“What’s the matter, Megan?”
“Everything!” the woman wailed, shaking her blond head violently.
You can say that again.
“Sshhhh. Look, I think we’re okay to talk here, but we’ve got to be careful.” Rachel held her breath and waited to see if the woman would open up. Despite the fact that they had spent the last few days working together, they were still very much strangers.
“I—I want to tell you my story. I don’t really know how it happened, but I know we stay because it’s the only way to be together as a family.”
Megan’s initial babblings only made marginal sense to Rachel, but she listened patiently.
“We used to live in Oregon. My husband, Kyle, was just beginning to distinguish himself in the computer world. He designs programs and tinkers with computers. I don’t know how Mr. Parker even learned of him, and I wish he hadn’t.” Her dark brown eyes became distant as she said, “The boys were only infants when Parker’s men came for us. I can’t tell you how many times I thought we’d die during those first few days. Then, Kyle showed up, angry and scared.”
“That must have been awful,” Rachel murmured. She found herself fighting mixed feelings of wishing her husband to her side and simultaneously hoping he stayed as far away from Mr. Parker as possible.
Heedless of Rachel’s inner turmoil, Megan continued telling her tale. “It’s been over a year and a half now, and we only get to see each other twice a week. Kyle hates working for Mr. Parker; I can see it in his eyes. He does it for us.” She stopped as if embarrassed. “I—I just thought you’d want to know that you’re not alone.” Before Rachel could respond, Megan rose from the cot and began reorganizing a rack of medical supplies.
The woman’s concern touched Rachel, but her story was disturbing.
Over a year and a half! I don’t want my children to grow up here!
Chapter 9
New Case
J. Edgar Hoover Building, FBI Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
Monday morning, the first thing that melted through the fog of Julie Ann Davidson’s brain was the sudden stream of profanities that came from a side office she passed. Her eyes widened and she blushed, scooting by the door as quickly as possible. Two steps from her tiny office an excited voice grabbed her attention.
“Davidson, Duncan, East conference room. Big case coming up!”
Her partner appeared at her side, and they exchanged glances but didn’t speak. Ann wasn’t even sure who had originally spoken to her, let alone how to respond to them.
“Did you sleep at all this weekend?” her partner asked in her ear.
Ann couldn’t decide whether to be flattered by or annoyed at the concern in his voice. She jerked her head in a quick nod, but didn’t have time to elaborate. Inwardly, she cringed a bit.
So much for makeup’s magic.
Ann had just decided to accept the concern graciously when she realized her partner was already halfway to the conference room where the meeting would take place. Rolling her eyes, Ann dashed to catch up.
The tiny conference room quickly filled with an odd assortment of agents. A confused frown crossed Ann’s face as she carefully scanned the others. Klipper and Harding usually worked organized crime cases. Baker and Vice worked a lot with CART, the Computer Analysis and Response Team. Daniels and Porter were ‘crime in the suites’ agents, who spent their time tracking white collar crime. Ann was amused to note that she and Agent Duncan seemed to be the oddballs, seeing as they caught all sorts of cases. Someone had once told her they were observation and methods personified.
Ann got so lost analyzing the other agents that it took her a moment to realize everyone had gone quiet. When she saw Assistant Director in Charge Lance Morgan standing there in their midst, she had to clamp her lips firmly so her jaw wouldn’t drop. The tall African American man cast a powerful presence, and the fact that he was here to brief them in person was more than slightly unusual.
“Have you all checked your bank accounts recently?” AD Morgan asked.
The question blindsided Ann. It sounded strange enough to be a question her partner would ask. She silently shook her head with the rest of the room.
“Sir?” asked Hank Klipper, the oldest agent in the room.
“Saturday night, the largest bank robbery in U.S. history took place,” Morgan announced grimly. “If you bank online with any major branch, you’re probably out a few dollars. Hackers sliced into bank accounts and siphoned off anywhere from three cents to four dollars and thirty-three cents.”
“Do they know how many accounts were hit?” asked George Baker.
A general buzz arose and Morgan shook his head.
Baker took a sip of coffee.
The marvelous scent wafted through the room, playing tricks on Ann’s nose. Noticing the coffee maker in the corner, she slipped over to it and fixed two cups.
“Damage?”
Ann smiled at the simple, pointed question that was so characteristic of her quiet partner.
Morgan’s voice was grumpy as he admitted, “That’s unknown at this time. Complaints are pouring in from all over the country. I’ve even got Alaskan banks barking in my ears.”
Ann returned to Patrick’s side and handed him a hot cup of coffee. He nodded his thanks.
After savoring a sip of warm, liquid comfort, Ann asked, “Do we have an origin point?”
Agent Vice shot her a mixed look of admiration and irritation that told her she had stolen the question from between his pudgy lips.
“The CART teams are working on it,” her boss said wearily. “I expect a report from them sometime this afternoon. Because this is such a massive case, I want you four teams tackling it from whatever angle you see fit. I’m making Patrick the case agent, but you’re still free to pursue leads as you find them.”
All the other teams nodded solemnly, but Ann exchanged an alarmed glance with Patrick.
Knowing he would just let it go, Ann said, “Um, sir, how exactly do we fit?”
The assistant director gave her a teeth-filled smile. “Report analysis.” He pointed to the others, “They’ll get you the pieces. You just have to put them together.” That said, he strode from the room looking like a burden had just rolled off his shoulders.
Great, now the burden’s on our shoulders.
Slowly, Ann and Patrick walked to her office. She sat behind her desk, and he leaned against the doorframe as usual.
“You can sit down, if you want,” Ann offered, knowing it would be futile.
Patrick declined with a shake of his head and downed the rest of the coffee. A thoughtful expression stole over his face. He calmly walked the three paces to her waste basket, deposited the Styrofoam cup, returned to his spot in her doorway, and leaned there with arms crossed in a position Ann had dubbed his ‘thinking pose.’ She impatiently fiddled with a pencil, giving Patrick time to think.
When several very long minutes had passed and her coffee wasn’t there to distract her, Ann gave up on waiting, and asked, “Where do we start?”
He gave her a have-patience look.
Slumping in her chair, Ann resigned herself to the irksome task of waiting for Patrick to say something. Bored with the pencil, she tossed it onto her desk and studied her partner. She despised waiting, but she had learned that soon after Patrick got that look in his deep blue eyes, which were several shades darker than her own, cases were broken wide open. His dark brown hair was a mite longer than was entirely neat but it fit nicely with his crisp, black suit. Ann admired his patience, not that she would ever tell him that. It infuriated as much as impressed her. He was only three years older than her thirty years, but at times, it seemed like he had about twenty years more experience.
“Want a cookie?” Ann offered, taking them out of her purse.
Patrick shook his head.
“They’re kinda stale.” Ann munched one of Mrs. Banning’s cookies as she pondered the case.
Now I
need milk.
The money motive was simple, but many questions remained. How many people are involved? How was it coordinated? How did they pull it off? Suddenly, Ann realized that she was assuming more than one person was involved. She contemplated that for a moment and then agreed with herself. There has to be more than one hacker, right? Nobody’s that good.
“We’ll wait it out,” Patrick said finally.
Ann nodded, mildly disappointed that he didn’t spit out the criminals’ names, birthdays, and favorite foods.
What else can we do?
“Did you find out anything about your friend?”
Shaking her head in frustration, Ann remembered the countless weekend hours spent thinking about the Collins case. Despite going to work on Saturday, her efforts had been consumed by the unofficial case. Taking a deep breath, she summarized her weekend. “When I got back home Friday evening, I did an internet search and read as many newspaper accounts of the case as I could. I spent Saturday bothering the Fairview police and fire departments. At first they were a bit wary about sharing details. I think they thought I was a reporter.”
She made a face, and Patrick chuckled.
“Finally, Officer Long vouched for me with the police, and I assured both departments that my involvement with the case was purely unofficial. That seemed to soothe their rabid territorial instincts, and they were more cooperative.”
“Who’s Officer Long?”
“Oh, that’s right. You weren’t in Saturday. I forgot I haven’t talked to you about the case at all. My trip out to PA was basically a waste of time, but I managed to talk to Officer Long, a Fairview cop who is also a friend of the Collins family. He had gone there that night because Christopher Collins wanted to talk. When he got there, he heard noises upstairs, and naturally, he went to investigate.”
Ann shook her head sadly, as if to say that was dumb.
“Trouble?” inquired Patrick.
Nodding confirmation, Ann chucked the half-eaten cookie into the garbage.
Okay, really stale. I need more coffee.
“Somebody knocked him out, tied him up, and dumped him out back sometime before the house exploded. Judging from the timeline in the reports, I’d say it was only a few minutes between the attack on Officer Long and the house incident. No one knows who set the charges, but Chris Collins is the prime suspect.”
“Did they run him through criminal databases?”
Ann winced, and Patrick nodded in understanding. The man in question was married to her friend. She desperately wanted to believe Rachel had better character judgment than marriage to a former convict would suggest. She frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think so, but I’ll get one of the computer guys here to handle that.”
Ann quickly put in the request before saying, “No bodies were found in the house.”
“No bodies are good bodies,” Patrick joked deadpan.
Smiling patronizingly, Ann continued, “I talked to a neighbor lady; nice, elderly, and very chatty. The important things I got from the rather drawn-out conversation were that Officer Long had been tied with a fluffy bunny lamp cord and a man in a blue uniform from a white van was seen that same day with the children, Jason and Emily, in front of their house.”
Patrick nodded, still leaning on her doorway.
Doesn’t his shoulder ever get sore?
Ann’s phone rang, startling her. The caller ID told her it was Brad Matthews. “Davidson,” she answered, before listening to the quick explanation. “I see. Okay, thanks Brad. No, no—wait do me a favor. I want you to run the check again. This time do a face search for a picture I’m sending you.” She pulled a photo of Christopher Collins from her purse. “Be right back,” she said to Patrick.
Exiting the room, Ann dashed over to the scanner and sent the photo to her buddies down in the dungeons the Bureau liked to call computer labs. Mission accomplished, she returned to her office and slipped sideways past Patrick who hadn’t moved an inch. “I asked around and found out several of the Collins family’s bank accounts were emptied the same day the house exploded and the family disappeared. Also, the people at Millcreek Community Hospital say Dr. Collins was there late.”
“Mister?”
“Yes, they’re both doctors, but only Christopher works at the hospital. He was there covering a staff shortage that night. Officer Long said he talked to Chris around 9:30. I checked with the bank. Their system shows that someone used the internet to access the accounts belonging to the Collins family and moved some funds to offshore accounts around ten. That’s about as far as I got. Later, six automated telling machines had their hidden cameras covered and most of the remaining money in the accounts was removed.”
“Strange.”
“Very much so. No one knows who got their money. If it was Chris, then he had every right to access the accounts. But why cover the cameras? And why the rest of the cloak and dagger bit? On a hunch, I asked Officer Long to have the ATM machines dusted for prints. It was too late for four of the machines; they already had fingerprints all over the place.” The inflection in her voice suggested there was more.
“Bet the other two had the opposite problem,” said Patrick.
His ability to process things quickly was one more reason Ann liked him. “Precisely. The one on Archer Street is rarely used because it’s so out of the way. There were five partial prints, but the other buttons and all around the base had been wiped clean. The other machine had the same thing. Half of it was still clean of all prints, which tells us that either there are obsessive-compulsive bank employees out there or someone didn’t want their prints taken.”
“Brad came up negative on the criminal records?” Patrick inquired.
Ann nodded.
“Juvenile records too?”
“I didn’t ask,” she admitted.
He looked at her kindly. “Shall I?”
She smiled thanks. “Please, but only if you can do it without making waves.”
Giving her a good-natured salute, Patrick went to complete his assignment.
Suddenly alone, Ann sat at her desk idly tapping a pencil against her chin and thinking.
This could be even more complicated than I’d thought.
More than four days had passed. Statistically, the odds of recovering kidnapping victims alive after the first twenty-four hours weren’t stellar, and each extra day just made the likelihood of a happy ending more and more remote. With the new case they’d caught today, Ann wasn’t sure how much time she could devote to finding Rachel.
Please, please don’t become a statistic, Rach. I need you to be okay.
Chapter 10
Satellite Snooping
Parker’s Base of Operations
New York City, New York
Christopher Collins let his head slump into his palms, supported by elbows firmly planted on the desk. Since his arrival at the Manhattan hideout, he had taught hackers just enough so they could complete ‘Mr. Parker’s’ job. The first hit had been highly successful, netting about $237 million. Lacking the element of surprise, the second wave of bank account raids had required a great deal more care. The extra precautions forced them all to work longer and harder than they had the previous time. Chris fought down a flutter of worry that someone would catch his safeguards. He didn’t have time for worry. The others had dispersed to celebrate their successful take of $289 million.
Chris could probably have used a good stiff drink to forget his troubles, but he needed a clear head to find his family. He spent the free time hacking into government files and satellite feeds. Rachel’s mouthed message all those days ago had been a time: 10:06. That placed her in Mountain Standard Time.
Over the last four nights, Chris had stolen a few minutes here and there alone with the computers, but this was the first time he’d managed to devote a few hours to his search. He knew his former friend well enough to know that Rachel and the kids would be held in a remote compound hidden in plain sight.
Frustrated,
Chris studied hundreds of satellite photos, systematically searching from south to north. After several false alarms, he found it, a tiny, square compound that blended in perfectly with the South Dakota landscape.
Thank you, suspicious, nosy government bureaucrats, he thought as he pulled up, cleaned up, and printed out the photo.
I’ve got to tell someone.
Chris hated to admit needing help, but he knew rescuing Rachel and the kids would require far more than a one-man crusade. His knees cracked when he stood up to stretch. Grabbing the printout, he stumbled to his room to rack his brain for ideas. He hid the photo and collapsed onto the bed. Soon, he drifted off to a dreamless sleep.
The next day the team rigorously prepared for the third and final wave. Or so they thought. Mostly, Chris had them working in circles.
That night, Chris continued his quest. He had spent much of the day thinking about whom he should contact. For some reason, his thoughts kept drifting to that last night with Rachel. He could almost smell her pleasant perfume.
What were we doing? After a few moments, Chris answered his own question. Looking at pictures from her old yearbook. She was talking about something … someone. Who was she talking about? He closed his eyes and massaged his temple. I should remember this!
At last, things clicked together. With a few sure key strokes, he connected to a private search engine. Since his bank raids messed with people’s money, they had naturally generated a lot of media coverage. After scanning a few newspapers, Chris discovered a short interview with one of his neighbors who had belatedly reported seeing a white van outside of the house, pre-explosion of course. Chris smiled genuinely for the first time in a long time. Next, he hacked into the government’s personnel database for confirmation.
Perfect.
A simple plan formed within minutes. He would get his help to come to him.
Chris set his plan in motion and found himself awkwardly praying. Uh, God? I’ve never been much of a praying man, but please, watch over my family.
Chapter 11
Song Strength
Ann Davidson’s Apartment
Alexandria, Virginia
As the one week anniversary of the kidnapping of Rachel, Jason, and Emily Collins neared, Ann’s anxiety level rose exponentially. To make matters worse, the case of the internet bank thieves seemed to go nowhere either. She felt like she’d leapt onto a case treadmill. This wasn’t the first time a case stumped her, but by far, Rachel’s disappearance was the most personal case to do so. It wasn’t officially her case, but she and Rachel had been good friends once upon a time. Ann knew all too well the time sensitivity of kidnapping cases.