She rose and held out her hand. “How about we try this again?”
“Are you sure about this?”
“No, but I want to do it anyway.”
Robie was about to stand when his phone buzzed.
“Shit,” exclaimed Reel. “I don’t care if that’s Marks, Tucker, or the president himself. Don’t answer it.”
Robie looked at the phone screen. “It’s Nicole Vance.”
“Then really don’t answer it.”
Robie clicked a key and said, “What’s up?”
He grinned at Reel, who was making a slicing motion with her finger across her neck. Then Robie’s grin disappeared.
“On my way.”
He clicked off and looked at Reel, who was now looking deadly serious.
“What?”
“It’s Julie.”
Reel’s mouth sagged. “Julie? What happened?”
“She’s been taken.”
Chapter 37
Nicole Vance met them outside the town house where only hours before Robie and Reel had dropped off Julie. Police cars lined the street and Robie could see FBI wheels parked along the curb. Yellow tape was up everywhere and police officers were holding back curious folks who craned their necks and jostled their neighbors trying to see.
“What happened?” Robie asked.
Vance looked at Reel and then at Robie. “Were you two together when I called you?”
“Yes,” said Robie. “We had taken Julie to dinner and dropped her off. We watched her go inside. Everything seemed fine.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” replied Vance, with another sharp glance at Reel. “Jerome Cassidy managed to call the police.”
“Managed?” said Robie.
“They nearly killed him. I wonder now why they didn’t. The cops in turn called us because it was a kidnapping. We have an Amber Alert out but nothing so far.”
“How did they get to her?” asked Reel.
“Apparently they were waiting for her when she got home. Cassidy was already unconscious.”
“So they broke into the house after we picked Julie up?” said Robie slowly.
“Apparently so,” replied Vance. “They subdued Cassidy and then waited for her to return.”
Reel added, “That means they were watching Julie’s house.”
“Looks to be the case,” said Vance. “We know she might have some enemies,” she added, looking at Robie.
Robie briefly returned the stare and then looked away, his gut suddenly full of acid.
“Any clues to who might have taken her?” asked Reel.
“Forensics team is going over everything right now. Cassidy might be some help once the docs sort him out. But I’m not holding out much hope. Cops say he was pretty garbled when he called 911. And I doubt they left a business card with helpful contact information.”
Reel nodded and glanced at Robie. But her gaze shot back to Vance with the woman’s next words.
“Julie’s phone was left behind. She didn’t drop it. It was on the table in the foyer, like they meant for us to find it. There was a text on it. From the time stamp it had to have been sent about the time she was taken. They’d turned off the auto lock on the phone so we could access it when we got here. It wasn’t addressed to Julie, but to somebody called Sally Fontaine.”
Reel and Robie exchanged a significant glance that Vance did not see because at that moment one of her men came up to her to deliver a report.
Vance finished with him and turned back to the pair. “You said you had dinner with her. Did she say anything that would make you believe she was nervous or scared?”
“No,” said Robie in a distracted tone. “Quite the opposite.”
“Did you see anybody following you?”
“Not that we noticed,” said Reel. “But they wouldn’t have to follow us if they knew where we’d picked Julie up from. They just had to wait for us to bring her back.”
“That’s true,” said Vance wearily. “Poor kid. She’s been through so much hell already. You’d think she’d catch a break.”
Robie said, “Any leads on this Sally Fontaine person? Can you trace where the text came from?”
“Nothing so far, but we’re working on both right now.”
“Why did you call me?” asked Robie.
“It was Julie. I thought you’d want to know. And we looked at her phone calendar. You were listed on there for tonight. Didn’t know it was dinner. But I figured if you had seen her you might have something useful.”
“I’m sorry that I don’t,” replied Robie. He eyed Vance warily. “You want some help on this?”
“Official or unofficial?”
“I think it’s going to have to be the latter.”
She considered this. “I’m okay with that so long as you are completely up front with me about anything you find. I’ll do my utmost to respond in kind.”
Reel said, “Didn’t know the Bureau was so cooperative.”
“Oh, we can be,” retorted Vance. “So long as we’re accorded respect.”
Reel nodded at this but said nothing. Her mind was evidently elsewhere. Then she said, “The text to this Sally Fontaine. What did it say?”
Vance shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“It’s apparently written in code. At least it made no sense to any of us.”
“Can we see it?” asked Robie after Reel gave him a sharp look.
“Why, are you guys codebreakers?”
“I’ve got some experience with it,” said Robie.
“Well, I guess it can’t hurt.”
Vance made a call and about fifteen minutes later one of her agents brought her a written copy of the text. The phone itself was already tagged and bagged and in the Bureau’s evidence truck.
Reel glanced at the paper but showed no reaction.
Robie said, “We’ll take a look at this and get back to you with anything we might have.”
“So, you two are a team again?” asked Vance.
“Of sorts,” answered Reel.
“How about that,” said Vance without a trace of enthusiasm.
Robie said hurriedly, “We’ll be in touch.”
He took Reel by the elbow and turned her away from Vance, ushering her down the street. He looked back once to see Vance staring at them.
Reel did not speak until they got back to the car.
They climbed in and she held up the paper.
“Sally Fontaine,” said Robie.
“They took her because of me,” said Reel, and her voice trembled as she said this.
“You couldn’t have known, Jessica.”
“The hell I couldn’t. It was a setup, Robie, clear and simple.”
“Your father?”
“Wanting me to come and see him so he could say goodbye? What bullshit. Was I a damn idiot?” She slammed her fist against the dashboard. “Shit!” she screamed in fury.
“He was dying all alone in a prison he’d been in for twenty years. Not the sort of guy you worry about.”
She held up the page again. “He wasn’t alone, Robie. He got me down there for a reason.” She added dully, “And this tells me why.”
“You can read that code?”
“I helped invent this code.”
He looked at her, stunned. “What?”
“When I was a teenager and working undercover for the FBI.”
“You mean when you’d infiltrated the neo-Nazi group?”
She nodded. “The neo-Nazis needed a safe way to communicate. I helped them come up with this communication protocol. Only they didn’t know I was feeding it to the Bureau at the same time.”
“So this is the same group? I thought they’d been arrested.”
“That was almost twenty years ago, Robie. Many of them are out now.”
“So they used your old man to get to you.”
She gave a hollow laugh. “It was probably his idea, not theirs.”
“So what does it say?”