False Witness (41 page)

A few weeks ago she was a third-year law student itching to get out in the “real world” so she could start prosecuting criminals. Her main concern had been whether to answer questions if called on in crim pro. Now, she was being hunted by the mob. Kidnapped. Threatened.

Life seemed so fragile.

At 3:30 a.m., Jamie rose from her bed and padded over to the door that separated her room from Drew's. She hesitated for a moment, recalled his words—
“if you need to talk”
—and knocked softly on the adjoining door. She waited, heard no sound coming from the other room, and knocked again. This time she heard a faint “Just a minute,” and a few seconds later Drew opened the door.

He was wearing a pair of jeans and no shirt, his thick, dark hair matted. The man certainly kept himself in shape. He leaned against the doorjamb looking sleepy and squinting at the light.

“I'm sorry,” Jamie said. “It's just that I couldn't sleep. And you said . . .”

“No, really, it's fine.” He waved off her apology. “Let me get a shirt on, and maybe we can get some coffee or something.”

She suddenly felt like an idiot for waking him up. “Are you sure? I mean, it can wait until later.”

He smiled, the sleepy eyes coming to life. “Let's see, you knock on my door at 3:30 a.m. to tell me it can wait? I don't think so.”

For some unspoken reason, it didn't seem right staying in one of the hotel rooms, so the two friends made their way down to the lobby. Drew talked one of the FBI agents into making a coffee run, and soon Drew and Jamie were sitting on an overstuffed lobby couch, their feet propped on a coffee table, discussing the previous day's events. Jamie, still wearing the pajamas Drew had bought earlier, kicked her sandals off. Drew was wearing his jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt.

“Nice pajamas,” Drew said. “They look even better on you than they did on the mannequin.”

“They don't put pajamas on mannequins.”

“Reality should never stand in the way of a good pick-up line.”

They talked for a few minutes about everything and nothing. Drew asked how she was doing without Snowball. Jamie asked whether Drew ever had any dogs. He did—a greyhound he had rescued from the kennel. So they swapped dog stories for a while. When the coffee came, Jamie decided it was time to ask about a few of the things that had been keeping her up.

“How did you guys find me? And how did
you
end up down here?”

“I can go home if you want me to,” Drew countered with a smirk.

“No, I'm really glad you're here,” Jamie said emphatically. “But this is a federal case, and they don't usually bring local cops along for the ride.”

“You don't have your watch on right now, do you?”

She looked down at her wrist and realized she had left it on the bedside table. “No. Why?”

“I'll show it to you later, but when you hired me for private security, I implanted a small chip inside your watch. It's like one of those RFID chips they implant in a lot of retail products these days, or the ones they use to track the migration patterns of animals, only stronger.” As he talked, Drew seemed to be watching Jamie to see what kind of impact this was having on her. In all honesty, she really wasn't sure how to feel about it. Thankful he had saved her life? Upset that she was being monitored without her knowledge?

“It's a passive, read-only tag, and the feds didn't even know I'd installed it,” he continued. “That's why it took so long to rescue you. I was working at my desk job and didn't find out you'd been kidnapped until about seven o'clock. I helped them track you down but demanded to tag along . . . no pun intended.”

Jamie took a sip of coffee. “You installed a tracking device in my watch and didn't tell me?” It felt a little weird.

“I should have told you. I know.” Drew avoided Jamie's eyes and fiddled with his coffee cup. She felt guilty for jumping on his case.

“It's just that you were freaked out enough with everything going on and I didn't want to create more worry,” Drew continued. “Plus, I wasn't 100 percent sure you'd let me do it. I know that doesn't justify it, Jamie. I'm just saying . . . it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Now . . . I wish I'd told you about it.”

“What other tags do you have on me?”

“None. I swear.”

“Cameras in my apartment? And in my car?”

“No, but that's probably not a bad idea.”

Jamie managed a weak smile, and it seemed to relax Drew a little. At least he was contrite about it and didn't try to make excuses. And it had ended up saving her life.

“Drew, I really am grateful you implanted that chip or code or whatever, especially the way things turned out. But you can't just track me like some wild animal and not even tell me about it. What about my privacy rights?”

He opened his palms in surrender. “I'm sorry, Jamie. I really am. I cared so much about your safety that I did something really stupid. From now on, what I know, you'll know.”

She found it hard to stay mad at a guy who admitted his mistakes and in the process threw in a line about how much he cared. Especially when she felt so exhausted. Right now, she didn't need another fight. She needed an ally, someone she could trust. “Tell me about the way this whole thing came down,” she said. “Start to finish. Every detail.”

“Well, fortunately,” Drew began, “this brilliant detective had implanted an RFID-type device in the watch of a beautiful young lawyer, although he admittedly should have obtained her permission first. . . .”

She nodded her encouragement. “You're off to a good start.”

Later, when they returned to their rooms, Drew lingered in front of Jamie's door. She turned to face him, told him thanks, and waited for a beat, frozen by an awkward mixture of fear and anticipation, wondering if he felt the same thing she did.

In response, he reached out and gently touched her arm, then took a step closer and brushed his lips against hers. She felt the electricity of that moment: two people meant for each other, her destiny starting to change. It was the perfect kiss, gentle and sensitive, from the perfect Southern gentleman. She wanted to lean in and kiss him back, to reward him for taking a chance with someone as emotionally tough and distant as she could be. But the past several hours had been traumatic, and her emotions were still on hyperdrive. It was not the right time to trust her heart.

“Thanks,” she said again. Drew looked a little hurt as she turned and let herself in the room.

71

Thursday, April 10

Jamie slept until noon and spent the rest of the day cooped up in her hotel room. The feds were being remarkably tight-lipped about their plan but insisted that Jamie not be seen in public. She wanted to at least call Chris and a few of her friends from law school but the feds frowned on the idea. What if the triad had tapped into their phones? Besides, Chris wouldn't be worried. Only a few others like Wellington and Isaiah even knew about Jamie's kidnapping. The fewer variables, the better, the federal agents insisted.

Feeling helpless, Jamie tried to pass the time watching hotel movies. The minutes dragged by and she wondered if her life would ever return to normal again.

At 8:30 p.m., David Hoffman checked the rearview mirror as he exited Route 400 and pulled onto Old Milton Parkway. He took mental note of the cars behind him, a habit he had fine-tuned in the last few weeks. After a few lights, he pulled into the right-turn lane and slowed, checking to make sure the other cars continued straight and passed him by. Remaining vigilant, Hoffman took a right onto North Point Parkway, then pulled into the first large office complex on his left. It was dark, but the parking lot was well lit and mostly deserted. He made sure that no cars followed him into the lot.

He waited five minutes before he pulled back onto North Point, turned right, crossed Old Milton Parkway, then took an immediate right into the parking lot of the Staybridge Suites.

After he registered, he parked behind the hotel in one of the few empty spaces and pulled out his access key for the back door. He had his Glock tucked inside a cowboy boot and a switchblade in his pocket. He walked quickly to the door, slid his key through the magnetic slot, and stepped inside.

His attacker seemed to come out of thin air, materializing inside the stairwell. Before Hoffman could react, the man dealt a crippling blow to Hoffman's larynx, caught him as he collapsed, and dragged him outside. Two others quickly joined the first assailant, cuffing Hoffman's arms behind his back as he struggled to draw a breath.

A Town Car screeched around the corner, and the back door popped open. The men threw Hoffman in the car. One of his assailants climbed into the backseat after Hoffman; the others ran to another vehicle. Hoffman, still fighting for air, feeling like his windpipe had collapsed, found himself pinned between two muscular men, one holding a gun to his head.

He recognized the man with the gun. The low forehead, the thick neck, the sideburn scar on the right side of his face, and a cobra tattoo on his neck. It was the man who had taken the place of Johnny Chin at Silvoso's clinic. The man Hoffman had seen in court.

As they pulled out of the parking lot and headed back toward the interstate, the passenger in the front seat turned around. A man, about David's age, with the rugged good looks of an Asian bad boy—stylish sideburns and short goatee, dark eyebrows, wide eyes, a demon-possessed smile.

The hair on Hoffman's arms stood up. He had met Huang Xu only once, at the blasting pit four years earlier, and Xu's face had been covered by a ski mask. But Hoffman had seen the FBI photos of the man who would haunt his nightmares, his visage burned forever into Hoffman's subconscious.

Xu seemed amused by his captive, like a mean-spirited kid ready to pull the wings off a captive fly. “You're good at dishing out torture, my friend. Tonight, we'll see how you fare on the receiving end.”

After a few minutes of silence, the burly Asian next to Hoffman spoke. “Take off your clothes.”

But Hoffman had regained his voice. “You're not my type,” he replied.

“Umph!” Hoffman caught an elbow in the ribs from the man on the other side—a middle-aged balding man with a dark complexion. It doubled Hoffman over, knocking the wind out of him.

Hoffman grunted, trying to get some air back in his lungs. He gasped for a few moments as the car turned into the vacant parking lot of a boarded-up restaurant. The driver parked next to an old Dumpster behind the building.

“Take off your clothes,” the man with the cobra tattoo repeated.

Without saying a word, Hoffman bent over and untied his shoes. He slipped them off, then the socks. The shirt came next. While Hoffman removed it, his backseat companions stepped out of the car. The cobra man went around to the trunk and grabbed another set of clothes—a pair of boxers, jeans, flip-flops, and a T-shirt. He threw them in the backseat.

“Put these on,” he demanded.

The driver had a gun leveled at Hoffman over the front seat. Hoffman stripped completely down and put on the new set of clothes. They were guarding against listening devices, he knew. They threw his old clothes in the trash bin and had him stand outside the vehicle. Huang Xu waved a metal wand, the kind they use at airports, a few inches from Hoffman's body. It beeped just below Hoffman's stomach. Xu muttered something and moved the wand by the same spot a second time.

It beeped again, a nasty little noise that made Hoffman flinch. Xu's lips curled into a malicious smile.

He said something in Chinese that brought grins to the faces of the others. Hoffman felt like he might puke.

“You have a thing for GPS devices,” Xu said. “This one must have been swallowed several hours ago because it appears to be lodged in the stomach or perhaps the upper intestines. But this time, Mr. Shealy, we came prepared. Knowing your penchant for such devices, we brought a police jammer in this vehicle.”