Return Fire (Sam Archer ) (2 page)

‘Jesus Christ, you almost gave me a heart attack,’
Archer whispered so the girl wouldn’t wake up.

He pulled the door back so his NYPD partner
could come in.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’ve been trying to call you,’
Josh replied quietly, stepping into the apartment.

‘I just saw,’
Archer said, pushing the door closed and locking it.
‘Why?’

Josh paused. Glancing over Archer’s shoulder at the open door of the little girl’s bedroom, he motioned for his partner to follow him.

The two men moved across the sitting room and Josh drew back the balcony door, Archer joining him and still carrying his pistol as Josh pulled the panel shut behind them.

‘What’s going on?’ Archer asked, the two men standing face to face and talking normally now they were out of earshot.

Josh hesitated for a moment. ‘It’s Vargas, Arch.’

Still holding the S
ig, Archer immediately tensed. Josh looked him in the eye.

‘Something’s happened.’

‘What?’

‘She’s gone missing.’

THREE

Twenty minutes later, Archer gave Vargas’ daughter a final hug and left her with Josh’s wife Michelle at their home over on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. Pulling the front door shut quietly behind him and joining Josh on the front step, the two men strode towards the Counter-Terrorism Bureau Ford 4x4 parked by the sidewalk.

The smile Archer had forced when he’d said goodbye to the girl disappeared the instant he’d closed the front door.

After Josh had told him why he’d stopped by, Archer hadn’t wasted a second asking for details, knowing his partner could explain on the move. Heading back inside as Josh went down to start the car, Archer had pulled on some jeans and sneakers then woken the little girl as he did up his shirt, telling her something had come up at work and that she’d be having a sleep-over at Josh’s place. She’d become good friends with Josh and Michelle’s three kids and had stayed there in the past so it wasn’t an issue, especially as Archer had played up the adventure while quickly packing her bag and grabbed her epilepsy medication, the girl still half-asleep and not really understanding what was going on.

Once he’d gathered her things and locked up, he’d carried the sleepy girl still in her pyjamas downstairs and out to the Bureau Ford. Josh had then burned it over to his place on the Upper West Side, he and Archer not saying a word, saving it for when the child in the backseat was safely out of earshot.

Now just the two of them again, Josh fired the engine, released the handbrake and set off for the return journey to Queens, turning out onto Central Park West and heading straight for the Counter-Terrorism Bureau Headquarters just the other side of the Queensborough Bridge.

‘How long ago?’ Archer asked, his leg jiggling with nervous tension, looking ahead at the lamp-lit streets of the city as they flashed past.

‘Anywhere after 11 o’clock last night, Spanish time.’

‘Who was the last person to see her?’

‘Her grandmother.’

‘How did it go down?’

‘Alice took her out to dinner and after they got back they said goodnight about an hour before midnight,’ Josh explained. ‘When she wasn’t responding to any calls or knocks on the door this morning, her grandmother checked her room.’

He paused.

‘Her bags and passport were still there, but Alice was gone. Left a real scene too.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She must have put up one hell of a fight, Arch,’ he said, just making it past a red light and accelerating to try and beat the next one. ‘Both lamps were smashed and there was blood on the sheets.’

Pause.

‘Alice’s?’

‘We don’t know yet. The Department have a liaison stationed in Madrid and he’s already got the Spanish cops running the samples for DNA. The results should come through in the next hour or so; if it’s not Vargas’ blood, we might be able to get a match on whoever abducted her.’

As Archer absorbed the news, Josh turned left at Columbus Circle and started heading east across Manhattan on 59
th
Street, the previous calm of the night now completely vanished, the shadowy Central Park rolling past their left side.

‘Any ransom calls?’ Archer asked.

‘None.’

‘Borders?’

‘Her photo and vitals have gone out to European police departments. A Spanish forensics team dusted the bedroom, but it looks like whoever took her was wearing gloves. The only prints in there were Vargas’, the maid’s and her grandmother’s.’

His leg still jiggling, Archer checked his watch, picturing the abduction in his head. ‘Madrid is six hours ahead, so 11pm Spanish time is 5pm here. And her grandmother didn’t discover she was missing until 8 o’clock the next morning.’

Josh nodded.

Archer swore. ‘Jesus Christ, that’s a nine hour window to get her out of the country. She could be anywhere in Europe right now.’

Josh didn’t reply. The humming of the car’s powerful engine filled the silence.

‘How did you hear?’ Archer asked.

‘Shepherd. The Spanish authorities called the Department and he’s ordered you, me and Marquez in. When I got there, he told me you weren’t answering your phone so he sent me to get you immediately.’

‘It wasn’t switched on,’ Archer replied. ‘We’re supposed to be on leave.’

‘Not anymore,’ Josh said, shaking his head grimly and speeding on towards the Queensborough.

They crossed the Bridge moments later and after a swift right turn and a quick ride down Vernon Boulevard, pulled into a space outside the Counter-Terrorism Bureau’s HQ fifty yards from the water.

The building was located in an unassuming non-residential area, dominated by auto-shops and warehouses, an unexpected but intentionally-chosen location for what was the beating heart of New York’s fight against terrorism. Stepping out, the two men slammed their car doors and strode quickly towards the entrance, and after buzzing themselves in, walked inside.

It was the middle of the night but the place was as busy as a Midtown office during the day, the staff and detectives working away in the large tech and analyst area to the left, their shift patterns ensuring the staff worked with the same clinical purpose, focus and efficiency at 3am as they did at 3pm. Not wasting a second, Archer and Josh turned right, moving into the field team’s portion of the building, a series of desks and cubicles for the detectives who worked out of the Bureau.

As the two men strode past the detective pit, they heard a whistle from above and saw a member of their team, Detective Lisa Marquez, standing on a walkway and beckoning them up.

The moment he saw her, Archer felt the briefest moment of reassurance. Latina, thirty three and a single mother from the Bronx, Marquez looked as sharp as a cat considering it was the middle of the night. Archer had a huge amount of respect for her which was returned, the mutual high regard borne from both having got each other out of some tight spots before. Some people had to work at being a police officer but others were born to it and Lisa Marquez was one of those; every part of her personality made her an effective cop, from her calm demeanour and resilience under pressure to her hatred of injustice and razor-sharp deduction. She was also Vargas’ detective partner and the two had become close in the past few months; all in all, Marquez was damn good and Archer was glad she was here.

Like him and Josh, she was someone who wouldn’t rest until they got Vargas back.

Arriving at the stairs, Archer and Josh took them two at a time, and once they reached the second tier, they turned and strode towards Marquez who was standing halfway down the walkway with a cup of coffee in her hand. Up on this level were a series of Conference Rooms the detective teams below used as operational command posts and she was outside Number 5.

As the two men approached her, she stepped forward to meet them.

‘You made it,’ she said to Archer, squeezing his shoulder supportively with her free hand once they joined her.

‘What’s the latest?’ Josh asked.

‘You’re both just in time,’ she said. ‘Madrid’s about to call us back.’

Turning immediately, Archer and Josh walked straight into the Conference Room, Marquez following but keeping the door open behind them. As they entered, Archer saw their team leader Sergeant Matt Shepherd sitting at the table in the room talking with an analyst from next door who was working on a laptop. Brown haired, in his mid-thirties, over six feet tall and solidly built, Shepherd was a natural leader, cool, calm and measured and a man who’d been through more than his own share of battles.

He turned in his seat as the trio walked in, focusing on Archer.

‘You’re here,’ he said. ‘Good.’

‘Josh filled me in, sir,’ Archer said. ‘Sorry I didn’t pick up your calls.’

Shepherd nodded, waving his hand. ‘We’re supposed to be on leave. Only reason they got me was because of my landline.’

He glanced at Josh.

‘Did you explain?’

‘Yes, sir. Where are we at?’

As the three of his four detectives stood there, Shepherd motioned to the chairs around him at the table, his face grim.

‘Take a seat.’

FOUR

The trio sat down, Archer and Josh on the left side of the table opposite Marquez, who took the empty chair
beside Shepherd on the right. On the large screen on the wall ahead Archer saw a news-feed, the headline in Spanish, a number of police cars surrounding a villa in the centre of a small town near the sea.

It was already early morning there, six hours ahead, and the sun was glinting off th
e cars and windows of villas; Archer saw a scrolling headline in Spanish under the shot which he could just about translate but he focused on the images instead. He guessed the abduction of an NYPD cop would stand out from some of the run of the mill stories they usually had to cover.

‘What’s the name of the town?’ Josh asked, studying the screen.

‘Nerja,’ Shepherd replied. ‘An old fishing village turned tourist spot on the Southern coast. As you can see, local news has jumped on the story. We’ve been talking with Detective Travis, our contact stationed in Madrid. He’s already driven down there and is now working closely with the local police.’

He turned to Josh and Archer.

‘He called whilst you were both absent. Apparently the police interviewed a neighbour who said he heard a commotion coming from somewhere nearby last night which woke him up. He’d been drinking though, so isn’t the most reliable witness, but said he heard some things being knocked over and smashed around.’

‘He didn’t investigate?’ Josh asked, frowning.

‘Said he thought it was a domestic dispute. Didn’t want to get involved.’

‘Did the man guess what time?’ Archer asked.

‘That was the one thing he was sure about. He said it was 2:30am on the nose.’

‘How can he be so exact?’

‘He remembers hearing the clock-tower down the street chime during the ruckus. Then he fell asleep.’

Pause.

‘OK, so that’s 8:30pm our time,’ Marquez replied, checking her watch. ‘From that moment until right now gives them five and a half hours to put distance between themselves and the villa.’

‘Excuse me for asking, but why was she in Spain in the first place?’ the analyst sitting at the table asked. Archer remembered his name was Ethan.

‘Visiting her grandmother,’ Archer replied. ‘She’s been ill. We’re all supposed to be on leave for a week. Vargas used the time to go look after her while she’s recuperating.’

As Ethan nodded, Josh turned to Shepherd.
‘Still no ransom calls, sir?’

‘Not here or to the Spanish police. Could be coming later though. Give us time to realise Vargas is missing and let us stew.’

There was a pause and they all watched the muted Spanish news footage in silence.

The tension in the room was palpable.

‘Who the hell kidnaps an NYPD detective in Spain?’ Marquez said. ‘If you go down that path, you know you’ve got officers from both our Department and the Spanish force on your back. That’s a lot of people invested in finding her; it doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Who’s to say they knew she was a cop?’ Josh replied. ‘She wasn’t on police business, so wouldn’t have had her badge and she was abroad, which meant she wouldn’t have had her gun. Whoever took her might not know who she is; this could have been a case of wrong target, wrong time.’

Beside him, Archer shook his head, staring at the screen.

‘No way,’ he said. ‘This feels deliberate.’

He pointed at the news feed.

‘Look at the height of the 2
nd
floor of the villa.’

The group all studied the shot of the property.

‘That’s quite a way up, next to a public street. Say this was an opportunistic break-in and kidnap; that wall would be a bitch to scale, let alone to get back down with a woman trained in self-defence resisting you. And going in from the front would have taken some significant effort too; Vargas would have sealed the house shut. Breaching the villa quietly, restraining her, then taking her away without anyone noticing would require some serious determination and pre-planning. Why not find an easier mark?’

There was a pause.

‘Whoever took her definitely knows who she is.’

‘But why kidnap her?’ Ethan asked. ‘Something from her past?’

‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ Shepherd said. ‘Pull up her file.’

Ethan’s fingers quickly flickered across the keypad and a few moments later the news report was replaced by Vargas’ police bio.

The file photo had been taken just a few months ago when she’d joined the NYPD; she was in official uniform looking straight at the camera, her black hair tied back neatly and a hint of a smile at the edges of her mouth. Archer felt his stomach clench as he saw the snap, Vargas suddenly joining them in the room, part of the team.

‘3
rd
Grade NYPD Detective Alice Vargas,’ Ethan read as the group all looked at her file on the screen. ‘Twenty eight years old, born in Los Angeles to Elaine and Raul Vargas. Raised in Reseda, California.’

He scrolled down.

‘Parents divorced soon after she was born; she lived with her mother and attended Reseda High School. Ended up working a 9-5 in LA for a few years then quit and signed up to the Police Academy when she was twenty five. Since then, she’s former LAPD, Miami-Dade PD, a United States Marshal and currently NYPD.’

He paused, studying her history.

‘Holy shit; all that in three years?’

‘It’s a long story,’ Shepherd said. ‘But including New York, that’s four different career locations.’

He turned to his team.

‘
Four separate places to make enemies.’

‘So let’s start with the most recent, right here in New York,’ Josh said. ‘All NYPD detectives are potential targets.’

‘I agree,’ Archer said. ‘But this isn’t something from New York.’

‘How can you know?’

‘She works out of this Bureau and pretty much everything we do here is covert. Not much use being a counter-terrorist cop if the players on the other side know everything about you.’

‘Plus she’s only worked here for a few months,’ Marquez continued, agreeing with Archer. ‘We’ve all seen the cases she’s been involved in. How much trouble could you stir up in that timeframe when the other side don’t have a clue who you are?’

Shepherd turned to her. ‘You’re Vargas’ partner out there in the field. Has she been caught up in anything unusual that you can think of? Anything at all?’

Marquez shook her head. ‘Nothing. This can’t be someone she’s encountered in New York. Surely we’d have noticed anything out of the ordinary if it was?’

Shepherd thought for a moment.

‘OK, so that’s one option struck off,’ he said. ‘Let’s move backwards chronologically. Before us, she was a member of the Marshals Service and Miami-Dade PD prior to that.’

‘Her work in both seems to have been wrapped up too,’ Ethan said, reading the file. ‘There’s a lot of history there, but no apparent loose ends.’

Shepherd, Josh and Marquez all glanced at Archer, who nodded, suddenly taken back four months.

‘Yeah,
I can vouch for that,’ he said.

‘So already that’s three out of the four options void,’ Josh said. ‘Leaves us just with her time in LA.’

‘She worked a squad car for two years after the Academy,’ Ethan read, scrolling down on the file, everyone looking at it up on the screen. ‘Partner was an older veteran called Alvarez.’

‘Where was their beat?’ Shepherd asked.

‘Inglewood, then a few months in Chinatown before she was transferred to Miami.’

‘A lot of gangs have links around the world,’ Josh said. ‘It’s conceivable she could have pissed someone off and they tracked her down.’

‘For what, issuing a parking ticket?’ Marquez said, reading the file on the screen. ‘Look at her record. It’s innocuous.’

‘But she shot someone,’ Ethan said, pointing. ‘Bottom of the screen.’

The team all focused where his finger was aimed. As he read the notation, Shepherd’s eyes narrowed; Ethan was right.

‘Open it up.’

Ethan tapped a few keys and the official LAPD police report appeared on the screen.

‘Shootout in Chinatown,’ he read. ‘Vargas put two guys down. One of them had to have the lower portion of his arm amputated due to a later infection.’

‘Cause of the gunfight?’

‘They held up a liquor store,’ Ethan read. ‘Vargas and Alvarez were first to respond. Apparently these guys decided to bang it out on the street so they had no choice but to take cover and fire back.’

‘She and her partner shot two gang members,’ Josh said. ‘There’s motive.’

Ethan pulled up another window and searched for the incident, drawing up the report. Vargas’s file was momentarily replaced by two LAPD profiles of the two gang members. They both had shaved heads and tattoos on their necks, both with tear drops tattooed under their
right eyes. Studying them, Archer knew that certain gang members were rewarded with a tear tattoo whenever they killed someone; it wasn’t the smartest thing to do if you wanted to beat a murder rap, but it sure as hell sent a message to people who might be thinking about crossing you.

‘Emilio Sanchez and Rodrigo Fuentes,’ Ethan said. ‘Both Surenos; Mexican Mafia.’

He pointed at the photo on the right.

‘Fuentes is the one who lost his lower arm. But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.’

‘Why?’ Shepherd asked.

‘He’s dead. Stabbed to death in prison six months into his sentence. And Sanchez is doing life for murder at Pelican Bay.’

‘Nevertheless Vargas still put two bullets in Fuentes,’ Josh said. ‘And after she dropped him, he went to jail for six months before he was killed. That’s a lot of time to think about revenge; especially when you’re sitting in a cell all day.’

‘But he died some time ago,’ Archer replied, unconvinced. ‘And these guys are street bangers, not criminal masterminds. Even if they had friends who were determined to get revenge, there’s no way they could track Alice down. Not from Miami to the Marshals service to New York, and
definitely not to Spain.’

He shook his head.

‘It’s got nothing to do with them. They don’t have the connections. For guys like this, LA is their entire world.’

Leaning forward in his chair, Archer cursed quietly, frustrated and worried as Ethan brought Vargas’ file back onto the screen.

Four options from Alice’s past, al
l seemingly dead ends. He’d been banking on this being a ransom case, but with no obvious suspects he realised Josh could be right.

Her kidnappers might not even know who she is
.

No ransom calls. No witnesses.

And no trace of Vargas
.

As the thoughts crossed his mind, Archer felt his stomach grip.

He was suddenly starting to feel a hell of a lot worse about this.