by Meryl Sawyer
“It’s possible but not likely,” Shane added.
“I contacted the DIA on my way over here,” Vince told them. “Ashton disappeared from Costa Rica about two months ago. His handler didn’t know how he got out of the country, but obviously he came to America again with a phony passport.”
“He’ll have a new name,” Shane explained. “Otherwise, the second his real name went into the computer at Customs, he’d be arrested.”
“What he’s done so far fits the profile of most fugitives,” Vince told everyone. “He’s returned to an area he knows.”
“Do any of you have any idea where he might go?” Shane asked. “You all knew him. Think about places he might have mentioned.”
“He loved SoBe. I mean loved it,” Lisa said. “Loved the clubs, the beach. While Taylor worked, he hung out on Lummus Beach, where all the babes are.”
“Was he known at the clubs?” Shane asked.
“Oh, absolutely. It’s hard to get in unless you grease the bouncer.”
“Who wants to check the clubs?” asked Vince.
Lisa volunteered. “Jim will help me. We’ll cover as many as we can tonight.”
Shane asked, “Does anyone happen to have a picture of Paul?”
“I’m sure I must have a photo taken at a family dinner those first few months Taylor was dating him. After then, he rarely came,” Vanessa said.
“Trent, do you still have our pictures?” Lisa asked. “We had snapshots of the four of us, remember?”
Trent nodded. “I know just where they are.”
“Paul looks about the same,” Shane said. “The people at Brew Ha-Ha told us he had blond hair worn in a short ponytail.”
“Do you think he’d risk showing up at one of the clubs looking the same?” asked Lisa. “What if someone recognized him?”
“Who would know to report him to the police as long as he kept a low profile and didn’t get into trouble?” Shane asked. “Besides, he’s arrogant and sure of himself. I doubt if he see this as a risk.”
“He must live fairly close,” Trent said. “Taylor had just talked to him, and they were meeting a short time later.”
“Good thinking.” Shane wondered how he’d missed getting this information from Trent earlier. He’d been so thrown by Taylor’s disappearance, he hadn’t thought to ask.
“What area is like SoBe and nearby?” Shane asked. He hadn’t been in Miami long enough to know the city the way he needed to if he was going to save Taylor.
“Mid-Miami Beach,” Doyle said, “just north of here.”
“There are a lot of exclusive hotels like the Fontainebleau Resort, and high-rise condos in the area,” Trent said. “There are some private homes.”
“This is when the pictures will be important.”
Shane stood up and strode across the room, talking to everyone. Auggie dogged every step.
“Go through the photos and meet back here in two hours. We’ll blow up the best shots of Paul and show them around the mid-Miami area and the clubs.”
“If only Taylor had put on her watch,” Vince said when the others had left and Caleb was helping Vanessa go through her pictures. “We could find her in no time with that chip.”
“It’s too bad, but there’s nothing we can do about it now. We need a plan and luck.”
“We need more manpower,” Vince said.
“I’ve got the money. Hire people and put them to work.” Shane thought a moment. “Maybe we should hire this Rick Masters. He tailed Paul once—”
“Fuhgettaboutit,” Vince said in his best Sopranos impression. “The guy’s a has-been who does nothing but spouse-peeping. It took three months for him to nail Ashton. Come on.”
“You’re right, but I’m going to ask Vanessa for Master’s report. I want to read it. There may be something in there to help us.”
“We need to put a recorder on Vanessa’s phone for the next call.”
“Right I figure it’ll be a day or more. Ashton wants us to sweat out every second.”
“That’s a good thing,” Vince replied, obviously trying to give him some hope. “He has to keep her alive to make the call.”
“I’m guessing there will be several calls. It has to do with the drug info on the Web site.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I’ve had experience with the guy. Ashton might kill for revenge but money is his god. I think he knows—somehow—we’ve decoded the Web site. He needs to set up another site and transfer the information. He must get the new info to his suppliers and dealers.”
“That’ll take time, especially if they aren’t using E-mail, which they won’t if they’re smart. Otherwise, it leaves a trail prosecutors can use. Everyone will have to check in at the Web site and get the new information, using the code.”
“Know what this means?” Shane asked, then answered his own question. “There’s a leak at the DIA. Someone tipped Ashton. That’s why he grabbed Taylor—to buy time. The moment his contacts have been notified, he’ll kill her.”
Chapter 31
Handcuffed to the bed, Taylor stared up at the ceiling of the fishing shanty where Paul had taken her. Cobwebs streeled from the ceiling, and mildew covered every surface, especially the musty-smelling old mattress under her.
Paul had forced her to drive south to Big Pine Key, which was almost to Key West. It was one of the larger islands, a wilderness of scrub, mahogany, and gumbo-limbo trees. Mangroves lined the shore where crocodiles preyed on the raccoons, otters, and miniature Key deer that were a tourist attraction in the area.
Who would think to look for her here?
No one. Not even Shane.
Trent would have told him that she’d gone to meet Paul. Surely, her mother had said she’d been kidnapped. Paul wouldn’t let her mention his name, but they would know.
The sun set, and in the gloaming she saw a red-tailed hawk fly across the sky, riding an updraft. The shack consisted of one room with a single window, a bed, and a chair. A fishing porch was cantilevered out over the inlet.
Paul had handcuffed her to the bed and left, saying he needed to use a telephone. He had a satchel full of stolen cell phones. He’d made her use one of them to call her mother just outside Miami, then he’d tossed it in the ocean.
No doubt he wanted to call someone and use a land line in case the police were monitoring cell calls. Would her mother have notified the police even though she’d been warned not to? Taylor couldn’t guess. Her mother wasn’t herself these days.
Suddenly, she had a disturbing thought.
What if Paul didn’t come back?
From the look of it, no one had been here for several years. If she died shackled to this rusty wrought-iron bed, no telling when someone would find her.
Paul must be coming back.
For some reason, he didn’t want her dead yet. She was supposed to make another telephone call home. There had to be a way to tip off Shane.
A key word or phrase.
Like what?
“Think, think hard,” she whispered.
She fell asleep trying to come up with something. The sound of a car engine on the single lane dirt road and the flash of headlights through the grimy window awakened her.
Paul banged his way through the door, his arms full, a flashlight in one hand. It arced around the small room, catching the cobwebs and turning them silver.
She smelled alcohol on him and knew he’d been in a bar somewhere, using the telephone … and waiting. For what? Who?
He dropped an orange plastic bucket on the bed. “If you need to go to the bathroom, use it.”
She didn’t say a word as he set some things on the floor. One of them was the bag she’d seen in the trunk earlier. He was packing enough heat to wipe out a banana republic.
Why so many guns?
He returned to the car and brought in a Styrofoam ice chest and several bags of groceries. Judging by the supplies, he planned to be here several days. Enough time for Shane to find
her if only she could slip him a clue.
Paul lit a kerosene lantern, and the shanty suddenly filled with amber light. He rummaged through one bag.
“Hungry?” He tossed her a protein bar and a bottle of water.
She didn’t touch them.
“Sweetheart, don’t pout. You’ve got to eat, right?”
“I’m not pouting. You won’t answer my questions. What’s the point in talking?”
He filled a plastic cup with ice from the cooler, unscrewed a bottle of Grey Goose, and poured it over the ice. A crackling sound filled the hot room.
“Want some?”
She shook her head.
“Might as well enjoy yourself.”
“When are you going to let me go?”
Without responding, he knocked back a bit of vodka.
“Why are you doing this? I never did a thing to hurt you.”
She’d questioned him before, but a sullen stare had been his only response.
“I have a right to know why you kidnapped me.”
He studied her a moment, and in the amber light his green eyes had a feral glow. What had she ever seen in him?
“You were always so … so perfect.” He smiled, more to himself than her. “You tried so hard to nurture my career, when I was already a star. You didn’t know it. You felt sorry for me.”
“No, I didn’t I—” She stopped herself from saying she had loved him.
“You thought you were better than I was.”
“That’s ridiculous. I …” She let the sentence die, admitting on some level she had felt superior, and he’d picked up on it.
“You and your mother both.”
“That’s no reason to—”
“If you want to know, let me finish.”
He capped the vodka and stowed it in the ice chest. He swung the shanty’s single chair around backward and sat, the drink in his hand.
“Your mother paid me to get out of your life, you know.”
Taylor wasn’t surprised, given her mother’s attempt to buy off Raoul.
“She knew I was dealing drugs long before you all discovered the codes on the Web site.”
“She never mentioned it.”
“Not to you, but she tipped the cops. They busted me in Colombia.”
Taylor knew this was dead wrong. Shane and the DIA had caught Paul. She didn’t correct him for fear he might do something to Shane.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be exiled to Costa Rica? You might as well be in jail. Can’t go anywhere, can’t do anything without notifying and getting permission from your handler.” He swigged a bit more of the vodka. “Thanks to your mother and her big mouth.”
Taylor kept quiet, comprehending the source of his anger for the first time. Granted, Paul and her mother were like oil and water, but she never suspected his hatred ran so deep.
An extremely abnormal reaction. There had to be more to it than this.
“It took me almost two years to rebuild my network under my handler’s nose. What the feds didn’t find was the Web site. They’re not half as smart as they like to think.
“I’ve got a world-class hacker in Japan. He’s in the DIA computers, and they don’t even know it. I knew the second they cracked the code and told Donovan.”
“Is the Japanese man the one who tinkered with our Web site?” she asked just to keep him talking. The more she learned, the better chance she’d have at saving herself.
“You bet. I gave him the codes you kept in the desk. Pretty dumb on your part. Even dumber not to change the codes regularily.”
She nodded slightly, as if she agreed, just to keep him going.
“Now, Donovan’s going to tell the police all about it unless your mother convinces him to hold off a few days.”
“Why a few days?”
“I need to let my contacts know where the new Web site is. Until everyone of them checks in, I want to keep your site operational.”
Taylor heard herself sigh. “Why didn’t you have me tell my mother to keep Shane from calling the authorities?”
He laughed, a brittle, grating sound.
“You’re kidding, right? Donovan’s not calling the police as long as I have you.”
“All of this is to get back at my mother?”
He thought about it a moment, swirling the nearly melted ice in the glass. “I wanted to teach you a lesson, too. Never look down on a man, never think you’re better just because you have more money and a fancy education.”
“I didn’t look down—”
“I’m enjoying your mother’s suffering,” he cut her off, obviously not caring what she was going to say. “I went through hell. Why shouldn’t she?”
“Mother has myeloma, you know. It’s a terminal illness. Don’t you think she’s in enough pain?”
“Pain?”
He shot out of the chair, spun around, and went into the cooler again. This time he grabbed an apple.
“I’ll tell you what pain is. It’s sitting on your ass in Costa Rica. No air conditioning. No decent nightclubs. Total boredom.”
“Poor baby.”
The sarcastic remark slipped out before she could stop herself. For a second, she thought he was going to backhand her. But he merely smiled.
The smile from hell.
“You’ll think ‘poor baby’ before we’re through.”
He chomped into the apple and deliberately chewed noisily.
“I promised myself if I ever got out of that hellhole she put me in, I’d make your mother miserable. Then I found out she was dying, and she was searching for the daughter she gave up.
“Know what? That pissed me off even more. My mother dumped me like your mother dumped Renata.”
In his eyes the cold truth dawned. That’s it, Taylor thought. He hates Mother because he blames her for the way his own mother rejected him. He was a complicated man, and she had sensed a dark undertow to his personality. She’d attributed it to his artistic nature, but now she knew the truth.
He despised her mother for several things. Her mother hadn’t been responsible for the bust-up of the drug ring. She certainly hadn’t given him up for adoption. The only thing her mother was guilty of was thinking Paul wasn’t good enough for her.
“I was adopted by the sorriest couple to ever walk the planet. As soon as I was eighteen I ditched them.”
“You told me they were dead.”
“I told you a lot of things you were stupid enough to believe.”
He was right, and hearing him, of all people, say it made her even angrier with herself.
“Did you ever try to find your mother?”
“No. Why would I? She unloaded me.”
“Maybe she regretted it the way my mother did.”
Paul snorted and took another bite of apple.
“I doubt it. She and your mother are exactly alike—selfish bitches.”
Despite being in the hot, stuffy shack, goose bumps sprang across her shoulders and ran down her arms as a disturbing thought hit her.
“You killed Renata, didn’t you?”
“You just figure that out?”
“Why? You didn’t even know her.”
“Donovan was nosing around. I needed to distract him.”
He chuckled, obviously pleased with himself. He’s crazy, she decided. Truly demented.
How could she have lived with this man and not known?
The crazier a person is, the more sane he can appear. She seemed to remember that from a psych class she’d taken at Yale.
Still, you’d think she would have noticed … something. This was a man who’d killed in cold blood because he needed a distraction. A man who hated his own mother so much that he blamed another woman for what his mother had done.
“I could have used one of these babies on Renata.” He reached into a bag and pulled out a pistol with a silencer on it. “But I wanted it to look amateurish, like one of you did it.”
Again he laughed.
“B
est of all, your mother went for it. Torture can be subtle, you know. She’s grieving for the daughter she just found, and she’s blaming you or Trent for her death. Now she knows she’s going to lose another daughter.”
Taylor had realized he planned to kill her, but this was the first time he’d admitted it. She should have been shocked, but all she could do was stare at him, transfixed.
“The beauty of this whole deal is no one knows I’m here,” Paul said. “When it’s over, I’m moving to LA. I already have a new name. I’m starting a new life.”
The sun was rising over Biscayne Bay when Shane rendezvoused with Vince, Jim and Lisa. They’d been showing a picture of Paul around the clubs.
Auggie at his side, Shane had checked as many houses as he could in the mid-Miami area until it was too late to ring a doorbell. Then he and Auggie had walked the streets for hours.
He’d given Auggie the T-shirt Taylor had slept in the last night they were together. Auggie hadn’t been trained to track people, but he had a hell of a nose, and he thought Taylor hung the moon. With luck, Auggie might catch her scent.
His luck had run out.
They didn’t find a trace of Taylor.
“He’s been spotted at several of the clubs,” Lisa told them.
“But none of the bouncers knew where he lives,” Jim added.
“I had another thought,” Lisa told them. “Paul’s pretty buff. He used to work out every day at Fit For Life.”
“In the morning could you check the health clubs?” Shane asked.
“Sure. We’ll do it, but there’s a lot of them.”
“I’m sure Trent and Brianna would be glad to help,” Vince said. “Start here in SoBe and move north.”
“I’d start in mid-Miami,” Shane said. “Ashton’s arrogant enough to hit the clubs because he knows Taylor isn’t into that scene. I doubt he’d risk running around SoBe in daylight.”
“Yeah, he’s too smart for that,” Vince agreed.
Shane told them to go home and get some sleep. He drove back to Coral Gables, where Doyle was waiting by the telephone with Caleb and Vanessa. Doyle answered the door and they walked down the hall to the library, Auggie at their heels.
“Brianna’s in bed,” Doyle said.
