In This Together

Suddenly the bathroom door burst open, and if she’d been scared before, she was terrified now. Travis filled the door, looking very large, and if he could have shot lasers from his eyes, he probably would have. He looked like an avenging dark angel.

He came toward her, and for one horrible moment, she thought he was going to hit her. But he snatched the phone out of her hands.

“I didn’t even turn it on,” she said.

“You had my phone for five minutes and you didn’t turn it on?”

All he had to do was check the call history to know she was lying. “Okay, yes, I turned it on, but I just wanted to tell Daniel I was okay. I asked him to give you what you want.”

“I’ll just bet you did.” He took her arm. “Come on. We have to go.”

“We do?”

“I suppose you think we should just sit here and wait for the cops to come and arrest me?”

She tried to reason with him as he dragged her through the house. “I didn’t tell him where we were. I couldn’t, because I have no idea.”

“The cops can locate me by the GPS. They can get within a hundred feet, and once they do that, they’ll figure out we’re in the vacant house.”

She knew that, but she was surprised he did. She’d assumed when he said he couldn’t manage a simple online form that he wouldn’t understand how the GPS tracker on a phone worked.

He took her through the back door. It was only a few feet to the truck, which was already open. No chance of her making a break for it, not that she’d have given herself even a small chance of escaping him. He was strong and fast. He’d recovered awful damn quickly after she’d bonked him with the wrench.

He pulled her to the rear of the truck.

“Oh, come on. Do I have to ride in the back again?”

“Of course not, princess. Your limo should be here in a few minutes. Yes, you have to get in the back. I know you think I’m stupid, but do you really think I’d put you up front with me where you can jump out at the first stop sign? Or open the window and scream for help?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid.” She sighed as he opened the cargo cover and the tailgate.

“Will you get in, or do I have to stuff you in there? I don’t want to hurt you. I really, really don’t. But I’ll do what has to be done not to get caught. Not yet.”

She could fight him. He’d have a helluva time getting her into the back of the truck if she kicked and clawed and screamed, and maybe a neighbor would hear her this time. But in the end, she’d probably hurt herself worse than him. He’d get her inside the truck—no doubt about that—and be gone before the cops arrived.

She looked him in the eye and made sure he looked back. Then she gave him the evil eye, something her abuela had taught her. She’d reduced more than one grown man to quivering jelly with this look.

“I’m keeping score. I’ll make you pay.”

“I don’t doubt it. Get it through your head, Elena. You can’t talk me out of this. The only thing that matters is that someone gets Eric out of prison so he can get his little girl back and try to salvage what used to be a good and productive life.”

She looked away. Then she sat on the tailgate and swung her legs up. Travis held her hand, helping her wedge herself into the truck bed as if he were assisting her into Cinderella’s carriage.

“Oh, comfy.” She patted a folded blanket he’d put in there so she’d have a cushion for her head. Just before he shut her in, she handed him his cell phone, which she’d pickpocketed again.

“Son of a bitch!”

“You might want to stop carrying it in your front pocket,” she said sweetly.

“How did you do that? Do you moonlight as a magician or something?”

“Trade secret.”

He closed the tailgate and cargo cover. The last she saw of him, right before it went dark, he had the strangest, most perplexed look on his face, as though he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her.

She could have kept the phone. She could have turned it on again once she was out of his sight. His provider would track the pings and follow them right to whatever new location he drove to. But she hadn’t.

Some part of her really didn’t want Travis to get caught.

* * *

DANIEL HAD ASKED Randolph, his chauffeur, to drive him directly to the Project Justice offices downtown, where everyone had been put on notice. Elena had been kidnapped. And when it came to his people, no effort was too great.

Celeste was in her usual place at the front desk. A former Houston cop, she was the building’s first line of defense—and a formidable one at that. Her wild-colored clothes and big dangly earrings were a deceiving affectation. No one got past her if she didn’t want them to.

She got to her feet. “Daniel. Any word since she called?”

“No.” It didn’t surprise him that news of Elena’s call had reached Celeste. She always seemed to know everything that was going on. “Celeste, thank you for your quick and decisive actions when the kidnapper called.”

“I knew he was serious. I tangled with him once before, when he tried to get in here without an appointment.”

“You’ve met him, then? What’s he like. Tell me every detail you remember.”

“He’s over six feet, muscular build, working man’s hands. Dark hair, kinda shaggy. Blue eyes. Nice looking, can’t deny that. Any other time—”

“Irrelevant, Celeste.”

“Right. He was very polite but insistent. And stubborn. He didn’t want to take no for an answer, no matter how many times I explained that his first step was to fill out the online form. Once he realized I wasn’t going to budge, he left. Not in a happy mood.”

“Did he seem unbalanced?”

“No, not at all. He stated his case in very clear terms. I remember the case he was talking about, the Tammy Riggs murder.”

Daniel remembered it, too, though not in great detail. He followed a lot of crimes, sensational or not.

“He had a sort of noble bearing. Looked me right in the eye. Never used any coarse language, didn’t lose his temper.”

“Thank you, Celeste. If any more calls come through from him, put them—”

“Directly through to the conference room. Yes, sir.”

God, he loved Celeste. He suspected he was the only person in the world she addressed as “sir.”

From the lobby, he went directly to the main conference room. He could hear the buzz of conversation behind the door before he opened it; his team was on the case.

Conversation stopped as he entered.

“Daniel.” The speaker was Ford Hyatt, his most experienced investigator. “Any new developments?”

“Not on my end. Bring me up to speed.” He pulled out a chair at the head of the long mahogany table. Usually he ran Project Justice meetings from home, via video conferencing. But for this matter, it was important to be there in person—if only to make sure his people knew this was no ordinary operation.

“We have copies of the security video from the front gate,” said Mitch Delacroix, who was in charge of anything involving computers, video or audio.

“You caught the abduction on video?”

“Unfortunately no. Elena walked down the driveway and went outside the gate to talk to him.”

Why had she done that? Elena was quite proficient at discouraging nuisance visitors. Then, she had seemed unusually troubled by the man’s plight—not her usual ruthlessly efficient manner.

“What about his vehicle?”

“Also not caught on video.”

Daniel made a mental note to add some extra surveillance cameras outside the gate to include more of the street in front of his house.

“We do have a vehicle description,” Hyatt said. “Riggs owns a black 2001 Ford F-150 pickup.”

“What else do we know about him?”

“Travis Brandon Riggs. Thirty-three years old. He and his brother, Eric, were raised by a single mother, now deceased. Father unknown. He did a short stint in foster care when he was ten. Dropped out of high school when he was sixteen. Since then he’s worked in construction on and off. Three years in the army. Honorable discharge. Married to a Judith Evans, divorced a year later. Did a stint at the Harris County Jail for assault. Haven’t found out the particulars yet, but I’m working on it.”

So, he did have violent tendencies. That was bad news.

“No trouble since he got out—that was almost ten years ago. Currently he owns a small construction company doing home repairs, remodeling and renovation.”

“Home address?”

“It’s a one-bedroom apartment in Westridge, nothing special.” Mitch brought up a picture of a blocky, 1970s-era building on the video screen. It was small but tidy—neatly trimmed lawn, freshly painted, freshly raked. “We’ve already got it under surveillance,” Mitch continued. “He hasn’t been there.”

And he probably wouldn’t be dumb enough to show his face there, either. He’d made no attempt to hide his identity, and he had to know there was a good chance the authorities or Project Justice people would come looking for him.

“Mitch. What’s the word from Reynolds?” David Reynolds was Daniel’s contact at Riggs’s cell phone provider. For a hefty fee, he would check the GPS data and report back.

Daniel had already sent another investigator to check out the first location, the place from which Riggs had made his first call, but it hadn’t looked promising and had probably been only a temporary stopping point. Daniel was counting on Elena’s call yielding more fruitful information.

“Reynolds is still working on it.”

“Griffin,” Daniel said, addressing another of his best, a former investigative reporter who had become one of his most skilled operatives, especially when it came to working undercover. “As soon as you have a location nailed down, I want you and Jillian to go there. Take the fake utility truck—uniforms should be inside it. Once you confirm it’s the right place, we’ll figure out our next move.

“Raleigh,” he asked another senior investigator, who was also his top-dog lawyer, “are you ready to brief me on the Eric Riggs case? You know what I’m looking for—a piece of jewelry missing from the victim, a detail never released to the public.” He needed something to appease Travis Riggs, to lull him into believing Daniel was knuckling under the pressure.

“It was a necklace,” Raleigh said. “A gold locket.”

Obviously Travis hadn’t done his homework, or he’d know that Daniel did not knuckle under to anyone. He would do whatever it took to keep Elena safe, of course. But she said she didn’t think she was in any danger. Daniel was banking on that being true. He just had to keep stringing Travis along until he made a mistake. And he would. When he did, his ass was Daniel’s.

Mitch murmured something into his headset and then turned to Daniel. “We have the location nailed down to three houses in a subdivision in Timbergrove.”

“Let’s roll.”

* * *

FORD HYATT, DRESSED in full SWAT-like gear, showed Daniel a satellite map on his phone. “It’s these three houses, at the end of the cul-de-sac.”

Daniel spoke into a radio. “Anyone have eyes on those houses?” Jillian and Griffin were already inside the complex in their fake utility truck.

“Affirmative,” came Jillian’s response. “We can rule two of them out. I’ve seen people going in and out, no kidnapper types. The third one appears unoccupied.”

“That’s our target, then. Hyatt, Kinkaid and I are right behind you.”

Daniel and his two operatives were in a taxi with tinted windows. Daniel, behind the wheel, was dressed as your average cabdriver. Hyatt and Kinkaid were in back. Taxis seemed to have no trouble getting in and out of gated communities. Mitch simply faked a call from a resident to the guardhouse requesting a cab. Five minutes later, Daniel and his party were inside. The guard barely looked at them as they passed through. They would be on camera, if a question ever came up, but with shades and a hat, Daniel wasn’t recognizable, and the taxi’s license plates wouldn’t trace back to anything.

Moments later, he pulled up behind the utility truck and spoke into the radio again. “Griffin and Jillian, make entry at the rear.” He didn’t bother using code names; their communications were encrypted. “Hyatt and Kinkaid will come through the front. On my signal.”

He watched as the utility truck slid into the driveway of the house in question, which did not appear lived in. That was good news. Less chance that they were breaking into the home of an innocent family.

Daniel gave Griffin and Jillian a few seconds to get situated and then signaled Hyatt and Kinkaid. They exited the taxi and ran noiselessly to the home’s front porch. Daniel hoped to hell the neighbors didn’t see; this was the sort of highly illegal maneuver that he and his people could get arrested for. He’d considered letting the police make the extraction, but no cops could mobilize as fast as Project Justice could. And this was Elena they were talking about.

Daniel remained in the taxi. He didn’t have the same training as the others, and if he tried to play macho cop he could put himself and others in danger. But as soon as they had the kidnapper subdued, he would be there.

“On my signal,” he said. “One, two, three, go.”

Without hesitation, Hyatt broke the glass in the front door, reached in and opened the door, yelling out a warning to anyone who might be inside to get on the floor. They looked like cops and sounded like cops, but they never identified themselves as such. Posing as a cop brought additional criminal charges.

Daniel counted off the seconds as he listened to the shouting and banging door on the open channel of his radio. No sounds of gunfire, thank God. More good news.

“Clear... Clear... Clear...” That single word came through over and over again. Twenty seconds in, Daniel heard, “All clear.” That meant he could go in. But he had a bad feeling as he sprinted across the front lawn and into the house.

Hyatt met him. “There’s no one here. It appears the house is being renovated.”

“Found something!” Jillian shouted from another part of the house. All eyes looked toward the hallway where she appeared, holding a blue piece of clothing.

“Elena’s jacket. Damn.” How close were they? By how many minutes had they missed rescuing Elena and taking Travis Riggs down? Ten? Five?

“There was also a small amount of blood in the bathroom,” Jillian said, her eyes downcast. “And some blood-soaked tissues in the trash.”

“Damn it! How much blood?”

“Enough to be concerned,” Jillian replied.

Daniel sighed. “I hate to say it, but we’re going to have to call in the authorities. What they lack in speed and precision, they make up for in sheer numbers. At this point, we have no idea where he might have taken her. The cops can get choppers in the air, monitor phones, bank accounts, credit cards.” Project Justice could do all of those things, but they didn’t have the number of people required to monitor it all. “Come on. Let’s clear out of here before the real cops arrive.”

CHAPTER FIVE

TRAVIS COULDN’T BELIEVE she’d gotten hold of his phone. Not once but twice! She must be a magician or a witch or something.

He hated it that he had to find a new safe house. That Bellaire McMansion had been perfect.

Travis sifted through various other possible locations, rejecting each one. Most of his recent job sites were occupied. He’d have to take to the country, find a place to camp. He had little food except the few cans and whatnot he’d grabbed from the kitchen and chucked into his backpack before putting Elena in the truck and heading out. He always carried a sleeping bag and a few essentials with him, but it was going to be rough. Although the climate in south Texas was almost always mild, it would get down into the fifties tonight—cool enough to be uncomfortable without a jacket.

He hadn’t allowed Elena to retrieve her jacket, he realized. She’d taken it off and draped it over the side of the tub at some point.

Several camping spots came to mind, isolated places where you didn’t have to register or reserve a space. A friend of Eric’s had a hunting lease they’d used once, a few years ago. If they were lucky, they wouldn’t run into anyone else. Elena wasn’t likely to try to run away, not in her bare feet. The heels she’d been carrying when he’d kidnapped her were probably still in the truck, but she couldn’t get far in those, either.

That was good. He hadn’t wanted to tie her up. When he went to trial for this crime—and he would—he wanted Elena to testify that he’d shown some concern for her welfare. Photos of bruises and rope burns would make for damning evidence in court.

It took him more than an hour and a half to get to the hunting lease, north of Lake Conroe. He’d left the freeway long ago, following a series of increasingly smaller roads. At one point he’d pulled over and waited, scanning the horizon behind him for the telltale plume of dust rising from the road signaling the passage of a vehicle. But he wasn’t being followed. For the time being, he was safe.

He hoped he remembered the turnoff. The sun was going down; in the dark, he’d never find it.

Wait, there was the dead tree, a black skeleton against sky the color of faded blue ink. Another five minutes and he’d have missed it in the dark.

He swung the truck onto the narrow dirt road. Though he’d slowed to five miles an hour, the bumps and ruts challenged the old vehicle’s suspension. He shuddered to think of how uncomfortable Elena must be. What if one of his tools rolled into her and injured her?

If he had stopped to consider the consequences of his actions, he wouldn’t be in this mess right now and neither would Elena. He’d thought he had mastered his troublesome impulsive streak years ago, but apparently he’d only temporarily stifled it.

It seemed he bumped along the dirt road for hours, but it was only a few minutes before the road widened to a turnaround spot. He was now on the hunting lease, and all appeared quiet—no signs of a campfire or recent tire tracks. He opened the window and stuck his head out to look up. The tree canopy was still pretty thick even though it was full-on autumn. No one would spot his truck from a helicopter. He couldn’t smell any campfire smoke in the air.

He parked just off the road. Later he could camouflage the truck with some brush, but he doubted anyone would come along. Right now he needed to rescue Elena.

With the wrench-missile still firmly in his memory, he stood to the side as he opened the cargo cover and peeked in. She lay there placidly, staring up at him.

“It’s about time. I was almost asphyxiated in there from the exhaust fumes.”

Oh, hell, he hadn’t even thought about that. As slow as he’d been driving, the exhaust fumes wouldn’t dissipate in the wind as they did at normal speeds.

“Lucky for you I didn’t,” she continued as she sat up. “Or you could share a cell with your brother.” She looked around. “Where are we?”

“Where we won’t be found. Please, please don’t try to run. We’re miles from civilization, and I’d catch you anyway. So save us both the aggravation.”

He opened the tailgate, and she swung her legs out and stood. She’d found her shoes and put them on, he noticed, wondering if she’d been readying herself to sprint for freedom. If she tried to run out here in those heels, she’d break an ankle.

“Are we camping out?”

“Yup.”

She sighed. “I really screwed myself over by stealing your phone. I could have spent the night in that nice bathroom, where at least I had a flush toilet. Now instead I get to relive scenes from Friday the 13th.”

“Sorry about that, princess.” He grabbed his flashlight from the glove box and rummaged around in his truck for anything that might be useful in the woods. He loaded up his backpack with a few additional food items he’d found, a small tarp, matches, a hatchet—

“What’s that for?” she asked with some alarm. She stood quite close to him, watching his every move, apparently.

“Firewood.”

“Oh. Isn’t it risky, building a fire? What if someone sees it?”

“It’s gonna be a small fire. And if I hear any helicopters, I’ll douse it before they see it.” It was a risk; she was right. But very slight. Even if an air search was mounted, they couldn’t investigate every campfire they saw.

He just couldn’t see camping without the small comfort of a fire. It was un-American.

He grabbed his sleeping bag and gave it to Elena to carry. “Let’s go.”

“I can’t hike through the woods in heels. It’s ridiculous.”

She was right again, damn it. He set down the backpack. “Let me see your shoes.”

“Why?” she asked suspiciously. “You aren’t going to throw them away, are you? Because these are my favorite shoes. Do you know how hard it is to find a comfortable pair of heels?” But she took off one shoe and handed it to him.

He snapped off the heel and handed it back. “There. Flats.”

Fortunately, he couldn’t see the expression on her face. It had grown too dark. But he could feel the anger radiating from her.

“You are going to pay for that.”

“I’ll probably be in prison for twenty years. What can you do that’s worse?”

“Castrate you.” But she gave him the other shoe, and he made his alterations and handed it back. She put them back on without further comment.

Travis led the way into the woods, walking slowly, beating aside the brush with his work boots so Elena’s legs wouldn’t get scratched. At least the weather wasn’t horrible. Camping in August in south Texas could be brutal—you spent the whole night sweating and swatting mosquitos. But autumn was downright pleasant.

“How far do we have to go?”

“’Til I find the right spot.”

Every few steps Travis paused and scanned around him with the flashlight. About the tenth time, he spotted the platform, a rudimentary wooden structure you could at least spread your sleeping bag on, keeping it off the damp ground. And the ground was damp. It had rained quite a bit in the last couple of weeks.

“Thank God,” Elena groused when he announced they were stopping. “How did you even know this was here?”

“My brother and I camped here before, on a hunting trip.”

“What did you hunt?”

“Deer. Supposedly.”

She gasped softly. “You killed deer?”

He laughed. “We never even saw a deer. That hunting trip was just an excuse for a bunch of men to hang out without their wives, exercise bad hygiene, drink gallons of beer in the evenings and do the male-bonding thing. I was relieved I didn’t have to kill Bambi’s mother.”

Travis set the flashlight down and pulled the tarp out of the backpack, spreading it on the platform. Elena had already sat down on a corner of the platform. He took the sleeping bag from her and opened it, shook it out and spread it over the tarp.

“Your bed, princess.”

“My bed?”

“Well, yeah. You didn’t expect me to take the only sleeping bag for myself, did you?”

“Where are you going to sleep?”

“I’ll manage.” Truth was, he wouldn’t sleep. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately in general as he worried about how to help Eric. He’d like to blame the lack of sleep for his lapse in judgment, but that really wasn’t much of an excuse.

“Is there going to be dinner?”

“Well, let’s see...” He opened the backpack again and extracted the canned goods one by one. “Baked beans, chili con carne, carrots and...pumpkin pie filling.”

“You set the bar pretty high with that lasagna, you know.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “That’d be good.”

“Baked beans. I can eat those cold.”

“But you don’t have to. I’ll build a fire and we can heat this stuff right in the can. Weren’t you ever a Girl Scout?”

“No. The places I grew up didn’t have Girl Scouts.”

Her voice had taken on an edge, and he decided not to pursue that line of conversation for now, though he was curious about her background. She’d said she was Cuban. Had she actually come from Cuba? Or was she of Cuban heritage but born here? Did people come here from Cuba anymore? He knew that at one time many Cubans had fled their homeland and entered the U.S. illegally and then were given asylum.