Chapter 1

Matt woke up to the phone ringing next to his head. He looked at the clock: 5:00 am. This better be good he thought to himself as he picked up the receiver.

"Houston" he managed to get out with a yawn.

"Houston, I know it's early but I need your help." Michael Hoyt was a lieutenant with the LAPD who nowadays counted himself among one of Houston's friends. Their relationship had started out extremely rocky at first, but now they counted on each other.

"What's goin' on, Hoyt?" Houston sat up on the edge of the bed rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"There's been a kidnapping. An 11-year-old girl. You may have heard of the parents: Jeff and Theresa Saunders. Wealthy. He's a stockbroker and she's a pediatrician. We've got video from their security cameras. You're not going to believe it." Hoyt sounded as tired as Matt had ever heard him.

"Okay, let me get some clothes on and I'll meet you." He took down the address. "I'll be there in about twenty minutes. Bye." Houston put on a pair of jeans, a white button-down collar shirt and a pair of boots. As he started to leave the house, he turned back. He had a bad feeling. He went back to the bedroom and retrieved his gun and a couple of extra clips.

As he drove up the street looking for the address that Hoyt had given him, it wasn't hard to spot: police cars, crime scene investigator vans, and something Houston wasn't hoping to see. The van from the medical examiner's office was parked at the end of the sidewalk.

Michael Hoyt was waiting for him next to the ME's van. "Sorry to drag you out of the bed so early, but I've got a feeling we're going to need your help." Hoyt shook hands with the private investigator, thinking back to when they had first met. In those days, he was tired of hearing "Houston and Novelli would have handled it like this", and "Novelli said it was okay for Houston to look at files." He had a hard time living in the shadow of Vince Novelli for a few months after he was medically discharged from the force after a shooting. That shooting, of which Houston had been a part, had changed Novelli's life drastically: he was now missing his spleen and was also a diabetic due to the damage from the bullets. He and his family had picked up and moved to Hawaii where they now operated the family business, a restaurant started by Mama Novelli, Vince's mother.

"So what have you got on video that's so hard to believe?" Houston walked with him into the home and into what appeared to be the home office belonging to one of the residents. "Sanchez, pull up that security footage for Houston." Hoyt rubbed the back of his neck.

On the computer's monitor, Houston could see feeds from four different cameras located on the property. Camera 1 was covering the front door, camera 2 the back door, camera 3 the east side of the house, and camera 4 the west side. Houston watched as a very large figure showed on camera 3, and looked around. "Okay, is it the camera angle or is this guy really that big?" Houston estimated him to be over seven feet tall.

"He's that big. Near as we can figure, at least seven feet." Hoyt was clearly stressed.

"Can we get a closer look at his face?" Houston leaned closer as Sanchez isolated the frame where the suspect's face was more in focus. "Okay, he's got some kind of a mask on. Not your typical ski mask. Looks like one of those that the wrestlers from Mexico wear – a luchador mask. Maybe we can get a copy of this to some of the manufacturers, see if they know where this particular style came from and who bought it."

"Okay. Sanchez, take care of that for us." Sanchez took a screen shot of the mask and put it on a flash drive. "Now watch what this guy does." Hoyt stepped back to give Houston room to get closer.

"Uh huh, yeah, that's hard to believe alright." With his bare hands, the suspect ripped the phone lines completely out of the box attached to the side of the house. He then shoved the door with his shoulder, splintering the frame around it. Then he disappeared from the camera view, to reappear a couple of moments later carrying what appeared to be a girl wrapped in a blanket. "Looks like she's fighting him." Houston watched as both ends of the blanket moved. "Do we have a picture of the girl?" Matt turned to Hoyt who handed him a 4 x 6 of a pretty little blonde-haired girl. "What about the parents?"

Hoyt shook his head. "Both are dead. There's no sign of any weapon being used. Both of them have broken necks."

"Not hard to believe at all after seeing the size of this guy." Houston followed Hoyt to the master bedroom. "God." He expected it not to be pretty, but this was beyond anything he had imagined. Both of them were lying on the floor, in what should have been a face-down position, but their necks had been so badly broken that they were now facing up.

"What do we know about the parents? Any enemies?" He turned to Hoyt. Looking as though he wanted to throw up, Hoyt started back out of the bedroom shaking his head. "Not that we know about. All we know so far is that the man has a brother down in San Diego. We haven't found anything yet about the lady's side of the family." Hoyt had his hands stuffed into his pockets. Matt followed him down the hallway to what appeared to be the room of the little girl. Nothing looked out of place here, except that the bedspread was missing from the canopy bed. Pictures of unicorns and princesses were painted on the walls. Dolls and stuffed animals lined the shelves. On the nightstand next to the bed was a photograph from happier times: the family of three on a merry-go-round at an amusement park.

"Well, it's not much to go on." Houston looked around the room again. Hoyt rubbed his temples and looked up at Houston. "We've put out an APB and an Amber Alert with a description of the suspect and the girl. Her name is Haley Marie Saunders, by the way." Both heard raised voices coming from the other end of the house, and one voice in particular moved Matt to open a couple of buttons on his shirt and put the picture of Haley inside under his left arm. Hoyt saw the move and grinned. "Some things never change, huh p.i.?" "I have no idea what you're referring to, Lieutenant." Houston suppressed a smile as Floyd Hooten came storming back to the bedroom where the two were standing.

"I want this guy outta here, NOW!" Hooten pointed at Houston. "We don't need any lousy amateurs involved with this case, Lieutenant. You should know better than that."

"Amateur, huh? Seems to me that Houston proved YOU to be an amateur last time we all met." Hoyt stood with his hands on his hips.

"Lieutenant, I think I've seen about enough," Matt said, walking toward the door. "Nice to see you again, J. Edgar Hooten." Matt said the last in a loud voice. With that he loped on out of the room, down the hall, and out of the front door, all the while feeling the eyes of the pompous FBI agent on him. He heard plenty of giggles and half-suppressed laughter from the LAPD officers.