No one seemed to be sure.
Sophie looked over at him, still typing. “She left about a half hour ago. I think she went to meet Joaquin for a photo shoot with one of the soldiers for her VA story. Try reaching her on her cell.”
He felt his teeth grind with the effort not to shout. “I need to find Laura
That had their attention.
Javier was used to giving orders and having them obeyed. He instinctively fell back on that. “Sophie, call Joaquin. Find out whether Laura is with him and where they were supposed to meet.”
Sophie nodded.
Javier walked over to the desk he assumed was Laura’s—the one with balloons—and looked for a notepad that might have an address or phone number. There were several manila folders, pages of transcribed interviews, handwritten notes and spreadsheets, but no address. He roused her computer from sleep and found what he was looking for—a maps application showing an address and directions. “Is this hooked up to a printer?”
“It should come out there.” A red-haired man pointed to a bank of laser printers on the other side of the room.
Javier clicked Print and retrieved the page from the printer, half-listening to Sophie, who was speaking with Joaquin now.
A big man with curly gray hair stepped out from behind a closed office door labeled “Editor.” Laura’s boss.
“What’s going on out—”
Javier met his gaze, held up a finger for silence, then looked over at Sophie, who’d just ended the call. “Sophie?”
“Joaquin says she went to meet with a veteran named Ted Hollis, but he can’t find the address she gave him. His GPS says it doesn’t exist. He admitted he hasn’t updated for a while. He’s tried calling Laura, too. No answer.”
Javier didn’t like this.
Wherever she was, Laura was alone.
He needed to get to her now. “I need to borrow a vehicle.”
“Someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?” the editor asked.
Sophie answered, her face pale. “Laura may be missing.”
Alex stood, tossed Javier a set of keys. “Take mine. It’s a black Chevy Tahoe. I gassed up this morning. There’s body armor and an AR-15 and two loaded thirty-round mags in the back.”
Javier wasn’t even going to ask why Alex carried all that shit. An asshole like him probably needed it for self-defense. He caught the keys. “Thanks.”
He was on his way downstairs when McBride called.
“You with Laura?”
“No. She’s not here. She left a half hour ago, and she’s not answering her cell.”
“Son of a bitch!” McBride brought him quickly up to date—and the news wasn’t good. “I pulled up the files on the other men involved in the shakedown scheme and called our Miami and Detroit offices. While I was on the phone, Edwards’s social worker caught sight of the files and pointed to one of the men—Theodore Kimball.”
“He’s the one who was declared dead.”
“Right, but his remains were never recovered. The social worker swears she saw him at Edwards’s place a few weeks back. He said he was Edwards’s old army buddy. She says he introduced himself as Ted, but didn’t give a last name.”
Javier’s heart gave a single hard knock, fear flooding his veins like adrenaline. “The man Laura was supposed to meet is named Ted Hollis. I’ll bet my ass that’s him. I’ve got the address, and I’m on my way there now in a borrowed vehicle.”
Javier gave McBride the address and directions.
“That’s north of Denver in an undeveloped area of Adams County,” McBride said. “Hang for a minute, and I’ll pick you up in my car.”
“I can’t wait. If he’s got her, Laura doesn’t have much time.”
As he ended the call, the thought jabbed at him, a splinter in his mind.
“WAKE UP, LAURA. Rise and shine. It’s time to die.”
At first, Laura thought she was dreaming, but dreams didn’t come with throbbing headaches. She struggled to open her eyes, panic threading sluggishly through her veins. The voice was familiar. But something wasn’t right.
Someone pulled her hair, forced her head up, and gave her head a little shake, pain making her scalp tingle and temples throb. “Open your eyes.”
A man’s blurred face swam into view, blue sky and steel beams above him.
Where was she?
She’d been on her way to meet Joaquin. She’d gotten lost. There had been open fields and then . . .
It had struck her car, and a man with a rifle had come for her. Ether. He’d drugged her and dragged her away.
She’d been abducted again.
Blind terror surged through her, her heart slamming painfully in her chest, her eyes coming open. But she must still have been drugged. Nothing she saw made sense.
She was sitting tied to a chair in a room that had no ceiling, a building without a roof, nothing above her but steel girders and sky. In front of her was a partial wall with openings in the shapes of a wide door and windows that looked out onto a lake.
Was it some kind of partially constructed building?
A hand slapped her cheek, the pain sharp.
“There you are. Come on. Snap out of it.”
Ted Hollis.
She recognized his voice now.
He loomed over her dressed in olive-colored workman’s coveralls, blue nitrile gloves on his hands, and a baseball hat on his head with little lights sewn into the bill.
Infrared LEDs. The sniper.
Ted Hollis was the sniper.
Her pulse thrummed against her eardrums, fear making her sick to her stomach. Or maybe that was another side effect of the drug.
He reached for her face. “I guess I can take this off. There’s no one out here to hear you scream anyway, except for me, of course, and I enjoy that.”
He tore something from her mouth, pain making her gasp.
A piece of duct tape.
She swallowed, her mouth dry, whether from the ether or terror, she didn’t know. “Wh-where have you taken me?”
He smiled. “Don’t you recognize me, Laura?”
“Mr. Holl—”
“No, that’s just an alias.” He smiled, clearly satisfied with himself. “I’m Theodore Kimball, one of the soldiers whose lives you destroyed.”
Her mind raced, trying to put the pieces together. Wasn’t one of Edwards’s coconspirators named Theodore Kimball?
Yes.
So Ted Hollis was Theodore Kimball.
She fought her fear. She’d been through this before, and this time she was not going to let it break her. If
