Matthew had followed Riley to her son’s room. His eyes took in the mayhem of the teenage boy’s space, but his gaze soon stopped on Riley.
“No, no, no, no!” She flipped off the music and rushed out. “He’s gone.”
Matthew tailed her as she scanned the house in a futile search.
She headed to the front door, tore it open, and stared out into the torrential rain at the side of the house, then came back in. “His bike is gone too.”
“Maybe he heard us and got scared.” If the kid had heard Matthew and what was going on, he could have become frightened and taken off. And he could think his mother had been shot. He’d be freaked out of his mind.
“I doubt it. He wouldn’t have heard anything over his music.” Riley wrung her hands together, then stopped and stared at him. “I bet he left awhile ago and has gone to see Aleksa.”
But Aleksa was being held by a madman. Their trouble had grown exponentially worse. Matthew had to calm her down. “Why would he go see her?”
Glaring at him like this was all his fault, she spat out, “Aleksa texted him that you two were going to Paris and she wanted to see him before you left.” Riley paced back and forth between the kitchen and living area, her hand rubbing her heart, and her face flushed red. “I told him he couldn’t go. We had an argument, and he went to his room. That was at least an hour before you showed up at my door.”
“She must have texted him before the man got her.” Matthew could still see Aleksa’s frightened face. His urgency to save his daughter soared.
“If he made it to your causeway, he could have been swept out to sea.” Riley rubbed her sternum.
Matthew’s only hope of saving Aleksa was Riley. And she needed to focus and not worry about what could have happened. “If he left awhile ago, he could have gotten across before the water rose. Let’s count on that before we go to the worst-case scenario.”
“I hope you’re right.” Her panic seemed to take a step back.
“There’s another way to my place, but we’re going to need . . .” He couldn’t believe what he was about to say.
“We’re going to need what? A miracle? Miracles and I don’t get along.” She took a deep breath and winced.
“A boat.” There. He’d said it. “We’re going to need a boat.” He’d ride a stupid surfboard if it meant saving his daughter and Jeremiah.
“Well, come on, then.” Riley headed out the front door, pointing at the guns on the table. “Grab those, would you?”
Matthew put one in each pocket of his trench coat before following.
Once they got in her car, she shifted into reverse and swung the vehicle around. Driving down an overgrown dirt road, they continued to an old building. She braked hard and got out, racing to the structure. Matthew kept pace with her. Riley flung open the doors, and there, on a trailer, rested a thirty-eight-foot Munson patrol vessel. Probably the very same boat that had rescued him and Aleksa five years ago. Finally, a good omen.
Through the rain, they feverishly worked, hooking her SUV to the boat trailer and easing the vessel into the water near the pitching pontoon dock. While Riley parked her vehicle by the building, away from the beach, Matthew stayed with the boat, trying to keep the storm from banging the craft against the plastic mooring. The rain had soaked through his coat.
Riley returned, rain streaming down her face in rivulets, her jacket plastered to her body. She hopped on the vessel as though she did it every day. Taking a leap of faith, he followed. As soon as his feet touched the deck, memories threw him back in time, back to the nightmare.
Not now! He had to concentrate on saving Aleksa and finding Jeremiah.
Riley plopped into the wet seat behind the boat’s wheel and grabbed the radio mic. “This is Deputy Scott on Agate Island. Come in, please.”
“This is Carla, dispatch for the sheriff’s office. Welcome to the San Juans.”
“Carla, there’s a hostage situation at Matthew Taggart’s. They have his daughter. Mr. Taggart is with me. The causeway to his place is not drivable. We’re in pursuit in my boat. Please send backup ASAP.”
“Roger that! Are you all right?”
“Yes, but also tell the sheriff there’s a 187 in my beach house. Out.” She flipped the ignition. The engine roared to life, not missing a beat. Another good omen.
Matthew opened the life-vest compartment and handed one to Riley before putting one on himself. He took the passenger seat across from her. Once buckled into her life vest, she leaned on the throttle, and the boat charged across turbulent waters.
“My place is on the southern tip of the island,” he shouted over the roar of the engine and against the howling wind and rain.
Each bump jarred him to his soul, calling for him to remember his painful past, but he resisted. The past needed to stay just that. Past. His thoughts turned to his mother. His soul ached; she must be dead. In her midseventies, she’d have been no match for Hadeon’s men. How had they found where she lived? She’d told Matthew that his father had promised to stay out of their lives, that he had nothing to worry about. The boat crashed through waves like a bulldozer.
He couldn’t imagine what Riley thought about all this, with her son missing and possibly swept out to sea. On top of having Matthew point a gun at her only moments ago, threatening to shoot her, she must be overwhelmed. And the worst part was he had thought he could do it, thought he could kill her to save Aleksa. He’d had no choice. Riley or Aleksa. Given those odds again, he’d choose his daughter.
But then, for some reason, he didn’t.
Deep in his soul, he knew no matter what it cost him, he couldn’t kill Riley. She was a mother. Matthew had been raised by his gentle mother, away from the Russian mafia world. However, that world had come pounding on his door, demanding him to join. He’d refused. And now, Aleksa could die.
He struggled with his chaotic thoughts as the boat bucked against the ocean. They navigated past Mire Bay and around Seal Peninsula, and after what seemed an eternity, they reached Buccaneer Bay below his place. The causeway sat on the other side of his property and faced the sea. The bay was more protected from windy storms.
Glad that years ago, before the accident, he’d shored up his beach with fine sand that made it boat-accessible, he pointed to the shoreline, showing Riley where she could land. “The tide comes in and out four times a day. We have an incoming tide now,” he yelled over the storm. She nodded and throttled back the engine, coming in slowly.
Matthew grabbed both the bow and anchor lines, and when the water was waist deep, he jumped in. Splashing up on the beach, he pulled the bow line until the keel firmly nudged the sand. Then he took the anchor farther inshore until tension on the line kept the keel against the beach. He wrapped the anchor rope around the base of a tree. By the time he finished, Riley had joined him.
“Where from here?” She squinted against the rain and wind, taking off her life jacket and leaving it next to the tree.
He pulled his off as well, placed it on top of hers, and pointed at the thicket of pines. “There’s a pathway to the house.”
“Lead the way.”
As he started through the wind-whipped thicket, he prayed he’d find his little girl alive.
* * *
Riley had grown numb from cold and worry and chest pain. Her body moved on its own, going through the motions, much like it had on the night she’d squared off with Petruso. There was a level beyond panic where a special agent compartmentalized fear into a gray area somewhere between heaven and hell. She didn’t know what to call it, but she hated when she found herself in that netherworld where only the devil could live.
Long ago, she’d teetered on believing in God. She’d seen too much of society’s ugly underbelly and couldn’t comprehend a deity who could stand by while innocent people were murdered and tortured. One time, she and Tony had been called to the Mexican/U.S. border where a cave had collapsed and killed over twenty innocent people. A firefight broke out with the thugs who had tried to smuggle them into the United States. Another time, she and Tony had been trying to catch members of a cartel smuggling drugs into the country using a boat. The problem was as the FBI closed in, a bomb the cartel had jerry-rigged went off. It killed two special agents. And Riley and Tony were the ones who had had to inform their families they were never coming home.
Then when Petruso had killed her husband, all hope she’d had of a superior Being had died. Yet, even feeling as she did, as she’d driven the boat through the turbulent waters, she’d prayed. Prayed for her son. She wouldn’t for herself, but she’d do whatever it took to save her child. She prayed, though to whom and what, she didn’t know, feeling only that she needed help from a superior source. Her world had run amok, and she didn’t have any idea how or when she’d gain control again. So yes, she’d prayed to a God she didn’t believe in to ask Him to keep her baby and Aleksa safe. Or at the very least, help her and Matthew reach them in time.
Following Matthew up the path, she wondered how fruitless her petition had been. She had to somehow do her duty—help the son of the man who killed her husband save his child—while she wrestled with worry for her son.
Her baby.
The only family she had left.
They came to a clearing. A short distance away stood a small bungalow-type house. They dashed over to it.
“This is my caretaker’s place.” Matthew leaned against the building, catching his breath. “When Aleksa and I got home, they had him in the lodge. His wife is on the mainland right now, so no one is here.”
Riley scanned the bushes as she walked around the small clapboard structure. “Do you see Jeremiah’s bike anywhere?”
“No.” Matthew had followed but had stopped at the screen door. “But he might be inside.” He opened the door and disappeared into the building.
When Riley couldn’t wait any longer, she started to follow, but he met her in the doorway. “No one’s here.”
“Did you say lodge?” she asked, remembering what he’d said before.
“Yeah. Come on.” He closed the door and sprinted across the lawn to another grove of giant, weathered trees. He guided her around the bend and stopped. There, before them, stood the lodge, which looked to be three stories tall.
“Good night. It’s huge.” Riley wondered how best to safely search it. She should have asked before now how big his place was, but she hadn’t thought about it.
He pointed to the top. “Two bedrooms up there. Three on the second floor, plus my den, and my painting studio is over the garage.” He pointed to an archway from the main house to another building. “On the ground floor, there are two more bedrooms, along with a great room, kitchen, and dining area.”
“Where was he holding Aleksa when you left?” Riley wiped rainwater from her face as she listened.
“In the kitchen/dining room. He had Floyd, my caretaker, there too.”
Riley broke a twig off a tree. “Draw me the schematics of the ground floor in the mud here so we can make a plan.”
Matthew knelt on one knee and roughed out a sketch. She gazed from his crude drawing to the building and back again. “Looks like a bank of windows in the kitchen faces us, so he’ll see us coming. You say that archway connects your studio to the main building?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you get to the studio through the garage?”
“Yes, I have a mudroom/bathroom area off the garage bay and stairs that go directly up to the studio. Why? You’re not going to try to sneak in. You’ll get her killed.” Fatherly concern crinkled lines at the sides of his face.
“On occasion, I helped the Hostage Recovery Team with the Bureau. I know what I’m doing.” Anyway, she hoped she did. “I’m going to sneak into the garage, then go through your studio to the main building.”
Matthew’s eyes searched the horizon as if he thought, This will never work, but then he seemed to realize it was their only chance. “What can I do?”
“I want you to just walk in like you’re expected.”
“He’s going to ask where his partner is.” He stared at her like she’d gone crazy.
“Yeah, that’s when you stall. Make up a story, but keep him occupied until I can make my way in. I’ll come down the far set of stairs”—she pointed to his drawing—“and see if I can creep over to the dining/kitchen area without him seeing me. With any luck, I’ll have a clear shot.”
“Okay.” He swiped at his chin as though bolstering courage, yet he felt hampered with self-doubt.
“You can do this, Matthew.” She patted him on the back, wishing she had someone with her who had more experience. How she missed Tony. He’d know exactly what to do.
A noise came from near the caretaker’s house. Riley and Matthew spun around, weapons drawn.