Taken (21 page)

“Becky called me her shadow—her white shadow rather than her dark one, since she rather liked me—but she couldn’t get rid of me.”

Shannon’s expression brightened, and she laughed. “I like that.” She nodded. “Good night, Matthew.” She turned toward her room, and his own smile faded as he shut off the television. He thoughtfully picked up the pages she had given him. She was wisely handing off to him the worst of it, he thought—her conversations on the drive to Chicago, the conversation tonight about the graves. She’d worked out a plan to tell her story one-on-one, and he’d been the lucky one—if that was the right word—selected to hear it.

He took the diary with him, walked across the hall, and called Paul. The retired cop in him was becoming fully engaged with the work that was unfolding. The man dealing with matters and trying to help her through this process was feeling every bit of the weight and the sadness.

S
hannon was on the phone with her brother. Matthew covered the scrambled eggs in the skillet to keep them warm till she was finished. He poured juice, found more strawberries.

Her hand brushed his shoulder as she moved past to get a plate. “Thanks for fixing breakfast again.”

He glanced over at her, surprised at the calmness he could both hear and see. “Scrambled eggs and fried potatoes two meals running—I’m not sure I deserve the compliment.”

She smiled. “It helps that I like them. You said Paul is expecting us at nine thirty?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to stop for a box of donuts on the way. If I’m going to talk about everything on my list, I’d like to do it with a steady stream of sugar and caffeine. It might dull the edges of a headache I’m certain is going to be part of my memories of this day.”

“The sugar and caffeine will likely contribute to a headache, but I can relate to the sentiment. We’ll stop for donuts.”

Paul was waiting for them in the secure parking lot of the FBI building. Dressed casually in jeans and a pale blue shirt, he walked over with a relaxed smile as they stepped out of the car. “Hello, Shannon. Welcome to the FBI.”

“Hello, Paul.”

Her words were calm, but Shannon’s hand tightened to white knuckles on the canvas bag she carried. Matthew saw it, as did Paul, he noted. Matthew let his hand slide down her arm in a comforting gesture even as he gave Paul a slight shake of the head so he wouldn’t pursue it.

“We stopped for donuts on the way in,” Matthew mentioned, “had a nice debate over the merits of cream-filled versus Long Johns and glazed, ended up with some of each.” He opened the back door to retrieve the donuts and the maps Shannon had marked. He handed Paul the maps, kept the two boxes of donuts. “We brought enough to share.”

“A nice way to begin the morning. I’ve got fresh coffee to go with the donuts.” Paul turned to Shannon. “I appreciate your coming in for a conversation, Shannon. I thought we’d talk in my office if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure.”

Paul coded in their entrance into a back hallway and led the way to a waiting elevator that bypassed the lobby. “Ann’s upstairs with Theo. Would you like Ann to join us?”

“Whatever you think is best. Is there a table to spread out the maps, maybe a whiteboard?” Shannon asked.

“Would you prefer we stop by the case room first?”

“That might be easier.”

“We’ll go there then.” He changed their floor destination
and, when they stepped off the elevator, led the way to a conference room.

Theodore Lincoln was there, studying a financial printout with Ann. He looked up, gave a welcoming smile, and rose to his feet. “Hello, Shannon. It’s a pleasure to have you here.”

“Hello, Theo. Hi, Ann.”

“Nice to see you again, Shannon,” Ann said.

Shannon looked around the room at the information displayed: the photos she had provided of the five people who had died, the children rescued, ignored the boards with her picture and those of her family, the timeline on her own disappearance. She nodded to herself and walked over to the last whiteboard where there was still empty space. “May I?”

“Sure,” Paul said.

She placed her canvas bag on the table and pulled out a folder. “Do you have any more of those magnetic clips to hold photos?”

Theo offered her a container of them. She started putting photos up. “I can build you kind of a loose family tree.”

Theo and Ann moved around to better see what she was doing. Matthew unrolled the maps on the table, then pulled out a chair and settled back with a donut to watch Shannon work. No preliminaries, just what she had come to say, nerves nearly screaming now they were so visible. Ann leaned over. “What’s wrong?” she asked in a whisper barely above a breath.

Matthew shook his head. He had no idea, but something had Shannon fighting nerves to an extent he hadn’t seen before. He didn’t think she was bothered by public speaking, so it had to be the information she was unpacking. She’d arrived at the FBI prepared to have this conversation, and yet her nerves had abruptly coiled tight. Ann found a bottle of water in the refrigerator, set it by the whiteboard ledge for Shannon. She tucked
the folder of photos under her arm, picked it up, nodded her thanks. Matthew didn’t like what he was seeing. Shannon was brutally pale.

Any ideas for me, God, on what is happening?
He hadn’t prayed much in the last couple of days since reading that first diary, the simmering anger that God hadn’t stopped what had happened still being worked through his system. He’d been in that same place with God after he heard Becky’s story, so he knew the emotions would subside over the coming days and he’d have a more level conversation with God again. But this prayer was on point, and one he needed answered.

Paul filled a mug from the coffeepot, walked over to stand beside Shannon. “How were you able to get the photos out?”

She placed another photo on the board, which looked like it had been enlarged from a wedding announcement. “I took advantage of anything that meant the family photos or wedding albums should be boxed or moved to get myself access to the images. Bad storms, roof leaks, broken windows—whenever water threatened to damage items—to more mundane reasons like birthday nostalgia and Christmas gatherings.” She took a sip from the water bottle. “I created an extra envelope of miscellaneous negatives and photos that had fallen out of other collections. I managed to get that envelope slipped into a stolen-item package on its way to storage. Once I had gotten away, getting to the envelope meant getting to the right state and remembering where it had been placed. Some of these photos are pretty dated, and others are enlarged from a group picture, but I can recognize the person in the photo.”

Paul scanned the images. “No worries. They’re good enough for us to work from.”

She picked up a marker and began writing names and some
birthdays beside the photographs. “I don’t know if I have official names or longtime aliases for some of these people. This is the birth date they celebrated. I don’t often have the year. If you can find any details in a database that match up, like a more current photo, I can confirm it’s the right person. They rarely travel using these names, so I don’t think you’ll find a driver’s license even if I knew the state to check. There’s still a New England accent within the family, so I think northeastern states are the places to start.”

“Theo?”

“I’m on it.”

Shannon drew a square with a question mark for five names, indicating she didn’t have a photo, but wrote down gender, age, a description of their build, and identifying features. She sketched in eighteen people, adding the family connections and affiliations, before she finally stepped back. “This is the Jacoby family, or more accurately, the U.S. offshoot of the larger family, as best I could figure it out. The branch of the family in Poland and the Jacobys in Canada appear to be law-abiding and didn’t have any involvement in what was going on here in the States.”

She added stars beside some of the names. “The photos and names with the star are those who dealt with smuggling people, mostly children. The rest were smuggling objects.”

Matthew was relieved when she stepped back from the board, got herself a donut, leaned against the table to study the graph. She was going to drop that water bottle if her hand tremor got any stronger. He leaned forward and reached out to get her attention, could feel the fine tremor in her arm too, and she turned to hold his gaze briefly. Not nerves as much as reaction—she was losing that grip of control she’d had in place since Atlanta.
“You want to go, just say the word,” he murmured. Tears shimmered briefly before she blinked them away. She shook her head.

She walked back to the whiteboard and put a roughly drawn anchor beside three photos. “These three are very rarely on dry land, so they’re going to be an interesting chase. One prefers a sloop and the East Coast, the other two fishing trawlers and the West. They get a hint you are coming, you won’t catch them in U.S. waters.”

Theo carried printouts to pin on the adjacent board as he found matching police records for some of the individuals.

Matthew wasn’t entirely surprised by the fact Flynn was on the board as a blank square with no photo and no description. “Shannon, nothing on Flynn?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “If the investigation finds him, you find him. I owe him . . . something. For now, I’ve decided silence is appropriate.”

Paul, watching the exchange, nodded that he’d accept that.

Shannon erased one of her notes and redid it in smaller lettering to make more whiteboard space available. “The boat names change more frequently than you can say ‘false papers.’ What I have will likely already be dated.” She wrote out fourteen of them. “There were probably a few name changes I didn’t hear about.”

“The first year, the trawler was named
Sea Sprite
?” Ann asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s showing up in the Coast Guard records.” Ann sent the screen of data she was studying to the printer. “Did the captain have a routine, visit the same ports?”

Shannon thought about the question. “More so than the others did. The same refueling points, favorite mooring spots.”
She came back to the maps Matthew had unfurled, thumbed through them for the states of California and Washington. “I marked the places I remember in red, those I heard mentioned I put in blue.”

Ann leaned over the maps with her. “These are the travel routes they took?” Ann asked, referencing the lines that flowed into California.

“Yes, they were professionals at it and would use interstate highways and back roads with equal ease. Their geography is somewhat predictable by season. They travel in pairs or as a group of three, but rarely more than that. They might be in two or three vehicles through the same general area, but they’re acting independently of each other. They never stay near where they’ve stayed in the past. Oddly, that’s one thing you can depend on. I’ve never seen an overlap in eleven years.” She referenced the California map. “Hence this spider-web effect when you look at travels through the state over the last decade. They didn’t want to be remembered. They used to argue when they approached a favorite restaurant if anyone in the group was unknown there and could go get a carryout order.” Matthew heard her voice break and trail off, and for a moment Shannon wasn’t in this room but somewhere in the past. He reached for her hand, gripped it hard, brought her back to the present.

She was still disturbingly pale but took a breath and finished her thought. “Everyone I put on that board is on the road most of the year. They aren’t gypsies, but they consider their safety best maintained by being in motion. If they picked up something stolen, they would be at least a hundred miles away before stopping for gas, two hundred miles before thinking of stopping for the night. Never in a place they’d stayed previously.” She reached for the water bottle and took a long drink of water.

“It never stopped. The top echelon on that board has an incredible thirst for money and things, and it’s both an addiction and an adrenaline rush. Could they get away with something, how much profit could they make on deals, when and where should they sell what they had in storage? Those in the family willing to smuggle children were opportunistic—they’d accept work that fit where they planned to go. This time of year most of the people on the board should be in the northern leg of the circuit. If I had to choose the most likely states going into the Fourth of July weekend, I’d be looking at Colorado, Montana, maybe as far south as Iowa.”

“What’s the earliest they ever travel down the West Coast?” Paul asked.

“August.”

“Did they stay at hotels? Private homes?”

“Mostly they traded off driving—one would sleep while another drove. Knocking on the door of an acquaintance late at night, being on the road again at dawn, was fairly common. Two- or three-day stops at a motel were also common. When they would stay put for a period of time—ten days, two weeks—they’d be mostly in out-of-the-way rentals.” She finished the water, and Ann brought her another bottle. “They never call ahead for reservations. That you can depend on. They travel mostly on prepaid credit cards rather than cash. Part of their safety is the fact nothing’s planned in advance, decisions are made on the fly. Even buying and selling is free-form. Arrive in an area, make a call, make the buy or sale within the hour, and then be traveling again.”

Her hand trembled as she tried to set the bottle of water down. Matthew’s eyes narrowed with sudden understanding. She was
afraid
. Whether God put the thought in his mind or he finally figured out what he was seeing, the answer settled in his mind
with certainty. Shannon was afraid right now. It wouldn’t be for her physical safety while in a building full of armed cops. It was the implications of what she was saying that was causing it. She feared how this was going to unfold. Eleven years living with the knowledge that her conduct determined someone else’s safety—maybe someone else’s life—and she was blowing that wide open. He needed to get her out of here, get her some breathing room. The realization was so intense he was pushing back his chair before what he should do was clear to him. “I’ll be outside in the hall for a moment, Shannon,” he said. “I need to make a call.”