The Fourth Victim (17 page)

“He said one other thing.” JoAnne's voice interrupted Clay's thoughts.

“What?”

“That there's a second bomb to ensure he makes it out of the country.”

“Did he say where it is?”

“No. Only that children will die.”

“And because Chapman's car turned up in Tennessee we can reasonably assume this second bomb could be planted anywhere between here and there.”

“Yup.”

Goddammit to hell.

Edgewood, Ohio
Sunday, December 5, 2010

I
'd been up an hour. I'd showered again, once I found the plastic shopping bags hanging on the handle of my door, and I was feeling better in the jeans and soft black top he'd purchased for me. None of the tennis shoes fit—they were all too big—but he'd forgotten socks, too, so I'd improvised. I'd hand-washed my skate socks, and with them on, plus some toilet paper in the toes, I could keep one of the pairs of shoes on my feet.

I was happy to have a manageable task to focus on.

I'd taken the bandages off my hands so the air could heal my scraped skin, but I put on the salve Clay had given me.

My body still ached, like I'd been run over by something.

“He could be bluffing.” I spoke to the man who was the only other inhabitant of my small world. He'd just told me about the latest call from the kidnapper.

We were at the table in the eating nook off his kitchen. A bay window looked out on a wooded back lot, or so he told me. He had shutters closed over them, blocking the
view. The rest of the kitchen area was filled with papers. I'd even had to move some to sit down.

He'd made coffee. Served me a cup without asking. I never drank the stuff.

“We know for certain I don't have a bomb attached to my stomach,” I said when Clay didn't immediately respond.

He'd made toast, too. With peanut butter. I'd eaten one piece.

No bomb.
I added that to the list I'd made in the small notebook Clay had given me—eons ago, it seemed—in the cave outside town.

“If he's for real, he's likely planning to attach it to you tomorrow morning,” Clay said. “Or maybe after dark tonight. If he knows about today's investigations, if he knows his cover's blown, he'll probably try to get to you tonight. You can be sure he has a back way to that spot in the woods.”

I wished I hadn't eaten that toast. It felt like I had peanut butter stuck in my throat.

“So if he's for real and goes to put a bomb on me, what happens when I'm not there?”

“Any number of things can happen. If he's really after the money, he'll most likely go through with the delivery, anyway. Statistically, kidnappers often don't return their victims even after a successful ransom pay. Returned victims are evidence. Besides, he doesn't really need you at this point.”

“But wouldn't he worry, if I'm gone, that you found me and that he has no leverage? If he shows up, you'll just arrest him.”

“He says he's planted a second bomb. If he doesn't get safely out of the country, it goes off. And children die.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I can't afford not to.”

He was listening to me. But I had a feeling his mind was way ahead of mine. Which made me uncomfortable.

And scared. Okay. I was scared. Someone out there wanted me dead for some as yet unknown reason.

“Tell me what you're thinking,” I finally said.

“This man sounds serious. If this is about the money, he's going to show up for his payoff whether he has you or not. Whether he knows you're in the cave or not.”

“So then what?”

“We put a tracer in the money. The bills are marked. I'll have an undercover agent on him. And we hope to God we put enough pieces together to find the second bomb before it detonates. If there
is
a second bomb. But we have to assume there is.”

“You think he'd still set it off?”

“Without a doubt.”

“And if he's really after
me?
” I remembered Clay saying that the ransom call could just be a distraction. Hadn't he?

My mind was clear this afternoon, but my memory was still pretty foggy.

“As soon as he realizes you aren't in that cave, he's going to be looking for you. And he goes with plan B where you're concerned.”

Plan B,
I jotted down. Because I didn't know what else to do.
Plan B.
An innocuous statement that had no specific intent—other than to get me.

“Say the ransom call
is
just a distraction, then he won't be going back to the cave, right? He won't know I'm gone.”

“Maybe not.”

His look said more. “What?”

Frowning, he studied me. I withstood the perusal. And he seemed to make a decision about something.

“Whoever took you did a lot of planning. He's sharp. Aware. A guy like that doesn't just kidnap you and walk away.”

“Unless it's the guy in Florida and all they need is to have me gone.” I was actually hoping someone from the Florida case was behind this nightmare from which I couldn't wake up. I'd rather deal with a street gang than a national security threat. Or David Abrams.

I was hoping no one was coming back for me.

“Even if the street gang is behind this, they're going to watch their backs. Make sure you stay gone. Make sure you aren't found.”

“So you do think the kidnapper's going back for me no matter what?”

“I think we have to assume he's keeping an eye on us. No one followed us last night. I'm confident no one knows you're here, but we have to assume he knows his cover is blown, because with the questions we're asking, it wouldn't be hard for him to figure out. Even without an inside source. All he'd have to do is the same thing we're doing. Check with suppliers. Ask a few people if questions have been asked.” He took a gulp of coffee from a mug with an inscription that read
World's Greatest Boss
. The word
Boss
had been struck out and underneath it read
Zookeeper.

I put his pen in my mouth. And took it out again, embarrassed. Too late. He'd seen me.

The pen was now mine.

“I don't know whether or not he's coming back for you,” Clay said. “That depends on why he took you in the first place. If your abduction has anything to do with Rick Thomas, and they've now realized they won't be able to access your files, then they're going to need you.”

“You've got people watching my house and office, right?” I thought he'd told me that.

“Yes.”

“So they can't get to my things.”

“Not without a fight and the risk of getting caught.”

“If they need the information badly enough, they'll take that risk.”

I was going to have to ask for a Diet Coke. I needed the caffeine.

I'd rather just go to the store and get some myself. And stop by my life on the way. Spend a while there. Like the next sixty years.

Then, if they still wanted me, I'd come back here.

“We've got three possibilities. One, this ransom call is legitimate and we'll know that when we catch the guy. Two, it's from the kidnapper and he's trying to throw us off the scent. Three, there's someone behind your disappearance with a completely different agenda. In which case, the ransom demand could be pure opportunism. For now, I have to assume that whoever wanted you gone will be watching to make sure you stay gone until he decides to free you.
If
he decides to free you.”

“And that means I'm not going to be free—or safe—until you find him.”

“Correct. And at this point, with a threat made against children, I have to take this ransom call seriously.” He paused. “You aren't drinking your coffee. I got Diet Coke. Would you like some?”

“I'd love some,” I said gratefully.

He got up to fetch me a can and a glass with ice.

I took a long drink. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Stay here. Don't walk in front of any windows. Don't peek outside even from a distance. Don't attempt to contact anyone, by any means, or get on the computer, even to browse or play games. If anyone, including other FBI agents, were to get suspicious about my activities, or suspect
I've found you, and start to monitor my online activities, we don't want anything that doesn't fit my patterns.”

“What about the stuff you bought this morning?” He'd picked out and paid for the underwear I had on. The frumpiest, old-lady briefs I'd ever pulled on. I'd had to roll the waistband down three inches just so they didn't come up above the waist of the jeans.

“I went through self-checkout and paid cash. And dropped off a bag of stuff in the bin at the women's shelter in Edgewood. Something I do on a fairly regular basis.”

I made a note of that. On the
Clay
page I'd started.

“If someone was really looking, wouldn't he be able to tell that what you donated wasn't what you'd purchased?”

“Not without a hell of a lot of checking.” He was looking for something, riffling through pages.

“How many pairs of jeans did you buy?”

He didn't glance up. “Three.”

“That's how many you brought home. What'd you donate?” It didn't matter. I asked, anyway.

“A bag of stuff I already had in the car.”

I watched him. And thought about that. I was more interested in his donations than in sitting there panicking over the fact that I couldn't leave. That I couldn't do anything I wanted or needed to do because if I did I could end up dead. Or Maggie could.

I thought about his donations because I needed a break from wondering who hated me so much they'd knocked me out, thrown me in a hole in the ground and left me to die.

“You randomly buy stuff and donate it?” I asked after a small silence.

“What?” Clay looked at me then. “Do I—” He broke off. “No, I buy stuff for my mother, she picks out what she wants and I donate the rest.”

“Regularly.”

“Yes.”

He'd answered my question, but I wasn't satisfied. His answer had just produced more questions. The first of which was,
You have a mother?

Of course, biologically, everyone had a mother. But Clay Thatcher didn't seem the type who had a mother in his life.

The starkness of his house spoke of pure bachelorhood. No female influence at all.

“I've got to make some calls, and I need to put in an appearance at the office,” he said, his voice filled with the urgency I'd come to expect from him. An urgency that instilled all the fear I was trying so desperately to avoid. “You going to be okay?” he murmured.

He'd explained the security system. The dead bolts on the doors that were locked and unlocked with a key from the inside. And he'd shown me how to use the little pistol he'd produced from somewhere in the back of his house.

A smaller gun than the one he was wearing beneath the tweed jacket he'd had on when I got up. The jacket was blue this time instead of yesterday's brown.

“I'll be fine,” I told him, hating the way my insides quaked at the thought of being alone again, even for a second.

“You know what to do?”

“You want me just to sit here quietly.”

He took another sip of coffee as he stood. “Yes.”

“I'm not good at that.”

“Then get good at it.”

I didn't think this was a great time to become high-maintenance.

 

“Contact the superintendent of Chandler schools,” Clay told JoAnne as soon as he had her on the phone Sunday
afternoon. She was at the office, having just come from the Evans farm. “I don't want one kid within a half-mile radius of that school in the morning.”

“Okay. And Sam's checking for recent sales of materials commonly used in homemade bombs. She did a chemical search last summer and has all the resources. I couldn't stop her, Clay. She's a detective and—”

“JoAnne.” He interrupted her midsentence. “It's okay.” As a general rule—okay, always—Clay was territorial about their cases. No one else involved. Period. Outside help invariable got messy. And lines of command got blurred.

But nothing about this case was normal. In ways JoAnne couldn't even imagine.

“I've already put a call in to state police bomb squads in both Ohio and Tennessee,” Clay told her. And the FBI would investigate, as well. Another team was being called in to assist, but Clay had been given jurisdiction.

“Any ideas about the kids?” he asked JoAnne. He had several thoughts, but wanted to hear hers.

“Obviously day cares.” JoAnne named the first type of facility on his own list. “With so many of them being small private ventures, they'd be the easiest to infiltrate.”

“Agreed. Because we're short on time here, we'll have to take a risk and narrow our boundaries to the Chandler-Brookwood area and Knoxville—the two places we know our kidnapper's been. I'm going to assume he didn't stop someplace in between to plant a bomb.”

“What do you want me to tell them?”

“That we have a possible situation and as a precautionary measure we recommend they remain closed until after noon tomorrow. There are too many of them to run bomb checks on every facility.”

“You aren't afraid of inciting panic?”

“I'm more afraid of having the deaths of children on my conscience. Are you still friendly with Gary Smithers?”

Gary was a journalist with a well-known national news channel. Not too long ago he'd been aggressively interested in JoAnne.

JoAnne's sigh should've given him at least a twinge of guilt. But it didn't. “It took me a month to get rid of him the last time you asked me that question, boss.”

“I know.”

And he knew she understood why he was asking, too. Because the man would do whatever she wanted—and that included spinning this particular turn in the case in a way that would prevent all-out panic.

“I'll see if he'll meet me for drinks. Now, what do you want to do about the elementary schools?”

“Let's see if there are enough local police to do a check on those. Our goal is to protect the kids, first, but we've got to find that bomb.”

“If it exists.”

“Right.”