Total Control (64 page)

Patterson started to say something and then stopped. He frowned as he looked out the window. Finally he looked over at her. "We'll go to Boston together and then we'll talk about it. If you still want to split up then, so be it."

While Sidney sat outside in the van, Patterson went in to rent a car. When he came out a few minutes later and walked over to the van, Sidney rolled down the window.

"Did you rent a car?" Sidney asked.

Patterson nodded. "They'll have it ready in about five minutes. I got us a roomy four-door. You can sleep in the back; I'll drive."

"I love you, Dad." Sidney rolled the window back up and drove off. Her stunned father ran after her, but she was quickly out of sight.

"Christ!" Sawyer peered out the window into near-zero visibility.

"Can't we go any faster?" he yelled through the window to the trooper. They had already seen the devastation of the Patterson beach house and were now desperately looking everywhere for Sidney Archer and her family.

The trooper yelled back, "We go any faster, we're going to end up dead in some ditch."

Dead. Is that what Sidney Archer is right now? Sawyer looked at his watch. He fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.

Jackson was looking at him. "Damn, Lee, don't start smoking in here. It's hard enough to breathe as it is."

Sawyer's lips parted as he felt the slender object in his pocket. He slowly pulled the card out.

As Sidney headed out of town, she decided to keep her emotions in check and let longtime habits take over. For what seemed like forever, she had been merely reacting to a series of crises, without the opportunity to think things through. She was an attorney, trained to view facts logically, look at the details and then work them into an overall picture. She certainly had some information to work with.

Jason had labored on Triton's records for the CyberCom deal. That she knew. Jason had disappeared under mysterious circumstances and had sent her a disk with some information on it. That, also, was a fact. Jason was not selling secrets to RTG, not with Brophy in the picture. That also was clear to her. And then there were the financial records. Apparently Triton had simply handed them over. Then why the big scene at the meeting in New York? Why had Gamble demanded to talk to Jason about his work on the records, particularly after he had sent Jason an e-mail congratulating him on a job well done? Why the big deal of getting Jason on the phone? Why put her in an impossible situation like that?

She slowed down and pulled off the road. Unless the intent all along was to put her in an impossible situation. Making it appear as though she had lied. Suspicion had followed her from that very moment.

What exactly had been in those records in the warehouse?

Was that what was on the disk? Something Jason had found out?

That night Gamble's limo had whisked her to his estate, he had obviously wanted some answers. Could he have been attempting to find out if Jason had told her anything?

Triton had been a client for several years now. A big, powerful company with a very private past. But how did that tie in to all the other things? The deaths of the Page brothers. Triton beating out RTG for CyberCom. As Sidney thought once more of that horrible day in New York, something clicked. Ironically, she had the same thought Lee Sawyer had experienced earlier but for a different reason: A performance.

My God! She had to get in touch with Sawyer. She put the van in drive and got back on the road. A shrill ring interrupted her thoughts. She looked around at the interior of the van for the source until her eyes alighted on the cellular phone resting on a magnetized plate against the lower dashboard. She hadn't noticed it until just that moment. It was ringing? Her hand went instinctively down to answer it and then pulled back. Finally she picked it up. "Yes?"

"I thought you weren't interested in playing games." The voice was filled with anger.

"Right. And you just forgot to mention that you had a bug in my purse and were just waiting to jump me."

"Okay, let's talk about the future. We want the disk and you're going to bring it to us. Now!"

"What I'm going to do is hang up. Now!"

"If I were you, I wouldn't."

"Listen, if you're trying to keep me on the phone so you can lock on my location, it's not going--" Sidney's voice broke off and her entire body turned to putty as she listened to the small voice on the other end of the line.

"Mommy? Mommy?"

Her tongue as big as a fist, Sidney could not answer. Her foot went off the accelerator; her dead arms no longer had the strength to steer the van. The vehicle slowed down and drifted into a pile of snow on the shoulder.

"Mommy? Daddy? Come over?" The voice sounded frightened, pitiful.

Suddenly sick to her stomach, her entire body swaying uncontrollably, Sidney managed to speak. "AA-Amy. Baby."

"Mommy?"

"Baby, it's Mommy. I'm here." An avalanche of tears poured down Sidney's face.

Sidney heard the phone being taken away.

"Ten minutes. Here are the directions."

"Let me talk to her again. Please!"

"Now you have nine minutes and fifty-five seconds."

A sudden thought occurred to Sidney. What if it was a tape?

"How do I know you really have her? That could be just a recording."

"Fine. If you want to take that chance, don't come." The voice sounded very confident. There was no earthly way Sidney would ever take that chance. The person on the other line knew that too.

"If you hurt her--"

"We're not interested in the kid. She can't identify us. After it's over, we'll drop her at a safe place." He paused. "You won't be joining her, though, Ms. Archer. Your safe places have just run out."

"Let her go. Please just let her go. She's only a baby." Sidney was trembling so much she could barely keep the phone pressed against her mouth.

"You better write down these directions. You don't want to get lost. If you don't show, there won't be enough left of your kid to identify."

"I'll be there," she said in a hushed voice and the line went dead.

She pulled back on the road. A sudden thought leaped across her mind. Her mother! Where was her mother? Her blood seemed to be pooling in her veins as she gripped the steering wheel. Another ringing sound invaded the interior of the van. With a shaking hand, Sidney picked up the phone, but there was no one there. In fact, the ringing sound was different. She pulled off the road again and desperately searched everywhere. Her eyes finally stopped on the seat right next to her. She looked at her purse, slowly put her hand inside and pulled the object out. Written across the small screen on her pager was a phone number she didn't recognize. She turned off the pager's ringer. It was probably a wrong number. She couldn't imagine that someone from her law firm or a client was attempting to call her; she was fresh out of legal advice. She was about to erase the message, but her finger stopped. Could it be Jason? If it was Jason, then it would qualify as the worst timing in the history of the world. Her finger remained poised over the erase button. Finally she put the pager in her lap, picked up the cellular phone and dialed the number on the pager's screen.

The voice that came on the other end of the line was enough to take her breath away. Apparently, miracles did happen.

The main house of the resort was dark, its seclusion made all the more stark by a wall of bulky evergreens in front. When the van pulled down the long driveway, two armed guards emerged from the entryway to meet it. The snowstorm had lightened considerably in the last few minutes. Behind the house the dark, foreboding waters of the Atlantic assaulted the land.

One of the guards jerked back as the van continued to roll toward them without any sign of slowing down. "Shit," he yelled as both men hurled themselves out of the way. The van tore past them, crashed right through the front door and came to an abrupt halt, its wheels still spinning, when it struck a four-foot-thick interior wall.

A minute later, several heavily armed men surrounded the van and wrenched the damaged door open. No one was inside. The men's eyes passed over the receptacle where the cellular phone would normally be kept. The phone was completely under the front seat, the phone cord pretty much invisible under the weak illumination of the dome light. They believed the phone had probably been dislodged upon impact rather than that it had deliberately been placed there.

Sidney entered the house through the rear. When the man had given her directions to the place, she had instantly recognized it. She and Jason had stayed at the resort several times, and she was very familiar with the interior layout. She had taken a shortcut and arrived in half the time her daughter's captors had allotted her. She had used those precious extra minutes to rig the van's steering wheel and accelerator with rope she had found in the back of the vehicle. She clutched her pistol, her finger resting lightly on the trigger as she stole through the dark rooms of the resort. She was ninety percent certain that Amy was not on the premises. The ten percent of doubt had led her to use the rigged van as a diversion so that she could at tempt a rescue, however improbable, of her daughter. She was under no delusions that these men would let Amy go free.

Up ahead she heard the sounds of raised voices and feet running toward the front of the house. She cocked her head to the left as a pair of footsteps echoed down the hallway. This person was not running; the tread was slow and methodical. She shrank back into the shadows and waited for the person to pass by. As soon as he did, she pressed the muzzle of her pistol directly against his neck.

"Make any sound at all, and you're dead," she said with a cold finality.

"Hands over your head."

Her prisoner complied. He was tall, with broad shoulders. She felt for his gun and found it in a shoulder holster. She crammed the man's pistol in her jacket pocket and pushed him forward. The large room up ahead was well lit. Sidney could not hear any noise emanating from the space, but she didn't think that silence would last long. They would soon figure out her ploy, if they hadn't already.

She prodded the man away from the light and down a darkened hallway.

They came to a doorway. "Open it and move inside," she told him.

He opened the door and she pushed him inside. One of her hands felt around for the light switch. When the lights came on, she shut the door behind her and looked at the man's face.

Richard Lucas stared back at her.

"You don't look surprised," Lucas said, his voice even and calm.

"Let's just say nothing surprises me anymore," Sidney replied.

"Sit." She motioned with her gun to a straight-backed chair. "Where are the others?"

Lucas shrugged. "Here, there, everywhere. There are a lot of them, Sidney."

"Where's my daughter? And my mother?" Lucas kept silent. Sidney put both hands on her gun and pointed it directly at his chest.

'Tm not screwing around with you. Where are they?"

"When I was a CIA operative, I was captured and tortured by the KGB for two months before I escaped. I never told them anything and I'm not telling you anything," Lucas said calmly. "And if you're thinking about using me to exchange for your daughter, forget it. So you might as well pull the trigger, Sidney."

Sidney's finger quivered on the trigger as she and Lucas engaged in a staring contest. Finally she swore under her breath and lowered the pistol. A smile cracked Lucas's lips.

She thought quickly. All right, you sonofabitch. "What color is the hat Amy was wearing, Rich? If you have her, you should know that."

The smile disappeared from Lucas's lips. He paused for a second and then answered. "Like a beige."

"Good answer. Neutral, could apply to lots of different colors."

She paused as an enormous wave of relief washed over her. "Only Amy wasn't wearing a hat."

Lucas started to bolt out of the chair. A second faster than he, Sidney smashed her pistol across his head. Lucas went down in a heap, unconscious. She towered over his prostrate form. "You're a real ass-hole."

Sidney exited the room and stole down the corridor. From the direction of where she had entered the house, she heard men approaching.

She changed course and once again headed toward the lit room she had spied earlier. She peered around the corner. The light from inside was enough to let her check her watch. She said a silent prayer and edged into the room, keeping low behind a long, carved wooden-backed sofa. She looked around, her eyes taking in a wall of French doors that was visible on the ocean side. The room was huge, with ceilings that soared at least twenty feet high. An interior second-story balcony ran across one side of the room. Another wall held a collection of finely bound books. Comfortable furnishings were placed throughout.

Sidney shrank back as far as she could when a group of armed men, all dressed in black fatigues, entered the room through another doorway. One of them barked into a walkie-talkie. By listening to his words, she knew they were aware of her presence. It was only a matter of time before they found her. Blood pounding in her eardrums, she made her way out of the room, keeping well out of sight behind the sofa. Once in the corridor, she walked swiftly back toward the room in which she had left Lucas, with the intent of using him as her exit card. Maybe they would not care about killing Lucas to get to her, but right now it was the only option she had.

Her plan ran into an immediate problem when she discovered Lucas was no longer in the room. She had hit him very hard, and she briefly marveled at his recuperative powers. Apparently he hadn't been kidding about the KGB. She ran out of the room and toward the door where she had entered the house. Lucas would most certainly raise the alarm. She probably only had seconds to make her getaway. She was a few feet from the door when she heard it.

"Mommy, Mommy."

Sidney jerked around. Amy's walls continued down the hallway.