Operation Unleashed

by Justine Davis

  “It wasn’t your fault, Cutter,” Alyssa said gently, patting the dog. “You weren’t even there.”

  Drew felt his heart lurch, that even now she felt concern for another creature. But one of the many things Alyssa had in abundance was empathy. Maybe that’s what had gotten her into that mess, back in the day, if Doug truly had been struggling against comparisons to his big brother. He didn’t want to think that, didn’t want to have to deal with the responsibility that came with it, didn’t have time to deal with it right now.

  Later, he told himself, even as he cringed inwardly at how many times, in how many situations, he’d used that word to put things off. He would never allow that in his business, yet in his personal life it seemed to have become a mantra. Later, always later. Don’t talk about Doug now. Don’t rock the boat now. Don’t ask for more now.

  He gave a sharp shake of his head as Hayley responded to Alyssa’s words. “He still feels badly. He knows something’s wrong, and that we’re all upset.”

  “He keeps looking at us,” Drew said as they settled into chairs in the meeting room.

  “It’s like he knows Luke’s missing,” Alyssa said, her voice breaking on her son’s name.

  “He knows who’s not here,” Hayley said gently. “He’s a very smart dog. To him, his job—besides finding work for us—is to take care of us. And right now that us includes you. Especially Luke. He started this whole thing because of Luke, and he won’t be happy again until he’s back.”

  “And he will be back,” Quinn said firmly as he picked up a small remote on the table and aimed it at a flat screen on the wall. Drew had noticed it there before, but wondered why on earth Quinn would be turning a television on now.

  As if he’d sensed the question, Quinn looked back over his shoulder. “We just got this hooked up to our network system, so we can talk to Tyler in St. Louis on something bigger than a laptop screen.”

  “You think he’ll have something already?” Alyssa asked.

  “Or nothing,” Quinn said. “Either of which will tell us something.”

  The image came on of a young man who looked barely old enough to be out of school—thin, wiry, with sandy hair that stood up in a spiky sort of way, either by design or because he ran his hands through it a lot. There was a small upside-down triangle of beard below his lower lip, looking a bit sparse.

  “Tyler, these are the Kileys, Alyssa and Drew,” Hayley said, then gestured at the screen. “This is our resident genius, Tyler Hewitt.”

  The young man grinned, waved, then seemed to suddenly remember why they were here and that good cheer might not be appropriate and abruptly stopped. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Dive in,” Quinn suggested. “Conclusion first, we’re a little antsy here.”

  “Right. The car dropped off somewhere between the last and next to last ferry cam, headed west.”

  Drew let out a breath. “So he wasn’t headed for the ferry?”

  “No,” Hewitt’s voice came back. “And he never showed up in the holding lanes, at least not within the hour after he was on the move again. That’s as far as I’ve had time to check so far.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” Alyssa asked. “It would be harder to find him in Seattle, right?”

  “Much,” Quinn agreed.

  “So if we know he left the highway somewhere between those two cameras, then we have a place to start,” Drew said.

  “Already started,” Quinn answered. “Right, Ty?”

  “Yes, sir. I flashed the data to your comlink the minute I had it, so the guys knew even before you came up on comm here.”

  Drew felt a bit calmer now. Clearly Foxworth was just as efficient as it appeared, and the thought that the three men searching had known where to look even before they did was reassuring.

  “Good job,” Quinn said, and Drew thought he saw the young tech guru fighting a smile. Obviously Quinn’s approval meant a lot to him. “Okay, details? From the beginning.”

  With a quick nod Hewitt began. “The car showed up passing through the first cam at fourteen hundred hours.”

  “That’s an hour and forty-five minutes before school lets out,” Alyssa said.

  The image on the screen suddenly split, and the slightly distorted ferry-cam images popped up on the left. The four scenes were familiar to Drew, since he often checked to see if they needed to leave early for a trip to the other side, or to see the road conditions up on the highway in winter. But while they were familiar, today they weren’t at all comforting.

  “Sorry,” Tyler said as he started the images in a sort of stop-action sequence. “It’s a bit jerky, their shortest refresh time is fifteen seconds. And the cam’s across the street, so it’s not real clear. But you can see here—” he did something on his end and froze an image in the middle frame, then it zoomed to fill the screen “—there’s nothing, and in the next image there’s a vehicle starting to pull over, and in the next he’s on the shoulder, and then he’s in that little clear spot.”

  “Car looks like a match to our witness statements. Can you enhance the image? Enough to see a plate?”

  “Just sent you a copy of the clearest I can get it. At least the letters match. But the lighting’s not the best there, with the big trees and all, so it’s hard to be sure on color. Looks silver, though. Can’t see the driver at all, first the reflection then the shadows.”

  “That has to be it.” Drew stared at the screen, at that last frozen image and what he could see of the back of what appeared to be a small, nondescript, four-door sedan.

  “Agreed. What about the next image?” Quinn asked.

  “You can’t see a thing,” Tyler said, “between the trees, the shade and the angle, you wouldn’t even know a car was there unless you already knew it was there.”

  The young man seemed to grimace at his own awkward phrasing.

  “So we can’t see him getting out of the car?” Drew asked.

  “Sorry, no. Or back in. He’s completely out of view.”

  “Do you think he knew about the cameras?” Alyssa asked Quinn, her voice very quiet. Somehow this was making it all the more real. Denial was no longer an option.

  “They’re not hidden,” Quinn said. “But if he was that detail-oriented you’d think he would have found a road less traveled. There’s a lot of traffic up there, since it’s the route to the ferry.”

  “Unless getting out of there fast was his priority,” Drew said grimly.

  “And he wasn’t really visible once he got off the road,” Hayley said.

  “Go ahead, Ty,” Quinn said.

  “Right. He was there for a long time. Or at least the car was. It didn’t move again for nearly two hours.”

  Drew felt his chest tighten and his stomach lurch as the images sped forward. It was like some bizarre stop-action nightmare, the edges changed, but the center of his focus, that spot in the trees where the car had vanished, never changed. The time marker in the corner of the image jumped ahead. When Hewitt stopped the progression, it read as he’d said, nearly two hours later. Just enough time to get there from the school.

  Carrying a jack-o-lantern bag.

  For two hours that slime had skulked around, spying on the school, on Luke, waiting for his chance?

  “Do you suppose,” Alyssa said, her voice tight, “that he brought the puppies and turned them loose at the school?”

  Drew’s head snapped around to stare at her. He hadn’t thought of that, but now that she’d said it, it made perfect sense.

  “Puppies,” he said under his breath. “The perfect lure. Especially for Luke right now.”

  “Definitely a possibility,” Quinn agreed, nodding at Alyssa. “Maybe even a probability.” He turned back to the screen. “Continue, Ty.”

  Hewitt nodded. He put the still frames back into that
jerky motion.

  “Here’s where it moves again. You still can’t see the driver, or—” he swallowed audibly, it sounded amplified over the speaker “—if there’s anybody in the car with him.”

  Even as he was frustrated by the lack of visual confirmation, Drew appreciated the kid’s apparent realization of what they were dealing with. He watched with a growing feeling of nausea in the pit of his stomach as the car pulled out of the trees, skidded slightly on the shoulder, corrected, and whipped out onto the state highway at a fast pace.

  Oliver was in a hurry. Because he had his prize. Drew knew it, deep down. That bastard had Luke.

  “He continues west,” Hewitt said, “but somewhere between here and the next ferry cam, he’s gone.”

  Which could mean either he was trying to get out of view of the cameras, or...he was staying local. Drew hoped beyond measure it was the latter. As long as Luke was close, they’d find him. It made sense, though. If he’d wanted to get lost, he would have headed to Seattle, or its sprawling, well-populated surroundings.

  “Keep watching,” Quinn ordered Hewitt.

  “Yes, sir. I’m recording it all. If that car shows up on any of those cams again, you’ll know it. And I’m watching the others, too, not just ferries but every cam I could find in the county.”

  Quinn drew back slightly, then smiled and nodded. “We’ll get you some help. I’ll call Charlie to arrange it.”

  The kid’s eyes widened. “I— No, I—”

  Quinn’s mouth quirked. “Don’t worry. I’ll make it clear you don’t need Charlie’s personal help.”

  Hewitt seemed to breathe again. This Charlie must be something else, Drew thought, to inspire such instant fear. Or awe. Whatever it was.

  When the screen went black, Drew felt oddly cut off, as if the images had somehow been his last connection to his son. But he was quickly distracted by Quinn’s action, to take his phone and signal the three Foxworth men in the field.

  “He was headed west,” he told them. “Let’s work for now on the higher likelihood he turned from that side of the road, to the north. It’s less populated, less probability he’d be seen.”

  Drew heard a series of clicks he assumed was their method of acknowledgment.

  “Teague, cover the south side, Liam and Rafe the north,” Quinn said. “I’ll head that way in a couple.”

  “Bring Cutter,” came a voice over the phone’s speaker, Drew wasn’t sure who it was, but from the conciseness of it suspected it was the laconic Rafe.

  “Planned on it,” Quinn answered. “We’ll connect when I’m in the area.”

  Again the clicks.

  “I’m going with you,” Drew said, getting to his feet.

  Quinn turned to look at him. Again Drew got that feeling of being assessed, although flatteringly it wasn’t as long this time before Quinn nodded. Alyssa stood up, and Drew was sure she was determined not to be left behind. He didn’t blame her, he knew how he felt, if he didn’t do something, anything, he was going to explode.

  “Alyssa, Drew.” Hayley spoke quietly, but something about her voice got his attention as if she’d shouted.

  “What?”

  “There’s something else. It’s not crucial right now, but it’s something I think you both—” she glanced at Alyssa “—need to hear.”

  He glanced at Quinn. “Stay, listen,” the man said. “Call me when you’re done and we’ll meet up and continue the search.”

  Since he didn’t seem intent on using this to cut him out of the search, Drew nodded. Slowly, since he wasn’t sure if he should be anxious, excited, or simply dreading whatever Hayley had to say. He sat back down at the table. Alyssa sat in the chair beside him. A united front, he thought. On this, they could be nothing less, and it was clear Alyssa knew that.

  Hayley slid a paper across the table to them. It was a photocopy of some kind of receipt. Then she added another, this time a copy that looked like a photo print of a very old, worn, even torn in places, timetable of some sort.

  “This,” Hayley said, indicating the first page, “is a copy of a receipt that was in Doug Kiley’s property after the accident.”

  Drew heard Alyssa suck in a breath. Instinctively he reached out to take her hand, steady her; no matter how he felt about Doug, she had loved him and this had to feel like a touch from the grave.

  “You’ll notice it’s a simple register receipt, indicating the purchase was made with cash.”

  Drew went still. Was she going to tell them he’d bought something with the stolen money? Something that might be a clue to where it had ended up?

  “There’s a dog on it,” Alyssa said, frowning.

  “It’s a receipt from a bus line,” Hayley said.

  So that was it. They’d managed to track down how Doug had been going to run. He’d been going to get on a bus out of town and leave his nineteen-year-old pregnant girlfriend behind. The old bitterness about his scapegrace brother rose up anew.

  “This,” Hayley said, “is a copy of the bus schedule and fares that were in effect at the time. And the destination codes that we matched to the receipt.”

  Belatedly he realized Alyssa’s fingers had gone tense beneath his. She was going to feel even worse, now face-to-face with proof Doug had been going to abandon her and her unborn son. He wished Hayley had waited until Luke was safe to reveal this, even if it was going to prove him right. Alyssa didn’t need this right now, and—

  Her voice gentle, and with a glance at him that Drew thought a bit odd, she finished it.

  “On the morning before he was killed, Doug bought two bus tickets.”

  Drew frowned, but Alyssa gasped.

  “Two?”

  “Yes,” Hayley said, her eyes fixed on Alyssa now. “Two.”

  “To where?” Alyssa asked, her breathing audibly quicker now.

  “Seattle,” Hayley said. “He was going to bring you home.”

  Chapter 29

  Drew felt a little numb. Alyssa said nothing, but silent tears trickled down her cheeks.

  All this time, all the fights, the arguments, his wishing that she would open her eyes and see the truth about Doug...all this time and she had been right, it had been he who was wrong, who had misjudged his brother even in death.

  He’d been going to bring her home.

  It didn’t matter that he’d been that ne’er-do-well all his life, that he’d been careless and slipshod, relying on looks and charm to get him through life the easiest way possible every day of his twenty-four years. It didn’t matter because apparently, when the chips were really down and reality was staring him in the face, he’d done the right thing.

  He would have been surprised even if all Doug had done was buy Lyss a ticket home. But he’d bought two, and there was only one explanation for that; he’d been going to bring her home himself. He had no idea what Doug had planned after that, if anything. There was no way to know.

  But there was no way to deny what those two pieces of paper proved.

  “Thank you,” Alyssa said, her voice thick with the tears that had finally slow. “Thank you for finding that.”

  “It’s what you wanted us to do in the first place,” Hayley said. “Find the truth about Doug. And the truth is that whatever he was before, in the end he was going to step up.”

  Still wrestling with the revelation, Drew wasn’t sure that Doug hadn’t planned on bugging out again the minute he got her home, but he wasn’t about to say that. Besides, if he’d been so wrong about this, maybe he was wrong about that, too.

  But there was no way to deny that at least this once, he’d been going to do the right thing. For Alyssa and for his unborn child. For Luke.

  Luke.

  He sucked in a deep breath. For a few moments, he’d been shocked out of the present. But wh
at he’d just learned didn’t change what was now. Luke was missing, in the hands of a man Drew feared would stop at nothing. That was what he had to focus on now. Not whether his little brother had, in the last hours of his life, finally grown up.

  He would deal with the shattering of his entire image of his irresponsible brother later. He knew his ability to compartmentalize, to set aside one problem to work on another sometimes drove Alyssa crazy, but Luke was so much more important than finding out he’d been wrong about Doug.

  He looked at the papers once more, the evidence he’d never thought he’d see, proof that Lyss had been right. He owed her for that, he thought. But later.

  That damned word again. It was getting to be right up there with appreciate. If he kept this up, the whole language was going to drive him crazy before long.

  Which was his problem, not hers.

  He stood up abruptly. “We need to be looking for Luke.”

  Alyssa stared up at him. “That’s it? That’s all you can say?”

  “Isn’t it the most important?”

  “Of course it is,” she snapped.

  Drew shoved his hands through his hair, lacing his fingers at the back of his head, pushing back against them as if that would somehow relieve the tension. Hayley rose quietly and left without a word, giving them space. Wise woman, he thought. Cutter, on the other hand, stayed put. Drew wondered if he’d nip one of them if they didn’t straighten this out soon. He wouldn’t put it past him. The dog seemed to understand more than a lot of people did.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “You’re right. You’ve been right. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “Not if you don’t mean it.”

  “I’m not blind, Alyssa.” He gestured at the papers. “I know what that means.”

  “It’s that hard for you to admit you were wrong?”

  “What, do you think I’m mad because I was wrong, at least about what Doug was going to do? Do you think I’m not glad that in the end, he did the right thing?”