Frozen Past (29 page)

Chapter 55

Ellie woke to a rag being pressed hard against her face and the familiar fumes invading her lungs. The world spun, and then she was out again. She had dreams of being carried away by a cool stream, the raft she floated on bobbing easily in its gentle wake. The water faded and she dreamt of home. Her mother, brother, and even Bentley. The feel and smell of her house comforted her and cradled her in a feeling of peace and warmth, safety and familiarity. Then it shifted again and she dreamt of blood.

* * *

Jaxon and Victoria searched the basement with her flashlight for thirty minutes and found nothing. It was barren. A chair, table, and Styrofoam cooler were all that remained of the missing Ellie. Apparently, she had gotten sick on the floor and Jaxon worried she was being tortured.

The urgency he felt ramped up a notch and his nerve endings felt fried. He was jittery and the headache that had followed him all day grew stronger, with white pinpoints of light invading the perimeter of his vision. He didn’t need a migraine now and he downed four more aspirin, dry, his acid stomach protesting but letting him keep it down.

“Who called you?” Victoria finally asked as they made their way back up the stairs.

Jaxon had completely forgotten about his phone vibrating while they entered the basement. He pulled out the phone and looked at the caller ID. It was a number he didn’t recognize and the icon for a voice mail blinked in the upper left corner.

“I got a voice mail,” he said and let it play out through the speaker.

“Mr. Jennings?” a young female voice said. “This is Deana Harrison. Luke’s sister. Can you please call me back. Luke has left the hospital and says he’s going to find Ellie. I’m scared! My parents are still in the hospital and we need your help. Call me back as soon as you get this.”

“Damn that kid!” Jaxon said. “This is all we need.”

“Call her back,” Victoria said. “Maybe he’s come to his senses and returned to the hospital.

Jaxon called and the phone was answered almost immediately. Deana told him what had happened and what she thought Luke was going to do.

“When did he leave,” Jaxon asked her.

“About eight hours ago.”

“And you’re just telling me this now?”

“I’m sorry,” she said and started to cry. “My mother tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. We didn’t know what to do.”

“Alright,” he said. “It’s alright. I’ll find him. We won’t let anything happen.”

She cried a little more and he reassured her they would get to him before he did anything stupid. She seemed to relax a little and he was finally able to get her off the phone so he could try and call the Harrison boy.

“How long has he been out?” Victoria asked.

“Eight hours.”

“Shit!”

“Yeah. Let me see if he’ll answer the number I have for him.”

He scrolled through his call log list and found the number, dialing it. It rang eight times and just when he was about to hang up, Luke answered it.

“Have you found her?!” Luke said, the excitement in his voice palpable through the connection.

“No,” Jaxon said. “And I don’t need you keeping me from my job.”

Luke was silent for a moment and then Jaxon could hear the disappointment and anger in his voice. “From what I hear, you don’t have a job.”

“That won’t keep me from finding her, but if you’re out there blundering around in the dark, it only makes my job harder. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“What you can’t,” Luke said and Jaxon winced.

“Don’t do this. I don’t have time to be protecting you while I hunt for her. Stay at home.”

“You can’t stop me. And I have the edge.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You couldn’t find him before,” Luke said, “but we did. And we’ll find him again.”

“Don’t be messing with this guy. You know what he’s capable of. Just about your whole family is in the hospital because of him. If you’re willing to risk your life and theirs, then by all means keep doing what you’re doing, but this man will hunt you down and take everything that means anything from you.”

“He already has.”

“Dammit Harrison! I’m warning you! Stay out of it!”

“Too late.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s already contacted me. We can track him.”

“Then give the information to me,” Jaxon said quickly. “Victoria and I can stop him. We have the whole DC Metro area police force behind us. Tell me where he is.”

Silence.

“Harrison?”

“I don’t know where he is yet. But I will soon.”

“Give me what you have then.”

“No. You botched it before, you’ll botch it again.”

Jaxon turned to Victoria looking for help. He was losing and didn’t know what to do. She signaled for the phone.

“Hold on,” Jaxon said and handed the phone to Victoria. She put it on speaker.

“Luke, this is Victoria. You can’t do this alone. You know that.”

“I have help.”

“Even if you do, you’re putting your friend’s lives at risk. Can you live with that? Think about what you’re asking of them. Is it worth their lives for you to stumble around blindly, anger this man, and get them killed?”

“They know what’s at stake. They’re with me.”

“I can tell you have your mind made up and I know what Ellie means to you. She means the world to me and I’m sorry we failed her. But we will not fail again. We will not let her die! Jaxon and I are willing to give up everything to save her. Let us do our job. If you won’t listen to reason, then at least let us work together.”

“You had your chance,” Luke said. “She’s where she is because of you two.”

“I don’t blame you for being angry, but don’t risk her life because you blame us. You do know that’s what you’re doing, right? You’re taking her life into your own hands. A kid from the suburbs of Virginia, putting his girlfriend’s life in his untrained hands because he has something to prove. If you know something that can save her, tell us what it is and let us save her.”

“You had your chance,” is all that came out of the speaker. “You had your chance. You failed.” And the line went dead.

* * *

Luke held the cell phone in a hand that shook. Jaxon and Victoria had gotten to him even if he had ultimately refused to help them. He was feeling unsure of his actions and his resolve felt weakened a bit. He stared out the window into the dark night and talked to her.

“Ellie—I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry! I miss you so much. Please—tell me what to do.”

He slammed his fist into the wall and hot tears burst from his eyes. Of course, no answer came to him and he stood staring into the black void beyond the window and let his sorrow overtake him. He heard someone come into the room and he got himself under control. Just then a musical chime played from somewhere in the house. Luke had never heard it before.

“Luke!” Jimmy yelled. “His phone just turned on!”

Chapter 56

“This could help us,” Jaxon said.

“How?” Victoria asked, the cell phone in her hand, silent after Luke Harrison hung up on them.

“We can use his own tool to help us.”

She looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“We’ll get the software that he gave us and track his own cell phone with it. When he goes after Worthington, we’ll follow him to the spot and take it from there.”

She smiled and then frowned. “How will we keep Luke out of it?”

“He’s made his own bed. Now he’ll have to lie in it.”

“That’s not fair,” she said. “We helped make that bed and now we’re going to just abandon him to chance? We can’t do that.”

Jaxon knew she was right. The kid was only acting this way because he and Vick had dropped the ball. “What the hell do we do?” he asked. “We need him to lead us to Worthington.”

She nodded, thinking. “We need to beat him to Worthington.”

“That would take being a mind reader. We wouldn’t need Luke and his software if we knew where the asshole was.”

“Maybe we’ll be able to guess.”

“Big risk.”

“Any better ideas?”

He shook his head. “Let’s go to the Hoover building and get the laptop. We’ll grab it and wait with it in Luke’s neighborhood so we’ll be right on his tail. Just in case.”

She looked into his eyes and grabbed his arm. “He’s not going to win.”

“You don’t have to give me a pep talk, Vick.”

“Maybe I need one,” she said and smiled.

He squeezed her hand and smiled back. “Come on.”

Chapter 57

Worthington’s phone was on, but he wasn’t moving. Luke, Jimmy, and John had all been watching the blip for the last hour. It sat stationary on I-495 near Tyson’s Corner. It wasn’t a house or hotel, just some random spot on the interstate.

“Maybe he parked the car and left the phone to lead us away.” Jimmy said.

“Are you sure you have the right phone number?” John said.

“Yes,” Luke said. “Bodey told me how to work the software and I watched Q use it too. The numbers that came up were just like when Q did it. He’s waiting for something.”

“Let’s go to him,” Jimmy said.

“Not yet,” Luke said. He wasn’t convinced Worthington meant to stay there. He would wait until they watched him move to a house or some other place they could approach without him knowing it.

His cell phone rang and Luke picked it up. He looked at Jimmy and John and they knew what he knew. Worthington.

“Hello.”

A deep voice, not the electronically altered irritation Luke had heard before, came over the speaker.

“Where are you?” he said, mockingly. “I’ve been waiting for you and you haven’t shown up.”

This voice, though normal, was somehow worse than the other one. This voice was human and Luke couldn’t seem to link it to anything human at all. The man was a monster and it bothered Luke that the monster could sound so normal. “Is she alright?” was all he managed to get out.

“Listen.”

Luke heard rustling and then a moan. Then her voice, sleepy, as if he was trying to wake her and she didn’t want to wake up. “No. I don’t want to eat,” she mumbled. “You can’t make me,” and her voice trailed off. The relief he felt was so great, he almost started to cry. Worthington stopped that.

“She won’t be alive much longer,” he said. “You’d better hurry.”

“Don’t touch her! I swear I’ll…”

“You’ll what!” he shouted. It made Luke jump. “I don’t see you here! I doubt you have it in you to even find me much less stop me. Bring it on, kid! Bring it on!” The line went dead.

“He’s moving,” John said.

* * *

Jaxon and Victoria sat in his car two blocks from the Harrison house. They were right by the pool complex with the laptop open and the tracking software running. So far, the Harrison boy was still in his house.

“You don’t think he left his phone at home, do you?” Victoria asked.

“I doubt it. Kids don’t go anywhere without them nowadays.”

“Still, what if he did?”

“We’re screwed.”

She sat silent for a moment and he knew her wheels were spinning. They had been spinning since they left the Hoover building. “What are you thinking?”

“About the pictures,” she said.

“What about them?”

“They bother me.”

“They bother me too, but we found his clue. He made it easy.”

“We’re missing something.”

“We’re missing a lot.”

She gave him a look and he turned away. The Harrison kid was still there.

“Why all the family shots? Why show us how his life was when he was with them?”

“Maybe he liked them.”

“Then why did he leave them for us?”

“He wanted to show me how I ruined his life.”

“Could be,” she said, but he could tell she didn’t believe that. “Or, he wanted us to see his house.”

“But we already know he lived there. That’s common knowledge. I’ve been there before and hell, I almost removed him from it.”

“But his house was in every picture,” she said, turning to him.

He thought about this and a little tumbler fell into place. Click. He jerked back to her and she was smiling.

“Every picture,” she said again.

“Shit!”

Just then he noticed Harrison’s cell phone moving. He pointed to it and she said. “He’s on the move! He must be on foot because he’s not moving very fast.”

“It has to be the house!”

“Let’s go!”