Into the Whirlwind (6 page)

She was glad her father had gone home. Her dad would go ballistic if he knew what they were planning to do. But Meg trusted these men. She hadn't met Luke before tonight, but Dirk had spoken of him often and highly. She knew he was ex-military, like Dirk, part of some Special Forces unit. She knew Dirk respected him greatly. She believed the men would do their best to bring her baby home.

She caught Dirk's strong, handsome profile as the Bronco rolled along. He ran a hand over the short-cropped mustache around his mouth, down to his hard jaw. The first time she'd seen him she'd thought it made him look like a badass. A very hot, very sexy badass.

And she had been exactly right.

A badass when it came to protecting her. A sweet, affectionate man when it came to the way he treated her, a total hunk in bed. She had given him up for Charlie, for the steady, predictable, stable sort of life she was determined to give her son. But she had never met a man who could come close to replacing Dirk.

An ache throbbed beneath her breastbone. After she'd quit modeling, her father had encouraged her to start dating. He'd invited her to lunches at the country club, where the son of a friend would conveniently appear and be invited to join them. Her dad seemed to have forgotten what a failure his first choice of husband had been.

Vaguely, she wondered if she should call Jonathan, let him know his son had been abducted. But the hard truth was Jonathan didn't give a damn about Charlie and never had.

“This is it,” Dirk said, jarring her out of her thoughts, making her heart jerk, then thump against the inside of her chest. “Circle the block,” he said to Luke. “Let's see if we get any movement inside, anyone moving around in the area.”

Gripping the edge of her seat, Meg leaned toward the window to stare into the darkness. As they drove past a row of older homes, she could just make out the numbers they were looking for beside the front door of a single-story house with a one-car garage.

No lights were on. The house looked empty except for a wisp of smoke floating out of the chimney. Luke kept driving and turned at the corner.

“Looks like there's an alley,” Dirk said. “Let's check it out on foot.”

Luke drove a little farther, pulled over in front of a house with a “For Sale” sign in the yard. The home appeared to be vacant.

Dirk swiveled in his seat, pinned her with a look of warning. “Remember what I said. Stay down and out of sight.” Soundlessly, the men cracked open their doors. The dome light didn't come on.

“Good luck,” she said softly.

Dirk made no reply, just turned and slipped off out of sight. Meg ducked down into the floor well. Closing her eyes, she said a silent prayer for Charlie. A prayer for Luke. And a prayer for Dirk, the man she still loved.

Chapter Six

“You called her honey,” Luke said darkly as they moved through the night toward the mouth of the alley that ran behind the house. “I can't believe you called her honey.”

“It just slipped out, okay? I was just trying to be, you know, nice.”

“Bullshit. You've still got a thing for her. I can see it in your face every time you look at her.”

“I don't have a thing for her. Not anymore. She's beautiful, is all. You've got to admit Meg's really hot.”

“Okay, so she's hot. So what?”

“A guy can appreciate a beautiful woman, can't he?”

“Not if he's thinking with his dick instead of his brain. Meg's bad news, bro. You know it. I know it. The only person who doesn't know it is her.”

Dirk made no reply. Luke was right. Seeing Meg again made him ache for her the way he had before.

“So what about that girl you've been dating?” Luke pressed, determined to keep badgering him. “What's her name . . . Stella? She's beautiful, too. She's fucking gorgeous.”

“She is, yeah. She's just not ... I don't know, she's just not . . .”

“She's just not Meg, right? Be careful, bro. That's all I'm saying.”

“If you're interested in Stella, I haven't called her in a couple of weeks. We were never exclusive anyway.”

Luke just shook his head.

Both of them fell silent. The mouth of the pitch-dark alley closed around them. The time for talking was over.

They headed down the narrow passage lined with trash cans, papers, and miscellaneous garbage, and began slipping quietly along in the shadows. Dirk recognized the grape-stake fence that ran along the sides of the house, pointed it out to Luke, then pointed to the house.

They split up, Dirk circling left, Luke right. The house was a simple rectangular design with a chimney on one side, a garage on the other, and porches off the front and rear. All the shades were drawn, no light, nothing moving behind the windows on his side of the house. The garage was locked. He couldn't see anything through the dirty window.

Turning, he headed back to the rear, caught up with Luke at the bottom of the steps leading up to the back porch.

“Anything?” Luke asked.

“Not a thing. You?”

Luke shook his head.

“We need to go in.” Dirk was already pulling his lock picks out of his jacket pocket as he silently climbed the back steps, opened the screen door, and slipped inside out of sight. Luke was right behind him, gun drawn and pointing downward.

The lock wasn't much. In seconds, Dirk had it open. He pulled his weapon, turned the knob, and eased the door open a couple of inches. Staying to the side, out of the line of fire, he nudged the door farther open with his boot, saw only a dark, empty kitchen, and stepped inside. Luke followed him in.

They began clearing the house, first Dirk in front, then Luke, then Dirk, then Luke, moving with the military precision that still came as naturally to them as breathing.

“House is empty,” Dirk said, holstering his weapon, flipping on the lights to examine the interior. A living room, two bedrooms, and a bath. A furnished rental: basic brown sofa and chairs, twin beds in one room, a queen in the other. By now, Sadie would have the owner's name and address.

“They're gone,” Luke said, walking over to the still-smoldering fire. “But someone was definitely here and they haven't been gone that long.”

Dirk's gaze went to the fireplace. A small, smoke-blackened piece of a pizza box and the last burned remnants of a paper Coke cup lay in the coals at the bottom of the fireplace.

Softly, he cursed. Whatever evidence might have been in the house was little more than ashes. Whoever they were, these guys weren't dumb. They'd wiped their prints at Meg's house and gotten rid of anything here that might have prints or DNA.

He and Luke made a sweep of the interior, looking for something they might have missed, found nothing, and returned to the kitchen.

“What's that?” Luke pointed to a piece of paper spread open on the kitchen counter.

“Looks like they left us a message.” Dirk walked to the counter, reached for the note, and saw the lock of fine red hair lying on top. If he'd had any doubt the kidnappers had been there, that doubt was gone.

Anger rippled through him. Carefully pocketing the little boy's silky red hair, he picked the paper up by one corner and began to read the words scratched in blue ink.

“ ‘This is your first mistake. Make it your last or the boy is dead. You've got forty-eight hours left.'”

Luke hissed out a breath. “Son of a bitch!”

Dirk's jaw clenched so hard it hurt. He glanced back at the smoldering fireplace. “They haven't been gone that long. Twenty minutes max.”

“Just long enough to pack up, get rid of evidence, and hit the road. How the hell did they know we were coming?”

Dirk's gaze swung to Luke's, the truth crashing in on both of them at the same time.

“Damn! Meg's house is bugged.” Luke slammed out the back door, Dirk right behind him, both of them racing toward the Bronco. As Dirk opened the passenger door, Meg popped up in the backseat.

“Where is he? Where's my baby?”

“He wasn't there, Meg.” Dirk could have sworn he personally felt the sharp stab of her pain. “They knew we were coming.”

Meg made a sound in her throat as the engine of the SUV roared to life and Luke hit the gas. “How could they possibly know?”

“They planted surveillance equipment in your house,” Luke said.

Dirk leaned over and grabbed Luke's gym bag off the backseat, pulled out a towel, and wiped the paint off his face. “Which means they know we pinged Pamela's cell and that's how we found them.” By now they had undoubtedly ditched the phone, making it impossible to track them.

Meg looked up at Dirk. “Surely you don't think Pamela had the knowledge to install that kind of equipment?”

Dirk handed the towel to Luke. “If it's just a listening device, it can be really small, easy to hide. Anyone who came into the house could have done it. If it's cameras, placing them would be harder.”

“Cameras? Oh my God.”

“Take it easy. No use jumping to conclusions.” They were flying down the freeway, passing the few cars on the road, going too fast and hoping they didn't get stopped by the police. The kidnappers had cut the drop time to forty-eight hours. Dirk didn't tell that to Meg.

Instead, just before they reached the house, he turned in his seat to face her. “We're going to do a sweep of the interior, find whatever devices they're using and disable them. I don't want them knowing any more than they do already.”

Which was every damn thing they'd done so far.

“Luke and I both have the type of scanners it takes to find whatever they've put up. It shouldn't take us too long.”

Meg fell silent. She didn't say more until they stepped into the entry. When she started to speak, Dirk held a finger against his lips to silence her, then pointed to the sofa, asking her to wait until they were done.

As he went out to the garage to retrieve his scanner, he reached into the pocket of his shirt.

The soft red strands of Charlie's hair seemed to burn his fingers.

* * *

“You take the upstairs,” Dirk said to Luke. “I'll work down here.”

“What about Rose?” he asked.

“I'm right here,” Rose said as she came down the stairs. “What's happened?”

“Go over there with Meg, Rose. We'll talk in a minute.”

“Did something happen? Did—”

Dirk held up a hand to silence her, then pointed to the sofa. Meg motioned her over and Rose sat down next to her.

While Luke worked the upstairs bedrooms, Dirk moved through the rooms downstairs. His scanner was only slightly bigger than his cell phone, looked a lot like one. The device could detect wireless, hard-wired, and self-contained cameras. It could also find wireless audio bugs, telephone taps, and laser microphones.

In his line of work, it was a handy little gadget to have.

Twenty minutes later, Dirk looked up to see Luke coming down the stairs with six tiny bugs in his palm. Dirk had found six more. He took them out to the garage, crushed them with his boot, then tossed them into a baggie in case they needed them for evidence.

The women were still sitting in silence when he walked back into the living room.

“Will someone please tell me what's going on?” Rose apparently had waited long enough.

“Someone bugged the house,” Dirk replied.

“What does that mean? Bugged?”

Keeping it simple, he said, “A bug is a listening device, Rose. The kidnappers wanted information.”

“You mean they've been ... they've been listening to us?”

“You're lucky they didn't put up cameras.” The thought of the bastards watching Meg undress made Dirk's stomach burn. Invading her privacy was bad enough.

“You don't think it was me?” Rose said, her face suddenly ashen.

Meg flashed Dirk a look, reached over and squeezed Rose's hand. “We don't think it was you, Rose. We know how much you love Charlie.”

We?
Surely she wasn't including him. Dirk didn't think Meg had ever thought of them as a
we.
That was the problem.

Rose suddenly jumped up from the sofa, her plump body snapping to attention. “The PG&E men! Oh, dear Lord, I forgot all about them!”

Dirk strode toward her. “Take a deep breath, Rose.” He waited for her to pull in some air and settle. “Now, what PG&E men are you talking about?”

“Two men. They came to the house a week ago. They were wearing those blue coveralls, you know? The ones that say PG&E on the front?”

“All right, go on.”

“They said they had received a report of a gas leak in the neighborhood. They wanted to check, make sure everything in the house was working properly, make sure the house was safe. They seemed like nice men just doing their jobs. So I let them in.” She turned away and her eyes filled. “Are they ... are they the ones who took Charlie?”

“We don't know yet who took Charlie. And you didn't do anything wrong. They did.”

* * *

Meg cornered Dirk in the kitchen. The sun was coming up, just cresting the horizon, thin beams of light sifting through the stark branches of the leafless trees in her big backyard. She hadn't had a moment of sleep, but then, neither had Dirk.

Half an hour ago, Luke had left. He planned to go home and shower, then head down to the office. “Call me if you need me,” he'd said to Dirk as he'd headed out the door.

Rose had left for home to change into fresh clothes. Meg had gone upstairs, hadn't had the energy to shower, but had managed to change clothes. Dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt, she was back downstairs, ready to make coffee and face the grim day ahead.

The rich aroma of French roast said Dirk had already brewed a pot. She crossed the ceramic tile floor, a warm buttercream, to where he stood, lounging back against the granite counter, his hazel eyes watching her as he sipped from a thick ceramic mug with bright yellow daisies on the side.

He had always seemed so out of place in her house, too wild to be fenced in. If he'd stayed, it would have been like trying to turn a panther into a house cat. Watching him now, she felt his restless energy, reluctantly admitting that nothing had changed.

Still, she was drawn to him. Pulled by an invisible cord that made her yearn for him just as strongly as she had almost from the moment she had first seen him. She stopped in front of him, wanted to reach out and touch him so badly her hands trembled.

She clutched them together behind her back. “You haven't slept all night. I know you're at least as tired as I am. Why don't you go home for a while? At least take the time to shower and change.”

“I'll clean up here. Luke's stopping by my apartment to pick up some clothes. He'll drop them by before he heads into the office.”

She just nodded, tried not to imagine Dirk stripping and climbing naked into her shower. Tried not to remember she had fantasized about joining him there, but they'd never had time to make it happen. Never really had time to explore the fierce sexual attraction that even now made her heart beat too fast.

“You doing okay?”

The words jerked her sharply back to reality. Charlie was missing. That was no fantasy. Her eyes started to burn. How could she have forgotten Charlie even for a second? Dear God, was her little boy all right? She prayed they hadn't hurt him.

She felt Dirk's big hands settle on her shoulders. “Don't go there, Meg. Charlie's okay. That's what you keep telling yourself. He'll be back home soon. That's how you get through this, yeah?”

She couldn't stop herself. She stepped forward and moved into his space, so close they were touching full length. For an instant, his hard arms came around her. Meg closed her eyes and rested her head against his shoulder.

The next thing she knew, he was moving away from her, distancing himself as he had from the moment he had seen her walking toward him at his Lakehurst house.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to do that.”

A muscle ticked in his cheek. “You're just tired. We both are. Maybe you should try to get some sleep.”

She just shook her head. “I need to call my dad. Tell him what's going on.”

“I'll call him, bring him up to speed. I'll tell him about the bugs.”

“Will you tell him about last night? About going to the kidnapper's house?”