“He has money,” he finally ground out, noting how he said the phrase with the same distaste in his tone he might have used if he’d said he has mange.
Boss must’ve finished his call, because he stepped out of his office and announced coolly, “The more outside influences we bring into this thing, the less likely it is we’ll be able to keep the true nature of this place under wraps.”
“Ayuh, well…” Hew’s voice was low and tight, even to his own ears. “Sabrina’s life is on the line. Our Sabrina.” He didn’t say my Sabrina. He wanted to, but he didn’t. Because it wasn’t true. She wasn’t his. “So that’s a risk I’m willin’ to take,” he finished firmly. “Anyone disagree?”
There was a beat of silence. The kind that said a thousand things all at once.
“No one disagrees,” Fish assured him. “We’ll do whatever it takes. But first we need to?—”
“Holy shit!” Ozzie’s voice suddenly sliced through the air like a thrown blade. Every head in the room snapped in his direction. “I think I may have something.”
Hew’s heart lurched violently. He was across the room without his boots touching the floor. Bracing his hands on the back of Ozzie’s chair, he asked, “What is it?”
Ozzie didn’t answer right away. He waited for the others to converge around the bank of computers. Then, “I fed the make, model, and color of Sabrina’s Prius into a program I wrote that scours the city’s CCTV footage. I asked it to pull all relevant images from last night.”
A grid of still photos bloomed to life on the screen. All grainy. All muted colors in the dark of night. And yet…
There she was. Sabrina. Inside her little Prius with its telltale dent on the back quarter panel from the day Hew had taken her to a Cubs game and she had tried to parallel park on a side street with all the grace of a blind moose.
For the first time in hours, something warmed inside his center. It was hope. Big and bright and burning.
“Oh-kay.” Sam’s voice was skeptical. “So what? We can see her leaving the compound, taking surface streets, and then turning onto Lake Shore Drive. But we already figured that’s the route she took out of the city.”
“No.” Ozzie shook his head, his sandy-colored mad scientist hair waving. “Look behind her.” He jabbed a blunt-tipped finger at the screen and quickly clicked through four photos.
In two of the images, tucked a car-length back, was a black van.
Unmarked. Unremarkable. Creepy as hell.
“Can you zoom in?” Boss’s deep voice was as grim as the expression on his face. “Clean up the images a bit?”
“I’ll do my best,” Ozzie muttered as he worked his magic until the images grew clearer.
But only marginally.
The van’s windows were tinted as dark as hell’s midnight. There were two figures visible in the front seats. But both were cloaked in shadows, nothing more than silhouettes.
“Damn,” Sam cursed.
“What about the plates?” Hew’s voice was low and urgent. “Can ya find a view of the back of the van?”
Ozzie didn’t answer. Just pounded the keys again until images raced across the monitor like a high-speed flipbook and?—
“Stop there,” Hew barked.
Ozzie froze the frame on a grainy image of the back of the van looming ominously behind Sabrina’s little Prius.
He could just make out the shape of Sabrina’s head through her car’s back windshield, and a sick, sour feeling twisted his gut when he realized she’d had no idea she was being followed. Being hunted.
“Running the van’s plates now.” Ozzie’s words were clipped.
Everyone in the room went still. Breaths were bated. Hearts skipped beats. Then…
“It’s fake.” Ozzie sat back with an aggravated sigh. “A ghost plate.”
Of course it was.
“What about the van itself?” Grace asked from across the room. She looked fierce and focused, an FBI agent through and through. “Can you check the make and model? See if we can’t narrow something down that way?”
