Fatal Exchange (13 page)

N
o . . . no . . . no.” Emily couldn’t breathe.

She fumbled with her phone, dropping her bag onto the pavement in the process. One of her pens rolled out of the dumped-over bag. This had to be a mistake. Tess was safe, on her way to see her mother at the hospital.

Charlie picked up the pen and handed it to her. “Em . . . what’s wrong?”

“It’s a message from . . . from a blocked number.” Emily handed him her phone, all the panic and alarm from the day returning. Except this time she felt as if she were stumbling in the dark. This time she had no idea who was behind the message. “I don’t understand how, but it says they have Tess.”

“Whoa. Slow down.” Charlie turned her toward him, his hands on her shoulders. “You don’t know what this means. Not yet. It could be nothing more than a prank. Someone’s idea of a very bad practical joke.”

“A prank?” Her eyes widened. “I don’t believe that, and neither do you. Not after today.”

Charlie pulled out his own phone. “I’m calling the captain.”

This should have been over. The students had been released. They’d found Eduardo. So why the text? Why Tess?

Lingering hope that Charlie’s first instincts had been right
hovered at the edges of her thoughts. Maybe this wasn’t anything more than someone’s idea of a sick joke.

Charlie waited for the captain to answer as she tried to sort through the facts as she knew them. The cartel had kidnapped Eduardo and his mother. Demanded money owed them. Tried to manipulate Rafael . . .

They’d never gotten their money.

“They didn’t get the money,” she spouted.

“What?” Charlie ended his unanswered call and caught her gaze.

“The ransom money. Someone else has to be involved.”

“But why Tess?”

She took her phone back from Charlie. “I don’t know, but I need to find my father.”

She pushed her father’s number on speed dial, then started searching to see if his car was still in the parking lot. She found it halfway down the first row. He hadn’t left yet. Where was Tess? She hung up the unanswered phone. And where was her father?

Panic sifted through her as Charlie stopped beside her. “They have to be here somewhere.”

“Emily?”

She turned at Mason’s voice. He must have seen her running across the parking lot.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

She tried to catch her breath. “Someone’s taken her. There has to be a connection to Eduardo and Rafael, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Wait a minute. Slow down. Taken who?”

“Tess.” She showed him the message. “We need to find the captain and my father. We can’t get ahold of either of them.”

Mason took her phone. “Who did this come from?”

“I don’t know. It’s a blocked number.”

“When’s the last time you saw Tess?”

“Right before I spoke with you. Fifteen . . . maybe twenty minutes ago. She was with my father. They were leaving to go see my sister at the hospital.”

“I just saw your father,” Mason said. “The captain needed to speak with him about something in private.”

“Was Tess with him?”

“No.”

Something shiny flashed from under one of the bushes. Emily bent down and picked up her father’s set of keys with the familiar inscribed key ring. A silver car with flashlights for headlights.

Her father’s.

She looked up at Mason, the jingle of keys audible between her shaky fingers. “So what happened? He sent Tess to the car to wait for him?”

“Would she have gotten into a car with someone she didn’t know?”

“Her mother is a police detective. She’d never get in a car with a stranger.”

“And the school grounds are full of reporters and police officers,” Charlie added. “If someone tried to grab her, there would be witnesses.”

“Okay, then could it have been someone she knew?” Mason asked.

“Maybe.”

Emily’s head pounded. It hurt to think. All she could do was follow Mason and Charlie back toward the school. Mason started barking out instructions at the other officers.

“We’ve got a missing student. Another possible kidnapping. Tessica North, Captain Hunt’s granddaughter. I want the grounds searched immediately. Everyone questioned . . .”

A few reporters still lingered at the edges of the parking lot. They were going to be all over this story, but she didn’t care. Like
them, she’d thought all the students were safe now. Thought the situation had been resolved, but now . . .

She watched Mason hand her phone to someone. She was impressed at how he’d automatically taken charge.

“Get this phone to Tory and have her trace the last text. Charlie, get an AMBER Alert out.”

She caught the look that passed between them and expected Charlie to balk, but instead he just nodded.

She felt Mason’s hand on her shoulder. “Emily?”

“We have to find her.” She’d thought things couldn’t get worse when Rafael had shown up with a gun in her classroom. They’d made it through that. They’d make it through this. They had to.

“We’re going to find her,” he assured her, “but right now I need to know an exact timeline leading up to her disappearance. You said you saw her about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Yes.” Emily’s chest burned. She tried to breathe, but the air wasn’t reaching her lungs. She tried to calm herself, knowing that panicking wasn’t going to help Tess. “After talking with the police, I found Tess and my father. Daddy told us what happened to Avery and Eduardo. He headed to the parking lot with Tess, planning to drive her to the hospital to see her mom. That was right before we spoke.”

“And Charlie?”

“I met him in the parking lot after talking with you. He wanted to make sure I was okay.” She was having trouble staying focused. “I need to find my father, Mason.”

“I’ve got someone trying to get ahold of him now.”

She’d been scared in that classroom, but at least she’d known Rafael. Maybe she’d been wrong, but a part of her had never really believed he would do anything to hurt her or Tess. But now . . . Rafael was dead, and she had no way to know who was behind this.

Oh God . . . I’m
trying to trust you in this situation. You know where
she is. You know we have to find her.

She glanced up as her father came running toward her.

“Daddy.” She let him gather her into his arms, trying not to remember that the last time she’d seen him, Tess had been with them.

He pulled back, his arms still around her. “What’s going on? I was just told that Tess has been abducted?”

“I received a text message.” She heard the sound of her own voice. No inflection. No emotion. She was running on autopilot. “Someone’s taken her.”

“What? Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Her father turned to Mason, the creases across his forehead pronounced. The gray more evident than she remembered. Her father was strong, but he’d already lost so much this year.

“Has the text been traced?” Thirty years of police experience snapped into play.

“I’ve got Tory working on it, but if it’s a burn phone she won’t be able to trace it.”

“School surveillance footage needs to be gone over.” Her father jutted his chin toward the school. “I’ll speak to the principal about getting that set up, then make sure the captain’s aware of what’s going on. You ensure we’ve got teams out there looking for my granddaughter, starting with the school grounds. Question anyone who might have seen something.”

Mason nodded. “One other thing, sir. We found the keys to your car in the bushes in the parking lot.”

Emily glanced up at her father. “Where was Tess?”

Her father’s eyebrows furrowed. “The captain called and told me he needed to speak to me in private. He offered to send one of his officers to wait with Tess at the car, because I didn’t want her to be alone.”

“Do you have the name of the officer?” Mason asked.

“One of the new recruits . . . Officer Reed.”

“Good,” Mason said. “I’ll have someone track her down.”

“We’re going to find her. But please . . .” Emily grasped her father’s arm as Mason rushed off. Standing around doing nothing would push her over the edge. “Let me help with the footage. I need something to do.”

“You and me both.” His frown deepened. “I can’t believe I let Tess out of my sight—”

“You didn’t know.” She worked to match his long stride as he hurried toward the office. “None of us did. The danger was supposed to be over.”

Now wasn’t the time for either of them to allow guilt to cloud their vision. All that mattered was finding Tess.

“Emily, before we go in there . . .” Her father stopped just outside the entrance of the school. Dark clouds hovered overhead, bringing with them a light flurry of the predicted snow. But Emily’s focus was on the worry in her father’s expression. “I need you to listen carefully to me, sweetheart.”

She shuddered at a gust of cold wind that seemed to blow right through her. “Daddy . . . what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know who’s behind this, or what’s going on, but I want you to stay here in the school offices until I get back.”

“Okay, but—”

“There’s one other thing. If I get delayed, I need you to know you can trust Mason.”

“Mason?” His words caught her off guard. “Why?”

He squeezed her hand. “If I’m not here to keep you safe, he will.”

“What do you know?” Fear was back. The nightmare still lingered. Emily shook her head. “Tell me what’s going on. Please.”

“I can’t—”

Her father’s phone went off, and he pulled it out of his jacket pocket.

His face paled. “Another text just came through. It’s from the kidnappers.”

“What do they want?”

“The two million dollars they didn’t get the first time.”

W
e
’
re
missing
something
.

Mason stood for a moment, staring out across the school lawns that were now covered with a dusting of white, then pulled out his phone. He was cold, tired, and emotionally drained. He hadn’t heard from the captain. Or Emily’s dad, for that matter. And after twenty minutes of searching the school and its grounds, there was still no sign of Tess. If they didn’t find her soon, they were going to have to extend their initial search radius. They needed a solid lead. Evidence from the surveillance footage, a witness who had seen what happened in that parking lot, a confession from the men being held in conjunction with Eduardo’s case . . . anything that would help them find Tess. So far, they had nothing.

He punched in Carlos’s number, praying the detective had an update for him.

Mason heard the noisy precinct in the background as Carlos picked up. “Mason, hey. I was just getting ready to call you.”

“I’m looking at a bunch of dead ends here. I need something.”

“We might have a lead,” Carlos said, “but first the bad news. We struck out on the messages sent to Emily and her father. No way to trace them, but I can tell you it was a different phone from the one that called Rafael and his mother this morning.”

“What about the guy from the funeral home you dragged in?”

“His name’s Juan Carter. When we told him we could tie him to a string of recent kidnappings and murders, he confessed to kidnapping Eduardo, but nothing more. We’ve tied him to a local gang—Griffin is running that angle down right now—but while he admits Eduardo’s kidnapping had to do with a dispute over a drug debt, he swears he doesn’t know anything about Tess or Mrs. Cerda’s disappearance.”

“And Jacobs?”

“Still not wanting to cooperate and insists he doesn’t know anything about the kidnappings. I think he’s telling the truth.”

Mason ran his fingers through his hair and paced the sidewalk in front of the school. Even if they could tie the kidnappings to one of the local gangs, something wasn’t right. He still believed that Rafael had somehow been manipulated. That his mother had been used as leverage. That implied that someone else was involved. “So what’s the lead?”

“You remember about six months ago, when someone broke into the department’s evidence locker?” Carlos asked.

“Yeah. They stole a couple weapons, some jewelry, cash, and fifty-thousand dollars’ worth of heroin.”

“Exactly,” Carlos said. “Here’s the kicker. The gun Rafael used is a match to one of those stolen weapons. Unregistered and impossible to trace back to the original owner.”

“Which makes it the perfect weapon.”

Mason’s mind spun as he ran through the timeline in his head. Eduardo had been taken early Sunday morning. Mrs. Cerda disappeared Monday morning just after seven. Rafael walked into the school with the gun around eight. Emily had been convinced someone was manipulating Rafael, but the only motivation that made sense was that whoever had taken Eduardo in the first place had grabbed Mrs. Cerda as an extra guarantee that they got their money. But a ransom situation in a school
wasn’t the normal cartel MO. Unless . . . unless someone else had kidnapped Mrs. Cerda and given Rafael a gun and enough incentive to walk into a school with a weapon.

“Whoever was behind the thefts at the precinct knew what they were doing, which points to an inside job,” Mason said. “So what if we’re looking at two separate cases?”

“Two kidnappers?” Carlos asked.

“What if someone found out about the first kidnapping and decided they wanted a piece of the cash?”

“It’s possible, but who else besides you knew about Eduardo’s kidnapping?” Carlos asked.

The department mole.

It was the one thing that made sense. It wasn’t as common as accepting bribes or falsifying reports, but he’d heard of officers who had participated in organized crime themselves. What if someone else had known about Eduardo’s kidnapping, had the stolen gun, and decided to play it to their advantage.

The pictures had never been out of his possession. The door to Avery’s office had been shut, because he hadn’t wanted anyone listening in. He brushed a patch of snow that had fallen on his neck, barely feeling the stinging cold. He might be grasping at straws, but what if someone
had
overheard their conversation?

“Mason . . . what are you thinking?”

He shifted his thoughts to Carlos’s question and tried to formulate them into something coherent. “What if we’re looking at a second kidnapper? Someone who had nothing to do with Eduardo’s kidnapping? Someone who took Tess and maybe Mrs. Cerda as well.”

Someone who thought they could take advantage of the situation. Someone who thought they could walk away with two million dollars if they played their cards right.

“I don’t know, but it’s worth looking at. Who else knew about your meeting with Rafael?”

“According to Rafael, he didn’t tell anyone else. The people who took his brother made it clear they didn’t want anyone to know—especially the police. He was taking a chance contacting me.”

“So let’s assume he didn’t tell anyone else. Who did you talk to?”

“After talking with Rafael, I took the photos straight to Avery. I knew she was involved in the Torres investigation, and I thought there might be a connection.”

“Was anyone else in the room with you while you were talking?”

“No one. I felt the situation needed to be kept under the radar.” There was another possibility. “What if there’s a bug in Avery’s office?”

“You seriously think someone might have bugged her office?”

He understood the incredulity in Carlos’s voice. His first thought was that it wasn’t possible, but on the other hand, it would explain how someone inside the department had been able to access sensitive information over the past few months. “Where are you right now?” Mason asked.

“I’m heading for her office now. Give me a minute.”

Snow crunched beneath his shoes as Mason started pacing the sidewalk in front of the school. A second kidnapper meant that the dynamics had just shifted from a clear-cut ransom case with a list of possible suspects to not knowing who the players were.

Two million dollars was a lot of motivation. An open opportunity for someone ready to take a risk.

“Anything?” Mason asked.

“Not yet.”

The snow was falling harder. He stepped under the awning that ran along the front of the main building. Most of the parents had left hours ago with their children, leaving the parking lot empty except for a couple of reporters and the team of law enforcement officers searching for Tess.

He drummed his free hand against his leg. They both knew
what to look for. Something small, compact, and not easy to find. If they had more time, they could bring someone in to sweep the room, but time wasn’t on their side.

“Mason . . . I’ve just stepped back outside her office, but I found something. A listening device mounted beneath her desk with a magnet.”

So he’d been right. Someone had been listening in, had found out about the kidnapping, and decided to take advantage of the situation.

“What did it look like?” Mason asked.

“It’s a small, silver canister, about the size of a dime. Maybe a bit smaller.”

He’d used similar devices before. Had met a guy who sold electronic surveillance devices and had learned everything he could from him. While working undercover, he’d bought and sold illegal drugs, catching suppliers in the process by using the same kind of electronic surveillance as Carlos described. But that equipment wasn’t supposed to be used inside the department.

“Were there any serial numbers, dates, or any kind of markings?”

“Not that I could see, but I’m leaving it intact for evidence.”

“Good.”

Mason worked through their options. If someone on the force was involved, they’d probably been at the school all day. Which meant there was a good chance that there was a partner involved who had done the actual communicating with Rafael. And had possibly taken Tess. There had to be a connection between the two cases.

“I’ll call you back as soon as I can, Carlos. I need to find the captain.”