Predator Read online

  “That’s fine,” she said and followed the others as everyone shuffled into the living area and started to dig in.

  Miranda sat down on the sofa next to Wesson, peeled the wrap off the sandwich, and took a bite. She tasted cilantro and chipotle and a bit of a kick.

  “It’s good,” she said to Becker, who had made his way to his desk and his laptops, and was waiting for her reaction.

  Must be Fanuzzi’s influence.

  Normally she would have relished the fare, but she knew she wasn’t going to get down half of it right now. Even if she wasn’t going through a personal hell, it had only been a few hours since she’d eaten with Parker.

  Turning her head, she watched Parker reach for the turkey club and take his plate to the window to eat. He was suppressing the urge to talk to the team himself, she knew.

  Then she frowned. He probably wasn’t very hungry, either, but his sandwich selection wasn’t typical. He’d been avoiding red meat lately, hadn’t he? What was up with that?

  She couldn’t ask him about it now, so she concentrated on getting down what she could of her food and waiting for the team to inhale theirs.

  No one had much to say, and while they were munching Miranda realized she should have told them to order anything on the menu instead of just sandwiches.

  Too late now. But they all seemed focused on the task at hand.

  After forcing down all the southwestern chicken she could, Miranda took a gulp of black coffee and got to her feet. “Before we start to strategize, there are some things I need to tell you.”

  “Oh?” Becker said, his mouth full.

  “What is it, Steele?” Wesson sounded like she was bracing herself for bad news.

  “This will take a little while.” Miranda moved to the middle of the room and looked into the faces of her three colleagues.

  Becker was still at the desk near the window with his laptops. He had on a frumpy blue sweater and jeans with holes in the knees, which probably weren’t there for fashion. Wearing sweatpants and a loose T-shirt, Wesson was pulling her legs under her and getting settled on the sofa. Back in jeans and his olive green sweatshirt with the marine logo, Holloway sat on the tiger-print ottoman he’d pulled over to the coffee table to eat. He was swallowing the last of his sandwich and cleaning up.

  She loved them all. Even stubborn ole Holloway. She hated having to tell them what they were up against. But she knew they could take it.

  She drew in a deep breath and began. “Back in the middle of February Parker’s father came to us to ask a favor for his wife.”

  “Tatiana?” Becker said.

  He and Fanuzzi had gotten to know Parker’s family well. Mr. P was always sending Fanuzzi clients for her catering business.

  “Yes. As you know, she’s from Ukraine. It seems she had a brother who went missing long ago. Anyway that’s why we went there. To try to locate the brother.”

  Holloway wiped his mouth with a napkin and sat up. “You and Mr. Parker went to Ukraine?”

  “Yes, we did. And it was colder than here.” She pointed out the window.

  Holloway wasn’t sure he liked that answer.

  “And you found Tatiana’s brother, right?” Wesson said. She knew most of the details, but not all of them.

  Miranda paused a moment, bolstering herself for the rest. “We learned that after the brother left home, he went to Kiev. He became homeless there and got involved in a criminal organization. They used him.”

  Wesson blinked. “Oh, my.”

  “After we teamed up with authorities in Kiev, we discovered this organization was planning a huge drug deal. We tried to stop it, but wound up getting captured.”

  “You were captured?” Becker gasped. “In Kiev?” He knew what that felt like. He had the missing tip of his little finger to remind him.

  Holloway looked at Parker. “I take it you escaped?”

  “Yes, we did,” Parker told him.

  Since they were both standing in front of them.

  Miranda continued. “The boy we were searching for, now a man, turned out to be someone we knew.”

  “Who was he?” Becker’s voice had a nervous tone.

  The truth. Had to tell them the truth. Miranda took a deep breath. “The Ukrainian who was working with Eustace DeBow in Kennesaw.”

  Holloway jumped up from his seat, waving his arms. “Eustace DeBow? The guy who shot me in the leg and tried to kill us both?”

  “Yes, that Eustace DeBow. But it was his lackey, the man named Anatoly Tamarkin, who tried to kill Parker that day.” She could still remember the sound of the trains in that house.

  Parker stepped to the table and reached for a cup of coffee. “I managed to talk him out of it.”

  Becker rubbed the side of his head, recalling the data he’d dug up on Interpol during that case. “Tamarkin has an alias. A couple of them. That man is Tatiana’s brother?”

  “Yes,” Miranda told him.

  Holloway rubbed his leg as if his old wound from DeBow’s gun was fresh. “So what does this have to do with finding Mackenzie?”

  Miranda waited a moment for Parker to return to his place, then continued. “The person who captured us in Kiev was a woman. I managed to get information out of her. She was Ostap Savko’s sister.”

  Now it was Wesson’s turned to suck in her breath. “The man who kidnapped my niece and tried to kill us all in Los Angeles?”

  One of the details Wesson didn’t know. Miranda put her hands behind her back and tried to sound neutral, but that memory was still raw for her, too. “The same. She’s dead now.”

  Wesson stared at Miranda with her big green eyes.

  Miranda let her imagine how that had happened. “The most important thing the sister told me was that there was a man in the US who ran everything.”

  Wesson twisted on the couch. “Her brother, Ostap.”

  “No. Someone above him. Someone at the top. Someone who runs it all. She said she only knew him as ‘the Man in Boston.’”

  The whole room seemed to lose air as everyone gasped.

  “Boston?” Becker turned a little pale. “Are you saying that’s the guy who was texting Mackenzie?”

  “It’s a strong possibility,” Parker replied.

  Becker got up and started pacing. “Steele, are you telling us it’s really this ‘Man in Boston’ who’s been pulling the strings all this time?”

  Holloway looked bewildered. “Do you mean the ‘Man in Boston’ is the head of Group 141?”

  “That’s what we suspect.” Miranda had conveniently left out the part of Tamarkin in prison, when he’d thought Parker was his former boss, and the revelation it had led to about Mr. P. That part was too personal.

  “But it could be someone else, couldn’t it?” Becker said.

  Miranda turned to him. “Someone else who would want to hijack a social media account to lure Mackenzie to Boston?”

  He raised his hands. “It’s a big place.”

  “True. But this ‘Man in Boston’ has motive big time,” Miranda said. “We put away his top man in Los Angeles. We stopped a twenty-four million dollar drug deal and put an end to the operation in Kiev. If he didn’t hate us before, he really hates us now.”

  “But whoever Ambrose is has been texting Mackenzie since November,” Holloway pointed out.

  Wesson nodded. “Before Los Angeles.”

  Holloway’s face went dark. “But that wasn’t long after we destroyed that underground lab in Sweet Water Park.”

  Where Drew Iwasaki had been experimenting with mind control drugs. Another reason for revenge, if the ‘man in Boson’ had his finger in that place.

  Looking ill, Becker sank into his desk chair. “Did that lab belong to the Man in Boston?”

  Simon Sloan was the one who had first suspected it was all tied together. It seemed he was right. A chill went through her at the thought.

  Miranda folded her arms. “I guess this guy’s a long term planner.”

  Wesson picked up
the trash on the coffee table, took it to the kitchenette to dispose of it. “Or maybe it was someone in another branch of Group 141 who posed as Ambrose Eaton and sent Mackenzie those texts.”

  From the corner, Parker shook his head. “Group 141 is just a name Simon Sloan gave the child kidnapping rings he was fighting. We don’t know exactly what it entails.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Becker said.

  Miranda spun around to face him. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter?”

  “I mean whether Mackenzie was kidnapped by the ‘Man in Boston’ or some other sexual predator, the methodology for finding him is the same.” Becker put his hands in the air. “So it wasn’t Ambrose who sent those messages. We can still trace the messages. And when we find him, we’ll know who he is.”

  Feeling a ray of hope, Miranda wagged a finger at him. “You’re right, Becker. And that’s why we need to get to work.”

  “Exactly. We need to trace the IP address from the email with the flight itinerary.”

  “And nail down the sender of that ‘hot chick’ post,” Holloway said. “I can help with that.”

  “Maybe we can get access to the surveillance video at the airport,” Wesson said from the kitchen.

  “I can work on that,” Parker said.

  Becker sighed. “I just wish we had the number of that prepaid phone Mackenzie bought. It would make finding this guy a lot quicker.”

  “That’s probably a lost cause,” Miranda told him. Then she noticed Wesson at the counter in the kitchenette staring off into space. “What are your thoughts?” she wanted to know.

  Wesson came back into the living area and folded her arms, looking a bit tentative. “If this is Group 141, we should get Simon Sloan involved.”

  “You mean ask for his help?” Miranda said.

  “Yes. We should call him.”

  Miranda gave Wesson a scowl. She knew her colleague had a thing for Sloan. “I’m not sure we should get the FBI involved yet.”

  Wesson’s green eyes flashed. “Hasn’t Sloan already been involved in every step of this—this—plot to kill us all, or whatever it is?”

  Miranda pressed her hand against her head. She couldn’t handle a mutiny right now.

  “It’s a good suggestion,” Parker said to Wesson. “But the point is mute, Detective. I don’t have the secure phone Sloan gave me.”

  He always kept it locked in his office back at the Agency.

  Wesson cleared her throat. “I have one.”

  Miranda’s head shot up. “What?”

  Wesson glanced around the room at her male colleagues. She seemed embarrassed. “Sloan sent it to me after you had me call him. He said he didn’t want me going out late at night like that again.”

  Miranda didn’t know what to say to that.

  But she thought of Sloan’s expression when he saw Tamarkin recognize Parker as his boss. Sloan might have already made progress figuring out who this ‘Man in Boston’ was.

  “All right, Wesson. Go ahead and call him. But we’re in charge of this investigation.”

  “I’ll make that clear to him. The phone is in my room.” And she hurried out the door.

  Miranda turned to Becker. “You’re in charge of the assignments.”

  He didn’t answer. Now he was wearing a glazed look, too.

  “Becker?”

  “I think I’ve got an idea.”

  “Okay. Spill.”

  “This guy is, you know, into kids. Or his organization is, right?” He was too much of a family man to say the words “sex slavery” out loud.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you know that post about the ‘hot chick’ Holloway’s working on?”

  Right now, the thought of it was making Miranda’s skin crawl. “Okay, what about it?”

  “I set up a site, like I said. It’s got an alert, but the message I sent is kind of bland. What if we send some more messages and pretend to be a young girl? You know, the type he’s looking for?”

  “You mean a sting operation?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s a terrific idea.” Just the thing a guy who ran sex slavery operations all over the world would go for.

  “A brilliant idea, Detective,” Parker echoed.

  Becker’s face turned beet red.

  “Okay.” Miranda started toward the kitchenette to get more coffee. “We’ve got a lot to do. Let’s get started. We’ve got to find this guy ASAP.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Simon Sloan sat at the plain wooden table in his apartment in Washington DC staring at the shot glass of Jim Beam he’d just poured.

  Years ago back home in Ohio, he’d been hitting the booze hard at a friend’s party. A teen party. He’d been eighteen and thought he was invincible. Then he’d gotten into a car with his date, his brother, and the girl who would become his sister-in-law. Two miles from home, he’d swerved to miss a deer that wasn’t really there and hit a tree, landing everyone in the car in the hospital and nearly killing them all.

  He’d given up the stuff and hadn’t touched it since.

  And yet two of them were gone now.

  Funny how death was bringing him back to hard liquor now.

  Picking up the glass, he studied its amber contents, then set it back down. Shifting in his chair, he looked around at his hole of an apartment. A wooden floor and plain eggshell walls with no pictures, no rugs, not even a needlepoint cushion. It gave him a hollow feeling. The bedroom was the same. He’d never spent much time in the place until the last two weeks.

  Until Cooley had taken him out of the field and demoted him to a desk job.

  He didn’t blame his boss. Cooley had been furious with him when Sloan’s brilliant plan had backfired. But not as furious as he was with himself.

  How could he be anything else after losing Toby Shaw?

  Sloan had thought Shaw was right for the job of tailing the Ukrainian they’d let go from the prison in Lower Manhattan. He was sharp. He had four years with the Bureau. He’d been a Marine.

  But it hadn’t been enough.

  Somehow the subject he was tailing had gotten the best of Shaw. The morning after Sloan had sent his man on his assignment, he’d gotten a call from the Middlesex County sheriff’s office. Shaw’s car had been found on the side of the road. A few feet away in a snowy ditch they had found the special agent.

  His pants were down and his throat was slit. He’d been ambushed while relieving himself.

  Sloan had driven to Framingham himself to identify the body.

  Cooley forced him to inform the family, but Sloan would have insisted on doing that himself, anyway. Shaw had been just twenty-eight. He had a pretty wife and a four-year-old daughter. Sloan could still hear the woman’s shrieks when he’d given her the news.

  He thought of James, his brother. His sister-in-law, Clarissa. Special Agent Endicott, who’d been under his command in Atlanta. And now Shaw. All dead because of his mistakes. His errors in judgment. Why was he the one left alive?

  Once more he picked up the shot glass. Was it time to throw fifteen years of tee totaling out the window?

  He decided it was.

  But before he could get the liquor to his lips, his cell rang.

  He put down the glass and picked up his phone. Was it Cooley?

  No. When he saw the number, he wanted to smile, but he couldn’t manage it.

  It was Janey. The gorgeous redhead he’d met in Atlanta. The sharpshooter who worked for the Parker Agency. The woman he’d kissed in Los Angeles. A kiss he’d remember for the rest of his life. Now if she’d been there that night outside Framingham, Shaw would still be alive.

  He’d love to hear her voice just now. He’d love to bare his soul to her. But she didn’t need someone like him in her life. It was insane for him to have sent her that secure cell. What had he been thinking?

  Better not to lead her on.

  He pressed the red button on his phone to end the call and got to his feet. Taking the shot glass,
he went to the sink and poured out its contents. He put the lid on the whisky bottle, tucked it under a cabinet, and plodded toward the bedroom.

  He couldn’t get drunk. He had an early day tomorrow. He had to get up and push papers at the office.

  Such important work required a clear head.

  And with that, he undressed and fell into bed.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Miranda opened her eyes and saw the angry red digits of the hotel alarm clock glowing six fifty-nine. A little more than twenty-four hours since Mackenzie turned off the alarm in her home on West Paces Ferry.

  Not good.

  Rolling over, she pressed her palms to her face as panic washed over her. She thought about DeBow and the children he had kidnapped and sold. She thought about Ostap Savko’s massive sex trade operation in Los Angeles. Where was her daughter? Had the man in charge of Group 141 handed her over to one of his groomers somewhere? Was she being trained as a sex slave?

  The thought made her bolt up in bed.

  “Miranda.” Parker’s touch on her back soothed the fear back for a moment.

  She turned to him, her eyes tearing up. “What are we going to do, Parker? How are we going to find her?”

  “We’re going to keep trying until we do.”

  “But will we?”

  They had worked with the team until after two in the morning and gotten nowhere. Sloan wasn’t even answering Wesson’s calls. She’d tried him three times. So much for that long distance romance.

  Parker hadn’t made any progress getting access to the airport surveillance, either.

  “I spoke to Antonio about an hour ago.”

  “Oh?” He hadn’t wakened her.

  “He laid out a process for a court order for the airport, but it will be a long and tedious path.”

  She shook her head. “We don’t have time for that, Parker. If the Man in Boston is anything like Savko and his sister—”

  What was she thinking? Most likely it was the Man in Boston who had given Ostap Savko the order to kill her and Parker and her entire team. He was ten times as ruthless and bloodthirsty as Ostap and his sister. He made money from Savko’s criminal exploits.

  With a grunt she put her hands on the sides of her head and squeezed, as if trying to push out the tormenting thoughts.