The Stolen Girl Page 14

  They had one. She decided to give it to him. “We’re looking for a missing child,” she said, her eyes on Wesson.

  The woman didn’t blink.

  “A child?” Sloan’s expression turned dark. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” He must have been thinking of the Dylan Hughes case.

  Parker let out a frustrated huff. “Our client received a call from the kidnapper telling her not to go to the police.”

  “We aren’t the police.”

  Parker’s gaze turned hard. “We’re not sure the kidnapper would make that fine a distinction.”

  “All we want is to have a look at the evidence you gathered from the bank,” Miranda said. She waved a hand at Becker. “We brought our own expert. We won’t get in your way.”

  Sloan came around the desk and leaned against it. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

  “Why not?”

  He folded his arms. “My hands are tied. This isn’t our normal jurisdiction.”

  Now Miranda’s temper was starting to flare. “What do you mean it’s not your jurisdiction? You’re the freaking FBI.”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.” He reached for his water glass again, put it back down. “To hell with water. I need coffee.”

  And without another word, he crossed the room and went out the door.

  “Come back,” Wesson cried, and she ran out the door after him.

  Miranda stared after her.

  “Do you want me to stop her?” Parker asked.

  She shook her head. “Maybe Wesson can convince him to change his mind.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Janelle Wesson hurried down the long twisty hall after the stubborn, fast-moving man, her heart racing with panic, surging with emotions she couldn’t put a name to.

  As he turned a corner, she almost caught up to him. Then he zoomed ahead.

  “Sloan, stop,” she called.

  He did, turning so suddenly she almost bumped into him.

  “What is it?”

  She stood gaping stupidly at him. The last, most unprofessional thing she wanted to do.

  But darn it, the man took her breath away. She recalled the sensation she’d had when she first laid eyes on him. A gut-punch so startling, she hadn’t known what to make of it.

  Sloan was handsome, to be sure. Way more than a ten on the Wesson-O-Meter. Better than her personal Top-Ten list of movie stars. And she’d dated good-looking men before. Scores of them.

  But none had ever had this kind of effect on her.

  He made her heart pound in her chest. He made her feel dizzy and woozy and fluttery. She couldn’t think straight. She could barely breathe. In fact, she might never take a deep breath again.

  He wasn’t much taller than she was, but she could feel the vibes of a lean muscular body under his store-bought suit as he eyed her up and down, the way dozens of men had looked at her before.

  But this time it was different. This man made her skin tingle with just his eyes.

  Suddenly she realized she’d dressed up just because she’d be seeing him tonight. She wished she’d worn a pantsuit like Steele. She wanted to be seen as a professional. Not as a—not unprofessional.

  The thought made her angry. In fact, she was furious with this man.

  “Why won’t you help us?” she snapped.

  “Why should I?”

  Now he was turning cynical again. His tone was maddening.

  “Because we’ve worked with you before. Because we’re the good guys. Because the missing child is my sister’s daughter.”

  Her voice broke with the last words, revealing her embarrassing emotions. She was looking less and less like a professional investigator in front of Sloan and she didn’t like it.

  But his dark eyes softened. “She’s your niece?”

  Janelle nodded.

  “How old is she?”

  “Seven.”

  His look turned so troubling, she wanted to burst into tears. What did he know? She was certain Steele and Mr. Parker had been thinking the same thoughts she had ever since they’d seen Sloan on TV that morning. Thoughts of the Dylan Ward Hughes case back in Atlanta. Was that what had happened to Imogen? Had she been taken by another kidnapping ring who’d sell her as a sex slave?

  The idea made her ill.

  She had to know. “Tell me the truth, Sloan. Is this like Atlanta?”

  His eyes narrowed with untold pain. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

  She believed him. But that only meant they had to find out as fast as possible. “You’ve got to let Becker have a look at that evidence.”

  He stared at her a long moment, his chest moving up and down, his face unyielding.

  At last, he said, “Let’s get some coffee and we’ll talk about it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Tired of tapping her foot on the floor, Miranda pulled out her phone. “They’ve been gone for ten minutes,” she grumbled.

  Not that she’d noted the time Wesson and Sloan had gone out the door.

  “At least ten minutes.” Parker was as irritated as she was.

  “For all we know, Sloan’s taken Wesson into custody.” Or maybe to an executive bedroom somewhere in this fancy building.

  “He’ll have a lawsuit on his hands if he did.”

  “He helped us last time,” Becker offered. He was trying to put a positive spin on things.

  “Yeah.” But last time they’d been called in by someone working for the Bureau. Parker’s sister, no less. This time was different.

  Just as Miranda was about to go hunt the pair down, the door opened and the couple reappeared.

  Sloan stepped into the room carrying a paper tray with four coffee cups. Wesson followed him with the fifth cup in her hand.

  So now he was playing host?

  Sloan walked the tray over to the low table and set it down. Then he waved a hand at the white chairs. “Everyone take a seat. I need you to tell me everything you know about the bank bombing today.”

  Miranda stayed where she was. “Will you let our expert examine the evidence?”

  “Yes, yes. But first I have to get some details from you. We need to be on the same page.”

  Same page? Miranda glanced at Parker and saw his brow was raised as high as her own.

  Apparently Wesson had worked her sexy magic on the g-man. Still, she felt like she was about to be interrogated, as she took a seat in the corner of the tufted leather bench, while the others settled in around her.

  She reached for one of the cups and took a big sip of black coffee. She had a feeling she’d need it.

  Wesson eased into an ergonomic chair across from her, opened a sugar packet, and poured it into her coffee. “The kidnapper called Olivia last night and told her to be at Pacific Bank at ten this morning,” she said to Sloan.

  Sloan set his coffee on his desk and reached for a pad and pen. “Olivia. That’s your sister?”

  “Yes. The kidnapper told her to withdraw a large sum of money.” Wesson’s eyes followed the agent as he came around and stood at the edge of the table.

  “How much money?” he asked, returning her intense look.

  “Fifteen thousand dollars.”

  The electric undercurrent between Wesson and Sloan was raising the temperature in the room. But Miranda was in charge of this operation.

  She cleared her throat and put her cup down. “We advised our client to do as the kidnapper told her.”

  Sloan tore his gaze from Wesson and turned to her. “But you got a recording of the call.”

  Miranda scowled at Wesson. Had she spilled everything to him?

  Becker sat up and raised a hand, as if he were in school. “That’s right. I ran the recording through some audio decomposition software and managed to reproduce the voice. Olivia didn’t recognize it.”

  Sloan stopped writing and nodded with approval. “Do you have it with you?”

  “I do.” Becker pulled out the phone and set it on the ta
ble in the middle of the cups.

  He pressed a button and the chilling words filled the office.

  “Listen carefully and do exactly as I say. Go to Pacific Bank on Washington at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Withdraw fifteen thousand dollars.”

  Again, the human voice sounded as ugly as the distorted one.

  Sloan stared down at the phone for a long moment. “Could be any one of a hundred thugs in the area.”

  Well, that narrowed it down.

  Suddenly Becker brightened. “We have a sketch.”

  Sloan wrinkled his nose. “A what?”

  Miranda hadn’t wanted to tell Sloan about the sketch, but they were in too deep now. So she explained about the little boy at the school, the man whose car Imogen had gotten into, and the picture Holloway had drawn from the boy’s description.

  “The boy also told us the man was driving a sedan with a dent in the passenger side door.”

  Sloan scratched his chin with the end of the pen. “Curt Holloway. He’s not with you tonight?”

  “He’s with Olivia.” Miranda reached for her cup and took another swallow of coffee.

  Sloan nodded as if he understood and gave Wesson as tender a look as she’d seen on the man.

  “Where is this sketch?”

  Miranda pulled out her phone and showed it to him.

  “I tried to run it through facial recognition software,” Becker said as Sloan studied the image. “But it was a no-go. Our program isn’t trained for drawings.”

  Sloan handed the phone back to Miranda. “We have software trained to recognize faces from a drawing. But we’d need the original.”

  She blinked, still shocked at Sloan’s sudden altruism. He had to be after something. She hoped it wasn’t Wesson.

  “We just happen to have that.” Parker drew the piece of paper out of his coat pocket and handed it to Sloan.

  Miranda stared at him.

  “Curt gave it to me before we left.”

  Holloway hadn’t trust her with it, had he? This boss thing wasn’t going so well, but she couldn’t think about that now. If the FBI software worked, it could give them enough information to track down Dragon-Boy and find Imogen.

  She pointed to the sketch. “How soon can you run that through your computer? And what about the evidence from the bank bombing?” That could tell them more about this guy.

  For a long moment Sloan studied the sketch, then he slipped it into his pocket along with his notebook.

  “I’ll take you to the lab now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sloan had had the power to grant them access to the evidence all along, Miranda surmised, as she followed the man through the halls and down another elevator ride. He just hadn’t wanted to. As they rode down several floors, she wondered again just how Wesson had changed his mind.

  Did he have a thing for her?

  He definitely had a thing for throwing his weight around. He stuck by the rules, even when he didn’t have to. Especially when the rules put him in charge. Probably had a Napoleon complex. Not that he was small. He was only a little shorter than Parker and sinewy. She bet he’d be tough as nails in a fight.

  Was that what Wesson found so attractive about him?

  They got off the elevator and passed through a silver-lined corridor to a thick metal door with a keypad and a palm print pad.

  Sloan went through the security measures as naturally as if he were washing his hands, and a second later they stepped inside the lab.

  It seemed to take up two whole floors.

  The huge open space was windowless and lit by rows of fluorescent lamps mounted in the scaffolding so high overhead, they created as much shadow as light. Tall evidence racks lined the perimeter casting more shadows. They were stacked high with hundreds of boxes and labeled with indecipherable codes.

  The cool purified air had the hint of a metallic smell and the feel of a morgue.

  All around the room were clusters of workstations, some of them manned. About half a dozen technicians stood at long metal tables or sat at desks cluttered with computer screens and lamps. Each technician was surrounded by stacks of boxes and bins. Material to go through, Miranda assumed. Metal baskets sat on carts filled with plastic bags, markers, bottles, tape. About two dozen more workstations were dark.

  It was well past midnight. This must be the second shift.

  “What are these people doing?” Miranda asked.

  Sloan fixed her with a cold look in his cadet blue eyes. “Utilizing our forensic capabilities, Ms. Steele.”

  She raised a brow at him. That much was obvious.

  “They’re analyzing fingerprints, hair and fibers, blast damage. They’re screening, sorting, and identifying key components.”

  Of bombs. “All this can’t be just for Pacific Bank.”

  “No,” Sloan said dryly. “But due to the nature of the case, I have access to the resources of our West coast facilities.”

  He didn’t say it, but this evidence must have come from places all over the country, all over the world. They were analyzing evidence from terrorist attacks.

  Sloan marched over to a thin young woman in a lab coat with her dark hair pulled back at her neck. “Greenwood.”

  She pulled off her glasses and turned around. “Yessir?”

  Sloan handed her Holloway’s sketch. “Run this through our software and see what you get.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  Without a thank you, Sloan turned away and pointed in the distance. “The evidence you want to see is over here.”

  Their footsteps smacked against the concrete as he led them across the room to another work station. Here debris had been removed from its bags and laid out on a long metal table.

  Miranda took it in. “This is from the bank?”

  “This is what we collected.”

  She turned to Becker. “What do you think?”

  “May I?” He pointed at a nearby chair.

  “Be my guest,” Sloan told him.

  Becker took out a pair of blue gloves from a box on the desk, pulled them on and sat down. One by one he gingerly began to study the pieces. Remaining on his feet Parker reached for a second pair of gloves and conducted his own examination.

  There were shards of Plexiglas Miranda assumed had come from the dancing dollar sign. Pieces of sheetrock from the wall. Wires. Circuit boards. There were also plastic tubing and several funnels.

  Sloan pointed to a dark shape on an adjacent table. “The teller’s keyboard is over here.”

  “The one you think triggered the explosion?” Wesson asked.

  “The one people said triggered the explosion,” Sloan corrected.

  Becker picked it up, drew it to his nose and sniffed. “Hmm.” He found a magnifying glass and used it to peer between the keys.

  Sloan let out a huff and ran a hand over his hair. “We got a few fingerprints. We’re running them now. Already matched two sets to employees. We’ve questioned them both, but they deny any involvement. We’re running background checks on them, as well as all the other employees. We’ve also asked the bank manager if she knows of any disgruntled workers or customers.”

  He was missing a key piece of information. Miranda decided to give it to him. “The kidnapper called Olivia this morning and claimed responsibility for the explosion. He was trying to intimidate her.”

  Sloan glared at her like she’d just confessed to murder. “He called you again? A third time?”

  Parker pulled off his gloves and tossed them into a nearby trash receptacle. “I told you that when we spoke earlier.”

  “I thought you were bluffing.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  Parker had already told him about that call? The two men glared at each other. Miranda was getting more irritated with Sloan by the minute, but a fight wouldn’t get them anywhere.

  “This is weird.” Ignoring the tension in the room, Becker sat staring at the half melted circuit board in his hands.

  Miranda
turned back to him. “What is?”

  “This board is set up to look like it was triggered by the teller’s computer.”

  “Okay.” That’s what everybody had been saying.

  “But this keyboard couldn’t set off anything.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head. “Looks like there was an incendiary device on the back of the sign. It’s melted away, but it had to be triggered remotely, not by the keyboard. There’s no connection. It worked kind of like the controls to a gas fireplace.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You’re saying the blast was remote controlled?”

  “Had to be.”

  “By someone inside the bank?”

  “Or very nearby. It wouldn’t have had a very long range.”

  And the trigger man—or woman—would have to have been watching Olivia to time it right.

  “It’s weird,” Becker continued. “All this dirt and flour.”

  “Flour?”

  “It had to have been stuffed into these funnels and blown out through the plastic tubes. The blast was real, but it was low grade. This stuff made it look worse than it was. Kind of like a movie explosion.”

  “I concur,” Parker said darkly.

  “Movie explosion?” Miranda turned to Parker, then to Sloan. “Holloway followed the guy in the sketch to a movie studio this morning.”

  As if he were getting a migraine, Sloan put his hands on his head. “What are you saying, Steele? I thought you didn’t know who the guy in the sketch was.”

  “We don’t. But we found a guy who looks like the sketch at a biker bar last night and put a tail on him.”

  “And Holloway followed him where this morning?”

  “To Thunderclap Studios.”

  “In Culver City?”

  “Is there more than one?”

  Miranda watched Sloan’s piercing gaze go from her to Parker and back again as the wheels in his head turned.

  He jabbed a finger toward her. “You and you,” he said, indicating Parker. “With me.”

  He spun on his heels and hurried away.

  Miranda turned to Parker and raised her hands.