The Abduction

by James Grippando

  The cop grabbed her again. “You’re with the press, aren’t you?”

  She ignored him. “Harley, are you there?”

  “Damn media sharks,” the cop groaned. “Get your bony reporter’s ass behind the police tape.” He ripped the microphone from her ear. The radio went completely dead.

  “You idiot!” she screamed.

  He grabbed her with one hand. His walkie-talkie was in the other. It squawked, giving Allison an idea. She wrestled free and grabbed his walkie-talkie.

  “Hey!” he shouted.

  Allison ran off.

  “Lady, stop!”

  She kept going, disappearing into the crowd. She pushed against the flow and made it back into the lobby. The smoke was beginning to clear below, but it was still clouding from the second floor. She pushed the button on her walkie-talkie.

  “I don’t know who I’m talking to, but this is Attorney General Allison Leahy. I need to reach Special Agent Harley Abrams of the FBI immediately.” She left it on, hoping for a response.

  Firefighters in full gear had replaced the hysterical guests in the lobby. Black soot and cinders covered the walls and floor. The chandeliers were dark. Emergency spotlights were the only source of light. Traces of smoke irritated her eyes, even though the fire was under control and the smoke had diminished. Most of the firefighters were wearing masks, but it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Allison could breathe without one.

  She hurried inside and stopped at the base of the stairwell. The lighting was spotty, but she could see up to the mezzanine and the charred Independence Bar. A lone fireman was crouched by the table where she’d left the money. He wore a complete set of firefighting gear, including a self-contained breathing apparatus, like a scuba diver. Dressed like that, he could walk through any cloud of smoke. And, she realized, he could walk right out of the building without being detected.

  As he rose from his crouch, Allison could see it-he had the money in hand. Their eyes met briefly at a distance, him from above and her from below. The man froze. Allison didn’t flinch. His face was barely visible behind the clear fireproof mask, but Allison could have sworn she saw him smile. In one swift motion, he snatched the briefcase and ran for the guest rooms.

  Allison charged up the stairs, past the bar, heading at full speed toward the guest rooms. The smoke was thicker upstairs, though not impenetrable. The carpeting had completely burned away. The exposed floorboards were still hot from the flames.

  Allison turned down the hall to the second-floor rooms. Glass crunched beneath her feet. The windows facing the inner courtyard had shattered in the explosion. Some interior walls had burned away completely. Others were charred but still standing. An emergency light shined through the smoke like a lone headlight beaming through fog. She was closing on the man in the fire suit. He was struggling beneath the weight of his gear.

  He stopped suddenly, turned, and pointed his gun. On impulse, Allison ducked into an open room just as the bullet whizzed by her. She took her pistol from inside her jacket and peered out the doorway. He was running down the hall again. She ran after him.

  He fired another shot on the run, but it was erratic. He seemed to be having trouble shooting with the thick fireproof gloves on his hands. Allison kept coming, though the floor was getting weaker. Some boards were completely burned away. She watched her step but refused to stop. She was just twenty feet behind him when the floor gave way beneath his feet.

  Allison stopped as he plunged up to his waist in the fire-eaten floor. In his struggle to save the briefcase his gun fell through the opening in the floor. Allison assumed the police stance and pointed her gun at him from behind.

  “Freeze!” she shouted.

  He kept struggling. He was like a man who’d fallen through the ice and couldn’t pull himself up. Each time he groped for a firm piece of flooring, it broke away beneath him. Flames from below were lapping at his heels. He was barely hanging on-but he was getting away.

  “Freeze!” she said again.

  He kept inching away from her, though the heavy equipment and air tank were clearly slowing his movement. Finally he reached firm flooring, leaving a gaping hole in the floor between him and Allison. He wobbled to his feet. He started to run, but he’d hurt his leg in the fall. He limped away with the money.

  Allison took aim, but she couldn’t shoot. Not without answers about Emily. She aimed lower, for his legs, but under the smoky conditions she feared her shot would come in high. An erratic bullet in the compressed air tank strapped to his back would unleash an explosion that would silence him forever-particularly with tanks that had been heated by the raging fire. She lowered her gun and charged forward, stopping at the hole. It was like gazing into hell-a long way down, nothing but flames.

  The hole was slightly off-center. She walked along the intact ridge of flooring near the wall. The charred boards creaked beneath her feet, but she knew she weighed less than the man in all that gear. Her feet slid an inch at a time, one step at a time. Heat shot up from the open hole; it was like standing over a volcano. She moved faster, then leaped the last three feet to more secure flooring.

  The kidnapper was just ducking into a room at the end of the hall-unarmed, she assumed, though she couldn’t be certain he didn’t have another weapon. She raced down the hall, gun in hand. The floor was still weak in spots, but she didn’t slow down. If he could make it wearing all that gear, she could surely make it. She stopped in the doorway and pointed her gun.

  The man leaped from behind the door and knocked her backward, across the hall. She crashed through the remnants of a charred French door, but she fell only ten inches before the balcony caught her. Behind and below her was the hotel’s central courtyard. Staring at her from across the hall was Vincent Gambrelli.

  Still on her back, she aimed her gun. “Stop right there,” she said.

  He was framed in the doorway across the hall, fifteen feet away. He pulled off his mask and tossed it aside. He looked huge in his gear, especially with the breathing tank bulging behind him.

  “Stop the charade,” he scoffed. “I know you’re not going to shoot me.”

  She rose to her feet and stood on the balcony, aiming right at his face. She glanced at the courtyard behind her, fifty feet below. It was a maze of English gardens surrounded by wrought-iron fences with sharp-pointed pickets. The fear of falling forced her forward, but only a step. “I’ll kill you if you come any closer.”

  “And where would that leave you? Peter is dead. I’m the only man alive who knows where Emily is.”

  “You son of a bitch. Where is she?”

  The walkie-talkie crackled in her coat. This time, the voice was familiar. “Allison, it’s Harley Abrams. Where are you?”

  “Don’t you dare answer that,” said Gambrelli.

  She had two hands on the gun, taking aim.

  Gambrelli said, “I’m in control here, Allison. Not you. Not Abrams. Only I know where Emily is. You can’t kill me. You know you can’t kill me.”

  The walkie-talkie crackled. “Allison, this is Harley. Where are you?”

  Gambrelli heard it. She heard it. Allison didn’t move. He took a step toward her.

  “Stay right there!” she shouted.

  “Or what?” he sneered. “You’re not going to kill me. You won’t even tell the FBI where you are because you’re afraid they might kill me. You come up here all by yourself, trusting no one else to do the job. You know that if I’m dead, you’ll never find Emily.”

  Her hands shook. She wanted to kill him-the man who had sneaked into her house and taken her sleeping baby right from her crib. But she knew he was right. She couldn’t kill him. Not if she ever hoped to find Emily.

  Gambrelli took another step. “Now be a smart broad and give me the gun. You and I are going to walk right out of here.”

  Her finger twitched on the trigger. Her face cringed with agony. She couldn’t give him the gun. She couldn’t let herself become a hostage. But she couldn’t give up on Em
ily.

  The walkie-talkie crackled once more. “Allison, if you can hear me, those photographs gave us a lead. We found Emily. She’s alive and well in New York.”

  Her eyes brightened.

  Gambrelli’s face filled with panic.

  In desperation he leaped toward her to grab the gun. Allison fell right back onto the balcony, much harder this time. The weight of Gambrelli’s equipment made him like a high-speed train, completely unstoppable. On her back, she felt him tumbling right over her. She yanked his coat with all her strength to keep his momentum going forward. In a split second he was flying over her head, flying over the rail, flying off the balcony, and screaming like a wounded banshee. She turned as he fell to the courtyard below, into the maze of walkways surrounded by wrought-iron fences with sharp-pointed pickets. He was falling face up, leading with his breathing tank. He landed squarely on the iron fence. The sharp picket punctured the tank, releasing an explosion of fire-heated compressed air that rocked the balcony fifty feet above. Allison covered her head from flying debris, then looked down. Shreds of the tattered firefighting suit lay strewn across the courtyard.

  Vincent Gambrelli was gone. Completely gone.

  Allison shivered as she peered over the railing. “That was for Emily,” she said from above.

  Epilogue

  Flames lit up the late Monday evening newscasts across the country, though the fiery loss of the St. George Hotel was just a footnote to the breaking story on the night before the election. Kristen Howe was safe, and Allison Leahy had rescued her. That was as much as Harley Abrams and Tanya Howe would tell the press. It was the kind of headline that had Lincoln Howe empathizing with a certain Republican governor named Dewey who’d gone to bed on election night thinking he’d defeated Harry Truman.

  It was a half-truth Allison couldn’t let stand.

  At 11:15 P.M. eastern time, she issued a brief statement to a packed pressroom back at the Justice Building. “With great shame and personal regret,” she told the American people what they deserved to know-that her late husband was behind Kristen Howe’s kidnapping.

  Stunned silence fell over television audiences across the country, followed by an immediate outburst of questions from reporters. Allison answered none of them. Exhausted, she retired to the sleeping loft in her office suite, leaving it to Tuesday’s voters to decide whether she was a hero, a victim, or something else altogether.

  She rested only a few hours. At 5:00 A.M. the Justice Department’s Sabre jet flew her to New York. Harley Abrams went with her. She didn’t have to force him. He seemed unwilling to have it any other way.

  At 8:00 A.M. they were on their way to Ellington Prep School. It had been the school-the redbrick building in the background of Gambrelli’s photograph-that led the FBI to Emily. The analysts in the lab had picked up something invisible to the naked eye-a plaque dedicated to the school’s founder posted by the door. Once they had the school, they had Emily.

  The sedan stopped directly across the street from the schoolyard. Brownish grass and bare oak trees stretched beyond the chain-link fence surrounding the yard. Mothers and fathers led their children down the sidewalk to the school gate, sending them off for another day. Harley parallel-parked near the crosswalk, then shut off the engine. Allison sat quietly in the passenger seat, gesturing with her hands, engaged in a silent and imaginary conversation.

  “Who you talking to over there?” asked Harley.

  “Huh?”

  “Who you talking to?”

  Her head rolled back as she sighed with anxiety. “Oh, jeez. I was just explaining to Emily-” She stopped herself. “Her name’s not even Emily. It’s April. April Remmick. The only child of Henry and Elizabeth Remmick. Two decent, hardworking people who had no idea the little girl they were adopting eight years ago hadn’t come from Russia but was stolen from me.” She grimaced, as if suddenly in pain. “They’re a family, Harley. What right do I have to upset that?”

  “You’re her mother, that’s what right you have.”

  He got out of the car. Allison stayed put. She watched through the windshield as he walked around the front. She locked the door as he reached for the handle.

  He tapped on the window. “Allison, get out of the car.”

  She shook her head.

  “Allison, we’re right here.”

  “But if I see her…” Her voice trailed off. Her eyes shifted toward the schoolyard, forty yards away. The children were lining up to go inside-young boys and girls, all wearing the school uniform. One, however, seemed to stand out in Allison’s line of sight. It was as if she were wearing a different uniform. As if she were alone in the yard.

  Allison unlocked the door and got out of the car. She crossed the street slowly, one step at a time, drawing closer. Her gaze never left the little blond-haired girl with the pink barrette and red knee socks, third in a line of twelve youngsters arranged from shortest to tallest. She stopped at the fence and grasped the chain links with both hands, still staring, just thirty yards away.

  Harley’s footsteps clicked on the sidewalk behind her.

  She couldn’t look away. “That’s her,” she said.

  “Looks just like her picture.”

  “Somehow, I think I would have known it was her. Even without the picture. I feel something inside. A connection. Can you understand what I’m saying?”

  Harley nodded.

  “She looks so happy. A little shy, but happy.” She looked at Harley. “April. That’s a pretty name, too, isn’t it?”

  He smiled with his eyes. “You know, lots of kids have two sets of parents. Some kids who are adopted even get to know their biological mother. It’s not unheard of, I mean.”

  She looked at Emily-April-then back at Harley. “Honestly, if you were her parents, would you let her get anywhere near me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because these special kind of arrangements are hard enough when you have two sets of normal parents. Win or lose today’s election, I can never offer anyone a normal life. It’s like the kidnapper said-fate has found me. Any family I touch will be instantly dysfunctional.”

  “That’s crazy, Allison. Every family is dysfunctional. No, I take that back,” he said, raising a finger for a case in point. “The Addams family. Now there’s the one family that was not dysfunctional.”

  “The Addams family?”

  “You know-Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester. The only family in the history of the world where everyone just accepted each other for exactly what they were.”

  She smiled. “Never thought of it that way.”

  “You should. All those people in Washington who keep trying to define the perfect American family should, too.”

  “So, do you think Emily’s-I mean April’s-parents are like Gomez and Morticia?”

  He laid his hand on his heart, smirking. “We can only hope.”

  She smiled, then glanced back at April. The children were filing inside.

  Harley turned toward the car, offering his arm. “Come on, Allison. Let’s go talk to Mr. and Mrs. Remmick. You might be surprised.”

  She paused, then took his arm. There was a spring in her step as they crossed the street.

  “Allison?”

  “What?”

  “You’re on my arm, and you’re leading.”

  She didn’t break stride. “Harley?”

  “What?”

  She pinched his ribs. “Don’t be a pain in the ass.”

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you…

  To Tiffany. I don’t say it enough, but I couldn’t do it without you.

  To Carolyn Marino, Robin Stamm, and the usual suspects with the unusual talent-Artie Pine, Richard Pine, and Joan Sanger.

  And to Carlos Sires, Eleanor Raynor, Judy Russell, Nancy Lehner, Eric Helmers, Jim Hall, Terri Gavulic (once a Pepper, always a Pepper), Gayle DeJulio, Jennifer Stearns, and Jerry Houlihan.

  The third time’s a charm, even though we all know this is really the
fourth.

  About the Author

  James Grippando is the bestselling author of seven novels- Beyond Suspicion, A King’s Ransom, Under Cover of Darkness, Found Money, The Abduction, The Informant, and The Pardon -which are enjoyed worldwide in fourteen languages. He lives in Florida, where he was a trial lawyer for twelve years. Visit his website at www.jamesgrippando.com.

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