Kara Lennox - Bounty Hunter Ransom

Aubrey couldn’t believe she was doing this, but it sounded easy enough. Anyway, she needed the practice. She was going undercover tonight—at an S&M bar.

A woman in her fifties answered the door. “Yes?”

“Hi, I’m Rita McMurray.” She had no idea where that name had come from. “I’m moving in a couple of houses down,” she said, pointing vaguely down the block, “and they haven’t connected the phone yet. Could I use yours?”

The woman gave a tight smile. “Sure. I’ll bring you the cordless.” She closed the screen door, but Aubrey got a clear view inside. She looked for any sign of a child and saw nothing. But moments later an ear-piercing shriek rent the air. The child—for surely that’s what it was—was quickly shushed by someone inside.

The woman returned with the phone. Aubrey dialed her office number, pretended to talk to her nonexistent husband, returned the phone and got out of there. She felt triumphant, exultant, as she rounded the corner and got into Beau’s car.

“Yup, there’s a child in there. I didn’t see him, but I heard him. And he was shushed up really quickly.”

“Good work.” He pulled a cell phone from the console and dialed, then gave some terse directions. Apparently he was going to extract the child from the house right now.

In fifteen minutes two more cars showed up. One held Ace and Lori. A man Aubrey had never met climbed out of the second. He was huge, six-three at least, with blond hair cut very short and piercing green eyes. He screamed ex-military.

The three men and Lori conferred on the sidewalk while Aubrey remained in the stifling car. Then the blond man and Ace went up the alley, while Beau walked back down the block toward the front of the redbrick house.

Lori joined Aubrey at the car, leaning in the open window. “Don’t you just hate being a woman sometimes? Those macho jerks won’t let me help.”

The last place Aubrey wanted to be was with the guys right now. “I’ll stay right here where it’s safe, thanks.”

“Come on, let’s watch.”

Aubrey got out of the car, though Beau had told her not to, and she and Lori peeked out from behind a fence. Beau beat on the front door. “Fugitive recovery agent! Open up!”

The door opened immediately and Beau went inside. An interminable amount of time seemed to pass, though realistically it was probably only a minute or two. Then he emerged holding a screaming child. He gave a signal to Lori.

“Come on, that’s our cue.”

Without knowing what she was doing, Aubrey jumped in the Mustang along with Lori, who cranked it up, put it in gear, and skidded around the corner. Beau met the car, opened Aubrey’s door and handed the kid to her. “Get out of here.”

Lori hit the gas.

The child screamed despite Aubrey’s attempts to comfort him. “Is this legal?” she asked Lori. “Just snatching a kid away from his mother?”

“She kidnapped him first.”

“But…she’s his mother.”

“She’s a prostitute, and a junkie. We didn’t take her kid away, the courts did. We’re just enforcing what the court ordered.”

Aubrey wasn’t sure she liked it. That woman could have been Patti. Beau’s career choice seemed morally ambiguous at best. But then, that was her whole objection to how Beau earned a living. He followed the cash—even if that meant betraying his best friend.

Beau wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing by taking Aubrey with him to extract Christopher Langford from the house. But he’d needed to act quickly. If he’d waited even a few hours, Shelley might have gotten spooked and skipped out with the kid. And he couldn’t think of any place to leave Aubrey where he knew she’d be safe.

He wasn’t sure when he’d decided that protecting her was his job. All he knew was that if something happened to her, he would feel directly responsible.

She might not know it, but he was on the job, whether or not she wanted to pay him. After what he’d done to Gavin, he figured he owed her and her family. The Schuylers and Clarendons had been the prevailing influence on his youth. Lord knew his own family hadn’t done much for him. His mother had died when he was three and his father had spent the next fifteen years drinking himself into a premature grave.

Lori offered to take over little Christopher, return him to his father and collect the reward on Beau’s behalf, and he was happy to let her. Ace was paying her a small salary to handle bureaucratic details, something all of the First Strike agents appreciated. But once Lori was earning enough of her own fees to make a living, they’d all have to do their own grunt work.

“That was…intense,” Aubrey commented once they were alone again. It was getting close to five o’clock, and they sat in his car at a Sonic Drive-In. “I can’t believe we’re just sitting here, drinking root beer. You seem so casual about it.”

“It’s my job. And that was an easy extraction. Shelley and her aunt took one look at me and crumbled. No guns, no chasing.”

“Will Shelley get in trouble?”

Beau shrugged. “Not my problem. If my client wants to press charges, that’s his business. Hey, it’s almost five o’clock,” he said, changing the subject. “Did you say Patti had a job?”

“She works for an insurance agent, answering the phone.” Aubrey was glad to refocus her energies on her own problems.

“Why don’t we pay this agent a visit? We can probably catch him before he goes home for the day. He might be able to tell us if Patti’s had any strange visitors at work, or phone calls. She might have even confided the problem to him, asked him to advance her salary or something.”

“It’s worth a shot, though I doubt she would confide anything in him. She thinks he’s a jerk.”

They arrived at the Greg Holmes Insurance Agency at five minutes to five. It was a small, one-agent operation, affiliated with one of the less prestigious national firms. The office was a bit run-down, but Beau couldn’t exactly criticize the man for his decorating taste, given where he worked.

A plump young woman with a discreet tattoo on her wrist looked as if she were about to leave. She stood behind her desk, putting a yellow camp shirt on over her sleeveless blouse. Her skirt was a bit too short for office wear. In fact, with her brassy bleach job and eye makeup à la Tammy Faye, she could have hung out with Jodie and Erin and looked right at home.

“Can I help you?” she asked, not particularly friendly.

“I’m a friend of Patti Clarendon,” Beau said.

“She’s not here. She lit out of here this morning, no explanation, stuck me with answering the phone when I could be out making calls. Hey, are you cops or something?”

“I’m Patti’s cousin,” Aubrey said. “We’re roommates. I’m a little bit worried about her.”

Beau silently applauded her. She seemed to know just the right tone to strike with this slightly hostile young woman.

“You’re Summer, right?” Aubrey continued. “Patti talks about you all the time. She says you’re really good at handling people when they come in all upset.”

That earned a slight smile from Summer. “People get real wacko sometimes. Usually it’s because they’re embarrassed they’ve wrecked their car.”

Beau found a chair and picked up a magazine. Aubrey was handling Summer just fine. He’d let her keep going.

“When Patti left this morning, she didn’t give you any indication of what was wrong?”

“She got a phone call. She’s not supposed to take personal calls, but she’s got that phone glued to her ear all day. Anyway, after this call, she said she had to go and she’d be gone the rest of the day. Oh, wait, I remember now. She said something about her kid being sick or something, and she had to pick her up from the baby-sitter.”