Блейк Пирс - A Trace of Hope

“So what do you know?” Keri asked.

“I told you Cave made a mistake. He came to me and said he was worried about you. He had done some checking and found out that one of his guys had kidnapped your daughter. As you found out, it was Brian Wickwire – the Collector. Cave didn’t order it or know about it. Wickwire operated on his own a lot and Cave would often help facilitate moving the girls after the fact. That’s what he did with Evie and he never gave it a second thought.”

“So he wasn’t targeting her?” Keri asked. She had suspected as much but wanted to be sure.

“No. She was just some cute blonde girl that Wickwire thought he could fetch a nice price for. But after you started rescuing girls and generating headlines, Cave went back through his records and saw that he was connected to her abduction through Wickwire. He was worried you’d eventually find your way to him and he asked me to help stash Evie somewhere well-hidden and to keep him out of it. He didn’t want to know.”

“He was covering his tracks even before I suspected he was involved?” Keri asked, marveling at Cave’s foresight.

“He’s a clever guy,” Anderson agreed. “But what he didn’t realize was that he was asking the exact wrong person for help. He couldn’t have known. After all, I’m the one who corrupted him in the first place. Why would he suspect me? But I made up my mind to help you. Of course, I did it in a way that I thought would keep me protected.”

Just then Kiley opened the door a crack.

“Negotiator’s on his way,” he said, his voice quavering. “He’ll be here in five minutes. Just stay calm. Don’t do anything crazy, Anderson.”

“Don’t you make me do anything crazy!” Anderson screamed back at him, pulling the toothbrush back up to Keri’s neck and inadvertently poking her skin. Kiley quickly shut the door again.

“Ow,” she said.” I think you drew blood.”

“Sorry about that,” he said, sounding surprisingly sheepish. “It’s hard to maneuver splayed out on the floor like this.”

“Just rein it in a little, okay?”

“I’ll try. There’s just a lot going on, you know? Anyway, I talked to Wickwire and told him to place Evie at a location somewhere in LA where she’d be well taken care of, in case we needed her later on. I wanted to make sure she didn’t leave the city. And I didn’t want her to go through… more than she had to.”

Keri didn’t respond but they both knew there was nothing he could do about the years prior to that, and the horrors her daughter must have suffered in that time. Anderson continued quickly, clearly not wanting to linger on the thought any more than she did.

“I didn’t know what he did with her but it turned out he put her with the older guy you eventually found out she was staying with.”

“If you had decided to help me, why didn’t you just find out her location and get her yourself?”

“Two reasons,” Anderson said. “First, Wickwire wasn’t going to give up her location to me. It was prized info and he kept it closely guarded. Second, and I’m not proud of this, I knew that I’d get arrested if I came to you with your daughter.”

“But you got arrested intentionally anyway a few months later for child abductions,” Keri protested.

“I did that afterward, when I realized I had to take drastic action. I knew that eventually you’d research child abductors and traffickers and find your way to me. And I knew that I could set you on the right path without making Cave suspicious of me. As to getting arrested intentionally, that’s true. But you may recall that I defended myself in court. And if you check the court record closely, you’ll discover that both the prosecutor and the judge made several errors, errors I baited them into, that would almost certainly lead to my conviction being overturned. I was just waiting until the right time to appeal the case. Of course that’s all moot now.”

Keri looked up and saw a commotion outside the window of the room. She could see multiple officers passing by, at least one of whom was carrying a long gun. He was a sniper.

“I don’t mean to be cold but we need to wrap this up,” she said. “There’s no telling if someone out there has an itchy trigger finger or if Cave has ordered one of his minions to put you down as a precaution.”

“Quite right, Detective,” Anderson agreed. “Here I am blathering on about my moral conversion when what you want to know is how to get your daughter back. Am I right?”

“You are. So tell me. How do I get her back?”

“I genuinely don’t know. I don’t know where she is. I don’t believe Cave knows where she is. He might know the location of the Vista event tomorrow night but there’s no chance he’ll attend. So it’s pointless to have him followed.”

“So you’re saying I have no hope of getting her back?” Keri demanded, disbelieving.

Have I been through all this for that answer?

“Likely not, Detective,” he admitted. “But maybe you can get him to give her back.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jackson Cave used to consider you an annoyance, an obstacle to running his business. But that has changed in the last year. He’s become obsessed with you. He not only thinks you are out to destroy his business. He thinks you want to destroy him personally. And because he has twisted reality to make himself the good guy, he thinks you are the bad guy.”

“He thinks I’m the bad guy?” Keri repeated, incredulous.

“Yes. Remember, he manipulates his moral code as he sees fit so that he can function. If he thought he was doing evil things, he couldn’t live with himself. But he’s found ways to justify even the most heinous of acts. He told me once that the girls in these sex slave rings would be starving on the streets if not for him.”

“He’s gone mad,” Keri said.

“He’s doing what he can to look himself in the mirror each morning, Detective. And these days, part of that means believing that you are on a witch hunt. He views you as the enemy. He sees you as his nemesis. And that makes him very dangerous. Because I’m not sure what lengths he’ll go to in order to stop you.”

“So then how can I get a guy like that to give Evie back to me?”

“If you went to him and convinced him that you’re not after him, that all you want is your daughter, maybe he’d relent. If you could persuade him that once you had your daughter safe in your arms you would forget about him forever, maybe even leave the police force, he might be convinced to lay down his arms. Right now he thinks you want his destruction. But if he could be made to believe that you don’t want him, that you only want her , perhaps there’s a chance.”

“You think that would really work?” Keri asked, unable to hide the skepticism in her voice. “I just say ‘give me my daughter back and I’ll leave you alone forever’ and he goes for it?”

“I don’t know if it will work. But I know that you’re out of options. And you have nothing to lose by trying.”

Keri was turning the idea over in her head when there was a knock on the door.

“The negotiator’s here,” Kiley yelled. “He’s coming down the hall now.”

“Wait a minute!” Anderson yelled. “Tell him to stay back. I’ll tell him when he can come in.”

“I’ll tell him,” Kiley said, though his voice indicated he was desperate to hand over communication as soon as possible.

“One last thing,” Anderson whispered in her ear, even more quietly than before if that was possible. “You have a mole in your unit.”

“What? West LA Division?” Keri asked, stunned.

“In your Missing Persons Unit. I don’t know who it is. But someone is feeding information to the other side. So watch your back. More than usual, I mean.”