by Carsen Taite
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dale was pacing near the school bus when she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She checked the screen. Peyton. She considered letting it go to voice mail. She knew Peyton probably wanted to discuss what was going on with Sophia. She did too, but right now she was more focused on getting in a mental head space to face Lindsey and answer her hard questions. Ultimately, she decided it would be easier to take Peyton’s call. “Hey, Peyton, what’s up?”
“I talked to Sophia.”
“Good.”
“It was a pretty one-sided conversation, but I figure she’s worried someone might be listening in on her end.”
Dale spotted a Dallas cop sprinting by the school bus. She tracked his path and watched as he skidded to a stop directly in front of Elaina who was standing backstage talking to the mayor and Diego.
“Are you there?” Peyton asked.
The cop was animated, waving both hands in the air. Diego looked around and started shouting at several of the other DEA agents who were present for the event, pointing toward the school bus. Dale’s stomach churned and her heart started thumping wildly. She whipped around, but couldn’t see the source of the commotion. “Peyton, I have to go.”
She started to disconnect the call, but Peyton yelled, “Wait!”
“Seriously, I have to go.”
“Just a sec. Arturo did tell Sophia something. Something that scared her, but he didn’t threaten her and neither did Sergio. He told her someone working with us was the source of the threat. We should meet. Just the core group. Leave Tanner out of it for now.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Dale saw more cops, coming from the other side of the stage. She recognized some of them—they’d been in the audience earlier. They were all headed her way. She saw Elaina and Alice running after them, and a growing sense of panic spurred her to start walking, faster and faster until she broke into a run. She’d barely registered Peyton’s words, but she offered a rote “sounds good” and shoved the phone back in her pocket.
Dale rounded the corner of the school bus and pulled up short. A crowd of uniformed cops were gathered on the portion of the street next to city hall that had been blocked off. She pulled out her badge and pushed her way into the center of the crowd until she spotted Diego. “What’s going on?”
“Not sure yet. A DPD officer got pistol-whipped. He’s coming to, but he’s fuzzy about what happened. Says some guys in black masks toting automatic weapons came up on him and some other folks. They knocked him out and that’s all he remembers.”
What the cop described didn’t make any sense. Guys with masks and guns show up, assault a cop, and then what? Where were they now? Dale replayed the words over in her head. There was a clue there.
“Has somebody talked to the kids?”
Dale’s head snapped in the direction of the voice, but she didn’t recognize the man who’d spoken. She started to ask him what he was talking about when she heard a sharp cry and looked around for the source of the sound.
The two kids from the program were huddled over to the side with Andrea DeJesus. Elaina and Alice were standing a few feet from a car, and a uniformed officer she didn’t recognize was yelling at them to step back. She catalogued the details of the scene in slow motion. A dark four-door sedan. The trunk of the car was open. A brown folder lay on the ground behind the trunk, its contents spilled out on the pavement.
She shoved past Diego and strode toward the car, every step a heavy, weighted agony against the background of the cop yelling at her to step back. She ignored him as she made her way to the children, but she froze when she saw the papers fanned out on the cement.
One, two, three, four, five. Five photographs of Lindsey, smiling and glamorous. Dale’s skin felt tight and suffocating and she fought for breath. She heard someone shouting and looked up from the photos into Elaina’s face. Her mouth was moving, but Dale had to struggle to make out the words. When she finally understood what she was saying she realized Elaina was telling her what she already knew.
“Lindsey’s gone. We have to find her.”
*
Lindsey hated not being able to see. The van had stopped just outside of downtown, and one of the men had opened the cage, strapped a zip tie around her wrists, and tied a black cloth around her head. She heard murmured voices and, after a few minutes, they took off driving again.
The darkness heightened her other senses but did nothing to diminish her fear. Sour sweat burned her nostrils, and her ears pounded with the sound of heavy metal banging from the van’s speakers. The van that was taking her farther and farther away from downtown. Away from Alice, Jed, and Elaina. And Dale. How long would it be before any of them noticed she was gone? She hoped Carolina and Emilio would run for help, but in their panicked state would they remember anything about what they’d seen?
She shoved aside her fear and searched her memory for details of the training she’d received before she went to Afghanistan. The network had made sure she’d received instruction in how to handle being taken hostage before she went overseas. She’d been lucky not to have to use the techniques they’d taught her, but she prayed her training would come in handy now.
The things she remembered right off the bat were to develop a relationship with the captors and convince them you’re interested in telling all sides of a story. She’d have to ignore the no talking rule to accomplish either of these.
“My name is Lindsey Ryan. I’m a reporter for Spotlight America. If you have a message you want to get out to the world, anything at all, I can help you. I know lots of important people.”
“No talking.”
The words were delivered with a grunt, but the voice sounded more apathetic than angry. She sifted through her thoughts to remember what else she’d learned. Make it personal—tell the captors personal details about yourself to appeal to their humanity. Played back in the middle of a real situation, these tips were starting to feel pretty stupid. Guys with assault rifles didn’t exactly strike her as the warm and fuzzy types who wanted to hear about her personal life. Of course they’d had the opportunity to kill that cop and the kids and they hadn’t, so maybe there was a chance they valued at least some human life.
The problem was she couldn’t think of anything to tell them. The trainers had said tell them about your family, your loved ones, and your interests. Lindsey didn’t think a story about her single life as a solitary reporter who spent every waking moment working and was estranged from her family would be especially appealing. She spent her life telling other people’s stories never giving a thought to building a life of her own. She had no family to come home to, no place to live, no one to miss her if she didn’t live through whatever happened next.
Well, she couldn’t change any of that right now, but she could do her damnedest to make sure she lived so she could make different choices with the rest of her life. In the meantime, she didn’t think they’d kill her while they were driving. She’d spend the next however long counting the turns and plotting her future, starting by making a plan to get out of this mess.
*
Dale pushed Elaina aside and ran over to the kids.
“I taught their DARE program,” Andrea said, her voice animated. “They ran straight to me. They saw it all go down.”
Dale hunched over so she could look the kids in the eyes and searched her memory for their names. “Carolina, Emilio, you guys sure are brave. Do you know where Lindsey is? Can you tell me what you saw?”
Emilio was pale and shaking, but Carolina was amped up. “We’re not brave. Lindsey went right for them, but she told us to run and we did. They had on black ski masks and they had guns. Not handguns, but rifles. Black ones. The kind that keep firing, you know, that you don’t have to reload.”
Dale breathed deep as the image of Lindsey running toward danger cast an ugly shadow across her mind. “Okay. Did they say anything?”
“Not that I could hear.”
“Think hard for me. Did you
see anything else?”
Carolina shook her head, but Emilio piped up. “They got in a van. Dark blue. I looked back for a sec, and I saw them put her in the back.”
Dale stood up and put her hands on their shoulders. “Great job, guys. Thanks.” She motioned to DeJesus to follow her, and they walked a couple of steps away. “They say anything else before I got here?”
“No. They were in shock. I’m surprised you got them to talk at all. What do you need me to do?”
“Stay with them.” Dale didn’t wait for a response. Her mind was racing as she considered what to do next. The answer was right in front of her, tickling her subconscious. She just needed to focus. The tracking device! She’d never anticipated these would be the circumstances under which she’d use what she learned, but she offered up a silent thanks to the universe for happenstance.
She ran back over to the crowd of law enforcement around the car and found Diego. “We need to talk.” She motioned for him to join her a few feet away and spoke fast. “I have a confession to make. You’re going to be pissed, but I need you to yell at me later, not now.”
Diego grimaced. “Spill.”
“I put a tracker in Lindsey’s jacket.”
She held back a flinch as she waited for his response. To his credit, he didn’t say anything, but his eyes got wide and then his face settled into a scowl. She started talking quickly to ward off his anger. “I’ll explain why I did it later, but right now it’s the best chance we have of finding her.” She pulled out her phone and opened the GPS app tied to the device she’d attached to Lindsey’s jacket when she’d arrived at the event. “They have about a fifteen-minute head start and they’re headed north on I-35. I know an agent who’s working on a case in that part of town.” She waited for his response, but she wouldn’t wait long.
“Go, but keep your phone line open. I’m going to notify SRT that we have a situation and have them contact you for details. Do not, I repeat, do not approach on your own. You do and I’ll be more than pissed. You’ll be out of a job. Understood?”
She didn’t answer because she was already on the move. Lindsey was in danger, and Dale didn’t give a damn about anything else.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Dale sped down the highway, her eyes moving between the road and the red dot on her phone that she held tightly pressed against the steering wheel. Not wanting to risk a second away from the screen that was tracking Lindsey’s movements, she used voice commands to dial Mary’s number.
The phone rang four times and she was about to disconnect when Mary’s voice came through the line. “Hey, Nelson, miss me?”
Dale didn’t waste a second. “Where are you right this minute?”
“Headed to the Circle Six. Peyton’s right behind me.” Mary’s tone was serious now, like she could tell something was up.
“I need you to take a detour. I’m on I-35. I just drove past the Corinth exit. Can you get to me quick?”
“Absolutely. We’re just north of there, on the service road near Lake Dallas. Tell me what you need.”
Dale did a quick mental calculation and changed her mind. “Change of plans. Stay put and I’ll be right there.” She clicked off the line and stepped hard on the gas. At ninety miles an hour, she was flying by the other vehicles on the road, and she’d already decided if a state trooper lit up near her she was going to fly on by. She might get to Lindsey faster if she had a lights and sirens escort.
Lindsey. Just a few hours ago, she couldn’t wait to be rid of her and now she was racing to her rescue. Who had taken her and why? She had a ton of questions, but the logistics and purpose behind Lindsey’s abduction weren’t at the forefront. If she was being honest, the biggest question was why the news of Lindsey’s abduction sent her reeling. From the moment she’d learned Lindsey had been taken, she knew without a doubt she would do everything in her power to find and protect her, and she also knew the compulsion was more than duty, it was…
She hit the steering wheel with her palm. Dammit. She wasn’t ready to put a name to her feelings. She might never be. The best thing she could do right now was ignore emotion and focus on coming up with a plan before the red dot on her phone stopped moving.
The sign for Lake Dallas came into view, and she roared across three lanes of traffic to make the exit. As she merged onto the service road, she saw Mary and Peyton standing behind Mary’s Jeep at the gas station on the corner. Mary had a large canvas bag labeled ATF on her shoulder.
Dale swerved into the parking lot, stopped directly behind them, and lowered her window. “Get in!”
They’d barely shut the doors before she took off again. She handed her phone to Mary. “Watch that red dot and tell me where it goes. Lindsey Ryan was abducted by at least two armed guys. They shoved her into the back of a dark blue van and that red dot is going to lead us to them.”
“On it,” Mary said. “How did we manage to get tracking on them?”
“I planted a tracker on Lindsey at the event today. I figured it was time she got a taste of her own medicine.” Dale looked back at Peyton. “Don’t start with the lectures about warrants and shit. She and her camera crew were staking out your ranch earlier in the week, and she showed up at Sophia’s this morning. I don’t know what she’s up to, but she obviously wasn’t going to stop, so we had to have a way to keep an eye on her.”
“So you decided to take off after these armed men all on your own?”
Peyton sounded incredulous, but Dale ignored the question. There was only one explanation for her reckless behavior, but talking about it would be a waste of energy. Peyton’s question did remind her about something else though. “Mary, will you call Diego? He’s supposed to have SRT get in contact with me, and I want to keep my phone free if I can. Give him your number and they can get in touch with you.”
Dale listened to the one-sided conversation while Mary described where they were and told Diego that based on the map, they were about fifteen minutes behind the van. What followed next were a few “okays” and “uh-huhs” and she was about to tell Mary how to transmit the information on her phone about Lindsey’s location to the special response team, when Mary exclaimed “two hours?”
“Put the phone on speaker,” Dale said, resisting the urge to grab it out of Mary’s hand. When she heard Diego’s voice, she practically yelled. “Are you saying you can’t get SRT scrambled for two hours?”
“We’ve got a team in cars headed your way now, but the chopper is grounded. We’ve got one on the way from DPD SWAT, but it’s going to take a little time to get it outfitted.”
“Not acceptable.”
“Dale, I’m doing the best I can. Just hang tight. You promised you wouldn’t go in on your own.”
Mary waved her hand and pointed at Dale’s phone. She held it up and Dale saw that the red dot had moved to the right. It was off the highway now, and turning right. Dale whispered, “Find me the exit.” And then louder, “Diego, gotta go. They just turned off the highway.”
Before she hung up, she heard him say again, “Remember, you promised.”
He needn’t have worried. She glanced at Mary and Peyton. She’d keep her promise—she wasn’t going in alone.
*
Nothing she said the entire drive elicited a response, and Lindsey was beginning to wonder if there was a point in continuing to try. As far as she could tell, they’d been driving at a pretty steady clip in a straight line for a long time, but they’d just slowed down and made a right turn. If she had to guess, she’d say they’d been on the highway. Resigned to silence, she was left with just her thoughts.
Elaina was probably having an aneurism right about now. Hopefully, Carolina and Emilio had made it safely back to the crowd at the event and were able to relay what had happened. If not, and Elaina and the rest of her crew were in the dark, Elaina probably thought she’d gotten tired of doing the network’s bidding and had bailed on the interview with Dale.
Which led her to wonder what Dale was thinkin
g. Had she stuck around, ready to answer questions or had she left the event and written this entire episode off to a bad day at the office? She had no doubt Dale resented the intrusion into her life, but she’d been intrigued too. She’d known it for a fact at dinner last night until something caused her to do a one-eighty.
There was a good chance she’d probably never see Dale again even if she survived this episode of her life, but on the off chance she came out of this unscathed, she started a mental bucket list—an exercise she’d always considered a bit silly because if a person wanted to do something, they should just do it and not wait until they were at the end of life to check things off the list. She’d climbed mountains, jumped out of planes, traveled the world, learned new languages, and gotten paid handsomely for the privilege. Other people’s bucket lists would pale in comparison to the things she’d experienced as a matter of course, but she couldn’t help but feel empty because she’d had no one to share her life.
Even with Elaina, all the fulfilling moments she’d had had been alone. They hadn’t shared the same interests, the same passions. They’d simply mistaken the intersection of their careers as a reason to couple up, and they’d been at odds from the start. Elaina had never understood Lindsey’s unwillingness to compromise her work for what the network deemed palatable, and Lindsey would never concede that compromise was a necessary evil.
Of course, she’d compromised when she’d taken this particular assignment. She was only here, in Dallas and in this van, because she’d thrown a bone to the network in exchange for having control over the type of news she wanted to cover. How poetic that her first compromise might be her last.
The van jerked right again, and she braced against the side of the cage to keep from sliding. They were no longer on a paved road, and she felt every bump and bounce of the uneven terrain. She had a feeling they were nearing their destination, wherever that might be. Now was the time to add something new, something meaningful to the bucket list, but her mind was paralyzed with dread at what might happen next, and she couldn’t manage to put words to her dreams.
