He was clearly nervous about something, but whether this was the kidnapper, Connor couldn’t say. If it was, he had ditched the beard, the sunglasses, and the cap, thus becoming unrecognizable.

  “So?” Olin asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s see if he comes back with the briefcase.”

  He pulled his own cell phone out of another pocket and turned it on. While he had not wanted it broadcasting his location when he was at the Pearlman, he couldn’t see any harm in it pinging a tower here.

  Once the phone came to life, he clicked an app called “Find My” and selected the AirTag they had hidden inside one of the pockets of the briefcase. Dylan had suggested they use a tracker to find the money after they made the exchange with the kidnapper, but until Connor had seen the AirTag attached to his bumper, he wasn’t sure what sort of tracker he was going to use.

  The AirTag was an obvious solution, and a little bit of poetic justice.

  “How are you doing over there, Dylan?” he asked.

  “How do you think?”

  “How close are you?”

  “Five minutes. Maybe less.”

  Connor looked at the time on his phone. Dylan had left six minutes ago. It had taken perhaps a minute to get out of the building. But if the man who had stepped inside was the kidnapper, then that meant Jerry was at Greenwood Park alone.

  Although the kidnapper had proven he could detonate a bomb remotely, Connor doubted he would leave the boy alone with any such device strapped to him. Something like that would certainly draw attention. It was the middle of the day, after all.

  Actually, any condition the kidnapper had left Jerry in would have drawn attention, wouldn’t it? It’s not like people would ignore a child bound with rope any more than they would ignore one with a bomb strapped to his chest.

  Was this whole thing a trick?

  Connor could feel the muscles in his neck begin to tighten. He hoped Jerry was not already dead, dumped in a river, or buried deep in the woods.

  “Let me know as soon as you get there.”

  “Duh.”

  Connor looked back at the map on his phone. The AirTag did not seem to have moved, but he also doubted the device would register any change in location that occurred within the building.

  Suddenly, the door that led from the parking lot to the building opened and the man in the green tee shirt stepped out. This time, he was indeed carrying the briefcase Connor had left.

  They had finally found their kidnapper.

  As Connor and Olin slid back down in their seats, Connor exchanged the Find My app for his camera and did his best to take a picture of the man without drawing attention. He showed it to Olin. “In case he gets away.”

  Olin did not ask what they would do with the picture if they needed it, and the truth was, Connor didn’t know. They couldn’t show it to Detective Pierce without explaining how they got it, and if they did not find the man among Lucy’s social media contacts, the picture would probably be useless. It certainly wasn’t clear enough for a reverse image search online.

  But there was no guarantee the kidnapper would not ditch the briefcase somewhere, so they had to take every opportunity they could to make sure he didn’t disappear into the wind.

  Connor moved his burner from the dashboard to one of the cup holders, speaker up, so it wouldn’t slide off, then followed him out of the parking lot, making sure to put plenty of distance between the two cars. He didn’t want to take the risk that the kidnapper might see him. On the neighborhood streets immediately around the building, that meant depending a lot on the AirTag. Once they reached Carole Drive, though, Connor was able to use the three lanes of heavy traffic going in each direction to hide in plain sight.

  Eleven minutes had passed since Connor had exited the building. Dylan still had yet to say she was at the park.

  “Tell me you’re close,” he said into the burner.

  “Pulling up now,” she replied.

  Greenwood Park was not very big. In fact, it was little more than a play area for children with several surrounding benches. If there had been an explosion, Dylan would already know about it.

  Connor changed lanes, shifting his position relative to the kidnapper’s vehicle, which he hoped would make him harder to spot. Then he directed his attention back to the phone. “Do you see him?”

  Dylan did not answer for several seconds. Connor heard a car door open and then close.

  “I see him!” she finally said. “I see him!” She shouted the boy’s name.

  Connor could tell she had broken into a run.

  “Is he okay?” Olin asked.

  “Yes, he’s fine. He’s just sitting here on a bench. He’s okay.”

  Connor sighed with relief. The tension in his neck subsided a little.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Dylan said, her voice some distance from the phone. “Everything’s all right. Don’t cry.” Then, to Connor: “I’m going to take him home. Make sure you don’t lose that son of a bitch.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Connor had no intention of losing the kidnapper. They may have gotten the boy back, but their job wasn’t done until they had the bearer bonds, too. This—as Dylan had put it—son of a bitch was not getting away with the money. Connor was not going to let him turn them into accomplices in his crime.

  He followed the old Ford to an apartment building half an hour away. From the outside, this building seemed only marginally better than the one they had just left. It was, he noted, surprisingly close to Lucy’s house.

  Could this man be an acquaintance? Maybe even a friend? Somebody who knew Lucy worked for Connor and had set out to leverage that relationship?

  Maybe that would make sense if this was an ordinary kidnapping, but it didn’t fit here, since the kidnapper would also have had to know about the bearer bonds, and that seemed like too many coincidences.

  Connor wished once again he had his gun with him. Whatever he was about to face in that building would be easier to handle if he was armed. This time, though, he said it aloud, and when he did, Olin replied, “I brought it.”

  “What?”

  Olin opened the glove box. “Yeah. Right here. I understand why you didn’t want to take it into the Pearlman, but I thought it might be handy to have afterward, so I brought it.”

  Connor almost smiled. He reached over and grabbed the Glock. “Let’s go get that money back.”

  Olin did not have a gun of his own, but he had a brute strength and a willingness to use it that Connor did not. So long as it was two against one in there, they should be just fine.

  Olin nodded and followed Connor to the main entrance.

  Connor, who was still holding the gun in his right hand, grabbed the handle on the door with his left and pulled.

  Now that they were inside, he realized the differences between this building and the one they had just been at were greater than they first appeared. Here, there was no graffiti covering the walls, no eviction notices taped to doors, no mold creeping along the ceiling or baseboards.

  Olin looked down the long hallway. “Now what?”

  Connor’s first instinct was to suggest they start knocking, but that plan came with problems he wasn’t sure how to handle. Most notably, the fact that the kidnapper might simply decline to answer, in which case, they would have no way of knowing whether he was there or not.

  Connor did have one more card he could play, though. The same AirTag he had used to follow the kidnapper here could take him to the precise location of the device once it was within range of the phone’s Bluetooth. That was about thirty feet.

  He explained the idea to Olin.

  Olin nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  Since Connor would need both hands to fire his gun, he unlocked his phone, pulled up the Find My app again, and passed the device to Olin.

  As they moved down the hall, they paused briefly in front of each apartment. The phone did not find the AirTag on the first floor, so they went up to the second, where they planned to repeat the process.

  They were barely out of the stairwell when the DIRECTIONS button on the app switched to FIND, indicating the AirTag was now within range of the iPhone’s Bluetooth.

  Olin held up a hand as he stopped moving, and Connor got the message. Then Olin tapped the digital FIND button. The screen faded to black and little white dots swirled around it as the two devices connected. Once they did, the dots then transformed into an arrow pointing them toward an apartment on Connor’s left. The screen also advised them that the AirTag was eighteen feet away.

  They followed the arrow to the door and the iPhone now reported the AirTag was only six feet away.

  “All we have to do is get inside and grab the briefcase,” Connor whispered.

  “Yeah, but how are we going to get inside?”

  Connor had thought about that. They could try turning the knob to see if the door was unlocked, but if the knob squeaked or the kidnapper happened to be looking, he would know someone was there. If he didn’t suspect it was Connor, he would certainly suspect it was the police. Either way, they would lose the element of surprise.

  Their only choice was to go in fast, loud. And the only way to do that was to go in shooting.

  Connor knew Olin wouldn’t like that plan, which was why he did not bother to explain it before dropping to one knee and firing at the lock. He pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession with the barrel aimed up toward the ceiling to minimize the odds he would hit anybody inside.

  Olin jumped back. “Are you fucking crazy?”

  Back on his feet, Connor kicked the door open and charged into the apartment, the gun now held out in front of him. Since Connor and Olin were now technically accomplices in the kidnapper’s crime, this confrontation would not end the way similar confrontations had ended in the past. There would be no call to the police. There would be no sending the bad guy to jail. Not today, anyway. Since they now had a picture of the kidnapper and an address, they might find a way to build a case against him in the future that did not also ensnare Connor and his friends. For the moment, though, Connor just wanted to get out of the building with the bearer bonds in hand.

  At least that would be justice of some sort, he figured.

  As the door rebounded off the wall, the kidnapper hopped up from a table deeper in the apartment. He looked toward Connor, surprised and ready to run.

  “Stay where you are!” Connor shouted, aiming the gun at him. “Stay right where you are.” He was not sure he could pull the trigger if it came to it, but that was not the reason he had bought the gun in the first place. He had bought it for the same reason he was using it now: to intimidate.

  The briefcase was on the floor to Connor’s right. Easy enough to grab—if it weren’t already open and empty.

  Connor looked back at the table where the man had been sitting. He now realized the bearer bonds were stacked up on top of it in two piles, one face up, the other face down.

  The kidnapper had been counting his haul.

  Then he realized something else, something he should have realized when he took the man’s picture. This was the same person he had nearly trampled when exiting the Pearlman with Dylan. Perhaps only moments from leaving the note on Connor’s car.

  Connor wasn’t surprised he had not made the connection earlier. The picture was fuzzy, and he had other things on his mind—like Jerry’s wellbeing.

  Besides, now that he had made that connection, what did it matter? There wasn’t anything he could do with that information.

  “Back away from the table,” he said.

  The kidnapper raised his hands and did as instructed. He looked like he would kill Connor if he got the chance.

  “Olin!”

  Olin was still standing in the hall with his mouth hanging open. Although he had brought Connor the gun, he had not yet recovered from the sight of Connor firing into the door.

  “Olin!” Connor said again. “Get the bearer bonds.”

  Finally, Olin started to move.

  When Connor turned his attention back to the kidnapper, he realized the man had taken several steps away from the table. But he wasn’t trying to run like Connor had first thought. He was moving toward the coffee table, where he had a Glock of his own.

  “Hey! I said stay where you are!”

  The man once again froze, hands raised in the air.

  “I swear, if you make one more step toward that gun . . .”

  Olin scurried around Connor and grabbed the bearer bonds. On his way back, he also grabbed the briefcase. He did not, however, make it out of the apartment like Connor had expected. Instead, as he straightened, with the bearer bonds tucked under one arm and the briefcase in his opposite hand, Connor heard another voice, this one a woman’s.

  “If you shoot him, I’ll shoot Olin. Drop the bearer bonds and get out of here.”

  Connor knew who it was without turning to look, but he did anyway. “Lucy?”

  She also had a gun. Hers was aimed directly at Olin and, unlike Connor’s, was only inches from her target’s back.

  Connor kept his weapon aimed at the kidnapper but stepped deeper into the kitchen, which was adjacent to the front door, so that he could keep both him and Lucy in his sights. Then, aiming the weapon over the bar that divided the kitchen from the living room, he asked Lucy, “What the hell’s going on?”

  He did not have to wait for her to answer before the pieces started falling into place. If Lucy was here, she had to be in on the crime.

  “It’s not as bad as it seems,” Lucy said.

  The kidnapper looked from Connor to Lucy. “What are you doing?”

  It was the first time Connor had heard the kidnapper speak. He realized he was right when he had assumed the man was using a digital synthesizer to disguise his voice. Which meant he was also probably right when he had assumed the beard was fake. This man had gone to great lengths to disguise his identity.

  Since Lucy was here, Connor knew he hadn’t done that just because of the money. He was close to the family, which might have made him easy for the police to find if he himself had not. And when Lucy spoke again, Connor found out just how close.

  “Jerry wasn’t in any danger,” Lucy said. “He was with Antonio the whole time.”

  “Lucy!” the kidnapper shouted.

  Connor had heard Lucy talk about Antonio before. He was her husband. The man who had drifted from one sales job to the next. The man who could no longer handle the stress of raising a child.

  The man who had been inching his way toward the gun on the coffee table.

  “We just needed a little money,” Lucy continued. “That’s why Antonio left. We just needed to take some of the stress off the family.”

  “Lucy! Shut the fuck up!”

  “You understand. You have to understand. I mean, you guys don’t always do what you’re supposed to.” She glanced at the stack of bearer bonds to make her point. “But you always do what you do for the right reason. That’s all we were doing here. We just wanted to be a family. What can be more right than that?”

  Antonio clenched his fists and shook them violently but didn’t dare move with Connor’s gun pointed at him. “Goddammit!”

  Connor thought about how she’d sought them out, how she’d made a point of getting the job as their secretary. He remembered what she had said when he asked her why she wanted the job: That’s easy. I like what you do. I like how you do it.

  She had been planning this from the beginning. She must have been.

  Connor’s gaze cut briefly to Olin. Lucy still had her gun pressed to his back. Despite the stress that had caused beads of sweat to pop up on his forehead and transform his expression into something Connor hardly recognized, he could tell Olin had drawn the same conclusion.

  “Just let us go, okay?” Lucy said. “Nobody got hurt. Nobody needs to know about this.”

  “Somebody could have.”

  “You mean the bomb at the warehouse? That was just meant to scare you. We had to get you to the point where you would be willing to do what we needed you to do.”

  “Lucy, you have to shut up! What the fuck’s the matter with you? Just pull the damn trigger and let’s get the hell out of here!”

  At that moment, Connor realized two important things.

  The first was Lucy did not want to be on the run. Olin was standing directly in front of her with the bearer bonds under one arm; it would be easy for her to grab them and disappear. Connor obviously wasn’t going to fire at her with Olin in the way. That probably had something to do with Jerry.

  The second was that Antonio would kill them if he got the chance.

  “Come on, Connor,” Lucy said. “I know how you operate. Drake was a thief. He’s killed people. You can’t be upset about stealing from a guy like that.”

  Connor was already aware of both of those things, and they didn’t change his calculation. Now that he knew the truth, he could no longer say the crime had been for the greater good. However, he wasn’t ready to make such a declaration yet. Although Lucy might not want to find herself on the run, she certainly did not want to go to jail. If she felt cornered, she might make her own calculation about the lesser of two evils, and it might not tilt in Connor’s favor.

  He needed to get the upper hand.

  He also wanted to find out how she knew about Drake. Not just the safe, either. The murders, too. That hadn’t been published anywhere Connor had seen. If it was true, it only further emphasized the point that she and her husband must have inside information.

  “How do you know all this about Drake?”

  “Antonio—”

  “Goddammit, Lucy!” Antonio lunged for the gun on the coffee table. Whatever Lucy was about to say, it seemed like it was going to be one step more than Antonio was comfortable with. He got off two shots before Connor could convince himself to pull the trigger. The first was aimed at Connor and missed. The second was aimed at Olin.

  Connor might not have been able to fire when Antonio started to move, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let Antonio shoot his friend.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23