Hero in the Nick of Time

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Siren?” Cade asked. Had the police arrived on the scene that quickly? There was a solitary house overlooking that section of the road. Had someone been watching from the window and called the police?

  A superior expression creased Jake’s face as he nodded toward his partner. “Andy likes to turn on the siren every chance he gets. Doesn’t seem to care that he’s destroying my ears.”

  “So the other driver just kept going?” Cade prodded, directing their attention back to the accident.

  Andy nodded vigorously. He stubbed out his cigarette. “Like a bullet.”

  Waving away the smoke from the cigarette, Jake hissed through his teeth. “Bullets don’t drive—”

  Mac felt as if she were back refereeing her brothers when they were all little. She raised her voice. “Then what happened?”

  “We got the woman and the baby out of the car. Andy brought the stretcher over and went to get another one for the baby, but I thought maybe the baby should go to Mission. They’ve got that special trauma unit, so I called them.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Andy corrected him. “I did.”

  Caught, Jake frowned. “Right, he did.”

  “How badly injured was the baby?” Cade asked. “Bump on the head and a bruise just underneath,” Andy told him. “But you don’t want to take chances when they’re that young.”

  “Happen to know what ambulance company answered the call?” Cade asked, hoping to get a reply without having to listen to any more bickering between the two men.

  “Yeah.” Jake grabbed the pack of cigarettes off the table before his partner could reach for another one. “Dominion. They got there in less than fifteen minutes, then we took off. The cops cleaned up the rest.”

  “When did the police get there?” Mac asked, surprising Cade.

  Andy thought. “Five, ten minutes before we left.”

  Cade finished jotting notes down and flipped his pad closed. “Where’s Dominion located?”

  “Laguna somewhere.” Jake exchanged looks with Andy, but the latter had nothing to volunteer. “Joan has the address up front.” He jerked a thumb toward the front of the building.

  Thanking them for their time, Cade and Mac went to get Dominion’s address. In the background, they heard Jake and Andy beginning to argue again, this time over whose turn it was to deal the cards.

  “It’s a wonder they reached the hospital with my sister at all,” Mac murmured.

  Cade only laughed.

  Less than five minutes later, they were back out in the small parking lot, getting into Cade’s car. Mac figured she’d held on to her tongue long enough. This man was definitely not forthcoming. “So?”

  Cade knew she was asking for his conclusions. He hadn’t any. What he had were just deeper suspicions. “So it’s beginning to look more and more as if the driver of that blue car meant to run your sister off the road to steal the baby.”

  Mac wasn’t a Pollyanna. Mac knew what the world was like. But it was still difficult for Mac to believe that things like this were actually planned. “But they drove off—”

  “When the ambulance arrived to interfere with their plans,” he pointed out. “And the other ambulance is still missing.”

  She started to ask what he thought that meant and then stopped. He probably would only give her a nebulous answer. It was obvious that Cade Townsend didn’t like being pinned down. Mac reminded herself that she was paying him for his expertise and not his company.

  With a sigh, she sank back in her seat, trying not to fidget inwardly.

  “I’ll tell you what I already told the police. Henry and Smithy are two of our best drivers.” The bald-headed man behind the counter frowned at Cade. The telephone rang, interrupting him. “Get that, will you, Billy?” he called over his shoulder to someone behind the drawn curtain that separated the medical supply showroom from its stockroom. The man turned to look at Cade and Mac again. “Henry’s been with the company since it started. Smithy came on board three years ago, just before I did. If either of them are mixed up in anything underhanded here, then I’m Elvis Presley.”

  Another line on the telephone rang. Not bothering to hide his annoyance, the man jerked up the receiver without excusing himself.

  “Dominion.” A moment later, his eyes widened sufficiently enough to catch Cade’s attention. “Are they all right? And the ambulance?” He breathed a loud sigh of relief as Cade and Mac exchanged looks. “Thank God. Sure, thanks, and thanks for calling, Officer.”

  The man hung up, his face a mask of triumph. “That was the police department. They just found Henry and Smithy,” he announced. “And the missing ambulance.”

  It was a lucky break. “Where are they?” Cade asked.

  “Hey, Billy,” he called out behind him before answering Cade. “Henry and Smithy are okay.” Only then did he address the question. “The police just took them to Harris Memorial.”

  “Get the feeling we’re going around in circles?” Mac muttered under her breath as they hurried out the door again.

  “At least we’re moving,” Cade pointed out.

  He was right. This certainly beat sitting in Moira’s hospital room, holding her sister’s hand and wondering if the police had found Heather.

  “Hey, I’m not complaining.” Mac got into the car.

  Cade nodded as if taking the information in. “Just so it’s clear.”

  One step closer, Mac told herself as Cade started the car. One step closer to Heather.

  Chapter 4

  “But I already told all this to the police.”

  Buttoning his shirt, John Smith, Smithy to the immediate world, seemed in a hurry to get out of the hospital emergency room.

  Glancing over toward Henry, who appeared in better shape than he was, Smithy was ready to go. “Look, I want to get home to my wife. Can’t you just talk to the police and get whatever information you need?”

  Cade had worked his way past a witness’s reluctance to talk more often than he could remember, but before he could say anything, Mac was cornering the paramedic.

  “You know as well as anybody that the police are very closemouthed when it comes to their investigations. They don’t exactly believe in the buddy system. That little girl you were bringing to Mission Hospital was—is—” she corrected herself tersely, damning herself for her slip “—my niece Heather. We haven’t heard a single word about her since she was taken. My sister—her mother—is in this hospital right now—in the intensive care unit.” She paused deliberately, her eyes pinning the man, searching for compassion. “She needs something to hang on to.” Mac placed her hand lightly on the man’s forearm, her eyes still on his. “Help me give it to her.”

  Watching her, Cade couldn’t help but wonder just how much of what she’d said to him earlier had been true and how much had been fabrication. There was no denying that she could turn in a performance on demand.

  Smithy ran his hand through his thinning dark hair and sighed. “Okay, I guess I can spare another five minutes.” He looked at his partner again. “How about you, Henry?”

  A wiry man, somewhat taller and younger than Smithy, Henry crossed to the bed his partner was still sitting on. “Okay by me.”

  Triumphant, Mac forged on, completely forgetting about the man at her side. “What did he look like—the person driving the Camry?”

  Smithy looked at her in confusion for a minute. “It wasn’t a he, it was a she.”

  “A woman?” Cade raised an eyebrow in surprise, glancing toward Mac. They had both assumed, just the way the other set of ambulance drivers had, that Heather’s abductor was a man.

  Smithy, the more vocal of the two, elaborated. “Yeah, a really well-dressed one, too. She got into the ambulance with us. With me,” he clarified, since Henry was in the front, driving. “She said she was the baby’s aunt. That she’d been in the car when the accident happened. Said her sister wanted her to go with the baby.” He looked from Mac to Cade. “In all the excitement, I didn’t think anything
of it. I figured, why not?”

  Henry said something unintelligible under his breath, then cleared his throat, looking at Smithy. “I guess we won’t be taking extra passengers along any time soon after this.”

  The chagrined look on Smithy’s face indicated he was in agreement with the driver.

  “What happened?” Cade prodded.

  “As soon as we drove away from the scene of the accident, the woman took out a gun, pointed the damn thing at me and yelled to Henry to drive to an out-of-the-way place along the western stretch of PCH.”

  “Huntington Beach,” Henry interjected.

  A nurse came and politely asked them to adjourn the discussion to the another section of the room. The bed was needed for another patient.

  Reining in her impatience, Mac waited until they reached the first available empty space. “And then what?”

  “She made Henry stop, then had him tie me up,” Smithy resumed. “I asked her what she wanted, but this woman, she didn’t talk just to talk, she just gave orders, nothing more. After knocking me unconscious, she apparently tied Henry up and got out with the baby.”

  “She wouldn’t just walk off,” Mac said, thinking out loud. “She had to have a car waiting nearby.”

  The kidnapping was beginning to take on elaborate proportions, going in directions that made her blood run cold. How long had these people been watching Moira, waiting for their chance? And how often did this kind of thing go on?

  “She did,” Smithy confirmed. “She called some cab company on her cell phone after she was finished with us, told them to come and pick her up. One cool woman.” Despite the situation, there was a note of admiration in the man’s voice.

  “Did either of you happen to see the cab?” Mac pressed. She knew it was an extreme long shot.

  “I did.” Smithy smiled, exposing one gleaming gold tooth. “I got up on my knees and looked out the back window just as she was going in.”

  “What kind of a cab?” Cade asked.

  But this time, the man shook his head. “Couldn’t make out the name. But it was yellow. Had a big sign on the top advertising that new play. The one at the Center.” Unable to recall the name, he looked from Mac to Cade, frustrated. “My wife wants to go see it.” His mind was a blank. “You know, the one with the guy in the mask. Ghost something.”

  “Phantom of the Opera?” Mac guessed, unable to think of anything else.

  Smithy slapped his hands together, then pointed two fingers triumphantly at Mac. “That’s the one.”

  “Anything else?” Cade asked.

  Smithy shook his head. “That’s all. Does it help?”

  “It helps,” Cade assured him. Everything helped. It would take some doing, tracking down the cab, but at least they had something to work with. He pushed his luck, trying to get a little more. “Where did the police finally find you?”

  This time, Smithy looked to Henry for an answer.

  “Can’t say, exactly. She had me driving for a while, turning down long stretches of isolated road. Just know it was by the ocean somewhere in Huntington Beach.”

  They’d been missing for more than a day. “Couldn’t you yell for help?”

  Henry shook his head. “She used bandages and tape to gag us. And she knew her knots. Checked us both out before she left. Had us tied up better than Thanksgiving turkeys.”

  “What did she look like?” Cade asked.

  “That’s the funny thing,” Smithy told them. “The woman looked like a class act. Seeing her on the street, you’d have never thought she’d be mixed up in something like this.”

  More and more, Cade was beginning to think that they were up against an organization. This sounded far too professional for a random snatch, and it certainly wasn’t something that had been undertaken on impulse. He wondered just how many people were involved and how intricate the network actually was.

  He looked at Smithy. “Do you think you could go into a little more detail about the woman?”

  “She was tall—taller than you,” he added, looking at Mac. “Blond, maybe around forty or so, but really well taken care of. Great figure. Had on one of those outfits—you know the kind.” He searched his mind for the right word. “My wife calls ’em powder suits, something like that.”

  “Power suits?” Mac suggested.

  “Yeah, that’s the word.” He grinned again, as if he’d hit a bull’s-eye. “She had a real pretty face. Like a Valentine.”

  “Heart-shaped?” Mac suggested.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cade writing more things down in his notepad. She felt impatience scurrying, going nowhere, like tiny hamster paws leaving tracks on a vinyl floor.

  Smithy’s shoulders rose and fell spasmodically. He bit off a groan, massaging one. Being tied up for more than a day had left its mark.

  “Damn, that hurts.” He looked at Cade. “I don’t know what it’s called.”

  An idea suddenly occurred to Mac. “Do you think you could describe her to a sketch artist?” she asked the paramedic eagerly.

  A dour expression nudged his smile aside. Smithy had already given them more time than he’d intended. “How long is that going to take?”

  Cade countered the man’s question with another. “How long will it take your conscience to stop making you feel guilty if this little girl is never returned to her mother?” he asked quietly.

  When Cade put it that way, Smithy felt he and Henry had no choice. He answered for both of them. “We’ll talk to the sketch artist.”

  Since she suggested it, Cade figured Mac could follow through. “Have anyone in mind?”

  Even as he asked, Mac was already taking out her cell phone. She hit a single number, then pressed the send button. “My brother Randy was born with a brush in his hand.”

  “My sympathies to your mother,” Cade murmured.

  She flashed him a smile that Cade found more than mildly distracting. Just like the woman herself.

  “Is this what you mean?”

  Randy Dellaventura held up his sketch pad for the two men to view. He had started from scratch three times in the last twenty-five minutes, going back to the beginning to try to capture the elusive woman who seemed to have left very different impressions on the paramedics.

  It took a while, with a maximum of erasures and compromises, before the two men could finally come to some sort of agreement.

  “Yeah, that’s her all right.” Satisfied, Smithy looked up at Cade. “Told you she was a class act.”

  With a weary, pleased sigh, Randy tore off the sketch and surrendered it to the man his family had hired to find his niece.

  Cade studied it for a moment. The woman didn’t look like anyone he had come across in his line of work. But the octopus that was the black-market baby ring was always growing new tentacles.

  He turned the sketch toward Mac. There was still a chance that the kidnapper might be someone familiar to her family. “Look like anyone you might know?”

  She’d watched every stroke that Randy had made, hoping. But now she shook her head. It wasn’t going to be that easy, Mac thought.

  Cade glanced toward Randy. He caught himself wondering how many more there were in the family. He’d grown up an only child in a quiet, proper home. He had a feeling that the Dellaventura homestead was anything but quiet during those same years. Not if Mac had been a part of it.

  “Nice work.” The first chance he got, Cade meant to feed the sketch into a scanner. There was a database set up on the Web for this kind of information. Besides that, he was going to need copies to pass around.

  But first things first.

  “We need to have your sister take a look at this,” he told Mac and Randy.

  “No.” Moira shook her head, handing the sketch back to Cade. “I never saw this woman before. Is she the one who took Heather?”

  “We think so,” Cade told her gently.

  “But why? Why would someone do something so terrible? Why would they take my little girl?” Moira’s
eyes filled up with tears again. She wiped away the ones that spilled out. “I thought I’d already cried all the tears out.”

  “We’ll make her pay for this, Moira,” Mac said fiercely. “I promise you that. Now pull yourself together and get well. You can’t take care of Heather from a hospital bed.” She squeezed Moira’s hand. “I’ll see you later.” Turning toward Cade, she nodded toward the door. “Okay, let’s go.”

  She was giving him orders again, Cade thought. Apparently the woman didn’t know how to take a back seat. He followed her out, but once they were in the hall, he stopped dead. When she looked at him impatiently, he asked, “Go where?”

  For a second, Mac wasn’t sure what he was saying, or why he was asking her. She waved a hand vaguely in the air. “To the next place.”

  Cade crossed his arms before his chest, waiting. It’d be interesting to see what she came up with. “Which is?”

  What was he doing? “I don’t know, you’re the detective.”

  “Exactly. Try to remember that for more than three seconds at a time.” His point made, he headed toward the elevator bank.

  “Sorry.” Mac struggled to hold on to her temper, goaded by impatience, as she hurried after him. “I had no idea you were that sensitive.”

  “I’m not. Generally.” He pushed the down button, then looked at her. “How’re your telephone skills?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He just grinned as the elevator arrived and they got in.

  Mac didn’t have long to wait for her explanation.

  They returned to his office. A temp named Audra who Megan had brought in was manning the phones, taking messages. The others were out, Audra informed him when Cade asked after their whereabouts, working on their separate cases.

  “You like being on top of the situation as much as I do,” Mac commented to his back.

  “It’s not quite the same thing.” Finding what he was looking for, Cade turned around, a thick telephone directory in his hands. “I run the agency. It’s my job to know where everyone is. C’mon.” He led the way to his office. “You can use the phone in here. I’ll be across the hall in Megan’s office.”