“All right, what do you have?” Hackett asked.
“Mr. Smoot here is convinced Tilly Martin is being held hostage by two men who fit the description,” Gibb said.
“Did you talk to her?” Larson asked Smoot.
“No, ma’am, but I saw her in there, even though it was dark. I think they got her chained.”
“Have you had anything to drink today, sir?” Hackett asked.
“Couple sips for medicinal reasons. But I am telling you, I know what I seen a little while ago.”
“Thank you, sir,” Hackett said, pulling Gibb and Thorpe aside. “What’s next?”
“Halder’s squad makes a dynamic entry, kicks the door, goes in with flash bangs.”
“You’ve ruled out calling in?” Hackett asked.
“Can’t risk them grabbing the girl, using her as a shield.”
Gibb raised his walkie-talkie and checked with Halder.
“What’s your status, Tate?”
“Good to go.”
Without making a sound, two squad members scouted the hot zone surrounding Unit 28. The motel had been cleared of life and the night held an eerie quiet, conveying a false sense of calm.
Tension filled the air, as if a shotgun had been racked.
Using a stethoscope device, they heard the sound of Unit 28’s TV and air conditioner. No other movement, as they waved in their team.
Pressed against the chipped exterior walls, the squad inched toward the door with one member leading as point, another as rear cover.
For an instant, Halder recalled how a barricaded gunman shot a squad member during an arrest at a school shooting last year. The officer survived; the gunman didn’t. Checking his grip on his weapon, Halder forced his thoughts back to the operation.
His squad was made up of battle-tested veterans.
Each one was ready.
At that moment, Jack Gannon and Cora arrived in Cora’s Pontiac Vibe at a police checkpoint at the outer perimeter, far from the motel.
They got there without Hackett’s blessing.
Indifferent to their pleas at the house, Hackett had refused to give them information on the motel tip, again, because he didn’t want them at the scene. It didn’t matter. Gannon had been alerted by a WPA photographer who was among the press pack keeping vigil outside Cora’s home. The photographer was standing near a patrol car when he’d overheard two officers discussing the dispatches they’d read on their terminal.
As Gannon expected, the breaking news was not exclusive to the WPA. Other media outlets had also learned of it through their sources and once they spotted Cora at the police line, they moved in for her reaction. Microphones were thrust at her and news cameras closed in as reporters fired questions.
“Is your daughter in the motel?”
“Are these the kidnappers?”
“Cora, please tell us, what thoughts go through your mind at this time?”
Her heart racing she glanced at Jack, who gave a little nod.
“I’m terrified,” she said. “I can’t take it anymore. I want Tilly home, safe.”
Beyond the motel’s pool and across the courtyard, SAU sniper Paul Mulligan lay flat on his stomach in the shadow of a trash bin, one eye squinted behind his rifle.
The window and door of Unit 28 filled his scope.
Mulligan’s accuracy was rated at ninety-eight percent.
The room’s curtains were almost completely drawn. Concentrating on the dark interior, Mulligan detected no movement and whispered his report to Tate Halder and their lieutenant, Chett Gibb.
After a last run-through, Gibb green-lighted the squad.
“Go!” Halder said.
The battering ram popped the door, followed by the deafening
Bedroom number one: empty. Bathroom: empty. Closets: empty. Bedroom number two: empty. Bathroom: empty. Closets: empty. The ceiling, floors and walls were tapped for body mass.
They found fast food take-out containers heaped in the trash.
“What the hell?”
Halder and the others looked at a long silver chain fixed to an open handcuff near the bed.
“We just missed them, Tate.” Hawkins, the squad’s point man, touched a take-out coffee cup. “It’s warm.”
Halder reached for his radio.
Less than half an hour after Halder’s squad cleared Unit 28, the FBI’s Evidence Response Team began processing it. Time passed at an excruciating pace before Cora’s cell phone rang.
It was Hackett. After learning Cora and Gannon were at the tape, he advised them to proceed to the motel.
“Need you to look at something.”
Cora passed her phone to a Phoenix officer, who nodded a few times and said, “Right away.” Then Cora and Gannon went to the Sweet Times office. Hackett showed Cora a photo on his cell phone of a small shirt.
“They found this on the bed,” he said, zooming in, enlarging it.
Cora and Gannon studied the shirt’s unicorn pattern.
“Oh my God, that’s Tilly’s pajama top!”
“There’s no mistake?” Hackett asked.
Cora touched her fingernail to a small tear on the cuff. “I did that on the dryer door. That’s hers,” Cora said. Looking at Hackett, her eyes filled with anguish. “Did you find her?”
31
Drenched with sweat, almost drowning in fear-
She was buried in darkness.
The creeps had moved so fast after some angry guy had banged on the door. Tilly’s first thought-her hope-was that real police had come to save her. The banging had surprised her kidnappers. Ruiz, the one whose English was good, told Alfredo, the dumb one, to hold her.
She had tried to claw off her gag, to scream for help to whoever was banging on the door, but Alfredo had one hand around her mouth and held a knife to her throat with the other one. The guy at the door sounded mad and from what she could glimpse through the crack, he had a bat or something.
Ruiz calmed him down.
