Just as they were about to break, a Ford panel van drove past them. It was in the middle lane, and Steck estimated it was driving at the speed limit. Steck tried to catch the license plate but only got a partial from the last three characters. D79.
He sat behind the wheel of his police cruiser and turned on the cruiser’s computer. Eiderzen took her seat and said, “You’d think Linda would have called in sick or at least taken the day off, this being her last shift.”
“Not her style,” Steck said. He compared the license plate from the Ford panel van he had just seen to the two license plates Farrell had forwarded to them via email.
I’ll be damned.
“One of them is a match,” Steck said, looking at his partner.
“What are you talking about?”
“The list Linda sent us,” Steck explained. “One of the Fords’ plates matches the panel van that drove by us a minute ago. Weren’t you paying attention?”
Steck made a quick executive decision and decided to pull over the van. He’d find a legal reason to do so later. He put the gearshift into drive and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. Dust and small rocks shot out from under the rear tires and peppered the concrete buffering wall separating the two sides of the highway.
“What are you doing?” Eiderzen asked, clipping her seat belt in place.
“We’re gonna check it out.”
Eiderzen grabbed the microphone from the dashboard clip and said, “Trooper Farrell from Trooper Eiderzen.”
“Go ahead for Farrell.”
“A Ford panel van with a partially matching license plate drove past us a minute ago. Corporal Steck will intercept and pull it over. You want to back us up?”
“You serious?”
“The last three digits matched one of the plates,” Eiderzen replied.
Steck smiled. Police work often involved pure sweat—talking to people on the street, canvassing an area to find a weapon, finding witnesses willing to share their stories. Out of the hundreds—and sometime thousands—of pieces of information a team brought in over the course of an investigation, it wasn’t unusual to get only one or two solid leads. Equally important, though, was that success in police work largely depended on luck and on a cop’s instinct to follow his or her gut. Farrell had done so with this case, and as long as it didn’t take him or his team too far from their primary mandate, Steck was ready to probe deeper into BlueShade Rental.
Steck looked in his rearview mirror. The rest of his team was right behind him. They were now traveling at close to ninety miles an hour. At that speed, it didn’t take long to catch up to the Ford panel van. When they were about seventy-five feet behind the van, Steck’s foot came off the gas pedal.
“Can you confirm the license plate?” he asked Erica.
“Yep,” she said. “That’s one of them.”
“Okay. Let the others know. We’ll pull it over.”
It didn’t matter how many years of service he had behind him. Every time Steck initiated a traffic stop, a rush of adrenaline surged through him. All traffic stops are potentially dangerous. Every year, officers of the Florida Highway Patrol were injured or killed during what Steck was sure the injured or dead officers thought was a routine traffic stop. There was nothing routine with traffic stops. Ever. About one out of ten physical attacks against police officers occurred while engaged in a traffic stop.
As he activated the emergency equipment of his police cruiser, Corporal Ryan Steck turned over in his mind everything he could think of that could go wrong.
Never could he have foreseen what was waiting for him and his team.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Hallandale Beach, Florida
Hunt began his controlled descent down the stairs leading to the basement. He kept his back pressed against the wall and his gun in front of him but close to his body. When he reached the final step, a chill coursed through him.
Leila. She was here. I can feel it.
He listened closely for any sound. Once he was satisfied that the only noise was his own breathing, Hunt moved rapidly, room by room, searching for any signs of his daughter. The first room consisted of a double bed, which had been slept in, a dresser with a large mirror, and a night table with a lamp. A sink and a toilet were tucked next to each other in one corner. A video camera hung from the ceiling in a back corner. A lump formed in his throat.
Was it here that they kept her?
He tossed the mattress aside and opened all the drawers but didn’t find anything connecting the room to his daughter. The next room was a perfect replica of the previous one. With one major difference.
The blood.
Something terrible had happened in this room. To Leila? He blinked a few times and shook the dark thoughts away. If whatever had happened here had taken place more than an hour or two ago, the blood would be dry and brown. Instead, it was dark red and fresh.
And frightening.