Unleashed (29 page)

The blow to her cheek was stunning as much for its force as its unexpectedness. Pain exploded across her cheekbone as he hit her with his wide open palm.

“Don’t you lie to me, you little cunt.”

She heard him through the ringing in her head. She looked over at Marshall, who stood in the corner, eyes averted, as though if he didn’t look at her he could pretend it wasn’t happening.

“I know you found something!” Patrick roared. He grabbed her hair in his fist and pulled her to her knees. “How else did you find out we were filming! That sure as hell wasn’t in Anne Taggart’s day planner.”

Shit
. She’d forgotten that little detail. “Danny won’t let up, you know. Killing me will have him on your ass so hard you won’t know what hit you. He—”

“He’s dead,” Marshall bit out. “The guys at the house took care of it.”

Caroline hung her head as pain exploded in her chest. She’d known it was likely. He was outnumbered. But she’d hoped…

She squeezed her eyes shut and remembered the feel of his shaking arms wrapping around you.
Carrie, I need you. I never got over you
.

All that week she’d been trying to protect herself from him, to not let him back into her heart. Now her heart burst into a million pieces as she faced the reality that he was gone, and even if she got out alive, they’d never have a second chance to get things right.

“I’m not telling you shit. Go ahead and kill me like you killed Anne and Emily. Like you killed James. You’ve wanted me dead all along. Now finish it.”

“It’s not that easy anymore,” Patrick said, calmer now. “Marshall, go get them.”

A prick of fear permeated her haze of grief. Who, exactly, was “them.”

“Patrick, I don’t see what good this is going to do,” Marshall said, his voice low but not so low she couldn’t hear. “We should just do it and—”

“You don’t get it, do you? I need to know how much damage has been done, how far he went—”

“Just assume we’re fucked, okay?” Marshall bit out. “Gates will help us go underground—”

“You think I’ll just give up my wife, my family, if it’s not totally necessary? There are bigger things at stake here.”

A panicked note reverberated in Patrick’s voice. He was a man at the edge, trying desperately to climb out of the hole he’d dug for himself, trying to convince himself his life could go back to normal. “Now go get them.”

“No.”

Patrick’s mouth fell open at Marshall’s refusal. “You don’t tell me no, you little shit.” Without warning he lifted his gun and fired. Marshall didn’t have time to move even a finger to his own gun before Patrick’s bullet caught him in the middle of the forehead.

Caroline’s cry of horror choked in her throat. She couldn’t make herself turn away from the gruesome sight of Marshall, dead, his blue eyes wide with shock as a thick crimson puddle formed under his head.

She barely heard Patrick mutter about doing something himself as he took Marshall’s gun from his waistband and left the stall. Left her alone with Marshall’s dead body.

He’d killed Danny. Maybe not with his own hand, but he might as well have. It tore at her guts to think of a fierce warrior like Danny being taken out by a slick weasel like Marshall. She was glad Marshall was dead. Would have been happier if it had been by her own hand.

Caroline squeezed herself into the corner, as far away as possible from the corpse. She had to think. There had to be some way out. She pulled at the bonds of the plastic ties, wincing as they cut into her wrists.

Before, she’d cavalierly thought about martyring herself. Now she saw the face of death in Marshall. Imagined it in Danny. Anne Taggart. Emily Parrish. Rachael Weller.

She wasn’t going to let that be her fate, too.

Caroline’s gaze darted around the stall, looking for anything she could use to cut the ties. Dust and hay were all she saw.

She looked at Marshall, his sightless stare aimed at the ceiling. Maybe he had a knife, or even a key. Swallowing back her revulsion, she scooted back over to him. Her bound hands ran clumsily over his pockets and found a lump in the right one. She managed to get two almost numb fingers in and felt the edge of a key.

The barn door was squealing, signaling Patrick’s return. Caroline’s fumbling grew more desperate.

“Patrick, what’s going on?”

Every muscle froze at the sound of the panicked, feminine voice.

Please no
.

A child started to cry.

“Shh, Michael, it’s okay.”

Caroline sobbed as she tried to extract the keys from Marshall’s pocket.

The stall door slid open, and a rough hand grabbed her by the hair to pull her away from Marshall’s body. Patrick was back. And with him were Kate and Michael.

Kate’s face went white when she saw Marshall. She tried, too late, to keep Michael from seeing. His blue eyes went saucer wide and filled with tears.

“Now Caroline,” Patrick said, raising the gun so it pointed at the back of Michael’s head. “Let’s start this conversation over, and this time try being a little more cooperative.”

“A
re you sure it was this way?” Danny tried to keep the frustration out of his voice as he pulled onto the state route headed north. The last thing this poor girl needed was him biting her head off when she was his only hope of finding Caroline. He was an asshole for taking her with him instead of leaving her to be taken with the others by the police. It had quickly become apparent that she wasn’t able to tell him how to get to Gates, but she insisted that if she rode with him she would recognize landmarks.

He forced himself to travel at a few miles under the speed limit so Kaylee could focus on every detail and keep an eye out for anything familiar. Danny had little hope she’d remembered much of the trip in her drugged out haze, but, sixteen-year-old Kaylee was the only hope he had. Toni still hadn’t managed to pull any information off the flash drive and so far Derek could only trace the bank accounts back to James. Ethan, Alex Novascelic, and Ben Moreno were on their way to meet up with Danny to offer backup and get Kaylee to safety once they’d determined Caroline’s location.

“Yes,” she insisted. “I remember this road when Ericka first brought me out here.” He’d taken her back to the motel where the thugs had picked her up, as good a starting point as any. In the fifteen or so minutes it had taken to get to the motel Kaylee had told him a story that made his stomach churn and his blood run cold.

A story he might not have believed had he not discovered the truth about what had happened to his mother and why. James Medford and whoever he’d been working with had taken their operation to a new level of sinister sophistication.

A fucking baby factory. Danny had seen terrible things in some of the darkest corners of the planet, including girls younger than Kaylee kidnapped and forced into prostitution. But he’d never heard of girls, some illegal immigrants who came to the states on promises of good jobs and new opportunities, some runaways like Kaylee, being forcibly impregnated so wealthy infertile couples could adopt a custom ordered baby.

“Do the parents know?” Danny asked, struggling to imagine how any adoptive couple, no matter how desperate, could knowingly take part in such an exchange.

“I don’t know,” Kaylee said. “I only figured out what they were doing after my exam. Today was supposed to be—”

Danny didn’t need her to finish. “And they make money off of the…” he didn’t know what to call it, “by filming it and selling it as porn.”

Kaylee gave a shudder next to him, her coltish frame swallowed up by the oversize T-shirt and sweatpants he’d dug out of his gym bag. She sniffed and wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “They make some of the girls do it a bunch of times with a bunch of different guys. One of the girls told me it’s better once you get pregnant, because you don’t have to have sex with anyone and they take good care of you until the baby comes.”

“You don’t have to worry about any of that now,” Danny strove for a reassuring tone, even though his helpless frustration mounted with every slowly passing mile.

Caroline.

Her name was like a drumbeat in his head, driving him forward. He couldn’t lose her again. He thought of his father, and finally understood his unceasing need to believe that his wife was alive, to cling to that last shred of hope that it wasn’t all over.

Caroline.

He struggled to contain his helpless rage. If he wanted to find her, he needed direction, and the only help he was getting was from the remarkably brave but slightly foggy-headed girl next to him.

“A couple more guys are going to be here soon, and as soon as we find Gates’s place, we’ll get you away from there where you’ll be safe.”

Kaylee nodded silently and stared intently out the window.

“Anything?”

“Not yet. I have a feeling we were on this road for a while.”

A familiar silver BMW appeared in Danny’s rearview mirror, tailed closely by a red Mustang. His cell phone rang a second later.

“I take it since you’re traveling at grandma speed she hasn’t zeroed in on the location yet,” Ethan said.

“Not yet. What did Toni find?”

“In a ten mile radius there are about thirty properties that could be described as ‘big old houses with what kinda looks like a barn,’” Ethan said, using Kaylee’s description of what Gates’s compound looked like from the outside. “But nothing registered to anyone named Gates or to Esteban Lucero. Not that we expected it to be that easy.”

In the meantime all Danny could do was travel slowly up State Route 12, followed closely by his brother and colleagues and hope something jogged Kaylee’s memory pretty damn quick.

“You have to let them go,” Caroline said. “Kate doesn’t know anything about what James was involved in, and Michael,” her sob caught in her throat as she looked at his sweet, terrified face as he pressed himself against his mother’s side.

“Tell me what I want to know and they won’t suffer,” Patrick said.

Kate let out a whimper as if she, too, absorbed his words.

“We found a floor safe,” Caroline said, all bets off as the words came spilling out. She was out of ideas, but maybe if she talked and stalled something would come to her. “There was a DVD. That’s how we found the movie shoot. I recognized the woman in the movie from when she was at our house.”

“What movie? What woman?” Kate asked, bewildered. “Someone tell me what’s going on here.”

“Goddamn her,” Patrick said. “That bitch was the beginning of the end.”

“Who was she?” Caroline asked.

Patrick shrugged. “Some Russian slut. Who cares? She escaped a couple days after she gave birth, and somehow she got hold of one of James’s business cards. The baby had already been transferred—”

“Don’t you mean sold to the highest bidder?” Caroline snapped.

“Transferred to her new family,” Patrick continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “James was an idiot. I told him to be more careful about bringing anything with him that gave any clue to his identity, but he never listened.”

“Selling babies?” Kate whispered. “Are you saying my dad—”

“Shut up, Kate,” Patrick snapped, pushing the barrel of the gun harder against Michael’s head for emphasis. “Your dad did what he had to do to keep you and your stepmother in high style. Just like I did what I had to do to provide for my family. Now tell me what else you found in that safe, Caroline!”

“What happened to the girl?” Caroline countered.

“I expect the same thing that’s going to happen to you. Killed, her body stripped of any identifying marks before being suitably disposed of. Now what was in the safe?”

He was crazy. She could see it in his wild blue eyes. “The only things we found were a flash drive and some printouts that looked like bank statements, but there were no names on the accounts, just numbers.”

“And what’s on the flash drive?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Kate yelped in pain as Patrick brought the butt of the gun down on her head.

“I swear!” Caroline yelled. “It had something on it, a virus or something, like a booby trap. And all the data is encrypted.”

“You’re lying. What was on it?”

“We couldn’t get any information off it before I left. I have no idea what’s on there.”

“You swear. You swear on his life,” he yanked Michael away from Kate and pressed the gun to the little boy’s temple. “There was no information on there about me, or my family? Anything about Jennifer?”

“I don’t know if there is or not,” she said, pleading. Through the fear and rush of adrenaline that stole the warmth from her veins, she finally saw the truth. “Jennifer isn’t yours.”

Patrick’s mouth tightened. “She’s as much mine and Melody’s as any child. She looks enough like Melody that no one ever questioned it. I made sure of that.”

He was right. Melody’s blond hair and small, fine features were so similar to her daughter’s it had never occurred to Caroline that Jennifer wasn’t their biological child.

Then another blonde with pretty, delicate features flashed in her head. “You took Emily Parrish’s baby. That’s why you wouldn’t let her back out of the deal.”

“It was all Melody wanted.” Pain flashed across Patrick’s face and for a moment, Caroline caught a glimpse of the man she’d thought was her friend. “I would have done anything to make her happy.” His mouth tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Who has the flash drive, Caroline?” Patrick pressed.

Caroline swallowed hard. If she told him, she was likely putting Toni Crawford in danger. Caroline knew Patrick wasn’t working alone, and some of his colleagues were ruthless killers. But if she didn’t tell Patrick, she was going to put Kate and Michael through more pain. At least Toni had all those big strapping ex-military types to watch her back. “It’s at the Gemini Securities office. They’re working on it right now.”

Patrick’s face relaxed a little and he released a sobbing Michael. He came to stand over Caroline, his legs spread in a sickeningly triumphant stance. “We better hope I get my hands on it before they crack the code. But thanks to your cooperation, I’ll keep my promise and make it quick for them.”

She could barely hear Kate and Michael’s sobs through the roar in her head. She had to do something. Caroline leaned back on her elbows, and using every bit of core strength she’d built up in endless hours with her personal trainer, she brought her bound, booted feet up squarely between Patrick’s legs.

He emitted a choked groan and fell to his knees.

“Run, Kate! Get out of here!” she yelled, rolling to the side as Patrick squeezed off a wild shot. “Go!”

Kate staggered to her feet and grabbed Mikey’s bound hands in her own as she slipped through the stall door Patrick had left partially open.

Caroline squeezed her eyes shut and said a little prayer.
Please please please let them get away
. She opened her eyes to the sight of Patrick’s gun, trained straight at her face.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Easterbrook?”

Patrick’s eyes widened with what looked like fear at the clipped, accented voice. Caroline dragged her gaze away from the gun and saw a tall, lean man with caramel colored skin and the coldest yellow eyes she’d ever seen. He held Kate by one arm, Michael by another and was flanked by two goons that closely resembled the three she’d seen earlier on the porn set.

“I think we’re getting close,” Kaylee said as she peered out at the rain soaked hills that lined the road. “I definitely remember that rocky field.”

The fenced off pasture on the east side of the road was dotted with gray boulders that stood out against the deep green grass like giant moon rocks.

“You got that?” Danny asked Ethan, Alex and Ben who were still on the line. They all answered in the affirmative.”

“Let me check in with Toni, see if she can come up with something,” Ethan said and clicked over. A few seconds later he clicked back on the line. “Danny I’ve got Toni on with me.”

“Where do we need to go, Toni?”

“I don’t have the house,” she said, excitement evident in her voice, “but I managed to get into the documents on the flash drive. James Medford was working with Patrick Easterbrook. He was the doctor who delivers all the babies and falsifies their birth certificates.”

Son of a bitch. And they’d gone straight to Easterbrook’s house and tipped their hand. “Kaylee, what did the doctor who examined you look like?”

Kaylee’s eyes were wide and haunted. “Old, with a lot of gray hair. Blue eyes. And big. Not fat, but like a big guy who maybe used to play football. I saw him a couple times before that too, when he was there doing deliveries.”

“There’s some stuff in here too about someone named Marshall who worked at James’s law firm, along with a list of names, birthdates, hair and eye color of the birth mothers.” Toni’s voice grew more serious. “There are a lot of names on this list, Danny, going back a lot of years.”

An ugly legacy Patrick Easterbrook was willing to kill to keep quiet.

“Any mention of anyone named Gates?” Danny asked.

“Hold on,” he heard her click. “I haven’t had a chance to go through all the documentation.” There were a few seconds of silence and then a soft, horrified, “Oh, God. He’s described as the ‘supplier.’ James wrote that Gates set up a facility to keep ‘selected gestational carriers’. He describes the procedure—”

“Yeah, I have a good idea what’s going on,” Danny said as he swallowed back bile. “Where’s the facility?”

“It doesn’t say. James wasn’t allowed to go on site. Patrick met James or Marshall at another location to hand off the baby….

“There’s one other thing, Danny,” Toni said. “According to James’s notes, not all of the babies were adopted by outside families. At least one stayed in the inner circle. Eighteen years ago Patrick Easterbrook and his wife kept a baby girl for themselves.”

Dread curled in his gut as the answer hit him full force. But just to be sure, he asked. “Does it list a birth date?”

“Just a month and a year. June 1991.” If money wasn’t enough to motivate Patrick to kill, protecting the circumstances of his daughter’s birth certainly was.

Patrick Easterbrook and James Medford had taken Emily Parrish’s baby and killed Anne Taggart to keep their secret. Rage burned in Danny’s veins. At the years he’d lost hating his mother, thinking she’d left him. Letting that lie fuck up his entire world and costing him the only woman he’d ever loved.

Rage for the pain he, his brothers, and especially his father had endured in their exhausting, fruitless searches.

Every sinew screamed for revenge. James was dead. It was too late to do anything about him. But Patrick was about to learn the hard way that you don’t fuck with the Taggarts or their women.

“We have to find Patrick Easterbrook, now.”

“On it,” Toni said and clicked off.

Danny switched lines and called Melody Easterbrook. “Where’s your husband?” he said, barely giving her a chance to say hello.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Danny Taggart. We spoke the other night. I need to know where your husband is.”

“He’s out of town on business,” she said testily, “and I don’t think I appreciate your tone.”

“And I don’t appreciate that he killed James Medford and tried to pin it on Caroline, so we’re even.”