House of Stone

by T. K. Thorne

“I have to take this,” I say. “Segal, you okay?”

  “No.” Tension rattles his voice.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I got a call from Children’s Hospital.”

  My heart dives.

  “Kaleshia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she—?” I can’t stand the thought of that brave little spirit succumbing to her cancer.

  “No, it’s not the cancer. She’s gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s gone.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She’s not in the hospital.”

  “Did her father take her?”

  “No, nobody took her. She’s just gone. I’m going crazy. I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “Segal, where are you?”

  “I’m at the motel, but you gotta find her.”

  “We’ll find her. Don’t leave. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  Disconnecting, I turn to Alice. “I gotta run.”

  “Police business?”

  “Yes.”

  On the way to my car, I call Tracey.

  “Yeah?” he answers.

  “You have any contacts at Children’s Hospital security?”

  “The head of security is Don Glass. He was in my rookie class at the Academy, but decided private security paid better. What’s up?”

  “Kaleshia is missing from Children’s Hospital.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yes. Just got a call from Segal.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “Have they released you—?” I’m talking to the dead line.

  Don Glass reaches out to shake my hand. “Damnedest thing,” he says. “The child—”

  “Kaleshia Segal?”

  “Yeah, a man walked out with her.”

  “Don’t the discharge papers say who he was?” Tracey asks.

  “No, they don’t, because there aren’t any discharge papers.”

  Tracey looks at me.

  “What does the staff say?” I ask.

  “They said they assumed he was family taking her out for some sunshine. She was smiling and holding his hand.”

  “You got video footage of the man?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can we take a look? We’re working a case that might have connections.”

  “Sure.”

  He leads us into a room with camera displays and nods at a security guard sitting before it. “Run it again.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There are several tapes, but this is the best angle.”

  On the video clip, Kaleshia is dressed in street clothes and sitting in a wheelchair. The camera view is unfocused, and the face of the man beside her is turned as though he is aware of the camera as they walk past. It’s very possible that the man has a short ponytail. I don’t need a clear picture. I recognize his walk. There’s no doubt about the man’s identity.

  “Freeze it,” Glass says.

  “Can we have a printout of that image?” Tracey asks.

  “Of course. You recognize him? That’s a pretty grainy photo, and you can’t see the man’s face.”

  “I think we know who he might be.”

  “Who is he?” Glass asks.

  “His first name is Angola. That’s all we know right now.”

  “Is the child safe with him?”

  “No,” I say. “She is not.”

  Glass’s face is stiff. “What can we do?”

  “You’ve already helped more than you know,” Tracey says. “Did you file a report?”

  “Of course, with UAB Police.”

  “You got a case number?”

  “Sure. I’ll get it for you.”

  Ice clogs my veins. Angola has Kaleshia.

  When Glass hands Tracey a copy of the card left by the UAB officer who took the initial report, Tracey drops it in his shirt pocket. “Thanks. We’ll let you know as soon as we find her.”

  Glass offers his hand. “I hope it’s soon, and she’s okay. This is on us. Anything I can do from my end, just holler.”

  “Will do,” Tracey says.

  On the sidewalk outside the security office, I turn to Tracey. His face is pinched.

  “You know why Angola took her,” I say.

  He nods. “To get Segal to change the data.”

  “If he hurts Kaleshia—”

  Tracey’s fists clench. “If he hurts that child, he will wish he’d never met me.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Tracey and I crowd into Lieutenant Faraday’s office. She looks up over a stack of paperwork.

  “You get released from the hospital that quick?” she asks Tracey.

  “Um, yeah. I felt fine.”

  She narrows her eyes at him, but he jumps in before she can ask for more details.

  “Lieutenant, we’ve got an active kidnapping going on.”

  “Really?” She eyes the papers before her. “I haven’t seen a kidnapping come across my desk.”

  “University PD took the report at Children’s Hospital about forty minutes ago.”

  “Someone took a child from the hospital?”

  “She’s a cancer patient.”

  “A family member?”

  “No.”

  She sits up. “What else do you know?”

  “Her name is Kaleshia Segal. UAB might have tagged it a missing person, but we’re pretty sure the suspect is someone connected to one of our homicide cases,” Tracey says.

  “Which case?”

  “Benjamin Crompton.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “The UAB insulin overdose? The one connected to the Vestavia homicide and someone shooting at you two?”

  “We don’t have enough evidence on him to charge the suspect with it, but we have reason to believe he wants to disrupt a drug trial research in progress at UAB, and the little girl he kidnapped is the sister of the guy who can do that.”

  “He’s using the sister as leverage?”

  “That’s our theory.”

  “Any threats made?”

  “Not yet.”

  “FBI?” she asks.

  Tracey shakes his head. “No indication he intends to take her out of the state. It’s our baby.”

  “Okay. Let UAB PD know we’re on it. What can we do from here?”

  “All we know is that his name is Angola. No last name or date of birth, but he’s in his thirties, I’d guess. White male, but dark skinned or possibly a light-skinned black male. Dark eyes, no facial hair. Wears his hair in a ponytail.”

  “Possible military record,” I add. “And he works for a Jason Blackwell.”

  Tracey’s shoulders tense. We are pointing a finger at House of Iron and that puts everyone at risk, but I’m not willing to let them hurt Kaleshia.

  “You guys want someone on the family?” Faraday asks.

  “No,” Tracey says quickly. “We’ll handle that and ask for help as we need it.”

  “I want a report in my hands with all you know before you step foot out of the office,” she says tightly.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Tracey leads me out her door.

  “We need a location on Segal,” Tracey says, “and any other family members. Since you have the rapport with Segal, get on that. I’ll knock out a quick report for Faraday.”

  “Crap.” I glance at my phone.

  “What is it?”

  It’s Segal. He called, but I missed it and no voice message. I hit redial.

  The phone rings several times and moves into voicemail. I hang up without leaving a message. “He’s not answering.”

  Tracey pulls up a Supplemental Report form on his terminal and starts typing. “Keep trying.”

/>   I do, but he doesn’t answer. My mouth goes dry. “Lohan, I can’t get him to pick up. I just get his voice mail. He may be in trouble. How can we locate him through his phone GPS before his battery dies? Can the phone company do that as an emergency without a warrant?”

  “Yep. Go talk to Faraday about it while I finish this.”

  Faraday makes the call to the phone company. They send an exigency request form by email, and she prints it. As quickly as I can, I fill out the form citing an emergency with a kidnapped child and scan it and send it back.

  I’m grateful Faraday doesn’t ask for details about the case. Knowing it’s a kidnapping of a child is enough. She trusts her people. Lohan, anyway. If it were just me, she’d probably be grilling me to make sure we weren’t violating someone’s rights and privacy.

  By the time Tracey finishes his report, I have GPS coordinates from the phone company. It’s not exactly accurate. Only the military can access the precise coordinates that the satellites are capable of sending. But it will be close enough. I plug the coordinates into my own smart phone map app.

  Tracey prints out his report and delivers it to Faraday, and we head full speed out of the office.

  “Found him,” I say, eyes on my phone as we move down the hall.

  “Let me guess—the Edge of Chaos.”

  “If you knew, why did I go through all that with the phone company?”

  “To confirm it before we busted our asses getting there, only to find he was somewhere else.”

  We use blue lights but no siren to clear the path.

  To my relief, Segal is in his office at his computer, working. My House of Iron mojo must have worn off. I wonder if that process is hastened by stress. Learning his little sister was kidnapped would certainly fall into that category.

  Stress is evident in Segal’s hunched shoulders, pinched eyes and tight jaws. I think he’s gritting his teeth.

  “Segal.” I say. He is intent on the numbers on his screen and jumps when I say his name.

  “Damn. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “We were worried about you.”

  Tracey, standing behind me, is silent.

  “Kaleshia?” Segal asks.

  I shake my head. “But we know who took her.”

  “Where is she? Is she okay?”

  “I’m sorry. We don’t know that . . . yet.” I pull up a chair and get eye level with him. “Tell me what happened.”

  His face tight with pain, he leans back, wrapping his arms around his chest as if to keep his heart from exploding. “A man called me. How did he get my number?”

  “That’s not important right now. What did he say?”

  “He said that he had Kaleshia, and that if I didn’t want her hurt, I had to adjust the zahablan trial data to ensure it was a failure without setting off any alarms. He said I wouldn’t see my sister again until that made the news.”

  “The media would report something like that?” Tracey asks.

  “Maybe not the big guys, but it would be reported on the UAB news sites as a follow-up for the other stories on those tests. A lot of people are watching that.”

  Segal takes a shaky breath. “Kaleshia’s in the middle of a treatment. She needs to be in the hospital.”

  “We’ve got to have information to find her. “What else did he say?”

  Segal swallows. “He said if I tell anyone, he’ll kill her. You gotta find her before he . . . hurts her.”

  I take a breath. Segal called me as I instructed him to, but then his fear took over. Either everything wore off or he just followed my instructions rather than my intent. The command was to call me, not to make sure I answered or to tell me what happened. I clearly don’t know what I’m doing with Iron magic.

  My gaze drifts to the lines of data on his computer screen. “You know if zahablan really works, it could help millions of people.”

  “I don’t care about millions of people right now. I care about my little sister.”

  “I do too,” I say softly.

  “We need the phone number the man called from,” Tracey says.

  Segal puts his hand over his cell phone where it sits on his desk. “I have to do what he says. If you call him, he’ll know I told you.”

  “We’re not going to call him,” I say. “We’re going to find him and Kaleshia.”

  “How?”

  “Same way we found you,” Tracey says. “We can get the phone company to ping his phone without alerting him.”

  “I can’t risk it,” Segal says. “No.”

  I lean forward. “Deon, look at me.” I feel the pull of Iron magic, but I fight it. Deon deserves to make his own choices.

  He does. The hand that covers the face of his phone is shaking, but not budging.

  “This man is a ruthless killer,” I say. “He’s already murdered two people. After he gets what he wants, he will kill again. The only reason he is keeping Kaleshia alive is because it is leverage on you to do what he wants. As soon as you do what he wants, he has no reason to keep her alive.”

  “Why would he kill her if I do what he wants? Won’t he just release her?”

  “I’m being honest with you. I can’t know for sure what he will do, but the best scenario is for us to find her while you stall him, so he has a reason not to hurt her.”

  “But if he thinks I’m stalling, he might hurt her to make me know he’s for real.”

  My stomach clinches. “That’s a possibility. You need to convince him you are really trying, but that you have to do it right to keep it from being obvious that you’re manipulating the data. And that requires time. If you want any chance of saving her, you have to help us and give us time.”

  His hand tightens again on the phone, hovers there and drops away.

  “Okay,” he says, “but I’m doing what he says.”

  “You do what you have to.” Tracey picks up Segal’s phone. “Let us do what we have to.”

  “Trust us,” I say. “Our primary goal is to protect you and your sister.”

  “What’s your phone password?” Tracey asks.

  Segal gives it to him.

  “You got a charger for this thing?”

  He nods.

  “Good. Keep it charged. I have a feeling you may be here for a while.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until it’s done,” Segal says.

  “Did you tell him how long it would take?”

  “I said a couple of days, but I can do it faster.”

  “Don’t or don’t tell him you can. When he calls back, stall him.”

  “Every minute I stall is a risk for Kaleshia. You don’t understand. She needs her medicine.”

  “Segal, listen to me. Kaleshia is only valuable to him as long as you are not finished.” I said this before, but he is in such a state, it didn’t seem to really register. I stare hard at him. “Get it?”

  Slowly he nods. “Yeah, I get it.”

  “Phone company is going to call me back as soon as they have the GPS coordinates,” Tracey says. “Let’s let Segal work.”

  We step out into the hall.

  “What if Angola used a burner phone?” I ask.

  “Unless it has no GPS whatsoever, which is rare and hard to find, they can still give us a location. They could also use cell towers to triangulate his position, but that would only tell us he’s somewhere in a 20 mile radius. Not much help.”

  “What if Angola calls back?” I ask. “We need somebody here to record the call and protect Segal.”

  “Yep and it can’t be just anyone.”

  “I agree. Angola could touch anyone not Stone or Rose, and they would do or say whatever he wanted.” Suddenly suspicious Tracey is going to give me guard duty, I add, “I’m not staying here.”

  He scowls. “I’m not letting you go after this
guy alone.”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  We stare at each other.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Aplainclothes officer shows up in jeans and tee shirt, my kind of uniform. He introduces himself as Allen Self from the Technical Surveillance Unit and quickly plugs a device into the phone that allows it to continue charging. It has a split wire, one end going to a recorder and the other to a pair of headphones.

  “This is going to be a long watch,” Tracey says.

  Self grins. “That’s what I do. At least this is in air conditioning and not a surveillance in a van oven.” He makes a gesture in a semicircle. “We got eyes on this place. If Ponytail sets a foot—” He glances at Segal’s long dreadlock braid. “Uh—”

  Segal is completely unaware, lost again in his data.

  “I got another man coming up here,” Tracey tells Self. “Councilman Hobart.”

  Self lifts thin eyebrows and shakes his head. “No good can come from a politician getting involved in an investigation.”

  “It’s necessary,” Tracey says. “Keep him informed.”

  Self shrugs. “Gonna be crowded.”

  “Can I speak to you in the hall?” I say to Tracey.

  He steps out, and I lead him out of earshot. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “We can’t be stuck here if something breaks, and we need to move.”

  “But a city councilman?”

  “He’s tougher than you think, and I told him to come armed.”

  “Faraday will have a cow.”

  “We can worry about that later. Somebody from Stone has to be here in case Angola or Jason shows up. My father knows how to handle himself.”

  “There’s no reason for Angola to ‘show up.’ He’s holding all the cards and that would be taking a risk he didn’t have to take.”

  “I know. It’s a long shot, but we can’t afford not to have someone here. Hobart can pretend it’s connected in some way to City Hall. I briefed him.”

  Tracey’s phone chimes. He glances at it. “It’s the phone company.”

  I grab a pen and a scrap of paper out of my purse.

  “Go,” I say, ready to write.

  Tracey recites the longitude and latitude the phone company retrieved from pinging Angola’s cell phone. I write it down and plug it into my map app.

  “Oh my God,” I whisper hoarsely.