“Dawg. Control room now, please.”
McGyver met him at the door. “Explosion on campus. Math building. Iris has math class now. I’m headed there to check it out.”
He stopped and took his vest off. He didn’t need to go as an RTMC member. He settled it on top of the safe and nodded to Dawg. “Let Brain know.”
The compound is less than two miles from campus as the crow flies, but closer to three if you take the main roads.
McGyver’s helmet was hooked up through his phone, and he called Aaron Drake on his way. Aaron picked right up and told what he knew without preamble.
“She’s out of contact and traveling away from the building. I have a team en route. Her phone is still on campus. I’m on my way. I had two men on her this morning. The human closest to her was killed in the explosion. Former marine. The device must’ve been placed ahead of time because nothing got past him. Ben was outside, watching her through a window. He’s retired army, Ranger, and he’s a bobcat, so retired doesn’t mean old and washed up. The building’s doors automatically closed to contain the fire and smoke, and she was herded to…” He sighed. “They knew exactly where traffic would be directed. Meet my team on Vine Street, and if you smell something or see something, speak up. Every nose is different, and you’ll be more locked in on her scent.”
“I’m on my bike and I’m close. None of the trackers I had on her are in motion. If you have movement, please let me know where she is. I can follow faster than your people.”
“Give me a sec. I was talking to Chance and put him on hold to answer your call — let me get you both on the line together.” A handful of seconds later, another man was on the line and talking a million miles a minute. “Everything’s still on Oak Street, but she isn’t! I’m scouring traffic cams on the off chance I see something that catches my eye, but we have nothing, Aaron!”
“Chance, I have McGyver on the line. Where should he go? Catch him up. No secrets.”
“Vine Street to smell, first. They turned right into Grote Hall parking, came back through to the math and engineering building parking lot, turned right onto Palmetto and then another right onto Oak, and I lost them in front of Cadek Hall! I can’t scour traffic cams, because there aren’t any — it’s all back roads.” He took a breath. “The university’s cameras went down when the explosion happened. I’m in their system, but there’s nothing to see there, either. Assholes know what they’re doing.”
McGyver locked his emotions down and considered it from all angles. What would he do if he needed to get someone out of there in a cage? Would he take MLK to the interstate, or would he loop around and use Amnicola, or would he go north on Corridor J?
It depended on where they were taking her, but out of town seemed the best bet. But, without knowing the type of vehicle they were in, driving around town looking wouldn’t accomplish anything.
“Drive to the amphitheater by the fine arts building,” Aaron told him. “Someone there will give you an earpiece, so you can listen in and be kept up to date. Her father’s on the way to the Birmingham airport.”
“I need a minute alone with you and not on the phone.”
“Then you’ll have it, but only because I know you’d never waste my time in this kind of situation.”
If he hadn’t offered the earpiece, McGyver wouldn’t have told him about Kendra this early, and might not have at all, but Aaron was working to get her back, too, and they all needed to be on the same page.
McGyver pulled up to the amphitheater, just down the road from where they’d lost her signal, and he locked his emotions down even tighter. He walked to a pile of clothes on the side of the road, in front of Cadek Hall. They’d been cut away from her. He knew they were hers because they fucking smelled like her. Even her bra was there. They’d stripped her bare.
“That’s why all her trackers stopped.” He didn’t say it as a question.
“Aaron says you get to tag along,” said Ranger. “I’m appointing you our in-the-field tech consultant. Is her father going to recognize you, with the beard? If we call you McGyver and treat you as one of us, can we pull it off? I have no time for drama today, so if there’s even a cunt-hair’s chance he’ll recognize you, we need to keep you out of sight.”
“My hair was short and I didn’t have the beard, and he’s going to be preoccupied, but it’ll probably be safe to keep me in the background, if possible. He obviously hasn’t kept up with me enough to know I’m in Chattanooga, but he might have known when I joined the MC in Atlanta, so hearing my name might trigger something.”
Ranger nodded. “Since our Mac’s out of town on another assignment, it won’t be confusing to call you Mac. I’ll let everyone know. Aaron’s bringing a Drake shirt for you.” He looked at the clothes on the ground. “Anything you can tell me from this?”
He leaned down and let his wolf come forward enough to get a good smell. He stood and took a cleansing breath to manage his own emotions. He needed to hit someone, but that would have to wait. “Logic and fear. She’s terrified but holding it together.”
Three police cars pulled up, and a uniformed officer started yelling for them to get on the ground. The RTMC’s official policy is to follow orders of law enforcement, but none of the Drake people moved to do so, so McGyver stood beside Ranger and held his hands up and out, the same as the other Drake people.
“Call your supervisor and tell him Drake Security’s on the premises,” Ranger told them. “The kidnapped female is a client. We’ll hand law enforcement everything we have once a detective is assigned to the case.”
The officer got on the phone, but another cop pointed his gun at McGyver.
“He’s RTMC.”
“He’s our tech consultant. Aaron Drake’s on his way with a shirt, since Mac rode straight here when we called him. We had numerous trackers on Iris, and we believe they’re all in this pile of clothing, meaning we won’t be able to track where they’ve taken her. I expect her father will receive a ransom call soon. He’s headed to the airport and will fly up on his private jet. We’re tapped into his phone so we can try to trace the call if one comes through. He’s been trained extensively in how to handle a ransom call. We’ll have a recording, which we’ll of course share with law enforcement.”
The officer who’d made the phone call secured his gun back in the holster. “Cap’s calling the Feebs. We’re to secure the scene until they arrive.”
The guns were put away, everyone put their hands down, and Ranger said, “I’m reaching into my pocket for a business card. If you can get it to whoever is in charge of the investigation, we can make sure they have everything we do. We have what we need from the two crime scenes, so we’ll be heading back to the office. Bob is the only one here who witnessed it. We have his statement, and he’ll stay so he can give it again.” He looked at McGyver. “I need you to ride with me.”
McGyver made a quick call to the MC’s control room, and Dawg assured him someone would get his bike back to the compound. He slid into the passenger side of Ranger’s SUV, and didn’t breathe easy until they were out of sight of the cops.
“Where are we headed?”
“Drake offices.” He pushed a button and told the onboard system to call the control room. A few seconds later, Chance answered with a status update.
“Aaron’s headed to the office instead of the scene. We’ve set up a room and have a board started, with pictures and video. We have people scouring social media, and we have blurry pictures of the abduction. Everyone’s wearing a mask, and we know the van was dumped a few blocks away, but Micca has the images and if there’s anything to learn, she’ll figure it out.” He took a breath. “Gabby’s here, and she’s insisting she sit in on meetings. I think she’s with Micca now, looking over footage.”
McGyver closed his eyes and leaned his head against the headrest. He’d forgotten how closely intertwined the MC and Drake were. Gabby belonged to Horse, and Micca was Matty’s best friend, which meant she was also Razor’s.
They were family, and they wouldn’t let him down.
Ranger issued a few orders and disconnected the call.
“You should hear what I need to tell Aaron when we get to the Drake headquarters, but I’m not telling him over a phone.” McGyver took a breath. “No one can know except you and Aaron. I don’t care what lies you have to tell to make it happen, but I need that promise.”
“He’ll likely say Nathan will have to be included. I’ve never known them to keep secrets from each other.”
Ranger and McGyver went straight to Aaron’s office when they arrived. The sounds in the hallway went away when the door closed, and McGyver breathed a little easier knowing the room was soundproof.
“Ranger said you’ll want to tell Nathan. I don’t want anyone else, to know, please.”
Aaron nodded, and McGyver told them, “I told Iris what I am, and had Kendra do the oath. I paid Kendra to bite her and bind her enough she’d be able to find her, should we need her to. Kendra wiped it from Iris’s mind and she doesn’t know. I need to keep it that way, but as soon as Kendra’s up, she can head us in the right direction. If they’ve taken her far away, we probably won’t be able to zero in on her until we can get Kendra on a plane.”
Aaron glanced at the clock on the wall. “Abbott wakes before Kendra, and he can use Kendra’s tie to find her, or at least the general direction. We have around five hours until he’ll wake, but I’ll leave a message so he’ll call us the second he does.” He shook his head. “I don’t lie to Sophia. Usually, I can make work promises because it’s doubtful she’ll ask, but if she does, the most I can promise is to tell her I can’t share how we found Iris.”
McGyver looked at his feet, but there was no question about whether or not to use Kendra. They had to find her and get her back. If he had to face the music about what he’d done, so be it. At least she’d be alive.
“Her father won’t be able to know.” He looked up. “I assume he doesn’t know about supernaturals?”
“Not to my knowledge,” said Aaron. “We’ll put you and Kendra with a top-notch team on Abbott’s plane as soon as she’s up, assuming she agrees to it. They can get her into it safely, and there’s a light-tight room. She’ll be able to direct the plane, and we’ll tell Wendel that our tech consultant’s following a slim lead.” He sighed. “And then we’ll hope to hell we can backtrack something so we can explain how we found her. There’s a chance these are the same people who took her mom, or that at least one of them was on that team. Maybe we can say we suspected him so we went to where he was. I don’t know — we’ll figure it out later.” He looked around the room. “We find her and get her home safe, and then we figure out how to explain it.”
Aaron walked to the door. “Let’s see if Chance has anything new.” They followed him, and Aaron explained, “I’ve taken charge of this op. Ranger’s secondary now. Chance will be in charge of the war room. Micca and Gabby are on board. You’ll have a station in the war room, and Chance will have one of our geeks make sure you understand the tools at your fingertips. The laptop will be yours until we find her. If you need to access a high-level government database, let Chance know and he’ll do it for you. Otherwise, you’ll be able to get into just about anything you might need, including DMV records for every state. Don’t abuse it.”
He stopped to punch in a code to get into a hallway. All doors were closed in this wing. They passed a dozen of the old classrooms, and Aaron stopped and pressed his palm to the sensor beside the door.
“Chance,” he said as they entered, “get Mac’s palmprint so you can give him access.” He turned to McGyver. “Last five digits of your cellphone will work on the keypads you’ve been cleared for. This isn’t the case for employees, so don’t even try. If you need access longer than twenty-four hours, we’ll get you something to memorize.” He looked to the board and then focused on Micca a few seconds before looking back to Chance. “Where are we?”
Chance pointed to the monitor the size of a whiteboard on the wall, set up like the crime board in police procedurals. “Pics and vid from social media. I hacked the phone of the young man with the vid so we could get the original hi-res, but it’s still crap.” He pointed to another wall with an array of monitors. “The map shows where Wendel’s plane is. Looks like he’s about twenty minutes out, and I have a car waiting for him. No ransom call yet. The others are a visual of what the people in the room are working on, a running list of CPD and HCSD’s dispatch, and current status of Brock Wendel’s phone.” He blew out a breath. “We haven’t hit a wall because we have things to analyze, but… fuck. We should’ve had three men on her in this building. Too many exits.”
“These men are willing to kill to get what they want,” Aaron told him. “They’d have found a way if we’d put ten men on her, and even more people would be dead or injured. Keep your head in the game and get back on your keyboard. Thanks for getting everything organized. You did good.”
Chance nodded and looked at McGyver. “I’ll show you to your workstation and get you an earpiece. It’s a lot of talking back and forth, and it’s hard to focus with it at first, but it helps keep you up to date.”
“We wear them on ops. I’m used to it. I’ll be fine.”
Chance nodded and lifted a little stick no bigger than a toothpick, but with pincers on the end holding something no bigger than a flat mole. “It sticks to the tragus, the little flap on the front of your earhole. We have a vacuum thing to take it off, so it won’t get lost. They’re sanitized between uses. Lean down and I’ll put it in. I just need to touch it to your skin and it’ll stick.”
There wasn’t time to argue, so McGyver did, and then closed his eyes when he heard Bob talking to the cops through it.
Chance handed him a small square unit, an inch by two inches and perhaps a quarter inch thick. “Transmitter. Side button is push-to-talk. Top four buttons are power, always-on, and then channel down and up. Volume buttons are on the side. We’re on channel seven for this op. Don’t switch it unless you’re told to. Always-on will occasionally go to eleven, but we don’t have enough going on now, so Bob’s fine.”
Chapter 19
Iris’s body hurt in places she didn’t know could hurt, but she pushed it all to the background and paid attention to what was happening around her. They’d switched from the original vehicle into another right away, and then moved to a third perhaps forty minutes to an hour later. Time was hard to gauge, but she’d guess they drove another twenty minutes before transferring her to a plane with jet engines, so these guys either had money or the wherewithal to steal and pilot a plane. Either way, everything they’d done so far pointed to professionals.
They’d put some kind of loose dress on her before they got on the plane, and they’d moved her hands so they were bound in front instead of behind, but her head was still covered, they hadn’t cut her ankles loose, and someone had carried her onto the plane like a baby.
She was seated in what felt like an airplane seat. Someone fastened her seatbelt, and a robotic voice came over a loudspeaker to tell them they should be wheels up in ten minutes.
Based on the sound of the jets, Iris assumed the plane would need a longer runway than most private airports, which meant they were likely at an airport that handled commercial traffic. None of this gave her a chance to escape, but she was keeping sane by trying to stay on top of what was happening around her.
Her shoulders, back, neck, stomach, chest, and legs still ached, but at least she wasn’t in the hogtie anymore. She jumped when someone touched her, and her stomach sank when they attached her wrists to the right armrest. Her shoulders spasmed and jerked in protest, but she breathed through the pain and didn’t complain.
However, other than the horrible positions they put her in, they weren’t hurting her, and they weren’t letting her hear them talk, nor had she seen them. She had the distinct impression they were communicating via a whiteboard instead of talking. She smelled the marker, and she occasionally heard the squeaking
noise. So, while they weren’t going out of their way to make her comfortable, they weren’t being assholes, and they were making sure she couldn’t identify them when they let her go. Iris held onto that knowledge and forced herself away from the panic attack just at the edge of her psyche.
It’d been three years since her mother’s abduction, and no one had ever figured out what went wrong. The exchange had been scheduled, but no one was there when her father arrived with the money. The next afternoon, her body was found on the side of a state highway outside Richmond, Virginia.
Had they inadvertently said something so she’d have been able to identify them? Had the cops or the FBI spooked them?
The autopsy showed she’d died from a bullet to the head. It was as if they’d pulled over on the side of the road, shot her, left her in some tall grass, and that was it. She was abducted in New York and the exchange was supposed to happen in downtown Philadelphia, so why had she been in Richmond?
No one had ever been able to answer any of these questions.
Chapter 20
Before Brock Wendel was due to arrive, someone brought McGyver prescription type glasses and a black Drake Security shirt. He changed shirts without leaving the room. The shapeshifters would have smelled the gun on his hip right away — no need in trying to hide it. He put the glasses on, and Gabby stepped to him and added a Drake Security hat. The shirt was snug, but it was long enough.
“I found a picture of you in the high school yearbook, and I don’t think there’s any way he’ll recognize you as being that boy. The focus will be on your muscles, your hair, and the glasses. We all know to call you Mac.” Gabby touched his arm. “We’re going to find her. Now, go sit and look for her along with the rest of us. The assholes found a twenty-minute window there were no damned satellites over us, but there has to be a way to see what kind of vehicle they swapped into.”
“Uniforms are questioning everyone in the area,” Aaron said. “Nothing yet.” He picked up an empty coffee mug and threw it against the wall so hard, it pulverized into powder instead of shards of ceramic. “Brock Wendel’s plane just landed. He’ll be here in twenty minutes and we need to have something to tell him.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Sorry. We haven’t completely lost someone like this in decades. I’m going to look through the data we have on her mother’s abduction again, just to see if something pops.”
McGyver Page 14
