AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The older man paled and scowled. “You’ve signed their death warrant. When the kidnapper hears the FBI is involved, they’ll kill the kids and disappear.”
“We’re going to find them first. The first few hours are critical, and we’re lucky enough to have someone knowledgeable about child abductions in the area. We’ll locate them.”
Lucas wished he was as confident as he sounded. It would be tough to track down the kidnapper. Carly had nailed it when she went through the list of possible suspects. They still were uncertain which direction to go. But his words seemed to have calmed Kyle, who dropped his arms and slumped.
The older man settled into a chair. “What’s the next step?”
Lucas couldn’t explain his antipathy to Kyle Tucker other than he’d abandoned his kids, both the first group and Isabelle, and Lucas picked his words carefully. He didn’t want to expose more than he should to this mercurial man. “We’ll look at neighborhood videos to see who was in and out of the house as well as talk to neighbors. We’ll check cams around town to see if we can spot Isabelle in a vehicle too. There’s likely to be a clue to the person who took her. These days it’s impossible to pull off something like this in broad daylight without someone noticing.”
Lucas’s phone rang, and he walked out into the foyer to take the call from Bernard. “What you got, Lieutenant?”
“Siela Chen from the FBI is here. And we just missed catching Dimitri. A neighborhood video showed he was in your house but went out the back door before we could grab him.”
There was something Bernard wasn’t telling him. “Carly and I will be right there. You have a car watching the house, right?”
“With two officers,” his boss said.
“I’ll have Ryan on alert inside. We’ll be right there.” Lucas ended the call and knelt in front of Carly. “We need to get to the station as soon as possible.”
“I’m ready.” She handed him the baby and tossed aside the blanket.
“I’ll keep Noah,” Amelia said. “No reason to take him with you.”
Lucas handed over the baby before retreating to the foyer, where he found Ryan waiting for him. His brother wore a worried frown. “You think you’ll find them?”
“FBI is here. We’ll do our best. You see anything on our cameras at all?”
“Not a thing. I reset them this morning, but they’d been wiped.”
Lucas gaped at his brother. “That would indicate whoever it was knew where they were. Or else it was a top hacker who knew how to turn them off remotely.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Could this be someone they knew? Lucas couldn’t wrap his head around that thought, but now it was lodged in his brain. It would explain how the perp had been a few steps ahead of them all along. He’d assumed it had been someone who had started searching for the egg before them, but that might not be true.
Carly joined them. Her face was pale and set, and her eyes were red. Realizing she’d been crying made him want to take her in his arms, and his fingers curled into his palms as he resisted the impulse. Her pain made his own heart hurt.
“I’m ready. Noah should be good for three or four hours. Long enough to meet Mr.Schoenwald and figure out what we’re going to do about the ransom.” Her eyes glinted with determination. Though she’d spent some time crying, she was clearly ready to enter the battle again and find her little sister and Caroline.
They left Ryan to oversee protecting the rest of the family and went out to Lucas’s truck. As they started for the precinct, he told her about the cameras. “So I think someone we know is behind it all. And here’s the key to the safety-deposit box.” He handed it to her and she put it in her purse. “It’s been copied, though. I saw it on the video after the breach at the bank.”
She shook her head. “That’s terrible, Lucas. Who would do such a thing?”
“I don’t know yet. I hope neighbors saw something or a cam picked up the vehicle with your family in it. I’m guessing two people are involved. An acquaintance who is privy to the egg information and someone he’s hired to carry out directives.”
She chewed on her lip. “Maybe I should have taken Noah with me.”
“Ryan is armed. He’ll protect him and the rest of your family. Two officers are watching the house as well.” He should have asked for a guard when they went to Elizabeth’s, but he’d thought Ryan could handle it by himself. But there’d been no actual attack. Isabelle and Caroline’s disappearance was peculiar.
The grateful smile she turned on him warmed his cheeks. “You’re the best.”
If he truly was the best, this wouldn’t be happening to her and her family. He had to fix it somehow.
***
The whiteboard at the front of the room held pictures and dates. Carly spotted a picture of herself with the wordsIntruder killed. Eric’s death was also on the whiteboard. The officers inthe chairs wore identical expressions of grave determination. Beside Anna Martin’s name were the wordsDimitri Smirnov ballistics matched to Kelly Cicero.
She stopped and pointed at the board. “Smirnov shot Kelly and Anna?”
