At the conclusion of their last case, the president had called to thank them, and he’d issued a request. He’d said he would consider it a personal favor if Spense and Caity would join a task force formed in Colorado to find a missing coed. On Tuesday morning, Laura Chaucer, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of Senator Whitmore Chaucer, had gone missing. Spense hadn’t believed anything could make him give up a Tahitian vacation with Caity, especially not after they’d finally declared their love for each other, but a young woman in trouble and a plea from the president of the United States had been impossible to ignore.
As for whether or not Laura Chaucer was still alive, they could only hope. For now, they’d operate on the assumption they were here to rescue rather than search and recover, but he wasn’t optimistic. In a missing person case the first forty-eight hours were vital and that critical marker had already passed.
Beyond the security checkpoint, Spense stopped short to avoid barreling into a man dressed in a black uniform. He held a placard that read “Cassidy & Spenser.” Shooting a look over his shoulder at Caity, Spense asked, “I forget your birthday or something?”
“No.”
“Because it sure isn’t mine, and I can’t remember the last time the Bureau sent a driver to pick me up at the airport.”
The look on her face made him regret his quip. Her father had been executed on her eighteenth birthday, and he’d just carelessly reminded her of that black day. But the darkness in her eyes vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared, and she smiled at him, as if he were the finest version of himself instead of a thoughtless ass. He hoped she knew he’d rather rip his own heart out than hurt her, and just in case she didn’t, he’d tell her so later. But right now, there was a man with a sign to deal with.
Spense dropped the bags. Offered a hand to the driver. “What the hell’s up?”
“You’re Agent Spenser?” he asked, though his tone and pointed address told Spense he knew the answer already.
“Yeah, and this is my partner, Dr. Cassidy . . .” Spense angled his head, checking out the man’s name tag . . . “Mr. Crawford.”
“Jasper.”
“Nice meeting you, Jasper.” Caity stuck out her hand. “Pardon our surprise, but we weren’t expecting you. The Bureau doesn’t usually . . .”
“The Bureau?” Now it was Jasper’s turn to look confused, but he made a fast recovery. “You mean the FBI.”
Impatiently, Spense shifted his feet. They didn’t have time to waste on small talk, and he wasn’t going to put Caity in a limo and go for a joy ride without verification this guy was legit.
“You’re right, I wasn’t sent by the Bureau.” Jasper rolled the word around on his tongue, seeming pleased to be speaking their language. “My employer asked me to FaceTime him as soon as you arrived.”
Spense said nothing while Jasper put the call through and handed him the cell. The man who appeared on the screen was immediately recognizable.
“Agent Spenser, Dr. Cassidy, I’m Whit Chaucer.”
“Senator,” they answered in unison.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of sending a driver to take you to the task-force meeting.”
“That wasn’t necessary, but thank you,” Spense said, annoyed that local law enforcement had given the senator their flight information. He knew the Bureau’s Denver field office would never have done so.
“I’m incredibly grateful you two agreed to join the team. I’ve arranged to have Mr. Crawford at your disposal for as long as you need him.”
Spense had no intention of letting the senator’s personal spy chauffeur them around, and he was about to say so when Caity jumped in. “That’s very kind, but we won’t be able to take you up on that offer. We need to be ready to go on a moment’s notice.”
“Crawford can be ready on a moment’s notice.” Senator Whit Chaucer was used to getting his way. Spense understood the man was high on the food chain, but the last thing they needed was the father of the missing girl trying to call the shots.
“We’re grateful for the lift today, but in the future, the Bureau will provide a car for us,” Spense said with finality.
The senator nodded. The close camera angle accentuated his bloodshot eyes, haloed with purpled rims as though he’d cried all night. Worry had drilled the expression lines on his face into deep trenches, giving him a very different look than the man Spense had seen on television stumping for the senate. Spense wished he could reassure him that Laura would be okay, but platitudes weren’t an option for those charged with telling the truth. The best he could offer up was a sympathetic look.
He could hardly blame the guy for trying to take control in a situation that would make anyone feel helpless. If Spense’s loved one were missing, he’d probably be barking orders and refusing to take “no” for an answer—even though he certainly knew better. He chose his next words carefully, mindful not to mention Laura’s name in public. “I hope you understand, sir. It’s just that we’ve got the best chance of bringing her home safely if you steer clear and let us do our jobs.”
“Of course,” Chaucer said. “But if you change your minds, the offer stands. Meanwhile, I’ll let you get to your meeting. And it goes without saying, I’m at your disposal whenever you’re ready for me.”
It was a good sign the senator had the self-restraint not to intrude on the upcoming task-force meeting, even though he could’ve easily exerted his influence to be present. Maybe he planned to let them do their job without interfering after all, which was a smart play if he wanted his daughter back alive. After a polite good-bye, Spense disconnected the call, and then he and Caity followed Crawford to a limo with blacked-out windows.
Crawford swung the bags into the trunk while Spense opened the rear passenger door for Caity to get in first. He saw her shoulders stiffen, and when he touched the small of her back, felt resistance. She let out a quick breath before climbing in. Spense followed, then grunted aloud. He wasn’t fond of surprises. And there, waiting in the limo, was a big one.
Chapter 4
Afternoon
Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains
This wasn’t the first time Laura had awakened with a pounding head and a hole in her memory. The sun, peeking beneath her eyelids, carried a glow that told her she’d slept past noon—and that was no first either. But the deep ache in her bones, the shredded feeling in her stomach, like someone had taken a potato peeler to its lining, was beyond anything she’d experienced before. Her mouth was so dry she barely had the saliva to swallow, and when she attempted to do so, she gagged on her own bile. This was shaping up to be one mother of a blackout.
Hang on. Breathe.
Once the nausea passed, she braced herself on her elbows, lifted her shoulders, opened her eyes fully, and cried out—the noise screeching violently out of her chest as if propelled by a demon. She’d been expecting to find herself in bed, sheets tangled about her feet, or maybe kicked to the floor. A single worn sheet did cover the lower half of her body, but she wasn’t in her bed. Instead, she lay naked on a cold floor surrounded by a pool of foul-smelling liquid.
She cringed and rolled away. She’d been sleeping in vomit and feces . . . and something else . . . that looked like blood.
No. No. No.
She touched her forehead. Sweaty hair stuck to her face, but she was cold . . . really, really cold. She saw that her hands were trembling, and then, without warning, her entire body began to shake violently. She couldn’t control her limbs. They jerked open and shut, jackknifing at the joints. Panic travelled over her in waves as tangible as the convulsions. Her head slammed against the floor, but God took no mercy on her—the head bang didn’t knock her out. She remained fully conscious through every excruciating muscle spasm until, after what seemed an eternity, the seizure passed. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. What the hell was going on?
Get off the floor, Laura.
If she could manage to stand up, she told herself, everyth
ing would be okay. She’d look around and realize that this had all been one of her bad dreams. Or maybe a hallucination. After all, she’d seen things that weren’t really there before. But . . . that was so long ago, and she’d been heavily medicated at the time. Dr. Webber had said the hallucinations were caused by an interaction between her antidepressants and her sleeping pills. Once he’d changed her meds around, the visions had stopped. At the moment, she couldn’t remember much about the recent past, but one thing she knew for sure: she’d tossed out all of her pills the day she left DC for Denver.
There was no way drugs could be the cause of all this because she hadn’t taken any.
Get up, Laura! Now!
Lurching to her feet, she looked around. Her eyes filled with tears. Everything was still there: the puke on the floor, the blood, and the stench that permeated the air, bearing shameful witness to her incontinence.
Hallucinations didn’t smell—at least not the type she’d had in the past.
This was real.
She’d been passed out in a pool of her own bodily fluids, and she had no idea for how long. It might’ve been hours or even days.
Shuddering, she dragged her gaze around the interior of the room. Its bare walls brought a glimmer of recognition. She remembered seeing this cabin before . . . before . . . before what? She yanked at her damp hair, as if that could stimulate her memory. And maybe it worked because she now recalled the flicker of a candle. A table. Her hand went to her throat. Her heart, already racing, kicked into overdrive. With her fingertips, she sought out the razor-thin scars that had long marred her neck and felt new wounds—ones that were still moist and excruciatingly sore.
Dead ahead was the table she remembered, as well as a chair with her silk scarves—the ones she wore to cover the marks on her neck—wrapped around its arms.
Another flash of memory: He’d tied her up.
But as she studied her arms, she didn’t find any telltale ligature marks.
Because he’d used her silk scarves.
Unlike rope would have done, the scarves had left no trace, no physical evidence, but she remembered being bound. She remembered . . . a knife.
He’d held a knife to her throat.
Gripping her abdomen, she doubled over, barely managing not to throw up.
She closed her eyes and recalled her mouth being stuffed with a damp, stinky rag.
The pieces were slowly falling into place. He’d drugged her, taken her from her room and brought her here to this remote cabin. That must be what happened.
It was him.
It must have been.
Her legs tried to buckle, but she didn’t collapse. He would not bring her to her knees. She would not cower naked on the floor. She retrieved the soiled sheet that had covered her, wrapped it around her shoulders and body, and in the process noticed her purse where it lay open beneath the table. Rifling through it, she located her wallet. It still contained the five hundred dollars in cash she’d withdrawn from the bank on Monday to loan to her friend, Harriet, who was in a tight spot after falling out with her mom. Laura had never learned to drive, but she had a Colorado state identification card. It was there, along with her Holly Hill student badge. Only her cell phone appeared to be missing.
With clumsy hands she removed a compact of powder from her bag. She opened it, took a bracing breath, and inspected herself in the mirror. It wasn’t the haggard look in her blue-gray eyes, it wasn’t her bone-white complexion or even the vomit and blood matting her long black hair that made her want to climb out of her own skin. It was those fresh marks on her neck. There, just above her old scars, she touched the new wounds—each one a nearly perfect match to the scar below. She bowed her head, not to pray, but to think. The cuts were fine and shallow. Too superficial to be the cause of all the blood on the floor . . . and yet she didn’t seem to have any other injuries. As shaky and weak as she felt, she could still stand, still walk, still think. Like everything else, it made no sense . . . unless all that blood wasn’t hers.
It was impossible, at least for her, to tell how long the blood had been soaking into the floor. Had someone else been brought here before her? The thought made her gag, but she forced herself to breathe through the moment and focus on her own survival.
She should catalogue any and all information available to her.
The wounds on her throat were covered in a thin yellow pre-scab. How long would that healing process have taken to kick in? She didn’t know, but she guessed it to be longer than a few hours but shorter than a few days.
When you’re fighting to survive, you never know what little thing will turn out to be important.
Her counselors at wilderness camp—a survival therapy program that had been one of her parents’ desperate schemes to fix her—emphasized that point until she had been sick to death of hearing it. How she’d hated that camp.
It had been just one more confirmation that she was broken.
But now, a flicker of hope began to build inside her. Because of that stupid survival therapy, she had skills. She knew more than most people about staying alive. Despite her dire circumstances, she wasn’t completely helpless—and she had her parents and those relentless counselors to thank. Irony, it seemed, wasn’t always a bad thing.
She decided to take inventory of what she knew—or thought she knew—so far. Between one and three days ago, someone had drugged her, kidnapped her, stripped her naked, slashed her throat, and left her to die in the middle of nowhere. As her brain clicked into gear, her pulse slowed. She ticked off the terrifying facts like she was reciting a grocery list.
Good.
That meant she was pulling it together.
It meant she was going to get through this.
Then suddenly, her chest contracted to the point she could barely breathe, as a thought pushed its way to the surface, shattering her confidence into a million pieces.
Maybe he hadn’t left her to die in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe her monster was still with her.
Chapter 5
Thursday, October 24
12:25 P.M.
Denver, Colorado
At first glance, Caitlin hadn’t recognized the man in the back of the limo. He’d changed over the years. His face had grown slightly fuller, more lines cracked around his cunning blue eyes, and his blond hair exposed a touch more of his forehead—but that wasn’t the reason it took her a moment to know him. She simply hadn’t expected to see Dr. Grady Webber in Senator Whit Chaucer’s limo.
She hadn’t expected to see Grady anywhere.
Ever again.
Never would’ve been too soon.
Still, here he was.
She searched her brain for a reason. Among the cobwebs draping the farthest recesses of her mind, that place where she’d vanquished all things Grady, hung the flimsy recollection that he and the senator knew each other.
She ducked her chin to conceal the displeasure that must be written all over her face. Then, teeth gritted, she climbed in, choosing a seat directly facing Grady. He was still built like a running back, and he still dressed like a GQ model. His long legs stretched across the aisle of the limo, and he politely bent them to make room for her. He appeared handsomely distinguished in an expensive gray silk, Hugo Boss if she had to guess—he’d always been partial to that designer.
Their eyes locked.
“Dr. Cassidy, I presume?”
Her face went white-hot. “Hello Grady,” she said, trying to add enough enthusiasm to her voice to hide her annoyance at his subterfuge. Why pretend he didn’t know her unless he wanted to make it seem like a bigger deal than it really was once the truth came out? And of course the truth would come out because she had no intention of keeping her past relationship with Grady Webber a secret from Spense.
They’d fought too hard to develop mutual trust to risk losing it now.
For years she and Spense had battled one another professionally, with her working to protect the rights of accused i
nnocents while Spense did whatever it took to get the bad guys off the streets. It wasn’t until recently, when they’d been forced to work together on the Man in the Maze case, that they’d realized they’d been on the same side all along: justice. It hadn’t taken long for theirs to develop into much more than a working relationship—so maybe those sparks between them all these years hadn’t been about competition after all. In any case, over the past few months they’d been through the fire together. He’d saved her life more than once, and she’d saved his. He’d earned both her trust and her heart, and there was no way she would deliberately mislead Spense—not about Grady—not about anything.
Spense found a seat next to Grady, and she turned her mind back to the job. She wasn’t sure why Grady was here, in the senator’s limo, but she could guess what he might have to do with the Laura Chaucer missing person case.
As Spense settled in, his gaze swept over Grady with a deliberateness that told her Spense hadn’t missed a thing. Grady’s false greeting had put him on full alert.
Waving her hand between the two men, she said, “Let me introduce you two. Dr. Grady Webber. Special Agent Atticus Spenser.” She paused, waiting for Spense’s stock response: Call me Spense.
Instead, a long, tense silence followed.
As she watched the two men, she couldn’t help comparing. They were both tall, muscular, and undeniably handsome, but the difference between them was striking. Whereas Grady looked like he’d stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine, Spense could’ve made the cover of a G-man calendar. His dark hair was cut short, FBI style, and his build was powerful in a way that didn’t just make you want to stare—it made you feel safe. His eyes were plain brown, but when he turned them on you, pencils dropped, lattes spilled, and thoughts became decidedly unladylike. He turned those eyes on her now, and she realized he was waiting for her to speak.
“Grady was chief of psychiatry at Rocky Mountain Memorial—the hospital where I did my psychiatric residency.” Had she left it at that, it might’ve seemed to Spense that Grady simply hadn’t remembered her. But Spense was too clever, and she was too honest. She had nothing to gain by glossing things over. She straightened her back and said, “I’ll fill you in on the rest later.”
Stolen Page 2
