Little Girl Gone (An Afton Tangler Thriller #1)(87)

When he hung up, he looked like he’d been sucker punched in the gut.

“We gotta listen to the call!” Max boomed.

They all raced down the hall and crowded into a smaller room, which held a myriad of audio and video equipment. Dick Boyce, the tech guy, hit a button on a piece of equipment and the conversation crackled to life.

“Hello?” They were hearing Richard’s voice, just as they had a few moments earlier.

“Listen carefully, Mr. Darden,” came a male voice. “If you want to get your baby back alive, you are to drive to the corner of Sims and Weide in Saint Paul. Do you understand?”

Afton frowned. This wasn’t what she’d been expecting. She’d thought that the doll lady or the pizza guy would be calling. This was a man, same as the other night, with a fairly cultured voice. What was going on?

“Yes, I understand,” came Darden’s voice.

“Bring the two million dollars,” said the voice. “When you arrive, you will be given further instructions.”

“Okay, but it’s going to take me a while to get there,” Darden said.

“Come alone. No police.”

“Absolutely.”


*

WAS this the same guy who called the other night?” Thacker asked. Everyone was clustered around Darden, staring at him as if he were a class biology project.

“I think so.” Darden coughed and cleared his throat. “I’m pretty sure it was.”

“This person sounds very controlled,” Jasper said. “This is a guy who’s thought things through rather carefully. He’s not going to be easy to deal with.”

“Shouldn’t I get moving?” Darden quaked. He looked terrified, like a man about to face a firing squad. At the same time, he seemed anxious to be on his way with the ransom money. To get it over with.

That was when the mad scramble began. Everyone started talking at once while the tech guys double-checked the tiny tracking devices and microphones attached to Darden’s clothing.

“I still think we should put a camera on his jacket,” Thacker said. “Maybe stick it on his lapel?”

“You sure you want to do that?” Max asked.

“Positive,” Thacker said. “We need eyes. We can’t take any chances.”

“We’re already taking chances,” Afton said. To her, job one was getting Elizabeth Ann back safely. After that, she didn’t care if they shot the kidnapper with a high-powered rifle or dragged him to jail behind a fleet of squad cars.

But Thacker and Jasper were explicit in their plans. Darden had his tracking device, as well as a broadcast mike and a miniature camera. They wanted to know what was happening every second of the way. Vehicles carrying the FBI and two SWAT teams would follow Darden closely on parallel streets, and a helicopter would track his every move from overhead. The Saint Paul Police Department was standing by on alert, ready to jump in if needed.

Afton pulled Max aside. “What are we going to do?” In all the planning and furor, they hadn’t received a definite assignment. In fact, they’d effectively been sidelined. Everything was now in the capable hands of the FBI and the MPD hostage and rescue professionals.

“We’ll go, too,” Max said in a low voice as they slipped down the hall. “We’ll tuck in behind the FBI and SWAT guys.”


*

DO you think the caller was the same guy from the other night?” Afton asked.

“Darden thought so,” Max said. He was driving his Hyundai, following five minutes behind the dark, unmarked car that carried Jasper, Thacker, and Bagin.

“So who is he? I mean, it’s not the doll lady and he’s obviously not the kid I tangled with, the one we suspect is the pizza guy.” Afton hung on for dear life as Max drove full bore down I-94. He was hitting speeds of almost seventy miles an hour, blowing past cars and trucks that crawled along tentatively on the snow-clogged freeway. Had they passed the unmarked car carrying Thacker and company? Maybe not. That car had been going like a bat out of hell, too.

Max’s knuckles were practically white from his death grip on the steering wheel. “There must be three kidnappers, working in concert.”

“Doesn’t feel right to me.” Afton fiddled with the radio equipment they’d been issued. Besides Max’s police radio, they had a special radio that was linked directly to Darden’s microphone. It would allow all parties concerned to listen in on any commentary that Darden made. More important, it would let them eavesdrop on his face-to-face confrontation with the kidnapper.

“Nothing feels right to me,” Max said. “Turn up those radios, see if anybody’s saying anything yet.”

Afton did. But Darden remained silent. And the police radio just carried the usual squeal. She peered through the windshield. “Damn, this snow just keeps coming down.”

“More tomorrow,” Max said. “Weatherman is predicting some kind of superstorm. They’re saying maybe eight more inches.”

“Think this will all be over by tomorrow?” She meant a resolution to the kidnapping, not the bad weather.

Max stared straight ahead, fighting the wind that buffeted his car back and forth, trying desperately to stay in his lane. “I don’t know.”

As they swept through Spaghetti Junction, the multifreeway tangle that cut through downtown Saint Paul, Afton said, “Thacker and Jasper and the rest of those guys probably got off at Sixth Street, right?”