"Yeah?"
"Belonged to one Jedidiah Sanderson."
"Then Faith was right. It wasn't Jed Norris."
"Let's say rather that Jed Norris wasn't who he appeared to be. Sanderson's prints are on file because he had a record. A few arrests, mostly strong-arm stuff, and going back years. But not in Atlanta."
Kane drew a breath. "Seattle."
"Seattle."
"Then he's the connection we've been looking for?"
"Sanderson was Faith's boss, Kane. He ran that construction company she worked at, took over when the younger brother who started it was supposedly killed in a fire. Didn't do too well wit it. He declared bankruptcy not long after Faith's family was killed, and blew town before anybody could stop him."
"And came to Atlanta. Okay, but I still don't see "
"When I dug into the fire that killed his younger brother, I found an arson investigator who was certain but couldn't prove the fire had been started deliberately. The insurance money was paid, and it was a lot. But Sanderson never seemed to have any money afterward, just a company he couldn't keep in the black. I started wondering where the money went. I found a photograph of the younger brother and sent it to Richardson. He recognized it right away. Kane... It's Max Sanders."
"Max." Kane felt curiously suspended, caught between a moment of realization and one of dawning fear.
"Yeah. I have a hunch the younger brother was the corpse Dinah was about to start looking for. She was probably looking at the Seattle end a lot more closely than we've been, and she was suspicious of that fire and the insurance money. I don't know how close she was to the answers, whether she suspected Sanders or was just looking for a connection to Seattle and somehow alerted him. We may never know."
"Christ."
"And correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Max Sanders have a key to the gate at the job site? And official clearance to get into your office building so he can roam wherever he damn well wants?"
Kane swung around to stare at the door of his office. The fear was clawing at him now. "Jesus."
"Kane..."
But Kane dropped the phone, the rolled blueprints, and bolted for the door. He reached the hall just as Sam charged past with a worried look on his face. As Kane joined him, he barely took in the bodyguard's hurried explanation that Faith "should have been visible on the hallway monitor by now."
They turned the corner together, seeing a long corridor stretching before them. And Faith's shoulder bag lying on the floor beside the emergency exit that led to the stairwell.
"A mirror," Sam was saying bitterly, staring up at one of the video cameras. "He used a fucking mirror!"
Kane bent to pick up Faith's bag, feeling as though something was dragging at him, slowing him down when he needed to be moving fast, so fast, because they had her and the thought of what they'd do to her ripped at his sanity.
"No," he said clearly. "Not again."
CHAPTER 15
Whatever he'd used to knock her out — chloroform, she supposed — Faith hoped it hadn't kept her unconscious for long. She couldn't be certain since there was no clock in the room where she awoke.
It was a powder room. Pedestal sink, toilet, not much else. Head pounding and nausea churning, Faith got her hands underneath her to push herself up off the cold tile floor, and only then realized she was handcuffed.
She managed to sit up, but it was a long while before the dizziness passed enough for her to struggle to her feet.
She tried the door, which was locked, then decided to splash cold water on her face to wash the cobwebs from her mind. Afterward, she almost wished she hadn't, because with clarity of mind came terror.
She hadn't seen who had grabbed her; it had all happened too fast. But she had no doubt she was in deadly danger. The fact that he had knocked her out rather than killed her told her he wanted something from her.
He wanted whatever it was she had taken from him, the elusive thing still lost somewhere in the darkness of her mind.
She would be tortured. Like Dinah.
Faith wanted to pound on the door, to scream and scream, and it took all her strength to keep herself from doing just that.
Don't be an idiot. And don't expect the cavalry to come riding to the rescue, either. That only happens in the movies. If you want to live through this, you'll have to help yourself.
Faith pressed her ear to the door but heard nothing.
Move, just move. Look for something that might help you get free, get out of here.
There was no medicine cabinet or linen closet, and not even a picture on the walls to offer her a bit of useful ware. Remembering suddenly, she worked her cuffed hands around until she was able to dig into the right pocket of her jacket. It was there, a thin, flexible piece of metal.
A lock pick.
It felt familiar in her grasp, and her fingers moved with swift, sure skill that required no thought. Within seconds she was free. For a fleeting moment, Faith wondered where on earth she had learned such a thing, and why, but there would be time enough later to ponder that.
She hoped.
The locked door was more stubborn than the handcuffs, but she kept working at it.
If this damned thing would stop slipping, I could... There!
She returned the lock pick to her pocket and carefully eased open the door. She was facing a fairly long hallway that was a solid wall on the other side and on her side boasted only one other room, its open door spilling light. At the end, she thought she could make out stairs leading upward. She was in a basement.
She heard the voices. There were two of them, angry male voices that were a bit muffled. They came from the other room. Her first impulse was to run as fast as she could, her instincts urging her to race from danger, to flee while she had the chance. But intellect prevailed.
She stood a better chance of escaping if she moved cautiously and silently to slip past that open door unnoticed by the men inside.
Hardly breathing, keeping close to the wall and moving with utmost care, Faith eased down the hall toward the lighted doorway. As she neared it, the voices became distinct.
"... You must have been out of your mind to hang around Macgregor and Payne all day!"
There was something familiar about that voice, but before she could probe her memory to identify it, the second man spoke.
"At least I was doing something useful! I wasn't hiding in my nice little lake house praying no one would find me!"
A coldness deeper than anything Faith had ever felt re washed over her, and the dizziness returned far worse than before, forcing her to lean against the wall and close her eyes, to swallow the sick terror welling up from a dark nightmare place inside her.
She remembered the voice from her painfully violent vision: Careful! She can't tell me what I want to know if she's dead.
Faith heard her breath catch, and the tiny sound was just enough to free her from the paralysis of sheer terror. It was him. The man who had lurked in the darkness as Dinah was being tortured, who had ordered the one hurting her to break her fingers or something else, anything else, whatever he had to do to make her talk ... And she had sat in Kane's office with him without recognizing his voice, without realizing that Dinah's tormentor was talking briskly to Kane about structure and construction materials. Max Sanders.
The need to run was overwhelming, but Faith forced herself to move slowly, one step at a time, down the hall. As she crept nearer, the voices grew louder, more distinct.
"I've told you — you're moving too fast, allowing Kane and the police to panic you. If you'd just been willing to sit tight, to keep your mouth shut..."
"I'm not the one who killed Jed, goddammit! What was that if it wasn't panic?"