Kristen clicked the answer button, but when she opened her mouth to say hello, nothing came out. Part of her brain hoped a robotic voice or a prerecorded message would begin to play signaling a sales call of some kind or just a scammer.
Then Nick slipped the phone from her nerveless fingers and tilted it so that speaker mode toggled to on. The action gave Kristen the moment she needed to gather her wits and croak out, “Who...is this?”
“Listen, as I’m only saying this once.” The voice sounded like a robocaller, mechanical and nearly flat in tone.
The inhuman voice continued with a time and location for the exchange. Kristen forced her brain to concentrate, to remember every detail. She knew the marshals were recording the call so they would know, but she didn’t have that luxury. If she was going to go, whether they wanted her there or not—which of course they did not—she had to pay attention and forget nothing.
“You better have all that,” the voice said.
“Wait,” Kristen tried to interject.
That bloodcurdling scream sounded across the ether as it had the night before, and the call ended.
Kristen thought she was going to be sick.
Nick laid the phone on the table and touched her hand. “Deep breath, Kristen. That was prerecorded.”
“All of it?”
“All of it. That was a computer reading everything.”
“But the scream?”
Not her mother. Her mother wouldn’t scream. Would she?
“As easily copied from a horror movie as real.” Nick gave her an encouraging smile. “We’ll have your mother back in a few hours.”
“How without me?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Can’t? Won’t? Or you don’t know?” She met his gaze with a challenging one of her own.
“I don’t know exactly, but there are methods—”
“Which often fail.”
“Nothing is foolproof.”
“Letting me go so we can find out what they want—I mean, why they want me—is foolproof.”
“No one would agree to that, Kristen. Besides the fact you’re a civilian, these men don’t play by rules. They might keep or even kill both of you.”
Before Kristen came up with an argument for that one, Nick’s phone rang. He stood as he answered it, and headed for the front door, taking her phone with him.
Despite the chill at which Sean and Gina kept their house, Kristen grew hot all over. She wasn’t sure if it was the way Nick dismissed her usefulness by pointing out her civilian status, as though civilians didn’t count, or how he picked up her phone when he left for a private conversation. She only knew she was angry more than scared. These men had terrorized her and run her off the road. They had taken and possibly hurt her mother because they wanted something from Kristen. They had tried to kidnap her. The police and marshals had lost the one man who might have given them answers. Yet she was not supposed to be involved.
Somehow, she was going to be there tonight to make sure her mom was freed. More, she was going to ensure she learned why these men were after her so the marshals would know how to stop them. She knew she was in danger. She didn’t think they wanted to kill her, at least not yet. If they only wanted her dead, they would have managed that too easily on the side of the expressway. They might want information she couldn’t give them either literally or ethically. What would happen to her, she didn’t know. But surely she could figure out something, some way to elude them. She was intelligent. She graduated at the top of her class from the University of Chicago.
Through the front window, she noticed that Nick had walked off the porch to talk. So he wanted to make sure she didn’t overhear. That action added fuel to her fire to not cooperate with the Marshals Service or any other law enforcement agency involved. She didn’t like being treated like a child who had to be kept in the dark about the issues that truly mattered.
Too often, her parents had done that. She’d learned of her mother’s nomination to the federal bench from the newspaper, not her mother. She had been fourteen and Mom thought her too young to worry about the process. Mom’s way of protecting Kristen.
Mom and Dad always tried to protect her. They had purchased a condo for her as a graduation gift, even though neither approved of her choice of careers. But they made sure it was in the suburbs not far from their house, though they knew she wanted to live in the city where her commute would be shorter and she could walk to restaurants and the grocery store. The first time Mom was threatened, Kristen had been dragged into the situation, grabbed out of class by marshals and locked in a safehouse, terrified and told too little until the threat was over. The second time, she knew nothing until the incident had passed.
And Mom had protected her the day before from something. Kristen knew Mom had been keeping something to herself, had been too quick to notice the SUV and jump to the conclusion it was up to no good. If she had told Kristen, maybe matters would have turned out differently.
Even allowing the men to take her and not Kristen had been a form of protection. The greatest form of protection.
Restless, Kristen rose and opened the front door. Behind her, Sean’s office door opened. In front of her and in the planter-strewn courtyard between the carriage house and the apartment building, Nick looked up.
Kristen set her hands on her hips. “I’d like my phone back so I can call my dad again.”
She wanted to leave him a voice mail if nothing else, to let him know what she intended to do. Just in case something went wrong. He needed to know. Kristen wasn’t sure he deserved to know, going off the grid as he apparently had. At least she presumed he had disappeared voluntarily. Surely these kidnappers hadn’t found him in Switzerland.
Another worry she did not need. She had to believe he, at least, was safe.
Nick said something into his phone she couldn’t quite hear, then returned it to his pocket before he climbed the porch steps. “We’ll get you another phone.”
“But all my numbers are in that one you took away from me.”
“I know. It’s terrible how we don’t know anything without our phones anymore.” Nick grinned.
Kristen looked away so her foolish female side didn’t respond to the charm of that grin.
“I can let you copy all the numbers.” Nick drew out her phone, though he didn’t give it to her. “Will that help?”
“I guess it’ll have to.”
She must appear to cooperate.
“I’m sure Sean can give you some paper and a pencil.” Nick kept coming toward her, so Kristen had to step out of the doorway and let him pass. Except he didn’t cross the threshold.
“After you, madam.” He gave her a little bow.
“Do you think I’m going to run out the door if you go first?” Kristen made herself laugh. “You could probably catch me in five minutes or less.”
“Probably, but I’d rather not have to try.”
Kristen shrugged and strolled into the house. Sean was making coffee in the kitchen. “There’s paper and pencils on my desk, Kristen. Help yourself.”
“You have about a half hour to copy all the names you want,” Nick said as he locked the front door. “Someone will be here to pick you up then.”
“Pick me up?” Kristen spun around halfway across the dining room. “Pick me up for what?”
“In the light of this phone call, we are placing you in protective custody until Her Honor is released.”
“But I thought...tomorrow...” Kristen’s mind raced.
She had counted on being able to get away tonight, elude Nick in the dark. Now she would have to find a way to do so in the daylight, not as easy. Not easy at all. Probably impossible without a ruse.
She would find one.
“Then let me get that paper.” As though she wasn’t in the least bothered by the protective custody idea, she continued to the office, where she located paper and pencils. The room was small but efficiently set up with a desk with a monitor, and smaller tables containing a printer and other monitors. One of those monitors showed a split-screen view of the exterior of the carriage house. Kristen recognized the views—outside the front door. Outside the dining room, outside her bedroom. None outside the bathroom. Turning away from the screens, she headed for the dining room to spread the paper and pencils out on the table.
Nick offered her coffee, fetched them each a cup, then joined her at the table. He laid her phone between them. More texts from friends filled the screen. No missed calls. Nothing from her father.
Kristen unlocked the phone and scrolled through her contacts. Her parents’ and boss’s numbers. Her closest friends’. Who else? Her pastor’s number, maybe? Why not.
The contacts copied, she folded the half sheet and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans.
“That’s all?” Nick asked.
Kristen shrugged. “All I should need for the next day or two.”
“But we’ll need your phone for evidence, you know.”
She hadn’t thought of that—that keeping her phone would be as good as permanent.
“I think the rest should be in the cloud and I can transfer them when I get a new phone.” She made herself smile. “I know it’s on a giant server somewhere, but I like thinking about a fluffy white cloud in the sky holding all my pictures and numbers and appointments. And one day it’ll get too heavy and dark and all those pictures and numbers will just tumble from the sky.”
Nick looked bemused.
Kristen laughed for real this time and rose. “I’m really not going nuts, Deputy Marshal Sandoval. Just a little stir-crazy.” She grimaced. “And it’s going to be worse in—” she made air quotes “—protective custody. And if they’re coming to take me away soon, I better make sure all my stuff is together.”
She left Nick at the table and retreated to the guest room. Her stuff was still together. All she could take with her was her purse, which was fortunately a fairly large cross-body satchel. She stuffed some toiletries inside along with a few other necessities, then slipped into the bathroom.
The carriage house had been built at least a hundred years ago and had obviously not included two bathrooms en suite. Probably not even one. Either Sean and Gina or previous owners had added such luxuries. But they had kept the original exterior of the old building, which meant the bathroom boasted a window on one wall that could be opened. Not a large window, but big enough for Kristen to wriggle through. The problem lay in the drop to the ground. The carriage house was built over a basement only half cut into the ground. That made the drop a minimum of ten feet. She could dangle from her hands and fall, but if she landed incorrectly, she could twist an ankle or worse. Not to mention the impact of landing on her still-sore feet.
She would do it. She had to get away before she was locked into some prison, even if it was a comfortable house or hotel room, her every move guarded for her own good.
Time was wasting. Shortly, Nick would be knocking on the door. Worse, if a female deputy marshal showed up, they might break into the bathroom to see what was taking Kristen so long.
Making sure her purse was tightly zipped, she dropped it into the bushes outside the window. Those plants would help break her own fall. She hated the idea of crushing them, but they would grow back. This was only June. Listening for anyone coming into the bedroom, Kristen climbed onto the vanity, then stepped on top of the tank. She practically had to manage a handstand to go out feetfirst, but with her hands braced on the vanity, her torso twisted, she got one leg and then the other over the sill. Immediately, gravity took over and she began to slide. For a heartbeat, she feared she would crash to the ground in an uncontrolled descent. A cry rose in her throat. She clamped her mouth shut to keep any sound inside and flung out her hands to catch the edge of the sill.
Her fall stopped with an abruptness that wrenched her shoulders. She gasped with pain. One of her sneakers, loosely tied so she could keep her feet bandaged, fell into the shrubbery beside her purse.
She had underestimated the ten-foot fall. Surely, it must have been at least fifteen or twenty. She was going to break something for sure. Without the upper body strength to drag herself back inside the window, and the idea of being locked up while her mother suffered or worse driving her on, Kristen let go.
She landed with a thud and crackle of breaking branches. For several minutes, she huddled in a heap of arms and legs, assessing potential damage to her person and tried to breathe like normal, not like someone who had just run a marathon.
Certain everything was where it should be, she retrieved her shoe and tied it on, grabbed her purse and began to creep along the base of the house where the camera angle wouldn’t pick up her movements unless someone shifted them. Until Nick or Sean realized she had escaped, they wouldn’t move those cameras.
At the front of the house, she’d have to cross the open courtyard. She might be seen at that point if anyone was watching the cameras. She might get caught if the deputy marshals sent to collect her arrived as she exited the gate.
She would certainly be caught if she remained still.
At the front corner of the house, she took a deep breath and sprinted to the gangway. The dimness between the two apartment buildings, not more than five feet apart, swallowed her up. There were possibly more cameras here. Couldn’t be helped now. She just kept going. The gate was locked. She tapped in the code she had memorized watching Sean and Nick type it, hoping neither had changed it, and exited.
The street with cars lining both sides lay ahead of her, quiet in the weekday afternoon. She ran across, then used the opposite line of vehicles as cover to the end of the block. Another less busy street, then Lincoln Avenue, which was never quiet. And she could see the “L” station two blocks away. Just two blocks away, and no one had shouted her name yet. No feet pounded after her.
So as not to draw attention to herself, she strolled with everyone else walking dogs, going for an afternoon caffeine pick-me-up, enjoying the lovely summer day.
She reached the station still without anyone following her that she noticed. A swipe of her CTA card allowed her through the turnstile and up the steps. She took the elevator to spare her feet, for speed, for concealment. On the platform, the board said a train was due in three minutes. Only three minutes until she would board the elevated train and become nearly impossible to catch.
“Two minutes until the arrival of a train bound for The Loop,” an inhuman female voice announced over the loudspeaker.
Kristen glanced over the waist-high railing that was the only barricade between the platform and the ground more than twenty feet below.
And saw Nick Sandoval headed straight for the station entrance.
With the rumble of the oncoming train fast approaching, Nick vaulted the gate and charged for the steps. If no one stopped him, he would catch the train and prevent it from leaving the station in the event the woman he had seen enter the building moments ahead of him was Kristen.
“Halt right there, young man.” Of course someone held him up—the station manager. He had the lined face of an older man, but the physique of someone who worked out on a regular basis.
Nick doubted he would be able to push past this gentleman without causing trouble he didn’t want.
“Deputy US Marshal Nicholas Sandoval.” Nick held out his credentials.
Above him, the train rattled into the station, the two-tone door chime sounding, the announcer’s voice declaring the name of the station.
“There’s a person I need to stop from getting on that train.” Nick sighed as the train’s rumble roared down the stairwell.
“L” trains didn’t remain in the station for long.
“Needed to stop from getting on that train,” Nick corrected himself. “Can we stop it before it gets to the next station?”
“I can try, but the stations are close together here and we only got a minute.” The station manager walked and talked at the same time, heading for his booth.
But he had to take out his keys and unlock the gate, and then he had to unlock the door. Once inside, he called someone, who insisted, apparently at a manager’s request, for Nick’s credentials again, to know his badge number to verify Nick truly was with the Marshals Service. By the time the information got through, the train had left the next station only half a mile down the track.
“But we got it stopped at the next one,” the station manager said.
“Thank you.” Pocketing his credentials, Nick raced back to Gina’s house to retrieve his car, talking to his office the whole way. He and the two marshals sent to collect Kristen Lang met at the station, but Kristen wasn’t among the restless and annoyed passengers. She had either not been on the train at all or had gotten off at the next station. She could be anywhere in the transit system or on foot. With time, they could get her transit records and follow her movements if she was using a registered transit card. He suspected she must be. She hadn’t had time to purchase a short-term ticket.
But that would take too long. She could hop in a taxi or rent a car before they knew where she was headed.
Except Nick did know where she was headed later that day.
“How did you lose her?” one of Nick’s coworkers asked, meeting him back at the carriage house.
“She went out the bathroom window.” Nick met the female marshal’s gaze. “I didn’t think Kristen would fit through that window or want to risk the drop to the ground from that height. It’s about twelve feet.”
“She wanted free in a bad way.” The female deputy marshal held out her hand. “I’m Stephanie Kelly and this is Marcos Segovia. You’re Sandoval, I presume.”
“You presume right.” Nick speared his fingers through his hair, knowing it would now be standing on end. “I should have guessed she was up to something when she was so calm about you two coming to take her to a safe house.”
“The question now is how do we find her?” Segovia said.
“I wish that wasn’t easy.” Nick climbed the porch steps, the other two marshals behind him.
“How?” Segovia asked.
“She’s going to meet her mother’s kidnappers.” Nick rang the doorbell.
Sean arrived to open it immediately. “Didn’t catch up with her?”
Nick didn’t answer the obvious.
Sean stepped back so they could all enter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t put cameras outside the bathroom window. It just seemed wrong, and that window is pretty small and high up.”
“Not small and high up enough,” Kelly said. “Do you want to call the office or should I, Sandoval?”
“I already have. I’m waiting for Callahan to call me back.”
Not waiting with any anticipation. As his six-year-old nephew would say, You’re in big trouble.
All he had to do was watch over one quiet and anxious female, to keep her safe from harm, and he had let her go.
He had failed again to protect someone with whom God had trusted him.
“She’s going to be at the exchange point tonight,” Nick said.
His phone rang, and he repeated the words to his boss.
Callahan said a great deal about Nick losing another lady he was supposed to keep safe. Even if Michele hadn’t officially been Nick’s responsibility, her death surely had been, no matter what others tried to tell him. Callahan, Nick’s boss and Michele’s father, made disparaging comments at least once a week, solidifying Nick’s personal conviction about his incompetence as a marshal.
He should be given no more responsibility than watching the metal detectors in the courthouse.
“You aren’t competent enough to handle more than watching the metal detectors in the courthouse,” Callahan echoed Nick’s thoughts, “in someplace like Franklin, Tennessee, or maybe Brownsville, Texas.”
“Yes, sir.” Nick’s neck and ears scorched.
His colleagues and brother-in-law might not be able to hear Callahan, but they were laughing at his discomfort.
“We can catch up with her tonight if we don’t before then.” Nick tried to defuse his boss’s temper.
“Does she have her phone?” Callahan asked. “We can triangulate it.”
“No, sir, I have it.”
Nick wanted to sink into Sean and Gina’s basement.
He remembered how. She had written down all those names and numbers to put into a new phone, a burner phone she could buy in a hundred different places in the city.
“Credit cards?” Nick asked.
“She used an ATM at Halsted and Clybourn,” Callahan said.
So she had cash to buy a burner phone and hire a taxi from any street corner, which would be less traceable than using a car service from an app that required a credit card.
Aware of three pairs of eyes upon him, Nick asked, “What steps would you like me to take now, sir?”
“I want you here immediately.” Callahan’s tone was uncompromising. “Maybe when you’re explaining how you lost a civilian, you’ll figure out something about how we can stop her from reaching the rendezvous site and messing up our operation.”
“Yes, sir.” Nick signed off and shrugged. “I’m off to take my punishment like a man.” He snatched his jacket on the way to the door.
“Sandoval?” Kelly followed him, blocking his path of egress. “Doesn’t this all seem suspicious to you?”
“All what? The kidnapping of the judge or Kristen escaping?”
Nick guessed where his coworker was going—the same way as the media. Nick had been able to dismiss the idea of Kristen’s involvement without hesitation that morning, but right then, he wasn’t as sure of her innocence as he had been a few hours ago.
“She’s behaved with a pretty cool and calculating head for a civilian whose mother was just kidnapped,” Stephanie Kelly said. “Do you think she’s involved?”
Nick opened his mouth to deny the possibility, but doubts niggling at his brain kept him from the negative he wished to speak. “I think she’s determined to make up for her mother getting kidnapped while preventing those men from taking her.”
“She can’t be doing that.” Segovia’s face paled. “She’ll get herself and law enforcement killed, if these men are inclined to be that violent.”
“When you’re looking at decades in prison,” Kelly said, “most men are willing to kill to escape it.”
“And Kristen was willing to risk a great deal to keep from being locked up in a safehouse.” Nick still sought for an excuse other than guilt to cover her behavior.
“We have no reason to believe she’s involved,” was all he knew to say.
It was the simple truth.
“We don’t know why these men would want her instead of her mother, either,” Kelly reminded them.
“Seems to me,” Marcos said, “the judge is more important than her daughter any day.”
“She’s a victim’s advocate. Maybe she helped the wrong person.” Nick turned sideways to edge around Kelly. “I’d better go face the music.”
“Like your funeral dirge.” Marcos grinned.
Nick grimaced, called a thank-you to Sean and headed for his car. Traffic was going to be terrible heading into The Loop. It wasn’t terrible enough. He knew what was coming—he was off the case. He didn’t need the aggravation of crawling along Lake Shore Drive with the beauty of the blue lake taunting him against the foreground of snarled traffic to hear his boss yell at him in person.
But yelled at in person was what he got when he finally reached the office.
“Your brother-in-law’s house is like a fortress, you told me—” Callahan began without so much as a hello, “—cameras everywhere.”
“It is. They are.” Nick stood in the doorway, not having been invited in farther.
“And after you let that one kidnapper go yester—”
“Excuse me, sir, but my job is to protect the judge and her family, and that was what I was doing. The cops are the ones who—”
“And you failed to protect the judge and her family.” Callahan was close to shouting. Although the other office doors were closed, Nick didn’t doubt for a moment ears were pressed to the other sides of the panels to listen.
Nick closed his eyes, expecting to see Michele’s sweet and delicate face. Instead, an image of Kristen with her strong-boned features, deep-blue eyes and yards of blond hair blazed across the insides of his eyelids. Kristen on her own and prepared to meet monsters with only herself as a bargaining tool.
“Please, sir—” Nick began to explain why he believed Kristen ran. “Kristen would rather—”
“Be on her own than in our protection?” Callahan cut in.
“Yes, sir. She is tired of standing by doing nothing after her mother stopped those men from taking her. She feels guilty and wants to be involved—”
“You got to know her well.” Callahan’s voice held a sneer.
“I thought I was supposed to, sir.” Nick spoke with exaggerated calm. “She wants—however mistakenly—to meet these men.”
“Because she’s involved?” Callahan asked.
“With all due respect, sir, why would she be involved with her own mother’s kidnapping?”
“To get attention. To get money out of her parents. Because she’s angry with them. There’s a dozen reasons why a daughter might do something like this.”
“But—” Nick stopped, unable to find a single argument.
He didn’t know Kristen that well. He could only go on his instincts that said she wasn’t involved in any criminal manner.
Yet the media had started it, perhaps with a little help from Callahan, Nick realized, and now the Marshals Service and probably others had continued the idea that Kristen was part of the abduction.
“If she’s involved,” Nick asked, “why would these men offer to release Her Honor in an exchange?”
“To make Kristen look innocent,” Callahan suggested.
“That’s a weak reason, sir.”
“We can’t overlook the circumstances that point to Kristen’s involvement, including her running off today.”
“But—”
“Go home,” Callahan ordered. “Report to the courthouse tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.” Though he flinched as if each word were a blow, Nick knew better than to argue.
In silence, he left the doorway, exited the building. Moments later, he was headed to his apartment in Old Town. It was small, a mere studio flat, but big enough for his needs since he was rarely there. He could take the “L” or even walk to work if he liked. He only drove his car on the days he headed to the suburbs to have dinner with one of his numerous family members who had taken upon themselves the task of feeding him, the only unmarried sibling.
This afternoon, the apartment looked no larger than a shoe box, too high off the ground, too stagnant in its recirculated air-conditioned air. He wanted the freshness of the woods, of the breeze off the lake.
He wanted to find Kristen.
He was ordered to begin work at the courthouse as usual the next day. But Kristen was at large that night. Finding her before the rendezvous was going to be nearly impossible, but just maybe he could stop her right at the rendezvous.
He knew Callahan would have something similar in play, but maybe she would listen to Nick. He thought they were building some sort of rapport, a hint of trust.
“Except she ran away from you,” he reminded himself aloud.
What he was about to do could get him fired. No, it would get him fired if Kristen was involved in the abduction and not a victim. Nick didn’t think she was part of these men’s scheme, but everyone else did, so he had to stop her before she tangled herself worse than she already had. Maybe if he could rescue her, he would make up for failing to rescue Michele.
Knowing his livelihood—the career he had planned for as far back as he could remember—was on the line, he gathered some things together and made his plans to stop Kristen at the rendezvous, if not before.