Point of Control (19 page)

C
HAPTER
36

Monday, March 23, 12:17 p.m., Seattle, Washington

The plane touched down, and Bailey woke from a restless sleep. She was finally back in Washington State! This investigation had pushed her to her limits. Traveling wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. It was time to do whatever it took to get the promotion to run the Critical Incident Response Group. It was the only position that would give her the constant excitement she craved without forcing her to travel or do undercover work. She wanted to be on the SWAT team but was too lazy to do the training. Resolving the North Korean incident would put her in the running if Lennard moved up, but she also had to make a connection soon with the assistant director, or maybe even the director.

By the time she rented a car and got on the road, she’d worked out a plan to ingratiate herself with the AD and make him see her as the only logical choice for the CIRG position. She considered, briefly, staying in a hotel for the professionalism of it, then laughed at the idea. Garrett Thorpe was a possible victim who needed protecting, so staying there was the right thing to do. Fortunately, it suited her personally too. She wanted more time with Garrett and had no reason to deny herself the pleasure. He was an adult who made his own decisions. It wasn’t her responsibility to protect him from emotional harm. Yet the thought of hurting him when she walked away made her uncomfortable—a new experience.

When she pulled into the Thorpes’ driveway and parked behind Garrett’s Jeep, she noticed the garage door was open. That was odd. The garage had never been open before. Garrett parked in the driveway, and Dana Thorpe wasn’t here to drive her car. A bad vibe rolled up her spine. Bailey jumped out of the rental and ran into the garage. Nothing seemed out of place. She stepped toward the covered walkway leading into the house. Was that a drop of blood on the cement floor? Bailey knelt down and looked more closely.
Maybe.
The dab of dark liquid had mostly dried, so it was hard to tell.

If it was blood, Garrett had likely hurt himself in the garage and gone into the house to get a bandage. That would explain why the overhead door had been left open. Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation was likely true. She hurried into the house anyway, watching for more blood, just in case she was dealing with a crime scene. She spotted another drop in the kitchen, a dark spot on an otherwise clean white-tile floor. Bailey took a picture with her phone to preserve the record. Where was Garrett? He must have heard her come in.

“Garrett!” She called his name as she trotted from room to room, looking for him.

He was gone. But his Jeep was in the driveway. She repressed a shiver of panic, forcing herself to work through it logically. There was blood, but very little, so he hadn’t been shot or stabbed. There was no sign of a struggle, so maybe he’d only scratched himself or had a nosebleed. He could have left with a friend or gone out for a walk. But why was the garage door open? She called his phone, and after seven rings, heard his voice mail greeting. Bailey hung up, not knowing where he might be receiving the call and not willing to leave her name.

Had the kidnappers taken him? Considering the previous events and his mother’s circumstances, she calculated the odds were pretty high, maybe 70 percent. But why? Garrett wasn’t a scientist or a tech expert. He was only useful to them as leverage. A way to make Dana Thorpe do what they wanted.
Oh hell.
Anger and worry settled in her heart, and indecision bounced around in her head. The anxiety was annoying, so she focused on making a decision. She had a solid lead for the general area where she might find all the victims, and she might as well drive there now.

Without any proof a crime had been committed, there was no point in reporting Garrett missing to the Seattle police. A young man could have simply left his house on foot, accidentally leaving the garage door open. But she had obligations to the bureau, and those were a little stickier. Reporting the incident directly to her boss wasn’t an option. She’d been ordered to discontinue her investigation and let the local field agents handle the kidnappings.

She would hedge her bets and split the decision down the middle. Bailey grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge and a box of crackers from the cupboard, saving herself a stop at a store. She hurried back out through the garage, leaving the front door locked and the garage door open, as she’d found both.

Once she’d made it through Seattle’s traffic and was on I-90 headed southeast, she called Agent Thorpe. “Bailey here. I was just at your son’s home. The garage door was open and Garrett was gone, but his Jeep is still in the driveway. I thought you’d like to know.”

“You don’t sound worried.”

She rarely did. “I called Garrett and he didn’t answer. There’s a drop of blood, but no sign of a struggle, so I’m not sure what to think.” No longer true.

“I’ll head over there now. Let me know if anything develops.”

“I’m on my way to central Washington. I have an idea about where Dana might be held, and I’m following up on it.”

“What lead?”

Bailey told him about the pharmacy robbery in Ellensburg and the sale of the Palisades Mine. “It just came together for me today.”

“What does a drugstore have to do with this case?”

He didn’t know about his ex-wife’s epilepsy, and she wasn’t supposed to tell him. “Dana needs medication, and I think the kidnapper was getting it for her.”

Thorpe hesitated, then scoffed. “That’s pretty tenuous.”

“I know. That’s why I’m not asking any local agents to spend their time on it until I know more.”

“When you have something solid, call me. I can be in that area in ninety minutes. Don’t go in without backup.”

“I won’t.” Unless she had to. There was no reason for him to know she wasn’t technically assigned to the case anymore. “If you hear from Garrett, let me know.” She hung up before he could ask questions she would have to lie about.

On the drive to Ellensburg, it rained steadily, and she hated every dark and dreary minute. The crackers kept her stomach from growling, and she checked her Yahoo email on her phone every ten minutes, hoping to find a bounce-back message from the malware email to the Mexican business registry. Once that came in, she would stop and find a public computer—if there was such a thing out here in the sticks.

The farther she drove, the more rural the landscape and the more she worried about internet access. Even through the rain, she could see the forests thin out and become scrubbier. The undergrowth changed too, from lush ferns to ugly little bushes. Once she was over the Cascades, the clouds parted and the rain stopped. Thank god. As the sun peeked through, she got her first decent look at the midstate landscape. A wide, flat plateau, with patches of desert pine trees and more mountains in the distance. The occasional house appeared along the frontage road, often with a truck parked in front. It was a habit to notice details and take mental pictures of everything, but she could barely concentrate on her surroundings. She called Garrett again, but still no response. She couldn’t help but think he was out there in the mountains somewhere, locked in some shitty space, maybe being tortured occasionally to frighten his mother into working faster or revealing more.

Bailey shook it off. If that was what empathy felt like, she was glad she didn’t experience it with anyone else. Besides, he’d only disappeared that morning, so she was right behind the kidnappers. She only hoped she didn’t regret driving out here before she had all the information she needed. If she couldn’t access the internet, she could call Havi. Bailey noticed a sign announcing that Ellensburg was only ten miles away. She would stop for coffee and, hopefully, a little hacking.

A few minutes later, she drove into Ellensburg, a quaint mix of old brick buildings and newly built franchise eateries, with a river bisecting the town. She used her phone to find a Starbucks and was soon in line for coffee and wifi—the lifeblood of a field agent.

At a corner table, while she waited for her grande Italian roast to cool, she checked her Yahoo email. The bounce back from the malware had landed.
Yes!
But she couldn’t open it on her own laptop or do any snooping from here. That could come back to bite her. She needed another public-access computer. A library. She asked for directions and found it five blocks away, with only one wrong turn.

An older building with a musty smell, the library was nearly empty and she had the tiny technology room to herself. Bailey signed into her Yahoo account and opened the bounce-back email, which contained the password
Octavius91703
. Probably the birthday of the clerk’s son. The email included a link, which she clicked, and it took her to the business registry database. A dialogue box appeared, and she logged in with the hacked password. Depending on the level of security employed by the Mexican government, she might get frozen out immediately because the system didn’t recognize the computer or she might only have a few minutes before it demanded she answer some security questions.

From the landing page, she clicked
Foreign Corporations
, then keyed
C&M Investments
into the search bar. A single page loaded with basic information in rectangular fields. The owner was listed as Jia Chen. Who the hell was she? Bailey’s grip tightened around her coffee cup. She’d been so sure she would find one of the executives of the startup phone companies. She googled the name
Jia Chen
and came up with only a few sites and images, none of which seemed connected to her investigation. Was the name an alias? Jia, or someone, had gone to considerable trouble to mask the purchase of the mining company. But why? Antitrust laws? Or was he or she hiding something at the property and didn’t want to be associated with it on paper?

Havi didn’t answer when she called, so Bailey sent him a text:
Find a Jia Chen connected to this case. Criminal record? Marriage license? Anything!

She scanned back through her call log and reconnected with the number from the state business office.

“Nolan Fredrick. How can I help you?”

“Agent Bailey again.” She kept her voice down, not wanting to draw the attention of the librarian on duty. “I found the owner of the holding company. Jia Chen.” She spelled out both names. “Does she own any other businesses in Washington?”

“Give me a minute to search.”

Bailey finished her coffee while she waited, and the acid burned in her stomach. She needed real food, and soon.

“Sorry,” Fredrick said, “but she doesn’t.”

“What about personal property?”

“I’ll have to get into the property tax files, and that could take a minute. Can I call you back?”

“Please do.”

Nervous that her lead could turn out to be a dead end, Bailey kept busy while she waited. She clicked on the first Google result for
Jia Chen
and discovered she was a prolific porn actress. Bailey quickly closed the site and opened the next one, a Facebook page for a student at a Florida university. Bailey’s phone rang and she clicked her earpiece to silence it. “Havi?”

“Of course.”

“What did you find?”

“The most famous Jia Chen is a porn star with a specialty in bestiality.”

She ignored his amusement. “Yeah, I discovered that. Any others who might be connected to metallurgists or device manufacturers?”

“I found a marriage license for Jia Chen and Shawn Crusher. Now she goes by Jia Crusher but uses the same social security number.”

Score!
“That’s it. Thank you.”

“What’s the connection to the kidnappings?”

“Shawn Crusher is the CEO of ZoGo, a burner phone manufacturer based in Mountain View, California.”

A pause while Havi processed it. “Does the mine produce the rare earth metals he needs?”

“Probably. Or at least he believes it will. Can you find out where Shawn Crusher is? Maybe track his credit cards or cell phone?”

“You know you need a warrant for that.”

She wasn’t on the case and couldn’t produce one. “We don’t have time. I just need a general location.”

Havi sighed. “I’ll try. But the AD has me looking for safe houses where the North Korean cryptographer might be staying. That has to be my priority.”

“I think Crusher has Lee Nam too, so helping me is just as critical.”

A moment of silence. “You’re seldom wrong, so I’ll toggle back and forth.”

“Thank you!”

She hung up and called the manager at the state business licensing office. “Hey, Bailey again. I just discovered that Jia Chen also goes by Jia Crusher, so please look for any personal property she might own.”

“I have a meeting in a few minutes, so I’ll get back to you.” He abruptly hung up.

Had she pissed him off or was he just busy? It didn’t matter. She had to find the Palisades Mine and covertly check it out. If the property had a building that could be used to house people, she figured it had an 80-percent chance of being the location of the victims.

Logistic and legal questions came to mind. Would she call Agent Thorpe for backup? Did they need a search warrant to go in? What were the consequences if she or they didn’t find the victims on the property? Bailey would work around whatever was thrown at her—she always did. But what about Dana and Garrett Thorpe? She couldn’t fail them. She’d connected with Garrett in a way she’d never experienced before, and she wanted to see how it played out. Not to mention that Dana and Garrett were good people and she wanted them to be alive in this world. After seeing the body of Nick Bowman, she knew their survival odds decreased rapidly every day. Maybe every hour.

The clock was ticking on Lee Nam and Jake Austin too. As a North Korean prisoner, Austin was probably doomed. The actor was an idiot for traveling there, regardless of his motives. On the other hand, Lee would probably survive the longest of the megalomaniac’s captives. But if they couldn’t find him in time, or convince North Korea that the US government wasn’t responsible, what would Kim Jong-un do next? Bailey checked the time on her phone. How many hours did they have left?