John Gilstrap - No mercy

It took him two minutes to trace the hit back to the National Archives in Washington, DC. His heart sank. Using public facilities like that made it living would need to keep the fact of a kidnapping secret.”

The phone rang for a third time, and she picked it up. “Sheriff Bonneville, hold on a second, please.” She put the call on hold. To Jesse, she continued, “If word leaked out that someone had been nabbed, somebody would call the police, and then the contractor would lose control of his operation.”

Jesse’s defenses started to fall as he saw it, too. “And the real reason to use an independent contractor in the first place would be because the kidnappers warned not to involve the police.”

Gail smiled and winked. “Bingo.” She pushed the hold button again and brought the phone to her ear. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. This is Sheriff Bonneville.”

“Medina.” The special agent in charge of the Chicago Field Office announced his name as if it were an accusation, but the sound of his voice brought pleasant memories to Gail’s mind. “You ready to have your world rocked?”

“I’m going to put you on speaker,” Gail said as she pressed the button. “I’m here with Jesse Collier.”

“Hey, Jess,” Medina said. “This kid you’re looking for, Thomas Hughes? Son of Stephenson and Julie Hughes?”

Gail glanced, and Jesse nodded. “That’s him,” she said.

“Well, when you find him, hold him, will you? His folks are murderers.”

Gail startled visibly. “ What? ”

“Yep, how’s that for a kick in the head? Looks like they murdered a woman, her two children, and their nanny in Muncie. Ugly scene, too. Early reports say torture.”

“Oh, my God,” she breathed. “What the hell is going on, Vince?”

“Soon as I know, you’ll know. Just thought I’d share. It came up on ICIS if you want to track it. Gotta go.”

With the line silent, she felt pale.

“Love to hear a hypothesis on this one, Boss,” Jesse said.

The security breach while surfing through the Carlyle site had shaken Venice. She’d wasted no time getting out of the Archives and back to the safety of Fisherman’s Cove. Safely back in her office now, she held her breath as she logged into the Interstate Crime Information System for an update on the Indiana investigation. Her stomach fell. By far the most critical investigation in the country-the one that was garnering the most bulletins and alerts-was Jonathan’s triple shooting in Samson, Indiana. Since the last time she’d signed in, authorities had figured out that the incident had involved a kidnapping, but it wasn’t obvious whether they thought the shooter was a rescuer or a kidnapper.

Even more startling was the fact that Indiana investigators had tied the name Thomas Hughes to the location of the shootings. They had him identified as a twenty-two-year-old college student from Ball State University, and he was currently being sought as a “person of interest,” which Venice knew from past experience was a label that spanned everything from potential witness to primary suspect. Whatever it meant in this case, it was not good news.

Thomas Hughes’s name on the screen was highlighted as a hyperlink, which usually foretold involvement in a second or related criminal investigation. When Venice clicked it, she gasped and brought her hand to her mouth after reading only the first two sentencepossible.

With her hands trembling from the sudden shot of adrenaline, she logged out of ICIS and pulled up the link for a super-encrypted telephone site. She donned her headset as her fingers flew across the keyboard to pull up Jonathan’s secure satellite phone.

The Hummer was a ridiculous waste of natural resources, Jonathan knew, but given the specific demands of his business and his addiction to high-tech toys, it was the only vehicle that would suffice. In addition to the armored doors and windows, he’d also equipped it with the latest in communication technology. He’d even thought to include a cipher-activated vault below the center console, in which he kept a supply of cash in case of emergencies. Right now, the vault held $25,000 in hundred-dollar bills. Boxers called it the Batmobile.

The hard-lined telephone mounted on the dash was an encrypted satellite phone that allowed him to freely discuss anything with anyone who had similar technology on the other end. Predictably, Boxers called it the Batphone.

And it was ringing.

A wrong number was impossible, but Jonathan nonetheless answered it on speakerphone with a noncommittal, “Yes.”

“Digger, it’s Venice. We’ve got a problem.”

He waited for it.

“The Hugheses are a family of murderers.”

As she drove toward Muncie, Gail Bonneville wasn’t sure what she expected to glean from the scene of the quadruple murder there, but when so many people were dead, and the single name of Hughes was tied to their murders, it was a lead that needed following.

This latest twist was a stunner. What had seemed so clearly to be an altruistic act of bravery on the part of her shooter in Samson suddenly looked like something else entirely. Three people murdered in the rescue of the son of murderers. What could that possibly mean? Every one of the conclusions she’d prematurely drawn to this point was now in question.

The trill of her cell phone annoyed her. One of the good things about long drives was the time it afforded for quiet thought. The caller ID showed her it was her office, but that somehow only heightened her sense of annoyance.

“Bonneville.”

“Collier.” Jesse matched her tone exactly, making her smile. “You in the mood for entertaining news?”

“I’d prefer ‘good’ to ‘entertaining,’” she said, “but I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

“When were tracking down all that flight information a while ago, I made some good contacts,” Jesse explained. “One of them just called to tell me that the Perseus Foods jet has filed a flight plan for a return trip to Indianapolis.”

The murder scene on Detweiler Avenue in Muncie was as gruesome as faux FBI Agent Jonathan Grave had ever seen. The bodies were gone-shipped off to the morgue hours ago to be split open and rummaged through-leaving behind the dried pools, smears, and spatters of gore that were somehow more awful by themselves than they would have been with the corpses still presenters’ affections. At about 2,300 square feet on two levels, it was exactly the kind of house that middle-class Americans think of when they think suburbia. Outside, the place was likewise well kept, even if the grass was a little long-the fact that prompted a neighbor to realize that something might be wrong in the first place. In the eighteen hours since that poor Samaritan had peeked in the window and called the police, thousands of footsteps by dozens of police officers and emergency workers had destroyed the lawn, and the dozens of feet of crime scene tape had ruined the innocence.

Stan Hastings of the Muncie Police Department was lead detective on the case. Five-eleven and trim, with signs of gray in what was left of his elaborate comb-over, he looked to be about forty-five, and seemed none too pleased to be walking through the scene yet again. He’d asked the usual jurisdictional questions when Jonathan arrived with his FBI credentials, but was easily convinced that he was investigating a link between the Caldwells and the theft of classified information.

As he conducted the tour, Hastings clearly avoided looking at the gore. “Angela Caldwell and her two children, one six and the other three, and their nanny, Felicia Bourdain, a French citizen, all murdered,” Hastings explained. “The nanny was killed right here in the foyer,” he said, indicating the lake of dried blood on the tiled floor and the spray that reached all the way to the ceiling in spots. “We figure she was killed answering the door. One slash across her throat, and she just dropped.”