The man was right. Her aunt’s name wasn’t Leigh-Ann. It was Carol. But Aunt Carol had been the one who’d inspired Shannon to sing when she was just a little girl. And she had been the one who’d told Shannon she ought to use a stage name after she’d won a huge talent contest at eleven years old.
That evening, still basking in the glow of victory, she and Aunt Carol had decided on Leigh-Ann as the name she’d use when she sang.
Carol had died two nights later in a horrible car accident on a snowy night. Every time Shannon sang for an audience after that, she’d silently dedicated the first song to her aunt Carol.
“May I please have some water?”
“Maybe in a few,” the man said gruffly as the vehicle slowed down. “We’ll see how I’m feeling.”
When the van stopped, he pulled Shannon up off the seat and guided her to the open double doors, where two more men grabbed her and lowered her to the ground. Each man took her by an elbow and escorted her down a hallway and into another room, where they guided her onto what felt like a couch.
She sat there for a few minutes, alone, as far as she could tell.
And then, out of nowhere, she was being lifted off the couch again and hustled back into the hallway by two men holding her by the elbows. After a short distance, they turned her roughly from the hallway into another room, where they forced her face-first against a wall and secured her tightly to it with clamps up and down her arms and legs, one around her neck, and two around her torso. She couldn’t move at all.
“What’s happening?” she shouted. “Please tell me what’s happening.”
“You’re going on a long plane trip.”
“To where?”
“And we’re just trying to make that trip easier for you.”
Someone swabbed her upper arm with rubbing alcohol. The powerful smell rose to her nostrils quickly, and she struggled wildly. But it was useless. She was completely immobilized against the wall.
“No, no!” she shouted, desperately trying to escape as the needle pierced her skin. “Stop, please stop!”
Thirty seconds later she was unconscious.
Ninety seconds later they had strapped her limp body to a gurney and were rolling her toward the waiting plane.
Five minutes later the plane was in the air.
“What do you think?” Baxter asked when Skylar was gone.
“I think Commander McCoy is in with both feet,” Dorn answered stoically, staring at the door she’d just used to exit the room. “She has a carrot and a stick staring her in the face. Which one would you choose? Isn’t it obvious, Stewart?”
“Of course.”
“I think Kodiak Four is off the ground, and Red Cell Seven has a severe problem on its hands,” Dorn continued, “especially the Jensens and your friend Shane Maddux.”
“He’s not my friend.” Baxter’s phone vibrated, and he pulled it from his suit coat pocket to check the text that had just come in. It was from the aide who had first delivered the news of Shannon’s kidnapping the other night. “Please stop saying that, sir.”
“You’ll take care of all the particulars, Stewart,” the president said as he rose from his chair. “I want my cell as protected and immune from prosecution as possible, just the way Nixon protected his.”
“I will.”
“You’ll speak to Chief Justice Espinosa.”
Dorn was already calling Espinosa by his nominated title, Baxter had noticed. “Yes, sir.”
“By the way, you did a nice job with Warren Bolger. A foggy morning, no visibility; he was driving himself to court. Excellent job, Stewart.”
“Thank you.” Dorn wasn’t going to like this, but he had to say something. “Sir?”
The president turned back as he reached the door. “What is it?”
“I just got a message from one of my aides. Shannon’s kidnappers have been in contact with him again.”
“What do they want?” Dorn asked hoarsely.
“That’s the strange part of it, sir. They didn’t demand anything.” It was odd for Baxter to see Dorn’s lower lip tremble just then. It was one of the few reactions he’d seen from the president that was pure, unrehearsed, and without motive or agenda, that wasn’t driven by ambition. David Dorn actually had a heart beneath that charismatic veneer. He was a father, and he was panic-stricken for his daughter. “They contacted us simply to say that she was still alive, and not to let this get into the press.”
The president ran a hand through his dark hair. “All right,” he said softly.
“Are you okay, sir?”
Dorn shook his head. “It’s ironic, isn’t it, Stewart?”
“What is, sir?”
“I’m the most powerful man in the world. But I can’t do a damn thing to get my daughter back.”
Karen’s hands and ankles were tied tightly together as she sat in the wooden chair. The blindfold had ridden up a little on her nose during the trip to wherever here was, and by tilting her head back, she could probably see around a little.
But she didn’t do it yet. She assumed that if one of her captors was in the room and saw her tilting back, they would quickly readjust the blindfold — or worse, they’d punish her. She couldn’t hear anyone else nearby, but she didn’t want to take the chance of being beaten. The men who’d taken her were animals. They didn’t give a damn that she was physically incapacitated. They’d made that obvious in the last hour.
All of this had to have something to do with the Jensens and Red Cell Seven — which she knew a little about. She’d gone to Alaska last fall to help Jack save Troy, and Jack had told her about the cell then.
Karen wondered if these people had Jennie, too. She hadn’t dared to call out for her, but it seemed logical to assume whoever these people were had taken Jennie at the Manhattan deli at the same time they’d kidnapped her.
At first the screaming sounded far away to Karen. A small child, what sounded like a little boy, screaming for help in a shrill, terrified voice, and it was getting closer.
Suddenly, to her horror, the screaming sounded all too familiar.
“Little Jack!” she shouted. “Little Jack, is that you?”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
Karen tilted her head back as far as she dared. She could see Little Jack across the room now. A huge man was grasping him roughly, and the little boy was hysterical, trying desperately to get away. “It’s Aunt Karen, honey, I’m here.” She prayed they wouldn’t hurt him. “Everything’s gonna be—”
“Shut up, bitch!”
A hand smacked her face so hard it sent her tumbling from the chair to the ground. Two men picked her up as she moaned in pain, carried her to another room, and then forced her face-first against a wall.
She felt the needle prick her skin and then go deeply into her arm, but she couldn’t defend herself. She was exhausted, and her condition wouldn’t have allowed it, anyway.
Thirty seconds later she was unconscious.
CHAPTER 30
“Eleven days ago, Wayne Griffin made a big deposit into his only checking account,” Troy said as a black pickup emerged from a grove of trees at the far end of the long gravel driveway.
“How big?”
“Two hundred fifty grand.”
Jack and Troy were crouched behind a stand of bushes overgrowing a barbed-wire fence thirty yards from Charlie’s parked pickup and forty yards from the farmhouse.
Jack peered through the brush, which hid them well, but he could see through when he pulled a few of the honeysuckle vines slightly apart. The fence was built on the crest of a small ridge overlooking the farmhouse, so he had a good view of the vehicle coming up the driveway toward them. It looked the same as Charlie’s truck, except it was black.