Chapter Fourteen
Fiona was restless. Since Management's unexpected visit, she'd been staying with Maddie along with her mum and Sean. They had decided after the wedding not to return to Ireland until the babies were born in another three months, and Maddie had encouraged them to stay with her.
Ena had given up the bed in Michael's old bedroom to Fiona, and was sleeping in Nate's room while Sean had moved in from the garage and was sleeping on the couch in Maddie's living room. Fiona's boys had kicked her alert an hour or so ago, and she'd restlessly turned and then turned again before she settled in to visit a nightmare from the past she thought she had eradicated.
She and Michael were sitting next to each other, their backs to the wall, their hands together, clutching either side of an explosive she'd created. They were ready to end their lives together, to take with them as many of Vaughn's men as possible, so Jesse could have enough time to escape with the thumb drive that contained the NOC list of operatives in Barrett and Vaughn's nasty covert operations group.
She was startled in alertness by the cold and painful end of a handgun barrel braced against her temple. She looked up in time to feel something cover her nose and mouth and something warm blossom in her arm.
The next time she awoke she was on her bed in the loft. Her mouth was dry, and sunlight was streaming through the open doors to the deck. She blinked, then tried to focus. Dead Larry was sitting outside on the deck. She closed her eyes again but her stomach objected and she found herself getting up and scrambling to the bathroom. That's when she discovered, thankfully, she hadn't been trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey.
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It was nearly ten in the morning before Ena, Maddie and Sean discovered Fiona was missing.
That was verified when they found her shoulder bag with her Walther and cell phone
beside the bed. Her car was still in the driveway.
They had determined she needed her sleep, so they stayed quiet until Ena went to peek in on her. It was logical to assume she was taken instead of having left under her own volition. Sean was the first to berate himself for not being alert to an intruder. The longer Ena and Maddie thought about it, the more frightened they became.
They called Sam immediately, and asked Jesse to contact Michael.
But before he did anything else, Jesse logged into the remotely operated security cameras he'd installed on Maddie's house. When they were removing all the devices that had been placed on her residence, he made the decision without conferring with anyone to discreetly install his own.
Jesse believed there was a connection between Vaughn, Management and Larry. He didn't understand what it was, and he'd never met any of them face to face. But after learning about Larry from Sam and Fi, he was convinced he was the most dangerous of the three. Psychopathically dangerous.
Jesse had kept the information about the small, unrecognizable cameras he'd installed to himself, hoping it was wasted effort. It wasn't. He narrowed GPS search fields for time and scrolled through, stopping at 4:20 a.m. Someone entered Maddie's kitchen door from outside, either with a key or a lock pick. A few minutes later, the same person left carrying a body over his shoulder. Jesse sighed. Fiona. He'd recognize the shape of those legs anywhere.
The question was . . .why would someone take Fiona to the loft? And who else was there?
"Crap." He said.
"Using my word. That can't be good," Sam said as he walked into Jesse's office.
"I know where she's at." He showed Sam the tapes, explained why he'd installed the security cameras, and told him about the micro-locator inside her wedding band. "There's one inside Mike's ring, too, as long as he's still wearing it."
Sam looked at him. "You put locators inside their rings?"
"Yeah," Jesse said. "Wedding gift. Hey, it's what I do."
"We need to get some eyes on the loft, and we got to call Mike."
"Yeah, that's up next," Jesse said, clicking in a series of commands that brought up the warehouse building Michael and Fi lived in.
"You bugged the loft?"
"No, man, didn't violate their privacy, just put eyes on the exterior like at Maddie's place."
Sam watched as Jesse flipped past frames, ending on a time slot and scrolling until he found images of someone carrying a body up the loft stairs at 5:07 a.m. "That's Fi."
"And that's Dead Larry," Sam said. "We got to get rid of that guy."
"We've got to talk to Mike."
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Max nudged Michael's shoulder. "Wake up. Jesse needs to talk to you about Fiona."
They'd worked all night sorting security codes and matching users, hitting dead end after dead end. Because Michael had been at it for more than 24 hours and Max had slept, he'd taken over. "Just grab a couple of hours, and come back to it."
Reluctantly, Michael agreed. Since his conversation with Fiona almost a month ago, Michael had relentlessly followed, tracked and assembled packages on every link he could find that hinted at involvement in the Barrett-Vaughn conspiracy. Max had been a step behind him the entire time.
Hearing Fiona's name sent Michael into an abrupt state of alertness. "Where?"
"Com room."
He was still rubbing sleep from his eyes when he sat down and faced Jesse, listening to every word he was relaying about Fi's disappearance and how he'd located her. He could see Sam pacing in the background wearing worry like a coat.
"She's still at the loft and it looks like it's just the two of them. Sam and I are going over there and getting eyes on the place. I'm thinking about trying the Westen-rooftop entrance. Mainly, I want to find out if she's okay or . . . "
"Yeah," Michael said. "I need to be there."
"Wait, Mike. Let us do this, and get back to you, say in an hour? Or less."
"Yeah," Michael agreed with obvious frustration.
Less than forty minutes later, Michael was notified to return to the com room. It was Sam, not Jesse returning the video call. He could see Jesse in the background at another computer.
"She's gone, Mikey. Just gone. Place is locked up like you left it yesterday. Looks like she was there, was on the bed, got sick, used the bathroom and changed clothes. And that book is missing, too."
"What book, Sam?"
"What to expect if you're having twins. She was nuts to get it back when she realized it was still at the loft, so I got her another one. It's at your mom's house. There's something damned weird going on here, but I don't-"
Jesse interrupted then. "Surveillance was compromised. You can see him go into the loft with her, and then nothing. There are no images with them leaving the loft, but I did find a 15 second lapse that occurred a couple of hours ago. That means they know about my cameras, and they're tied in. All we know for sure is that if Larry took her, he must have drugged her, and took her to the loft, then left. That's all we've got."
"Oh, and one more thing, Mikey," Sam added. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Fiona's wedding ring. This was on the nightstand next to the bed under a tissue."
"She had to do that on purpose," Michael interpreted. "Dammit! Why did she . . .? Dammit, I know what he wants. I don't know why I didn't see this before. It's that damned thumb drive."
Sam narrowed his eyes. "Which he? Larry or Management? And how do you figure the thumb drive? That was dead issue after we turned it over to Raines almost a year ago."
"No. We didn't." Jesse said. "Think back, Sam. If you'll remember, I was on a stretcher. I'd just palmed the drive to Mike when Raines' goons came after him. He gave Fi a kiss good-bye and slipped the thumb drive in her back pocket. When I got out of the hospital two days later Fi gave it to me. I took it back to CIFA, had it decoded with Simon's Bible. I asked the analyst make two copies and gave them to Raines personally. By then, the thumb drive had been turned into a bunch of zeros and ones. I gave it to Fi. I don't know what she did with it, but now-"
"Whatever is left on that drive is what everyone wants, and what Raines needs," Michael filled in.
That met with silence while everyone digested that thought.
"Whoever decrypted the drive for you dropped files, on purpose, Jesse," Michael continued. "That's why Raines couldn't take down the rest of Barrett's organization. That's why I kept finding holes. We know Vaughn co-opted it, and Management wanted it, and Larry found out about it from Brennan. So he killed Brennan before he discovered Jesse and Fi had escaped with it."
"How would he know Raines didn't get all the info on the drive? Unless . . . " Max started.
"Unless whoever Jesse got to decrypt it was working with Larry or Larry knew how to find him," Michael said.
Jesse agreed. "Two things. We need to get Fiona back, and I need to get back with CIFA to find out who was involved with decrypting the NOC list."
Sam was still not convinced. "How would Larry know Fi had the thumb. . . Crap, he probably watched the whole thing go down after the firefight. We thought the cops had him . . . damn, if this isn't a lesson in not leaving dangling ends. To be fair, there were only five of us trying to survive the evil empire."
"We're still trying to survive, Sam. I'll be there as soon as I can."
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She was being held in some sort of extremely well insulated climate controlled storage facility, Fiona decided.
She couldn't hear any noise at all beyond the AC ventilation, which meant whatever sounds came from this room probably couldn't be heard on the opposite side of the walls.
He'd brought her here in the back end of a panel van. She had tried to keep her sense of direction, but he'd made so many turns, her internal map was a bit confused. She thought they must not be far away from the apartment complex she and Michael had looked at before he had asked her to move into the loft.
The storage unit was new, too. It could have been built after one of the hurricanes last year. There didn't seem to be any evidence of cockroaches or mice, only a few spiders.
She had scoured the room, looking for any evidence of a listening device or surveillance camera and couldn't locate one, but considering how small those things were these days, she couldn't be sure.
It was a shame she'd had to leave her wedding ring behind when she figured out Larry did not know they were married. In her experience, the less the guy holding you hostage knew, the better. He'd taunted her while she was vomiting bile in the stool.
"Don't blame Michael for this," he'd said in that simultaneously soothing and frightening tone of voice. "That was all me and that little relaxer shot I gave you. Blame Michael for getting you pregnant and not marrying you, but you're going to have to blame me for everything else because I plan on making things very . . . troubling for you, Fiona. Very troubling."
She'd thumbed the ring off and held it in her palm when he jerked her up and away from the toilet. "Now be a good girl and get dressed. We have to be going. Where do you keep your clothes in this dump?"
He'd watched her dress, and when she sat on the bed to tie her shoes, she waited until he looked away to slip her ring under a tissue on the nightstand.
"What kind of pervert are you?" she'd asked.
"One who's trying to figure out how pregnant you are."
"Not very," she'd replied.
"Just enough then. That'll work."
And that was the problem with the ceilings.
They were just enough higher that if she set the futon on end, climbed on top and tried to access a ceiling panel, she still wouldn't be tall enough to reach one. The overhead lights were on and stayed on. There was a porta-potty in the corner. Someone's grandmother's colorful knitted blanket and a lumpy pillow had been left on the futon. Bottled water and juices and boxes of crackers had been left in a box on the floor.
She knew she was getting specialized treatment because of her pregnancy. What she didn't know was what he wanted.
Larry only appeared to be interested in her well-being. Fiona knew that would only last until he got Michael. She'd guessed her role would be one of victim. Hurt the pregnant woman and the dad will do anything, that was Larry's game plan. And it would probably work, too, she realized.
That was odd, she thought. She had been worrying about how Michael prioritized things in his life, but she knew. She had always known. Maybe, as Jesse suggested once, she had always known Michael was not the settling down, picket fence kind of husband. And the truth was she didn't want that kind of husband.
She righted the futon and moved it back into place, then started examining its structure. What could she take apart on that frame, and could she turn it into a club.
What she wanted were tools. Weapons. She didn't even have a hairpin. She'd dressed in a pair of soft pants with a stretchy waist and a t-shirt and sneakers. Not her normal shoe choice, but eminently practical if need be. And need might be.
Larry had brought along her book-What to Expect when You're Expecting Twins. He had been wickedly entertained by the idea that Michael was to become the father of twins. If he lived that long, that was.
She was still trying to figure out what Larry wanted three days later when the door opened and an angry, red-faced Larry drug Michael's limp and battered body into the room and shut the door. At least now she had a weapon-a slat she'd removed from the bottom of the futon. It wasn't much, but it would work.
Michael had passed out. As Fiona examined him, she could see he was more severely injured than he had been at the time she'd returned to Miami five years earlier when a hotel maid was worried he might die.
There was a large blood stain on one side of his shirt, and it wasn't his blood, she realized, because the only injury under his shirt there was a ugly red and purpling bruise. She could see a bullet had grazed his forehead, another creased the top of his shoulder, and still another had gone through his right thigh. He'd wrapped a woven belt around and over a blood-soaked cloth pad covering that wound.
She cradled his head in her lap and tried patting his cheeks lightly. She needed Michael conscious. Finally his eyes opened. "Tell him," he rasped, "Raines has it. Tell him." And then he passed out again.