by Desiree Holt
“As he should. I have specific guidelines I like to have followed in my home and business.”
Lauren lifted her chin. “I may be in your home, but I am no part of your business. I promise you there will be people coming for me.”
Evil glinted in his eyes. “First, they’ll have to find you. Now. I hope you enjoy the meal. I had the chef prepare some special dishes.”
“I don’t have a very discriminating palate,” she snapped, determined not to allow him to impress her. If she had to be his captive, she could find many ways to show her displeasure. “Pizza and Chinese food are more my style.”
His face hardened for a moment. “Then your stay here can be an epicurean learning experience for you. Among other things.”
“My stay here?” She was incredulous. “Don’t you mean my captivity?”
The look the man gave her was pure disdain. “Call it what you will. I insist, however, we follow a routine. We will dine together every night, just like this evening, unless I am away on business. I think it important that we get to know each other much better.”
She simply stared back at him.
“You will make this work, Miss Cahill. You know the consequences if you don’t.”
Her family would pay the consequences. Obviously Olberman didn’t plan to let her forget it.
Getting through dinner was an exercise in discipline for Lauren. The food was probably excellent, but she had to choke it down, each bite like sawdust. Olberman’s unctuous voice droned incessantly as each course was served and plates whisked away. It irritated the man that she refused wine, but she needed to have her wits about her.
“Well,” he said, when the dessert plates were cleared and coffee poured, “we should discuss the patient you will be treating first.”
“Patient?” She curled her hands around her coffee cup, trying to seep some of the warmth into her suddenly chilled body. He already had one picked out for her.
“I thought it best we get moving on your schedule.” He plucked a cigar from his pocket, clipped the end and sniffed it appreciatively. “No worries about this,” he said when he saw her frown. “I don’t smoke them too often. My doctor forbids it but what’s life worth if you can’t indulge your pleasures, right? Sometimes I get my fix just by holding them and inhaling the aroma. Now. Your patient.”
“Mr. Olberman.” She tried to choose her words carefully. “It doesn’t work quite the way you think. I need to know a lot about the person and his or her family. The medical condition. What the course of treatment has been so far.”
He waved the hand holding the cigar. “All that is taken care of. I set up an internal email account for you that you can access on the laptop in your room. I assume you found it?”
Email? A tiny ray of hope burst inside her. Had he really given her a connection to the outside world? She’d thought him too smart for that.
His smile when he studied her face was a mixture of arrogance and evil. “Please don’t try sending emails outside. The system won’t accept them and I’ll be very displeased. You’re connected to an internal server only.”
She swallowed. “Of course.”
“When you get back to your room, please pull up the file and read it thoroughly. Be prepared to discuss it with me in the morning and we’ll arrange for your travel.”
“I keep trying to tell you that’s not the process. I can’t just turn it on and off. There are some situations where I’d have no effect at all. I choose my patients carefully.”
He leaned forward on his elbow, his face close to hers.
“Listen carefully to me. I’ve read enough about psychic healing to know that there are ways to deal with every situation. It depends on the healer. So do whatever you have to.”
“Depends on the healer,” she repeated. “Exactly. Every healer is different. What if you put me in a situation where my energy doesn’t work?”
He sat back in his chair. “Then you’d better figure out how to make it work.” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Breakfast will be at nine tomorrow morning. Be prepared to discuss the file with me in detail.”
As if he’d been given a silent signal, Reid materialized in the room.
“Time to tuck in for the night,” he told her in his toneless voice.
Lauren did her best to control her trembling. She couldn’t let these men see exactly how terrified she was. Tonight, she’d put her brain to work, study her situation and see what she could do to protect herself until Troy and the others could find her.
* * * * *
Troy poured himself yet another cup of coffee and leaned against the kitchen counter. He’d had enough of the brew to wear a hole in his stomach, not to mention the wear and tear on his nerves from all the caffeine. Pizza boxes littered the counter. Mia and Faith had arrived close to seven o’clock with food for everyone, and the men ate as they worked.
The women joined Kat in the den to give her a chance to let her mind rest. Troy knew she was trying to force the viewing, trying to pull something out of thin air. He’d read enough about remote viewing after Mike married Kat to know it required certain triggers. Just the picture of Lauren alone might not do it.
“We’re dividing the country into quadrants,” Faith announced after half an hour. “Mia and I will try fixing random coordinates and feeding them to Kat to see if they trigger anything.”
“It’s like shooting craps under water,” Mia added, “but you never know what will pop up.”
The kitchen looked like a homemade version of the deck of the Starship Enterprise. The large table held five open laptops plugged into a large power strip. At each place, there was also a tablet and at least two cell phones. At any given time, any one of them could be searching for something on the internet, texting and doing another search on a tablet. And this was in addition to what Andy was doing back in Maryland.
They were working this from all possible angles. Andy had Dragonslayer peeling back layer after layer of protective walls hiding the Hausers’ mysterious benefactor. Mark had connected himself to the database back in Maryland so he could work on the fake corporations the car rental agreements were charged to, while Rick worked on the local airports.
He had sent everything he’d found earlier to Andy, asking him to get a list of traffic for the past twenty-four hours, including those with international flight plans. The information wasn’t readily available, of course, but Phoenix had given Andy permission to use Dragonslayer for anything in an emergency. They’d done enough contract work for the government, special jobs that needed special handling, that they had access to things not usually available.
Dan was processing the information as each piece came in, trying to find a connection to a falcon or the letter O and hoping to spark another vision for Mia. And in the den, Kat D’Antoni sat with a picture of Lauren that Troy had given her, trying to summon up where the woman might have been taken.
They’d all agreed that only a person with truly vast resources, someone with enormous wealth, could pull this off. This was Troy’s focus right now. The number of people in the world who fit that category, according to what he pulled up, was less than a hundred. He was meticulously researching each one of them while the others worked on their tasks.
He pulled out his chair and lowered himself back into it.
“Anything yet?” Dan asked.
“I’m eliminating people one at a time.” Troy growled his frustration. “Even just focusing right now on the United States and Canada, there’s a significant number. I’m not only cataloging resources but running the probability algorithm Andy sent. I just wish the damn machine would work faster.”
“I know whoever this is could be as far away as Australia,” Dan said. “But if that was the case, I’d think it would be more efficient to look for healers in that part of the world.”
“I agree. But fucking damn. This has to be a certain kind of person too, so it means not just facts and figures, but news stories on them that define what kind
of people they are.” He stopped a minute and cracked his knuckles. “At least it keeps me from going crazy.”
Because if he didn’t have something to do, he’d spend all his time thinking about how Lauren felt in his arms. How her breasts fit so nicely into the palms of his hands. How tight the muscles of her cunt were around his cock. How powerful their shared orgasms were. And how intense their feelings were for each other.
The last thing he’d expected when Faith and Mark asked him to do a favor was that he, the confirmed bachelor, would walk into a house and fall in love with a woman who captured his heart at once. Now he couldn’t imagine his life without her.
When I get my hands on this fucker, whoever he or she is, they’ll wish they were dead by the time I get through with them.
“Got something,” Rick announced. “At least I think I do.”
Everyone stopped what he was doing to look at him.
“Go on,” Troy prompted. “Give us what you’ve got.”
“It may be something, it may not.” He tapped the computer keys again. “Hey, Mia, can you come in here a minute?”
“What is it?” She hurried in from the den. “Did my vision help you with something?”
“Maybe. You know what you said about the big white bird? The one you thought might be a falcon?”
“Did you find it?” Her voice was edged with excitement.
“Take a look at this.” He turned his laptop so everyone could see the screen. He pointed to the picture of a white plane in its center. “That, folks, is a Dassault Falcon, one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive private aircraft in the world. According to the flight logs Andy’s sent so far, one was parked at a private airstrip just outside the city for three days. It took off early this afternoon.”
“I got to test-drive one of these babies once,” Mike said. “What a smooth ride. And every inch top-class.” He frowned. “But I think they’re a lot more common in Europe than in the States. Are we looking in the wrong area?”
“Let’s not take a detour yet,” Dan cautioned. “Let’s get the flight plan the pilot filed and see where it was headed.”
“I wish I knew what the O meant,” Mia fretted. “If only I could call these things up at will, maybe I could get more information.”
Dan reached behind him to squeeze her hand. “At least this gives us a good starting point.” He speed dialed the office on his cell. “Andy? I’m putting you on speaker.”
“Yeah, boss. I’m ready.” The excitement in his voice was evident.
The men all looked at each other. At twenty-five, Andy was the quintessential geek who knew more about computers than anyone they’d ever met. He had been Faith’s technical support person when the partners first met him, providing services for her and a number of other people. Mark had seen the unexplored talent and convinced his partners to hire him. All of them agreed it was one of the smartest things they’d ever done.
For Andy, the job was like a continuous Disneyland, and he was the only kid who got to enjoy it. And though he enjoyed the wild ride, he took his responsibilities very seriously.
“On the flight information you’ve got so far,” Dan said, “do any of the schedules show a Dassault Falcon?”
“Wait a second.” They could hear the clicking of keys over the speaker on the phone. “No, nothing. Sorry. Want me to try a different tack?”
Troy felt sick. Would this prove to be a dead end after all?
“Like what?” he asked. “If it left from a private field, not a listed Fixed Base Operation, he may not even have filed a flight plan.”
“Troy’s right,” Mike confirmed. “And if this guy, whoever he is, is so secretive, he wouldn’t want the footprints of a flight plan that could be traced.”
“Damn it.” Troy wanted to punch something. “So there’s nothing we can do? Because without a flight plan it’s like looking for a fucking needle in a haystack.”
“Don’t give up yet,” Mike said. “We’re the best because we always have a way to find the answers. Andy? You still there?”
“Right here.”
“Okay. Hold on a minute.” He looked at the others. “Ed’s at the field in Maryland getting some maintenance work done on the Cessna. Let me get him on the horn.”
Troy did his best to stay controlled through all of this but his nerves were strung tight. He listened carefully to Mike’s side of the conversation with Dan’s brother, who was the official pilot for Phoenix. Ed had contacts everywhere in the flying world.
“Give him about ten minutes,” Mike said, disconnecting the call. “I asked him to get on his network he has with dozens of pilots. They feed each other information. He’ll ask if anyone saw a Falcon flying today and where.”
For Troy, they were some of the longest minutes of his life. He was ready to jump out of his skin when Mike’s phone rang.
“Yeah, Ed?” Mike answered. “Got something?”
“About a dozen reports so far of a Falcon heading west from San Antonio this afternoon. Haven’t got a definite destination yet, but the network’s still working on it. Give me a few more minutes. The info’s still coming in.”
“But definitely west?” Mike asked.
“Yes,” Ed confirmed. “New Mexico and Arizona report negative sightings, so hold on.”
“We’re here.”
More waiting, but this time not quite as long.
“Okay.” Ed’s voice sounded from the phone’s speaker. “The plane was sighted making a descent into Grand Junction, Colorado.”
“Did you get a spot?” Dan wanted to know.
“The two pilots who spotted it said it landed at a small secure spot. One hangar, one small building. Scuttlebutt among the guys who fly the area says it belongs to a very reclusive billionaire. They just don’t know who. And neither does anyone else.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Mike disconnected. “Andy? You still there?”
“Right here, boss.”
“Do your thing for private landing strips between Aspen and Vail, Colorado. Someone had to buy the land. Someone else had to build the hangar. And another someone had to lay down the landing strip.”
“The real ownership will be hidden,” Rick put in, “so dig down to China if you have to. You know the drill.”
“On it.”
“All right.” Dan looked at everyone. “We’re all on this. Focus the search on Colorado, with Grand Junction as the center of the circle. My guess is they landed the Falcon and took a helicopter from there.”
“That means they’d need a pad to land at their destination,” Rick put in. “If we can work it down to a small enough circle we can get Ed to come and pick us up and we can do some reconnaissance.”
Dan nodded. “Mike, call your brother back and tell him to gas up the new Sikorsky. It’s got the fastest speed. Also have him bring everything we just used in Canada.”
“You think we’ll need it here too.” It was more of a statement than a question.
“Yes. The bird’s already fitted out with everything else we’ll need, except for what I’ve got at my house. As soon as he gives us an ETA, I’ll go pick him up and make a stop by my place at the same time.” He looked at Troy. “I’ve got the coordinates for Grand Junction and the O symbol. I’ll take them in to Kat in the den and see what she gets from there. At least we finally have a geographic location to start from.”
“Good. I’m setting up new search parameters for anyone with a last name beginning with O. Whatever I get I’ll send to Andy. He can run them through one of his programs to see what might cross over with other searches he’s running. The ones connected to the rental cars and the cashier’s check.”
For the next several minutes everyone was silent, but the air was humming with the tension of the situation. Then Dan called to them from the den.
“Troy? We may have something.”
Troy shoved away from the table and strode into the den. The room was darkened, the way Kat needed it when she did her remote viewing. In
front of her on Lauren’s desk was the large sketchbook she always used, the top page filled with a bare bones drawing.
“It’s a house,” she said. “I can’t get the clarity of the image I need. All I can see at the moment is a forest and a huge house.”
Troy picked up the pad and studied it, his hands shaking slightly. “How about if we scan this and send it to Andy. He can run it through one of his programs to see if he can fill in the image.”
“Good idea.” Dan took the page and tore off the top sheet.
“I’ll keep focusing,” Kat told them. “When we were looking for my sister, it took me several tries to pinpoint the location and get a clear picture of the scene. The coordinates are a big help. And give me anything else as soon as you get it.”
Chapter Fifteen
Lauren barely slept, disturbing dreams making her restless and fitful. At six o’clock, she finally gave up the effort, got up and took a shower. A thick terry cloth robe hung on a hook in the bathroom, so she wrapped herself in it, trying to infuse some warmth into her body. She’d been cold ever since she arrived at this expensive prison, a chill caused more by anxiety than anything else.
The file on her computer was extensive. She’d give Olberman credit for being thorough. The patient he wanted her to heal was a young boy, nine years old, the son of the ruler of a well-known island in the South Pacific. He was born with a defective valve in his heart. Apparently, surgery had been performed when he was an infant and the doctors thought they’d repaired it. But when the boy turned eight, he began to have problems again. His father took him to many specialists and a month ago surgery had again been performed. The problem was the boy wasn’t healing.
The father had flown the boy home and retained around-the-clock nurses to attend to him. He continued to use his extensive resources to bring in doctors who he hoped would make his son well, but the child continued to fail day by day. The man said he would pay any sum of money if someone could help his son.
