Page 61 of Billion-Dollar Ransom
Nicky followed the flurry of action, looking for any clues that Tim Dowd or Boo Schraeder had been here. But the place appeared to be just another Airbnb awaiting its next guest. There were no signs of life.
“Make sure you have people outside the house check for any escape routes,” Nicky said.
“All due respect, Gordon,” Jeff said, “this is not the first house we’ve breached.”
Nicky ignored that. “And if you find Dowd, you take him alive.”
“Last house was a bust,” Jeff reminded her. “I don’t think Dowd would be stupid enough to hole up so close.”
“I need to know you hear me,” Nicky said.
“Hey. If it comes down to Dowd or the hostage, and Dowd tries something funny, he’s a goner.”
“Damn it, Penney, listen to me—”
Her admonition was interrupted by an explosion of shouts and commands. Something was happening on multiple screens. Nicky found the video feeds that displayed the helmet cams of the team heading into a windowless room. Pistols and rifles up, all of them spreading out.
They were here.
CHAPTER 66
Thursday, 7:08 p.m.
NICKY TOOK IN every detail displayed on the camera feeds. The military cot with the pancake-thin mattress and spare bedding. The handcuffs. The gallon jugs of water. The generator. The microwave oven hooked up to the generator. The lantern. The box of industrial paper towels. The open box of MREs. These either belonged to a squatter who happened to be a trained survivalist, or a kidnapper prepared to keep his hostage alive with the bare necessities for the next few days.
“Penney!” Nicky shouted into her mic. “Get some men into the garage to see if there’s still a vehicle inside.”
“After my men finish clearing the room,” Jeff said, sounding more than a little annoyed, mostly because Nicky’s wild-card tip had been correct. “They might still be down there.”
“Trust me, they’re not,” Nicky said. “Which is why you also need to get someone next door to talk to the neighbor, see whatshe heard or saw. I’m sure she’s been watching this whole thing play out.”
Jeff Penney grumbled but followed her orders and gave the commands. Nicky watched as the garage door was lifted. Flashlights revealed a black Audi very similar to one they’d caught on traffic cams in the area not long after Boo Schraeder’s abduction. Beams of light focused on the car’s interior; there was no one inside.
Before Nicky even said anything, Hope ran the plate. A few seconds later, she told Nicky that it came up clean. Still, the Audi would be hauled to their garage to see if forensics could find any traces of Boo Schraeder inside.
The conversation with the next-door neighbor was fruitless. No, she hadn’t seen anyone leave the house—just the holy hell of the SWAT team interrupting an otherwise quiet night on the block. The noise distracted her from her favorite reality show, in fact, and no amount of reward money would cause her to rest easy now, not with all of this “ruckus.” (Never mind that this was the same busybody who’d called in the tip to begin with.)
“Oh, they were definitely here,” Jeff said to Nicky. She looked at his personal video feed and saw that Jeff was searching the room for anything Dowd might have left behind by mistake. “And they left not too long ago.”
“How do you know?”
“There’s food in the microwave. I stuck my finger in it. It’s still warm.”
“So they left in a hurry.”
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “Clearly somebody told that asshole Dowd we were on our way. Any idea who that somebody might be?”
Nicky said nothing, because she had a very good idea who that might be. Michael Hardy wasn’t in the Sandbox right now, but he had access to everything the task force did, including the anonymous tip-line call. And if Mike had let his ex-partner know about the SWAT team even a few minutes after the command to strike the house was given, Dowd would still have had plenty of time to slip away with his hostage.
“Gordon? You still with me?”
Nicky wasn’t about to share her suspicion with Jeff. “Yeah.”
“Perimeter is up,” Jeff continued, “but there’s a chance they’ve already slipped though. Very likely they made it to the freeway. And this time of night, they can move quick in any direction. Any bright ideas about where Dowd might be headed next?”
Nicky knew this was Jeff needling her, trying to save face. But it wasn’t necessary. This would be consideredherfailure—that she hadn’t acted on the suggestion from the tip line fast enough. Never mind that it took Jeff Penney longer to gather his team than she thought it should have.Heavy is the head that wears the crown,as Nicky’s boss John Scoleri liked to say.
“They had to have been on foot, at least at first,” Nicky said. “I want all your men scouring the neighborhood, and I’m going to call in reinforcements. We haven’t lost them yet.”
