Out of Reach: A Novel (9 page)

XI

I
SAAC COULD HAVE
killed her.

It would have been so easy, so sweet. She’d been mere feet away, standing there, her courage leaking from her like blood from an oozing wound. She’d tried to hold it in, tried to stop the flow, but her efforts failed. In the end, fear had drained her, made her weak.

Oh, she would have fought. And from what he’d discovered about her in the last few hours, it would have been an interesting encounter.

The information he’d given to Neville about her had been easy enough to uncover. He’d gotten her name from one of the cops at the park, and from there it had been a piece of cake to discover her address, occupation, and her sister, Claire. After leaving Neville, however, Isaac had dug a little deeper into Erin Baker’s life. The martial-arts training was an interesting twist, but not unusual. That she’d excelled at them, however, notched up his interest a bit. Still, she wasn’t a killer. She lacked that instinct, which would forever put her at a disadvantage. So he would have prevailed, taking her life and the threat she posed all in one move.

Unfortunately, her death would cause a stir neither he nor Neville could afford at the moment. Time was what they needed and what kept her alive. Time to let the whole Chelsea Madden incident die down. And time for the feds to give up and forget about Cody Sanders.

Besides, she was far too interesting a subject. She presented him with a challenge he hadn’t experienced in too long. He didn’t understand how she’d recognized him. What was it she’d seen in the two men, the two personas, that had caught her eye? He wanted to know, and until then, he wouldn’t kill her.

So he’d just watched, taunting her. Because she’d sensed his presence, and that, too, made her special. Unique.

Now, as he cut back through the woods to reach the playground before her, he thought about his meeting with Neville. For once they’d agreed on what needed to be done, if not on the how or why.

Neville hadn’t a clue about the real threat Erin Baker presented. Though he understood the danger to himself and had come to the same conclusion about her background as Isaac. She was NSA. Or CIA. It was the only thing that made sense. She’d fallen off the radar for a full year after earning her doctorate, then surfaced in Cairo for two more. It wasn’t exactly your standard career path for an academic. What Neville didn’t understand was that this was not about her government connections. This was personal. It was about her sister. And that made her all the more dangerous.

Neville had sent men to watch her. Isaac had seen them, parked a discreet distance from her house, close enough to watch, far enough not to be spotted. Not fools. Competent, efficient men who would watch her movements and report back. They weren’t, however, in her league. They would underestimate her—her skill and her determination—and she’d bring them all down.

So Isaac would do things his way, despite Neville’s orders to the contrary. Just as he’d done with the Madden girl. He’d let her go because killing her would have lent weight to Erin’s story. Missing or dead, they had a crime. Alive, they had a hysterical witness. As it was, the sleeping child had no recollection of the missing hours she’d spent in the back of his van. He’d dropped a chloroform-soaked cloth over her nose and mouth before taking her from the stroller. It had kept her sleeping, and ensured she had no memory of him.

He reached the edge of the playground and settled in to wait. Erin wasn’t that far behind him, running now, her long legs eating up the dirt path along the river.

Despite his resolve to do otherwise, he considered again the expediency of killing her now. He could take her quickly, then disappear. Neville wouldn’t be happy. But then, Isaac didn’t take Neville’s orders.

XII

A
LEC SAW HER
brace herself, her body settling into a defensive posture. He’d learned a lot about Erin Baker in the last six hours. She’d been training in the martial arts since she was twelve and held three black belts: tae kwon do, aikido, and kenpo. Which explained the incident with Beckwith last night. The kid hadn’t stood a chance.

Alec stopped walking, hands up, palms out. “Easy, Dr. Baker. It’s me, Agent Donovan.”

She didn’t let down her guard, though she eased up a bit. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“And so you stalk me in the middle of the night?”

“I’m not stalking you, and it’s almost—” He started forward but stopped when she tensed again.

“Were you following me along the path?”

“What?” He looked behind her, toward the dark water, and reached for the weapon beneath his jacket. “No.”

“Someone was, if not you—”

“It wasn’t me.” He moved up beside her, the .38 automatic in his hand now, and scanned the surrounding trees. The darkness was giving way to morning, but too many shadows lingered with too many places a man could hide. “You told me you ran early, so after checking your house and finding you’d already left, I came here to wait for you to finish. Did you see him?”

“Only a shadow.” She took a deep breath and seemed to shake off a chill. “He’s gone now.”

He realized she was spooked, and from what he’d seen so far, she wasn’t a woman who spooked easily. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She noticed the gun in his hand and laughed abruptly. “It was probably nothing.” Though she didn’t sound like she believed it.

“Maybe.” But then, maybe not. Especially if his suspicions were correct and they’d hit a nerve last night. In that case, she shouldn’t be running alone, no matter how many black belts she held.

“I think it would be best if we talk somewhere else,” he said, slipping his weapon back into its holster. “There’s an all-night diner a block over. Is that okay?”

She nodded and started for the park entrance, but he held back, studying again the now-empty dirt path and the rim of bushes framing it.

Was he out there even now? Watching them?

With a shiver of his own, Alec turned and caught up to her.

They walked in silence, and he could almost feel her settling back into the coolheaded woman he’d met the night before. It wasn’t until they’d put the park a full block behind them that she finally spoke.

“So, what does the FBI want with me?” she asked.

“Not the FBI. Me.”

She threw him a glance, a spark of surprise in her eyes. “Agent Donovan, are you hitting on me?”

He actually felt himself blush. The thought appealed to him more than he’d admit aloud, more than was prudent under the circumstances. He was looking for a kidnapper, possibly a serial kidnapper. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by a woman, even one as intriguing as Erin Baker.

“No,” he said, and realized that didn’t sound right. “I mean . . .” He shook his head, clearing the inappropriate thoughts. “I just have some questions about the missing girl.”

“There is no missing girl, remember?” Her voice held a touch of sarcasm. “She was found under a bush.”

“But there
is
a missing boy.” He pulled a manila envelope from his inside jacket pocket and withdrew a picture of Cody Sanders. Offering it to her, he said, “He’s been gone five days now.”

She refused the picture. “As I recall, we’ve already had this conversation. I told you I watch the news, and you suggested there might be a connection between the two kidnappings.”

He was about to tell her a lot more, probably more than he should. But he needed her help. “Then you also know we’re running out of time. The longer Cody’s missing, the less chance we have of finding him alive. Or ever.”

She stopped and turned to him. “What does this have to do with Chelsea Madden? Or me?”

“You believe someone took her yesterday, don’t you?” He slipped the picture back in his pocket. “Then left her for us to find?”

She didn’t comment. Why should she? She’d made her opinion clear enough to the police the night before. Calm. Rational. Totally sure of herself. She’d told them they were making a mistake.

“And you think it was the man you saw in the park who took her?” Alec added. “The same man you saw in Miami nineteen years ago.”

“Even if you don’t buy my story—and I really can’t blame you for that—there are still too many coincidences to write off Chelsea’s disappearance.” She started walking again. “You need to be looking for someone who had a motive for taking her and then letting her go.”

“I agree.” He snagged her arm and stopped her. “Cody Sanders was seen in Cross Street Market the day he disappeared.” It was the break in the case Alec had been waiting for, ferreted out by the locals who knew the area much better than his agents. “He was talking to a middle-aged man, balding, soft around the middle.” He saw her understanding, the recognition that he’d just described the man she’d seen in the park. “No one knows how long the man’s been hanging around the market. A week? A month? But we can’t find him now.”

He released her arm. If he hadn’t caught her attention yet, he’d have her with the next piece of information. “The one thing everyone does seem to remember is that the man played the shell game for quarters.”

She went very still.

“You do know what the shell game is, don’t you, Dr. Baker?” She nodded, but he explained anyway. “It’s a sleight-of-hand game played with shells and a ball. The dealer puts the ball under a shell and mixes them up. To win, the player needs to identify which shell hides the ball.”

They’d reached the diner, but neither of them seemed inclined to go in. “If the dealer is good,” Alec said, “if he has very quick hands . . .”

“Then he seldom loses.” She took a deep breath, looked away for a moment, then seemed to accept some unseen burden. “The same man I saw performing magic tricks in the park?”

“It’s possible.”

“And the man in Miami, the day Claire disappeared?”

“A long shot, but again, possible. Along with a dozen or more kidnappings over the past twenty or so years. That’s why I’m here, why you and I need to talk.”

The early morning, with its wakening sounds, settled between them. A street-cleaner pushed its bulky weight along the curb. A city garbage truck stopped and started in the alley alongside the diner, the gears of its belly cranking and creaking as stiff steel arms lifted and emptied a full Dumpster. And a few Sunday-morning commuters straggled onto the streets, heading for the district.

“Why would he do it?” she said. “Why grab Chelsea, then let her go?”

“Because someone—you”—he paused, letting his words sink in—“recognized him.”

She was so still. It was an extraordinary ability, one that seldom came naturally to the human species and was even beyond the skill of most professionals. And he had to wonder how she’d acquired it. “But that’s only one of the remaining questions,” he said, referring to her question about Chelsea’s release, though it applied to his thoughts about Erin as well. He gestured toward the diner. “Come on, I’ll buy you coffee and tell you the rest.”

They claimed a back booth. Other customers had begun drifting in, bleary-eyed, for coffee or a quick breakfast after a late shift or before an early one. A girl in her late teens, with nine silver hoops marching up each ear and three in each eyebrow, poured coffee.

After the waitress left, Erin wrapped her hands around the white ceramic mug but didn’t drink. “Okay, tell me what you know about the Magic Man.”

“Is that what you call him?”

She shrugged.

“In law enforcement circles, he’s known as the Magician.” Alec swallowed the hot coffee, wondering just how long the caffeine would keep him going before he crashed. “Except most don’t believe he exists.”

“But you do.”

“Three years ago the Coast Guard stopped a ship, the
Desert Sun
, off the California coast. The manifest indicated the ship was transporting engine parts to various Middle Eastern ports.” He hesitated, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “What they found were children.” He could still see those faces, the fear marring their young features, and it churned the anger inside him. “Twenty-two of them.”

Her eyes filled with horror, though her expression remained blank. She was good at hiding her emotions, except her eyes. They spoke volumes, and he heard every word. She was thinking of families, tormented by a child’s loss. It was something too close to her, a pain she understood too well.

That’s why he needed her help.

“The kids had been kidnapped one by one during the previous twelve months, from all different parts of the country. Most fit a certain general physical and socioeconomic profile.” He took a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Blonds. A few redheads. All light-skinned and most from low-income families. Many of the older ones, the nine- to twelve-year-olds, had been classified as runaways.”

“Why have I never heard anything about this?”

“It was hushed up and deemed classified so the information wouldn’t leak out.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice even further. “Think of the outrage if the general public thought American children were being sold overseas. No one would wait for a declaration of war. There would be killing in the streets, with every mosque from here to California as prime targets.”

“What happened to the children?”

The waitress returned to refill their coffee, and he waited until she’d left again. “None of them had been physically harmed, but they were hospitalized for observation and counseling before being sent home.”

“And so the FBI could question them.”

“We wanted more than a crew of sailors who manned the ship. Or even the ship’s captain.” He sat back, feeling the caffeine start to work on his nerves. “Unfortunately, the children weren’t much help. Most were too young or too traumatized to tell us anything we could use.”

“Most?” She was quick, her mind leaping ahead of him. “There were exceptions?”

“One. Her name was Suzie, and she told us about the man who’d kidnapped her.”

“The Magician?”

“I was working out of the L.A. office at the time and was called in to help with the interviews. Suzie was a precocious ten-year-old who’d been snatched from a fairgrounds a month earlier.” She was a feisty little redhead, with a sharp tongue and a bad attitude. A survivor. If he ever had a daughter, he’d want one like Suzie. “She claimed the man who abducted her did magic tricks.”

He gave her a moment to take it all in, finishing his coffee, while she still hadn’t touched hers. “Would you like something else?”

She shook her head. “No, this is fine. What came of the girl’s testimony?”

“Not much. None of the other children could verify Suzie’s story, and the man was never found or identified.” He shrugged. “The case is still open, but it’s been dormant for years. As for the Magician . . .” He paused again. “It wasn’t the first time we’d heard of a child abductor who did magic tricks. There have been random reports of him going back twenty years.”

“But no one really believes he exists?”

“I’m not sure I believed it myself, until that interview. You see, the Magician has become something of a myth, like the big one who got away. Anytime we fail to find a lost child, it’s easy to blame the man no one else can catch either.”

It sounded lame, like an excuse made by lazy cops and field agents, the very people meant to protect the Suzies and Codys of the world. But, it was more defense than anything else, a way to explain and somehow deal with their failure to always protect the innocent. “Then today, when you showed up with your story . . .”

He watched Erin work through it, analyzing his words. Cathy had done a full background check on her, but nothing she’d found explained the woman in the booth across from him.

Erin Baker was more than she claimed.

“So, who took the fall for the
Desert Sun
?” she asked.

“The captain. He claimed he masterminded and executed the entire plan with help from his crew. It seemed unlikely, but with nothing else, he was all we had.” Alec turned over his hands, a gesture of helplessness and frustration. “Besides, he wasn’t an innocent, he knew he was running a slave ship.”

“What about the ship’s ownership?”

“A shell corporation, which we eventually traced to this man.” From the same envelope holding Cody’s picture, Alec drew out another and pushed it across the table. “General William Neville.”

She studied the picture without touching it. “I know him. He’s attached to the German embassy.”

“And you know this because you’re a professor at Georgetown?”

“Don’t start playing games with me, Agent Donovan.” She slid the picture across the table. “We both know you had me thoroughly checked out. Yes, I do the embassy circuit. I’m a professor of international relations, and it usually helps to know something about the subject you teach.”

“Is that why you spent two years in Cairo?”

“If I wasn’t interested in foreign cultures, I wouldn’t be in this field.”

“You’re not going to tell me who you work for, are you?”

“You already know.”

He didn’t press her, though he knew she was skirting the truth. “Okay, so you’ve met General Neville.”

“I was introduced to him once, that’s all.” She sat back. “He’s not the Magician.” Again, she was so sure of herself.

“No, but he might be involved.” He slipped the photo back into its envelope and returned both to his jacket pocket. “Do you know anything about Neville?”

“Very little.” He could sense her pulling away from him, reining in her interest. “My expertise is in Middle Eastern cultures.”

“Neville’s old-world aristocracy. His father was a high-ranking officer in Hitler’s SS who lost the family fortune during the war.”

“But Neville is wealthy.”

“He’s also brilliant and ruthless. Over the past thirty years, he’s built a business empire whose interests are worldwide and diversified. And one of those interests is a small shipping firm.”

“Which owned the
Desert Sun
.”

“Exactly. He was, of course, questioned, but with his diplomatic attachments and the captain’s claim of operating on his own, we couldn’t pin anything on him.” Alec thought about it, holding in the anger that threatened to rise up whenever he thought about Neville and how he’d sidestepped responsibility for running a slave ship. “But yeah, I think he’s more than involved.”