Chapter Eighteen
Blu’s phone rang while he sat on his front porch, watching the horses graze. He’d come back home to unwind as they awaited a response to Pelton’s message. The call was from his daughter and he answered it. “Hi, Hope.”
“Shut up and listen.” The voice on the phone was not Hope’s. It was a man.
Blu knew at that moment that all the rules to this game had changed. And he also knew that there would be more death. A lot more.
The voice continued. “Your daughter is alive. For how long depends on you.”
Dealing with kidnappers was Blu’s specialty, and he knew how it worked better than anyone. He said, “What do you want?”
“We want Angelica Hollander. And we want Brack Pelton. You give them to us and your daughter goes free. We’ll be in touch.”
The call ended.
Blu resisted the urge to smash his phone into a million pieces. Once that subsided, he did what he did best and began to solve the problem in his mind.
It would be easy to give them what they wanted. But the request made no sense. He was involved as much as Pelton. When things made no sense, he stepped back until they made sense. And what made sense was he and Pelton were the targets.
This enemy was trying to divide and conquer. And they had his daughter.
He called Pelton and told him what he knew.
Surprisingly, no smart-ass reply came. The kid sounded concerned when he said, “What do you want to do?”
Without hesitation, Blu said, “Kill them all.”
After a pause, Pelton said, “I’m your wingman.”
Blu had a thought. “Who would you say is the closest to you?”
“My aunt and Paige.” Another pause. “Oh no.”
“Get them someplace safe. Now. Then call me back.”
The call ended.
Brack didn’t even try to speak with Paige directly. That would be a bad conversation. Instead, he called her husband, Crawford, and told him to get his wife out of Dodge. Crawford was an ex-cop with enough sense not to waste time cussing him out. That could wait until later.
The next call was to his aunt. She wasn’t in the office and Miss Dell didn’t know where she was, which complicated things.
Brack tried her cell and it went straight to voicemail. Then he sent a 911 text to her.
His aunt called back within ten seconds. “What’s up?”
“Where are you?”
“That is none of your business, nephew.”
Brack said, “Someone kidnapped Carraway’s daughter. And they want to trade her for Angelica Hollander and me. You and Paige are my family here. Crawford is getting Paige out of town. I am coming to get you right now.”
She said, “I can take care of myself.”
His aunt had a habit of not budging easily. She’d refused to leave the city.
He said, “Put yourself in their shoes. What’s the end game?”
“To clean up loose ends.”
“And who are the loose ends?”
She did not reply.
He said, “Exactly. We all are. You, me, Carraway, Angelica, and anyone else we might have talked to.”
She said, “What is the end game?”
Brack said, “The way they’re playing it—everyone dies.”
Blu and the kid sat across from Patricia in the large conference room of Patricia’s office building.
She said, “SS Logistics is a dummy organization.”
Pelton said, “It figures.”
“But we traced down what happened on all those dates from the calendar—robberies. All of them.”
“So we have a theft ring,” Blu said. “But why risk a high-profile hit?”
“I believe it’s like we thought,” the kid said. “To send a message. Skip must have pissed someone off.”
“How does that help us?” Blu asked.
“Not sure,” Pelton said, “but I know a guy who owns a pawn shop. I suggest we start with him.”
Patricia said, “What if he’s in on it?”
The kid said, “I don’t have any other ideas at the moment and I’d like to keep moving.”
With his daughter on the line, Blu was having trouble focusing.
Patricia asked, “What are you going to do?”
Pelton said, “It’s called gamble. If Big Al can’t help, we can always start posting all the details we know. I’m sure that will get his attention.”
“Not with my daughter’s life on the line,” Blu said.
“Don’t you see the irony in all of this?” Pelton asked. “You’re the resident expert on kidnap victim recovery, and these idiots probably know that. So what do they do? They kidnap your daughter.”
Blu asked, “So what are you saying?”
“These guys are in this all the way. They probably know even more than my aunt here about what really happened in Mexico—what you and your partner did down there. Yet they are willing to risk the same fate. This is bigger than you and me and the Hollanders.”
The kid was right, and Blu didn’t want to think about the fate of his daughter, if she were still alive.