Riley held back long enough for Mr. Young to get inside the house. Then she ducked around the bush and hurried toward the little yellow-and-white house. Apparently, her department head was having an affair. But did that make him a Russian spy? And did it mean he was the one holding Toby hostage? She doubted it, but they’d come this far; they had to be certain.
Mack caught up to her and got to the house before her.
Since he was taller, he could see in through the window without having to climb up onto the porch.
“See anything?”
“Just the two of them kissing.”
“Any sign of Toby?”
“No.” Mack moved from that window to another. Riley followed. “And the windows aren’t completely covered. You’d think if they had the boy, they’d have him hidden.”
“You’d think if they were having an affair, they’d hide it better. Any private investigator could have a field day snapping photos.”
Making a semicircle around the house, Mack checked every window. “From what I can tell, there isn’t a basement. I’m not seeing any sign of anyone other than Young and the woman. And they only have eyes for each other.”
“Give me a boost,” Riley demanded.
Mack cupped his hands. “Have a look.”
Riley stepped into his palms.
Mack raised her to eye level with the window.
As he’d mentioned, Mr. Young and the woman were heavy into kissing and more. Clothes were flying off, and Mr. Young backed the woman against the wall.
“Good Lord, that’s Rachel from HR.” Riley jerked and knocked her forehead against the glass pane.
The couple stopped in mid-grope and turned toward the window.
Riley dropped down, her heart pounding. “They might have seen me. We need to get out of here.”
“You feel confident they don’t have Toby?” Mack asked as they ran around a thick stand of bushes.
“Positive.”
“If you think there might be a chance they have him hidden in a closet, I’ll go knock on the door. They don’t know me. I could make up some story to get them to let me in.”
“No. I think we’re wasting our time.” Riley stood still for a moment, afraid to move unless Young and his lover caught sight of her.
The back door opened, and the woman peered out. Mr. Young stood in the shadows behind her.
Riley held her breath.
The woman shook her head and turned, closing the door behind her.
Riley grabbed Mack’s hand. “Come on, we have to check out the other two people on our list. I feel like we’re running out of time.”
A dog barked as they passed a fence, and someone yelled for it to shut up.
Riley broke into a run, a sense of urgency making her pulse race and her stomach twist. Mack opened the door for her and then hurried around to get into the driver’s seat.
“Where to next?” Mack shifted into Drive and pulled out onto the street.
“Steve Pruett’s place.” Riley stared down at the map function on her cell phone where she’d keyed in Steve’s address. “It’s about twenty minutes from here.”
“We’ll make it in fifteen.” Mack pushed down hard on the accelerator.
Riley stared out the window, despair eating away at hope. “I feel like we’re on a wild-goose chase.”
Mack reached across and gathered Riley’s hand in his. He gave it a gentle squeeze. “As long as Toby’s out there, we can’t give up hope.”
She nodded, her heart swelling at Mack’s touch. He gave her strength in the simple contact. “I’m not giving up,” she assured him. “But there has to be a better way to find him than chasing down impossible leads.”
As if on cue, Mack’s cell phone rang.
Riley lifted it and read the caller ID screen. “Declan.” She slid her finger across the display. “Hey, Declan. Tell me something good.”
“We had a hit on Steve Pruett.”
“What kind of hit?”
“We found a police report about a domestic disturbance at his house a month ago. The neighbor called it in. When they arrived, his girlfriend refused to press charges, even though she had a busted lip. She swore she’d walked into a door.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s a kidnapper.”
“No, but we also found information on a debt collection agency. The man owes over $100,000 in credit card bills. Apparently, he likes to live at a level greater than his salary warrants.”
“Motivation to sell secrets, but not to kill,” Riley said.
“Unless someone is paying him to have you do the killing,” Declan suggested. “He bears looking into. Grace and I cut our vacation short. We’re back at Charlie’s place with the computer guy who worked with her late husband. He’s an expert hacker. We’ve got him digging into anything to do with Pruett.”
“Good. We’re on our way to Pruett’s address. Anything you find in the next twenty minutes could help.”
“Will let you know. And we didn’t find anything on Bryan Young. Other than his wife recently filed for divorce. They’re in marriage counseling, to mediate and salvage their marriage.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Mack muttered.
Riley’s lips twisted into a wry grin. “Anything on Tracy Gibson?”
“The most we could find was that she’s drawing unemployment for now. No police record or rap sheet on her.”
“So far, Pruett’s all we have. If your hacker can get into Moretti’s computer at Quest or his home, have him see what he can dig up.”
“Will do,” Declan said.
“We’ll let you know what we find at Pruett’s place.” Mack ended the call with a touch to a button on the steering wheel. “What do you know about Steve Pruett?”
Riley shook her head. “That’s just it. I don’t know much about any of my coworkers. I was so busy working and spending time on the weekend with my brother. And when the FBI got me involved with finding the leak in our department, I was focused on Moretti. I didn’t see anything in any of the others...because I wasn’t looking.” She clenched her hands into fists. “Too many secrets. I hate living a life of secrets. But how did Pruett find out about mine? No one knew but my parents’ handler, as far as I know. Why would the handler share that information?”
“Unless he had an agenda of his own and needed to keep his identity secret.”
Riley glanced down at the map on her phone. “We turn here. Two blocks over and turn to the right.” Once again, her heart beat faster. If Pruett was their man, he could have Toby locked up in his house.
“Parking now.”
Before he had the gearshift fully engaged in Park, she was out of the truck and running toward Pruett’s address. Pruett had to be their guy. Toby could be yards away.
Riley’s heart raced as her legs powered her forward.
A hand on her arm jerked her back.
“You can’t go charging up to the house. He’s not just going to hand over Toby.” Mack brought her up short at the corner of a house three doors down from the target address and gripped both her arms, forcing her to look at him. “We have to take it slowly.”
Riley nodded. “I know. I know. I just...it’s Toby. I have to get him back. He’s bound to be scared to death.”
“If he’s there, we’ll get him.”
Riley curled her hands into his shirt. “He has to be there.”
“We’ll soon find out.” He swept his hand along the side of her cheek and brushed a strand of her hair back behind her ear. Then he bent and touched his lips to hers. “Let’s do this.” Mack took the lead and slipped behind the houses, following an alley that paralleled the street out front.
Riley shifted her gaze from the buildings ahead to her cell phone, tracking their progress since they weren’t looking at the numbers on the curb or mailboxes. “This is it,” she said, stopping short of the house. The backyard was surrounded by a chain-link fence. The one before it had a collection of old junk stacked in varying piles. Not Pruett’s house. The yard was pristine. Absent of everything but neatly trimmed grass. He didn’t even have bushes around the foundation.
“He has a basement.” Riley pointed to a trapdoor with a padlock securing the outside.
“Let’s see if he’s home.” Mack inched up to one of the windows and peeked inside.
“See anything?”
“No movement.”
Riley eased around the side of the building to the garage and looked through the window into a one-car garage. “No car. He must be out. We can get inside and be out before he returns.”
“That’s breaking and entering.”
“I don’t care if I have to smash a window. I’m going in.” Riley dug in her jacket pocket for the file she kept handy for just such an occasion. She climbed the stairs to the back porch and slipped the file into the lock on the door. Within seconds, she had the door open.
“One of your spy skills?”
“My father had me tinkering with locks from a very early age,” Riley admitted. “I’m good at it.” As she crossed the threshold into Pruett’s house, she glanced back. “Stay outside. I don’t want you taking the rap for breaking and entering. It’ll be all on me, if I get caught.”
“You’re not going in alone.” Mack followed her up the stairs and entered the house, closing the door behind them.
The house was old, with hardwood floors, crisply painted walls and not a cobweb or dust bunny anywhere. The hallway passed a small laundry room. Riley glanced through that doorway and moved on. Mack entered, checked it thoroughly and followed Riley into the kitchen.
A study in white, the kitchen was like the rest of the house, sparkling clean with white marble countertops and white cabinets with chrome pull handles, polished bright. No fingerprints marring the smooth finish.
Riley lifted her hands, afraid to touch anything for fear of leaving evidence that she’d been there. A staircase led off the kitchen up to the second floor. Riley hurried up the steps. Two bedrooms were completely empty with no furnishings or wall hangings. The light fixtures were clean, and cobwebs wouldn’t dare make an appearance in the rooms.
Mack led the way back to the ground floor and found a door beneath the staircase. Using the hem of his T-shirt, he opened the door and flipped on the light switch. A light hung overhead but only illuminated the staircase, nothing beyond.
Mack went down first.
Riley held her breath and followed.
Once they reached the concrete floor below, they had to turn to see into the rest of the basement. A shiny steel toolbox stood in one corner next to a workbench. Behind the workbench was a pegboard with tools hanging neatly. Each tool had an outline on the pegboard. Every tool had a place and every tool was in it.
Riley had the sudden urge to knock them all down and fling them across the floor in disarray. None of the tools had any dings, dirt or oil on them. They appeared to be barely used.
Mack made a quick inspection of the rest of the basement. “Nothing here,” he said.
“No secret doors?” Riley made her own pass through the room. “No hidden rooms?”
“Nothing.”
Her heart sank. “Where’s Toby?” she whispered.
“I don’t know, but we need to get out of here before Pruett returns and catches us.”
“Where would he keep a little boy?”
“We don’t even know it’s Pruett who has him.”
“What about the girlfriend? Can your friend Declan find her?”
“I hope so. Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”
“Me, too.” Riley climbed the stairs and had reached out to push the door wider when she heard a sound that made her blood run cold. The front doorknob rattled.
“Someone’s at the door.” Riley eased back, switched off the light and pulled the door almost all the way closed. The only light came from the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor.
Riley stepped down a step and bent to look through the gap.
As she suspected, someone was coming through the front door. All she could see was a pair of men’s leather shoes moving across the floor. The crisp tap of heels on wooden floors echoed off the walls.
The wearer of the shoes paused in the hallway. A rustle of fabric sounded, and a garment hit the floor. From what Riley could see, it was a jacket and was quickly snatched up.
The shoes moved toward the door behind which Riley and Mack stood.
Short of stumbling down the stairs in the dark, Riley could do nothing but freeze and pray the shoes didn’t stop.
She held her breath and waited, fully expecting the door to burst open and Pruett to call the police. Bunching her muscles, she prepared to launch herself up out of the basement and run like hell. Though what good that would do, she didn’t know. Pruett would recognize her, and she’d be charged with breaking and entering. What bothered her most was that Mack would be charged as well.
The shoes slowed on their way past the door but didn’t stop.
Riley listened as the footsteps passed the kitchen and moved on to the bedroom on the main level. Moments later, the sound of water rushing through the pipes gave her hope.
“He’s taking a shower.” Mack touched her arm. “If we want to leave, now would be the time.”
Riley eased the door open and stuck her head around the edge. The water rushing through the pipes suddenly stopped. Going out the back door would force them to pass the door to the main floor bedroom. Instead, Riley headed for the front door, opening it quietly and easing through the screen door.
Mack followed, closing the door carefully behind them.
Once she was out of the house, she walked down the steps as if she had just left a friend’s house and turned away from the side of the house with the master bedroom.
Mack fell in step beside her, took her hand and held it like a boyfriend going out with his girl for a stroll. After a block, they turned and doubled back on the next street, hurrying toward the parked truck.
As they approached the truck, a car whipped around the corner from the direction of Pruett’s house.
Riley grabbed the front of Mack’s shirt and pulled him into a tight embrace, rising on her toes to slam her mouth against his.
Taking his cue, he cupped the back of her head and turned her face away from the oncoming vehicle.
What started as a kiss to hide Riley’s face became something entirely different.
The car passed and turned the corner, disappearing around the houses on the next street. But Mack continued to kiss Riley, and Riley kissed him back.
She liked the way his lips were soft, but firm. Liked how hard his body was against her softer curves. Loved how he made her feel more feminine than any other man. She was familiar with every way to take a person down but was almost certain she’d struggle to overpower this man. And she liked that, too.
With one hand at the small of her back and the other buried in her hair, Mack brought her ever closer until there was no space between them. When he skimmed his tongue across the seam of her mouth, she opened eagerly, wanting to taste him, to caress him in that intimate way.
They might have gone on for a lot longer, but a car slowed in passing and a teen yelled, “Get a room!”
Riley backed away, her cheeks heating and her mouth throbbing from Mack’s kiss. “Was that Pruett?” she asked, her voice shaking. Her entire body trembled with her reaction to being so close to the marine.
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“We should try to catch up.” She stared up at him, her legs refusing to move.
Mack nodded. “We should. But I think he’s too far ahead.”
“Right.” Riley took a deep, steadying breath and climbed into the truck.
Mack got in beside her. “Tracy’s place?”
“Yeah.” She fumbled with her cell phone and keyed in the address.
They drove to her house in silence, neither looking across at the other. At least not blatantly. Riley watched Mack in her peripheral vision. He didn’t turn to face her once.
It took all of the thirty-minute ride for her heart to return to a regular pace and for her to talk herself down from the raging desire she’d felt in that one kiss. She wanted so much more.
By the time they reached Tracy’s apartment, dusk had settled over that corner of Virginia. Tracy’s apartment was completely dark from the outside.
Mack walked up to the door and knocked. If she answered, he’d make up a story or pretend he’d gotten the wrong apartment. Riley waited in the truck with the interior lights off. When no one came to the door, Riley joined Mack at the door and worked her magic with the file. They entered Tracy’s apartment and moved around using a penlight Riley kept in her purse. Unlike Steve Pruett’s place, Tracy’s was a disaster. Clothes littered the floor, dishes were piled in the sink and the bathroom looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since she moved in. Tracy wasn’t there, and neither was Toby.
Riley left Tracy’s place discouraged.
As they pulled out of the parking lot, a dark older-model SUV sprang out of a side street and slammed into the passenger side of Mack’s pickup.
Riley was flung sideways. The seat belt tightened across her chest, keeping her rooted to her seat though her head jerked hard on her neck.
The SUV backed up, the engine revved, and the tires spun up smoke as the vehicle came at them again.
At the last moment, Mack gunned the accelerator.
The SUV hit the bed of the pickup, spinning the entire vehicle ninety degrees to the right. When the SUV backed up to hit them again, they were nose to nose.
Mack shoved the gearshift into Reverse and spun the wheel, turning the passenger side of the truck away from the SUV and taking the brunt of the attack on the front left bumper.
The SUV hit hard. The driver’s side airbag deployed, shooting a bag and white dust into Mack’s face. The passenger side had been turned off, giving Riley a clear view of the vehicle coming at them yet again.
“Gun it!” she yelled, and grabbed the steering wheel, jerking it to the right.
Blinking the dust out of his eyes, Mack punched his foot to the floor, sending the truck into a spin.
The SUV clipped the back end and sped away.
Mack shoved the truck into Drive, but it limped forward, grinding to a stop.
“What the hell?” Mack jumped out and stared at the front bumper.
Riley got out and stood beside him, staring down at the fender bent all the way into the front wheel. The truck wasn’t going anywhere but up on a tow truck.
Whoever had hit them hadn’t had a license plate on the back of his vehicle. Nor had the lights been on. All Riley could say was that it was a dark SUV. Nothing really to go on. If it was the same person who had Toby, why would he want to kill them when Charlie was still alive? Nothing made sense.