The Paris Assignment (20 page)

Chapter 17

A
bby stared at the well-appointed apartment and knew, without the slightest doubt, that it was lined in some way that made it soundproof.

“No one will hear you.” Lucas Brown stared at her from across the room. He stood behind a built-in bar mixing a drink in a martini shaker, looking for all the world as if he were entertaining.

“Figured.”

His eyebrows lifted at her comment but he didn’t reply, instead just kept shaking his cocktail as a thick sheen of cold water formed on the metal.

“Comfortable?”

Restraints held her hands pinned to the arms of a dining-room chair. “Delightful.”

“I’d suggest you appreciate what you have as I can make things a whole lot less delightful.”

“Since I’m sure that’s already on your agenda why don’t you dispense with the formalities.”

He shrugged as he poured his cocktail. “Not yet.”

“You know we’re on to you. The theft of the device. Your fake relationship with Stef. The hit on Paul.”

He shook his head as he crossed to take a chair opposite. Despite the fact he’d also restrained her legs to the chair, Lucas sat a fair distance away from her.

As if she were distasteful to him.

He’d done something to her in the street that caused her to black out so he’d had to have touched her then. Despite that, she knew, without a doubt, that he hadn’t enjoyed it, nor was he interested in repeating the experience anytime soon.

Curious.

Where she’d originally feared rape and death, she could at least cross one worry off her list.

And why did that make her want to laugh out loud?

“A smirk, Abby? Really?”

“Consider it a recognition of the absurdities of life.”

He shrugged and she saw something familiar in the gesture, even as she couldn’t place it. “Suit yourself.”

“Oh, I will.” She hesitated a moment. “Won’t you tell me anything?”

“Soon enough.” He lifted his glass to her in toast. “Soon enough.”

* * *

Campbell rubbed the back of his neck as David drove him to the house. Abby had long since vanished and panic had taken counterpoint to the hard throbbing in his head with the vicious fists of a bass drummer.

Where was she?

He knew he needed to stay calm and think through it.

Lucas Brown had been the one jingling his chain all along and he’d already had David dispatch a team to the man’s hotel. They didn’t expect to find Lucas—if he were, in fact, responsible—but maybe something would turn up in his room.

The moment they reached the house, Campbell raced for his room and the makeshift office he’d set up.

And saw his buzzing phone where it danced on the top of the desk.

“Kenzi—” His sister’s name came out on a harsh sob he couldn’t hold back. “They’ve got her.”

“They who?” Kensington’s normally calm tone rose several notches. “Who, Campbell?”

“That’s what we don’t know. We couldn’t see him, damn it.” The worst sort of frustration rode him.

That Abby could be gone and he had no idea where was as painful as it was impossible to believe.

“It’s Lucas Brown.”

“How do you know that? Are you sure?”

“I have it right here. Listen to me.”

He listened to Kensington recount the specifics. How the man had been born Lucas McBane Brown.

How there had been several notations on file in the McBane security archives about a woman and her son who’d tried repeatedly to get entrance to visit Abby’s father on his business trips to the London office.

Each and every one was denied.

And then a rather large financial payment made to the same woman two years after Abby was born that had ended the visitation attempts.

“It was a blip, Campbell. A well-buried blip. The only reason I even thought to look at it was that I kept asking myself what a powerful man like Abby’s father might have had in his closet.”

“You found it.”

“Fat lot of good it’s done.”

“Actually, it’s done more than a lot of good.” Campbell felt the phone vibrate in his hands and removed the screen to look at it.

And went still when he saw what came up.

“Kenzi. I’m going to transfer you to David. The two of you can run point on Brown’s company. I know where she is.”

“How?”

“My ghost just took form.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Enough with the geek talk.”

He didn’t have the strength to smile, but he did take comfort from his sister’s reaction. “No geek here. I cracked the device. The one Lucas stole from Abby.”

“Yes?”

“I can find him. He’s using a wireless device to manage the tracker and I’ve reversed it.”

“You found him.”

“Gotta go.”

“Campbell! You can’t go in there alone.”

“Work it out with David.”

Campbell disconnected on the shouts of his sister.

* * *

Abby jerked her head back, the lazy edges of sleep clearing at the pain in her neck.

Had she actually slept?

Early morning light crept through the window and she knew she hadn’t been here all that long. Even so, her arms had gone numb and her legs felt like lead weights in the chair.

Campbell.

He was foremost in her thoughts, the only driving thought whether or not he was okay.

The thought was swiftly followed by another. Where was Lucas?

She sat still and tried to listen for any sounds—that subtle evidence that another person was in the same place as you.

The soft creak of the hardwoods down the hall confirmed he was there and she took an easy breath.

At least he hadn’t gone after Campbell.

It still didn’t explain his game. What did Lucas want with her? Or them? Whatever it was, the evidence that his feelings were personal were mounting.

“You’re awake.”

“Hard to sleep tied up.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“You think I’m going to be here awhile.”

He flicked a glance at her as he folded the cuffs of his fresh shirt. “Good plans take time to execute.”

“There’s a plan?”

At the mention of a “plan” her mind briefly latched on to the Joker in one of the Batman movies and his gleeful taunts that there were no plans.

“Of course there’s a plan. I’m a strategic leader in my field. I know how to plan and execute. A well-planned strategy trumps flash each and every time.”

“How long have you been working this one?”

“About twenty-five years.”

“What?” She did some rapid math in her head. “But you’re not more than thirty-five.”

“In November, as a matter of fact.”

“So how is it possible you’ve been planning to kidnap me since I was five?”

“Ten was when the idea of vengeance first took root in my mind.”

At his use of the word
vengeance
any hope this wasn’t personal fled.

“Most ten-year-old boys are interested in footballs and trains.”

He reached for the tie that hung around his neck and began tying a Windsor knot. “Let’s just say I was advanced for my age.”

Diabolical more like but she held the thought. He was finally opening up and it would do her no good to bait him to the degree he refused to say anything.

He crossed to the mirror that hung on a wall near the apartment’s entry. “Your innocence is charming.”

“Innocent of what?”

She saw his gaze flick to her in the reflection of the mirror, but still had no idea what this was all about.

“Didn’t you ever wonder about your father? His youthful escapades.”

“Not really.”

“Well, my dear sister.” Lucas crossed the room, his gaze never wavering from hers as he placed one deliberate foot in front of the other. “The result of his escapades have thought about you.”

Her brother?

Shock layered over disbelief layered over a strange sense of happiness.

A brother.

His flat cold stare froze any semblance of joy, but even so, Abby couldn’t dismiss the way several pieces fit into place. The vague familiarity in his movements. Their easy camaraderie. An overall level of comfort with him she’d had from the start, even as there were no overtones of anything sexual in the least.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There was nothing to tell.”

“Lucas! Of course there was.” The hard glint in his eyes caught her up short and she was forced to acknowledge there was no welcoming look in his gaze.

No happy reunion or even any interest in one. “What did he do to you?”

“Nothing. He did absolutely nothing.”

She fought to find the right words to penetrate the cold. “Surely you can’t think I’d do the same.”

“It’s too late to find out.”

When the door slammed behind him, Abby knew it was true.

Whatever forces had shaped him—her father’s clear dismissal of the boy’s existence at the top of the list—were too well embedded to be changed.

She glanced down at her tied arms and knew her first hopeless moments.

How would anyone ever find her? Or even know to look for her here?

* * *

“You can’t go barreling in there like the freaking cavalry.”

David’s words were a strict warning and Campbell had gotten sick of listening to the man’s “recommended restraint.”

He wanted Abby back and he had no interest in delaying that goal for any reason.

“You don’t know how he’s got it armed, Campbell. We need to watch and observe. She’s alive.”

“How do you know that?” His voice was quiet, the words lodged tightly in his chest.

“She’s valuable to him. He hasn’t gone through all this effort to waste it now.”

Campbell heard the underlying message.
Or kill Abby yet.

Damn it, he wasn’t going to go there.

Was. Not. Going. There.

“You know the device is calibrated properly?”

“Of course.”

“You sure?”

Campbell brushed off the skepticism and recognized David’s questions for what they were. An effort to be well prepared so they could get in and get Abby without anyone getting hurt.

David had lost men, too. Good people who’d followed him into battle and Campbell tried to keep that thought in mind as he and the security lead mapped out their next steps.

Campbell walked him through the program he’d written. The final fix had been simple, but the program itself was rather complex, using a mixture of GPS data, individual phone fingerprinting and a little overlay he fondly thought of as his gray hat special.

He might have started his hacking career as a black hat and might now wave the proud flag of the white hat, but he’d learned through the years his very best strategies used a mixture of both phases of his profession.

The little fingerprint he’d put on Lucas was just that.

Right now, he was picking up a signature of each and every device the man went anywhere near.

“See this.” Campbell pointed to a three-dimensional map on David’s workstation.

“Yep.”

“He’s centered at this address which Simon already confirmed is a high-rise apartment.”

“So you can tell what building but not which apartment.”

“My sister’s working through that now, combing ownership records, but right. We don’t have the exact apartment yet.”

“No video surveillance?” Simon probed.

Campbell had to hand it to the man, he’d come online, more than ready to help in the fight to bring Abby back. “Bastard’s worked his way around the video. It magically disappears each and every time he gets near the building.”

“And no one’s noticed? These systems are designed to manage outages and report them as problems.”

“Not when you give the system a happy little program to keep it occupied.” Campbell tapped on the screen once more. “He knows what the hell he’s doing. He’s really, really good.”

“And yet you’ve scented him down like a bloodhound.” David turned to slap him on the back. “We’re going to get her.”

“I know.”

But every minute they were apart Campbell wanted to rip something apart. He just prayed Lucas had enough control to keep her unharmed.

* * *

Abby shifted in her chair, fighting the near-nauseating need to use the bathroom, and considered her options once more.

Lucas’s use of the shaker the previous night—as well as the ready supply of liquor bottles on the sidebar—would make an adequate-enough weapon.

She had to be let loose first.

The lock sounded and she turned as the object of her calculations walked in. “And how was your morning?”

“I’m nearly floating.”

“Hmm?”

“Bathroom, Lucas. Can I use one?”

His gaze was skeptical, but she knew she had him on that one. Mother Nature always won.

She’d nearly congratulated herself when her world went vertical. She felt his hand through the slats at her back as he dragged the chair—and her—down the hall to the bathroom.

He positioned her at the open door, then stood behind her and undid the restraints.

“There’s nothing in that one so just go and keep it quick.”

She stumbled as he tilted the chair, shoving her through the door. Nearly her entire body had fallen asleep and pain rushed through her limbs with all the finesse of nails driving into her skin.

Abby stumbled to the toilet and relieved herself, considering the room. He hadn’t joked—the room was bare. Even the toilet paper sat by itself on the back of the toilet. She briefly considered lifting the toilet tank lid and using it as a weapon but couldn’t remove it. The seat was glued down, too.

Damn.

Frustration rose up to mix with sheer exhaustion.

She had to get out of here.

With a resigned sigh, she prayed Campbell would have some way of knowing where she was and knocked on the door.

She might as well learn as much as she could in the meantime.

Lucas made quick work of retying her, then dragged her back the way they’d come.

Without warning, an unexpected wash of tears hit her. Where she’d have expected them as a result of the exhaustion, she had to admit they came from another source.

Now that she knew why she saw similarities, when she looked at Lucas she saw her father.

The same well-framed jaw. The same sweep of how that jaw descended into his chin. The same arc of his cheekbone.