A Trace of Hope Read online

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Keri hurried back to her car, hoping to leave the parking structure before anyone noticed she was gone. Her heart was beating in time with her shoes, pounding hard and fast on the concrete.

  Her trip to the infirmary had been a gift from Anderson. He knew that after a hostage situation, she was sure to face hours of interrogation, hours she didn’t have to spare. By demanding she be allowed to go to the infirmary, he was ensuring her a window in which she would have little supervision and possibly be able to leave before being cornered by a bunch of Downtown Division detectives.

  That’s exactly what she had done. After a nurse had cleaned up the small puncture wound on her neck and bandaged it, Keri had feigned a brief post-hostage-crisis panic attack and asked to use the bathroom. Since she wasn’t an inmate, it was easy to slip out after that.

  She made her way down in the elevator with the janitorial staff who got off at 9 p.m. Security Officer Beamon must have been on break because there was some new guy manning the lobby and he didn’t give her a second look.

  Once out of the building, she started across the street to the parking structure, still expecting some detective to come racing outside after her demanding to know why she’d been interrogating a prisoner when she was on suspension. But she heard nothing.

  In fact, she was completely alone with her footsteps and heartbeat as all the off-duty janitors headed down the street to the bus stop and metro station. Apparently none of them drove to work.

  It was only when she had reached the second floor of the stairwell that she heard the sound of other shoes below. They were loud and heavy and they seemed to come out of nowhere. She would have noticed them earlier if they’d been walking before. They couldn’t have come from across the street. It was almost as if someone had been waiting for her arrival to start moving.

  She headed toward her car, about halfway down the row on the left. The footsteps followed and it became clear now that it wasn’t one set of shoes but two, both clearly belonging to men. Their gaits were thick and lumbering and she could hear one of them wheezing slightly.

  It was possible that these men were detectives but she doubted it. They likely would have identified themselves already if they wanted to question her. And if they were cops with ill intent, they wouldn’t be approaching her in the Twin Towers parking structure. There were cameras everywhere. If they were on Cave’s payroll and meant her harm, they would have waited until she was off city property.

  Keri slid her hand down involuntarily to her gun holster before remembering that she’d left her personal weapon in the trunk. She had wanted to avoid questions from security and decided that carrying her personal piece into a city jail might not accomplish that goal. For the same reason, her ankle pistol was in the same place. She was unarmed.

  Feeling her pulse quicken, Keri ordered herself to remain calm, not to speed up her pace to alert these guys that she was on to them. They had to know. But maintaining the illusion might give her time. Same for looking over her shoulder—she refused to do it. That was certain to set them running after her.

  Instead, she casually glanced in the windows of some of the shinier SUVs, hoping to get a sense of who she was dealing with. After a few cars, she was able to size them up. Two guys, both wearing suits: one big, the other huge with a belly that tumbled over his belt. It was hard to gauge age but the bigger one looked older as well. He was the wheezer. Neither were holding guns but the fat one had what looked to be a Taser and the younger one was clutching some kind of nightstick. Apparently someone wanted her taken alive.

  Trying to appear nonchalant, she pulled her keys from her purse, sliding the pointy ends between her knuckles facing outward as she hit the button to unlock her car, now only twenty feet away. The two men were still about ten feet from her but there was no way she could get to her car, open the door, get in, close the door, and lock it before they caught her, even at their size. She silently cursed herself for parking head-in.

  The beep her car made seemed to startle the fat one and he stumbled a bit. After that, Keri knew that pretending she didn’t notice them at this point would seem more suspicious than turning around, so she stopped abruptly and spun quickly, taking them by surprise.

  “How’s it going, guys?” she asked sweetly, as if discovering two hulking dudes right behind her was the most natural thing in the world. They both took another couple of steps before awkwardly pulling up five feet from her.

  The younger guy appeared to be at a loss. The older guy started to open his mouth to speak. Keri’s senses were tingling. For some reason, she noticed he had missed a patch of hair on the left side of his neck the last time he’d shaved. Almost without thinking, she pushed the alarm button on her car remote. Both men glanced involuntarily in that direction. That’s when she moved.

  She lunged forward quickly, swinging her right fist, the one with the exposed keys, at the left side of his face. Everything began to move in slow motion. He saw her too late and by the time he started to raise his left arm to try to block the punch, she had made contact.

  Keri knew it was a direct hit because at least one of the keys went pretty deep before hitting resistance. The screaming started almost immediately as blood gushed from his eye. She didn’t pause to admire her handiwork. Instead, she used her forward momentum to dive forward, slamming her right shoulder into his left knee even as he was already crumpling to the ground.

  She heard a sickening pop and knew that his knee ligaments were being torn violently apart as he fell to the ground. She forced the sound from her brain as she tried to roll smoothly back up to a standing position.

  Unfortunately, throwing herself against such a massive person had rattled her body from head to toe, re-aggravating the pain of the injuries she suffered only days earlier. Her chest felt like it had been whacked with a frying pan. She was pretty sure she’d slammed her injured knee on the concrete parking structure floor as she dived and the collision had left her right shoulder throbbing.

  More immediately troubling than any of that was that smashing into the guy had slowed her movement enough for the younger, fitter guy to regain his senses. As Keri came out of her roll and tried to recover her balance, he was already moving toward her, his eyes blazing with an intense mix of fury and fear, the nightstick in his right hand starting its downward swing.

  She realized that she wasn’t going to be able to avoid it completely and turned her body so that the blow landed on her left side rather than her head. She felt the brutal smash against the ribs on her left torso just below the shoulder, followed by a stinging pain that radiated outward from the point of impact.

  The air left her body as she collapsed to her knees in front of him. Her eyes had gone watery immediately upon being hit but she still managed to make out an ominous sight directly in front of her. The younger guy’s feet had started to rise onto his toes, his heels leaving the ground.

  It took less than a fraction of a second for Keri to process what that meant. He was rising up, lifting the nightstick over his head so that he would be able to bring its full force down on hers for a knockout blow. She saw his left foot start to come forward and knew that meant he was starting the downward motion.

  Ignoring everything—her inability to breathe, the pain ricocheting from her chest to her shoulder to her ribs to her knee, her blurry vision—she dove forward, directly at him. She knew she didn’t have much momentum pushing off from her knees but she hoped it was enough to prevent a direct hit on the top of her skull. As she did, she thrust her right hand, the one still clutching the keys, in the general direction of the guy’s crotch, hoping to make any kind of contact.

  It all happened at once. She felt the stick hit her upper back at the same time she heard the grunt. The whack stung her but only for a second as she realized the man had lost his grip on the stick almost immediately after making contact. She heard it hit the concrete and roll off into the distance as she collapsed to the floor.

  Glanc
ing up, she saw the man doubled over, both hands clutching at his groin area. He was cursing loudly and without end. At least for the moment, he seemed oblivious to her. Keri looked over at the fat man, who was several feet away, still rolling on the ground, screaming in agony, both hands covering his left eye, seemingly unaware of his knee, which was bent in an inhuman direction.

  Keri gulped in a deep breath of air, the first in what felt like forever, and forced herself into action.

  Get up and move. This is your chance. It may be your only one.

  Ignoring the pain she felt everywhere, she pushed herself up off the hard ground and half-ran, half-limped to her car. The younger guy glanced up from his crotch and made a token attempt to reach out and grab her. But she steered well clear of him and stumbled toward her car, got in, locked, it, started it, and pulled out without even looking in the rearview mirror. Part of her hoped the young guy was back there and that she’d hear a thud as she slammed into him.

  She hit the gas and tore around the corner of the second floor and down to the first. As she approached the exit booth, she was amazed to see the younger guy stumbling down the stairs and shuffling in the direction of her car.

  She could see the horror on the face of the booth attendant, who was looking back and forth between the hunched over man shambling in his direction and the tire-screeching car careening to the same spot. She almost felt bad for him. But it wasn’t enough to prevent her from speeding through the exit, slamming into the wooden gate, and sending chunks of it flying off into the night.

  *

  She spent the night at Ray’s place. For one thing, it didn’t seem safe to go back to hers. She didn’t know who had come after her. But if they were willing to attack her in a camera-filled parking lot across from the jail, her apartment didn’t seem like such a heavy lift. Besides, the way she felt, Keri wasn’t in any condition to fend off additional attackers tonight.

  Ray had drawn a bath for her. She’d called him on the way over so he knew the basics of the situation and mercifully wasn’t peppering her with questions while she tried to regroup. As she lay in the water, letting its warmth ease her aching bones, he sat in a chair beside the tub, intermittently coaxing her to sip spoonfuls of broth.

  Eventually, after drying off and putting on a pair of his pajamas, she felt well enough to do a postmortem. They sat on his couch in the living room, lit only by a half dozen candles. Neither of them commented on the fact that both their weapons rested on the coffee table in front of them.

  “It just seems so brazen,” Ray said, referring to the boldness of the parking structure attack, “and kind of desperate.”

  “I agree,” Keri said. “Assuming these were Cave’s flunkies, it makes me think he was really concerned that Anderson spilled all the beans in that interrogation room. But what I don’t get is, if he was willing to go that far, why didn’t he just have those guys shoot me in the back and get it over with? What was with the Taser and the nightstick?”

  “Maybe he wanted to find out what you know, see who else knows it, before getting rid of you. Or maybe it’s not Cave at all. You said Anderson told you there’s a mole in the unit, right? Maybe someone else didn’t want that information getting out.”

  “I guess that’s possible,” Kari admitted, “although he was so quiet when he said that part that I almost couldn’t hear him. It’s hard to imagine that even in a bugged room, anyone caught it. To be honest, I’m still having trouble even processing that bit of information.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Ray agreed. “So where do we go from here, Keri? I stayed in that conference room with Mags for another couple of hours but we didn’t learn anything really new. I’m not sure how to proceed.”

  “I think I’m going to take Anderson’s advice,” she replied.

  “What, you mean go see Cave?” he asked, incredulous. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. Are you just going to show up at the front door of his home?”

  “I’m not sure what other choice I have.”

  “What makes you think it’s going to do any good?” he asked.

  “It may not. But Anderson’s right. Unless something breaks soon, I’m out of options, Ray. Evie is going to be murdered on closed circuit television in twenty-five hours! If talking to Jackson Cave—appealing to him for my daughter’s life—has even a chance of working, then I’m going to try it.”

  Ray nodded, clasping her hand in his and wrapping his huge arms around her shoulder. He was gentle but she winced in pain nonetheless.

  “Sorry,” he whispered quietly. “Of course—we’ll do whatever it takes. But I’m going with you.”

  “Ray, I’m not holding out much hope that this will work. But he’s definitely not going to say anything if you’re standing there next to me. I have to do this alone.”

  “But he might have tried to have you killed tonight.”

  “Probably just maimed,” she said with a weak smile, trying to lower the temperature. “Besides, he won’t do that if I show up at his house. He won’t be expecting me. And it’d be too risky. What kind of alibi would he have if something happened to me while I was at his home? He might be delusional but he’s not stupid.”

  “Fine,” Ray relented. “I won’t go with you to the house. But you better believe I’ll be close by.”

  “Such a good boyfriend,” Keri said, snuggling up closer to him, despite the discomfort that moving caused. “I’ll bet you’ve got a black-and-white outside patrolling the neighborhood to make sure your little lady sleeps safe through the night.”

  “How about two?” he said. “I’m not letting anything happen to you.”

  “My knight in shining armor,” Keri said, yawning despite her best efforts. “I can still recall the days when I was a criminology professor at LMU and you would come and speak to my students.”

  “Simpler times,” Ray said quietly.

  “And I also remember the dark days after Evie was taken, when I started drinking scotch instead of water, when Stephen divorced me for sleeping with everything that moved, and the university dumped me for corrupting one my students.”

  “We don’t have to hit every pothole on memory lane, Keri.”

  “I’m just saying, who was it that pulled me out of that pit of self-loathing, dusted me off, and got me to apply to the police academy?”

  “That would be me,” Ray whispered softly.

  “That’s right,” Keri murmured in agreement. “See? Knight in shining armor.”

  She rested her head on his chest, allowing herself to relax, to ease into the rhythm of his breathing as he slowly inhaled and exhaled. As her lids became heavy and she drifted off into sleep, one last coherent thought passed through her head: Ray hadn’t actually ordered two police cars to patrol the neighborhood. She’d checked out the window as she’d changed earlier and counted at least four units. And that was just what she could see.

  She hoped it was enough.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Keri gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying not to let the sharp curves of the mountain road make her more nervous than she already was. It was 7:45 a.m., just over sixteen hours until her daughter was supposed to be ritually sacrificed in front of dozens of wealthy pedophiles.

  She was driving through the winding Malibu hills on a chilly but clear and sunny January Saturday morning to the home of Jackson Cave. She hoped to convince him to return her daughter safely to her. If she couldn’t, this would be the last day of Evie Locke’s life.

  Keri and Ray had woken up early, just after 6 a.m. She hadn’t been very hungry but Ray had insisted she force down some scrambled eggs and toast to go with her two cups of coffee. They were out of the apartment by seven.

  Ray spoke briefly to one of the patrol officers outside, who said that none of the units had reported any suspicious activity during the night. He thanked them and sent them on their way. Then he and Keri got in their cars and drove separately to Malibu.

  At that hour on a Saturday morning, the normally clogged Los Angeles
roads were virtually empty. Within twenty minutes, they were on the Pacific Coast Highway, catching the last remnants of the sunrise over the Santa Monica Mountains.

  By the time Keri was white-knuckling it up Tuna Canyon Road high in the Malibu hills, the splendor of the morning had given way to the grim reality of what she had to do. Her GPS indicated she was close to Cave’s place so she pulled over. Ray, who was right behind her, eased up next to her.

  “I think it’s right up past the next bend,” she said through the open car window. “Why don’t you go ahead and set up a little further down the road. He’s the type of guy who will have surveillance cameras all around so we don’t want to be driving up there together.”

  “Okay,” Ray agreed. “The cell service is really spotty up here so once you’re done I’ll just follow you back down the hill and we can debrief at that diner we passed at the PCH turnoff. Sound good?”

  “Sounds like a plan. Wish me luck, partner.”

  “Good luck, Keri,” he said sincerely. “I really hope this works.”

  She nodded, not really able to think of a meaningful reply at that moment. Ray gave her a little smile and drove on ahead. Keri waited another minute, then eased her foot onto the gas pedal and made the last curve before Cave’s house.

  When it came into view, she was surprised to find it looked modest compared to other homes in the area, at least from the street. The place had a bungalow appearance to it, almost like an elaborate version of something one might find at a South Seas resort.

  Then again, she knew this wasn’t even Cave’s main Los Angeles residence. He had a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, which was much more conveniently located to his downtown high-rise office. But it was common knowledge that he liked to spend his weekends at his Malibu “retreat,” and she’d checked around to make sure that was where he’d be this morning.