Commander Vanessa Livingston usually kept her long hair braided into a bun that stayed hidden beneath her hat. Today was her day off, though, so instead of wearing her uniform, she was dressed in blue jeans and a flowing blue blouse. Obviously, the men who normally worked under her were taken aback by any sign of femininity in their usually severe boss. None of them could look her in the eye, though they all seemed to be in suspended animation as they waited for her to speak.
“Nothing,” she said. “I checked the international terminal myself. The incinerator hasn’t gone off yet.” Will knew that customs was required by law to burn anything illegally brought into the country—usually fruits and vegetables. “I had one of my boys climb around inside, but it was just the usual crap people try to bring in.”
“It was worth a shot.” Amanda sounded as disappointed as they all felt.
Vanessa snapped her fingers at the men assembled in the room. “Report?”
The sergeant stood up. “The rental car companies and shuttles were a dead end. We called all the chauffeur services—legal and illegal. None of them report picking up a single adult with a child, two adults with a child, or a child alone.”
She nodded for him to get back to work, telling Amanda and Will, “It’s Monday. We generally see children traveling on weekends and holidays, so a kid would stick out.”
Amanda walked over to the map of the downtown corridor that was pinned to the wall. She tapped her finger on various points as she caught Vanessa up on their actions so far. “Marriott. Embassy Suites. Renaissance. Hilton. Westin. Holiday Inn. We’ve got at least thirty airport hotels, more if you stretch to College Park. I’ve pulled in all GBI field agents and invoked an Action Alert so that local police forces can help search. This, as you know, is our problem.” She traced a circle around I-75, I-85, I-20, I-285, all the major arteries that led away from the city. “We’re assuming the girl was handed off approximately forty-five minutes ago. That’s enough time to reach the Alabama state line. If he’s heading to Tennessee or the Carolinas, we’ve got approximately two more hours before he’s out of our jurisdiction. I’ve alerted Florida in case he’s going south.”
“Screw that,” Vanessa said. “We’ll take care of these assholes ourselves.”
She used her keycard to buzz them into the command center, which was euphemistically called the Cold Room.
Will let Amanda enter ahead of him. He felt the temperature drop as soon as his foot crossed the threshold. The Cold Room was kept at a cool sixty-five degrees so that the banks of computers could work at their most efficient levels. Every camera at the airport fed into this one room, which looked as if it had taken its design cues from NASA. Rows of desks were tiered like stadium seating. Each station had three monitors, and since that still wasn’t enough, dozens more monitors lined the front wall.
Will guessed the room was the size of a basketball gymnasium, with an upper level that looked down on it all like a suite at a stadium. This is where Vanessa stood, Amanda at her side, Will behind them. They watched the real-time action of the airport, which was slowly revving back up.
Almost fifty percent of Delta’s intercontinental flights laid over at Hartsfield, which meant their schedule had been shot to hell today. None of the passengers on the monitors looked happy. They were all taking it personally that their flights had been canceled or delayed. That a little girl had been snatched seemed a bad justification for missing their flight out. Vanessa’s team had already broken up a nasty fistfight in front of one of the ticketing desks.
Vanessa explained, “We’ve got every inch of the interior facilities covered. The parking garages are spotty—we’ve got most of the pedestrian walkways covered and of course cameras are on every car that enters and exits. I’ve already instructed my people to run every image through the face recognition software.”
Faith Mitchell stuck up her head from the sea of desks. She told Amanda, “We’re ready to go.”
Amanda glanced at her friend, on whose turf they were standing, but Vanessa only grunted, “Please.”
Faith looked back down at the desk. She’d always been good with electronics. A few taps on the keyboard and she was in complete control of the system.
The largest monitor on the wall flickered, and Will saw himself peering around the bathroom exit. The next monitor in the row showed the man wearing his bad wig and glasses. He was dragging the girl across the concourse, making a beeline toward the escalator. Will heard the tapping of keys as Faith isolated the images. Yet another monitor showed a frozen still of the man’s face. His wig was skewed. His glasses were halfway down his nose. Then came the girl’s face. She looked absolutely stricken.
Will felt all eyes on him. Looking at it from a distance, the crime was obvious.
Amanda mumbled, “It was a tough call,” which was probably the most generous thing she’d ever said.
Faith hit some more keys. The middle monitor sped back up, tracing the path Will had followed through the airport. When Will exited at the T concourse, the train camera tracked the man until he exited at baggage claim. He struggled to get off the train quickly, but was beaten in the rush to the escalators because the girl was holding him back. Instead of climbing the stairs, he took the elevator. The corner-mounted camera inside the car showed him furiously pressing the button to close the doors even as an older woman in a wheelchair approached.
The doors closed in her face. Again, the man looked at his watch.
Amanda asked, “How late was his plane?”
“Fifteen minutes,” Vanessa said. “It was one of the first out, so we know he didn’t put the girl on a connecting flight.”
They had already tracked the man back to his arrival gate in the C concourse. His American Airlines flight had left Seattle’s Sea-Tac International Airport this morning. It was a smaller airport, but fortunately was in compliance with Homeland Security’s new safety protocols. Every passenger who’d ever flown in a plane knew that their boarding pass was always scanned by the gate agent. What they didn’t realize was that there was a camera trained on their face the entire time so that the footage could later be matched to a name.
Sea-Tac had emailed the digital files ten minutes ago. Four techs were already working on finding the man’s identity.
Vanessa said, “Neither Seattle nor Tacoma PD have taken a missing child report matching our girl’s age range in the last seventy-two hours. They’ve sent a notice to all schools within a hundred-mile radius. It’s on the airwaves. Her photo’s everywhere.”
Amanda asked, “Seattle’s what—a three-hour drive from Vancouver?”
“We’ve already coordinated with the Mounties and border patrol. If she passed through one of the four main checkpoints into the U.S., they’ll find her.”
“There’s no telling where she came from,” Amanda pointed out. “She could’ve been driven up from Tijuana, for all we know.”
“LAX is running film for us. All the international airports from here to the West Coast. It’s a needle in a haystack, but they’ll comb every piece to find a kid,” Vanessa said. “Let’s pull up her picture again.”
Faith did the honors. The photo of the stolen girl took center stage. There was a pause, then a flurry of typing as people went back to work. Will stared at the girl, his mind filling with all kinds of what-ifs. What if he’d grabbed her in the bathroom? What if he’d stopped the man, questioned him?
About what? Why he wanted the little girl to hurry up and use the toilet?
“Got him!” someone yelled. “Joseph Allen Jenner.”
The little girl’s photo disappeared and in its place was the man. He stood in line behind a group of travelers in matching yellow shirts, probably part of a cruise trip en route to Florida.
Jenner was wearing the same jacket, green side out. His hair was white. No wig. No glasses. No baseball cap. Will guessed from his bulky jacket that these items were in the pockets. Security couldn’t stop you for traveling with a wig.
Faith ask
ed, “Where’s the kid?”
She was right. Jenner was alone.
“Scan back through the passengers,” Vanessa ordered.
“Already on it,” a man answered.
Faith turned back to her keyboard. Her work showed on one of the smaller screens. She was running Jenner through CODIS, the FBI’s national DNA database of convicted offenders. “Nothing,” she said, though they could see as much for themselves. She ran Jenner through the state system, then the regional, trying to find any record of arrest or registration as a sex offender. Finally, she Googled the man.
Pay dirt.
“He’s a tax lawyer,” Faith said. She clicked and scrolled through various articles in The Atlanta Journal Constitution, calling out her findings as she skimmed the information. Jenner wasn’t the type to fly below the radar. The guy did pro bono work for a children’s charity. He coached little league baseball. He was a certified lifeguard who helped out at the local YMCA.
“Typical,” Amanda muttered. “They always hide in plain sight.”
“Found the kid.” The Sea-Tac footage sped up, and a short, round woman was shown holding the girl in her arms. The child was obviously too big to be held. The woman nearly buckled under her weight.
“The woman is Eleanor Fielding,” the guy supplied. “Kid’s listed as Abigail Fielding.”
Vanessa asked, “Is she still with the kid when they land?”
The footage cut back to the gate in Atlanta. Will saw a line of passengers exiting the boarding door. They looked tired and confused, the way most people did when they sat in a metal tube for five hours and landed in a completely different city. All of them searched for signs, looking for either the exit or their next gate.
Fielding was in the second wave of passengers coming up the jetway. She didn’t look confused at all as she walked into the terminal. She headed off with purpose, almost jogging toward the escalators to the underground train.
Vanessa ordered, “Stay on the door.”
The film sped up, but not so much that they couldn’t make out the faces. The tech was good. The film was back at normal speed when Joseph Allen Jenner’s face came on-screen. He was one of the last passengers off the plane. He was holding the girl’s hand, dragging her along. Instead of heading toward the exit, he took her to an adjoining gate. A second and third camera tracked their progress as he led her to the back wall and forced her to sit in a chair. The girl was still groggy. She yawned, looking around with seemingly unfocused eyes.
“She looks drugged,” Amanda noted.
“That’s fairly common,” Vanessa supplied. She’d worked at the airport long enough to know how these people operated. “We had a kid abducted on the West Coast last year. Drugged out of his mind. Flight attendants assumed he was sleeping, which is what you want from a kid on a long flight. He was passed off at the international terminal and on his way to Amsterdam by the time LAX tracked the internal flight.”
“Did you recover him?” Will asked.
Vanessa nodded, but Will could tell from her expression that the kid hadn’t escaped unscathed. Not many of them did.
Stranger abductions were rare—statistically, a kid was much more likely to be harmed by a family member—but the Internet was making things easier for predators. Will had been involved in a sting several years ago where a man took photos of kids on the playground and posted them to a private chat room. His plan was to snatch a kid that he could trade with another predator. It was a pedophile’s version of the old Sears Wish Book. The man had been arrested, but these assholes were like cockroaches. For every one you caught, there were thousands hiding in the walls.
Like Joseph Allen Jenner.
On the security footage, it was obvious that the little girl was coming around. She was more awake now, taking in her surroundings, fidgeting in the chair. Jenner was visibly on edge. He kept looking at his watch, checking the time against the clock on the wall.
“He’s waiting for something,” Vanessa said. “Fast-forward.”
The tape sped up almost ten full minutes. Jenner took another look at his watch and snatched up the girl by the arm. He tried to move her forward, but she stopped, standing rooted in place. Her mouth moved as she spoke, probably asking to be taken to the restroom. Jenner looked furious. She was throwing off his perfect timing.
He dragged her into the bathroom, where security cameras could not reach.
“Where’s Fielding while all of this is happening?” Vanessa demanded. “I want to know how she got out of here.”
“We lost her,” one of the techs said. “Fielding left through the North Terminal. We don’t know where she went from there.”
Will said, “Jenner disappeared in the South Terminal.”
“Put more people on the parking exit videos,” Vanessa ordered. Will knew more than two hundred cars had left the airport in the forty-five minutes between the Seattle plane landing and the airport being shut down.
“Fielding’s got a record,” Faith said. She pulled up the woman’s mugshot. “Simple battery, child neglect. Two years ago in Jackson, Mississippi. She’s off probation. No registered Atlanta address.” The mugshot was replaced by Eleanor Fielding’s arrest report.
“My God,” Amanda mumbled. “She was a foster parent.”
“We got her at the exit,” the earlier man said. “She was one of the first cars we stopped. Fielding left through long-term parking, North Terminal. Black Mercedes.” He flashed up the car, which had been captured on the security camera at the main exit to the parking area. The Mercedes was thoroughly searched. The trunk was popped. The back seat and floorboard were checked. A mirror was even dragged under the car to inspect the chassis. The woman stood there with her hands on her hips, conveying what a huge inconvenience this all was.
Will checked the time stamp on the footage. Twelve fifty-two. He remembered Jenner checking his watch twenty minutes later.
“There she goes,” Amanda said as Fielding got back into her Mercedes and drove off. The camera tracked her to the split at the interstate. She took 75 South.
Faith said, “Fielding paid for the flight for her and the girl with her AmEx card. It goes to a local address on Lake Spivey. The Emerald Drive address matches her driver’s license.”
“Call Clayton County and tell them to bring her in,” Vanessa told one of her men. The guy jogged toward the door.
Faith said, “She flew out yesterday afternoon, so it was up and back.”
Amanda asked, “What about Jenner’s flight?”
There was a pause as Faith looked up the information. “Up and back, too. He left three hours before Fielding did. His flights were booked with a Visa card,” she said. “Belongs to Eleanor Fielding. Tracks back to the same Emerald Drive address.” Faith gave an incredulous snort. “She used her SkyMiles to upgrade their tickets.”
“Fewer questions in first class,” Vanessa noted.
“It was an overnight trip,” Amanda said. “Where did they stay?”
Faith did some more quick typing. The screen showed a credit card receipt. “Hilton Seattle Airport and Conference Center,” she said. “Two-hundred-six-dollar charge.” She pulled up the website for the hotel. After a few clicks, she’d managed to pull up the room options. “A two-double-bed room with the light-rail package that takes you to and from the airport is a hundred thirty-four bucks. With tax, meals, I’d guess that’d put them at around the two-hundred-dollar mark.” Faith went back to the credit card receipts. “No rental car on either credit card. Looks like they stayed at the hotel and waited.”
Amanda said, “And then someone delivered a little girl to their door.”
The room went silent. They all stared at the photo Will had taken of the little girl. Abigail. Maybe that was her real name. They would want to make sure she responded if called. These were the types of people who thought about such things. They booked the tickets ahead of time. They coordinated the exchanges. The Emerald Drive address was probably nothing more than a drop. Eleanor F
ielding wouldn’t be there. No one would be there.
Will felt the enormity of the situation start to overwhelm him. The little girl had been so close to him in the bathroom. He could’ve reached out and grabbed her. He could’ve knelt down and asked her if the man was her father. He could’ve punched the guy in the face and taken her away from him.
Vanessa said, “He’s invoked legal counsel. We can’t talk to him. What’s your plan?”
Amanda didn’t hesitate. “We talk to his lawyer.”
CHAPTER THREE
Joseph Allen Jenner was a fifty-two-year-old widower. His wife had passed away three years ago. Her obituary listed natural causes, though a call to a sympathetic records supervisor at Emory University hospital revealed she’d had a heart attack at the age of forty-eight. No children were mentioned. Her only survivor was listed as Joe Jenner, lawyer, philanthropist, president of the Jenner Children’s Foundation, which helped underprivileged children get access to after-school literacy programs.
Amanda sat across from Jenner in the interrogation room of the airport precinct. The walls were a crisp white, absent the usual scuff marks, cobwebs, and dirt that Will saw in just about every police station he’d stepped foot in.
She said, “I’m Deputy Director Amanda Wagner with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. This is my associate, Special Agent Will Trent.”
Jenner held a bloodied rag to his mouth. His voice was muffled but clear. “I’m not required by law to say anything to you.”
Amanda said, “You obviously know your rights, Mr. Jenner. I would expect nothing less from a tax attorney.”
Jenner’s eyebrow went up, though that was the only indication of surprise that they’d already learned his name. He took away the rag. “In that case, I’d like some ice water, please. And some aspirin.”
Amanda nodded toward the two-way mirror. Will guessed Vanessa Livingston was repeating the gesture to one of her minions.
Amanda told Jenner, “You came in on American three-sixty-two this morning. You boarded the plane alone. Your partner, Ms. Fielding, boarded behind you. She was carrying a child whose boarding pass identified her as Abigail Fielding.”