Thirty-Two
Ben waited for Danny Castillo on the front porch of the house. He had talked to the detective on the phone, given him the scant details of Claire and Sam’s disappearance. The uniforms were there, a couple of detectives milling around. The forensic guys had gone through the house and taken the box with the ear to the lab.
Ben had called Jake and told him what had happened, or at least what he thought must have happened. Jake and the rest of the Atlas gang knew about Michael Sullivan’s murder and that the police believed Diego Santos was involved. Ben told Jake about the box left for Claire, the note inside and Michael Sullivan’s butchered ear.
He tried to stay focused, tried to think clearly, the way he would if this were just another case. But he kept seeing Sullivan’s bludgeoned face, the cigarette burns across his forehead. He kept thinking of Claire and what they might be doing to her. He kept thinking of Sam and what might be happening to his son.
He heard a car pull up and then another. He looked out to see Jake’s black Jeep and Alex’s fancy BMW. Trace’s Cherokee pulled up behind them. All three men got out of their vehicles and started walking toward where he stood on the porch, one taller and brawnier than the others, one blond, one in a white straw cowboy hat. Seeing their fierce expressions, their determination to find his family, made his throat feel tight.
He took a deep breath, fought to steady himself.
“Where’s Castillo?” Jake asked as he climbed the stairs to the porch.
“On his way. The cops were here, detectives are just about finished. Crime scene guys took the ear. I don’t know how the box got inside the house. Nothing looks out of place. Claire’s purse is on the table with her cell phone inside. She’d opened the gun safe next to the bed, but she hadn’t touched it. The forensic guys didn’t find any evidence of a struggle. I don’t think Santos and his men ever came into the house.”
“What’s your theory?” Trace asked, forcing Ben to concentrate as he hadn’t been able to do since he had seen the front door standing open.
“They had to be watching the place, but I never saw any sign of them.” He shook his head. “I should have been paying closer attention. I should have figured they’d find her. I should have been more careful.”
“Okay, so Santos and his men were watching the house,” Jake said. “What about Sam? How does he fit into this?”
He tried to think. Couldn’t get his mind to function. Sam. He had just found his son and now he had lost him. His stomach knotted. Claire. Jesus God, what were they doing to Claire?
“They’ll torture her,” he said, his mouth so dry he could barely force out the words. “They think Claire has the information they’re looking for, but she doesn’t.”
“Ben, you’ve got to focus,” Jake said. “I know how much you love her, but you’ve got to clear your head.”
Ben stared at his best friend as if he had never seen him before. For several seconds he just stood there. I know how much you love her.
Claire was gone, maybe hurt, maybe dead. Jake knew the truth. The rest of his friends probably did, too. He couldn’t lie to himself any longer. “You’re right, I love her. I’m crazy in love with her. I didn’t tell her. I couldn’t say it. Jesus, why didn’t I tell her?”
Jake grabbed his shoulders and shoved him hard against the outside of the house. “All right, goddammit, you love her. You’ve said it. You’ve accepted it. Now get your f*cking head on straight, and let’s go find her and your boy.”
Ben took a shuddering breath, looked up at Jake, and everything seemed to fall into place. He had to find Claire and Sam. He had the men he needed to help him do it.
“Sam was on the school bus. They must have known what time he came home every day. When he got off at the corner they were waiting. They must have figured Claire would come out of the house to get him.”
“How did they know Claire would be home?”
How had they? “Good question. Emma got sick. She called Claire at the office. Santos knew the address of her apartment. Sullivan had her business card in his wallet so Santos knew where she worked. Maybe someone at the office tipped him that she was staying with me. When she left early, they called, told Santos she would be here by herself, waiting for Sam.”
“We need to find out,” Trace said.
“If they wanted Claire,” Alex asked, “why did they take Sam?”
“Leverage,” Ben said, his brain finally beginning to function. “They figured if they threatened the boy, Claire would tell them where to find the flash drive.” He ignored the sick feeling in his stomach. He was thinking again and he wasn’t going to let his worry get in the way.
A brown Chevy unmarked police car rolled up and Danny Castillo got out, tall, black hair combed straight back. They all knew him, all had had dealings with the detective at one time or another.
Ben watched Castillo striding toward the porch, a grim look on his face.
“We talked to the people at Claire’s office,” he said. “Some kid dropped off a box tied up with a ribbon no more than fifteen minutes before Claire left to go home. The receptionist said Claire took the box with her when she left.”
“That’s how it got inside the house,” Alex said. “Claire carried it in. She didn’t have time to open it.”
“We’ve had uniforms canvassing the neighborhood,” Castillo said. “One of the neighbors saw an older white van parked on the south side of the street just down the block from the bus stop. It was there about half an hour before the bus was due to arrive. She couldn’t see who was driving, and she didn’t notice if the van was there when the bus actually drove up.”
“We need to interview the employees in her office,” Jake said, “find out if one of them tipped Santos that Claire would be home alone.”
“We’ve already pushed them pretty hard,” Castillo said. “On the surface it looks as if they didn’t know anything about Claire’s troubles or have anything to do with Santos.”
“Maybe not,” Trace drawled, “but if Santos wanted the information bad enough, he could afford to pay whatever it cost to get it.”
“What do you think is on that drive?” Alex asked.
Castillo shook his head. “Whatever it is, it’s important.”
“What about Santos?” Ben pressed. “You have any idea where we can find him?”
“We’ve been looking since Sullivan was murdered. So far no sign of him. Odds are he’s gone underground.”
Ben’s jaw hardened. He couldn’t stand to wait any longer. “I need to get going. I’ve got people I need to see, guys who might know where Santos is holding Claire.” Informants, guys he paid for information. He needed to round them up, put them to work. He needed information and he needed it fast.
“I’ve got calls to make myself,” Jake said.
“We all do,” said Trace, “We’ve all got people who might know something.”
“Let’s meet back at the office at twenty-one hundred,” Ben said, “unless someone comes up with something before then.” Eight p.m. It sounded like an eternity.
The men dispersed back to their cars. Ben climbed into his Denali and fired up the engine. He was on track now. Single-minded. Completely focused.
He was going to find Claire and Sam. And he was going to kill Diego Santos.
* * *
Claire had been riding in the cramped position for hours. Her shoulder ached, her back throbbed. Her wrists were scraped raw from the plastic bindings, and her hands felt bloodless and numb. It was at least a six-hour drive from Houston to Egansville, farther on to Bushytail Bayou.
Even worse, Claire had a bad feeling the men weren’t taking her back to the compound. Ben believed they had fled to a secondary location, a place they went to in case of an emergency. It would be deeper in the swamp or in another place altogether.
A shiver rolled through her. She hadn’t eaten anything since the yogurt she’d had for lunch and she was beginning to feel light-headed. She had tried to gauge which direction the van was traveling, thought they were heading northeast, but she couldn’t be sure. She really needed to use the bathroom, but with the tape over her mouth, there was no way to communicate her wishes.
Finally the van pulled into a service station in the middle of nowhere and Troy slid open the door. Reaching inside, he ripped the tape off her mouth. He did the same to Sam.
“I figured you’d need to use the can. Duke will walk you over, bring you back and then take Sam. If you try to scream or make any trouble, I’ll take the boy and leave. You’ll never see the kid again.”
She weighed her options. She could scream or try to escape, but Hutchins was armed and she didn’t think he would hesitate to shoot her. He certainly hadn’t thought twice about shooting Ben.
She looked up at him. He was taller than Troy, about the same height as Ben and solidly muscled, thin-faced and hard-edged, with shaggy black hair and a beard that needed trimming. He was maybe mid-thirties, the same as Troy.
Hutchins looked around the gas station. No cars in sight. The attendant was inside the run-down building. The bathrooms were in the back.
He cut the plastic bindings on her wrists and jerked her forward. “Let’s go.” Claire stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding on to her. Hutchins hauled her upright and dragged her toward the women’s bathroom behind the white stucco building, opened the door and shoved her inside.
“Make it fast.”
She hurried, looking around while she was inside for some way to leave a note. But her purse was still in Houston, and the bathroom was empty except for a roll of toilet paper and the dirty paper towels on the floor.
With a calming breath, she walked back outside, rubbing her wrists to try to get the circulation going. Once they reached the van, Troy rebound her wrists but left the ties a little looser this time, helped her up into the van while Hutchins took off with Sam.
“I’ll leave the tape off,” Troy said, “but you say a word or make any trouble, I’ll truss you up like a Christmas goose. You got it?”
She nodded. It wasn’t long before Sam was back in the van lying beside her. They could talk, but she didn’t dare say much. Keeping her voice below the level of the engine noise, she looked into Sam’s frightened face.
“Your dad will come,” she whispered. “All we have to do is wait.”
Sam blinked as if he were fighting tears and glanced away. She had a hunch he was thinking the same thing she was. How is Ben going to find us?
“He’ll come,” she promised. “No matter what.”
This time Sam nodded, and she thought he looked a little less afraid.
* * *
The eight o’clock meeting led nowhere.
“No word on the street,” Ben said as they sat down at the conference room table, each carrying a mug of coffee. “No one’s heard a f*cking thing.”
“Same here,” Jake said. “Guy’s definitely lying low. I’ve called in some markers. Sooner or later, something’s bound to turn up.”
“I tracked down the kid who left the box,” Trace said. “He was a teenager who happened to be ridin’ his bike in the area. Said a guy paid him twenty bucks to deliver the box to the Neighborhood Center. From the kid’s description, the guy was Hispanic.”
“Santos?” Ben asked.
“Probably one of his lackeys.”
Alex raked a hand through his dark gold hair. Frustration turned his GQ good looks hard. “I took another shot at the employees Claire works with at the center. Either they’re all professional liars or they’ve never heard of Diego Santos or anyone who works for him.”
Ben’s fingers tightened around his coffee mug. “Then how the hell did they know she’d be home?”
Alex set his coffee mug down on the long mahogany table. “Might be they were watching her office. When she left, they followed her back to your place.”
“Makes the most sense,” Ben said. “But I was at her office morning and night, even drove by a couple of times during the day, and I never spotted anyone.”
“I know none of us are big believers in coincidence,” Trace drawled, “but maybe this once, they got lucky. Maybe they found out Claire was stayin’ with Ben. Maybe they got his address and just happened to be driving by, checking things out, when Claire showed up.”
Ben rolled it around in his head. Didn’t like it. Couldn’t make himself believe it. “Too many maybes for me. I’m going back out, prowl the streets a little more, see if I can dig up something we can use.”
“Keep us posted.” Trace rose as Ben pushed up from his chair.
“Call me if you find Santos and need some backup,” Jake said.
“Same goes.” Alex clenched his jaw.
“We’ll be there if you need us,” Trace finished.
Ben just nodded. Walking out of the conference room, he headed for the door.
It was getting late. He spent most of the night driving the streets on the dark side of Houston. In his black SUV, with his black hair and swarthy complexion, he could move around without drawing much attention. He set up meets with more of his informants. They showed, but said no one was talking. Santos was powerful, and a real badass. No one wanted to end up like Michael Sullivan.
Unable to face the empty house, Ben returned to the office. He slept a couple of hours on the couch in the employee lounge, but was wide-awake before dawn, restless to get started even as tired as he was. He made a pot of coffee, poured some into a go-cup and drove back to his house.
Maybe they had missed something. Maybe Claire had left some sort of clue. Maybe Sam had.
He fed Hercules and put out food for Pepper, but the dog refused to eat. Clearly the dog was as distraught over the missing boy as Ben was.
For nearly an hour, he searched the empty house, looking for something that would give him a lead. Trying not to blame himself, knowing if he went down that road he would be as useless to Claire and Sam as he had been yesterday before Jake had squared his ass away.
But the house was as void of clues as it had been before. Going back outside, Ben walked the area around the perimeter, then headed for the school bus stop at the corner.
One of his neighbors had noticed the white van parked near the stop. It occurred to him that maybe Santos’s men hadn’t come to the house because they had followed Claire or somehow knew she would be there. Maybe they had found out about Sam, knew how much he meant to her, planned to take him and trade her for the disk.
It wasn’t a bad theory. He walked to the corner, prowling the sidewalk, people’s front lawns, checking the street. About where the van had been parked, the sun reflected off something in the gutter. Ben reached down and picked up a piece of paper, the clear cellophane crackling in his hand.
He recognized the sound, and his heart started pounding. He spread open the candy wrapper, read the familiar white lettering. Homemade Mud Bugs. Catahoula Candy Makers, Egansville, Louisiana.
Relief and fury hit him at the same time. It wasn’t Santos. She wasn’t being tortured. Troy Bragg had come for Sam, and Claire had tried to stop him. Bragg had taken her with him to whatever godforsaken rat hole he and his clan were calling home.
Santos didn’t have her, but she was still in terrible danger. Both of them were, but especially Claire. His stomach knotted at the thought of the Bayou Patriots, thirty-odd men and very few women. Thirty horny, caged-up motherf*ckers and a beautiful woman like Claire, helpless against them.
As Ben headed for the car, he pulled out his cell phone and started making calls. Jake, Trace, Alex and Sol were waiting in the office when he stepped inside, ringing the bell above the door.
“All right, we know who’s got them,” Ben said as he approached. “We just need to find them. Time to go to work.”
“Copy that,” Trace said as all of them headed for the conference room. Ben didn’t miss the hard, determined looks on his best friends’ faces.