Page 20 of Billion-Dollar Ransom
As Agent Duffield led her down the hall to the tactical operations center, the junior agent brought her up to speed.
“We’ve been checking the surveillance cameras all alongRoscomare, which is where Cal and Finney Schraeder were abducted from their school bus. All the cameras had been disabled except for one. From that camera, we were able to track an SUV leaving the scene a short time later and trace it to Westwood, on Hilgard Avenue near the UCLA campus. LAPD is on the scene and about to enter the vehicle.”
“So it could be nothing,” Nicky said. “Just someone leaving their house?”
“This happened exactly one minute before the first responders arrived. The timing seemed suspicious.”
Timing,Nicky thought,was everything with this group of kidnappers.
On the screen in the operations center, they watched a live feed of a leafy stretch of Hilgard where over a dozen uniforms were approaching the SUV as if the trunk might contain a suitcase nuke. Nicky was 99 percent sure they’d find nothing inside. Even if this vehicle was connected to the kidnappers, they wouldn’t have gone through all this meticulous planning only to leave a clue behind in a cup holder.
Nicky watched anyway.
After a quick visual check inside and beneath the chassis of the SUV, the LAPD began hauling the vehicle up onto a flatbed. From here it would be transported to the closest LAPD garage, where a vehicle-forensics team would examine every inch before virtually and then physically taking the SUV apart in the hope of finding a useful shred of evidence.
Nicky doubted they would. Her gut was telling her this vehiclewaspart of the kidnappers’ plan, and that plan wasto keep sending the task force on wild-goose chases. Like this one.
“Agent Gordon!” boomed a voice from the hall. Nicky turned just as Michael Hardy poked his head into the tactical operations center.
“We have the green light to visit the old man.”
CHAPTER 22
“ADMIT IT, MOM. You ditched me to catch an Uber home earlier because you’re on that big kidnapping case, the billionaire dude and pretty much his whole family.”
“What I amon,” Nicky said carefully, “is speakerphone. Because I’m in the car with Chief Hardy.”
“Oh, sorry,” Kaitlin said, and she sounded like she meant it. “Hey, Mike.”
“What’s going on, Special K?”
“And you know that I don’t discuss active investigations over the phone,” Nicky continued, “especiallywith my teenage daughter.”
“ButI’lltell you everything,” Mike said. “Every last salacious detail. Names, dates, locations, you got it. Whaddya want to know?”
“Spill the tea, Mike!” Kaitlin said.
“Hardy,” Nicky warned.
“Oops!” Mike said. “Your mom outranks me on this one. Sorry, K.”
Nicky rolled her eyes but secretly loved how well her daughter and Mike got along. She’d been unsure how her daughter would feel when her “friend” from the LAPD came over for dinner that first time six months ago. Kaitlin’s father had been a cop too, an incredibly gifted detective with the Robbery-Homicide Division, and Nicky had fallen for his big investigative brain. But eight years ago, the same brain caught a random shot from a fleeing bank robber, and her husband died before EMTs could arrive on the scene.
Kaitlin had been six. She said she remembered him, but dimly, like pieces of a dream. Kaitlin also swore she’d marry the opposite of a cop someday. “You mean a criminal?” Nicky had joked. “No,” Kaitlin responded. “Someone who doesn’t have to carry a gun to work.”
“You doing okay, kiddo?” Mike asked now.
“Well, I was just about to shoot up some heroin with a needle I found in the alley out back, but don’t worry, I ran the tip underreallyhot water.”
“The kid’s got street smarts,” Mike said to Nicky. “You have to admire that.”
“Then I thought I’d send some nudes to random middle-aged men on the internet.”
“Be sure to eat some dinner while you do all that,” Nicky said. “There’s roasted chicken, couscous, and some salad makings in the fridge.”
“Mike, don’t listen to her,” Kaitlin said. “She’s trying to make you think she’s all domestic. The fridge has nothing in itbut a bottle of vodka, some ketchup packets, and a wilted stalk of celery.”
“The makings of a Bloody Mary? That’s it, I’m putting her up for Mother of the Year.”
