In This Together

“The cops can locate me by the GPS. They can get within a hundred feet, and once they do that, they’ll figure out we’re in the vacant house.”

She knew that, but she was surprised he did. She’d assumed when he said he couldn’t manage a simple online form that he wouldn’t understand how the GPS tracker on a phone worked.

He took her through the back door. It was only a few feet to the truck, which was already open. No chance of her making a break for it, not that she’d have given herself even a small chance of escaping him. He was strong and fast. He’d recovered awful damn quickly after she’d bonked him with the wrench.

He pulled her to the rear of the truck.

“Oh, come on. Do I have to ride in the back again?”

“Of course not, princess. Your limo should be here in a few minutes. Yes, you have to get in the back. I know you think I’m stupid, but do you really think I’d put you up front with me where you can jump out at the first stop sign? Or open the window and scream for help?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid.” She sighed as he opened the cargo cover and the tailgate.

“Will you get in, or do I have to stuff you in there? I don’t want to hurt you. I really, really don’t. But I’ll do what has to be done not to get caught. Not yet.”

She could fight him. He’d have a helluva time getting her into the back of the truck if she kicked and clawed and screamed, and maybe a neighbor would hear her this time. But in the end, she’d probably hurt herself worse than him. He’d get her inside the truck—no doubt about that—and be gone before the cops arrived.

She looked him in the eye and made sure he looked back. Then she gave him the evil eye, something her abuela had taught her. She’d reduced more than one grown man to quivering jelly with this look.

“I’m keeping score. I’ll make you pay.”

“I don’t doubt it. Get it through your head, Elena. You can’t talk me out of this. The only thing that matters is that someone gets Eric out of prison so he can get his little girl back and try to salvage what used to be a good and productive life.”

She looked away. Then she sat on the tailgate and swung her legs up. Travis held her hand, helping her wedge herself into the truck bed as if he were assisting her into Cinderella’s carriage.

“Oh, comfy.” She patted a folded blanket he’d put in there so she’d have a cushion for her head. Just before he shut her in, she handed him his cell phone, which she’d pickpocketed again.

“Son of a bitch!”

“You might want to stop carrying it in your front pocket,” she said sweetly.

“How did you do that? Do you moonlight as a magician or something?”

“Trade secret.”

He closed the tailgate and cargo cover. The last she saw of him, right before it went dark, he had the strangest, most perplexed look on his face, as though he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her.

She could have kept the phone. She could have turned it on again once she was out of his sight. His provider would track the pings and follow them right to whatever new location he drove to. But she hadn’t.

Some part of her really didn’t want Travis to get caught.

* * *

DANIEL HAD ASKED Randolph, his chauffeur, to drive him directly to the Project Justice offices downtown, where everyone had been put on notice. Elena had been kidnapped. And when it came to his people, no effort was too great.

Celeste was in her usual place at the front desk. A former Houston cop, she was the building’s first line of defense—and a formidable one at that. Her wild-colored clothes and big dangly earrings were a deceiving affectation. No one got past her if she didn’t want them to.

She got to her feet. “Daniel. Any word since she called?”

“No.” It didn’t surprise him that news of Elena’s call had reached Celeste. She always seemed to know everything that was going on. “Celeste, thank you for your quick and decisive actions when the kidnapper called.”

“I knew he was serious. I tangled with him once before, when he tried to get in here without an appointment.”

“You’ve met him, then? What’s he like. Tell me every detail you remember.”

“He’s over six feet, muscular build, working man’s hands. Dark hair, kinda shaggy. Blue eyes. Nice looking, can’t deny that. Any other time—”

“Irrelevant, Celeste.”

“Right. He was very polite but insistent. And stubborn. He didn’t want to take no for an answer, no matter how many times I explained that his first step was to fill out the online form. Once he realized I wasn’t going to budge, he left. Not in a happy mood.”

“Did he seem unbalanced?”

“No, not at all. He stated his case in very clear terms. I remember the case he was talking about, the Tammy Riggs murder.”

Daniel remembered it, too, though not in great detail. He followed a lot of crimes, sensational or not.

“He had a sort of noble bearing. Looked me right in the eye. Never used any coarse language, didn’t lose his temper.”

“Thank you, Celeste. If any more calls come through from him, put them—”

“Directly through to the conference room. Yes, sir.”

God, he loved Celeste. He suspected he was the only person in the world she addressed as “sir.”

From the lobby, he went directly to the main conference room. He could hear the buzz of conversation behind the door before he opened it; his team was on the case.

Conversation stopped as he entered.

“Daniel.” The speaker was Ford Hyatt, his most experienced investigator. “Any new developments?”

“Not on my end. Bring me up to speed.” He pulled out a chair at the head of the long mahogany table. Usually he ran Project Justice meetings from home, via video conferencing. But for this matter, it was important to be there in person—if only to make sure his people knew this was no ordinary operation.

“We have copies of the security video from the front gate,” said Mitch Delacroix, who was in charge of anything involving computers, video or audio.

“You caught the abduction on video?”

“Unfortunately no. Elena walked down the driveway and went outside the gate to talk to him.”

Why had she done that? Elena was quite proficient at discouraging nuisance visitors. Then, she had seemed unusually troubled by the man’s plight—not her usual ruthlessly efficient manner.

“What about his vehicle?”

“Also not caught on video.”

Daniel made a mental note to add some extra surveillance cameras outside the gate to include more of the street in front of his house.

“We do have a vehicle description,” Hyatt said. “Riggs owns a black 2001 Ford F-150 pickup.”