Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(44)

“So let’s cut to the chase, ma’am,” Cort Wesley said, his neck tight and his head pounding from the frantic drive from the Comanche reservation outside of Austin.

De Cantis rose and, to her credit, came around the desk to take the matching chair next to Cort Wesley’s. “We don’t believe Luke’s in any danger. That’s not why I called you here.”

“Oh no? Then why did you call me here?”

“Because, Mr. Masters, you are.”

Cort Wesley felt his skin crawling as Julia De Cantis told him the story, her words sounding far away and registering only at the edge of his consciousness. The state prep championship soccer team, on which Zach starred but Luke mostly rode the bench, had stopped at a McDonald’s on the way back from a 5–0 victory. Luke was all smiles, having played much of the second half. He had registered his first goal of the season on a picture-perfect header off a corner kick, which had shocked his coach and opened the door to more playing time. Just before leaving McDonald’s, Luke went to use the men’s room, but he still hadn’t returned when the coach loaded the team back onto the bus. Zach went to look for him but found the men’s room empty and no trace of Luke anywhere in the restaurant or parking lot.

The coach called the police, who arrived in force within minutes, setting up a perimeter around the block and preparing an AMBER Alert on the chance Luke had been kidnapped. They were in the process of interviewing all the players, as well as potential witnesses inside McDonald’s, when Luke, still garbed in his Village School warm-up suit, came walking across the street, right through oncoming traffic. He was so dazed and distracted he never saw the city bus that screeched to a stop and missed hitting him by little more than a yard.

“This is where things get cloudy, Mr. Masters,” De Cantis said, leaning across her chair to draw closer to him.

“Cloudy,” Cort Wesley repeated.

“The police suspected someone tried to abduct your son, but the boy has so far refused to provide any specifics, other than…”

“Other than what?”

“That he was worried about you. That the men who abducted him threatened you.”

“Strange he didn’t tell me this himself, as soon as the dust settled.”

“For security reasons, the coach and I both felt we should confiscate the cell phones of all the players. Keep a lid on this until we got a handle on things, avoid a panic or overreaction.”

“And how you doing with that?”

“Hoping that you can do better.”

Cort Wesley rose, his spine and knees cracking audibly. “Then let’s go have a talk with Luke.”





38

HOUSTON, TEXAS

“Thank you, ma’am,” Cort Wesley said to Julia De Cantis, when they reached Luke’s room. “I can take things from here.”

De Cantis had arranged for a uniformed Houston policeman to guard the building entrance and had posted a school security guard outside Luke’s door. The guard gave ground, pulling his chair out of the way, and De Cantis backed off as well when Cort Wesley knocked lightly on the door.

“It’s me, son. Open up.”

The door creaked open a moment later, Luke standing behind it. Cort Wesley hugged him tight and waited for his son to break the embrace, the boy’s eyes welling with tears he tried to sniffle away.

“Tell me what happened, son.”

They sat down atop Luke’s ruffled bed covers as the door behind them closed all the way.

“There were two of them,” Luke started, blowing the hair from his face, just as his older brother was prone to doing. “I came out of the men’s room and they grabbed me.”

“Grabbed you,” Cort Wesley repeated.

“Took me out a side exit and pushed me into an SUV just outside the door. Big, with its windows blacked out. One of them drove out of the parking lot before one of the doors was even closed.”

“What’d they want, son?”

“You. It was about you.”

“How’s that exactly?”

Luke blew more air from his mouth, but there was no hair to ruffle this time. “They said for you to stop making trouble, that this was a warning.” He swallowed hard. “That you needed to get your son in line and that you’d know what they were talking about.”

“Dylan,” Cort Wesley figured.

“They didn’t mention any names. I think they were hired hands, the kind of thugs like you see in the movies.”

“What about an Indian reservation? They mention anything about that?”

“Indian reservation?”

“I’ll take that as a no. What else did they say?”

“Not much.”

“Give me every word.”

Luke swallowed hard. “They said to tell you, next time I wouldn’t come back whole.”

“Exact words?”

“Pretty close, Dad. One of them had a knife.”

“You forget to mention that before?”

“I was focusing on what they said, like you asked.”

“I get it.”

“When the one said I wouldn’t be coming back whole, he poked me with the tip,” Luke went on, pointing a finger at his lap. “Here. I think he knew.”