Cold Touch (30 page)

“Exactly,” Olivia replied. “So maybe he did it again, kidnapped another boy

to use as a slave and is cal ing this one Jack, too, for some twisted reason.”

They were going on the assumption that there were only two victims, while

Gabe knew there could very wel be at least four. It was time for him to bring

them up to speed on that, and he would, as soon as Ty and the others arrived.

Ty was bringing al the information he’d already dug up on missing boys; he’d

spent much of yesterday morning working on it.

Gabe suspected it was a good thing he had. Whether a ghost had told her

or not—and, honestly, he couldn’t come up with any other explanation right

now—he already believed Olivia’s theory that the man who’d tried to murder

her had not been kil ed by police. And, frankly, a man who’d kidnap a boy and

a teenage girl and then drown them both wasn’t the type of leopard who’d

change his spots.

Of course
he would do it again. Having gotten away with it the first time, the

whole world thinking the perp was dead, what on earth was there to stop him?

We’re going to stop him.
Too late to help Sue-Ann Bowles’s son or the

Durkee boy. But hopeful y not too late to save this latest “Jack” he was holding

captive now.

Before he could say that, he heard his cel phone ring and pul ed it out of his

pocket. Seeing the Atlanta area code, he caught Olivia’s eye. “I think this

might be your FBI agent friend.”

She nodded. “Please tel him I said hel o.”

Julia pointed toward an open door, which looked like it led into a shadowy

conference room. “You can go in there and talk.”

“Thanks.” He headed for the door, not because he didn’t trust the two

women to hear the conversation but because he wanted to be able to listen

closely to what the man said without being interrupted by every new arrival.

“This is Detective Cooper,” he said, answering on the third ring. He pushed

the door shut behind him and flipped on a light, then sat in one of the chairs

circling the large conference table.

“Special Agent Steven Ames here, Detective,” the man said. He had a

deep voice, gruff, and sounded older. Olivia had once mentioned he’d been

fatherly toward her at the time of her kidnapping, which had been more than a

decade ago, so he figured this guy was probably at least in his fifties by now.

Gabe apologized for having missed the man’s cal s yesterday, not tel ing

him it was because he’d been busy watching Olivia go through her psychic

nightmare.

“No problem. It gave me a chance to check out the crime wires from

Savannah. I suspect you’re cal ing about the remains found in that bar fire.

Was it him? Was it Jack?”

Impressive that the man remembered so much about the case. “Yeah, looks

like it.”

“How’s Livvie taking it?”

“About like you’d expect.” He had already decided to lay it on the line with

Ames, since the man had worked this case long before Gabe had ever heard

of it—or, at least, aspects of this case. “The thing is, Agent Ames, the

evidence we’ve come up with so far doesn’t real y fit in with the story everyone

has settled on from that night.”

A beat. Then Ames murmured, “It wasn’t Col ier.”

“No, sir, I don’t believe it was. I think it’s likely he was sent on an errand to

pick up the money, but the real kidnapper got away.”

“I never thought that son of a bitch was smart enough to pul this off, at least

not without some inside help.”

“How smart did he have to be to grab a helpless girl and lock her in a barn?

” he asked, hearing his own barely subdued anger. The ease with which that

monster had intruded on Olivia’s life, completely upsetting it, changing her

future, her family, everything, simply infuriated him.

“You might be surprised. See, at the time, I was having a hard time figuring

out a couple of things. Why he’d wait so many hours to try for the ransom

money. Guess he was busy.”

Wal ing up a child’s body perhaps.

“How the bastard disabled the security system was another big question,”

the agent added.

“There was an alarm?” he asked, not having noticed that in the file.

“Uh-huh. He broke in through a smal window in the laundry room, one of the

few that wasn’t wired—guess they thought it was too smal .”

“Did you think, later, after Olivia told you about Jack . . .”

“That maybe he had the boy climb in, then open the closest door for him?

Makes sense.”

Yes. It did. Tragic sense.

“However it went down, he got in and found the main control panel inside

the pantry of this huge old house on a dark, moonless night, probably without

turning any lights on. And he disabled the alarm so none of the motion

detectors would go off as he went upstairs to the girls’ side of the house.”

Picturing the scene, Gabe felt sick. Liv and Brooke had been so young, so

vulnerable. If he ever had kids, which wasn’t something he pictured easily, not

given his own childhood, he definitely wouldn’t have them sleeping farther than

screaming distance from his own room. And his shotgun. He didn’t doubt

Olivia’s parents loved their children, but the rich sometimes had strange ideas

about how to spend their money. Living in humongous houses that separated

you from your loved ones wasn’t his idea of smart.

“Did Livvie tel you how he got her not to scream?” Ames asked.

“I read it in the file.” Standard operating procedure for maniacs. “He

threatened to kil her sister.”

“Yep. So she didn’t make a sound, he knocked her out, then carried her

right down the stairs and outside. Al without anybody hearing a thing.”

Gabe mul ed it over, realizing right away why Ames had been disturbed by

the whole scenario. It sure didn’t sound like the work of some punk whose

previous crimes hadn’t included anything worse than petty theft, a few drug

violations, and drunk and disorderly. Something like this would have taken

planning and steel nerves, neither of which was usual y associated with drunks

or drug abusers.

“Then there was the fact that he took her at al . The Wainwrights are rich, no

doubt about it, but they’re not the richest people in Savannah by a long shot.

The house is out in the boonies, and any criminal slimebal would know they

had gates and alarms, plus servants. So why go to al that trouble when you

could just as easily stalk and snatch some superrich debutante trying to piss

off Daddy by hanging out at a sleazy club on Abercorn?”

A very good question. What had drawn the monster’s eye to the

Wainwrights? To Olivia? Kidnapping for profit wasn’t real y that common a

crime, not in this area, at any rate. So what had put the big bul ’s-eye on her?

“Did you ever suspect anybody else?”

“Wel , I sure was thinking inside job, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Gabe whistled. It hadn’t been. But now that Ames mentioned it . . . “And?”

“Between the night she was taken and the night Col ier was kil ed picking up

the ransom, we practical y shone flashlights up the assholes of every

handyman, maid, repairman, deliveryman, florist, gardener, caterer or friend

who was in that house during the previous six months. We’d barely made a

dent when the word came in that she’d been found.”

Suspecting he already knew the answer, Gabe asked, “You wouldn’t happen

to stil have the names of those folks, would you?”

The other man laughed. “Does a wicked old man sin on Saturday nights

and pray on Sundays? Hel , yes, I do.”

Liking the agent more and more, Gabe gave him his e-mail address and

asked him to send the list as soon as possible.

“Wil do. And, Detective, if you’re right, I sure hope you get this bastard. It

never sat right with me, us not finding that boy.” He cleared his throat. “I’m

damn sorry to hear he was kil ed.”

“You and me both, Agent Ames. Thanks for the help.”

Though Johnny Traynor wasn’t fool enough to ever spend the ransom money

and didn’t make a whole lot at his day job, he did have a fair amount of cash

at his disposal. That was because of his special jobs, the contract work he did

on behalf of other people who didn’t have the brains, the bal s, or the

entrepreneurial spirit to do them themselves.

He real y shouldn’t do that type of work anymore—he knew that. Interacting

with other people in any of his il egal activities could be dangerous.

Accomplices meant witnesses.

It could also, however, be lucky. Just look at what had happened when he’d

paid a loser fifty bucks to go pick up the ransom money for that Wainwright

bitch al those years ago. If Johnny hadn’t hired him, he, himself, might have

been the one kil ed by the cops.

“Sneaky little whore,” he mumbled under his breath, feeling sick thinking of

her. What a mess she’d made of things, running away like that, forcing him to

pul up stakes and move before he was ready, just a couple of steps ahead of

the law. Lucky for him, most cops were so stupid they couldn’t find their own

heads if they weren’t wearing a hat. After they shot down that Col ier fel a, it’d

taken ’em hours to get out to the old barn. He’d been long gone.

Stil , they weren’t the ones he truly hated. She was.

Because she’d tried to take Jack away from him.

She hadn’t succeeded, o’course. His boy was just fine, out here enjoying

the sunshine with his daddy, the way every boy should on a beautiful Sunday

mornin’.

That didn’t mean him and the little whore were square. He always knew that

bil would come due someday, and she’d have to pay it. That was why he’d

kept tabs on her over the years.

He’d thought about going back and taking care of her and had desperately

wanted to. But he was a man of his word. He’d promised his accomplice he’d

stay away from the girl, agreeing that kil ing her might bring too much

unwanted attention. The police thought her kidnapper was dead; why get

anybody sniffing around, wondering if her murder today had anything to do

with what happened back then? He’d been biding his time, waiting til nobody

would even remember she’d ever been snatched. Then he could strike.

Promise or no promise.

He could reach out and get to her anytime he wanted to. Hel , this very week

she’d been practical y under his nose.

He’d been cutting her next-door neighbor’s lawn for the past couple of

years, hadn’t he?

She’d seen him hundreds of times—had come within two feet of him a few

weeks ago when that damn cat of hers got out—yet she’d never recognized

him. Never spared him much of a glance at al . Most rich sluts like her didn’t,

looking down their nose at quiet, hardworking old Lenny, who’d been cutting

lawns in Savannah for more than a decade. He was invisible to them yet had a

respectable, normal life that al owed him to blend in, even if he did have to live

it under an assumed name. Everybody knew him as Lenny; very few people

had any idea he’d been born Johnny Traynor or that him and his cousin was

raised in the same foster home after their mamas got kil ed in a car wreck.

His foster parents had been the first two people Johnny had kil ed.

With good reason.

In one way, Johnny hated the Wainwright bitch for not recognizing him. In

another, he was glad, not to mention proud of what a fine job he’d done

holding that girl if she’d never gotten one decent look at him.

That might not matter. If she gets in our business, we’re gonna have to kill

her right away. And she’s tryin’ that. Why else would she be talkin’ to the po-

lice?

Vicious, lying whore. She hadn’t fal en far off the tree, that was for sure. Her

parents were equal y as rotten. Buncha untrustworthy, double-dealing

scumbags as far as he was concerned. He shoulda known that hers wouldn’t

be an easy ransom job, that the family would get the police and the FBI

involved. He’d been told that they wouldn’t,
promised
that they wouldn’t, but

they had. You couldn’t trust nobody nowadays.

“Except people who are just as guilty as you are,” he mumbled, chuckling.

The only reason he trusted the people who hired him for his special projects

was because they, too, were up to their necks in whatever crimes they paid

him to carry out. He’d kept more than one of them in line over the years by

reminding them of that fact, though most times they’d parted ways amicably,

pleased with the results of their dealings. Which was why he was stil in the

murderfor-hire or occasional y kidnap-for-hire business.

Business was good.

So good, he had about fifty thousand dol ars cash tucked away in a safety

deposit box, left there in case of emergency or if he needed a quick getaway.

Now, for the first time in a while, he was thinking about raiding that cash for

something else: a birthday present for Jack.