Deadly Ties

by Vicki Hinze

  Call waiting signaled. Karl checked his watch. Seven o’clock. Oh, man. Frank checking in and Karl was late getting specifics back to him. “Follow orders.”

  “Where do you want me to go?”

  That attitude was more like it. “Anywhere but the village. Wait. Meet me in Opp, Alabama. Usual place.”

  Without waiting for Dutch’s response, Karl took the incoming call. It was Raven. He passed along Dutch’s million-dollar offer on Taylor.

  “Tell him to wire the funds,” Raven said.

  “Do I need to stay close pending incoming orders?”

  “Continue your scheduled activities. If your orders change, you’ll be notified.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  She briefed him on another matter, then abruptly ended the call. “Raven out.”

  Karl dragged in a steadying breath and then phoned Frank. “How’s it going?”

  “Routine. Just need directions.”

  Karl gave them to him, sending Frank to a convenience store on the south side of Jackson.

  “I passed that location fifteen minutes ago.”

  “I got hung up. At the moment, things are not so routine on this end.” Karl pulled into a drive-through coffee shop and ordered a large leaded coffee, then pulled halfway around to the window and stopped. “The boss just called. Someone from Seagrove Village PD just called Orlando PD asking for info on Charles Harper’s case.”

  “I see.”

  A swallow of hot coffee burned all the way down Karl’s throat. “Any evidence the doc has remembered anything?” Frank would know he meant Lisa; he’d rather not use her name.

  “None. I flashed my web. She didn’t react to it.”

  “Push a little harder. Test her.”

  “How? You said hands off on this whole shipment unless extreme measures were required. Now it’s beat it out of her?”

  “No, that won’t net the information we want.” She might just take Frank in hand-to-hand combat. He had weight, reach, and brute strength, but she was light-years ahead of him in skill, technique, and discipline—and she had the most to lose. “Just watch her for any reaction.”

  “To what?”

  “Call her a shrub.”

  Lisa sat quietly in the back end of the truck. Gwen and Selene were sleeping. Soon they’d be stopping again, and this time, she had to be ready.

  Images filled her mind. Her tied up in the back of the Spider’s van, working loose the duct tape binding her arms and then working on that securing her ankles. She left it in place so the Spider couldn’t tell.

  He stopped and turned a hard glare on her from the driver’s seat. “You stay put, you hear me?”

  On her side on the floor, Lisa bobbed her head, her heart threatening to punch through her chest wall.

  His door cracked open. He got out and she stretched up to see him enter a store.

  She ducked down low and stole some of his drinking water and splashed it on her face, then rolled backward so he wouldn’t realize she’d moved, getting into place just as he opened the van’s back door.

  “You’re sweating like a pig.” He ripped the duct tape off her mouth.

  It tore at her skin and her face burned like fire. “I’m sick.”

  “It’s hot out here.”

  “I—I get sick when I get hot. My mom takes me to the hospital for medicine.”

  His eyes stretched wide. “Stay here.”

  That was a silly order for someone tied up.

  He went back into the store. She watched from the back window, and as soon as the door closed behind him, she yanked at the loose tape, scrambled to the driver’s seat, and slipped out the door. Her bare feet burned on the hot pavement. She bit back a squeal, praying he didn’t see her, and ran like the wind straight across the street and into a dress shop.

  A gray-haired woman behind the counter saw the dangling tape at her mouth, wrists, and ankles, and her jaw fell open. She rushed over. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

  “No. The man took me. Call my mom. I want my mom!”

  “I’ll call the police.”

  “No, he’s coming. He’s coming! I have to hide!” Frantic, she searched and saw a hole under the counter, then scrambled into it and pulled a curtain at one end shut. Squeezing her eyes shut, she begged. Please, please don’t let him find me. Please don’t let him find me. Please.

  “Stay put. No matter what.” The lady locked the door.

  Lisa heard the click, then thudding. The man beating on the door. Would he knock it down too?

  The lady hollered at him through the glass. “Sorry, we don’t open until ten.”

  “My daughter is missing! Did she come here?”

  I’m not his daughter. Don’t listen. Please, don’t listen to him. Lisa opened the curtain and crawled out so she could see the lady. Shaking and shivering, she held her breath. Don’t let him break the glass. Make him too weak.

  “I said my daughter is missing. Have you seen her?”

  The lady didn’t even glance Lisa’s way. “No, but I’ll phone the police right away.” She grabbed the phone, dialed, and put it to her ear.

  He hesitated, then shouted his thanks and ran off. Lisa bobbed up, saw him run to the van, hop in, and take off. His tires churned smoke and squealed on the pavement.

  The lady watched to make sure he was really gone, and then she came back to Lisa. “You get down low and out of sight, you hear me? He could come back.”

  Lisa dropped down, curled her knees to her chest, and crunched into a ball, then held on as tightly as she could and tried not to move, not to breathe too deep. Maybe if she got little enough and stayed still enough, then no one would be able to see her. She could just be … invisible, and her daddy would be fine, and everything would be right again.

  Invisible. It never happened. None of it ever happened. Daddy’s busy at work. He’s always busy at work. It never happened. There was no trip to Disney, no motel with the big hat, no barrette, no … nothing.

  There was nothing.

  The box truck stopped short.

  Jerked from her memories, Lisa braced herself with a hand to its side and another to the wooden truck bed. Gwen and Selene startled awake.

  “What’s going on?” Selene’s voice trembled.

  Gwen turned on her flashlight, checked her watch. “It’s only seven o’clock. It’s too soon to stop again.”

  “Maybe we’ve arrived at wherever they’re taking us.” Selene sounded as worried as Lisa felt about that.

  “We might not have much time. Listen to me,” Lisa said. “Next time they take us inside—”

  The lock clicked.

  Juan swung open the door, and Frank hurled a woman inside.

  Her wrists were bound behind her back. Her ankles were banded together, she wore a metal cuff, and black tape slashed an X across her mouth.

  She landed with a dull thump and rolled in deeper, colliding with Lisa.

  This time, they wouldn’t be going inside.

  “How’s Annie?”

  Standing with Jeff and Joe in the ICU consult office, Mark turned at the sound of Ben Brandt’s voice. “No change. We thought she might be coming around, but Rose said it was involuntary twitching.”

  Mark glanced out the window on the far side of the room. Dawn had passed, morning had arrived, and gratitude that Annie was alive tangled with his fear and worry about Lisa. “She survived the night. Rose says that’s a good sign. More stable but still critical.”

  “She’s fighting and that’s good,” Ben said. “Anything new on Lisa?”

  “Jeff and Joe were about to brief me.” Mark focused on Jeff.

  “I’ve been on the phone with half the county down in Orlando,” he said. “Lisa’s father was murdered in a motel room down there when Lisa was seven. But she wasn’t on scene or mentioned in any of the reports.”

  Mark didn’t understand. “But Susan said Lisa was there.”

  “And I’m sure she was or Annie wouldn’t be worried about h
er remembering the incident. But Lisa doesn’t appear on any of the paperwork. None of it, Mark.”

  He frowned, sensing plenty was being left unsaid. “That’s on the record. Off the record, what’s their explanation for that?”

  “Unofficially, the detective who reviewed the case file picked up on some odd notes. The bottom line is he suspects the records were recently sanitized.” Jeff lowered his voice, dragged a hand over his neck. “I’ve been thinking about it. Seems logical that before hooking up with NINA, the criminal element expunged anything on Lisa.”

  “Why do you think so?” Joe folded a fresh piece of gum into his mouth.

  “They sure wouldn’t want any ties to that incident. It could botch their merger.” Jeff shrugged. “That’s my suspicion, anyway. But the detective came up with an explanation I can’t rule out.”

  Mark prodded. “What’s that?”

  “The Orlando police expunged Lisa’s records for her own protection.”

  Surprise streaked through Mark. “Legally expunged her?”

  “No.” Jeff looked him straight in the eye. “Not legally.”

  “Mmm.” Joe seemed skeptical. “Tampering with official documents? They’d have to have a good reason to take that on.”

  “Maybe they were afraid she’d be hunted down. She did escape from her kidnappers.” Jeff shook his head. “I’ve been at this awhile, and I read people pretty well. He has a reason for thinking the records were altered. What his reason is, I don’t know and I’m not sure it matters. I’d put my money on the crooks’ making sure they didn’t mess up their merger with NINA. They had to know if the merger failed, NINA would wipe them out. What I’m clear on is that the detective was more afraid of NINA than of exposing anything to us.”

  “Too scared of retribution to talk openly?”

  Jeff nodded. “I’m surprised he told me as much as he did.”

  “It fits, bro.” Joe pulled Mark out of the room and whispered, “Feedback from my sources is loaded. Heavy chatter, some confirmed.”

  “On what specifically?”

  “NINA’s formed strategic business alliances with most of the major players here, in Europe, and in Mexico. The Orlando cop’s smart to be scared.”

  NINA chatter was never good news. It was a matter of whether their operations were really bad or internationally lethal. “What kind of alliances?”

  “Mostly the trafficking kind.”

  Which would give weight to Jeff’s supposition about NINA’s potential partners’ removing Lisa from the record to protect its merger. “Drugs?”

  “Worse.” Fury burned in Joe’s eyes. “Humans. Best our sources can tell, it’s relatively new to NINA. Two, maybe three years. But the Orlando thugs have been at it for a long time. They’d target victims who had no families or whose families lacked the resources to fund a search and kick up a media fuss. HQ fears the NINA connection’s changed that. Women and kids, bro.”

  “No.” Lisa’s first abduction. The cheap motel where Charles had been murdered and she’d been kidnapped. Mark’s stomach roiled. His Lisa caught up in that then and again now? “No.”

  “There’s more.”

  “More?” Mark could barely absorb what he’d already heard.

  Joe nodded. “Let’s share the rest with the others.”

  They walked back into the consult office. Jeff stood arms folded over his chest. “Sorry,” Joe said.

  “No need.” Ben shot Jeff a loaded look.

  Jeff sighed. “Tell me what you can.”

  “Masson is directly involved.” Joe hiked a hip onto the corner of the desk. “They’re abducting women for two reasons. The first is obvious and one we’re all too familiar with.” He turned his focus to Mark. “The second reason might be worse.”

  Mark grunted. Selling human beings into prostitution. How could anything be worse?

  “Selected women are abducted and auctioned as fighters. To live, they have to fight other women to the death.”

  The video clip of the murdered FBI agent from Omega One—he’d sent it to warn Mark that they were connected. “You think Lisa was handpicked and abducted because she’s strong in self-defense?”

  “NINA has a big political agenda. To fund it, they need a lot of money. Human trafficking for various purposes is more lucrative than drugs.”

  Skills learned and practiced to protect Lisa were to blame for her abduction? It was too sick to wrap his mind around.

  “I don’t know anything for a fact about Lisa, bro. Just that this is going on, and the clips … She could be in even worse jeopardy than we first thought.”

  He was right. Revulsion swamped Mark.

  “She won’t do it.” Ben slumped, stuffed a hand in his pocket. “She won’t fight to kill.”

  “To stay alive, she might.” Jeff turned to Mark. “You know her best. What do you think?”

  “It’s against everything she believes in.” It was a total violation of her faith, morals, ethics, and Hippocratic oath—which is probably why Dutch did it. What would she do?

  Fumes-of-faith Christian. Physician.

  Would she survive or choose to die?

  18

  T iming is everything.

  And right now, the timing was wrong to get rid of Kelly Walker.

  Karl didn’t like it. But he hadn’t survived and avoided prison his entire career by being stupid.

  With minimal muttering, he made a U-turn on Highway 85 south of Crestview and headed north to cross the state line. Highway 9 took him through Florala to Opp, Alabama, and from there, he went north to Frank Jackson State Park where he’d previously parked his RV near the lake.

  When Karl arrived, Dutch’s car was parked by Karl’s RV, and Dutch was sitting in a folding chair beneath a sprawling oak.

  Karl pulled into his camping site and glanced down at a white plastic bag on the floorboard. He checked his pocket for the device that had been in the bag, and then parked so he’d have the privacy he needed to do what he wanted done.

  The sun was bright and hot. Man, he hated the South. Barely eight o’clock in the morning and it was scorching hot and muggy. In January, no less. Didn’t this armpit of the earth ever cool down?

  He left his car and paused behind Hauk’s, planted the device under his bumper, then walked on out into the open where Hauk could see him.

  Hauk tipped a can of beer at his mouth. Drinking before noon? Karl frowned. How Annie put up with the lump of human waste was a mystery. It had to be hard, going from her life with Charles Harper to one with this sorry excuse for a human being. She was so like Angel, and there was no way she would have put up with him. “Surprised you’re already here.”

  Hauk took a long swig. Burped. “Yeah, well, I was headed toward New Orleans, so it was an easy shot.”

  “New Orleans?”

  Hauk’s lids lowered, guarding his eyes. “You said anywhere but the village. Figured I’d run down to the Quarter and see what was up.”

  NINA had active interests in New Orleans that didn’t involve Dutch Hauk. Was he trying to insert himself deeper into the organization, or had he just blindly bumbled into NINA’s way?

  Hauk emptied his can, crushed it with his foot, then tossed it into a small white ice chest beside his chair and pulled out a fresh one. He tugged with his finger and popped the top. His eyes were bloodshot and droopy, his jaw lax. “You handle the Taylor hit?”

  “I told you to wire the funds.”

  “I did. A million, just like I said.” He waved a hand. “Better call her and get the code.”

  “Got it. Just waiting for the green light.” Karl had no code, but there was no way he was calling Raven. She’d been clear. If his orders changed, she’d let him know.

  “There’s plenty of time. Word at Ruby’s is Taylor’s staying put at the hospital. He thinks Lisa will contact him there.” Dutch chortled and squinted against the sun. “How’s Annie?”

  The idiot was half snockered already. “How should I know?” Karl retrieved a seco
nd chair from his RV and sat near Dutch. “My work with her ended on Highway 98.”

  “I can’t call the hospital. Not with the restraining order out on me. They won’t tell me anything.”

  Was the guy a hypocrite or just nuts? He pays to put her in the hospital or morgue and then acts all upset because she’s there? Still, he was the million-dollar client, and at least for the moment, placating him and issuing orders was Karl’s best bet for keeping him out of the way and too busy to cause trouble. “She’s still in a coma.”

  “What about Lisa?”

  “In tow.” Karl got a bottle of water out of his RV fridge, returned to his chair, then unscrewed the cap and fed his curiosity. “You were with Lisa a long time.” With her or tormenting her from a distance. “Did you see any evidence that she remembered the incident?”

  “You mean the hit on Charles?”

  Karl would rather not have used his name, but Charles’s murder was exactly what Karl meant. He wished he’d gotten here first. He’d have swept the site to make sure Hauk wasn’t wired. If he thought it would benefit him to turn on Karl, he would. The idiot would turn on NINA. Karl nodded.

  “None.” Hauk set his can into a net holder built into the arm of the chair. “Why?”

  “Just wondered.” Frank was putting her to the test. A fissure of uneasiness opened inside Karl. What if she recalled the word shrub? Karl hadn’t wanted to risk doing anything to trigger her memory, but he had no choice. There was a chance going in that the abduction itself could do that, but if she recalled the hit on her father, then both she and Kelly Walker could tag Karl for two different crimes. The special risks involved were the reason he’d subcontracted two operatives through his New Orleans contact to come in as Edmunds and Powell. As much as Karl hated adding additional links to a mission, he couldn’t have risked snatching Lisa Harper himself.

  The minute Dutch had come to NINA with the contract on Lisa that included using Annie to get to Lisa, Karl had gotten a bad feeling. He’d suggested refusing the contract, but Dutch offered big money and Raven moved forward on it. Karl had done little but worry ever since. He hated worrying, but things were working out. Frank would stop shortly and call her a shrub. And her reaction would determine whether she’d make it to her final destination.