The interior search went smoothly. The Cape Cod’s lower levels were cleared. There were no signs of forced entry, nothing out of place, no signs of struggle — and no more bodies. Meriweather led the other officers up the stairs.
On the second floor he found a bathroom and two bedrooms. Using hand signals, he directed the other teams to take the bedrooms as he searched the bathroom. He was approaching the threshold when one of the officers called out.
“Meriweather! End of the hall!”
Meriweather rushed down the hall and into the bedroom. Lying on the bed under the glare of four flashlights was a man in his late sixties or early seventies. He was bound hand and foot with plastic flexi-cuffs. His mouth was stuffed with a red ball-gag. Wide-eyed, he stared at them and mumbled into the gag.
Meriweather stepped through the circle of cops, loosened the ball-gag, and removed it.
The old man let out an explosive whoosh, then gulped for air.
“Sir, are you injured?” Meriweather said. “Can we—”
“My wife,” he panted. “They took my wife!”
Seventy-five miles away in Gloucester point, Joe McBride was enjoying one of his favorite hobbies: late-night vintage horror movies. Tonight he’d lucked out and found the 1960 Vincent Price version of The Fall of the House of Usher. As far as McBride was concerned Price was the king of what he liked to call “creepy campy.” Humor and terror all in one.
The phone jangled on the end table. McBride started, nearly spilling his popcorn. He glanced at the clock: three A.M. Who the hell … “Yeah, hello.”
“Hey, Joe, it’s Charlie Latham. Sorry to call so late.”
“Charlie … Jesus. You scared the hell out of me.”
“Lemme guess: Horror movie?”
“Yep—House of Usher.”
“Good one. Listen, we need your help.”
This caught McBride off guard. He knew Charlie from having worked with the FBI on several cases, but they’d never worked together. Latham’s bailiwick was counter-espionage; McBride’s, kidnapping. “Who does? You?”
“No, the higher-ups. They know we’re friends, so—”
“They thought you’d have more luck getting me to say yes.”
“That and lure you out this late at night.”
“I’m retired, Charlie.”
“Consultants don’t retire — they just take longer vacations.”
McBride chuckled. “What’s going on?”
“A big one, something up your alley. We’ve got an agent on the scene who’ll explain everything.” McBride hesitated. There was some truth to Latham’s jibe: Being freelance, he could slip into and out of retirement as he chose, and he’d done so several times in the past few years. That was the problem with doing what you loved for a living: What was the point in retiring?
“Okay. I’ll take a look,” McBride said. “No promises.”
“Fair enough.”
“Where am I going?”
“A little town called Royal Oak on Maryland’s eastern shore. A helicopter will be waiting for you at Fleeton.”
McBride hurriedly got dressed and drove the thirty miles up the coast to the Fleeton airstrip. As advertised, a Maryland State Police helicopter was waiting, its rotors spinning at idle. The pilot stuck his hand out the window and waved him aboard. Five minutes later they were airborne and heading east across the bay to Whitehaven, where they landed in a farmer’s field. From there a Wicomico County sheriff’s deputy drove him three miles to the scene.
Through the wrought-iron gate McBride could see a dozen unmarked and marked police cars lining the driveway to the two-story Cape Cod. Figures milled about the open front door. McBride could hear the overlapping crackle of radios and murmured voices. Yellow police tape fluttered in the breeze along the stone wall.
McBride felt that old familiar swell of excitement in his chest. He took a deep breath to quash it. Big case, big stakes. Retirement be damned. Still, there was part of him that wanted to turn around and go home. Exciting as they were, kidnapping cases took their toll on him, dominating his every thought and emotion until the case was resolved — and sometimes beyond that when things finished badly.
McBride had come to the “hostage talker” business largely by accident, having stumbled into it during his junior year at Notre Dame as he watched a police negotiator secure the release of three bank tellers taken during a robbery gone awry. This one man, standing in the midst of a dozen armed cops, a coked-out and twice-convicted felon with nothing to lose, and three hostages who didn’t know if they would live to see their families again, had turned an impossible situation into a miracle. The robber went to jail and the hostages went home to their loved ones.
The next day McBride changed his major to criminal justice.
To fund his undergraduate degree in psychology, after Notre Dame he joined the army reserves and trained as an armored intelligence scout. On those weekends he wasn’t bouncing around inside a Bradley fighting vehicle, he made pocket money by giving golf lessons at nearby courses and flipping steak at a local diner.
Time flies, Joe thought. From short-order cook to free-lancer for the FBI and the CIA. Time had also brought him some unexpected gifts, including a wonderful wife and a pair of sons — Joe Jr., a radiologist in Oklahoma, and Scott, an attorney in Ohio. Life was good — for him at least, watching the cops milling around the driveway. Something bad had happened here tonight. The question was, could he do anything to make it right? One way to find out.
The deputy escorted him to the front door, where he was met by a man wearing a blue blazer. An FBI badge dangled from his front pocket. The agent extended his hand to McBride. “Collin Oliver.”
“Joe McBride. You’ve got every cop within fifty miles here. What the hell happened?”
“Three dead security guards, one who’s probably on the way out, a bypassed alarm system, and a missing woman. A neighbor walking his dog found one of the guards and called it in.”
“The husband?”
“He’s inside. Shaken up but unhurt.”
“Any calls yet? Anything left behind?”
“Nothing.”
McBride frowned. “Agent Oliver, I’m not sure why I’m—”
“You’ll see. Come on.”
Oliver led him inside, through the living room, and into the kitchen. An elderly man with disheveled gray hair sat at the dining table. He stared into space, his hands curled around a steaming mug. Standing a few feet away a pair of State Troopers nervously shuffled their feet.
Oliver stopped in the doorway and gestured for McBride to wait. He walked up to the man, whispered a few words to him, then gestured toward McBride. The man looked in McBride’s direction then nodded.
The face looks familiar, McBride thought. As he tried to place it, Oliver waved him over.
“Joe, this is the owner of the house, Mr. Root.”
Root … Jonathan Root. That was it, that’s why he looked familiar, McBride realized. Jonathan Root was the former director of the CIA. Oh boy.
Root looked up at him. “You’re McBride?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve got to help me. They’ve got my wife. They told me they’ll kill her.”
3
Even before Vetsch began recounting the few details he had of Susanna’s disappearance, Tanner had made his decision. There was nothing to think about, really. He was Susanna’s godfather; she his surrogate daughter. Gill could not go after her himself — which was tearing him apart — and Tanner refused to simply sit back and hope for the best. Even so, there were arrangements to be made before he could do anything. His work complicated matters.