Innocent Prey (A Brown and de Luca Novel) (21 page)

Mason saw Rachel tapping on Vanessa’s smartphone. Then she apparently finished and shoved it down the front of her shirt just as the van came to a stop.

She walked right up to the rolled-down window, smiling, but wisely staying in the shadows. She was a hottie, but she wasn’t gonna pass for barely eighteen on close inspection. Her hand was inside the purse, and when she pulled it out, he was sure she had the GPS.

“I can’t let this happen,” he said. “I gotta stop this. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.” He was reaching for the door as he spoke, but then the chief said, “Too late,” and he looked.

The van’s side door slid open. A guy jumped out and grabbed her, hurled her inside. The GPS went sailing out of her hand and hit the sidewalk, pieces flying everywhere as the van lurched into motion. The door was slammed shut, and then they sped around a corner.

“No. Dammit, no!” Mason shouted.

Rosie dove into the front seat. He was too big to be graceful, but he was damn fast. “Get out your keys, bro, I’ll drop you at your car. It’ll move way faster than this thing.”

Mason got out his keys while the chief shouted into the radio. “I want triangulation on cell phones belonging to Rachel de Luca and Special Agent Vanessa Cantone. If either of them has location tracking turned on I want remote access, and I want Cantone’s supervisor on my phone twenty minutes ago. Got it?”

Rosie hit the brakes, and Mason had the side door open and was jumping out before the police van even came to a stop. The chief closed the door from inside, and Rosie stomped on the gas.

Mason slid behind the wheel of the Beast, twisted the key and put the car into gear, very glad that he had installed a supercharger.

* * *

I’d blown it. Oh, hell and damnation, I’d blown it. The GPS thingie had gone flying, and I’d heard it smash into a zillion pieces on the sidewalk when the jerk had yanked me into the van. I buried my face in my hands, pretending to be terrified and crying, cringing down into a corner on the floor. Keeping my face hidden was the top part of my plan. Okay, it was, as of right now, the
only
part of my plan. If one of these guys was Jake Kravitz, then he would recognize me. End of story. I needed them to lead the good guys to those captive girls before that happened.

I knew I’d been in sight of the cops when I’d been taken, and I knew Mason and the guys were following us. Or trying to. I didn’t know how successful they’d be now that the GPS was busted to bits.

“Shoot, this one’s barely any trouble at all,” said the guy who’d grabbed me.

The driver didn’t speak, but I figured I’d better do something before they caught on that this was going down way too easily. So I lunged for the side door.

“Whoa, whoa, spoke too soon!” the guy with me said, grabbing me by the hair and hurling me back. My head cracked against the side of the van and I yelped. That part wasn’t fake.

Then he was kneeling across the backs of my thighs, jerking my arms behind my back and tying my wrists real tight. So tight it hurt. Then he flipped me over. My hair fell across my face, and I left it that way.

He grabbed my purse off the floor where I’d dropped it and unzipped it while I watched him from behind my hair. He took out everything I’d put in there. All the props. Dummy wallet with nothing but cash, the shit-ton of makeup, my phone.

Shit, my phone. I’d meant to leave it in the car, but I’d been so damn nervous that I’d forgotten it. And if they started going through it, they’d know I wasn’t Carlotta Bennett, barely eighteen and a part-time hooker.

But I still had Vanessa’s phone stuffed down the front of my blouse. I’d tucked it up underneath my right boob, and now I thanked my stars I was well-endowed enough to pull that off.

My kidnapper didn’t even bother looking at my phone. He opened a window and tossed it out. I yelped again, and it wasn’t fake that time, either. My fucking phone!

Then he felt me up and down, both sides, both legs, even grabbed my crotch through the jeans. Up my front, giving me a breast exam for free on the way. He didn’t feel the phone crammed between my boob and the bra’s brutal underwire. And he didn’t check underneath, just down the front, then down my back. Big smack to my ass.

“Now you just lay there and be quiet, you understand me?”

I nodded, thinking,
The Asshole, I presume?

Then he sat down. I stayed where I was on the floor, but I scooched up a little, resting my back against the far side of the van, my head hanging down but my eyes angled up, trying to see where we were going. I caught a couple of street signs and committed them to memory, wondering as I did why they didn’t care that I was looking out the window. Then suddenly we turned so sharply I almost fell over. The van pulled into a garage with an empty car and a door on each end, and skidded to a sharp stop that slammed my head against the seat in front of me. The driver shut off the engine and the lights. The garage door closed behind us in slow motion while I watched, praying to see the headlights of the cops who were supposed to be following us.

The Asshole tied my feet together and wrapped a blindfold around my face from behind. Apparently what I’d seen up to now wouldn’t help me or they would’ve done it before now. “You start yelling, I’ll duct tape your mouth. Got it?”

I nodded, glad he was hiding my obviously not-eighteen-year-old face for me. I almost screamed so he’d add that promised tape to my mouth, because then everything but my nose would’ve been hidden. But I didn’t quite have the courage to do it.

Then he gripped my upper arm and started dragging me. I damn near fell out of the van when he pulled me through the door, badly banging one knee on the way down. He jerked me upright and forward, and I stumbled and cursed at myself inwardly. After twenty years blind, you’d think I could manage being yanked around in a blindfold without inflicting this much damage.

This didn’t feel like an act. I didn’t feel like bait in a trap or an amateur sleuth catching a killer. I felt like a victim. I felt like I was being kidnapped and roughed up and terrorized.

Because I was.

Then I was shoved into the back of a car.

“There, they drove right on by, just like we planned. Let’s go,” said the one doing all the talking.

I heard the hum of a second garage door, this one in front, and we drove out, turned right and sped away, leaving Mason and the rest of the cavalry chasing ghosts on the wrong road.

15

M
ason pounded the steering wheel in frustration and peered through the windshield until his eyes watered, but it was no use. He’d lost them.

He’d lost
her.

His cell phone rang, and he picked it up without looking first. “Yeah?”

“Brown?”

He frowned at the phone, pausing at an intersection before pulling a U-turn and going slowly back the way they’d come. “Cantone?”

“Yesh.”

“Where the hell are you, and why do you sound drunk?”

“Your girlfriend spiked my coffee. I figured it out just before I passed out, managed to hack up what wasn’t in my bloodstream yet. She took my keys ’n’ phone.”

He frowned. “Where are you calling from?”

“Front desk. Why did she—”

“She found out you had a kid.”

She sighed. “She had a vision. ’Bout me. Somethin’ bad. Tried to warn me.” She paused. Then she said, “She took my clothes. She’s gonna try to take my place.”

“She already did. They got her.”

“Ah, hell. You following?”

“Lost ’em. She dropped the GPS, and they tossed her phone a block from where they grabbed her.”

“She has my phone, Mason. If you haven’t found it, if they didn’t toss it with hers, then—”

“Then maybe they didn’t find it. We know and we’re on it. You okay?”

“Yeah. Been in worse shape than this ’n’ called it fun. Go find her. I’ll get some coffee ’n’ be there ASAP.”

“Will do.” He disconnected, scanning the buildings as he passed. They had to have pulled in somewhere. They couldn’t have gotten that far ahead of him that quickly. They’d been out of sight, around a bend...that bend, right there. And just this side of it there was a garage attached to an empty storefront. He killed the headlights and pulled over. Then he got out, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other, and ran over to check.

Flashlight still off, he looked through the glass quickly, then ducked below it again. He’d glimpsed the big boxy shape of what he thought might be the van. And darkness. No movement.

He got up and looked inside again, this time using the flashlight against the glass to get a better look. The van was there, and beside it was an empty space big enough to have held a second vehicle, and another garage door on the front wall.

He grabbed his phone and hit the chief’s number as he raced back to his car.

“Mason?”

“Look for Mike’s Garage,” he said, looking at the building and giving them the address. “They ditched the van, switched vehicles.”

He reached his car and dove behind the wheel, cranked the engine and slammed it into gear before he’d closed the door. He shot around the block and up the alley to the other side of the garage and stopped again, taking his light and his gun to examine the pavement from the overhead door to the road.

Sure as shit, someone had burned rubber as they’d turned right out of the garage. He got back into the car and drove. When he saw headlights his pulse jumped like a runner at the pistol shot. Hand on his gun, he was ready to ram the bastard right off the road if that was what it took.

Almost immediately he recognized the familiar shape of the police van.

He slammed the Beast into Park and got out, walked up to the driver’s side. “They must have turned off. The van’s in a garage a mile back. We need to call it in. Any hits on Cantone’s phone?”

“Not yet, but if it’s on, we’ll find her,” Chief Sub said. “We’ll get a team on that van...the garage. We’ll find something.”

Mason nodded. “Keep me posted.”

“Mason, they could have taken any of six streets back that way.”

“Or four my way,” Mason said. “I’m gonna keep looking.”

“Why?” Chief Sub asked. “You have no idea yet which way they—”

“Because that’s what Rachel would do.” He paused, then nodded firmly. “And you know what? She’d find me, too.”

* * *

I was terrified. I hadn’t expected to be. After all, this was part of my plan, right? Cops did this sort of thing all the time. I wasn’t
really
a kidnap victim. I was just pretending to be. It was all an act.

Yeah, except that was bull. That was the sort of fucked-up thought process that got me into this mess to begin with. I’d dropped the tracking device while trying to slap it onto the side of the van—where it surely would’ve been seen anyway. I hadn’t expected it to happen so fast. I’d expected to have more time, to slide the thing underneath the wheel well or something.

Dammit.

I had two things going for me. Cantone’s cell was still snugly underneath my boob, inside my bra. It was uncomfortable as all hell, and I wouldn’t have taken a cool million for it. As soon as I was alone for long enough, I was going to get it out and use it to call for help.

And I had Mason on my trail. Yeah, I’d fucked up the means he’d been planning to use to follow me, but I knew that man. He was good. He never quit. And he was pretty damn fond of me for some reason. I’d have to ask him why sometime. I hoped I got the chance.

I cringed in the corner of the backseat, hunched up and pretend-crying into my forearms so they wouldn’t see my crow’s-feet and catch on to the fact that I was far from eighteen. But I managed to push the blindfold down enough that I could see a little, and I peered out as often as I could, getting a clear look at the driver when he pulled off his mask.

It was Jake. The ex-boyfriend I’d wanted to trust. The one who’d reminded me of my brother. I think right up until I saw him with my own eyes I’d been hoping it wouldn’t be him. That Mason had been wrong about him and I’d been right. Like with Rodney Carr.

And that was the first time I got really freaking scared that he would look at my face and know me. Up until that moment it had been an abstract possibility that probably wouldn’t happen.

But when he took off his mask, when I saw his face and knew in just that much of a glance that it was him, I realized he could recognize me just as easily. For crying out loud, if he looked me in the face he’d know this was a sting and would never take me to the girls. And oh, yeah, he’d probably put a bullet in my head, too, and toss me into the nearest ditch.

Okay okay okay, just stay calm. Look around.

The other guy was in the passenger seat up front. Ski mask still in place. Smarter than good ol’ Jake up there.

Jake. That bastard was nothing like my brother. Tommy wouldn’t have hurt a fucking fly.

Jake looked up into the rearview mirror, and I lowered my head just in time. I gave him a few shuddering shoulders and loud sobs for good measure, then dared to check again. He was looking straight ahead, driving.

“This has dragged on way too long,” he said. “I haven’t even been paid yet.”

The one on the right didn’t say anything, and Jake heaved a sigh. “No more till I get paid. I mean it.” Then he took a sharp turn off the main road, and I rocked up against the door so hard I hit my head again.

The car jerked to a stop, and the guy in the passenger side reached back and pressed a damp rag against my face. I forgot about hiding from them and thrashed hard, but only about three times.

I was going, going... The car stopped, the door opened, and the interior light came on, so I tucked my face into my hair... Gone.

* * *

“We’ve lost the signal, Mason.”

Mason was behind the wheel of the Beast in the middle of fucking nowhere. Up to now he’d been driving according to the chief’s instructions, relayed from the tech boys who had finally homed in on Cantone’s cell phone.

He was in the right area, according to that signal...until it had vanished just now.

“What do you mean, you lost the signal?”

“They must have driven out of range. Or hit a tunnel or some interference.”

He pulled the car to the side of the road, shut off the headlights and looked around him. “No tunnel. And I can’t imagine interference out here. There’s just...nothing.” Rolling hills, some cattle, a lot of pines. A farm here and there. No towns, nothing that looked like a village in the past fifteen minutes, and roads getting steadily less roadlike. Broken pavement, then oil and stone, now dirt.

He didn’t even know where the hell he was.

He pounded the steering wheel and hung up the phone. Then he got out of the car and stared at the distant horizon like it might hold an answer. There were a zillion stars, no moon. The sky tonight would’ve had Rachel oohing and ahhing like a little kid seeing her first fireworks display.

If anything happened to her...

Wow. He hadn’t realized just how much he cared until it had hit him in the gut just now.

“Be okay, Rache. Dammit, be okay.”

* * *

“Hey, c’mon. Wake up.”

There was loud music, but the voice came from close to my ear. There were hands on my face, patting me, hands on my shoulders, shaking me. My eyes flew open and I sat up fast, sucking in a breath. The three girls jumped away from me, and I looked from one to the other, recognizing them. “Holy shit, you’re still alive!” I clapped a hand over my mouth as soon as I said it, darting a look at the room around me, frowning.

“It’s okay, they’re not here. Just talk low in case they’re listening.” The girl kneeling beside me was Stephanie Mattheson, in the flesh. She wasn’t looking directly at me, but her blue eyes, though blank and sightless, were beautiful.

“You ain’t no foster child,” said another girl.

“Lexus,” I said, looking at the platinum blonde with the nose ring. Then I shifted to the frightened-looking caramel-skinned beauty, who seemed way less than eighteen. “And you’re Sissy, right?”

“How do you know?”

I lowered my voice even further. “I’m working with the cops.”

“Some cop,” Lexus drawled with a roll of her eyes. “Girl, they knocked you out and tossed you in here like a dead rat they found under the sink. You the cop they sent to save us?” She talked like a rapper, and I got that it made her feel tough. It puffed her up, like a little animal trying to look bigger when facing a predator.

“I didn’t say I was a cop. I said I’m working with them. My name’s Rachel de Luca. I’m—”

“You’re shitting me,” Stephanie said. “Rachel de Luca?”

“Yeah.”

“So what are you gonna do, positive-think us out of this hole in the ground?”

“Hole in the—” I frowned, spotting the odd door in the ceiling about fifteen, maybe twenty feet above us. No ladder, no stairs, no way to get to it. And it was the only opening in the entire place. Not another door or window, except for the open one through which I could see a tiny bathroom. The room was round and underground, just like in my vision. I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here to help.”

“How?” Lexus asked. “How you gonna help us?”

I smiled. “With this.” I reached up under my blouse, into my bra and pulled out the very warm cell phone. Immediately I dialed Mason’s number. Then I waited.

And then I waited some more.

Then I looked at the screen.

“Girl, we underground,” Lexus said.

“Shit.” I got up, looked around the room. “Okay, we have to get up high. Close to the door.”

“You think they didn’t lock it?” Stephanie asked.

“Even if they did, we might get a signal if we get close enough.”

“There’s no way.”

“There
is
a way.” I put my hands on her shoulders, softened my voice. “There’s always a way, Stephanie. There’s
always
a way. There’s a way when you can see. There’s a way when you can’t. And there’s a way out of this. Trust me.”

She shook her head hard. “If they catch us, they’ll kill one of us. We tried to fight our way out of here and it got Venora killed.”

“I know. We found her.”

Stephanie’s eyes welled up. She closed her eyes to block the tears.

“She’d scratched your names into her skin. That was a huge help in us finding you.”

Sissy and Lexus looked at each other.

“She knew she was gonna die,” Stephanie said softly. “She said she dreamed it right before they took her. It’s my fault. It’s my fault.”

“Stephanie, it’s not your fault,” I began.

“Don’t even try to tell me she attracted it somehow. Don’t do it, ’cause there’s no way—”

I took a deep breath, because this was an argument hurled at me by my critics. If you create your own reality, why do people die? Why do they get sick? Why do they experience poverty or pain?

I knew this wasn’t the time or place for a discourse on the nature of reality, but I knew, too, that I had to get her on my side. I had to give her reason to believe, in herself and in me.

“Venora had a bad dream,” I said. “She believed it was going to come true, believed it so much that she made preparations for it to come true. And then it did.” I rubbed my sore head, and saw zip ties on the floor, realized the girls must have cut me loose. “Those are the facts. So either she foresaw it because it was going to happen, or it happened because she foresaw it. We’re never gonna know which or what it all means, Stephanie, so there’s no point arguing about it. But either way, she did a wonderful thing on her way out and maybe saved your lives in the process. Don’t you think you can find some meaning in that?”

Lexus blinked. “Meaning?”

“Like that her time was up, but yours wasn’t,” I said. “Like that her life is over, but yours is supposed to go on. Like that maybe whatever you were born to do, you haven’t done yet.”

“But how do you know Venora had done whatever
she
was born to do?” Sissy asked.

“’Cause if she hadn’t, she’d still be here,” I said, and I found that I meant it. “Maybe this was it. Maybe being the clue that led us to you was her whole thing.”

“It’s bullshit. Don’t listen to her,” Stephanie said.

I looked at the girl, and realized that she didn’t know her father was dead, or that her ex-boyfriend was one of her kidnappers. And I didn’t really think it would do her any good to know either of those things right now, but I felt guilty keeping the truth from her all the same.

“We’ve gotta try to get out of here,” I said, and I got to my feet, pacing around the place and finally stopping beside the sofa, which was about five feet long. Lexus and Sissy were sitting on it. I said, “Get up.”