“God damn it!”Knox muttered.“That was both brave and stupid as hell.She’s not a trained operative.She didn’t even have a weapon.”He looked around the room in exasperation, noting for the first time who was missing.“Where are Boone and Radley?”he asked.
“They headed right from my house to Quinn’s apartment,” Holt said.“We realize she’s not there, but they’re doing their due diligence.They’ll be back at the office shortly.”
Knox processed that piece of information then eyed the map on the screen again, staring at the airport and tiny little blip, where Quinn’s phone had last pinged.For a second he wondered what her apartment looked like.Would she ever see it again?Would he?
He’d fantasized about taking her to his own bed, but shit.He’d also imagined picking her up for a date.Bringing her flowers.Walking her to her door at night so she wasn’t alone.
Damn it all to hell.
“We need to head to the airport,” Knox told the team.“We’ll get flight logs and see what planes flew out that night.We need the pilot and air traffic controller’s names, too, so we can question them.Passenger manifests.Surveillance footage from anywhere nearby the airport or final cell tower.”
Xaden crossed his arms, frowning.“I agree with all that, but one questions remains.How the fuck did they get her to willingly board a damn airplane?”
***
TWO HOURS LATER, KNOXfelt sick.While they’d been successful in obtaining flight records from Friday night as well as all passenger names, no one remembered seeing Quinn.Nor was her name on a manifest.Of course, if she’d been kidnapped, she wouldn’t have willingly handed over an ID.There were no records of her getting on a plane, however, and she hadn’t been seen in video surveillance, which begged the question, where the hell was she?
He glanced around the small control room, happy his teammates were with him, but pissed as hell they were even in this situation to begin with.
“I’m sending the passenger names over to IT,” Radley said, typing a message on the laptop she’d brought.“They can take the photos from the fake IDs and compare them to the names and photographs of the known terror cell members.We’ll be able to confirm this is the flight we want and determine what alias each man is now going under.”
“Good idea,” Knox said.
They continued to watch the footage of the men gathering near the tarmac, readying to board the plane.Knox narrowed his gaze, studying the man with dark hair and dark beard.“He looks like the guy walking by Radley’s car in the other surveillance,” Knox pointed out.“Same build.Same facial hair.”
“Agreed,” Gage said.“He changed clothes, but it appears to be him.
Boone muttered something.Knox glanced over at his teammate, standing at his side in the small control room.“Something’s not right about this,” Boone said, his voice a deep rumble.“Why would they head to the airport with Quinn’s cell phone and not Quinn?It pinged by the tower.She’s missing.She had to be with them.”
“Let’s look at the videos again,” Radley said.“We’re missing something.”
Security rewound the footage, and Knox ran his hands through his hair, agitated.“The plane landed at San Francisco International Airport.We need to head there.The kidnappers may have been traveling under aliases, but we can still track those and see what flights they took from SFO.”
“We need to get on the phone with SFO and send someone down there in person to speed things along,” Boone said.
“Wait a sec,” Radley interjected, watching as they replayed the footage of several men arriving at the small Seattle airport.The surveillance was slightly grainy, made even worse by the fact that it was night.The man they recognized was in the front, but there was a second guy behind him.“Look at the man with the large suitcase,” Radley said, her voice low.“He’s a big guy, but he seems to be struggling to heft it around.”
Knox froze, icy cold fear washing over him.
“How much do you think Quinn weighs?”Boone asked, his gaze hard as he studied the footage.“Certainly over one hundred pounds.When they weigh your luggage at the airport, it’s considered oversized if it’s more than fifty pounds.Look how that guy has to shift to carry this suitcase and manage the weight.It’s heavier than normal.”
“No way,” Knox said, knowing in his gut that they were probably right.“No fucking way.”
“He’s having trouble with it,” Radley agreed.“Quinn’s what, maybe five foot seven or so?She’s slender.She could fit inside it.”
“But she’s—” Knox couldn’t continue, his voice choked.
Radley’s small hand landed on his bicep.“We don’t know anything,” she stressed.“If they needed to furtively load her onto an airplane, this was one way to do it.It’s a small airport.Look at the footage—he’s carrying the suitcase directly onboard that small plane.It’s not a huge airplane where they’re loading suitcases into the cargo hold.He kept it with him.”
“They put her in a fucking suitcase,” Knox ground out, shock washing over him.“Holy shit.”
“They wouldn’t be carrying around a dead body,” Radley said bluntly, her voice calm.“If they killed her, they’d could’ve easily left her in the trunk of that vehicle or disposed of her some other way.She’s alive, and they’re smuggling her out of Seattle in an airplane.”
Boone was already picking up his phone, calling Holt.“We need to get surveillance footage and flight manifests from SFO, stat.The terror suspects loaded Quinn onto an airplane here in Seattle in a large suitcase.We need to know where her kidnapper traveled after that plane landed, because I guarantee Quinn is with him.”
“He’s a dead man,” Knox seethed, a feeling of resolve washing over.“When I get my hands on him, he’ll wish he’d never been born.”
“We’ll find her,” Radley assured him.“They’re keeping her alive, and that works in our favor.It gives us time to locate her, formulate a plan, and stage a rescue.This is good news.We’re going to get her back.”
