Ben, where are you?
"Why do you think nothing's happened at the fund-raiser yet?" Kate asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. Tom had just gotten off the phone with one of the cops who had remained behind at the Troc. The agent had unlocked the window, as Kate had been instructed to do, and a contingent of FBI agents were standing by to take down anyone who came within a mile of it.
So far, no one had.
"The plan was for Wolff to exit through the hall that goes past that restroom," Tom said. "Maybe whatever they're planning is supposed to happen as he leaves. And he was scheduled to leave at ten, which is in about twenty minutes. There's no need to think anything's gone wrong yet."
"They're still trying to get a lock on the cell phone that called yours," Fish said. "It had to bounce off a tower somewhere, and by checking all calls that came through in this area at that exact time and then triangulating it between towers, they may be able to find it."
What he didn't say was that such a search would take time, if it even succeeded. And time, Kate feared, was exactly what they didn't have.
It had been only maybe ten minutes since she had talked to Ben, but in this situation, ten minutes was a lifetime.
Do they know their plan's been exposed yet? Do they think they don't need Ben any longer?
Both thoughts made her feel like all the air was being sucked out of the car.
The cars in front of them were stopping. Tom parked the Taurus, and they got out. The night was cold, and her bare feet in the sexy silver stiletto sandals Mona—whose feet were the same size as hers—had loaned her to go with the dress were freezing. Kate was glad to have her coat, which she had worn over the evening dress despite the fact that it was definitely not evening wear and thus didn't match at all. It was overcast, no moon or siars visible al all, and would have been dark as pitch had it not been for the glow of the halogen lights. The wind blowing in off the bay smelled of the sea, and of the coming rain. The surging of the tide against the shore was a constant murmur in the background.
Closer at hand was the sound of briskly approaching footsteps.
"Whatever happens, you stay with me," Tom said to her as Willets and his partner, who as Feds were nominally in charge of the operation, came toward them. "I'd leave you in the car, but too much could go wrong. Anyway, I don't trust you to stay there."
"Is that the sign?" Willets asked as he reached them, nodding toward the tyrannosaurus. Willets was about six feet tall and well-built, with thick, short tobacco-brown hair and a handsome, square-jawed face. Like the rest of the federal agents and Fish, he was immaculately dressed in a suit and tie.
"Yes," Kate said.
Willets turned in a full circle, hands on hips, looking all around, and gave a dismayed little whistle. "You can probably see it from every square inch of this place."
"Hurry," Kate breathed. Willets glanced at her and nodded.
Five minutes later they had divided the area into grids and were searching it systematically, warehouse by warehouse, being as quiet as possible in hope of not alerting their prey to their presence. Only she and Tom were left by the cars. She because, as a civilian, she was not allowed to join in the search, and Tom because he refused to leave her.
"Can we at least walk around?" Shivering, Kate thrust her hands deep into her pockets. She was so cold, freezing, but she knew it had little to do with the chilly weather. It was the bone-deep cold of abject fear. If she was wrong about this, if Ben wasn't here ... She couldn't even finish the thought. "I can't stand this."
Tom glanced around. The searchers had fanned out from their location in the middle of the shipyard. From where he and Kate stood by the cars, they could see dark figures slipping into narrow side doors and brief bursts of light as flashlights were judiciously employed. Occasionally, a whole warehouse would light up, although not all of them had working lights.
"Come on." Tom slid a hand around her elbow, and together they walked down the line of parked cars. The narrow ends of the three-story warehouses were maybe six feet from them on either side. The dark metal buildings blended into the night, faceless and anonymous. The idea that her son might be imprisoned inside one made Kate want to run among them, shrieking his name. Only the thought that if his captors were alerted to their presence they might kill him on the spot kept her quiet. By ten o'clock, though, whoever was holding Ben was going to know that something had gone wrong. Time was running out. Every time she remembered that, terror ran cold and thick through her veins.
Kate stopped and clenched her fists and closed her eyes.
Please, God, keep Ben safe.
"What?" Tom's voice was low.
"Shh. I just want to see if I can feel him." Maybe it was stupid, maybe it wasn't. But her whole life since his birth had been about Ben. She loved him with every fiber of her being, and he loved her back. She could almost feel the bond between them like an invisible cable stretching out through the darkness, connecting her to him. She'd never been one to believe in psychics or anything like that, but this was different. This was Ben, and her love for him was so strong that she hoped it would act as a beacon drawing her toward him.
Ben. Where are you, Ben?
There was something—something tugging at the edges of her mind. Not knowing quite what it was but obeying her instincts, she turned her head to the left, then started walking that way, down the path between the long sides of two of the warehouses, frowning. Drawn by
something.
Her heels plunged unevenly through the gravel, making walking precarious.
Ben. Are you there?
"Kate ..." Tom was beside her, his hand curling around her arm.
"Shh." She shook her head at him. She didn't know where she was going, or what was pulling her, but it felt important somehow. They reached the end of that row of warehouses, crossed another of the narrow roads, and walked between more warehouses. The farther they got from the lights, the darker it grew, and Kate could feel Tom growing restive beside her. The crunch of their footsteps in the gravel was loud. She didn't know if this area had already been searched or not, but none of the searchers was in sight. She was peripherally aware that, beside her, Tom had drawn his gun.
Then she heard it. Or, more likely, she'd been hearing it all along, but as the sound grew more distinct, her mind finally made the connection.
Hum. Click-click-click.
It was the sound she'd heard over the phone, which she had thought was static.
Her heart leaped. Her head turned sharply in the direction of the sound. It seemed to be coming from inside the warehouse to her left, which had a sliding, garage-size door in its side. The door was open about three feet, just about the width of an ordinary door, revealing a glimpse of almost impenetrable blackness inside. Except for, a few feet beyond the entrance, a dull silver gleam. Eyes widening, Kate realized as the shape took on form and substance against the more amorphous background that what she was seeing was a car's bumper.
A black SUV's bumper, to be precise.
"Tom." She grabbed his arm to alert him, turning to look at him through the thick shadows. Their eyes connected, and he started to say something. Then his gaze moved beyond her and he froze.
"Mom."
Kate was still in the process of following Tom's gaze to see what had so transfixed him when she heard Ben's voice. For one brief, shining instant it was the most welcome sound she had ever heard—until she registered how quiet it was, and how shaky.
Then she saw what Tom was staring at: Ben stood just inside the open warehouse door. The reason she was able to see him so well is that somebody off to one side was shining a flashlight on his face. As well as on the thick, black-clad arm around his neck, and the businesslike black gun pressed to his temple.
She felt all the color drain out of her face. The sudden lump that formed in her throat was hard, cold fear.
"Ben."
Instinctively, Kate started toward him. Tom grabbed her arm to keep her in place.
"Don't move. Don't make a sound. Or the kid's dead." The voice spoke out of the darkness just behind Tom. Kate jumped, glancing around, her eyes widening with horror as she realized that while they had been focused on Ben, someone—the man on the phone, the man in the ladies' room, the man who'd done all the talking in the SUV, the man who'd punched her, it was his voice—had crept up behind them. He was a big, burly shape in the dark—with a gun pointed straight at them.
"Ike?" There was no mistaking the disbelief in Tom's voice. Clearly, this was someone he knew. A cop? Had her instincts been right?
"Put the gun down, Tom. Nice and slow. And Ms. White—I wouldn't move if I were you. That's your kid over there. He wouldn't be so cute with a hole in his head."
Kate froze. Her stomach plunged. Her heart stopped.
"We got twenty people within a hundred yards of you," Tom said. "Plus, there's a perimeter set up around the edge of the property. There's no way you're getting out of here."
"You underestimate the value of being a police sergeant. We could shoot you all three right now, and then get in the car and drive on out there like we've come to help in the search and nobody would question it. Now put your gun on the ground. Don't make me off the kid."
The man holding Ben must have tightened his grip or done something else to cause him pain, because Ben made a little sound of distress.
"Ben.
" Kate's stomach turned inside out. She was breathing way too fast, and her heart pounded like she had been running for miles. All she wanted in the world was to rush to him—but she couldn't. She didn't have a single doubt that these men would kill them with the least provocation. And there was still a gun to Ben's head.
Letting go of her arm, Tom bent and put his gun on the ground.
"Now back off," Ike said. "And keep your hands where I can see them."
Tom took a couple of steps toward Kate. Ike scooped Tom's gun off the ground.
"Why?" Tom asked.
"Some of us need to supplement our income." Ike's tone was the verbal equivalent of a shrug. "I've been on Genovese's"—Kate recognized the name as that of an organized-crime boss in the area— "payroll for a while. Wolff pissed him off, and Genovese put a million-dollar price tag on his head. Long as it couldn't be traced back to him. We had a guy going in the window dressed like a waiter. Wolff always drinks a cup of hot tea before he hits the road at the end of these things. Our guy was going to put poison in it." "Poison?" Kate asked, before she could stop herself. "See, you shoot somebody, they're on top of you right there. You basically got no chance of getting away with it. Poison, it takes a little longer to act and it's not so easy to trace. Plus, it makes a statement, which is what Genovese wanted to do."
"What about Ed Curry?" Tom asked. "Is he on Genovese's payroll, too?"
"Nah. He's just somebody we had something on, like Ms. White here. He does what we tell him. When we tell him." "Not anymore. He's being picked up as we speak." "Shit." Ike sounded genuinely concerned, and Kate guessed he was worried about what Curry might spill. Then his tone changed. "Or you're full of shit. And I'm betting you're full of shit."
"I'm not. We got Curry. But it's not too late for you to make a deal," Tom said. "Go state's evidence against Genovese."
"I don't think so. Pissing Genovese off is not a smart thing to do." He gestured with his gun. "No more talk. You think I don't know what you're trying to do? Walk into the warehouse. And don't get between her and the gun, Tom. I'll shoot you right now if you do."
From that Kate deduced that Tom had been moving into a position to block her from Ike's gun with his own body, probably hoping that she would make a break for it. But there was no way in hell she was leaving Ben. Her eyes found her son's face. Still wearing the jeans and blue jacket he'd had on when he'd been pulled from her car, he looked pale and small and tired and scared to death. Kale knew how he felt.
Please, God, let Fish or Willets or somebody realize we're missing and come looking for us. We're right over here ...
The man holding Ben pulled him back out of the way as Kate stepped through the door.
"Mom," Ben whimpered as she neared him.
"It's going to be okay, sweetie," she lied. Kate would have gone straight to him then, but someone grabbed her arm, yanking her the rest of the way inside, causing her to stumble in her unfamiliar shoes, twisting her arm up behind her back so that she cried out in pain. By the shifting beam of the flashlight her captor held in his other hand—he was clearly the one who had been shining the light on Ben—Kate saw that she was in a cavernous space with a peaked, corrugated ceiling, metal rafters, metal walls, and an earthen floor. Tall stacks of wooden crates formed a wall about twenty feet in. Farther than that she could not see. Closer at hand were two plastic lawn chairs, a sleeping bag, and a kerosene heater. As soon as Kate saw the heater, she knew that this was the source of the sound she had heard: the steady hum of its operation, and the
click-click-click
as it oscillated back and forth.
She saw, too, that the man holding Ben had loosened his grip. Ben was no longer being held quite so tightly against him, and he no longer had a gun to his head. His eyes were on her, wide and terrified.
Despite the fact that she was sweating bullets and her arm was breaking and she was so frightened she felt like the blood was draining from her head, she smiled at him.
Then Tom walked through the opening, hands up, closely followed by Ike. Kate was sure that they were going to die, all three of them, in probably a matter of minutes. Tom knew them, and Ben and she could identify them. There was no way in hell any of them was going to be left alive.
"Goddamn it, Ike, are you going to kill a woman and a little kid?" Tom demanded as the flashlight swung toward him. The man holding Ben screamed. "Ow! He bit me! The little shit bit me!"