Stepping past Nic, hand coasting across his back, Cam peered over Lauren’s shoulder.“What’s that spike early on?”He pointed at the uptick in the readout on the left-hand screen.
“Your dig about Victoria.”She tapped her frosted nail at another spike later in the conversation.“And that’s when Nic nailed him on Harris.”
“How do those two things translate to that asshole having my sister?”Garrett asked from where he stood in the far corner, shifting on his feet.“I mean, I believe you that he does, but?—”
“He didn’t react when we put the picture of the kidnapper on the table,” Cam said, straightening.“He’s supremely confident in that regard.That’s what we’re used to seeing when he’s guilty.”
“Well then, let’s go get her.”
Nic halted in his pacing.“Where, Garrett?”
“I have some possibilities,” Lauren said.A flurry of flying keystrokes later, a map popped up on the right-hand screen.Cam recognized San Francisco Bay in the middle, but the map’s area as a whole was much larger, stretching north to Humboldt County, east to Tahoe, and south to Santa Barbara.And scattered all over the wide swath were little red dots.“These are all of Vaughn’s northern and central California holdings.Assuming his thug didn’t hop a plane with an injured hostage, which one, obvious, and two, I’ve got no record of that, including Vaughn’s private plane, these are the possible locations he could have traveled by car since the incident.”
Garrett whistled low while Cam said, “We need to narrow it down.We can’t canvass that many locations.”
Nic hustled to Cam’s side, examining the map.“Remove the ones that are actively leased.Vaughn’s not going to hold a hostage in one of those buildings.”More than three quarters of the red dots disappeared.
Nic was right.Vaughn wouldn’t have his goons take a hostage someplace full of people where his true illegal underbelly might be exposed by FBI and SWAT teams beating down the door.Along those same lines, Cam suggested, “Remove the ones actively under construction.Maybe those would work if he’d taken the hostage in the middle of the night but not during the day when there are workers around to see.”
Nic nodded, Lauren entered the commands, and half the remaining dots came off the board.Better but still not great.
“Now, pull up GPS tracking,” Cam said.“Have any of the cars Jamie tagged to Vaughn and his associates, including the one at the scene, been to any of these sites?”
Within a minute, during which the two military men paced circles behind them, one of the red dots began to blink.
“Bingo!”Lauren declared.
Nic reappeared at Cam’s side.“Satellite map,” he ordered.“What is that?”
Lauren flipped the map to street view, the pin dropping on what looked like an abandoned building south of San Jose in Morgan Hill.Zooming in, the old bowling alley looked the part—sign half gone, fenced in, deserted—but...“Why would Vaughn own that?”Cam asked.
“He bought it for the dirt,” Nic said, and Lauren was speed typing again while he explained.“The Bay Area is expanding daily.Morgan Hill used to be the country, but now it’s another burb, a stop on the Caltrain even.And it’s affordable, relatively.”
“Guessing that’s why Vaughn has a change-of-use permit pending for a mixed-use complex of townhomes and retail on this property.”
“All right, let’s go, then.”Garrett turned for the door.
Nic shot out a hand, grabbing him by the arm.“G, no.We have to handle this carefully if we want to be sure she doesn’t get hurt.”
“What’s to say she’s not already?”
Cam stepped beside Nic, addressing Garrett.“That’s not in Vaughn’s interest.”
Garrett’s brows climbed his forehead.“Not in his interest?”
“Vaughn may be an asshole, even a sociopath, but he’s not psychotic.”Cam had seen what happened to hostages and kidnap victims held by those.
He couldn’t stop the mental reel of images from their case in Boston.Two different girls kidnapped by the same monster who’d also taken his sister.He might have stayed lost in those memories if not for Nic’s hand on his back, returning the earlier gesture and bringing him back to the present.
He shook off the memories and focused on finding Nic’s sister, hopefully in a relatively better situation.“In this case, the hostage is leverage to force Nic to do what Vaughn wants, which is pay him and make the case go away.”
“So you’re expecting a ransom demand?”Nic said.
Cam nodded.“The hostage?—”
Garrett banged a fist against the observation glass, startling them all.“Lette.Her name is Lette.”
Thank fuck for reinforced glass, and for Vaughn and Patton being long gone from the interrogation room.Nic crossed to Garrett, sliding the hand that’d been on Cam’s back over Garrett’s.Cam felt the sharp sting of jealousy, no denying it, but he also felt an overwhelming wave of sympathy.He knew exactly what these men were going through, what they were feeling with a sibling lost.Under the circumstances, he wouldn’t deny them any sort of comfort.Or let jealousy compromise his efforts to find Nicolette.
