by Hunt, James
“Hey!” Multz slapped his hand on the desk. “We’re walking on thin ice here. If we start pointing fingers at everyone about who’s to blame here, then that’s time on finding the girl wasted!” He took a breath, his cheeks still flushed as he stared Sam and Grant down, reining in his volume. “When the smoke settles, I can assure you that we will get to the bottom of this, but right now we continue working in good faith with the FBI. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” Grant answered.
Sam remained in the corner, her body only half turned toward Multz, but she nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now get out of my office and find me that little girl.”
Grant was at the door first, and Sam joined him in the hall. She was still fuming as they headed back toward her desk. As far as partners went, Sam was about as polar opposite from Mocks as he could get. Sam was tall, standing five feet ten, and had blond hair, blue eyes, tan skin, and a rigidness for the rules that his former partner didn’t share. He couldn’t talk to her the same way he spoke to Mocks. And he didn’t want to.
“Listen, hey, just hold on for a minute.” Grant slowed, pulling Sam to a stop with him. “I know the Copellas were your first case. I know how badly you want to find them. But you need to channel that anger into something productive.” Two agents approached them in the hall, examining a folder, and Grant waited for them to pass. “Because if you don’t focus that rage, it’ll burn you.”
“Is that what happened to you?” Sam asked, a slight edge to her words.
“Yeah.” Grant cleared his throat, taking a step back. “So unless you want to find yourself working as a special investigative liaison, I suggest you listen.”
Activity erupted back near the conference room, and Hickem stormed out into the hall with his agents, a phone glued to his ear, passing Sam and Grant. “Seattle PD found a boat on Washington’s north shore and tire tracks heading north.”
Grant fell into stride with Sam and the others, the brisk pace shoving everyone out of their way, with Sam hopping up to the front.
“We need a traffic cams check on the routes leading away from the lake, and I want a tactical unit ready to deploy.” Sam turned to Grant. “Go catch up with Lieutenant Mullocks and see if we can get a bird in the air.”
“On it.” Grant jogged ahead, stepping out into the cool night air where he found Mocks on the phone just outside of the building.
“I got it, Commissioner,” Mocks said then hung up.
“Hey, we’ve got—”
Mocks held up her hands. “I know. We have reports of a car hijacking and shots fired northwest of the lake. Three units are already on scene.” She struggled to keep up with Grant’s stride, due to both her stomach and her height.
“Air support?” Grant asked.
“We’ve got a chopper gearing up now.”
Hickem and Sam spilled out the building’s front doors, and everyone headed for their vehicles. Hickem whistled, circling his finger in the air. “Let’s round up the wagons! I want this bastard in cuffs before the sun comes up.”
3
The caravan of vehicles heading north on the 405 toward the north end of Washington Lake lit up the night sky with a blur of red and blue lights. Grant rode with Sam in the middle row of an SUV. He looked out his window at the night sky and saw the chopper’s spotlight in the distance. It hovered to the northwest, circling the same spot. They were getting close.
“Local PD has already secured the scene,” Sam said, hanging up her phone. “Your old partner works quickly.”
Grant nodded. “Suspect or victim on scene?”
“Just the boat,” Sam answered, her focus past Grant and toward the chopper he was staring at earlier. “They’ve tracked the hijacked car to a neighborhood west of Brightwater Park. That’s where we’re headed.”
Grant shifted in his seat as the caravan turned off the interstate. He imagined it was quite a sight for anyone still on the road at this early hour. It was a motorcade that would have made the president jealous.
“Fifteen minutes,” the driver said, echoing the orders he received through the earpiece that ran up from the inside of his suit.
The marshals that Grant rode with grew tense, thickening the air with electricity that touched anyone inside. It was always like that before a raid.
But while his thoughts should have been focused on their mission, Grant found himself sneaking glances at Sam. He tried not to be too obvious. But from the quick peeks, he found that she wore no wedding ring and that she kept her fingernails short. She had a beautiful profile, complemented by a slender neck. She kept her hair pulled back in a ponytail that was tightly wound to prevent any issues in the field. She sat straight and still and wore her firearm on her right hip.
Unlike Sam, Grant couldn’t sit still, and he flushed with heat. He adjusted the Kevlar vest they’d given him, which was bulkier than the ones the other officers wore, most likely because theirs were custom and his was a loaner.
He checked his watch, which showed that they were still within the second hour after the abduction. Out of all the variables an abduction case offered, the only consistent one was time. The longer authorities took to find their victim, the lower their probability of success.
It only took twelve hours after an individual was abducted for the success rate to drop in half. They were lucky they had a good jump on the abductor, and they were even luckier to have the amount of resources available to them. But after the rundown Grant saw of Joza, he was willing to bet that the man had some significant resources of his own.
“What’s with the watch?” Sam asked, commenting on it as Grant checked it again.
“Helps keep me on point,” Grant answered. “I wore it when I was a detective. I guess old habits are hard to break.” He peeled his eyes away from the watch, and when they landed on Sam, he felt himself become unarmed. She had an assertive gaze, probably developed out of necessity in her male-dominated field. It wasn’t a look that most men in authority enjoyed. It made them feel inferior. Grant liked it.
“You’ve worked with Hickem before?” Sam asked.
Grant nodded.
“From what I read, he fared pretty well after throwing you under the bus with that human-trafficking incident.”
The “incident” that Sam referenced was the cause of Grant’s dismissal from Seattle PD. And it had cost the lives of a dozen Philippine women and caused more sleepless nights than Grant could keep track of. Ghosts made for bad bedfellows.
“He’s a climber,” Grant said. “He’ll fudge the lines to get what he wants, but he’s not a traitor.”
“Well, I don’t trust him,” Sam replied.
“We don’t need to trust him,” Grant said. “We just need to find the girl.”
The brake lights of the cars in front of them glowed red, and the vehicle slowed as the ones in front of them started to pull off the side of the road. Up ahead, the tactical team was already in position outside of a house where Grant saw the hijacked sedan parked in the driveway.
“Stay in the car,” Sam said, getting out and reaching for her sidearm in the same instance.
Doors opened and closed quickly, rattling Grant’s seat as he watched the raid through the front windshield. The officers and agents on scene surrounded the building, guns up, clustered in five-man tactical pushes.
Grant reached for the radio wedged into the center of the dash and turned up the volume.
“Breach, breach, breach.” A loud bang erupted in the night, triggering a few neighboring dogs into a frenzy as they busted down the front door and then stormed inside. “Living room clear.” The radio clicked off, and then another voice appeared. “Bedroom clear.” A few crackling static bursts blared through the speaker, and another voice broke through. “Kitchen clear. House secure.”
Grant opened his door then stepped out and passed the rows of vehicles parked along the street, blocking driveways, and clogging the run-down neighborhood. Sleepy and intrigued neighbors poked their
heads out their front doors or peeled back the curtains. Grant surmised that they didn’t get a lot of cops in this part of town, and when they did, it usually meant trouble.
Sam was back outside and in the front yard by the time Grant finally made it to the house. Hickem was there, the pair talking, though Hickem was doing most of the jawing.
“Found some clothes and plastic bags in the back.” Hickem gestured to the stolen vehicle that was still parked in the driveway. “Looks like they switched vehicles. I’ve already got teams combing the nearby woods, and we’ll have local PD knock on doors to see what they find.”
The heavy whoosh of chopper blades vibrated above them, and Grant squinted up at it and received an eyeful of spotlight as the air support passed overhead. While Grant blinked away the black spots from the helicopter, Hickem clapped him on the shoulder.
“Don’t make your new partner look bad,” he said then laughed as he walked off to another cluster of men that he barked an order to, and they scurried off toward the back of the house.
“So,” Sam said, hands on her hips, and her voice still shaky from the adrenaline burst of the raid. “What do you think?”
Grant regarded the house. The front had chipped siding, the roof was sagging, and the yard was nothing but dirt. The rest of the houses in the neighborhood were in similar condition. Like a lot of neighborhoods toward the north of Seattle, this one was poor, violent, and forgotten.
“We should pull the records on the house,” Grant said. “He picked this place ahead of time. We might get lucky on a hit with any records in regard to rentals or purchases. Though it’s a long shot.” He gestured to the neighbors. “These people aren’t going to talk to any of us, even if they did see something. They’ve already got a sour taste in their mouths for authority.”
“That’s assuming a lot, don’t you think?” Sam asked.
Grant shook his head. “Whatever community responsibility they feel is toward the people inside their homes, not out of it. Come on, let’s go inside and see what we’ve got.”
Grant marched ahead, and when he passed through the front door, he reached for the nearest light switch and flicked it on. “Someone’s been paying the power bill. We should check utility usage, see if anyone was here before our guy showed up. He may have been staying here before the abduction.”
Grant reached for his notepad and pen, his hand jotting down his thoughts as he broke down the room into visual grids, ignoring the other investigators and forensic techs that were already sweeping the place for evidence.
For Grant, it was like separating the visual plane into buckets. He could go to each bucket, search through it, and then, when he was done, move on to the next. It was a slower method of investigating but more efficient than any other he’d tried, and he rarely missed anything.
Sam followed him quietly, and after Grant passed from the living room and into the kitchen, he stopped at the trash can. He gloved his left hand and reached inside, pulling out torn-up packages.
“What is it?” Sam asked, hovering over Grant’s shoulder as he squatted down.
Grant flipped the piece of thin, waxed cardboard over and over in his hand. He set it down and then reached for another, trying to piece it together. He caught flashes of a woman’s eye, and then her mouth, and finally he gathered a few pieces of the lettering that revealed the box’s significance.
“Hair dye kit,” Grant answered, reaching into the wastebasket to remove one of the tubes of coloring and the used shower cap. “There’s two of them in here.”
“One for the girl, and one for the kidnapper?” Sam asked, thinking out loud.
Grant tapped the top of the metal can with his finger. “Maybe. Bag this for forensics.”
Sam flagged down one of the techs, and Grant moved from the kitchen and into the bedroom. A single bare mattress was pressed up against the corner, and Grant immediately covered his nose due to the smell radiating from the carpet.
“Jesus, it’s like someone died in here.” Sam pulled up her blouse to cover her nose and face, trying not to gag.
“I’m sure someone has,” Grant said, noticing the dampness in the carpet. He lifted his gaze toward the ceiling and found a cluster of water stains that dotted the top like urine spots. Some used drug paraphernalia littered the corners of the room. With the utilities working, he figured the local druggies broke in here to get high.
“I think I’ve got something.”
Grant turned at the sound of Sam’s voice, following it to the bathroom, where the sink was stained with the colored dye that Grant had found in the trash in the kitchen.
Sam held a pile of torn-up pieces of paper, wet from the toilet. “Looks like he tried to flush it, but it didn’t go down.” She held up the paper in the gloved hand, the ink on the notes cloudy, but once Sam fit together the torn pieces and flattened it out on the table, Grant already knew what it was.
“It’s a ferry receipt,” he said then narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the numbers of the boat identification that had grown bloated from water. “Looks like one of the San Juan ferries.”
“Where all the whale watching happens?” Sam asked.
“What do you have?” Hickem was in the bathroom doorway, his body taking up the entire door frame. He nearly hit his head when he passed through it.
“Ferry ticket,” Sam answered. “Grant says it’s for the San Juan ferries up north.”
Hickem nudged Grant out of the way and planted his gorilla-sized hands on the counter, studying the paper for a long time, and then without a word, he reached for his phone, talking to someone as he walked into the hallway.
“You think that’s where our guy is going?” Sam asked once Hickem was gone.
“Not sure,” Grant answered then reached for the toilet handle and gave it a flush, sending the dirty water down into the pipes. He grunted.
“What?” Sam asked.
“This guy is supposed to be part of a group of the most elite mercenaries in the world, right?” He gestured to the ferry ticket. “So he rips it up and then tosses it in the toilet but forgets to flush? That doesn’t sit right.”
“He left the hair dye out too,” Sam said.
Grant looked at the ferry receipt a little longer. “If this guy is as good as the analysts say, then he knows we’ll be watching all the public transportation outlets. Even with the dyed hair, it would be a risk.” He crossed his arms, backing away from the receipt. “It’s reckless. I don’t like it.”
Grant exited the bathroom and walked toward the front door, a few flashes from the forensics cameras blinding him on his left. He reached for his phone and pulled up a map of the area.
The nearest main road outside of the neighborhood was a highway that ran east-west, and the west connected to the 405, which traveled north toward the direction of the ferries, but east was barren save for a few small towns that had sprung up around the exits for gas and lodging.
Grant followed the map farther east and found that it passed a few private airfields. If they were trying to smuggle the girl out of the country, a small charter would be a safer bet than a crowded ferry.
“All right, let’s wrap up!” Hickem turned from his huddle of FBI agents, hanging up his phone. “We’ve identified the ferry number and the time of departure. Port authority has been notified, and we have two hours to prepare for intercept. Let’s move!”
With the clap of his hands, Hickem sent everyone into motion. But Grant jogged over to him, snagging his attention away from one of his associates. “We need to send a unit east down the highway and notify local authorities at least fifty miles east.”
“Grant, you saw the ticket,” Hickem said. “He needs to get the girl out of the country. Crossing the Canadian border is the easiest way to take our authorities out of the equation.”
“The rundown said that these guys were elite,” Grant said. “What’s elite about leaving behind evidence that tells the authorities exactly where they’re going to go?”
“The bastard was rushed, he didn’t think we’d find him, he’s cocky—take your pick.” Hickem shouldered Grant as he walked away and toward his unit’s vehicles.
When Sam stepped out of the house, Grant hurried toward her, repeating his request to Sam to send units east. “It’s the smart play. We have the resources to do it, and it won’t take up any extra time.”
Sam chewed the inside of her cheek and placed her hands on her hips. She turned around, shuffled a few steps, then faced Grant again. “Multz wants me to be on site for the intercept, and he agrees with the assessment of the kidnapper heading north.”
Grant felt his grip on the rope tying him to the case slip, and he cut the distance between them in half. “Think, Sam. All these pieces just fall into place?”
“I have my orders, Grant,” Sam answered. “A good officer follows them.”
“Then let me go,” Grant said. “I’d just be sitting on the sidelines anyway.”
“The director isn’t going to be able to spare you any resources,” Sam replied, her tone returned to something more emotionless.
“Then I’ll go with Seattle PD,” Grant replied. “But I need you to make the call to alert the other local precincts from here to Wyoming.” Grant stood his ground. “Worst-case scenario is I’m wrong and you blame me.”
Sam remained quiet, still chewing the inside of her cheek, but then nodded. “Call Mullocks and arrange a pickup. I won’t have time to wait around with you.”
“Marshal!” Hickem said, yelling from the front of his caravan. “Let’s go!”
Sam jogged toward her car as Grant started to dial Mocks. She turned back on the run, shouting above the engines as the cluster of SUVs and sedans turned around in the street. “You call me immediately if you find anything, and you are not to engage. Understand?”
Grant flashed a thumbs-up as he dialed Mocks, who picked up on the third ring. “Hey, I need a favor.”
“Ugh, now’s not a good time, Grant.”
Grant could hear the background noise of the precinct. “What’s wrong?”
