by Brad Taylor
Even with all of that, Charleston had its perks.
Lanny was happily married, with a wife and a nice ranch house in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and that happiness came from the fact that he was always on the road. They both loved each other, but neither had realized how much being deployed at sea with the navy had factored into their relationship. One year after retiring, they were completely sick of each other and on the verge of a divorce, then he’d found this contracting job. He traveled for months on end, just like he was still in the navy, and like those deployments, he carved out time to find some local girls for friendship.
He’d become accustomed to using the ubiquitous sex site BackPage.com, but that was shuttered by federal agents in 2018. Since then, he’d been shopping around, trying to find the next BackPage, and had landed on a site called Skipthegames. The webpage was located in Europe, but had plenty of ads for the United States, including Charleston, and it also had the added benefit of pictures. He’d perused it last night and was surprised to see a girl listed that he’d been with in Norfolk. Beth something-or-other.
She’d been sweet, and while she’d claimed to be eighteen, he was pretty sure she was younger. Just like the women he’d found in the old days of port liberty in Thailand and the Philippines. He’d used the webpage to book her for a night, but he didn’t want her to come here, right next to the naval base, so he’d made a reservation downtown at a swanky place called the French Quarter Inn.
He reviewed the instructions he’d been sent one more time, did a Google Map check of Tommy Condon’s, then packed up a go-bag with fresh underwear, toothbrush and toothpaste, a condom, and a cheap bouquet of flowers he’d purchased at a grocery store. He checked himself in the mirror, slapped his gut as if that would make it disappear, and then left his spartan room for the one downtown.
He spent the drive thinking about what he would do with the night. At the end of the day, he fully understood he was paying for sex, but he liked to pretend—at least in his own mind—that it was a date. He hadn’t had that in the Philippines, and it had made him feel dirty, like an exploiter of women. Something he had never liked.
Now, with the money he made on his contracts, whenever he ordered women, he didn’t just sleep with them and leave. He made it into an affair that lasted the night, including dinner, drinks, and a nice hotel room. He knew it was false, but it kept him from the slimy notion of being a john in a back alley. He was better than that. Noble.
He pulled into the parking garage on Cumberland Street, picked up the flowers and his go-bag from the passenger seat, locked up, and went down the stairwell to the entrance of the garage, a grin slipping out even as he tried to contain it.
He reached a landing and another man entered the stairwell, his face grim. Lannister glanced up and saw a bright scar tracking down through his brow and into his cheek, giving the man the look of death. Lannister ducked his head and went by him, not wanting to give the passerby any reason to engage him. He failed to realize he’d just passed the instrument of his own destruction.
Chapter 6
It was closing in on 5 p.m. and Amena hadn’t come home. Jennifer was now pacing the house like a caged panther. She finally looked at me and said, “Okay, we need to find her. Before it gets dark.”
I was glad her idea about giving Amena a little freedom was wearing off, because I was really starting to worry.
She’d run off into the crowd over five hours ago and hadn’t shown back up at our house. We both thought she’d be gone for an hour or two, max, but that hadn’t happened. Deep down, I knew something wasn’t right, and I felt the blame in my soul. I should have stopped her. Should have been the parent I once was.
I said, “I’ll go drive around the market and see if I can find her. It’ll be okay. She’s probably back in the fountain.”
Jennifer said, “Get the Taskforce on this. Find her phone.”
I held up Amena’s handset and said, “She left her phone. I can’t even track it.”
Jennifer slapped the counter and said, “I swear, when I get my hands on that child . . .”
I grinned, and then saw a tear form in her eye. I said, “Hey, I’ll go get her. It’s not going to end badly.”
She said, “She might have run away for real. Don’t let her go. Please. We brought her here. Promised her things. And now she’s going to end up in a ditch.”
I said, “Cut that out. She isn’t going to run away. If anything, she’s running around Charleston fleecing the tourists.”
Jennifer bored into me and said, “That’s not it. You know it. You feel it. I can see it in your eyes.”
And she was right. Amena touched me in a way that I hadn’t felt since my daughter had died. We had a connection, and that connection was telling me something was bad. But I didn’t want Jennifer to believe it was her fault for letting Amena go. And she most definitely felt that way.
I said, “I’ll go circle downtown. See what I can see.”
She said, “I’m coming with you.”
“No. You’re not. She might come home. Someone needs to be here. Let me do this alone.”
She looked at me with unadulterated pain and said, “Why did I let her run off?”
I leaned in and kissed her, saying, “It wasn’t you. What you did was right. What happened after isn’t your fault. I’ll find her.”
She took the kiss, then leaned back, looking at me with a ferocious stare. She said, “Get her back here. Do what you do.”
I said, “I will. In the meantime, stay by your phone. She might call you for a ride.”
I exited our house at a trot, jogging down the stairs to my dented Jeep CJ-7. It wasn’t as comfortable as Jennifer’s Mini Cooper, but it was certainly recognizable, which is something I wanted in case Amena was looking for us.
I wanted to believe that, but knew if that were the case, she would have just walked home.
I cut over to King Street, rode that down to Broad Street, then circled back up East Bay, cutting down Market, then circling to the fountain on Vendue Range. I saw nothing but tourists. No sign of Amena. I decided to go on foot, driving up Cumberland to the parking garage. I found a spot on the third floor, started walking down the stairwell, and saw a man on the level below me exit a Hyundai carrying a cheap bouquet of flowers, a small knapsack on his back. He reached the stairwell just as I rounded the floor above and glanced away. Which was something I was used to. I let him go in front, me four steps above him, and he picked up his pace like he didn’t want me behind him. Something else I was used to.
By the time I broke out into the sunshine, he was at the door to an old Irish pub called Tommy Condon’s. He entered, and I went left, back to Market Street, my head on a swivel looking for Amena.
Forty-five minutes later, I was walking back to my car, dreading the call I would have to make to Jennifer. She hadn’t called me, so I knew there had been no activity at home. I rounded the corner of Cumberland Street and saw the bouquet guy walking with a female. I did a double take when I saw her.
It was the girl that Amena had talked to at the ice cream shop. The older man I’d seen with her earlier was nowhere to be found. Just the flower boy and her. They disappeared into a brick tunnel leading to a building and I picked up my pace, wanting to ask the girl if she’d seen Amena.
I reached the tunnel and saw it was the entrance to a boutique hotel, one of many that dotted the peninsula of Charleston. I entered an atrium, swiveled my head around, but didn’t see the couple. In front of me were a winding staircase leading up and a Ruth’s Chris steakhouse that had just opened. I jogged forward and stuck my head in, seeing it deserted at this hour, with only a couple of businessmen at the bar. Staircase it was.
I sprinted up it, reached the hotel lobby area, and outdoor deck to the left. Once again I didn’t see my targets. I went to the woman at the reception desk and said, “There was a man and a girl that just came in here. Did you see where they went?”
She pointed and said, “The elevator.
They’re staying here.”
I nodded, started to move that way, and knew it wouldn’t do me any good. I had no idea what floor they were on. I turned back around and said, “Look, I know your answer is going to want to be no, but I’m trying to find a lost child, and I think they might have seen her. Can you tell me what room they’re in?”
She looked uncomfortable, but then gave the answer I knew was coming. “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t do that. I can, however, call the police for you.”
With Amena’s status, that was an absolute nonstarter. But I had a better idea. I said, “That’s okay. It’s not a crisis yet. I’ll try another way.”
She nodded, a little concern in her eyes, and I said, “Thanks anyway.”
I left the lobby at a trot, running back down the stairs and pulling out my cell phone. I speed walked to the Cumberland parking garage dialing a number. When it answered, I heard, “Pike, hey, how are you?”
Threaded in between the salutation was a little dread. Because I never called this guy direct unless I had a problem, and usually what I wanted was illegal. Like now.
I said, “Hey, Creed, I’ve got a little issue here and could use some help.”
“Pike, no, no, no. I’m not doing any hacking for you off the books.”
I entered the stairwell for the garage, sprinted up to the third floor, and said, “It’s not a hack. It’s just some data mining.”
Bartholomew Creedwater was what respectable people called a computer network operations engineer. Which was like calling a whore a sexual therapist, because he was a hacker. He worked for the Taskforce and was very good at his job. He was my go-to guy for any official work that I needed to be accomplished—and he’d been willing to bend a law or two on my behalf in the past.
He said, “Pike, no way. I can’t do it. It’ll be logged and recorded. I’ll get barbecued for breaking the law.”
The Taskforce had a healthy offensive capability to use the cyber realm to solve counterterrorism threats, but that came with some rules to prevent it from running amok—the primary one being we weren’t allowed to target any U.S. entities. On the surface, it seemed like we were “fighting with one arm tied behind our back,” but that wasn’t really true. Liberty needed protection as much as physical life, and I didn’t mind the strictures. Honestly, having the capability was the same as having a rifle. Issued to me by the U.S. government, I could use it against the enemy all day long, but to take it out of the arms room and start shooting Americans on the street would be a nonstarter. It was no different with the new world of cyber collection capabilities.
But now, I needed his help, and he was the only one who could do it.
I exited onto the third deck and said, “I’m not asking you to do any hacking. Just give me a name from a database. I’m going to give you a license plate, and I need a name.”
He said, “Pike, I can’t do that. We’re restricted from doing anything on U.S. soil. You know that.”
I said, “Pretend I’m not on U.S. soil. Get me the name of the guy that owns this car.”
“Pike . . . why?”
I reached the car and snarled, “Because I’ve lost Amena, and this fuck might be someone who knows where she is. That’s why.”
Amena had become a flashpoint in the Taskforce, precisely because I’d broken protocol to bring her to the United States, but Creed knew what she meant to me, and, unlike the other shits in the hierarchy, he actually cared.
I heard nothing for a moment, then, “Send it to me.”
I took a picture of the license plate, sent it, then said, “Tell me who owns it.”
A minute later, he said, “It’s a rental. Hertz.”
I said, “Who rented it?”
“Pike! That’s going to take offensive action to figure out. I’m not searching static databases anymore.”
I said, “Uh huh. Yeah. Answer the question. Who rented it?”
“Pike. I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can. Look, I think Amena is in serious trouble. She’s been gone for over five hours. This guy is with a woman who was with her. All I want to do is talk to him. That’s all.”
“Have you talked to Kurt about this?”
Kurt Hale was the commander of Project Prometheus—the official title for what we knuckledraggers called the Taskforce—and of course I hadn’t talked to him. I didn’t need to. He’d done the same thing once saving his niece and had asked me to help him then. But I knew he’d tell me no here.
I said, “Just tell me who rented that car. That’s all I’m asking.”
I heard nothing for a moment, then: “It’s a guy named Lannister McBride. He rented the car two weeks ago, with a return three weeks from now. Can I be done?”
Because of the speed with which I got the information, I knew he’d been working it before I even asked. He trusted me, and it meant a great deal.
I said, “Yeah, you can. Thank you.”
Chapter 7
I now had a name, but had to figure out how to leverage it for offensive action. I called Jennifer. “Any word?”
“No, Pike, I haven’t heard anything.”
“Well, get your ass down to the Cumberland parking lot. I have a thread, but I can’t do it by myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just get down here. I need eyes on a vehicle, and a Demon Seed tracker. Something that works with the cell network. I have a car I want tracked. I’ll explain when you get here.”
Because she was who she was, she didn’t even question me. She said, “On the way,” and hung up.
I then sat for a minute against Lannister’s car, leaning back and thinking about the call I was going to make. I needed to talk to the girl, but I had no idea about her name. That was okay, because all I really needed was to get her on the phone.
I decided that just plowing forward was the best bet. Make the call and be honest. If the two were on the up-and-up, he’d probably hand the phone to her, and I’d get my interview. If not, at least I’d be shaking the tree for Jennifer to exploit.
Which, in retrospect, was probably not the best idea, because even given all the evil I’d seen in the world, I had no idea that it had penetrated my own hometown and taken my little refugee.
I rang the number for the hotel and said, “Lannister McBride’s room, please.”
I waited a bit, and then someone answered.
“Hello?”
“Lannister McBride?”
“Yes.”
“Hey, this is going to seem a little weird, but you’re up there with a girl who was with my daughter. She’s now gone, and I’m trying to find her. Could I talk to her, please?”
I heard breathing, then, “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not up here with anyone. How did you get my name?”
And I realized he was doing something bad. The girl wasn’t a relative or friend. She was a whore.
I said, “Hey, calm down. I’m just trying to find my daughter. That’s all. Don’t go crazy here. Can I talk to the woman you’re with? Please? I don’t care what you’re doing.”
He screamed, “I’m not with a woman!”
And the phone disconnected.
I tapped my cell in my hand, then redialed, asking for his room again. This time, nobody answered. I went to the edge of the parking garage to a vantage point where I could keep an eye on the front door of the hotel. I saw plenty of people coming and going, but thankfully not my target. I tapped my foot impatiently, like that would make Jennifer arrive faster. I heard a car circling up the floors and saw Jenn’s little Mini Cooper rise up. I waved my hand and she pulled up next to me, saying, “What do you have?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing, but there’s a guy that went into the French Quarter Inn with the girl that Amena sat down next to, at the ice cream shop. I called his room and he clammed up. I want to know where he goes. He’s our only contact with the woman, and we don’t have the manpower to cover all the exits to catch her. They might be running out a back
exit right now—but eventually he’ll have to return to this car.”
She squinted and said, “How did you call him on the phone?”
I tilted my head and she said, “Okay, okay, I won’t ask. Where’s his car?”
I pointed at the Hyundai four spots away and said, “Get the Demon Seed on it, and then get ready to follow. Station at the exit. Pay your parking fee and wait. You’ll get a thirty-minute grace period before you have to exit. He’ll be out before then.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because he’s spooked. I could hear it in his voice. I don’t think he’s staying here. I think he got a room for the night only, and now he’s going to want to get back to his house.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“Then we let the Demon Seed do its work. He’ll leave sooner or later, and we won’t need to do some Starsky and Hutch stakeout to see him exit. Put a geo-fence on this garage and when he breaks it, we’re in business.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Once you’re set, I’m going to make another lap looking for Amena, but I don’t think I’ll see her. I want to brace this guy, but I want you to do it. I had contact with him in the stairwell here, so I don’t want to spook him. You’ll give him a sense of security because you’re a female. I want you to get him to open up. I’ll be right behind you, standing by if there’s any trouble.”
She said, “What’s he got to do with Amena? Is it just the connection at the fountain?”
I shook my head, and she saw the pain. I said, “I know it sounds thin, but it’s all we have right now. I honestly don’t know if it has anything at all to do with Amena. But I feel it.”
