No Second Chance
Page 47Rachel started toward the men when something made her stop. The wrought-iron gate. The one she had seen on her right. It was closed. The sign on it read:OPEN ON WEEKENDS AND MAJOR HOLIDAYS ONLY .
But through the thicket, Rachel saw the beam of a flashlight.
She pulled up. She tried to peer through the fence, but all she could see was the light beam. The brush was too thick. On her left, she heard the ding of an elevator. The doors slid open. The men stepped inside. No time to pull out the Palm Pilot and check the GPS. Besides, the elevator and beam of flashlight were too close. It would be hard to pinpoint the difference.
The man who had smiled at her put his hand against the side, keeping the door open. She wondered what to do.
The flashlight beam went out.
“Are you coming?” the man asked.
She waited for the flashlight beam to come back on. It didn’t. She shook her head. “No, thank you.”
Rachel quickly broke back up the stairs, trying to find a dark spot. It had to be dark for the goggles to work. The Rigels came with a built-in overlight sensor system to protect from bright lights, but Rachel still found that the fewer artificial lights, the better. Street level looked down over the park. Okay, the positioning was pretty good, but there was still too much light from the street.
She moved to the side of the stone hut that housed the elevators. On the left, there was a spot that—if she pressed herself against the wall—would give her total darkness. Perfect. The trees and bushes were still too heavy to get a clear view. But it would have to do.
Her goggles were supposedly lightweight but they still felt bulky. She should have bought a model you could just hold up to your face, binocular style. Most have that feature. This model didn’t. You could not just hold it to up your eyes. You had to strap it on as a mask. The advantage, however, was obvious: If you attached it like a mask, you could keep your hands free.
As she pulled them over her head, the flashlight beam appeared again. Rachel tried to follow it, see where it was coming from. It seemed to her that it was a different spot this time. Over on the right now. Closer.
And then, before she could pinpoint it, the beam was gone.
Her eyes locked on the spot where she thought the beam had come from. Dark. Very dark now. Still keeping her eyes looking there, she finished getting the night-vision goggles in place. Night-vision goggles are not magic. They don’t really see in the dark. Night-vision optics work by intensifying existing light, even very small amounts. But here, there was pretty much nothing. That used to be a problem, but now most brands came with an infrared illuminator standard. The illuminator cast a beam of infrared light that was not visible to the human eye.
But it was visible to the night-vision goggles.
Got something.
The view was hazy, but it looked to Rachel like a small woman. The woman seemed to be hiding behind a bush. She held something up to her mouth. A phone maybe. Peripheral vision is nearly nonexistent with these goggles, though these claimed to give you a thirty-seven-degree angle. She had to swivel her head to the right, and there, putting down the duffel bag with the two million dollars in it, was Marc.
Marc started walking toward the woman. His steps were short, probably because he was on cobblestones in the dark.
Rachel swiveled her head from the woman, to Marc, back to the woman. Marc was approaching, getting closer. The woman was still crouched in hiding. There was no way Marc could see her. Rachel frowned and wondered what the hell was going on.
Then the woman swung her arm up.
It was hard to see clearly—there were trees and branches in the way—but the woman seemed to be pointing her finger at Marc. They were not far apart anymore. Rachel squinted at the screen attached to her face. And it was then that she realized that the woman was not pointing a finger. The image was too big for a hand.
It was a gun. The woman was pointing a gun at Marc’s head.
A shadow crossed over Rachel’s vision. She started back, opening her mouth to call out a warning, when a hand like a baseball glove covered her mouth and smothered all sound away.
Tickner and Regan hooked up on the New Jersey Turnpike. Tickner drove. Regan sat next to him and stroked his face.
Tickner shook his head. “Can’t believe you still have that soul patch.”
“You don’t like it?”
“You think you’re Enrique Iglesias?”
“Who?”
“What’s wrong with the soul patch?”
“It’s like wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘I Had a Middle-Age Crisis in 1998.’ ”
Regan thought about it. “Yeah, okay, fair point. By the way, those sunglasses you always wear. I was wondering if they were FBI issue.”
Tickner grinned. “Helps me land the chicks.”
“Yeah, those and your stun gun.” Regan shifted in the chair. “Lloyd?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m not sure I get it.”
They weren’t talking about eyewear or facial hair anymore.
“We don’t have all the pieces,” Tickner said.
“But we’re getting close?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Let’s go through it then, cool?”
Tickner nodded. “First off, if the DNA lab Edgar Portman used is correct, the child is still alive.”
“Very. But it explains a lot. Who would be most likely to keep a kidnapped child alive?”
“Her father,” Regan said.
“And whose gun mysteriously vanished from the murder scene?”
“Her father’s.”
Tickner made a gun with his forefinger and thumb, aimed it at Regan, dropped the hammer. “Righto.”
“So where has the kid been all this time?” Regan asked.
“Hidden.”
“Well, gee, that helps.”
“No, think about it. We’ve been looking at Seidman. We’ve looked closely. He knows that. So who would be the best person to hide his kid?”
Regan saw where he was going. “The girlfriend we didn’t know about.”
“More than that, a girlfriend who used to work for the feds. A girlfriend who would know how we work. How to do a ransom drop. How to hide a child. Someone who would know Seidman’s sister, Stacy, and be able to enlist her help.”