by Beverly Long
Rico had been in Nashville twice but didn’t know the city all that well. The Mustang didn’t have GPS so he navigated off his phone. He found an exit that he thought would work and made the turn. A mile down the road, his breath caught in his chest as a cop car came toward him.
He didn’t make eye contact and the car cruised by. Rico watched him in his rearview mirror, but there was nothing to be concerned about.
He wanted to dump the car as quickly as he could and limit his street driving and the opportunities for street cameras to pick him up. He realized that he was close to Vanderbilt University. That was good. There would be cabs in the area.
He found a spot, in a no-parking zone. He pulled in, killed the engine and put the keys under the floor mat. He was wearing gloves and he was confident that he’d done a good job of wiping the car down before they’d left Colorado. Neither he nor Laura would be tied to the car via fingerprints.
He opened the door, keeping his face down. He walked away without a backward glance. Went into the science building. There were students milling around but nobody gave him a second look.
He quickly found a men’s room and checked to make sure it was empty. Then he took off his hat and gloves and stuffed them in the pockets of his coat before slipping the garment off. It was close to sixty in Nashville, a far cry from the temperature in Colorado. He would draw attention dressed so warmly.
Casually carrying his coat over his arm, he merged back into the hallway traffic. Went out the rear door of the building. Crossed several streets, went in and out of a couple more buildings, and finally, hailed a cab to take him to Honky Tonk Row.
He checked his phone in the cab and saw that Laura had texted him. She had a parking spot, near the Hilton Hotel, just a block or two off Broadway. He texted back, said that he’d be there in fifteen minutes. He wanted to reassure her that everything was going to be fine but decided that could wait until he saw her.
* * *
Laura had been worried about finding a parking place big enough for the SUV and the trailer but had lucked out. She’d turned off the SUV and immediately texted Rico the closest intersection. Then she’d stared at her phone. When Rico’s text came in, she wanted to cry in relief. She’d been so worried that he was going to get stopped before he could get rid of the car.
She had sat for another five minutes when a car passed. It parked in front of her, in a no-parking zone. A man and a woman got out, the woman holding a map. They were pointing at street signs and seemed to be looking for addresses on buildings.
They walked toward her SUV and stopped outside her door. “Do you know this area?” the man asked.
She could probably help them but her general wariness of strangers, probably heightened from being on the run with Hannah, kicked in and she kept her window up. Her door was already locked. “Where do you want to go?” she asked.
“To the Brasserie,” he said. “It’s a restaurant.”
Not one she was familiar with. She shook her head. “Sorry,” she said, loud enough that they could hear her through the closed window. “I’ve never heard of it.”
The woman stepped forward. “We’ve got a map. Can we show you?”
Oh, fine. She rolled down her window. Smiled at the woman. “Let me see what you’ve got.”
And realized too late that what the woman had was a gun under her map, now pointed directly at Laura’s face.
Chapter 20
Rico saw the red SUV and trailer from more than a block away. He walked faster, grateful that the short separation from Laura was over. He just felt better when she was by his side.
He went to the passenger side, assuming she was in the driver’s seat, and stopped short. The SUV was empty. He swiveled his neck, looking at the nearby businesses. Had she needed a restroom, perhaps?
He took out his phone, dialed her number. Her phone had to be out of her purse. She’d texted him less than fifteen minutes ago. It rang and then went to voice mail. “Hey, I’m at our vehicle,” he said. “Where are you?” He hung up. Dialed again. Same result. He didn’t leave another message.
He opened the back of the trailer. It was empty. Closed the doors and started up the sidewalk.
Went two blocks before turning around and walking the other side.
His heart seemed to think he’d run a marathon. It was beating hard in his chest and the air he sucked into his lungs felt heavy. Something had happened to her. He knew it.
Hodge Rankin. Somehow he’d gotten to her. He was going to tear the man apart, limb by limb, if he touched a hair on Laura’s head.
He had the man’s address. He clicked a few buttons on his phone and he had a map. Twenty minutes, back the direction he’d just come from.
He had his gun but had no idea how Rankin might be armed. Had no idea if he might have accomplices.
He ran his finger through his list of recent calls. Found the one where Laura had called Detective August Phillips. He made the call.
“Detective Phillips,” the man answered.
“My name is Rico Metez. I am a friend of Laura Collins, who contacted you about a half hour ago and scheduled a noon meeting with you. Laura is missing from her vehicle. It has to be Hodge Rankin.”
The man was silent. Finally, he said, “Where is Hannah Collins?”
That set Rico back but now wasn’t the time to play coy. “Safe in Colorado. With good friends. How did you know that Laura had Hannah?”
“I’ve known since Gloria Wise contacted me after going to the daycare to pick up Hannah and she wasn’t there. She didn’t believe Hodge Rankin’s story that he’d picked her up and she was playing inside the house.”
“Why did she contact you?”
“I had interviewed her once, following the death of Ariel Collins. She still had my card.”
“Laura was trying to do the right thing,” Rico said.
“I know. That’s why we let it go. Hannah was safer with her aunt than with Rankin.”
“Well, she’s safe but Laura isn’t. I know something has happened to her. I’m on my way to Hodge Rankin’s house.”
“Don’t go to Rankin’s house.” Now the detective was speaking fast. Hard.
“Why not?” He was back at his SUV. Thank God Jennie had been smart enough to give them two keys.
“Because if you go charging in there, there is a good chance that you’re going to get shot.”
Rico hurriedly pulled the pin from the trailer hook and freed up the SUV. He might need to maneuver quickly and he didn’t want to be hauling a trailer. “By Rankin?”
“No. By one of the officers who is watching that house, 24/7.”
What? “Why are you watching his house?”
Again, silence. Rico got in, started the vehicle and pulled away from the curb.
“Mr. Metez, I’m going to assume that you have good intent. But I’m not going to discuss this on the telephone with somebody that I’ve never met. Do you have Rankin’s address?”
“Yes. On Appleton Avenue.”
“Good. Then I will meet you at the corner of Appleton and Twenty-Ninth Street. That’s two blocks away from his house. Ten minutes.” The detective hung up on him.
What the hell? The man had said don’t go there and then arranged to meet him at the end of the block. It didn’t matter. All he knew was that he was going.
He put his phone on the seat, willing it to ring. Still hoping that Laura had walked away on some kind of errand.
But knowing that wasn’t the case. She would never do something that would worry him unnecessarily.
But how the hell would Rankin have known that she was back in Nashville? It made no sense.
The only people who knew were Jennie and Paddie and his family.
He trusted them all—well, maybe not all of them—implicitly. He didn’t trust Peter. Never had. But there was no way for Peter to be
connected to Rankin. He and Laura hadn’t even told his family the truth about Hannah, that she was Laura’s niece.
It was all a damn scrambled mess in his head.
He drove fast, weaving in and out of traffic. His phone had said it would take eighteen minutes but he made it in thirteen. Still, when he pulled up, there was a man standing next to a black four-door sedan. He held up a badge that Rico couldn’t read, of course, but it was enough that he knew it had to be Detective Phillips.
He parked and jogged over to the detective, keeping his hands visible.
“I’m Rico Metez,” he said.
“Detective Phillips. Do you have some identification?”
“I’m going to reach into my pocket,” Rico said, and waited for the man to nod. He pulled his license and his business card.
The detective nodded. “I looked your name up and Wingman Security popped up.”
He wasn’t interested in networking. He wanted Laura. “Why are you watching Hodge Rankin’s house?”
“Because we think Hodge Rankin is a bad guy. And I don’t like to let bad guys have the run of my city,” Detective Phillips said.
“He killed his wife, didn’t he? And Laura’s brother. And probably his fiancée before that. And the woman who watched Hannah.”
Detective Phillips held up a finger. “We think you’re right about the first three. But we believe Mrs. Gloria Wise and the unlucky woman who happened to leave the yoga class at the same time were shot by Casandra Scale.”
Seth had not mentioned another victim which made Rico think that he hadn’t known. And he also had not disclosed the shooter’s name. Maybe that had been kept purposefully quiet by the police. “What do you know about Casandra Scale?”
“We know she’s Hodge Rankin’s girlfriend.”
He thought about making some smart remark about the woman’s life expectancy but he was only concerned about one woman’s life. Laura’s.
“Have you been in touch with your people? Do they have a visual on Rankin?”
“They do. He’s out by his pool. Has been sunning for the last hour.”
“That’s not possible,” Rico said. “Wait, go back to the girlfriend. Are you watching her, too?”
“Yes. And I might add, it’s costing a boatload of money. But when innocent people get gunned down, suddenly the checkbook is open. She is also accounted for.”
Rico rubbed his forehead. “Why didn’t Rankin report Hannah as missing?”
“That’s complicated,” the detective said. “And I can’t really tell you much except that while Hodge Rankin is a dirt wad, we believe he got bested by bigger dirt wads. Rankin was indeed negotiating a price for Hannah. She would have been out of the country by noon the following day. The buyers were part of a large trafficking ring and they ran a pretty complex operation. They teamed up with people on the inside, people who work at various daycares, and they paid these people to find children who are in circumstances where an acquisition could be negotiated.”
“Mary Margaret,” Rico said.
The detective looked surprised. Rico held up a hand. “When Laura talked to her boss earlier this morning, the woman said that Mary Margaret had quit the same time that Laura was absent from the daycare. Acted like it was a big inconvenience. I’m suspecting she has no idea that she was employing a child trafficker.”
“No. But we have Mary Margaret. She’s made a full confession about her role in the transaction. She had never met the potential buyers until they came to the daycare. She didn’t like them and became very concerned about Hannah. In the end, she did the right thing by going to the police. She was also trying to protect Hannah.”
“Why don’t you just arrest Rankin and his girlfriend?”
“Unfortunately, no money changed hands over the sale of Hannah. And Rankin has been careful about covering his tracks in the other deaths. Our evidence is more circumstantial. His girlfriend was less careful and we have street camera footage of her with the gun. What we don’t have, besides one witness who won’t hold up well under cross-examination, is anything that ties the two together. But we believe the witness who worked with Casandra at a bar and said that Rankin used to meet Casandra in the alley, after the bar closed. Since the Wise shooting, the two of them have had no contact. But they’re going to make a mistake. And when they meet up, we’re going to be there. We think they’re both going to be willing to point the finger at the other in order to help themselves and in the end, they’re both going to prison for a long time.”
It was wonderful news. Laura was Hannah’s closest blood relative and she could petition the courts for custody. But where the hell was she?
* * *
Laura would have kicked her own butt if she could have reached it. But since they’d tied her wrists together in front of her and each ankle to the legs of the desk chair and left her, she couldn’t very well do that. And they’d put a piece of tape over her mouth so screaming wasn’t going to work.
She’d have taken her chances with them, would have tried to fight back, even against a gun, versus getting in their car, but then they’d called her by name and said that they had Hannah, too. And she wanted to call their bluff, to tell them that there was no way, that Hannah was safe in Colorado with Jennie and Paddie, but in the end, she simply couldn’t take the chance.
“Where is she?” she’d asked.
“We’ll take you to her,” they’d said. “She’s been asking for you. Wants you to make her some more macaroni and cheese like she had at the hospital.”
And she’d felt her heart crack.
She’d started to reach for her purse and her phone but they’d told her to leave everything, to just hurry and get into their car. She’d done what they said. They seemed very nervous and she was terribly afraid the gun was going to go off by mistake. Had assumed they were associates of Rankin. Who else in Nashville would know who she was and that Hannah was important to her?
They’d put her in the front seat of their car. The man had driven and the woman had sat behind her, holding a gun to her neck. Laura had demanded to know why they were doing this, had told them that they were fools to do Rankin’s dirty work, that he’d simply kill them when their usefulness came to an end.
And that’s when she’d gotten her first indication that maybe she was wrong. Because the look the man driving had given to the woman in the back was very easily read. What is she talking about?
The woman had told her to shut up and she did, thinking it might be smarter to listen than to talk. She needed to figure out who these people were. They’d driven her to a hotel on the outskirts of Nashville. It was a two-story, not all that different than the motel that Hannah and she had almost stayed at in Moreville. Once inside, she’d realized it wasn’t as clean but none of that mattered. What mattered was that she hadn’t immediately seen Hannah. And when she’d demanded, the woman had laughed. Taunted her that they never had Hannah but that they’d known that was what would make her do whatever they wanted.
Then they’d tied her up, taped her mouth and left her in the hotel room.
She didn’t know them. But they knew her, knew enough about her to know that Hannah was her life.
She didn’t think the two were married. She’d studied them in the car and was confident that they were brother and sister. There was a strong resemblance. And they didn’t talk like they were from Nashville or anywhere in Tennessee.
After leaving her tied in the room, they’d left but she’d immediately heard the door to the right open and close. Then loud voices. She could make out a word here or there but they were talking over one another and yelling.
“Stupid to bring her...”
“...can identify...”
“...have to kill...”
It was definitely the woman and it seemed as if there were two different male voices. She had to assume that one of them was the ma
n who’d been with the woman. He’d never said a word the entire time she’d been in the car.
If they weren’t working for Rankin, why did they have any interest in her? Who would benefit if something bad happened to her?
And then she realized that she was asking the wrong questions.
Who would suffer if something bad happened to her?
Rico. Rico who might have had a drone flying over his cabin. Rico who had people coming to his sister’s house, making up stories about class reunions to get his address. Rico who suspected that his skiing accident hadn’t been all that much of an accident.
Mora. That had been his client’s name. And she had three children. Two males and one female. Rico had said the one man rarely spoke. She closed her eyes and thought of the conversation when they’d first discussed them. She’d made light of their names. Duggar, Gilly, and Tributary. Duggar had pulled the fire alarm, Gilly rarely talked, and Tributary was the only one not still living with Mom.
By now, Rico would have found the SUV, would have seen her stuff still in it and would know that something was very wrong. He’d be worried sick. Would assume that it was Rankin.
How would he ever connect all of this to Mora and her three children?
Chapter 21
Rico looked at his watch. Laura had been missing now for more than thirty minutes and he was no closer to finding her. And Detective Phillips was staring at him, as if he still wasn’t 100 percent sure that Rico wasn’t going to make a break for Rankin’s house.
But there was no reason to. It wasn’t Rankin.
Who else could it be?
Something random? No, he didn’t believe it. But if not random, then how would they have known that Laura was in that vehicle, parked on that street?
There was really only one way. He ran back to the SUV. It took him less than a minute to find the tracking device in Laura’s big purse.
He realized that Detective Phillips had followed him and was now staring at the device. “I assume that’s Laura’s purse and you didn’t know it was there.”
