Get Back Jack (23 page)

Kim got the message loud and clear: Or they will all die. Before she had a chance to say anything about the proof-of-life or the ransom demand, Neagley had pressed the speed dial on the house speakerphone. The connection was swift and crystal clear.

Morrie said, “Yes.”

Neagley asked, “Have we authenticated the video?”

“Affirmative.”

“Where are they holding Dixon?”

“Unknown.”

“Sanchez’s family?”

“Also unknown.”

“Franz’s family?”

“Unclear.”

Neagley disconnected the call. She turned to Kim and demanded, “Call Cooper.”

Kim asked, “Why?”

“Because we’re out of time for flailing around on our own. We need higher level assistance. Cooper’s the quickest option. He’s already involved and he’s got the resources at his fingertips. Get him on the line.”

“What do you think he can do that you can’t?”

“Locate the hostages within a two-mile radius in less than thirty minutes.”

“And then what?” Gaspar demanded.

Neagley shrugged. “We go get them.”

Kim said, “Easier if we had the $65 million ransom.”

Neagley seemed to consider this briefly. She neither admitted nor denied guilty knowledge. Instead, she pushed the speakerphone button again and quickly dialed ten digits. They heard one ring begin to chime before the call was accepted.

“What do you want?” the all too familiar voice challenged.

“You owe me, Cooper,” she said.

“If there was anything I could do, I’d have already done it. My hands are tied.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Monday, November 15

3:50 a.m.

Houston, TX

Neagley had said she could usually find things and she had proved it by finding Franz’s family home with dispatch.

Three quick phone calls were all it took. Neagley had connected with a source at the Pentagon she refused to name to get the address, arranged a private jet to Houston, and extricated herself from Chicago without participating in the official investigation of the Las Olas attack on her home and murder of her brother. She was some sort of mutant superwoman, it seemed.

Neagley’s private security business was far more extensive even than Kim had imagined, and she felt a little jealous, actually. She was an FBI Special Agent, a member of the most elite law enforcement agency in the world. Yet she worked the Reacher file with none of Neagley’s privately available resources. The seething anger Kim had felt when she awakened on Neagley’s stairwell Saturday was like a fire seed in her belly; it flamed hotter every time she matched herself against Neagley and came up wanting. Like now.

“Check your watches,” Neagley had said. “We’ll go in at four o’clock. No one expects you to arrive at four o’clock. It’s the best time to catch them unprepared.”

“Reacher teach you that?” Kim asked.

“Among other things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the best way to figure out what someone else is going to do is to think like them,
be
them,” Neagley said. “You should try it sometime. It works.”

Kim ignored her condescension. Now was not the time to take Neagley on. But that time was coming. And Kim was looking forward to it.

Now it was ten minutes to four. The moonless night sky felt brisk against her skin. The cloud ceiling was more than a mile high. She knew the Boss was watching and he’d be able to see and hear outside activities clearly. Whether he’d help if this went south in a hurry was unclear. He’d made no promises.

So Kim, Neagley, Gaspar, Morrie, and two private security personnel Morrie had recruited locally were stationed outside the darkened Houston condo where the former Mrs. Calvin Franz now lived with her son, Charlie, and her new husband. The husband worked for an oil company as a junior executive of some sort. Neagley’s contacts said he’d been sent on a six-week work assignment to Alaska three hours after the family outing recorded in the proof-of-life video. Which was already too many hours ago.

The husband’s absence presented an easier opportunity for Berenson and Dean to kidnap Angela and Charlie Franz. Phone calls to the home and to Angela’s cell phone had been unanswered. All other location efforts were unsuccessful.

What they didn’t know for sure was whether Angela and Charlie were home asleep or had voluntarily left or, worst case, were already taken.

“Cooper could answer this question, you know,” Neagley said. “He has the ability to pinpoint their heartbeats inside this building. Assuming they’re still here. One call to the Pentagon. That’s all he had to do. You might want to ask yourself why the heartless bastard is unwilling to make that call, Otto.”

Kim didn’t have to ask; she already knew. Sure, the request to use military surveillance on domestic citizens was illegal. But he wouldn’t have let that stop him. The Boss wanted the Reacher File assignment off the books. Each time he intervened on their behalf, and the more sophisticated his actions were, he increased his risk of exposure. He wanted plausible deniability and he would sacrifice Angela and Charlie Franz to get it. Neagley, too, for that matter. Kim figured she and Gaspar were slightly less expendable because the Reacher file was not complete. He’d prefer not to lose them and start over with a new team. Maybe.

Gaspar rubbed his hands together and shuffled his feet. “Damn, it’s cold out here.”

“Be a lot hotter in Mexico when we get there,” Neagley replied.

“Can’t wait,” he said.

Kim looked around again. Once more, she saw no indication that anything was amiss here. No cars traveled the residential street. No lights flickered in any of the homes. Night sounds were almost nonexistent, too. No barking dogs or meowing cats or distant traffic noise. Even the wind was still.

Nestled between Washington Avenue and Memorial Drive on Croft Street, the area could charitably be described as a neighborhood in transition. Angela Franz’s abode was one half of an upscale duplex. But the home on the other side of Franz’s was a ramshackle one-story frame house, 1950s vintage, and the vacant houses across Croft would have been improved by a good fire.

Angela’s three-story condo resembled a saltine box, deeper than it was wide or high. Online real estate records claimed 3,191 square feet on three floors of living space. Four bedrooms and four bathrooms, inside any one of which Las Olas killers could be waiting. Windowless two-car garage on the main level at the Croft Street side meant Kim couldn’t see whether Angela’s car or any other vehicles were parked inside. The condo had a market value of $700,000 or so, which meant the decor was likely to be upscale, too. In Houston, that meant hardwood and tile floors in most of the rooms, which would make it impossible to move with stealth.

Morrie had disabled the house alarm and then stationed himself and the two private security personnel at the east side entrance to the fenced patio, Morrie and one man inside the fence near the back entrance of the home, and the other man behind the fence, in case someone climbed over and landed in the empty lot adjacent on the south side.

Gaspar would remain out front. Kim and Neagley would enter through the side garage entrance and, hopefully, find Angela and Charlie Franz blissfully unaware, sleeping in their beds, precisely where mothers and children should be in a quiet residential neighborhood at precisely 4:00 a.m.

“Time to go, Neagley,” Kim said. “Ready?”

“Always,” Neagley replied.

They crouched, guns drawn, and crept quickly, close to the building, until they reached the garage entrance. Kim picked the lock rapidly. She held her breath as she opened the door, listening for another alarm or a screaming child or whatever might come to a home invader at 4:00 a.m.

She heard nothing.

She pushed the door open and slid inside the blacker-than-black garage, feeling Neagley enter immediately behind her and gently close the door. Kim settled night vision goggles onto her face and relaxed into the soft green glow that eliminated the darkness.

Only one vehicle in the garage. A silver Volvo station wagon of indeterminate age. The other parking slot was empty. This would normally hold the husband’s car, which was now parked at the airport. Against the wall was a mess of kid stuff. A bike, a skateboard, a scooter, a few balls of various shapes and matching bats and gear to go with them. Across the back was a workbench, neatly organized; hand tools hung on a pegboard, several rolls of duct tape rested on the shelf. Under the bench were gardening tools and supplies.

To the left of the bench was the entrance door to the home’s interior. There was an alarm pad next to it. The red “armed” light glowed. Above the door was a security camera. Kim saw the red “recording” light steady on, too. Had Morrie screwed up? Were the security measures disabled or not?

She grabbed the doorknob. It held fast. Unlike most homeowners, Angela Franz evidently realized the vulnerability of her security system at the interior garage entrance. Kim picked the flimsy lock quickly, turned the knob, held her breath and opened the door. No warning beeps. No sirens. If a silent alarm fed directly to the police department, there was nothing they could do about that now. Get in, get out, hope no one got hurt.

Neagley followed Kim through a laundry room and into a hallway that led to the back of the house on the right, or upstairs to the other living areas. They both went to the back patio door and opened it to let Morrie inside. Then the three split up to search the rest of the house.

According to the online records, the second floor contained an open floor plan of common rooms and one guest suite. Along the back, French doors opened onto a second floor balcony. A total of four areas to search. The third floor contained the remaining three bedrooms and three bathrooms, and another balcony. Seven more possible hiding places.

They worked swiftly. Kim searched the second floor. Neagley and Morrie took the third. Within five minutes they knew Angela and Charlie Franz were gone. They saw no signs of violence or that the home had been ransacked. To the extent that any home invasion could be peaceful, it seemed they came and took only what they wanted: the two hostages. In exchange, they left only one obvious piece of evidence.

The three rejoined Gaspar out front, recalled the two freelancers, and piled back into the van Morrie had procured. One of the freelancers drove. When they were on the road, Kim pulled from her pocket the two-by-four inch Las Olas sealed brown envelope she’d collected in Angela’s kitchen. She hadn’t opened it, but she could feel the flash drive inside. And on the front it said:
Agent K. L. Otto.

She knew what it was. Proof-of-life on Angela and Charley. Or proof-of-death on another of the hostages. Either way, not good. She held onto the envelope a few moments more before she said, “Gaspar, take a look at this and pass it over to Neagley.”

When Neagley received it, she handed the envelope to Morrie. Because there were no official law enforcement personnel present, no one needed to pretend chain of custody for the evidence was important this time. But still, maybe DNA could be lifted off the envelope’s seal at some point.

He pulled out a small pocket knife and, as Kim noticed he’d done with the previous envelope, carefully separated the factory applied adhesive on the bottom lip from the envelope to get inside but avoid breaking the Las Olas seal. He poured the shiny silver flash drive out into his hand.

They couldn’t view the drive’s content. No one had a laptop. They’d left their equipment in the jet.

Morrie looked at his watch. “ETA twelve minutes,” he said.

Kim estimated twenty minutes more to reach Houston Executive Airport, board the private jet they’d arrived in and plug the flash drive into the laptop. Twenty-two minutes before they learned what Berenson and Dean wanted them to know. Her stomach had already been pumping acid into her system in anticipation of the flight. What she felt now was sharp, unrelenting pain in her belly.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Monday, November 15

5:35 a.m.

Houston, TX

Parked at HEA, the freelance security waited in the car while Kim and the others boarded the jet, located a laptop and crowded around it to watch the flash drive’s short and pointed contents.

The video began with an establishing shot of the front of the Franz condo. There was no time or date stamp, but the footage probably was recorded only two or three hours before, given the all-enveloping nighttime. As when Neagley’s team had been there, the building was dark and quiet and no activity in the immediate vicinity.

After the establishing shot, the next few frames showed Charlie sleeping in a bed that looked like a race car from an animated movie. His room was decorated in primary colors bold enough to be recognizable even in the dim nightlight’s glow. The car was bright red, the sheets were bold red stripes, and the pillowcase was blue.

The next brief scene was Angela sleeping alone in a pricey, wrought iron, king-sized bed. She was covered with an ivory damask comforter. Her hair fanned the pillow and blended with the shiny white pillowcase so that she almost looked bald.

The next scene was half a second of Charlie’s empty bed followed by a shorter view of Angela’s empty bed.

“Subtle, aren’t they?” Gaspar deadpanned.

“They put Agent Otto’s name on the envelope,” Morrie said. “How did they know she would collect the envelope and the message?”

Kim said nothing. Neagley said nothing.

Next was the hospital ward again. Five cots. Five patients. Five IV lines feeding who-knew-what into their veins.

Once again, the cameraman approached the elderly woman. Again, today’s Spanish language newspaper was placed on her chest, which rose and fell with her shallow breathing.

After the video lingered long enough to establish she was still alive, the cameraman’s straight right arm raised from his side into the viewfinder. He wore a black long-sleeved shirt and a black glove so that not even a slice of skin was showing. He held a black gun in his hand. Glock 19, Gen 4. Utilitarian, tough, reliable. Comfortable grip, controllable recoil, easily concealed. Used by law enforcement because of its stopping power. The same perfect choice Sanchez had made to kill O’Donnell. Probably the same choice the killer had made to eliminate Downing, the New York PI.