“Yes,” he answered calmly. “The locker rooms each have exterior entrances for use during hockey games. The other team has had eyes on it while we watched the main entrance. Aside from a few random cars driving around the building, looking for parking, they’ve noted nothing suspicious.”
Shaking his head, Alexander threw open the door to the car, cursing under his breath.
“Where are you going?!” Moretti bellowed as Alexander took off sprinting. “You’re going to blow our cover!”
“This isn’t a ransom drop!” Alexander couldn’t believe he didn’t see it all sooner. “This is another abduction!”
The pavement was slick from the rain and ice, but it didn’t slow him down. He bolted across the large parking lot, passing row after row of cars. He gritted his teeth, thinking about all the happy families enjoying time together on a Saturday night while he was trying to bring his family back together. Moretti’s footsteps sounded behind him in the distance, but Alexander was on autopilot.
The lights of the parking lot grew dim as he raced around the right side of the building, running faster than he had in years. Just as he turned the corner to where the locker room entrances were located, a dark compact car drove around the opposite corner and stopped. Alexander hid behind a dumpster, peering past it to keep an eye on the sedan. The driver was shrouded in darkness, his face protected by the night. He looked down, as if checking his watch, then glanced back to the locker room entrance.
Alexander held his breath as Olivia exited into the crisp night air. The front passenger side window of the sedan lowered and Olivia ducked, as if speaking to whomever was behind the wheel. If this were simply a ransom drop, she could just hand the keys through the window and walk away. Instead, she reached for the handle of the back door, about to pull it open.
Only thinking of keeping Olivia safe, Alexander rushed toward her, his weapon drawn. His heart raced, his entire body heating from the adrenaline coursing through him. His legs felt weighted down, the distance between him and the sedan seeming like miles instead of just a few yards.
“No!” he bellowed. Olivia snapped her head in his direction, taking a step back in surprise. He threw himself toward her, pushing her away from the car, as the squeal of tires reverberated through the cold night air. Aiming his weapon at the back of the car, he fired a few shots, staring at the license plate as it disappeared around the corner.
Repeating the combination of six numbers and letters in his head, he holstered his gun, spinning toward Olivia. She stared at him in confusion, disoriented.
“What did you do that for?” she shrieked. He could see her terror and panic as she searched his face for an answer. “He has Melanie. He was going to bring me to her!”
Alexander grabbed her face between his hands and gazed deep into her eyes, resting his forehead on hers. “No, Olivia. He wasn’t. This was all a setup.”
“A setup? He said—”
“I should have seen it before,” he interrupted. “I was so caught up with finally having some answers, I overlooked one rather important detail.”
“What?” she asked in a grim voice.
“His ransom demand. This guy took every precaution imaginable from the beginning, even being so bold as to make it appear Martin had taken Melanie. It makes sense he wouldn’t want us to use the ransom to find him, too, doesn’t it?”
She nodded. “Yes, of course, but—”
“The cash,” Alexander said hurriedly as FBI agents began swarming the area, Moretti bellowing orders. “He never asked for non-consecutive, unmarked bills. He didn’t care about the money because he had no intention of taking it or returning Melanie. This was his way of drawing you out alone so he could…” He trailed off, grateful the light had come on before it was too late. If a few more seconds had passed, he shuddered to think what would have happened had Olivia gotten into that car.
“But what could he possibly want with me?” she asked, biting her lip.
Alexander shook his head, still as dumbfounded as ever about what was going on. It was now past six at night. Melanie had been missing all day, and they were still clueless about why she was taken or where she could be.
“I don’t know, love. It’s probably just another way to try to get to me.”
“Who?” she quivered.
He ran through the list he had made in his head of everyone he had pissed off in his life. It wasn’t short by any stretch of the imagination, but not one person on it stood out. He had thought this was about money. They all did. His firm had worked hundreds of cases for private citizens and very large corporations where they recovered stolen cash and goods. They had been responsible for people losing their jobs, their livelihoods. Some even lost their families as a result of the investigations. But now he knew he had it all wrong. This clearly wasn’t just about money. Maleek was after something else. But what? He absently wondered whether it was connected to Mischa’s death and Landon’s time in Afghanistan, but he couldn’t be sure of anything. Until he knew for certain, everyone was a suspect.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But we have a description and a name. You’re going to sit down with a sketch artist so we can blast this guy’s face all over the country. In the meantime, we’ll do our best to track him down with what information we do have.”
“And what’s that? This was our one shot at finding Melanie, but we’re now back to the same place we were before!” she said, fighting back tears.
“No, Olivia. Now we have a plate number. Even if he ditches the plates, he’s got a busted tail light.”
A look of understanding washed over her. “So that’s why you intentionally missed. I thought you were slipping. Even I could have made that shot.” She smirked, lightening the intensity momentarily.
“As much as I would have loved to put two in the bastard, he may be the only one who knows where Melanie is.”
“We’ll find her, right?” Olivia asked, looking up at Alexander through wet eyes.
Wrapping his arms around her and staring at the black sky, his mind went to dark places thinking of Melanie alone and scared. “Of course we will.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
December 19
9:30 PM
“DOES THIS LOOK ABOUT right?” a young man named Robert asked, flipping his tablet around and showing Olivia the final version of a sketch they had been working on.
He had asked questions about so many intricate details regarding Maleek’s appearance — the shape of his eyebrows, the fullness of his lips, the curve of his chin, the darkness of his eyes. After over an hour of sketching and re-sketching, Olivia now stared back into a pair of two-dimensional eyes that espoused evil and superiority. It was as if he were here with her, laughing at her, mocking her. They finally got it right.
All she could do was nod at the sketch artist, who didn’t look a day over eighteen, even though he hinted he had been with the bureau for close to a decade. He was extremely talented, able to translate Olivia’s lackluster description with ease, guiding her every step of the way.