Chapter Twenty-Four

Kade took the final turn onto Jamie’s street faster than was safe. When he hit the straightaway, he pounded his fist on the wheel.

From what Jamie had related during their brief phone conversation, the police didn’t know with any certainty that Rosa had really been kidnapped, but Kade knew. Every fiber of his being knew Fernando Colon was behind Rosa’s disappearance. Killing Josh was one thing but taking a five-year-old girl…

The man had just signed his own death warrant.

Kade cranked the wheel hard and came to a screeching stop in the driveway. Two Manasquan PD cars were parked on the street outside the shack. He hit the remote on his belt, popping open Smoke’s door and not bothering to leash him. With Smoke leading the way, he raced to the door and flung it open.

In the living room, Laia ran to him, flinging herself into his arms. “Kade, she’s gone,” she said between sobs. “She’s just…gone.”

Every sob was a knife strike to his heart. “We’ll find her. I promise.”

“I don’t know what h-happened,” she muttered against his chest. “One minute she was there and the next…” Her voice drifted off, ending with more gut-wrenching sobs.

“Honey, look at me.” When she didn’t, he pulled away enough that he could tip up her chin. “We will find her. Do you hear me? I’ll do everything in my power to find her, and I won’t stop looking until I do.”

Over her head, he took in Jamie’s grim expression. Slipping into Army Ranger mode, he locked eyes with Jamie first, then the Manasquan sergeant. “What do we know?”

“I was in the shower when this happened.” Jamie shook his head. “I’m sorry, man.”

“Not your fault,” Kade reassured him.

The sergeant, whose name tag said K. Malloy, looked at his pad. “Ms. Velez and her daughter were on the beach when Ms. Velez went to the aid of another woman who was being roughed up by her boyfriend. When Ms. Velez turned around, her daughter was gone.”

“I searched the house, the garage, and my next-door neighbor’s property,” Jamie said, again shaking his head.

Kade hated what he had to ask next, but there was no getting around it. “Laia, is there any chance Rosa went into the water without you?” No matter how hard he tried not to imagine it, awful images of Rosa’s little body floating somewhere out there in the ocean or sinking to the sandy bottom only to be found days later came to him.

“No!” She shook her head adamantly. “Rosa wouldn’t do that, she wouldn’t! We come to the beach all the time, and we have strict rules about not going in the water alone. She’s a good swimmer. Besides, I would have seen her. I was standing right at the water’s edge. If she had gone into the water, I would have seen her. I would have.”

“Okay, okay.” Which brought them full circle back to the only remaining possibility. Rosa really had been taken.

“Ms. Velez told us her daughter has never run off before and has no history of disappearances,” Sergeant Malloy said. “We have officers searching the beach and the Coast Guard’s been notified. We secured the girl’s last known location for forensics to process the scene. I also have a request in for a county search dog.”

“We can help with that.” Kade tipped his head to Smoke. “He knows Rosa. If she’s out there, he’ll find her.” To Laia, he said, “Tell me about that couple.”

“They were arguing. I thought he was going to hit her, so I ran over to help. As soon as I got there, things seemed to have calmed down. When I turned around, that’s when I couldn’t find Rosa.”

“What did that couple have to say? Did they see anything?” he asked Sergeant Malloy.

Malloy shook his head. “We couldn’t find them.”

“I looked for them, too,” Jamie said. “No sign of them anywhere. I don’t have any cameras facing the beach. Neither do most of my neighbors. Most cameras are aimed at the road in front of the houses.”

Kade clenched his jaw. “They were a decoy.”

“A decoy?” Laia’s voice cracked. “You mean they set me up so someone could take Rosa?”

“Looks that way. Did you see where they went?”

She pressed her lips together, looking more distraught by the second. “Back down the beach in the other direction, but I didn’t see where. When I ran back to the water to look for Rosa, I wasn’t paying attention to anything else but finding her.”

“That’s okay, honey.” He stroked her hair. “You were distracted. That was their intention.”

Through the windows facing the beach, Kade saw half a dozen uniformed officers combing the beach. Beyond, the kiddie carnival Ferris wheel spun round and round.

Kade looked at Jamie, then nodded to Sergeant Malloy. “Did you tell them everything?”

Jamie shook his head. “That’s your call.”

While he’d planned on keeping Laia and Rosa’s location a secret from everyone, including the local PD, the plan had changed. Drastically. “We don’t know for certain,” he said to Malloy, “but we have reason to believe that Rosa Velez was kidnapped by Fernando Colon.”

Malloy had been taking notes, but at the mention of Colon’s name, his pen froze over his pad. “The Fernando Colon?”

“Yeah.” Sonofabitch. “The only question is how he found them here.”

“You want me to call in the FBI?” Malloy asked. “If it’s a kidnapping, they’ve got jurisdiction.”

Jamie pulled his phone from his belt. “I’ll take care of that.”

Meaning, Jamie would call Dayne Andrews, a close friend of theirs and a top-notch FBI K-9 agent. Dayne and his fiancé, billionairess Katrina Vandenburg, lived in a castle—literally—just over an hour away. All Jamie had to do was say the word, and Dayne would be here in a heartbeat.

And in the meantime, Kade was seriously contemplating his backup plan—a little unexpected visit to Colon’s house. Confronting a drug lord on his own turf and accusing him of kidnapping a little girl might not be the smartest move, and his agency would probably shoot him down, calling it way premature without any substantial evidence pointing directly at Colon. Kade didn’t give a shit.

“Run me through your department’s kidnapping protocol,” he ordered.

Laia groaned. “More protocol.”

Kade knew that law enforcement’s reaction during the first four hours of a kidnapping were crucial and could make all the difference. Every agency, whether it was the FBI, state, or local police, had implemented fairly standardized kidnapping protocol, particularly where children were involved.

Sergeant Malloy opened his mouth when a phone rang.

Laia ran to the credenza and grabbed it. Her face fell as she looked at the screen. “It’s my mother. I have to talk to her. I have to tell her what happened.” She took the phone into the kitchen.

“Go on,” Kade said to Malloy.

“I have units out looking for witnesses and leads. An Amber Alert has been initiated. We’ll also spread word locally of the girl’s disappearance. Using the photo Ms. Velez provided, we’ll blanket the area with flyers. I’ll put out an APB on the girl.” Malloy paused, frowning. “But if you really think Fernando Colon took her, that’s a whole different ball game because if that’s the case, we know who we’re looking for. Do you have any proof that he took the girl?”

“No.” Not yet, anyway. The locals wouldn’t act against a drug lord with a mountain of pricy lawyers on retainer 24/7 without a boatload of evidence to back them up. For that matter, neither would the DHS.

Malloy tapped his pen on the pad. “What does he want with a five-year-old girl?”

Kade wasn’t prepared to tell anyone in the Manasquan PD exactly who Laia was or her connection to Colon. All they needed to know was that Rosa was missing, and while he was 99 percent certain Colon was behind this, he still couldn’t be absolutely certain Rosa hadn’t been taken by someone else. Which was equally disturbing.

“If it is Colon, he doesn’t want the girl,” Kade snarled. “He wants something in return for her.” The ledger and the cool two million in cash that Josh stole from him.

The back door at the top of the steps opened, and a young officer came in holding a plastic evidence bag containing a slice of pizza with a small bite taken out of it.

“Found this on the other side of the dune,” the cop said, holding up the bag.

Laia had returned from the kitchen and gasped. “Oh God. Pineapple. It’s Rosa’s favorite. When I got back to where I’d left her on the beach, I could swear I smelled pizza. I thought I was imagining it. How did they know?”

“Good question,” Kade growled. “However they found out, they obviously used it to lure her from the beach. It could have been drugged.”

A strangled sound bubbled up from Laia’s throat, and she covered her mouth with her hand. Kade pulled her into his arms. Her body shook as she tried valiantly to hold it together. Rage, the likes of which he’d never experienced, pounded in his head.

Keep it together. For Laia and Rosa’s sake. If he lost it, he’d be no good to them.

Smoke uttered a snort, then sat, looking up at Kade, waiting for orders. Smoke was feeding off sounds, body language, and the smell of Laia’s fear. He sensed something was totally off, even if he didn’t know what.

“Laia,” he said softly, swiping away a tear with the pad of his thumb. “I need to get out there with Smoke. If anyone can find her, he can. Will you be okay here without me? I need to know you’ll be okay.”

She rolled her lips inward, jerkily nodding her head. Man, he admired her guts and her game.

“Atta girl.” He tried giving her an encouraging smile. “Sergeant, can you or one of your officers stay with her?” Kade didn’t want her to be alone, and if she received a call from the kidnappers—whoever they were—he wanted to make sure there was a law enforcement witness.

“You got it.” Malloy pointed to the cop still holding the bagged slice of pizza. “Stay here with her, and make sure forensics gets that. Good find.”

“Thank you, sergeant.” The cop nodded.

Before heading out to the beach with Jamie and Smoke, Kade took the phone from Laia’s hand. “People will be coming soon to set your phone up with a recording device and a tracing app. In the meantime, do you know how to record a conversation on your phone?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“If you do get a call, make sure this officer—what’s your name?”

“Officer Gonzalez, sir.”

“If you get a call, record it, and make sure Officer Gonzalez is here to listen in.”

“Okay.” Again, she nodded, and her forehead creased.

Kade kissed the top of her head, trying to offer reassurances that he didn’t quite feel, then went to the sofa and picked up Rosa’s pink sweatshirt for Smoke to get a scent from. “I’ll be back. Jamie, you’re with me.”

“Copy that.”

Jamie followed him and Smoke down the stairs to the beach and over to the taped-off blanket, beside which were the remains of Rosa’s sandcastle. Smack dab in the middle of the sandcastle was a footprint, at least a men’s size ten.

About a hundred yards offshore, a small Coast Guard vessel began cruising back and forth in a crisscrossing search pattern.

She’s not there. She can’t be. Kade couldn’t allow himself to believe that Rosa was lying at the bottom of the ocean.

“You really think he has her?” Jamie asked.

“Well, I don’t believe in coincidences, that a random kidnapper just happened to grab Rosa at the very same moment Colon is so hot to get his ledger and his money back. And where did that couple go?” He swept his arm to encompass the entire beach. “They didn’t just vanish into thin air. I think they hauled ass the second their job was done—creating a diversion. So yeah. I think he has her.”

And they had jack to prove it. Maybe that would change. Maybe not. If that was the case, he fully planned to take matters into his own hand.

Flashing blue-and-red strobes flickered just over the top of the dunes as more units arrived. Probably the PD’s forensics team. Eventually, the FBI.

As if on cue, Jamie said, “Dayne is on his way with Remy.” Dayne’s German shepherd K-9 was well-known for being an amazing tracker. “He reached out to the closest CARD team. They’re on their way, but they were down in DC, so they’ll be a few hours.”

Kade didn’t doubt the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment teams’ abilities. Deep down in his soul, he knew their efforts would be wasted. Fernando Colon would reach out to them when he was good and ready. Until then, they’d have no choice but to play the waiting game.

He snapped on Smoke’s leash so he wouldn’t disturb the taped-off area, then held Rosa’s sweatshirt out for his dog to sniff. Soft huffing came from Smoke’s snout as he drew in her scent. “Smoke, find Rosa.”

Smoke put his head to the sand, sniffing and circling. There were plenty of other footprints in the sand, including those from himself, Jamie, and Deck from when they were all body surfing the other day. Narcotics was Smoke’s specialty, but Kade was counting on the strong bond Rosa had forged with his dog.

After more circling and sniffing, Smoke picked up a track and led Kade and Jamie to a break in the dunes that opened to Stockton Beach Park. Smoke led them into the park where at least a dozen people were playing ball on the two baseball fields.

Smoke continued directly to the parking lot, which was mostly empty. He sniffed the ground then pulled Kade to an empty parking spot near the dunes. His dog circled again, always coming back to the same spot.

Kade’s grip on the leash tightened, as did the pain in his chest. “She was here.”

“No cameras facing inside the park but look.” Jamie pointed to a pole at the edge of the dune. “A surf cam.”

Pointed directly at the beach and in the general vicinity of where Laia and Rosa had been.

“I’ll get with Sergeant Malloy and download the footage.” Jamie started running back to the shack.

“C’mon, Smoke.” Kade headed to the baseball fields. “Let’s go meet some people.”

Twenty minutes later, he’d interviewed every single man, woman, and child in the park. One kid vaguely recalled seeing two men walking with a little girl to a silver or gray car.

When Kade showed the kid a photo of Rosa on his phone, the boy couldn’t say with any certainty if it was her he saw getting into the car.

His phone buzzed with an incoming call from Jamie. “What have you got?” Please, please let it be a neighbor saying they found Rosa wandering around or playing in their yard or—

“Haul ass back here,” Jamie said in a hushed voice. “Laia just got the call.”