates were set and the first bites taken, the Asians looked at Lance, awaiting their answer.
&nb
sp; “They found the metal detector Dave was using the day before—for what, I don’t know—and that metal digging thing that goes with it. The only other thing they found besides that was a computer flash drive, but it was ruined from being in the water.”
The two Asians looked at each other increasing Lance’s nervousness. Did they know he was leaving something out? He didn’t see how they could possibly know Kristen had copied the drive's contents, but he did not want to dwell on this subject.
“But listen, we’ve got a bigger problem than that right now,” Lance went on. “Here’s what I wanted to talk about.”
Both of them paused with their forks in mid-air, concerned as to what Lance might say next. The server retuned with Lance’s drink and left again. Lance savored the control he now felt at directing the course of the discussion. He took a long sip of his drink while the kidnappers watched.
“Go on,” Left said.
“As you know,” Lance began at length, “today is the day my father was to be declared legally dead.”
“Was to be?” Right said, immediately picking up on the indication of a setback.
Lance said, “How is he by the way—my father?”
“He is well,” Right said. “Please continue.”
“Unfortunately—and I’ve been in contact this morning with my family’s will and probate attorney to confirm this—my father will not be declared dead today. Kauai police say that because his yacht was found deliberately wrecked with his crew dead, but not him, that the active investigation is being reopened.”
kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller) Page 15
