by R. T. Wolfe
Nickie hadn't realized there was such a thing and assumed she was at the top of that list a number of times in the Maryland system.
"I took in a child or siblings once or twice a year, usually for a day or a few days." The memories seemed to make her shake her head. "It was very sad. Then, a man came to visit me. I'd always had a phone call before, but this man had... what do you call it?"
"Credentials?"
"Yes, that is it. I let him in."
The hairs on the back of Nickie's neck woke and prickled.
"We had a short talk, me and this man. He emphasized the need but didn't share the emergency. The next day, a woman brought you to me. You were a dirty, skinny white girl. You slept in her car for over an hour in my drive. The woman said your emergency had kept you up through the night and that we should let you rest."
Gloria took a drink, and her eyes told Nickie she wasn't here, but back in time over a decade ago.
"You were such an angry child, pushing me, threatening to leave and oh, the language." She covered Nickie's hand with hers. It was warmer yet from her mug of coffee.
"But your eyes were tortured, tortured and wanting. You wanted to live here. You just had no idea how to do it. I have enough of my own children to know patience, and so patience is what I offered. One day you came to me. Do you remember that day?"
She did.
"You stepped next to me at the sink and said you were sorry. Not for anything in particular, but you apologized. Then—"
"I picked up a damp dish towel and starting drying dishes. We never spoke of it again."
"There was nothing more to say." She took a sip and her brows furled. "You never spoke of your home in Maryland or anywhere. Mr. Li called—"
"Mr. Li?" Sweat formed instantly, misting her upper lip. She gripped the untouched mug of tea and let the heat burn her hands.
"The man who came to me. He called once a week at first, explaining there was no other placement and asking if I would keep you a while longer. Then, the calls changed to once a month, and by that time, I knew. I knew I would keep you, wanted to keep you, as long as they would let me. The last six months of your stay, I received no phone calls."
Painfully, Nickie lifted the corner of the file folder, bypassing the picture of Thurmond Moody and William Tanner as she had planned and slid out her best close up of Jun Zheng.
Gloria sighed heavily, the corners of her mouth turned down. "That is him."
Nickie's mind spun with dozens of realizations and connections. It terrified her and angered her. For him to have come here. To bring Gloria and her family into this...
Zheng was going to pay.
"I knew this day would come," Gloria said again before she calmly took a sip. "I expected it before now."
"I don't understand."
"It was shortly after your eighteenth birthday. You were in college. You started talking about Maryland... never New York. I thought that maybe your birth family had moved to New York. I never pried into the lives of any of the children I served, asking them about their past. This was to be a refuge. But I had my suspicions. Then, one day I called and discovered there was no Jimmy Li who ever worked at child services. That was the day I signed up for shooting lessons."
Nickie nearly choked on nothing. "Gun shooting lessons?"
"Of course. What other kind is there?"
"Do you own a gun?"
"Two guns. One I keep in the cabinet over the sink next to my cookbooks and one I keep locked in the nightstand next to my bed."
Nickie took a sip of the tea. She hated tea but she had to do something with her hands. "I know who this man is, Gloria."
"I thought you brought me his picture for a reason."
"He's a bad man."
"I thought that too. He hid you in my home."
"I have something I need to tell you, something I haven't told anyone before. Except Duncan."
Gloria turned her chair to face her, and placed both her hands on Nickie's cheeks. "It's time, my Nickie. I always knew."
"How—?"
"The dreams. The horrible dreams that made you cry and thrash. I never woke you. Your mind would bring you to this when you were ready. You don't have to tell me if you—"
"I want to."
Gloria's warm smile soothed her. She told her of her abduction, her time in captivity, her escape and waking in the cold car as it sat on Gloria's drive. Nickie left out nearly every violent detail, but the tears still flowed freely down Gloria's face. "This is the man, Gloria. This is the man who kept me. I don't remember if he was the one who took me, but he is the one responsible for my scars. That, I haven't told Duncan."
* * *
Nickie's eyes were watering again as she pulled away from Gloria's drive and headed for the station. Damned cold weather. A new sense of determination followed the foreign stir of the need to protect someone she loved.
The drive was short, but it gave her enough time to sort through this new sensation. For most of her life, she had a need to protect strangers—the girls with her in captivity, victims of the crimes she investigated—but this was family and the rage was blinding.
She parked in her spot in the gravel lot she preferred and took the stairs, welcoming the endorphins produced from the climb. Nodding greetings to the desk clerks in the common area, she stopped when she reached her office. Without turning on the light, she hung up her coat and headed for Eddy's office.
He was there, beating furiously on his keyboard. Lifting his eyes, he froze expectantly when she stood without speaking. Right, right, right. She hadn't come to his office in weeks without barking that the captain needed to see them, or about a lead she had or a question, but he didn't need to make a thing about it.
"You coming in?"
"Sure." She plopped down in his chair and looked around. It was the first time she'd ever really done so. What a big place compared to her office. She'd been offered this space when Tanner went to prison. She turned it down. His chairs were even better, newer and with cushions.
She turned up her eyes to see him leaning back in his chair, staring.
"So, what are you working on?"
"What am I working on." He said it as a statement.
"Yeah. I hear beat patrol had a call about a shooting. Could be we're outta here soon."
He seemed to warm to the idea of her making a random visit and folded his hands over his lap. What he didn't know was that she was simply avoiding her laptop.
"Is this your way of saying you're sorry?"
For what? No. "It could be my way of saying let's let bygones be bygones and get on with working together. We're a good team."
He smiled. "True."
She stood as he squinted his eyes. "I'm going to hit the paperwork. Let me know if you get that call."
She was acting like an idiot. Stomping to her office, she flicked on her light. She considered picking up the place. It was a disaster, then realized that was lame. Reminding herself of her new determination, she plopped down in her desk chair and booted up her laptop. Ignoring her shaking hands, she entered two words into her search engine she had never entered before, 'Nicole Monticello.'
Chapter 23
There were two pages of hits during Nickie's missing year and a half. Most missing children had dozens. The earliest links were to English riding competitions and recitals where she was forced to perform. The period after her abduction provided a handful of reports from the media. Prominent Monticello Daughter Missing. She found a single picture of her parents at a press conference. The attached article read how they pleaded for her return. Then, nothing. Nothing for eighteen months.
She found reports of her father's business deals that mentioned the names of his family, ones of his fundraiser gatherings but nothing about her. It wasn't upsetting, and she questioned whether it should be.
The day she was found earned a few hits. There was the picture of her clinging to the police officer standing next to her, her parents on her other side. She hadn't no
ticed Zheng standing by the car at the time and somehow realized it was useless to kick herself about that now.
It brought back the memories of her few short months at her parents' home after her return. She had always considered their actions as embarrassed, but it was more than that. Turning away from the image on her monitor, she stared at nothing and realized their actions were those of frustration and anger. It made sense, she shrugged. A Maryland Monticello wouldn't want a daughter who had done what she did to survive.
And there it was.
A press release announced a runaway. Nicole Monticello. Except it wasn't from when she was fourteen and taken from her bedroom. It was when she was sixteen and had already been through several foster homes. Suspected runaway, it read. She must not have earned milk-carton status. It was right before she landed on Gloria's doorstep.
Zheng had been keeping tabs on her all this time.
* * *
"The Audi would have gotten better gas mileage," Duncan whined as he rode shotgun in his brother's Jeep.
"I doubt that," Andy responded. "Although our chances of staying out of a ditch have increased exponentially."
It was cold inside no matter how high they cranked the heater. The Jeep bumped down the highway enough to keep Duncan from checking his appointments on his tablet. Andy always insisted on traveling out of town when they did their more intensive hacking. Today it was an upscale coffee shop in Rochester. And the hacking would be one of their most difficult.
They'd hacked into school systems, police departments, overseas bank accounts, the damned FBI and even the government of Nicaragua. The recent hype surrounding the U.S. hacking into its citizens' personal information should make Duncan wary of what they were about to do. Should was the operative word.
He knew better than to allow himself to become overly confident, but the facts were that between his eidetic memory and Andy's talent for constructing safe pathways, they had a full-proof system. Still, Andy insisted on jumping around from free Wi-Fi spots in addition to chasing an electronic trail through several states before they got started.
They pulled into a spot beneath a wrought iron lamppost. The place was in an upscale strip mall, the walks shellacked aggregate stone. Back-to-back security cameras stood at the corners of the buildings on the outside, but inside the coffee shop there were none.
The place must have been shooting for cozy because half was lit with natural sunlight from floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and the other dimly lit booths and cushioned seats at small tables. Hazy lights hung low over hardwood tables. They chose one that was away from the front windows and booted up both their laptops and tablets. It was Nickie's lost file they were searching for today.
Although Duncan would tap into his constant feed linked to the bugs at Moody's white house, he had done a shallow search for the missing file already. It had been part of the official Baltimore, Maryland, police report. The details regarding Nickie's missing persons report were there, the parts about the pitiful search, her parents admitting they thought she had run away and all the information regarding her return. The piece missing was the forefront of the reports, the part that would come chronologically before the rest.
Duncan assumed what was missing. There was nothing to be found regarding the crime scene of the night Nickie was abducted. But he could see it, an empty space like a bottle of shampoo that had been taken from a perfect row displayed on a drugstore shelf. Something had been deleted.
But everyone knew nothing was ever permanently deleted. It would be difficult to find something this old. The rush of such a challenge generally excited him. This was different. It wasn't an excitement but more of a determination. Nickie had given him the green light to find it, and he was obsessively determined to do exactly that.
They went at it from every angle. Department historical files, the personal system of every police officer involved. He was going to owe his brother big for this. Andy had his business to run. He elbowed Duncan soundly in the ribs.
"I think I have a name. A name or a business. Look." Duncan craned his neck, checking out what Andy referred to. He tried to remain cautious, not up for another letdown. Andy found copies of old microfiche files. The one they were searching for was still missing, but the copies of the subsequent entries were all labeled with the name L. Schuster.
They turned their search to anyone with that name in a sixty-mile radius of Baltimore. There was only one L. Schuster in the area. He turned out to be a Larry Schuster who had worked as a second grade teacher for the local public school system for the last twenty-five years. They moved their search to fifteen years prior.
That brought up a Leslie Schuster, who, at that time, worked for a company called IEM Import and Export Moving Services. She'd changed her name back to her maiden name of Jacobsen five years ago and still lived in Baltimore, working for the company.
IEM. Why did that ring a bell?
His heart rate took a jump as he and Andy turned to each other. Both had caught the possibility. They hacked both her personal and work addresses and phone numbers, then did a thorough background check.
Single, lived alone in a highly upscale apartment condo. Work title was executive assistant, latest term for secretary. They hacked into her credit cards and found she liked to travel. Maui, Alaskan cruise, three weeks in Ireland. Plane tickets said she was leaving in four days for a two-week trip to San Juan.
"I won't ask you to come with me," Duncan whispered.
Andy seemed irritated. "I want to. I feel invested."
"I thought you would. You've done enough, though. See if Rose and the baby are up for dinner at my place. I'd like to repay you for your time."
"I'll take you up on the dinner invite, but you've taken your share of time with me, brother. No need for paybacks. We don't work that way."
* * *
Duncan stood with his feet apart, left arm outstretched. He focused down the sight of his Beretta and gently squeezed the trigger with his right forefinger once, twice, three times. The headphones helped, but his mind itched to take him back to the desert. Back to a time when he never knew if the sound of gunfire would be the last thing he heard.
He was an excellent shot. If not, he would be dead by now. Explosives experts were put on the front line. He'd signed up for service after college, which was backward to everyone else in his platoon. He did it because he had needed to do something with this memory he was given, something more than paint pictures for people who didn't need them.
Nickie stood next to him, shooting rounds from her Smith & Wesson. Shooting off one after another, she emptied her magazine, dropped it to the floor, reloaded and shot three more bullets in seconds. Semiautomatic carried a negative connotation. Nearly ninety percent of guns were semiautomatic, but that term didn't mean rapid fire. That is, unless you had a fast enough trigger finger.
She stopped and turned, the corners of her lips lifting when she caught his glance. Pulling off her hearing protection, she strolled to him where he took a break and leaned against the back wall of the shooting range.
They were the only ones there at this time of the afternoon. Business would pick up toward the evening hours.
She moved her eyes from her target to his before she commented, "Nice shooting, civilian."
He didn't leave his position against the wall, arms crossed with one ankle resting over the other. Tilting his head, he judged the two targets. They weren't bull's-eyes this time but silhouettes of people. Her aim was markedly better than his. Shrugging, he pushed from the wall and reloaded but didn't replace his headphones.
"I have a lead." She would know what he meant. He knew he needed to tell her. He'd learned that lesson well enough. But he did his best to brush it by her casually. Still, he sensed her tensing and waiting impatiently for him to continue.
"It may be a wash, but I'm flying out to Baltimore in the morning to look up a person whose name may or may not be attached to your missing file."
"No file, though?" She d
idn't sound hopeful.
He shook his head as he checked the safety on his gun. "I didn't just come for shooting practice. I came to invite you to come with me." He lifted a brow and cocked his head.
"I didn't think you were here by coincidence, and I can't make it. I have a meeting with the feds. They want to know about my little one-on-one with Tanner. After all, they were the ones who granted his isolation. I discovered two boxing matches this month that may likely have an entertainment schedule."
He turned to face her fully, leaning a hip against the low wall separating them from the shooting area. "Tell me."
She slid her gun into her holster. "One next weekend at Madison Square Garden, and the next at Broadway Boxing. The feds mentioned Madison Square before, but I can't imagine taking the girls there when Moody's place is so close. I need to tell them this, make sure they let me in."
She meant only her. He wouldn't be allowed to take any part this time. Why hadn't he realized that before? Keeping his face relaxed would have been a lot easier if he'd had some warning.
"Moody has cameras in each room. I didn't tell you before."
There was a lot she had yet to share with him, he knew.
"I think he records the johns, probably for blackmail. Or possibly as insurance. Who knows? And maybe he doesn't anymore. Fifteen years is a long time." She wandered off subject, staring blankly over his shoulder. He didn't want to consider where her mind was going. "Regardless, that fact alone is enough to lean toward him bringing them to his white house."
"Will you share this with Strong and Lewis?"
"The cameras? No. I know they know of my past, but I'm not ready to have the show and share that I was in that house."
He slipped his gun into the back of his belt and stepped to her. "So, tomorrow is booked, next weekend is booked, as is the next. How about dinner with my brother and Rose at my place this weekend?" He traced the backs of his fingers along the side of her face.
"Dinner? I don't cook. I grill. I can grill."
