Блейк Пирс - A Trace of Hope

“Six figures?” Keri repeated, disbelieving.

“As I said, it’s a very lucrative business. And that payment was just the first. Over the course of the trial, I paid him about half a million dollars. And with that, he was on his way. After I was acquitted and resumed work under my own name, he even started helping me facilitate the abductions to these ‘more deserving’ families. As long as he could find a way to justify the transactions, he was comfortable with them, even enthusiastic.”

“So you gave him that first bite of forbidden fruit?”

“I did. And he found that he liked the taste. In fact, he discovered that he had a taste for a great many things he hadn’t been aware that he might like.”

“What exactly are you saying?” Keri asked.

“Let’s just say that somewhere along the way, he lost the need to justify the transactions. You know that event tomorrow night?”

“Yes?”

“It was his brainchild,” Anderson said. “Mind you, he doesn’t partake. But he realized there was a market for that sort of thing and for all the smaller, similar festivities throughout the year. He filled that niche. He essentially controls the upscale version of that…market in the Los Angeles area. And to think that before me, he was working out of a one-room office next to a doughnut shop representing illegal immigrants being randomly charged with sex crimes by cops looking to make quotas.”

“So you developed a conscience?” Keri asked through gritted teeth. She was disgusted but she wanted answers and worried that being too overt with that disgust might shut Anderson down. He seemed to sense how she felt but proceeded anyway.

“Not yet. That’s not what did it for me. It happened much later. I saw this story on the local news about a year and a half ago about a female detective and her partner who rescued this little girl who was kidnapped by her babysitter’s boyfriend, a real creep.”

“Carlo Junta,” Keri said automatically.

“Right. Anyway, in the story, they mentioned that this detective was the same woman who had joined the police academy a few years earlier. And they showed a clip from an interview after her academy graduation. She said she’d joined the force because her daughter was abducted. She said that even though she couldn’t save her own daughter, maybe by being a cop, she could help save some other family’s daughter. Does that sound familiar?”

“Yes,” Keri said softly.

“So,” Anderson continued, “because I worked in a library and had access to all kinds of old news footage, I went back and found the story from when this lady’s daughter was abducted and her news conference right afterward when she pleaded for her daughter’s safe return.”

Keri flashed back to the news conference, which was mostly a blur. She remembered speaking into a dozen microphones jammed in her face, begging the man who had snatched her daughter in the middle of a park, who had tossed her in a van like a rag doll, to return her.

She remembered the scream of “Please Mommy, help me” and the bobbing blonde pigtails getting farther away as Evie, only eight at the time, disappeared across the green field. She remembered the bits of gravel that were still embedded in her feet during the news conference, trapped there when she ran barefoot through the parking lot, chasing after the van until it left her in the dust. She remembered it all.

Anderson had stopped talking. She looked at him and saw that his eyes were rimmed with tears, just as hers were. He pressed on.

“After that, I saw another story a few months later where this detective rescued another kid, this time a boy grabbed while he was walking to baseball practice.”

“Jimmy Tensall.”

“And a month later, she found a baby girl that had been snatched right out of a carrier at the supermarket. The woman who stole her had a fake birth certificate made and was planning to fly with the baby to Peru. You caught her at the gate as she was about to board the plane.”

“I remember.”

“That’s when I decided I couldn’t do it anymore. Every transaction reminded me of that news conference where you were begging for your daughter’s return. I couldn’t keep it at arm’s length anymore. I got soft, I guess. And right around then, our friend made a mistake.”

“What was that?” Keri asked, feeling a tingly sensation that only came when she sensed something big about to be revealed.

Thomas Anderson looked at her and she could tell he was wrestling with some kind of big internal decision. Then his brow unfurrowed and his eyes cleared. He seemed to have made up his mind.

“Do you trust me?” he asked quietly.

“What the hell kind of question is that? No friggin’ w – ”

But before she had finished the sentence, he had pushed away the table that separated them, swung the manacles on his wrists around her neck, and pulled her to the ground, sliding back into a corner of the interrogation room.

As Officer Kiley burst into the room, Anderson used her body as a shield, keeping her in front of him. She felt a sharp prick at her neck and glanced down to see what it was. It looked like a shaved-down toothbrush handle. And it was pressed against her jugular.

Keri was totally bewildered. A moment earlier, Anderson had been tearing up at the thought of her missing daughter. Now he was holding a razor-sharp piece of plastic to her throat.

Her first instinct was to make a move to break his grip. But she knew it wouldn’t work. There was no way she could do anything before he’d be able to jam the plastic spike into her vein.

Besides, something about this wasn’t right. Anderson had never given her any sense that he had malice toward her. He seemed to actually like her. He seemed to want to help her. And if he really had cancer, this was a fruitless exercise. He said himself that he’d be dead soon.

Is this way of avoiding the agony, his version of suicide by cop?

“Drop it, Anderson!” Officer Kiley screamed, his weapon pointed in their general direction.

“Put your gun down, Kiley,” Anderson said surprisingly calmly. “You’re going to accidentally shoot the hostage and then your career will be over before it’s even started. Follow procedure. Alert your superior. Get a negotiator over here. It shouldn’t take long. The department always has one on call. Someone can probably be in this room in ten minutes.”

Kiley stood there, uncertain how to proceed. His eyes darted back and forth between Anderson and Keri. His hands were shaking.

“He’s right, Officer,” Keri said, trying to match Anderson’s soothing tone. “Just follow standard procedure and this will all work out. The prisoner isn’t going anywhere. Step outside and make sure the door is locked. Make your calls. I’m okay. Mr. Anderson isn’t going to hurt me. He clearly wants to negotiate. So you need to bring in someone who has authorization to do that, okay?”

Kiley nodded but his feet remained rooted in place.

“Officer Kiley,” Keri said, this time more firmly, “step outside and call your supervisor. Right now!”

That seemed to snap Kiley out of it. He backed out of the room, closed and locked the door, and grabbed the phone on the wall, never letting them out of his sight.

“We don’t have much time,” Anderson whispered in Keri’s ear as he relaxed the plastic pressing against her flesh slightly. “I’m sorry about this but it’s the only way I could be sure we could speak in complete confidence.”

“Really?” Keri whispered back, half furious, half relieved.

“Cave has people everywhere, in here and out there. After this, I’m done for sure. I won’t last through the night. I might not last the hour. But I’m more worried about you. If he thinks that you know everything I know, he might just have you eliminated, regardless of the consequences.”