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“The powers that be, Robie. I was seventeen. I was in Witness Protection. I was moved around six times in less than a year. I had to testify against these scum. And I did.” She snapped, “You can’t exactly raise a kid with all that going on, can you? I could take care of myself. What I couldn’t take care of was an infant.”
“So it was your choice, to give her up?”
“I told you, I didn’t have a choice.”
“But if you’d had one?”
“What does it matter? I gave her up.”
“You said the leader of the neo-Nazi group is the father. He raped you.”
She nodded. “Leon Dikes.”
“You said he had a good lawyer and didn’t go to prison for all that long.”
“Even though I knew he’d ordered the murders of at least six people.”
“But he never knew where you were?”
&n
bsp; “Not until I walked into that damn prison in Alabama. They must have been waiting. Followed us. And now they have Julie.”
“Do you even know where your daughter is now?”
Reel didn’t answer.
Robie said, “Do you know—”
“I heard you! But do you really think I’m going to bring her into something like this? Why do you think Dikes wants her, Robie? To tell her how much he loves her? To shower her with money and a wonderful life?”
“I don’t know what he wants with her. I would imagine he wants to kill you.”
“Not nearly as much as I want to kill him.”
“He probably doesn’t know what you are, though.”
She glanced at him. “What do you mean?”
“He knew you were in WITSEC. He doesn’t know who you are now. Or he never would have done what he did.”
She nodded slowly. “But how does that help Julie?”
“I don’t know. And if they had followed us, why not just try to take you? Why go after Julie?”
“Because he may know where I am, but not where my daughter is. And he knows I’d never tell him.”
“So Julie is the bait. Put your daughter in danger or Julie dies.”
Reel put her face in her hands and started to weep, her body shuddering painfully.
Robie reached over and put his arm around her shoulders.
She finally calmed and wiped her eyes clear.
“There is no way out of this, Robie. The only thing I can do is offer myself for Julie. That’s it.”
“And if he won’t let Julie go?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
She closed her eyes and looked down.
He said, “They have to have a way for you to contact them somehow.”
Reel straightened. “That was in the code too. There’s a number to call.”
“There are no numbers on the paper,” said Robie.
“We didn’t use numbers in the code. Too obvious. We had letters represent numbers.”
“How would you know whether they were numbers or the actual letters, then?”
Reel pointed at the paper. “When a line begins with ‘TNF,’ that means ‘the numbers follow.’ That’s how we distinguished them.”
“The number’s probably a burner phone, untraceable.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“So they want you to call? When?”
Reel held up her phone. “Now.”
“So what are you going to say?”
“That I’ll trade myself for Julie.”
“And if they don’t agree to that? And they probably won’t.”
“What else can I do, Robie? The fact is, I don’t know where my daughter is now. It’s been over twenty years. I wouldn’t even know what she looks like,” she added miserably.
“But you’d recognize this Leon Dikes?”
“I’ll never forget him,” she said coldly. “If it’s possible, he’s even worse than my father.”
“Well, that is saying something.”
Reel ran her fingers along the edge of the dash. “So what do we do, Robie? We have to get Julie back. I’ll give my life for that to happen.”
“I know you would,” he replied quietly. “And so would I. But maybe it doesn’t have to come to that.”
She glanced at him. “Do you have a plan?”
“I have something. I’m not sure it qualifies as a plan just yet.”
“We have to get her back,” said Reel. “We have to. She’s an innocent.”
“She is an innocent. I’ve known that for a long time. And we will get her back. So let’s go to my apartment, you make the call, and we’ll see what these bastards say.”
Chapter
39
THE OLD PLANE BUMPED ALONG the runway before coming to a stop with its wheel brakes grinding, the fuselage shuddering, and the dual turboprops spinning slower until they too ceased.
The cabin door opened and steps came down.
A man in a black uniform stepped out first, followed by the only unwilling passenger on this flight from hell.
Julie was bound and gagged and a hood was over her head. Since she couldn’t see where to go, the man behind her, also dressed in the same black uniform, lifted her down the stairs. When her feet hit the tarmac he pulled her roughly over to a white van with no windows. Julie was loaded in and the van drove off along roads that quickly went from asphalt to macadam and, finally, to plain dirt.
She slumped against her seatback. She made no attempt to look around since the hood prevented her from seeing anything or anyone. Two minutes after she’d walked into her house she had been attacked. They had been quick and effective. A wet cloth over her face, fumes that made her head spin, and then nothing. The next thing she knew she was coming to as the plane she was in was taking off. And now she was in a van.
She didn’t even know if her guardian, Jerome Cassidy, was alive or dead. She didn’t know why she’d been taken.
Well, she had a guess. It might have to do with Will Robie. Or Jessica Reel. It seemed to her far too coincidental that as soon as she had been dropped off by them she had been kidnapped.
The van drove for another half hour and then stopped. She was jerked out of the vehicle and led through a doorway, down a set of stairs, and through another doorway. It closed behind her. She was pushed into a seat, and through the hood she could sense a light being turned on.
The hood was abruptly pulled off and she blinked rapidly to adjust her eyes to the brightness. She was in a small room with stone walls and a dirt floor. She was seated at a rickety wooden table. On the walls were swastika banners. An overhead bulb crackled and blinked.
These observations were really afterthoughts.
Seated across from her was a thin man of medium height with dyed black hair carefully parted and sharp, angular features. His eyes did not match his hair color. They were pinpoints of shocking blue. Like the other men in the room, he wore a black uniform, but his was different from theirs. It had more stuff on it, Julie noted. Stars and medals and the armbands were a brilliant red, with the black swastika in the middle and three white stripes around it. A military-style officer’s cap lay on the table within the man’s reach.
