Mercy Mild—Chapter Two
Victoria's daddy had told her to only use the cell phone he gave her in case of fire, blood, or imminent death. Victoria figured the last one applied since she'd overheard enough of Daddy and Aunt Walker's friends talk about their spy jobs to know what happened if someone was kidnapped, and she was pretty sure Aunt Ellie wouldn't take Jack and Clara somewhere without telling Mummy. To Victoria, that meant they had probably been stolen.
She stayed with the store clerk when Mummy told her to, sat behind the counter and listened as the clerk helped people, and worried about her mum. Mummy finally came back, pale and breathing harder. She told Victoria to stay where she was. Victoria took the phone out of her pocket and turned it on. Then she pushed the number that would automatically call Daddy while Mummy went back through the store and searched again, just in case.
Daddy didn't like being interrupted at work, so she expected him to sound really cranky when he answered. Instead, his voice was soft and kind of worried. Victoria knew Daddy worried, but this time he sounded almost scared, even though Daddy was never scared. "Victoria?"
"There was a man following us, and now Aunt Ellie, Clara and Jack are gone," she blurted out. She watched her mum, who had gone pale and struggled for breath, return. "I think they were stolen. Mummy's having trouble breathing."
"Where are you?" he asked.
She told him. Daddy's voice was muffled enough she couldn't hear his words, so Victoria figured he'd covered his phone to tell somebody something.
"Hand the phone to your mom," Daddy said when he uncovered it again.
Victoria knew it was rude to interrupt grownups when they were talking, but she figured this was more important. She tugged at Mummy's sleeve. When her mum looked down, Victoria handed her the phone. "It's Daddy."
Mummy frowned, looked at the phone. Victoria thought she might be in trouble. "John?" Mummy asked. Victoria noticed she relaxed a little when she heard whatever Daddy said to her. "They were right here," Mummy told him, "but now they're gone."
Victoria waited as patiently as she could, hoped Daddy was coming because she was certain he could find them. In the meantime, she looked over the counter and into the store for the man, who also seemed to have vanished.
Mummy frowned hard, then she looked at Victoria. Once more, she thought she might be in trouble, but Mummy simply put a hand on her back and moved her from behind the counter to a corner of the store where there wasn't a lot of merchandise or people but they could still see the front doors. "I don't know about a man," she said carefully, and then she asked Victoria, "What man did you see?"
She shrugged. "When we left the house there was a man watching. He pretended to scrape his boots off, but they were clean. He kept following us. I saw him twice while we were at Molly's, and he came in the store after we did. Then everyone disappeared."
Her mummy knelt in front of her. "What did he look like?"
"He was tall, but not nearly as tall as Daddy and Uncle Chuck," she told her mum. "He had a black coat, one kind of like Paddington Bear wears."
She had found Mummy's old Paddington Bear books when they last visited Grandma Ariel. Victoria liked the stories, but she hadn't yet convinced her parents that she should get two birthdays like Paddington. She liked that Paddington, just like her daddy, gave people hard stares when he was displeased.
"What else?" Mummy prompted.
She closed her eyes a minute to picture him. "He had a gray scarf, and his black hair was really short like a soldier's. His nose was kind of squished like Major Clack's." Victoria frowned a moment. "He walked funny, kind of rolled side to side, sort of like one of his legs was shorter than the other, and he kept his right hand against his chest, like he couldn't move it."
Mummy went even more pale than she'd already been, and her voice was kind of breathy when she said, "John, they're in trouble."
This time Victoria was the one who couldn't breathe. She should have told Mummy about the man sooner, should have called Daddy sooner, and then, maybe, that man wouldn't have taken Aunt Ellie, Clara, and Jack.
"Both our pasts," Mummy said then. Victoria wondered what that meant. "From Victoria's description, I think it might be Toussaint L'Ouverture."
Whatever Daddy said made Mummy mad. "No," she bit out, "I do not mean the leader of the Haitian Revolution. This is not the eighteenth century, John, and you probably knew him as Georges Duvalier."
Being mad at Daddy made Mummy's face fill with color and her eyes snap angrily. Then she rolled her eyes, though Victoria couldn't help but wonder why when Daddy wasn't there to see it. "Yes, in Montreal."
This time, Mummy sighed. "I know you hate the French, John, but the Québécois are a completely different flavor of French."
That was when Victoria remembered the woman. "Mummy, when we first turned onto Clark, he was talking to a woman."
Her mother's blue eyes zeroed in on her.
"What did she look like?" There was a note in Mummy's voice that made Victoria think her mum had an idea who that woman was, and she was about to be really mad.
"She was older, kind of tall, with brown hair." Mummy's eyes narrowed. "I didn't get a good look at her." In truth, Victoria had been more interested in the man. "She wore a fur hat and coat," she remembered, then frowned. "It was kind of whitish gray."
Mummy stood up then, and Victoria listened as she told Daddy what she had just said. Then she heard her mum say, "Yes, I remember Alan Dietrich." A moment later she said, "Alright." Then, "I will."
When she hung up, Mummy handed Victoria her phone back and used her own to call Grandpa V. H. She quickly told him what had happened and what Victoria had seen. Her mummy handed her the phone, and Grandpa V. H. asked her to repeat it all. When she finished, he asked her a lot of questions.
While she answered them, Mummy walked toward one of Daddy's friends who came into the store with a woman and two other men. Daddy's friend met Mummy about halfway across the store, and they talked while Victoria continued to answer her grandpa's questions. The others began moving through the main part of the store. Mummy introduced Daddy's friend to the store clerk she had left Victoria with, and then she came back to Victoria. Her grandpa told her to tell Mummy he was sending her some photographs to show Victoria, and then he told her he loved her.
Once she'd given Mummy the message, Mummy took her to Daddy's friend. "Victoria, this is Special Agent Alan Dietrich with the FBI."
Victoria frowned, mainly because, according to Daddy, the FBI was the worst agency of the U.S. government—if he didn't count the EPA.
The FBI man smiled at her and said hello. He told her he knew her Daddy, which Victoria already knew because she'd heard Daddy talk about him and because they had gone to his house before. He took them into the back of the store, and then he spoke to her like she was Jack's age until she gave him a hard stare. He laughed and looked at Mummy, who appeared more worried than Victoria had ever seen her. "She's definitely her father's daughter, isn't she?" Victoria was pretty sure he was making fun of her, so she crossed her arms and gave him an even harder stare.
By then, Victoria was certain her little brother had been stolen and Clara and Aunt Ellie with him. She was also certain that man with the funny walk and the black coat stole them. Now all she had to do was figure out how and where he had taken them since daddy's friend was being an idiot and talking to her and to Mummy instead of looking for them. She figured, too, that the lady in fur was probably that man's partner, and Victoria thought about Cruella De Vil, who also wore fur and took people. She hoped Cruella wasn't going to do horrible things to her brother and Clara and Aunt Ellie if Daddy's friend didn't hurry up and find them.
She worried that it might have been her fault that Jack and the others got taken, so Victoria decided she needed to not get mad at the FBI man and to tell him and the woman with him everything she saw. When she finished doing so and finished answering the questions they asked her after she told them what she had seen, the FBI man smiled at her and told her she was a very observant little girl and that that would make his job easier.
Victoria nearly told him Daddy would find them, but the last time she told someone Daddy worked with that they should just let Daddy do something, Daddy had later given her one of his Talking To's about "professional courtesy" and "don't insult the grownups."
While she answered questions, she couldn't help thinking they ought to be doing something instead of asking her again and again about the man and Cruella De Vil. She supposed it was okay since the other people the FBI man brought with him seemed to be doing something to try and find Jack. More FBI people and some police officers had shown up since the man started talking to her and Mummy.
When the questions were finally over, Victoria sat down beside her mum and thought, tried to see if there was anything she might have forgotten, anything she might have missed, and when she was certain she'd told them everything, she realized something.
Maybe she and Daddy should have been teaching Jack how to get away from grownups, just like Daddy and Mummy had done for her when she was little. Of course, it had been a long time since someone last talked about trying to steal Victoria, and even though she couldn't imagine why someone would want to take Jack—let alone Aunt Ellie and Clara—Victoria knew now that someone should have taught him what to do when grownups tried to snatch him. Jack might be a pain in the ass (though she knew not to say so or Mummy and Daddy would send her to her room since little girls weren't supposed to say ass), but he was also her little brother, and their Mummy and Daddy couldn't always be there to take care of him. Neither could Victoria, she realized, and for the first time since he disappeared, she felt fear.
Grownups sometimes had trouble understanding Jack if they weren't used to how little kids talked, so even if he got away from the man, he might still be lost, might not be able to find his way to someone who could let Mummy and Daddy know where he was. Even if Jack got away, he didn't like to talk, so he might not even say anything to anyone, especially if he remembered Mummy's warnings about not talking to strangers. Then again, those had been for Victoria, but Jack had probably heard them.
Maybe Daddy should have given Jack a phone, too.
Victoria's chest hurt. She wanted her Daddy. She thought she might be about to cry, so she was glad when Mummy hugged her. Mummy whispered in her ear: "It will be alright," she said. "They'll find him and Ellie and Clara. You did very well, Victoria, and they have some ideas where to look because you did exactly as we taught you."
"We should have taught Jack," she choked.
Mummy didn't just ignore her like a lot of grownups would. "Yes, we should have," she said quietly, met Victoria's eyes. "You'll have to help me with that when we get him back."
She threw her arms around Mummy and held on tightly, hoped she wouldn't cry. Mummy held her tightly, too. Sometimes Victoria wished their family was like other families, but it wasn't, and even though she wanted to slug Jack most of the time, if he turned up, she'd hug him, too, and be nicer to him than she had been.
They had to wait for the FBI people to finish and take them home—Daddy's orders—or they had to wait for him to come get them. Victoria hoped Daddy came and got them because she was sure he could figure out where her brother and Aunt Ellie and Clara had been taken. Mummy wanted to help, but the FBI people refused to let her. Victoria could tell how mad that made her mum. Mad was good, though, because each time Mummy finally backed down, she started to shake, looked like she might cry. Being mad kept her from doing either. Victoria talked to Mummy then. Making her mum focus on her seemed to help Mummy hold things together.
Victoria froze. She wasn't sure why she thought it, but once she had, she couldn't get rid of the question: What if that man took Aunt Ellie and Clara because he thought they were Mummy and Victoria?
Mummy must have realized something was wrong because she set Victoria away from her on the bench the FBI people finally told them they could use. Mummy kept her hands on Victoria's arms, though, and she was glad since Mummy's touch made her feel better. Her mum searched her face; Victoria could tell she was worried. "Victoria, this is not your fault."
Sometimes she thought Mummy read minds.
Breathing in slowly, Victoria asked the question that had occurred to her: "What if they thought they were us?" Her voice shook and barely made noise.
Her mummy studied her, paled. The last several days, Aunt Ellie had often watched Jack while Mummy and Victoria did Christmas shopping. Jack was easily bored and got into trouble when they were shopping. After Jack slipped his leash for the fourth time (Daddy had told her that it wasn't a leash and not to call it that, but Victoria thought it looked like the harness thing Mrs. Rabinowitz used when she walked her dachshund), Mummy decided to leave him with Aunt Ellie when Clara's mum wasn't working at the hospital so they could finish their Christmas shopping. Mummy closed her mouth, which had dropped open and chewed her lower lip a moment. "If that man was who I think it was, then he knows me," she said quietly. "I doubt he mistook Ellie for me."
Dread filled Victoria. "What if he wasn't who you think?" she asked. "What if whoever it was got it wrong?"
Before Mummy could answer, Daddy was there. Victoria shot off the bench and ran to him, glad when he scooped her up and hugged her tightly. He also pulled Mummy against him. Victoria didn't really relax, though, because if the man wasn't who Mummy thought, then Victoria might have made a mistake when she described him—or someone else took them. Daddy kissed Mummy, and then he pressed a kiss on Victoria's cheek. "I should have come immediately."
Victoria wished he'd come immediately, too, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she half listened to her parents talk about what Mummy had been able to learn and thought hard. The woman in the fur coat was familiar, so if Victoria could just remember where she had seen her, maybe they could find Jack.
-X-
Casey had given Victoria a cellphone when they came to Chicago. He'd long ago learned not to ignore the kind of persistent itch in the back of his head he'd gotten when they temporarily relocated for this assignment. Even though he was fairly certain that after several years of no threats to them she and her mother were safe, Casey hadn't been able to shake the idea that something was going to go wrong. He'd told his daughter to always carry the phone with her, to make sure it was always charged, and he'd walked her though the six numbers he'd programmed into it and the order in which she was to call them if it ever became necessary. He'd also explained what merited using the phone.
He ignored Dietrich's incredulous swearing and picked up. His daughter was not prone to panic, so if she called him, something was dreadfully wrong. "Victoria?" he asked softly, and prayed like hell it really was her on the other end and that her emergency wasn't actually a serious one.
"There was a man following us, and now Aunt Ellie, Clara and Jack are gone," his daughter said in a rush. "I think they were stolen, and now Mummy's having trouble breathing."
Not for the world would he ever admit the sense of panic that flooded him then. He tamped it down, reminded himself that he did not panic. After all, he could hear the edge of it in Victoria's voice, and if he wasn't calm, she might tip over that edge. It was the one thing about parenthood he was always good at: calm in the face of chaos or eminent disaster regardless of his inner turmoil. He took a deep breath and asked, "Where are you?"
He knew the grocery store. His wife often shopped there if she only needed a handful of things because it was close. That was her excuse, anyway. Casey knew it was because it was on the way to Molly's, and he was well aware of Riah's weakness for the bakery's dark chocolate raspberry cupcakes.
Casey covered the phone because Richardson was obviously winding up the pitch. Casey was suddenly torn. He could see this part of the mission out, or he could go after whatever bastards took his son. Then he realized that leaving to chase the bad guys would win him points with Riah but blow months of work because Bartowski would have to be told why he was bugging out, and the second the kid learned his sister and niece were MIA, he'd run for it, and it would all go right down the toilet.
As he eyed Richardson, the FBI's undercover agent, on the monitor, he thought hard.
Kidnapping was federal, and, in particular, it was FBI federal when it involved children, thanks to the Lindbergh baby case. Much as it killed Casey to admit it, they were far better prepared than he to deal with this. "You're going to do as I say, and if you fuck it up, Dietrich, I will kill you."
Dietrich looked startled, then concerned at Casey's vehemence. Casey told him to take over, curtly told Bartowski to listen to Dietrich while he dealt with something, and then uncovered his phone and told Victoria, "Hand the phone to your mom."
"John?"
Casey heard her fear and her obvious upset. "Victoria says Jack, Clara and Ellie disappeared." He didn't want to panic her, especially since their daughter was right about Riah's breathing; he could hear the slight wheeze in her voice.
"They were right here," she told him, "but now they're gone."
"Our daughter said she saw a man tailing you. Did you get a look at him?" He eyed Dietrich who was focused on his man and the mobsters on the monitor.
"I don't know about a man," his wife said in a carefully controlled tone. He heard her then ask Victoria, "What man did you see?"
Casey couldn't quite hear his daughter's words, and he nearly asked Riah to put it on speaker so he could. Instead, he waited impatiently, hoped this would turn out to be nothing more than her father having put a man on them to see they were safe and Ellie wandering off with the kids to do another errand while his wife grocery shopped. After a moment, Riah gave him a concise description: around six feet, black hair, broken nose and five o'clock shadow, black duffle coat with a gray scarf, and black boots. She went silent. Her voice was thready and almost inaudible as she added. "John, they're in trouble."
The trick would be not to spook her any more than she already was, not to set off the kind of panic attack he'd only witnessed twice and never wanted to experience again, especially when he wasn't there to help her through it. As a result, Casey made the kind of sarcastic comment that usually made her angry: "So is this guy a lone nut from the tundra or someone from one of our pasts?" He knew it was more likely someone from his if that turned out to be the case.
"Both our pasts," Riah replied, her voice a little stronger. "From Victoria's description, I think it might be Toussaint L'Ouverture."
That, he couldn't resist, mainly because he was the one who needed calm after hearing that name. "The guy who overthrew the whites in Haiti?"
He knew better, remembered the L'Ouverture she referenced from Montreal, and what he remembered was pretty goddamn ugly, though what the man might want with Jack—let alone Ellie or Clara Woodcomb—he simply couldn't fathom. Toussaint L'Ouverture had had a lot of years to hone his particular brand of sadistic bastard. Besides, Victoria's description hadn't sounded like an octogenarian, and L'Ouverture, assuming he was still alive, was at least eighty.
His wife bit, though, and made an immediate response to his sarcasm. "No, I do not mean the leader of the Haitian Revolution. This is not the eighteenth century, John, and you probably knew him as Georges Duvalier."
Casey had forgotten the old man had liked French nom du guerres, though he couldn't remember that L'Ouverture had ever used Duvalier. His son, on the other hand, had, and the wily old man had a grandson Casey suspected might meet the description his daughter had given her mother, provided genetics ran true and someone had smashed the kid's nose for him. For clarity, he asked, "From Montreal?"
"Yes, in Montreal."
"Fucking French," he breathed. It was an automatic response, and he wouldn't have made it if Victoria were in earshot. His daughter was picking up far too many of his expressions as it was.
She sighed. "I know you hate the French, John, but the Québécois are a completely different flavor of French." It wasn't hard to hear her exasperation in her response. Casey was unrepentant, though, especially because her panic always subsided if she was pissed off.
He heard Victoria tell her mother, "Mummy, when we first turned onto Clark, he was talking to a woman."
Riah immediately asked, "What did she look like?" Casey began running the L'Ouverture males through the databases while he waited for his wife to get their daughter's answer.
"She was older, kind of tall, with brown hair," he heard Victoria say. That particular description didn't narrow things down, though Casey was glad to have Carina ruled out. The redhead had played fast and loose with his family members before when she thought it would get her ahead in the game. On second thought, he wouldn't much mind taking Carina down, especially since this particular assignment kept dragging out, and he suspected that was largely down to her way of playing her own game with the hillbillies. "I didn't get a good look at her," he heard his daughter add. "She wore a fur hat and coat. It was kind of whitish gray."
His wife sounded even more pissed off when she repeated Victoria's answer, which made Casey suspect she had an idea about who the female might have been and that she didn't like her at all. That usually meant the woman was connected to either Casey or her father.
He wondered if there were things his wife had failed to tell him while he was distracted by his current assignment.
Bartowski's debut was underway, so Casey made a decision he was certain would seriously piss his wife off. He put his job first, though he suspected he was making the right decision given he lacked expertise in kidnappings and because his people skills were notoriously terrible when it was personal. It was probably best to send someone who wouldn't want to beat the hell out of any witnesses who weren't able to point them immediately at where his son was. It was definitely better to send someone who specialized in child abductions. He eyed the man next to him, and wondered what it would cost him when he acted on his decision.
"Remember Alan Dietrich?" he bit out. Dietrich had been at their wedding, but they hadn't socialized with the agent and his wife very much since coming to Chicago, mainly in case one of them was being watched.
"Yes, I know Alan Dietrich."
He could hear a slightly appalled note in her voice, and that meant she understood he wasn't leaving the job. He let the churning emotion through a minute because he was pretty sure she was angry at him. That was fair, but he was pissed off, too. He let her hear his frustration. "I can't leave right now," he bit out, "we're on go. Abduction—especially child abduction—is the FBI's sandbox, and it's show time here, so I'm sending Dietrich to you."
The other man looked startled as Casey met his eyes, but he'd have to wait for an explanation.
A moment later Riah tightly said, "Alright."
There was no accusation there, and for a split second he thought about what he'd told her years earlier when he convinced her to marry him. He was sorely tempted to be selfish for once, to go running and personally make sure his son was found safe, but then he remembered the oaths he'd made his country and the promises he'd made Beckman. He suspected the diminutive general would understand if he chose to ignore her orders and go to his wife, but there was always the chance she wouldn't, would instead see him court-martialed for dereliction of duty.
It occurred to him that Jack would probably be safe and with his mother if Casey hadn't been selfish enough to bring his family to Chicago in the first place.
"I'll get there as fast as I can," he promised, "but if I leave, Chuck's going to demand to know why. Then we have to start all over again with a new team because I'll have to tell him about Ellie and Clara, and he'll freak out and insist on coming."
It killed him that she would understand, let him off the hook for leaving her to deal with this alone. Casey felt like he was taking advantage of her general willingness to let him put the job first. He didn't like that at all, especially not when his first instinct was to go after whatever human slime thought he could get away with taking their son.
There were really only two reasons to take Jack—one of which was revenge on Casey (but then they would have taken Victoria and Riah as well to cause maximum damage), but the other, seemingly more likely scenario given his wife and daughter hadn't been taken as well, was the Intersect. He figured Ellie and Clara had been the real targets, had been intended as leverage against Bartowski, and that Jack had simply been with the wrong women when they were taken.
"Riah, I promise I'll be there as fast as I can, but for now, let Dietrich and his team do their job." He heard Bartowski begin, knew the kid needed his attention. He added fervently, "Help them find Jack."
Despite the fact he was certain he'd never hear the end of it from Dietrich, he added, "I love you, and I'll be there the second I can." In fact, as soon as Dietrich was en route, he was going to tell Walker and Bartowski to make it quick. A thought occurred to him. "Call your dad. He might find L'Ouverture faster." Casey left unsaid that he might also more quickly rule him out if necessary. If V.H. did, though, then they had no real leads with which to work.
His wife's voice was thick when she said, "I will."
When she hung up, he returned his attention to Dietrich. "My wife and daughter are at a grocery on Clark," and he gave his old friend the address. "Someone took my son and Bartowski's sister and niece. Get your CARD team and go find out what happened. I'll be there as soon as we can get away from here."
Dietrich stared at him, clearly dumbfounded. Casey really didn't want to hear it, so he growled, "Get your ass in gear and go find Jack. Get him back for us."
He didn't wait for that command to be followed, instead turned his attention to the operation underway. "I need you to work as fast as you can without compromising the operation," he told Walker and Bartowski. "We have another situation we need to deal with—immediately." There was only a slight flicker on the kid's face. Casey didn't elaborate, but he watched as Dietrich made his exit, the other man already on the phone to send his team to Riah and Victoria.
Just before Dietrich slid the door closed, Casey told his old friend to tell Riah and his daughter to stay put until he got there—or to take them home if Casey wasn't yet able to get free of Bartowski's opening act to get inside Bridges' operation.
Casey also sent a message to Beckman, told her what had happened and that he would report in as soon as he was able, but he also told her he was leaving others to do any cleanup with Bridges once Walker and Bartowski left the stage because his wife and daughter needed him. He honestly didn't care if she fired him or reprimanded him for doing exactly what he'd promised he wouldn't.
It took a little over two hours, that first maneuvering with Bridges, and Casey was more impatient than usual the entire time. He second-guessed his decision. He knew he should have turned this over to Dietrich, taken the man's team and gone to the grocery himself. Nonetheless, he dutifully fed Walker and Bartowski information, listened to the subtle negotiations, but even as he did, more perfunctorily than normal, he ran scenarios, checked what came back on the L'Ouverture family, and tried to figure out who remained of the old Fulcrum/Ring factions who might be trying to relive the past by pursuing an Intersect.
For good measure, he considered Walker's and Bartowski's enemies, past and present, and he sent Grimes a text, mainly to check that the Bearded Boy Wonder and Alex were safe. They were supposed to come into Chicago the next night, and Casey considered asking them to stay away. When Grimes responded, though, Casey didn't follow instinct and tell him to cancel their flight to Chicago. He suspected neither of them would agree to do it if they knew what was really going on, so he said nothing about the abduction. Besides, Bartowski would probably tell his life partner as soon as he knew, but the longer Casey could delay upsetting Alex, the longer he could keep them out of it, the better.
When Bartowski made his bow and they rendezvoused, Casey already had an NSA operative there to take the van. Bartowski, as predictable as clockwork, was running on an adrenaline high, and part of Casey didn't want to burst his bubble. On the one hand, the kid had done good, solid work, and he deserved to ride that. On the other, two of his family members were missing.
It was Walker who read his face and demanded, "What's wrong?"
Even if Casey did gentle and sensitive, he wouldn't have chosen that path in this case. The less time they wasted, the better, so Casey kept his eyes on hers and got to the point: "Nearly three hours ago, someone kidnapped Ellie, Clara, and Jack from a grocer's. We need to go."
Bartowski started in, but Casey ignored the stream of angry accusation, especially since the kid didn't say a thing he hadn't already acknowledged in his own head.
He couldn't say his driving was prudent given the road conditions and the fact that the snow still fell thickly. He definitely broke a number of traffic laws while Bartowski squawked and angrily vented because Casey hadn't told him sooner. Casey considered ignoring both the kid's complaints and the city's traffic laws justified since this was absolutely an emergency, and while the road conditions meant he occasionally skidded, each time he quickly regained control of the SUV. His son was missing. If anything beyond being snatched happened to Jack, Riah would never forgive him. Hell, he wouldnever forgive himself.
Immediately after that thought popped into his head, Casey knew he had made the wrong call: he should have left his post the moment Victoria told him what had happened. Screw his assignment. His son had been taken. Screw the oaths and promises. This overwrote those. The mission was less important if for no other reason than Jack's apparent kidnapping would devastate Riah.
As he ran a red light to make a left turn onto Clark, his chest tightened. He didn't give a good goddamn about the horns and skidding vehicles as he dodged pedestrians, barely noticed them except as obstacles to avoid.
He did belatedly think he should have taken one of the vehicles with a light bar and siren so people would clear out of his way.
Not bothering to stop at the booth to take a parking ticket after he again cut off traffic to turn into the grocery's lot, he parked the SUV in the fire lane—if a barely controlled skid that nearly ended up against the dried-blood red brick of the grocery's wall could be called "parking"—and exited the car. The elderly man dressed in what looked like a perahan wa tunban under a thick parka who came after him, jabbering about parking rules, caught the brunt of Casey's anger. He snapped in Pashto, "Unless you'd like to see if there really are seventy-two virgins waiting, get out of my way."
The man's eyes shot wide; after a blink of a second, he renewed his protestations. Casey held his badge out, and the man's complaints died. He scurried back to his booth, and Casey made a mental note to tell the feds to check the guy out.
They had shut the place down, though there were a few shoppers and employees still inside, either talking to the feds and Chicago PD or waiting to do so. Casey asked the first fed badge he saw, "Where's Dietrich?"
The woman hesitated, so he turned an impatient glare on her. "In the back."
He narrowed his eyes. "Where's that?" he demanded with the quiet menace that usually got results.
She pointed a shaking arm toward a far corner of the store, and then gathered enough courage to say, "You can't go back there!" when he headed in that direction. He kept going, held his badge up behind him, and vaguely heard Walker settling in to soothe ruffled feathers and, presumably, find out what the feds knew.
There was a cluster of employees and agents near the door to the back. Casey would interrogate them once he saw Riah and Victoria. He held the badge up again to forestall anyone else trying to stop or delay him.
It was only then that he realized Bartowski was beside him. He'd tuned the other man out before, ignored his questions, but now that they were here, the kid was spewing concern. Casey wasn't going to belittle that, not this time. Bartowski had earned some respect, but Casey didn't know anything beyond what he'd already told him, was flying blind, so the kid could just get his answers when Casey did.
As they entered the storeroom from the short hallway, Victoria flew at him, and even as he bent and scooped his daughter up into a tight, strangling hug, his eyes found his wife. Riah slowly stood from the bench where they had been seated, and her pale face showed her fear more clearly than he'd ever seen. Normally, she held it together, kept the spy face mostly intact, but this time her emotions were nakedly displayed. Her expression cut to the bone, and Casey realized he'd been functioning pretty much on autopilot until that moment. It had held his own worries at bay, but now the guilt crushed in on him. He again wished he'd dropped everything and come when he'd first answered his daughter's call.
He shifted Victoria to his hip as Riah reached him, folded her close, too, then bent, breathed in and had the experience of knowing what it must be like for her when panic flooded in and cut off her air. As her arms wrapped tightly around him, he kissed her. He pressed a kiss on Victoria's cheek. Riah buried her face in his chest. That chest felt uncomfortably tight, and he could feel his heart race. "I should have come immediately," he breathed softly, hoped she recognized his apology.
She shook her head, then lifted it from his chest. "It wouldn't have made any difference," she told him, a slight wheeze still in her voice. "They were taken out the front, so there were no tracks to follow. I spoke to the parking attendant who saw them leave, but he was busy with a customer when they exited. He really didn't see anything other than that they walked out of the lot to the street behind. He doesn't know which way they went when they reached it."
Because she looked up at him to say that, he caught her mouth, kissed her, drew comfort from the fact that she hadn't completely collapsed, had tried to do something while he had sat in the van and listened to Bartowski maneuver. Her words weren't much comfort, though. The one thing he did know about Jack's situation was that the first three hours were key in child kidnapping cases, but on the off-chance his wife didn't, he kept his mouth shut. Riah was obviously struggling with the situation, so he wasn't about to make it worse for her.
He set Victoria back on her feet and asked Riah to go through it all again. When she finished, he sat beside her on the bench where she and their daughter had been seated when he arrived, wrapped an arm around her and one around his daughter before asking Victoria to tell him everything she remembered. She reported she had first seen the man shortly after they left the house. Each time they stopped, so did the man. She described him in minute detail when Casey asked, and out of the corner of his eye, he noticed one of the feds taking notes. It pissed him off that they might not have asked Victoria what she had seen, but he did nothing more than return his attention to his daughter.
When she described the woman, he cocked his head. Riah asked softly, "What?"
Swallowing thickly, he breathed deeply in and then let it sigh out. Casey knew the name might cause her to go off like an IED. She gave him a look that said he had better spill. "It sounds a little like Galina Vian."
Riah's brows shot up, and then she looked seriously pissed off. "I've never seen her—that I'm aware."
"I've seen one of her movies," he said carefully. For once he was glad she only seemed interested in using sarcasm. He was well aware that his wife knew more than she admitted about the Belgian woman who'd once left her father cuffed naked to a bed. Vian had been a porn star early in her career, but later she had turned to espionage and the theater. It didn't change the fact that she was firmly entrenched in males of Casey's generation for a series of soft-core movies V. H. used to facetiously dismiss as "historical" since they were often set in the past.
His wife's expression told him she knew exactly what kind of film he meant. To his relief, she didn't ask which one. Instead, she said only, "Maybe we can find some footage from a security camera and see who it was." She looked at Victoria and prompted, "Tell your father the rest."
Victoria resumed her recital, explained about seeing the man outside Molly's, the woman, too, and then how she had stayed with her mother in the store and why. Casey felt Riah's reaction even as he heard her soft gasp when their daughter told him she stayed with her mother because she didn't want her to get stolen again like Riah had been when she was a little girl.
It was a pretty safe guess that V. H. had once more been telling Casey's daughter things he really shouldn't, and Casey would have a few choice words for his father-in-law about that when they finally had Jack back.
He watched his daughter's face crumple a little then smooth out once more. He was proud of the fact that she didn't let emotion get to her, but sometimes—like now—it might be best if she didn't control it quite so tightly. He pulled her closer to his side where she sat on the bench beside him, kissed the top of her head. What he really wanted to do was pull her into his lap and not let her go.
"I should have called you sooner," she said with a hitch in her voice that made Casey press another kiss to the top of her head.
"You did the right thing," he assured her, unwilling to make her think that by delaying she had risked her brother. Casey might have been able to abort the operation with Bartowski if she had, might have been able to get there before anything happened, but had he done so, they would likely have had to scrap their operation entirely, start again from the beginning with a new team and prolong his time in Chicago. He was also aware that he might well have shrugged Victoria's concerns off if she had called him sooner. If the guy was just watching them, Casey would probably have suggested she simply tell her mother, and the result would likely have been the same—their son and Ellie and her daughter taken.
Then again, Riah might not have stopped at the store, and they might all have been taken.
Riah's hand slid onto his thigh, and he covered it with his own, linked his fingers with hers. He had the urge to get up and interrogate Dietrich's people about what they had learned, but instead he sat there, provided what comfort he could to his wife and daughter and let Bartowski and Walker make the demands he would have preferred to make himself. Dietrich's team wouldn't find them any faster if he interfered with their investigation, and Walker was better than he at the getting people to talk part while Bartowski excelled at getting people to say things they normally wouldn't. Casey recalled the number of times he'd been impatient with those who intervened in his own investigations, and he found himself unwilling to be on the receiving end of what he had sometimes dished out.
When his phone rang, he released Riah's hand. It was V. H. For a moment Casey was tempted to get up, move where their conversation couldn't be overheard by the man's daughter and granddaughter. Instead, feeling Victoria tense and seeing Riah's face pale further, he stayed where he was and answered the call.
"All the L'Ouvertures are accounted for," his father-in-law told him, "so whoever this is, it isn't one of them."
Casey couldn't say he was surprised by that news. He hadn't really thought it was one of the Canadians. He suspected the Intersect—or an Intersect—was the real goal, and the L'Ouvertures were unlikely to go so far out of their way to try and take candidates for which they had little real use. The Ring was gone, Fulcrum was so crippled it might never fully recover, and while Casey had a few ideas about who might be stepping up to fill the void, none of them were quite strong enough or well organized enough to mount such an operation.
"How are Mariah and Victoria?" the other man asked.
Studying his wife and daughter, Casey found he wasn't at all sure how to answer that. Riah was barely holding it together while Victoria looked like someone had died.
His own breath caught at that, mainly because until then he had refused to accept that as a possibility.
"Holding up," he finally answered.
"I'm catching a plane." Casey was about to tell him it might be better if he stayed at ISI where he could run checks if this turned out to be something other than what he suspected, but the other man continued. "I'm not sure what time I'll get there, but I'll stay at a hotel since I imagine your place will be overrun with the FBI."
"Your daughter will shoot you if you do," Casey said, but his heart wasn't in the normal taunts he traded with V. H. Riah cocked her head, frowned at him. "Come to the house."
"Given the surveillance they'll put in place, it's probably better I have some privacy."
V. H. had been making noise about retirement, but so far he'd done nothing about it. He was still the director general of a major intelligence organization, one answerable to a foreign government, so Casey understood what he was saying. "I think we can make an arrangement."
"I'm not sure I trust an NSA agent given what any arrangements might mean after Snowden."
It was telling that Casey had no comeback for that. "Your daughter will want you with her."
"Alright."
He handed the phone to Riah when her father asked, and she, too, insisted V. H. stay with them. While they talked, Casey leaned down to Victoria and asked, "Want to go home?"
She nodded, her face solemn. Then she frowned. "Daddy, what if they took Aunt Ellie and Clara by mistake? What if they thought they were me and Mummy?"
That tightness was back in his chest as those questions spilled from his daughter. He'd briefly thought it but shoved it aside to deal with the operation underway. Now, meeting his daughter's troubled gaze, he gave it more serious thought.
There was no doubt it was possible, even probable. If it was truly the Intersect in play again, then each of them were viable targets—including Ellie and her own daughter. It was curious that they hadn't all been taken. Casey supposed it could be limited numbers if it had only been the man and woman Victoria had seen. It could have been concern that Riah wouldn't go quietly because of her background and training, so Ellie and Clara made more attractive, more biddable targets. Jack could have just been a bonus.
It was also possible Victoria had the right of it. Whoever had taken them might well have mistaken the two female Woodcombs for Riah and Victoria.
As Casey considered that, he decided whoever had taken them would have been in touch with him by now if that had been the case. The Intersect might play a role, but taking what someone believed to be his entire family was personal, and the kinds of human garbage he dealt with usually liked to let him know what they had done. It wasn't like those particular scumbags wouldn't have recognized Riah, though, so he tended to discount her being the actual target.
It was entirely possible, though, that Ellie was, that someone had connected Bartowski to her and taking her and her daughter was meant as leverage against the kid.
His daughter clearly expected an answer to her question, but he wasn't sure he had one. He was afraid his suspicions would only make her feel more guilt than she obviously already did, so Casey told her the only thing he felt he could: "This wasn't your fault, Victoria, and you shouldn't think it is. Even if someone thought it was you and your mother they took along with Jack, that's definitely not your fault."
"If Mummy wasn't a communist," she whispered, "I could have had my gun."
Casey wanted to laugh, mainly because it was better than any of the alternatives. It wasn't really funny, though, so he choked it back, especially since he didn't want to explain to Riah what he'd found funny in this situation. He'd been in trouble more than once with his wife for things their daughter had repeated or that he had allowed Victoria to do when the two of them disagreed about parenting, but if Riah found out he'd bought their daughter an age-appropriate handgun and regularly took her to the range to learn to use it, he'd probably be sleeping alone for a very long time. "What did I tell you about shooting bad guys?"
She sighed. "That I can't shoot them without proof that they really are bad guys, and even then I should let a grownup do it."
There had been considerably more to it than that, but Casey let it go since she got the essential part of it. Before he could add anything, Dietrich stepped into the room where they sat from the wide hallway. The other man beckoned to him. "Take care of your mom," Casey told Victoria softly as he removed his arm from around her and stood. Riah still spoke to her father, and when she looked up at him, he tilted his head slightly toward where Dietrich waited. Her eyes tracked to the other man, and then she nodded at Casey.
"And here I thought you'd be the extreme pain in the ass interfering with my investigation," Dietrich grimly greeted him. "Bartowski is in danger of friendly fire."
Casey ignored that. He knew all too well what Chuck was like when his loved ones were endangered. "Tell me what you know—all of it, not just the part you usually placate families with." He reinforced that order with a particularly hard stare, one that made Dietrich inexplicably laugh.
"Your daughter gave me that very same look." Dietrich's amusement died quickly when Casey amped it up, wondered what had inspired Victoria to do so. "They were taken out the front. One of the store's employees saw them being herded out, but before she could stop them or ask what they were doing, they were out the door. According to her, there were four of them. Two of them carried Jack and the girl out while the woman was held between the other two." Dietrich made a face. "She didn't think to call the cops, either, despite the fact that Dr. Woodcomb was obviously not leaving through her own choice, though the clerk says she wasn't really resisting either."
It didn't surprise Casey, especially since he'd learned long ago that a lot of civilians generally chose not to get involved, assumed someone else would report things that obviously needed to be reported to the authorities, so he focused instead on the fact that Ellie apparently hadn't fought; then he considered why. Probably a threat to Clara, or they had weapons on her the clerk hadn't seen. She was cooler under pressure than Chuck, but he found it hard to believe that she hadn't made an attempt to get away or to say something to someone. Then it hit him: she wanted the children safe, believed she could protect them, so she probably went with them when it was obvious they were taking them. It was probably the smartest thing she could have done in the circumstances, and Casey hoped she could make sure nothing happened to his son or her daughter before they found them. He also hoped that nothing happened to Ellie.
"They walked along the front of the store away from Clark," Dietrich continued, "so there's no telling which direction they went when they eventually got into a vehicle—if they got into a vehicle. There are a lot of apartments around here, and people come and go often. Chicago PD's handling the door-to-door, and my people will follow up with anyone who saw something. There are also a number of parking garages, and we're checking those. Thank God they all have security cameras, but it'll take time. We don't know what they were driving or if they got in a car or a van, so we'll have to canvas and ask who and what was seen leaving the area and in which direction."
Casey nodded. The narrow street that ran along the side of the store was short, fed into a primarily residential street on one end and into a mix of commercial and residential buildings on the other, so it was unlikely they'd get lucky and find surveillance video unless their quarry took their hostages into a parking garage. Casey doubted Dietrich's team would be so lucky since whoever had taken Ellie and the kids had managed it in broad daylight in a grocery store in a busy neighborhood and had apparently not aroused suspicions until Riah raised the alarm.
"Have you notified Ellie's husband yet?"
Dietrich shook his head. "He was in surgery when your wife tried to call him, and she told us it was probably better to wait until we knew more."
Woodcomb would not be awesome when he was told, so Casey thought Riah had made the right call. Bartowski could tell his brother-in-law and deal with the inevitable lady feelings and histrionics from Ellie's husband.
"All four of them were men," Dietrich continued, giving Casey their descriptions. Not one of them matched Victoria's description of the man she'd seen. Before Casey could ask, Dietrich held up a hand to stop him. "We saw the man your daughter described on the store surveillance, but he never approached them."
Maybe the man knew Victoria had seen him and simply served as the group's eyes, kept their targets in sight until they could be collected. "So we're looking for five men and the woman?"
Dietrich nodded, ignored Casey's we. "I assume you want to see the video?"
He took Casey to a cramped, cluttered office at the end of the hallway where one of Dietrich's agents showed him the store's surveillance video. He saw his family, Ellie, and Clara enter the store, watched as they separated—Riah and Victoria actually shopping while Ellie, Clara and Jack wandered and looked. He saw the man Victoria described keeping an eye on Riah and their daughter, and he saw the four men who blocked the ends of the aisle where Ellie and the other children were and closed in. They seemed to know where the cameras were because there were no good views of their faces. The four men moved in while Ellie and Clara discussed cookies, apparently. Jack was the first to spot two of the men and began tugging on Ellie's sleeve. By the time she gave him her attention, it was too late.
For a split second, one of the men exposed his face to the camera when he scooped up Jack, and Casey's blood ran cold. He reached for his phone and then had a brief moment of panic when he realized it wasn't there. Then he remembered leaving it with Riah. He demanded Dietrich's phone, and the FBI agent reluctantly turned it over. Casey prayed V. H. hadn't left his office yet.
He continued to watch the video, now focused on Riah and Victoria looking for the others while he mechanically went through the protocols to get through to his father-in-law. Casey decided he should have called the man's personal number instead of the office number he had automatically dialed. If it wouldn't raise questions he didn't need raised, he'd have hung up and done what he should have. Then again, it might be better if Dietrich couldn't get directly to V. H. The man Victoria had identified kept tracking them, and then he disappeared out the front door. It made no sense to Casey, indicated Ellie and Clara had probably been the real targets and Jack collateral damage. On the other hand, that familiar face made Casey believe they had specifically been after Jack, that Ellie and Clara were the collateral damage.
"Whatever happened to Lee Nevins's old partner?" he demanded when V. H. was finally on the line.
Nevins had shot Riah years ago and then disappeared. Two years later, they had rounded him up, and as far as Casey knew, the man still sat in a secure facility controlled by ISI. At the time, Nevins had worked for the Ring with another man from CSIS who'd escaped the dragnet for Nevins, and Casey hunted the name.
"Quinnell?"
"That's the one." Casey should have remembered, but they'd never crossed paths before or since. He'd only seen the man's photo, read his file.
"He's stayed under the radar and out of Canada as far as I know," V. H. said. There was an edge to the man's voice that told Casey that wasn't particularly good.
"I just watched him take my son," he bit out. "Bring everything you know about the bastard with you—or better yet, send it ahead."