The Watched (CSI Reilly Steel #4) (34 page)

Reilly
nodded. ‘I have credentials, but if my superiors find out that I came in here alone, they’ll pull me off the case.’ She took a deep breath and laid the last of her cards on the table. ‘If they do that, and by the time I’ve finished explaining everything to them, I don’t think anyone will get to Todd in time.’

Sheldon
’s eyes narrowed as he studied her and she found herself wanting to squirm. It was one of those looks like Daniel got when he was sizing up someone to decide whether or not he believed them.

‘
I have an idea,’ the writer said then. ‘It’s a little crazy, but it just might work.’

CHAPTER 40

Paul Lennox pulled his car up to the curb several yards from the hotel.

He’d just dropped off his letter at the news station, deciding that his final act in Florida deserved a personal touch.
He’d intended to return to the hotel and seek out Fisher, but quickly recognized that he had company.

The FBI
people in their ever-conspicuous suits were lingering outside; the younger ones were throwing longing looks toward the air-conditioned lobby. It appeared that they’d figured something out after all. Or it might have been the blond. There was no way either the Feds or the locals had figured everything out on their own. Either way, Wesley was out of his reach. For the moment at least.

Which meant a casting change was necessary.

Lennox opened up his laptop and checked the GPS of Sheldon’s PC.

Good. The screenwriter mustn’
t have been discovered yet, otherwise the location would’ve moved. No agent would leave something so potentially incriminating just sitting around. That supported the Maestro’s theory that they didn’t know as much about him as he’d originally feared.

Also, it meant he wa
s still on track to finish his project. But he’d have to do it soon. He’d come so far with Sheldon that it would have been a huge waste of time and energy to have to find another writer, go through all the hassle of explaining his mission, all while trying to stay under the radar long enough to finish the film. Not to mention the headache of the continuity issues that arose when changing screenwriters mid-movie.

At least he had all of his important things with him. Laptop, camera equipment, cattle prod and chloroform.
And his leading man of course. He smiled. All the basic essentials required when filming a blockbuster.

He just needed to head back to the safe house where he’d stashed
his understudy, and wait for Sheldon to finish the finale. Part of him was tempted to go back to the storage unit and tell the writer to hurry the hell along, but he’d worked with enough creative types over the years to know that rushing was never a good idea.

That’s how mistakes were made. He could afford to wait.

He would need to get rid of his rental car though. Wouldn’t do for the Feds to put out an APB on the plates, and then have someone spot it at the safe house. That would ruin everything.

No, better safe than sorry.

He needed to park the rental somewhere obscure and commandeer another vehicle. Unfortunately, it looked like he’d need to either buy a piece of junk with the little cash he had on him or steal one. While the latter would certainly be cheaper, he was loath to do anything to draw possible attention to himself. Oh well, a man was more than the car he drove. Besides, when this movie hit the box office, he could buy himself a whole fleet of fancy cars.

He had every confidence in the world that
even without Wesley Fisher as its star, his big finale was going to be the biggest thing anyone in Hollywood had seen. Since the
Ben-Hur
chariot race, even. And, despite the urban legends surrounding the classic movie, his would certainly be more deadly.

The Maestro
felt like a child waiting for Christmas morning.

Reilly
stared at the bedraggled writer, a mixture of admiration and disbelief on her face. There was no way he could be serious, was there? ‘You’re joking.’

‘
I’m not,’ Sheldon said, his expression somber. ‘I’m not risking this son of a bitch getting away just because we don’t know where to find him. The bastard threatened to kill my daughter. He’s not just going to walk away from this.’ The writer shook the chain on his ankle. ‘Though I wouldn’t mind having my leg free while I work.’

‘
We’re going to need bigger bolt cutters then.’ Reilly realized that the conversation had quickly transitioned from the theoretical into working out the logistics.

‘
And you might want a better choice of weapon just in case Lennox does suddenly show up.’ Sheldon opened the laptop. ‘Is there anyone you can call for backup? Because, no offense, but I hate to think of you going up against this psycho alone. I’ve already seen him take out men twice your size.’

Reilly
stood and took her phone from her pocket. She gave Sheldon a half-smile. ‘I’ll have you know that I’m actually a black belt. Or, at least, I was when I was twelve.’ She frowned at the lack of signal on her phone. ‘But there is one person I need to call. He can bring me a weapon and anything we need to get that chain off. You get started on your finale and I’ll take care of the weapons.’

‘
Sounds like a plan.’ Sheldon turned toward the laptop and Reilly headed for the door. Before she got there, she heard the writer add in a soft voice. ‘I’ll try my best to make sure we get your friend back.’

‘I certainly hope so.’
Reilly could barely speak around the lump in her throat. It took a moment, but she managed to squash down her anxiety. She couldn’t afford to fall apart. She was stronger than this.

She ste
pped out into the blinding late-morning sun. The heat rolled over her, leaving her sweating and struggling for air in seconds. She wasn’t sure which was worse, outside with clean, muggy air or inside where the climate-controlled atmosphere was fetid and foul.

She shook her head. She had more things to worry about than the air quality. It was time to make the call she’d been dreading. She didn’t want to do it, but she was running out of time.

She hit her speed dial and waited. Two rings and a familiar voice greeted her.

Reilly
took a deep breath. ‘Daniel, I need your help.’

Todd punched the door again without expecting any results.

For, as substandard as it had appeared, the door was as solid as any Todd had ever seen. Pain flared, hot and bright, through his knuckles, but he welcomed it. It sharpened him, made him focus. Besides, if Fisher succeeded, bruised and possibly cracked knuckles were going to be the least of Todd’s concerns.

He’d examined every inch of his prison. No cracks in the floor or walls. While the ceiling seemed to only consist of flooring from above, it was too solid to break through, same as the door.
He’d yelled enough to know that either the house was empty or there was a layer of soundproofing he’d missed. He was willing to bet it was the former rather than the latter.

Todd plopped down on the cot. No windows to see where he was, to gauge the passage of time or try to use as a means of escape. Unless he could pull a
Shawshank
and dig his way out with a spoon, he was screwed. He was also pretty sure Andy Dufresne hadn’t actually used a spoon, but the general idea remained the same. He was stuck.

That left him only one option. Wait. Wait until Fisher came back down to get him. Overpower the director and take him down. If only he could get rid of the damn cattle prod. Todd didn’t want to mess with that again. He coul
d still smell the singe of burned hair, taste the copper on his tongue from where he’d bitten it. He had a new-found sympathy for cows.

This time, he’d ask for the chloroform. Fisher would have to come close to administer it, and when he did, Todd would be ready. It was time to put those
self-defense lessons to work.

Granted,
the stuff they’d made them do at the Academy had been over a decade ago, but it was either that or figure out a way to make a weapon from a couple of dead bugs and a threadbare pillow.

He was fairly sure that even
John McClane in his best
Die Hard
days couldn’t have worked with so little. But it didn’t matter what he used. He had to try. For Bradley. For Holly. He had to bring Wesley Fisher to justice, make him pay for what he’d done.

Todd
just wasn’t sure how he was going to do that while locked in a basement.

CHAPTER 41

Anxiety etched Daniel’s face as he moved across the parking lot.

Reilly
hadn’t told him much, only that she needed help with a lead she was chasing, that Todd was in trouble and that she couldn’t use the Feds or local cops. Telling someone that their only son had been kidnapped wasn’t exactly the type of news that engendered lengthy discussion. Daniel had simply gathered the things Reilly had asked for, then got in the car and drove.

If Todd had been taken by the same man they’d been investigating, he knew there wasn’t any time to waste. Daniel already knew more than he cared for about the same man’s dark, twisted mind.

He reached Reilly, his face full of questions, and he could immediately see how stressed she was and that her nerves were stretched to the point of snapping. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come out with it. He has Todd.’

Daniel
’s face paled and he took a step toward her. ‘How do you know?’

‘It’s that guy we met at the hotel
– Fisher’s co-producer; he told us where to find him.’ Reilly back-tracked the explanation, realizing that they’d very briefly encountered Lennox at the time but had no reason to believe him a suspect in either Sheldon’s kidnapping or the murders. ‘He’s our killer and our kidnapper.’

Reilly
watched her old friend attempt to gather himself; to muster his usual calm, calculated state of mind when dealing with a psychotic criminal.

‘But h
ow do you know he has Todd? And where are the Feds . . . the detectives?’ He looked around, baffled by the absence of law enforcement.

‘
The reason I called you here is because, like we suspected, the murderer, Lennox, kidnapped the screenwriter.’ As Daniel struggled to come to terms with what was going on, Reilly motioned for him to follow her into the storage unit. ‘Mr Sheldon?’

‘Ah, the backup.’ T
he writer squinted up at Reilly before turning to Daniel. ‘Drew Sheldon, nice to meet you. Please excuse the mess. The maid hasn’t been in for a while.’

‘
Is he for real?’ Daniel’s voice held an understandable edge.

‘Your back
up doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.’ Sheldon turned back to his laptop.

‘
That monster has my son, so unless—’

‘
And that monster threatened my daughter,’ Sheldon’s snapped. ‘You’re not the only parent here.’

‘Reilly—’

‘Did he at least bring something to get this damn chain off my ankle?’ Sheldon directed his question to Reilly.

‘
Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?’ Daniel turned to Reilly. ‘You call me, ask me to bring a gun and a chain cutter, tell me that madman has kidnapped my son and then show me some writer chained to a cot in a storage unit—’

‘Daniel
,’ Reilly interrupted, the last of her patience having evaporated with the heated exchange between the two men. ‘Lennox, a failed producer, took Sheldon to make him write a script for his movie. This morning, he brought Todd here and because he can’t get to his ultimate target, Wesley Fisher, we think that he’s going to use Todd in the finale of his film. Drew is supposed to complete the script as soon as possible or Lennox is going to go after his daughter.’

‘But how did Lennox get Todd?’
Daniel started to speak.

‘
Do you mind?’ Sheldon spoke up. ‘If you’re going to do the whole lengthy explanation thing, could you at least give me some peace and quiet to work? I’ve got a lot to do and not a lot of time in which to do it.’

Reilly
motioned for Daniel to follow her. They stood in the doorway, allowing them to be in the shade and further away from the stench surrounding the writer.

‘I know you’re worried and you’re right.’ For Daniel’s sake, Reilly
tried to dampen down her own panic and keep her voice firm, professional, the way he had done back when he’d come to Dublin to help her deal with her own family crisis.

She knew that bogging themselves down in the how’s and why’s of Lennox capturing Todd would only complicate things and delay them further. ‘Sheldon
’s right, we don’t have a lot of time. Lennox took Todd somewhere, we don’t know where and we don’t have any way to track him. With all the police and Feds around, I don’t think the guy would be stupid enough to head back to the hotel any time soon and certainly not with a captive. I suggested to Sheldon that we could wait for him to come back here for the script but, long story short, Lennox has some sort of share program set up so he doesn’t have to come back, not until he’s ready to get rid of Sheldon. There’s a GPS on the laptop so we can’t take Sheldon out of here to write. He volunteered to stay here a bit longer and finish the script because he doesn’t trust Lennox and is worried about his daughter. Once he’s uploaded it, he’ll give us the location of where he’s setting the scene and we can pick Todd and Lennox up there.’