Gant was about to speak when his Satphone vibrated. He pulled it out, listened to the succinct report and then closed it. “Another victim we think might be related. Caleigh Roberts. Nineteen. Killed last night on the Florida-Alabama border. Drowned in less than a foot of water. Her father works for the CIA. On what, they’re not being forthcoming with, but I’ll find out shortly. Ever heard of him?”
Cranston shook his head. “How is Roberts connected?”
“We don’t know yet other than the timing and the fact she’s a family member.”
Cranston looked at Golden. “Why—“ he seemed at a loss for words. He swallowed. “Why are you here?”
Gant sighed and waited.
Golden still had her hand on Cranston’s arm. “I’m working with Gant.”
Cranston shifted to Gant. “You’re not NSA.”
“No.” Gant relaxed slightly knowing that Cranston was finally coming back to reality.
“And you won’t tell me who you work for.”
“You have no need to know.”
“We’ll get Emily back,” Golden interjected.
Hope, Gant thought.
Cranston wasn’t buying it either. “That’s not your mission,” he said to Gant.
Gant could feel Golden’s eyes burning into his skull. He started to speak, then paused. Regroup, retreat, Gant thought. Take a different approach when things are different. “No, it’s not. But.” He sat back. “They’re aligned. My mission is whoever snatched your daughter. The faster I get to him, the better the chance we find her alive.”
“Why do you think she’s alive?
“Because of the cache report. Because whoever did this has something bigger in mind and this is just the beginning.”
“How do you know that?” Cranston asked.
Gant could see that Golden was also interested in his answer.
“Because, as the good doctor has noted, whoever is doing this is playing us and there are moves yet to be made.” Gant stood. “You need to think. About missions you ran and people you worked with that weren’t ever recorded. We’ll get all the recorded ones and go through them, so don’t waste time on that. Make a list.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a card that just had a number on it. “Call me when you think of anything.” He looked at Golden. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Golden asked.
This was why Gant liked working alone. No need to explain things. “To the most recent incident site.” Better phrased than ‘the most recent body’, Gant thought.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Emily’s fingers bled more, which bothered her not so much because of the pain, but because the blood made holding the wire more difficult. She had tripled the wire, which, while strengthening it, had also correspondingly shortened it, making it more difficult to work with. All morning long she had made slight adjustments to the wire, bending it so slightly, there were times she wasn’t sure she had actually even done anything to it.
Taking a break, she glanced up through the leaves of the oak tree and checked the sun’s position. Mid-day, give or take an hour. She carefully put the wire down on a leaf and flexed her hands, feeling the pain as the cuts in her fingers pulsed out in protest. She ran her tongue around her lips, which were already cracking.
Emily shook her head. Do not think about water.
Think about something else. Something useful. She tried to remember the drive. How long had she been out? She didn’t think it had been more than a day. She vaguely remembered that the van had stopped somewhere en route. She’d been awake for a little while. She glanced down at her arm, at the two puncture marks. He’d drugged her again. But there had been that moment of semi-awareness between the first injection wearing off and the second one kicking in.
Something about that stop nagged at her, begging to be remembered. Emily closed her eyes, blocking out, one by one, the input from her senses, focusing inward. The way her father had taught her to focus. She flowed backward into the memory of those senses.
Had it been something she saw? No, there had only been darkness until he took the blindfold off here in the forest.
Smell? It was the most powerful of the five senses, she knew that from her physiological psychology class.
Yes. Grass. Freshly cut.
Emily felt a slight prick of excitement. He had not planned for her to awaken during the trip. But she had. So he’d made a mistake. One mistake could mean he’d made others.
She opened her eyes and picked up the wire, sliding it into the lock, gingerly working it once more, her earlier weariness replaced by a surge of energy.
There was something else from that stop. She had been slipping into a drug-induced fog, but she knew she had made a discovery during that brief window of consciousness. Something else the man didn’t know. She lost herself in the thought and the lock but nothing was forthcoming.
Finally, she once more noticed the sun overhead and was happy to have at least five more hours of sunlight. She stopped picking at the lock for a moment, and studied her tree and the position of the sun.
The side of the clearing facing her seemed to be west. Unless the loon had driven beyond her little prison, and walked her back to confuse her; she would go east when she got this fucking chain off her foot. Why would he try to confuse her though? Emily doubted he planned for her to escape this tree. She had been driven from Panama City and it had been less than a day. He would not have sped, not taking the chance of getting pulled over with a blindfolded, drugged girl in the back.
Sixteen hours. Seventy miles an hour.
Emily felt some of her new-found confidence slip as she realized that added up to over eleven hundred miles. A damn big circle. The entire southeast, then north to Virginia, west into Texas. She knew that she wasn’t in Florida any more: too many deciduous trees. Staring at the deep green of the newly leafed trees Emily started remembering, conjuring up the smell of green: freshly-cut grass with a mix of pungent wild onions. And then, like the gentle clicking of a metronome, she heard the wire scraping the steel and her memory fell into consciousness. The music. She had heard music then when the van had stopped. It was a canned metallic sound coming from poor-quality speakers. She could see from another memory the speakers nailed to the trees surrounding the small brick and wood building. And everywhere there is the perfectly coiffed grass around the rest area. She and her friends had driven to New Orleans many times from Auburn. The last rest stop on the Interstate before you leave the highway plays Cajun music. Once she and Lisa had stopped to pee and fell into an impromptu dance on the lawn.
She had been there. She tried to remember how long the drive from school had taken. If she factored in the additional time of leaving from Panama City that made it about four hours. If the drug wore off around the time the loon pulled onto that rest stop, then she was initially unconscious four hours. She supposed he would maintain the same travel time, so that by the time of her next and, she was sure, last shot they had traveled five hundred more miles. If he had continued west that would put her somewhere in Texas. But she didn’t know of any place in Texas this well forested. If he had turned north at any time she could really be anywhere in Louisiana or Arkansas. Not Louisiana she decided looking around, unless it was the far northern part of the state. Most likely Arkansas.
The important thing was that she had some idea of her geographical location, and a direction to take if she ever got out of the shackle. She dropped all other thoughts, and focused on picking the lock. She smiled. If someone had seen her at that moment, he or she would have been stunned at the beautiful half-naked, young girl wearing a small smile of self-satisfaction. She appeared the most relaxed and confident of women.