Only thing worse would be telling him the truth.
Alone in Gibson Radcliffe’s dungeon of a room, Morgan shifted her focus back to the missing teenager. She began her search by looking for any indications of friends they could follow up with or places he might have gone by riffling through a desk cluttered with school notebooks and an old laptop that was virtually obsolete. As she scanned the computer’s directories, she heard voices coming from the HVAC vent beside the desk.
“Why do you think Gibson may have left home?” It was Andre. He sounded frustrated, still trying to get a coherent answer from the mother. Morgan did not feel guilty at all about ditching him with the heavy lifting.
Diane stammered something Morgan couldn’t hear. Andre tried again. “Why would he leave now? Did something happen? A trigger?”
“I was pregnant when I met my husband.” Diane’s voice sounded even more thin and reedy echoing through the ductwork than it had in person. “I never told Gibson who his real father was. But I think, maybe, he thinks…”
Morgan leaned closer to the grate, not sure if Diane trailed off or if for some reason she’d moved away from the upstairs vent. How many arguments about Gibson had her son listened to down here, she wondered. Bad enough to be exiled to this dank dungeon, but to have to listen to every unkind word your parents said about you? No wonder he’d left.
“You think he found out who his father is? That he’s gone to meet him?” Andre asked.
“No. I don’t see how he could have, not for certain. But I think, maybe, he’s such an imaginative boy, no one ever sees that, they just see the outside, the problems…”
“What did Gibson think?” Andre persisted. “Who did he imagine was his real father?”
“He got this crazy notion. Became obsessed, even. With a man, a man he saw in the news…”
Morgan tensed. She suddenly had a pretty good idea what Diane was going to say before she said it.
“I think, maybe, he went, he thought he could find him…”
“Find who, Mrs. Radcliffe?” Tension knotted Andre’s voice and Morgan knew he’d come to the same conclusion as she had.
“Clinton Caine.” The mother’s words were punctuated with sobs. “The serial killer who just escaped from prison. Gibson thinks he’s his father. God help me, I think he went to find him.”
Chapter 7
TO JENNA’S SURPRISE, Oshiro didn’t argue about taking her car. Instead, he followed her to the building’s parking garage and made her wait while he inspected her black Tahoe—the closest thing a civilian could come to a vehicle that was similar to what federal law enforcement used.
“Remote detonation isn’t Clint’s style,” she told him as she watched in amusement while he ducked and rolled below the vehicle, shining his MagLite from front to back before standing once more. For such a bulky guy, he moved with the agility of a martial arts master. “If he wanted to kill me, he’d do it up close and personal.”
“If you were the target,” Oshiro said, popping the hood and inspecting the engine compartment. “But if he were trying to flush out his daughter—”
Jenna blinked. She’d imagined herself the hunter stalking Caine. She did not like the idea of being cannon fodder in the psychopathic games he and Morgan engaged in.
Oshiro slammed the hood shut. “All clear.” He said a few more words into his phone, alerting his men that they were ready to move.
Jenna almost changed her mind, ready to slam the door on both Clinton Caine and his daughter once and for all, but she couldn’t shut out the memories of when Caine held her captive. She’d been bait then as well—he wasn’t interested in her, wanted only Lucy Guardino, the FBI agent who’d put a stop to his original killing spree—but knowing that hadn’t made it any less terrifying.
She never wanted to feel that helpless again. Just as she never wanted to feel like she did now: a rabbit caught in a trap, powerless to run or hide, doomed to simply wait for the predator to decide to finish things once and for all. No. This ended. Now.
Resolve fortified, she strode forward and held her hand out to Oshiro for her car keys. His lips quirked in that weird half-smile of his—she had no idea if it was amusement, disdain, puzzlement, or annoyance—but he dropped the keys into her palm without argument.
She stashed her gear in the back and got into the driver’s seat, feeling more in control. Oshiro climbed into the passenger’s seat. Wordlessly, she handed him the map and pointed to the nearest location Morgan had circled, a remote crossroads about twenty miles out of town, up in the mountains past Slickville. “We’ll try there first.”
He radioed their destination to his men and instructed two of them to remain to watch the premises. “Any idea what’s waiting for us?” he asked as she drove them out of the garage and turned onto Braddock.