Hush (24 page)

Riley's blood turned to ice in her veins. She sucked in a wheezing breath. For Emma, she would turn over the information, the notebook, everything. Anything. Now.

“I have—” she began, meaning to add “the information you need.”

“Shut up.” He cut her off by the simple expedient of slamming her head into the trunk again. Riley cried out, went limp, breathed.

“I said
listen
. Three days. No cops, no FBI, no authorities. You go to George, tell him what I said. We'll contact you on your cell phone on Monday night. If you give us what we want, the girl will be released. If you don't . . .”

Without warning, he shoved her violently away from him. Crying out in surprise, Riley went flying, sliding along the side of the car, stumbling, falling to her knees on the rough pavement.

Looking up, she saw her captor running toward the van.

“Wait!”
she cried, but it was too late: he reached the van, hopped in.

She was still struggling to her feet as, with a squeal of tires, the van sped away.

P
anic. Desperation. Fury. Shock. As the van disappeared into the night, Riley would have collapsed from the gamut of emotions that engulfed her, but she simply didn't have the time.

Screaming was out, too. Worthless, worthless screaming.

Emma's life was in danger. She had to pull herself together fast, to think, to deal.

Heart pounding, breathing like she had been running for miles, insides curdling with terror, Riley leaned against the now-dark Mazda and sent a fervent prayer winging skyward:
Please, God, keep Emma safe
.

Beating back the hysteria that threatened, Riley grabbed onto the tatters of her composure and took swift stock of the situation. It was the middle of the night, no other human being in sight. Emma was gone, kidnapped. She was stuck on a deserted road in a closed-down industrial area with a car that, minus its
keys, was useless. Running back the way they had come, she might reach help in, say, fifteen minutes. Running forward, she was probably looking at the same time frame. Another car would almost certainly come along, but there was no saying when, or if, it would stop for her.

None of that would happen fast enough to save Emma.

She needed help. She needed it now.

No cops, no FBI, no authorities.
She could hear the warning still.

That left her and Margaret to deal with the situation. That put Emma's life squarely in their hands.

Riley felt dizzy. Her heart felt like it would beat its way out of her chest. Cold sweat poured over her in a wave.

She had what the kidnappers wanted: she knew where the money was, how to access the bank accounts, the whole nine yards. She would have told them so if they'd given her the chance.

We'll contact you on your cell phone on Monday night
.

When the kidnappers did that, she could give them the information. She would gladly give them the information.

Anything, if they would let Emma go.

But what if they didn't let Emma go? What if she handed over the information and—nothing? The thought froze her to her bone marrow. What would she—she and Margaret—do then?

Go to the authorities at that point? It might very well be too late.

Emma could be killed. Oh, God, no matter what she did, Emma could be killed.

That was when Riley started to shake. Her knees were suddenly so unsteady that she had to sit down hard in the driver's
seat. Chunks of safety glass from the broken window littered the seat, but she never even felt them.

Her only option seemed to be to hand over the information and trust that the kidnappers would keep their word.

Trust? Kidnappers? The very people who had just dragged her and Emma out of their car in the middle of the night? Get real, Riley.

Emma's life is at stake
.

Riley felt like an icy hand had just closed around her heart. Deliberately she slowed her breathing, determined not to hyperventilate.

She dared not try to handle this on her own. Margaret would be no help at all. Margaret would have a breakdown. This was beyond anything either of them, or both of them, were qualified to take on.

I need help. We need help
.

Casting a hunted look around, she felt her skin crawl as she tried to confirm that she was indeed absolutely, totally alone. Darkness stretched silently around her. The warehouses crouched on one side of the road, unspooling in a seemingly endless line beneath pale, wavery security lights. On the other side, a drainage ditch, an empty, trash-strewn field, what looked like an abandoned storage facility, the distant flash of headlights on the expressway.

Her surroundings gave fresh, sinister meaning to
not a soul in sight
.

She didn't know if it was her imagination but—it was almost like she sensed a presence.

What if they're watching me? Remotely? Listening to me?
Like, say, through a bug? Monitoring a police scanner? Suppose they have a contact in the FBI?

Panic flooded her. It required an almost-physical effort to beat it back. She didn't know if any of those things were reasonable, possible. She
did
know that she didn't want to do anything that might jeopardize Emma's life.

Stay calm. Think it through
.

What she came back to, after swiftly taking into consideration every possible danger that she could foresee, was
I need help
.

There was only one person she could think of to call.

Her own personal 911 hotline.

THE SHARP
blare of a trumpet—a ringtone he'd deliberately chosen for one particular caller—woke Finn up out of a sound sleep. His eyes opened on pitch blackness. His senses told him that he was in an unfamiliar bed, an unfamiliar place. Still, he knew immediately where he was and what that blasting trumpet portended. Waking fast and in full possession of his senses was a necessary ability he'd acquired over the years. Didn't prevent him from experiencing a thrill of alarm as he scooped his phone off the bedside table and answered. If Riley was calling him after that little disaster of an encounter earlier, something majorly bad must've gone down.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I need you.” Riley's voice was unsteady. His gut tightened in response. “Can you come?”

“What's happened? Where are you?”

Without answering the first question, she said a street name and location that meant nothing to him, and added, “Hurry.”

“You in danger?”

“No, not me.” Her voice still had that wavering quality that affected him like a jab to the stomach. It had him throwing his legs over the side of the bed and reaching for his pants like the hotel was on fire. “I'll fill you in when you get here.”

“Quick as I can,” he promised, but hadn't even finished speaking before she hung up.

He glanced at glowing green numbers on the digital clock—2:20 a.m. He'd been asleep for all of half an hour.

Five minutes later he was dressed, in the Acura and speeding toward where the blinking light on the mobile receiving unit told him she was. On the way, he hit the button that allowed him to listen to everything that had been recorded by the bug in Riley's cell phone since he'd left her in the Palm Room.

By the time he spotted the Mazda's emergency blinkers flashing through the darkness on the deserted stretch of road that ran parallel to the expressway, he knew what had transpired, why Riley sounded so distraught. Grimly he'd placed the phone call needed to get an all-out search-and-rescue effort for Emma Cowan going, then another one to find out what the hell had happened to the team that was supposed to keep Riley under visual surveillance as she left work.

They were, as it turned out, still in the parking lot outside the Palm Room. Been there since 1:55 a.m., according to Detective Tim Smith, who answered the call from the car in which he and his partner were watching the club's entrance.

“She hasn't come out yet,” Smith reported.

Finn clamped down on all kinds of unpleasant replies, said, “She's covered, you can stand down,” and disconnected.

Pulling onto the shoulder behind Riley's car, which was stopped in the slow lane, he shut off the mobile receiving unit and shoved it under his seat, pocketed his phone, slammed the car into park, and got out.

She was sitting in the driver's seat. The Mazda's interior light flashed briefly as she got out to meet him.

Striding around the back of her car, he took in the slim, sexy shape of her silhouetted against the darkness as she walked toward him, swaying slightly on those killer high heels. As he got closer he saw that her stockings were ripped all to hell, her dress was covered with pale dust, and her hair was a disheveled mess. Another couple of strides, and he could tell that her face was white as a corpse's, her eyes were huge and dark, and her mouth was shaking.

“Emma's been kidnapped,” was how she greeted him.

“Are you hurt?” he asked sharply.

“No.” There was impatience in the way she shook her head, even though all evidence pointed to the contrary. Her voice was hoarse, but surprisingly steady given the circumstances. “Two men in a van—they took her. For the money.” She took a breath, and he heard the hitch in it, which told him everything he needed to know about the state of her emotions despite the brave front she was putting on. “There was no license plate. A plain white van. That's all I can tell you.”

“We'll get her back,” he said, and slid a hand around her elbow to steady her as she wobbled and then stopped walking, maybe two feet in front of him.

“Will we?” Her eyes met his, begged. She was looking at him like he was her one hope of salvation, and something about having her look at him like that, about
her
, period, did something unexpected, something he didn't like at all, to his insides.

“Yeah.” His reply was terse.

“Okay.” She closed her eyes like she took that single, bitten-­off syllable as a promise, like he'd lifted a weight off of her, like she was placing her complete faith in him. She looked vulnerable, and beautiful, and as his eyes slid over her face his insides did that weird twisting thing again, which alarmed him almost as much as it pissed him off.

“God damn it,” he muttered, meaning it, and pulled her into his arms.

She went to him as though in his arms was exactly where she wanted to be.

HE WAS
a hard-eyed, suspicious-minded federal agent who was only in her life because he was investigating her. He'd made it abundantly clear that he thought she was guilty of something, and the thing about it was, he wasn't wrong. If he found out the truth, she had no idea what he would do, but her expectations included handcuffs and jail. Maybe a long time in jail.

Turned out that none of that mattered.

In this moment of terrible fear and grief and danger, he was her port in the storm. It had been a long time since she'd allowed herself to depend on anyone, but she was depending on him now.

She felt like she
could
depend on him. For her, that was huge.

Calling him had been the right choice. Riley was sure of it the instant she saw him step out of his car. Shrouded in thick gray shadows, he looked big and tough and capable, and if she'd been up to running she would have run to him on sight.

Please God please God please keep Emma safe.

He nodded as if it was no more than he had expected when, from the shelter of his arms, she urgently repeated the kidnappers' warning not to call the FBI or any other authorities and worried aloud that there might be some way they could
know
.

He said, “The number you called to reach me is untraceable. No one is going to know you got the FBI or any other authorities involved. You did the absolute smartest thing you could have done by calling me.”

Then he wrapped his jacket around her—until then, she hadn't even realized she was shivering—put her in his car, told her to sit tight, and left her briefly to push the Mazda out of the road. She assumed that's when he made some calls, because when he got back in the car he told her that a crack team of agents was already looking for Emma and that everything possible was being done to find her. That didn't make her relax—nothing could—but she believed him, and a tiny portion of the driving fear that had her in its grip eased.

As they pulled away, she glanced back and said, “My car—” because it had occurred to her that she couldn't simply abandon it.

“A tow truck's on the way,” Finn replied. “A forensics team will check it for fingerprints—”

“There won't be any,” she interrupted, too ramped up on
adrenaline still to let him finish. “The kidnappers were wearing gloves.”

“They'll also check for any other evidence. The windows will be repaired, and it'll be returned to you. Shouldn't take more than a day or two.”

Any kind of quip about fast or five-star government service was beyond her. Relieved to have the problem of her car solved, Riley simply nodded.

“Emma must be scared out of her mind,” she burst out a moment later. That was the terrible thought she couldn't escape. It turned her insides to jelly, reduced her brain to mush. Then, because, though she'd been trying not to think about it she couldn't help herself, she added in a voice that even to her own ears sounded strained, “Do you think they'll hurt her?”

He glanced at her, shook his head. Another car passed them, traveling in the opposite direction. As its headlights slashed through the Acura she saw that his eyes were hard and his features were set in grim lines. His was the face of a man born to deal with bad guys and mayhem and crises, and she recognized that thankfully.

He said, “They don't have any reason to hurt her. They're after money, and they think she's their ticket to getting it.”