Sean felt sick. He recognized that he was in a dangerous situation, so he didn’t make any sounds or movement to indicate that he was awake. He assessed his physical condition.
His head pounded, his mouth tasted like shit, and he was sore all over, as if someone had used him as a punching bag while he was unconscious.
He focused on his environment. He had to find a way out, any way he could. The ground he lay on was hard and rough, like cement. He breathed in as deep as he dared, felt a pain in his side, but also breathed in cement dust and metal and some sort of chemical. Not bleach, but something similar. It was also hot as hell, no air-conditioning. During the day this place would be a furnace.
He didn’t hear voices. It seemed dark, so he opened his eyes just a fraction. Yep, dark, though he could see light along the floor for a couple of feet, indicating that there was a closed door.
He listened again. They wouldn’t have left him in here without a guard. The attack was far too well planned for them to think it was safe to leave him alone.
That’s when he heard a voice. A faint voice, crying softly.
Jesse.
Sean tried to move then realized that his hands were tied with zip-ties. He could get out of them, but he didn’t have the strength right now, or the balance to stand up.
“Jess.”
“Dad? Dad? I thought you were dead.”
Jesse was crying. Oh God, Sean would have done anything to prevent this. How had he screwed it up?
They’d taken him and Jesse … who else?
“I’m okay,” he said.
That was relative. He was better awake than unconscious, but he was in no condition to fight.
“Are you okay, Jess?”
“Yeah. I didn’t eat much pizza. They put something in the pizza, I heard them talking about it in the van. But Mom isn’t moving.”
They’d taken him, Jesse, and Madison. Who else? “She’s unconscious,” Sean said. “If I’m awake, she’ll be waking up soon.” He had to figure out a way to get out of this. He was on to something at his house, something that was just on the edge of his memory. Something in those files he’d been staring at all day—the files he wasn’t supposed to have. It would come to him when the pounding in his head stopped.
He tried to scoot over to where he’d heard Jesse’s voice. Jesse met him halfway. “Are you tied up?” Sean asked.
“They put these plastic things on my wrist.”
Sean should have taught Jesse how to get out of them. He didn’t feel the weight of his gun in his waistband; they must have taken it from him. But he had a small pocketknife in his shoe. It was under his sock, and he could still feel it against his skin.
“Jess, I need you to get my knife out of my shoe.”
“You have a knife? Why didn’t they take it?”
“They took my gun, buddy. They didn’t find the pocketknife. It’s a small Swiss Army knife, it’s not going to get us out of here, but it will cut these binds.”
“It’s dark.”
“I know. Your eyes will adjust.” He felt Jesse turn around, his hands fumbling down his body until he reached his shoes.
“It’s in my right shoe, under the sock. It slipped down a bit, but you can reach it.”
It took Jesse a minute, but he got out the knife. “Got it.”
“Come here and cut my ties.”
“What if I cut you?”
“You won’t.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know, Jess. But I’m here. We’ll get out of this.”
Sean had the best security for home defense, and that hadn’t stopped this attack. The damn Trojan horse. Had they killed the pizza delivery guy or bribed him? Sean was going with bribing. Give the kid a hundred bucks to play a joke on an old friend. It would work as often as it would fail. Or they gave the kid a hundred bucks and had one of their men deliver the pizza. If he refused, kill or incapacitate him. Whichever way, Sean hadn’t seen it coming, and that made him scared and angry. Scared because he could usually predict any plan and have a counter-plan for it. He wasn’t as good as he thought. His brother and Jack could be dead because he hadn’t thought things through well enough.
And he was angry. Because his kid was scared and tied up in a dark room, and Sean wanted to kill whoever put that fear into his son.
Starting with Carson Spade and working his way up to Jeremy Robertson, going through Bart Vasquez and all his goons.
Sean winced when Jesse nicked him. The blade wasn’t sharp, but the tip was.
“I’m sorry!”
“It’s okay. Get the blade under the ties, and saw rapidly back and forth in short, firm movements.”
Jesse figured it out, and a minute later Sean was free. He took the knife and cut Jesse’s ties in one stroke. “Where’s your mom?”
“There’s a bed in the corner.”
Sean was getting used to the dark. The thin light under the door helped. The bed was actually a cot, and he realized they were in a break room of sorts. Mostly empty, maybe abandoned. A lopsided table, a couple of chairs, the cot, a sink, row of metal lockers. There could be supplies in the cabinet that he could use. If he had to MacGyver an escape, he would do it. While he wanted to take out all these bastards, the priority was getting Madison and Jesse to safety. And right now he didn’t think he could win a fight against even one person, not when his body was weak and shaking from the sedative.
“Madison,” Sean said and gently patted her cheek. “Madison, we have to wake up now. Come on, let’s go.”
She didn’t move. He put his ear down to her mouth. Was she breathing? He couldn’t tell. He searched for her pulse. He thought he felt something, but his heart was pounding and he couldn’t tell if it was hers or his. He felt the carotid artery on the side of her neck. A very faint pulse.
Shit, shit, shit.
He had no idea what Vasquez drugged them with. Madison weighed probably between 110 and 120. But Jesse seemed fine. “How much do you weigh, Jess?”
“Um, a hundred thirty? Maybe more?”
Jesse was thirteen, healthy, and growing. He was five foot seven, half an inch shorter than Lucy. They had joked that when he came back for Christmas he’d be taller. Yeah, he was at least 130. Madison was five foot five and very thin.
“How much pizza did your mom eat?”
“A piece. Maybe a piece and a half. What’s wrong with her? Is she okay?”
His voice went up in panic.
“Shh,” Sean said. “She’s still out. She weighs less than all of us, so it makes sense that she’s going to be knocked out longer.” He looked down at his watch—it was gone. Well, dammit, he loved that watch. What did they think, he had a secret communicator built into it? That would be cool, but so far no one had developed the tech unless it was in close proximity to a phone or computer.
Sean was concerned about Madison. Some sedatives could compromise the lungs, essentially shutting down breathing function. But she was breathing, that had to be a good sign, right?
All he knew was that she needed a doctor. He turned her on her side in case she threw up in her sleep. That’s when he noticed she wasn’t tied up. Because they didn’t see her as a threat? God, he hoped that was the case and not where his mind went: that she was part of all of this to get the money out of the hidden accounts so she and Carson could disappear with Jesse.
That’s the stupidest idea you’ve ever conceived. There would be far easier ways to pull out that money and disappear. Carson certainly has the skill to do it.
Sean took a deep breath and walked over to the door. It was solid metal. Jesse was right on his heels. Sean tried the knob. Locked. No surprise there. He hadn’t found a lock he couldn’t pick. But what if there was a dead bolt on the other side? He heard voices. Not close, but in the same building. He couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Sean quietly went back to the sink and looked in the cabinet. There were some unlabeled containers. He opened them and smelled. Cleaning supplies. Okay, those might come in handy. He lined them up from the ones that likely had bleach or ammonia to those that were less caustic. Next he checked the lockers. All empty. Except each locker had a hook on the back, and some of the hooks were loose. Sean took out his pocketknife and unscrewed two of them. He positioned them in his hands, so the sharpest point was protruding from the back of his hand. They could do some damage. He put them in his pockets.
But Jesse had the best find.
“Dad,” he whispered. “Can you use this? I found a mop.”
Sean felt the mop handle. Wooden. “Perfect, Jess.” He then sat down and took off the foul-smelling rag bottom. Now, this was a weapon he could do some damage with.
“What now?” Jesse asked.
“We wait.”
“My mom…” He looked over to where she was still lying. “We have to do something.”
Jesse was right, but Sean didn’t think that there was anything they could do.
Sean hid the tools and pounded on the door. “Hey! Hey! We need help in here!”
He kept pounding on the door until he heard someone approach. “Shut the fuck up,” a deep voice said.
“Madison hasn’t woken up yet. She needs a hospital.”
“Who cares?”
Sean pounded on the door. “Dammit! Her son is in here with her! She’s sick, her breathing is shallow—whatever you bastards drugged us with, she’s having a reaction.”
“She’ll be fine. Grow a pair.”
“I will kill you. I will break your fucking neck! Keep me, I don’t care, just take her and her son to a hospital.”
“You’re in no position to make demands, Mr. Rogan. Now, if I hear anything else from you, I’ll come in and put a bullet in her head, then you won’t have to worry about her at all.”
He walked away.
Sean pounded one more time and sank to the floor. Jesse was at his side. Sean put his arm around his son. “We’ll figure something out.”
Jesse put his head on Sean’s shoulder and Sean closed his eyes.
He had no idea how he was going to get out of here. Save Madison. Save his son. Save himself.
* * *
FBI ASAC Dean Hooper pulled up in front of Carson Spade’s modest house only a mile from headquarters. He had two agents with him, but told them to stay out front.
Dean rarely deviated from the rule book, but he would if he had to—and this was one of those rare instances when he would prefer not having a witness if he had to play hardball with a lying money launderer.
Carson was surprised to see him. He was also nervous. He hid it well, but Dean had dealt with hundreds of white-collar criminals. Most of them weren’t violent. One touch of violence in their orderly, illegal lives and they went full panic.
Dean entered without being asked.
“This isn’t a good time,” Carson said.
“This is the only time,” Dean said. He closed the door behind him. “Honesty from this point on is the only thing that is going to keep you from spending the rest of your life in prison.”
“Excuse me?” False indignation. Over the top.
“I know you’ve gotten a ransom demand, and you will work with me on this or so help me God, I will make sure everyone on your cellblock knows you had your wife and stepson kidnapped!”
“That’s not true!”
Dean stepped toward him. Carson stepped back. Dean walked him all the way back to the small den. “I’ve had it up to here with you, Spade. You’re already going to prison. You lied to the marshals when you went into witness protection. You lied to the AUSA about your banking accounts, and you lied to me about what you were doing here, in Sacramento, with Jeremy Robertson.”
“This is not happening.” Carson’s voice grew weak.
“It is happening,” Dean said. He pulled an envelope from his breast pocket. “I have the proof. Half a dozen bank accounts under a shell corp. And when I saw these, I thought, This structure looks familiar. Why does it look familiar? Because it’s the same way Carson Spade set up the money-laundering operation for the Flores cartel. And I got a warrant and was able to dig deeper and because this is for a friend of mine, I worked straight through the night and all day and finally traced all of these accounts back to you and Madison.”
“Leave her out of it.”
“That’s sweet, coming from the man who had his own wife kidnapped!”
“I didn’t! Please, I had nothing to do with it.”
“But you’re not surprised that they’re missing,” Dean said, his voice low and angry.
Carson’s mouth opened then closed. He walked to his computer and clicked a button. A disembodied monotone voice spoke.
“I have your wife and kid. You have twenty-four hours to raise twelve million dollars. I will call this time tomorrow with instructions. You know better than to call anyone.”
“You bastard,” Dean said.
Wife and kid. No mention of Sean, and so far, neither RCK nor Lucy had received a ransom demand for Sean. Dean hoped that didn’t mean anything.
Dean called his best cybertech. “I need you at my location with all your equipment to backtrace a VOI and set up a phone trace.”
“No!” Carson said, finally finding his voice. “He’ll kill them.”
To his cybertech, Dean said, “Thanks, Liz.” Then he hung up.
“What are you doing?” Carson demanded. “You’re risking their lives.”
“This is my operation, and you’re going to do everything I say or I will bury you so deep in the system you’ll never see the light of day.”
“You don’t know what’s going on.”
“Don’t I?” He pulled out another piece of paper. “You can thank Sean Rogan for finding this. An account—also under this shell corp—for one million transferred over to Jeremy Robertson. Payment for this kidnapping scheme?”
“I didn’t have my wife kidnapped!”
“You have five seconds to tell me the truth.” Dean paused. “Four. Three. Two.”
“Okay! Fuck, fuck!” Carson paced. “I just wanted Jesse back home. Madison was depressed, she should never have let the kid go visit Rogan. Never! And Rogan turned Jesse against us. And I can prove it—Jesse wants to change his name to Rogan! Madison was in tears when she found out. All I did was give Jeremy a little money to put a scare into Rogan so he’d send Jesse home. No one was supposed to go after Jesse. I love my son. I raised him! I was there for him! If Madison thought Rogan had a dangerous job, then she would insist he send Jesse home.”
Dean believed every word. It sounded like a desperate and stupid plan, with just enough plausibility that someone like Carson would think it might work.
Carson continued his rant. “Rogan has no rights, none! And it would have worked, Madison went there to get him, and I would have gone with her but I couldn’t because of my stupid agreement with your office. Ridiculous! And then … and then Rogan wouldn’t let Madison leave. He manipulated her, brainwashed her that someone was after Jesse, and that he was safer there. Well, that was a lie, wasn’t it? He wasn’t safer there! He was in danger because of Sean Rogan! I will kill him, I swear to the Almighty God, Sean Rogan is a dead man.”
“Threat duly noted,” Dean said.
“I mean—I didn’t mean it like that—”
“Let me tell you what I think. I think that one million dollars is a hefty payment for ‘scaring’ someone, but right in the ballpark of a high-profile hit. Considering that your good ol’ friend Jeremy hired a known fixer and hit man to take care of this project tells me that you had one of two plans: Either you wanted to increase the threat to you so that the marshals would put you back into WITSEC, or you paid to have Sean killed.”
“I would never put my son in danger!”
It clicked. “You wanted Jesse home first, then Sean would be assassinated.”
“No.” But his voice was weak.
“Your plan is a bust, Carson. So you’d better work with me because if Sean, Madison, or Jesse turn up dead, I will prosecute you for murder one, in the state of Texas, with special circumstances, and I will be very happy to watch you fry.”
If Carson could go any more pale he’d be dead.
“I—I—”
“Tell me everything.”
“Why would Jeremy do this? Why?”
“Because there is no honor among thieves. And it’s about fucking time you realized it.”
* * *
An hour later Dean Hooper called Rick Stockton, who brought Lucy Kincaid in on the call. “Lucy, hang in there,” Dean said when she got on the three-way call.
“I am.”
She sounded worried, but strong.
“Carson set everything in motion, just like Sean thought. And I can’t wait until he gets out of this and tells me that he was right, yet again,” Dean said, trying to bring levity to the situation before he dropped the bombshell.
“What did he set in motion, Dean?” Lucy asked.
“His goal was to push Sean into sending Jesse back to Sacramento, either Sean doing it himself or Madison insisting. It didn’t work out like he thought.”
“No shit.”
Dean had never heard Lucy swear. He cleared his throat. “The original plan was to remove Jesse from the situation, then assassinate Sean. One million was paid up front to Jeremy Robertson to accomplish both goals. I have since convinced Carson that after Jeremy accepted the money, he realized that Carson was hiding far more from law enforcement—funds that both Jeremy and Carson knew would negate the plea agreement Carson made with the AUSA. Jeremy is blackmailing Carson into turning over all his other illegal funds for the safe return of his wife and son.”
“He’s going to do it, right? We can go after Robertson later.”
“He wants to do it, but we’re holding off. We have”— he glanced at his watch, which he put on a countdown clock as soon as he timed everything out—“a little less than nineteen hours to put together a rescue plan.”
“But if he pays—”
“If he pays, Madison and Jesse will be released, if we can trust the word of Jeremy Robertson’s hired gun, which I’m skeptical about. But if they are released, Sean will be killed—per the original agreement. If he doesn’t pay, Madison and Jesse will die, and Sean will be freed. Carson wants to pay right now.”
“Of course he does.” Lucy took a deep breath. “But a child’s life is at stake. Sean would never want us to play with his son’s life.”
“We have time,” Dean stressed. “And remember—Jeremy Robertson already reneged on one deal with Spade; he could be blowing smoke up our ass about releasing Madison and Jesse. Rick—what’s the game plan? You’re the boss.”
“We’re looking for Jeremy Robertson now. We confirmed he’s still in San Antonio, but he checked out of his hotel room yesterday—maybe he was worried Carson would talk, or maybe he wanted to distance himself from the kidnapping. We know who Robertson hired to put the plan in motion, a corrupt ex-cop named Bart Vasquez. Problem is, because Vasquez is an ex-cop he still has some friends in blue. We have two unmarked units out in front of his office, but my guess is that he’s in the wind. We’re looking for a place Vasquez controls where he can keep three hostages under wraps. They used three identical vans, which makes tracking them difficult, but we have our best cybercrimes people on the ground poring over camera footage. When the time comes, we already have a warrant in place—coming out of DC so Vasquez won’t hear about it—to raid his house and office. But that’s last resort—we don’t want to spook him or his people into killing the hostages.”
“How are Jack and Kane?”
“Recuperating. I’ve forbidden them to go out tonight, but I’m not their boss.”
Lucy said quietly, “Kane has a severely sprained ankle, he’s not going anywhere. But Jack will be ready when we have intel.”
“I’m not going to tell you to stand down, Lucy, but—”
“Then don’t say it, Rick. I’m going to get them all back. Safe. Dean, keep your eye on Carson. I don’t trust him. He may release the money just to have Sean killed, since he knows he’s already going to prison.”
“He’s secured and won’t be talking to anyone outside my presence.”
“Thank you. But we have to be prepared to release the funds—if there’s a chance we can save Jesse.” There was a hitch to her voice, and Dean knew that this was far harder on her than she let on.
Rick said, “No one is releasing any money to that bastard. We’re going to find them and everyone involved is going down. That’s an order, Kincaid.”
* * *
Lucy hung up and rubbed her eyes. She was sitting at Sean’s desk. The office was a mess, but she’d sorted through the papers. He had been going through the shell corporations plus digging into Jeremy Robertson’s finances. Dean probably knew about but turned a blind eye to Sean’s snooping.
Lucy didn’t know what she would do if Sean didn’t make it out of this. Her greatest fear was losing him. She’d lost people she’d loved before, not least of whom was her nephew Justin. That loss had defined her in so many ways; it had in part made her who she was today. When her brother Patrick was in a coma for nearly two years, she’d feared he would be like that for the rest of his life, neither dead nor alive, just existing. It had tortured her because it was her fault he’d ended up that way. Though intellectually she knew she wasn’t the one who planted the explosives that resulted in the accident, emotionally she blamed herself because Patrick had been looking for her. To save her.
She couldn’t lose the man she loved, the man she expected to live with for the rest of her life. Sean made her whole, he made her a better version of herself. He had confidence in her, faith in her, and he made her laugh. They just hadn’t had enough time! Time to love each other. Time to have fun. Time to grow old and, someday, adopt children to raise and love, children who needed them.
Everyone in the San Antonio FBI office was working on finding Sean, Madison, and Jesse. Everyone. She had to believe in her colleagues.
Jack walked in.
“I told you to sleep,” she said.
Jack lifted her out of the chair and hugged her tightly. She took his love freely. She needed it.
“Sean spent all afternoon in here,” Jack said. “He was working on something. What was it?”
“I think everything Dean told him not to do. These are Robertson’s financial statements, and I don’t quite know what this list means.” She held up a list of names and numbers in Sean’s handwriting
“Can you look at his computer history?”
“No—he doesn’t save history.” But she sat down at Sean’s computer and logged in anyway. “But I can see anything he manually saved. Here—the last file he was looking at was exactly what I thought. Robertson’s banking information.” She frowned.
“What?”
“This—it’s not Robertson’s bank. It’s Bart Vasquez. Shit, Sean’s going to get into deep trouble for this. He downloaded Vasquez’s banking information to his computer.” She almost deleted it, but didn’t. Sean always cleaned up after himself, because he never wanted to put her at risk. But he never let her see him do anything in the gray area—or anything blatantly illegal.
“He must have had a reason.”
“Yeah, he knew that Robertson was working with him. But I don’t see what—oh. This is his business information, not his personal information. Wait, wait, wait…” She scrolled through. “Payroll!”
“Sean was trying to find out who worked for him.”
“This is completely illegal, but—”
“Lucy, just read it. We’ll deal with the fallout when Sean is safe.”
“Vasquez pays via direct deposit into six different personal accounts amounts anywhere from a thousand a week to two thousand a week—numbers to keep well below the IRS threshold. Sean has the list of those names.”
“Let’s go.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Jack. You still look green.”
“I’m not letting you go out there alone, and Nate hasn’t returned.”
“I can call—”
“Dammit, Lucy, I’m going. And I’m calling Nate. I know he wants to find Bandit, but finding Sean is more important.”
“Nate will be here when we need him.”