Lost But Not Forgotten (25 page)

“We’ll leave after we’ve had a look at that bag she’s talking about. Eloy and I agree the car was clean and also the apartment. Knight’s wife didn’t want to tell us anything. Reading between the lines, we figured out that Mrs. McGrath is pretty possessive of one suitcase.”

“She’s not Mrs. McGrath. You heard her say she’s divorced.” Mitch wheeled to face the two agents.

“Show them the case, Mitch.” Gillian blotted her tear-streaked cheeks, but tried not to speak in a teary voice. “Lord knows, no one wants that key to turn up more than I do.”

Mitch didn’t like it, but he complied with Gilly’s request. He went into the bedroom and returned a moment later, carrying the compact case. “Careful,” he growled when Bob Hall jerked it out of his hands.

“My God,” the older man exclaimed, springing back as the lid popped open. “If this is your idea of a joke, Valetti, it’s not very funny.”

Gillian elbowed her way into the circle of men. “Daryl and I lost a child,” she told them solemnly. “He knew, I’m sure, that I’d never agree to leave my only memories behind. We went through a terrible period. He didn’t handle my grief very well. Packing this case was good and decent of Daryl. Look as much as you need to, but don’t sully his intentions.”

“No, ma’am.” Instead, Agent Hall asked Gillian to empty out the contents of the case. Then he and Kevin Eloy felt under the lining, as had she and Mitch. Hall also pried up the metal corners that held the suitcase binding in place.

The younger agent gingerly lifted the quilt and examined each square. The little dress escaped, since there wasn’t so much as a hem wide enough to hide a key.

Bob Hall nudged the pewter urn with the tip of his index finger. Sounding uncomfortable, he muttered, “Any way McGrath might have dropped a key inside? Is this the original urn? It couldn’t be a duplicate to throw us off, could it?”

Gillian snatched back the urn, reverently holding it against her breast. “Daryl was preoccupied with his business and he was a workaholic. But he wasn’t a cold-
blooded man. He’d never do something as horrid as that. Besides, I saw him take this from my closet shelf. It’s only in B-grade movies that ashes are kept on the mantel,” she said scathingly.

The agents—and Mitch, too—seemed thoroughly cowed. Mitch because he’d placed the container on his mantel, hoping it’d somehow help him connect with the owner. He half suspected that in some mysterious way it had ultimately brought him and Gilly together.

“Maybe they snuffed your ex before he had a chance to hide the key in your things, Mrs. McGrath—er, Gillian. The trick will be to convince the folks who are worried about it that the evidence Daryl gathered has ended up in our hands.”

“How can I convince them of anything?” Gillian wondered aloud as she carefully replaced baby Katie’s things and again closed the lid.

“That’s our job,” Hall assured her, hitching up his belt. “Eloy and I are going out in the parking lot to hunker down. If those bastards show up here and try to get away with a B and E like they did at your apartment in Desert City, we’ll nail their scruffy hides. If you two leave the condo, Mitch, give us a high sign of some kind. We’ll keep one man here and the other will shadow you.”

Mitch agreed halfheartedly as he escorted the agents to the door. He wished his mind wasn’t so fuzzy from lack of sleep. Something that had just happened here was nudging his cop’s instincts. Like Ethan, he’d developed an internal method of mentally sifting through clues that weren’t really clues. When his sixth sense kicked in, it rarely gave him peace until he’d ferreted out what troubled him. Sleep might interrupt the process—but then again, sometimes he woke up with answers. All he knew
was that right now, it was three-thirty in the morning. This was the third night in a row he’d been short on shut-eye.

Still, he took care to lock the front door and check the glass patio door and kitchen windows before he wrapped his arms around Gilly again. “Sweetheart, I know you feel steamrollered by those jerks. But I’m beat and you must be, too. Let’s go back to bed for a couple of hours. Then we can sit down and sort everything out over breakfast.”

She slid her arms around Mitch’s waist and hugged him fiercely. “What if Turpin and Capputo turn up? How can you sleep, Mitch?”

“You let Hall, Eloy and me see to stuff like that. Besides, you heard them say they have a tail on those guys.” Mitch kissed her, soft and fast at first, but he kept it up and grew more serious until she went limp in his arms.

Feeling victorious, Mitch bundled her up and carried her to bed. “We’ll stay dressed. Guarantees we’ll sleep that way instead of…well, you know. Plus, we’ll be prepared if we need to dash out for any reason. Not that we will,” he hastened to add.

She agreed and curled tightly against his side, listening to his heartbeat. When his breathing changed to steady and slow, Gillian eased away and sat up.

Mitch believed in her. He’d given her nothing but love and support. He’d already been injured badly; he didn’t deserve to end up like poor Patrick Malone.

Standing silent a moment, she gazed lovingly on his sleeping form. Even after she’d bent and dropped a last kiss on his lips, she hadn’t fully decided what she was going to do. However, as she slipped out of the bedroom, ideas began to tumble inside her head.

What if she talked with Hall and Eloy and prevailed on them to let her contact Capputo and his sidekick? Then she could explain face-to-face that she wasn’t privy to anything Daryl might have known. She’d be able to assure them their secrets would remain safe. In turn, she’d ask only to be left alone. The agents could swoop in and pick them up afterward if they thought they could hold them.

The plan seemed so logical her heart began to sing. She took time to scribble Mitch a note and she left it by the coffeepot. Taking her little case to give to the agents for safekeeping, Gillian unlatched the door and quietly stepped out.

Her breath locked in her throat as two burly figures rose out of the gloom and pounced on her. One grabbed her around the waist. The other wrenched the suitcase from her hand and clapped a gloved hand over her mouth to stifle her scream.

At first she thought it was Hall and Eloy. But Gilly soon realized these intruders were bulkier and dressed not in suits but black jackets and dark caps pulled low over their foreheads. Unless she missed her guess, she’d just met Turpin and Capputo.

She’d
wanted
to meet with them, but on her terms and with FBI backup. Fright pumped adrenaline into her veins. She bit the man covering her mouth and managed one piercing scream before he swore and regained the upper hand.

Gilly saw lights pop on in the condominium to the right of theirs. She did her level best to slump and make herself harder to drag as she heard feet pounding in the parking lot below.

When shots rang out and thudded into the door at her back, she was so scared Mitch would come barreling out
and get hit, she stopped fighting and let the men pull her along the access landing and down a dark stairwell. In a way, this was the opportunity she sought, Gillian told herself desperately. Her chance to explain that she was no threat to their boss.

Apparently, she wouldn’t get that chance soon. Cringing, Gilly prayed every time the thug holding her shot over her head. She wanted them far away from Mitch. That was why she let them shove her into the back seat of a car without resisting. She opened her mouth to speak as the engine roared and the car squealed out of the lot. There was a loud crack, followed by a burst of light and pain slicing through her head. Another shot shattered the side window of the car and that was the last thing Gillian heard.

G
ROGGY AND
disoriented from having fallen so deeply asleep, Mitch roused from a pleasant dream. Pitching upright, he thought he’d heard gunfire. Damn! He had. Rolling off the bed, he stopped to see if the sound had disturbed Gillian. His blood chilled. Her side of the bed was empty. Shouting her name, he charged into the living room. Seeing the door standing ajar made his stomach drop. More awake now, he lunged and yanked it fully open in time to see Bob Hall kneel down at the railing. With two hands wrapped firmly around his nine millimeter, he shot at a big sedan speeding out of the lot. The left side window of the car exploded. Glass flew everywhere.

The agent was good with a weapon, Mitch had to give him that.

“Where the hell were you, Valetti?” Hall shouted, adding a few other choice words as he lumbered to his feet and his partner stepped into a pool of light below.

“Hold your fire, Bob,” Eloy yelled. “The suckers got away.”

“I’m gonna follow them.” Bob slammed his flat palm down on the balustrade. “Get up here, Kevin. Knock on doors and flash your badge. Dean Lucas can stay in Sedona and deal with the local cops, since he’s the idiot who lost Capputo and Turpin and let them sneak in here under our noses. Valetti, you come with me.”

“Where?” Mitch demanded. “What the hell is going on? Where’s—”

“Shut up and shake a leg if you want to help me track the bastards who walked off with Noelle McGrath.”

“Walked off with…
what?
” Mitch loped after the heavyset agent. Grabbing his elbow, Mitch pulled the agent up short.

“Capputo and Turpin waltzed in and took your woman.” Hall shrugged Mitch off. “The way it looked to me at first, I thought she met them at the door. But for a while she seemed to be fighting them off, so I’ll reserve judgment as to whether it was a put-up job or the real McCoy.”

Stunned and battling a suddenly queasy stomach, Mitch limped down the steps beside Hall. He jumped into the agent’s car without a word. After they’d roared off in the direction taken by the sedan, he collected his reeling brain enough to say through clenched teeth, “Gilly did
not
cook up a deal with those SOBs. I’m willing to stake my life on it.”

“Let’s hope it won’t come to that, Valetti.” Bob Hall sounded grim. Neither man spoke thereafter. At least not to each other. Hall got on his radio and got in touch with other agents on the case. Mitch knew they were so far behind the dark sedan that only a visual sighting by another agent or one of a network of local cops would allow them to tail it. Closing his eyes, he massaged his forehead and asked for divine intervention. He begged whoever or whatever was out there to let him find Gillian. He had to tell her he’d fallen in love with her. He wished he’d done that already. So she wouldn’t feel alone and afraid….

As the darkness turned pink in the early dawn, they got their first break. “Good news?” Mitch asked, sliding
to the edge of his seat when Hall uttered into his cell phone, “About damn time.”

“Just a minute, Valetti. Get somebody on it, Leroy. Find out if that plane filed a flight plan. If not, hand those call letters to the FAA so they can tell us what state registered the aircraft. We’ll meet you at the Flagstaff airport in…say, fifteen minutes?”

“Flagstaff? You think they’re flying her out of Flag?”

“Yeah. I may have to revise my report on Dean Lucas. He botched tailing Capputo, but he alerted agents in Flag and Bullhead City to be on the lookout for the sedan. Leroy Madison tailed ’em to the Flagstaff airport. They dumped the car and he saw them hustle McGrath into a light plane. One we know was used more than once for drug trafficking.”

“I don’t like the sound of this,” Mitch said, slapping his right fist into his left hand. “Can you step on it, Hall?”

“Relax, Valetti. I can always feel when a net’s closing in. My gut says we’re inches from wrapping this baby up.”

“That’s it. The baby. Man, oh man, that’s it.” Mitch whirled to face Hall, straining his seat belt. “That’s
it!
”

“What’s it? What are you talking about, Valetti?”

“The key! We’ve been looking for a regular key. The truth’s been in front of us all along.”

“Spill it!”

“Baby Katie’s urn. Well, not the urn exactly. The date carved on it. I’ll bet my bottom dollar Daryl McGrath has a safe either at his home or his office programmed to open using the baby’s date of birth. In this case, the code is also her date of death,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

“I don’t know, Valetti….”

“Gilly said her ex made up number games all the time. Doesn’t it stand to reason he’d do something clever like that? I mean, last night Gilly all but said it surprised her that Daryl was kind enough to pack that suitcase. He wasn’t being kind at all. He was being cagy.”

“You could be absolutely on target, Valetti,” Hall said thoughtfully. “Okay…here’s the deal. I’m willing to play your hunch. Say, do you remember the date? If so, I’ll phone ahead and have the Bureau send a team of agents to check out McGrath’s home and office.”

Mitch hesitated.

“Oh, crap. Can’t you remember the damned date?”

“I know what the numbers are. But I’ll only give them to you if you make me a promise.”

“Anything! We’re running out of time here,” Hall said, sounding impatient.

“I want your word, Bob. If I’m right, promise you’ll let me use the information as a bargaining tool to get Gilly out of their clutches alive.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Sorry, the numbers stay in my head.” He paused. “You
can
do it. Question is, will you? Look, even if Capputo and Turpin ran me they’d only learn I’m an ex-Desert City cop. They won’t have any idea I’m tied to the feds. Nor will Gilly guess we’re working together.”

“That’s true. All right, I’ll give my word. But if you blow this case, Valetti, your ass is grass.”

Mitch only smiled. “The number is 11-18-00. Finding the safe is up to your men. I doubt it’ll be sitting out in the open.”

“If a safe exists, I guarantee we’ll find it,” Bob muttered fiercely.

T
HE CAR
in which she’d been thrown sped along the country roads. Despite the jolting ride, Gillian didn’t
come around for some time. Feeling oozed into her body a little at a time. Her toes tingled, then she felt blood flow into her hands and arms. She expected to open her eyes and see Mitch lying beside her. When she raised her eyelids, pain slammed through her head, convincing her to shut them again. It was in that split second that memory returned. As nausea overtook her, she thought she’d be sick. She needed every ounce of concentration to keep the awful taste of bile confined to the back of her throat.

When her head finally stopped spinning and her breathing steadied, she cautiously opened her eyes. One of the ugliest men she’d ever seen stared back.

“She’s wakin’ up, Foss. Want me to bop her again?”

“Just if she tries to scream or pull any funny stuff.”

“I won’t.” Gillian’s voice sounded scratchy. “Wh-ere am I?” She realized the man peering down at her was seated, while she lay on a bumpy floor. The back of a car, she decided based on the rumble and sway beneath her.

“Never you mind, Mrs. McGrath. Our boss will ask the questions. You save your breath.”

Gillian tried to move, but discovered her arms were bound in front of her and her legs had been taped at the ankles. “What happened to my suitcase?” Growing panicky, she tried to wiggle into a sitting position. The pain ripping through her head had her flopping back again with a groan.

“I said no questions.” The man with the fat ugly face shoved her down with an equally fleshy hand.

Gillian’s head struck the floor. Darkness rolled over her in waves, and she tasted blood where her teeth had clamped down and split her lip.

“Take it easy, Lenny. The boss said he wants her in one piece. Only way we’re gonna find that key.”

“We shouldn’t’ve put her suitcase in the trunk. The key’s gotta be there. Why else would she and that crippled cop take it to their fancy mountain hideout?”

Gillian rallied again. “Daryl did
not
give me a key. In fact, I was going to leave the suitcase with the FBI agents in the parking lot. I intended to have them pass the word that I wanted to speak to your boss. I’m no threat to his operation. I don’t know anything about it, and I have
no key.
”

Although she shook throughout her speech, Gillian enunciated the last words loudly and clearly.

She heard the man in the front seat, the one driving the car—Foss Turpin, she assumed—turn swiftly.

“Whadidshesay, Lenny? Those weren’t local fuzz taking pot shots at us back there?”

Capputo reached down with stubby fingers and yanked Gillian up by the front of her jacket. Regan’s jacket, she thought hysterically, hearing the material rip. She found herself worrying about the most trivial things—like replacing Regan’s clothing once these men freed her. Because she couldn’t,
wouldn’t,
think about the alternative: not getting out of this predicament alive.

“Foss asked you a question. How many Fibbies? Who called the feds? That cop you shacked up with?”

Terrified, Gillian wondered how much to tell them. When Lenny shook her hard and she felt a button pop off Regan’s jacket, she decided to give them the truth. She reasoned that if they had the connections Patrick Malone thought they had, it’d be a simple matter for them to check out everything she knew, anyway.

“There were two agents keeping watch in the parking lot. Apparently another one followed you from Desert
City. The FBI showed up when your lawyers bailed you out. They’d been watching the dealings of your attorneys.”

The man in the front seat swore roundly. “Those bird-brains don’t give up easy. Now we gotta change our plan. Lenny, get on the horn and call Jimmy up in Flagstaff. Tell him to warm up a plane.”

“You know I hate flying,” Lenny whined.

“Tough shit. I’m not too happy about losing my best car, either. Look at it this way, the sooner we dump her in the boss’s lap, the faster we get our dough.”

Gillian saw Lenny Capputo brighten at the prospect of collecting money for dumping her. She shivered involuntarily. These men were the dregs of society. She could only imagine the ruthlessness of the person or persons at the top.

They dropped one bit of information she found somewhat cheering. Turpin insinuated that the agents would probably follow them. Which might or might not mean Mitch would, too. If all the shooting had roused him from sleep, she knew in her heart that he’d try to rescue her. Cold spread in her stomach. This entire debacle had come about through her efforts to spare him. God, she was already to blame for Patrick Malone’s beating. Now the blood of any agent injured in the recent shooting would also be on her conscience. She slumped back into her uncomfortable position the minute Lenny Capputo let go of her.

There she lay in a shaking, miserable heap until they stopped and roughly transferred her like so much freight into the cabin of a small airplane. Feeling the framework of the craft jiggle and bounce during engine warmup, Gillian was inclined to agree with Lenny on one point.
She’d never flown in a light plane, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like it.

A
GENT
H
ALL
roared right onto the tarmac of the Flagstaff airport. He’d heeded Mitch’s urge to step on the gas. Luckily other agents had paved the way and men dressed in dark suits were stationed at intervals, waving him on toward a hangar where Mitch saw a border patrol plane warming up.

He and Hall catapulted from both sides of the car. A dark-skinned man whose suit jacket and tie flapped wildly in a wind whipped up by the plane’s turbo engines stabbed an index finger toward the sky.

Shielding his eyes against the rising sun, Mitch saw a small plane winging its way toward the eastern horizon.

“What in hell happened?” Bob shouted at the man.

“It took time to check all the newly filed flight plans. This is a busy airport, Bob.”

“I know. Sorry for taking your head off, Bayless. It’s damn frustrating to be this close and still lose the SOBs. Mitch, this is Cal Bayless. He works out of our Northern Arizona office. Cal, Mitch Valetti, formerly Desert City P.D. Mitch is a friend of the kidnapped woman.”

Mitch shook hands. “Did you get their flight plan?” he asked Cal.

“Headed for Louisiana, but these guys are no dummies. They reserved the right to change their minds on where they might land to refuel—any one of three airports. Their final destination is also questionable. Shreveport, Baton Rouge or New Orleans were named as possible termination points.”

“That’s a no-brainer,” Mitch said. “Gilly’s from New Orleans. That’s where her ex had his CPA firm.”

“Speaking of his firm,” Bob interjected, “any news,
Cal, from our men in the field? I shipped them some coded data en route. I said I was headed here, and they should let you know if they got lucky.”

“No reports so far, Bob. We heard from Kevin Eloy. He’s settled with the condo owners on an amount for property damage from your fire fight. The local police are giving us their full cooperation.”

“That’s something,” Bob grumbled. “I hate citizen uprisings. Especially when all we’re trying to do is rid the world of scum. When will our flight be checked out and ready to roll?” he asked abruptly.

“You can board. Elerson’s piloting. He’s into the countdown now. He told me we have priority clearance with the tower to take off whenever you’re set.”

“Your plane is larger than theirs,” Mitch noted. “Can we beat them to New Orleans?”

“You’ll have to ask the pilot,” Cal said with a shrug.

“Let’s go, Valetti. I don’t like using civilians, but your game plan sounds workable. I’d deal with the devil himself to shut this operation down.”

Forcing his bad leg to cooperate, Mitch jogged toward the plane.

“Damn,” Bob wheezed, struggling to keep abreast. “I didn’t ask Cal to tell us who that plane’s registered to.”

“Too late now,” Mitch informed him. He’d already bounded into the craft. Glancing back, he’d seen Cal Bayless wave and climb into the automobile Bob had left running.