Touch of Red (Tracers #12)(84)

“Isn’t that a gamble? Going south when all the witnesses said they went west?”

Sean didn’t answer. Instead he stomped the gas.

? ? ?

The sharp pain had morphed into a sickening lump in Brooke’s stomach, and she fought the urge to throw up. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself on the floor of the car as they bumped along the road.

The noisy highway had given way to uneven asphalt many minutes ago. Then that, too, had disappeared, and now they were bumping along on a severely rutted road that was making Brooke dizzier by the minute.

She thought of Cameron in the trunk with his nervous stomach. She prayed he was alive and hadn’t succumbed to suffocation or anything else. Had he been injured when they put him in there? Had they come up behind him with a blow to the head? Or maybe they’d threatened him with a gun.

Then again, he was little for his eleven years, and maybe they’d simply grabbed him and tossed him in the trunk.

You’re not alone, Cam. I’m here.





CHAPTER 26


Callie was about to leave the Delphi Center when she got a call from Sean.

“Where are you?” he demanded.

“Hey, nice greeting.”

“Brooke and Cameron have been kidnapped!”

“Are you serious?” she asked. But she could tell he was by the panic in his voice.

“She got grabbed at a truck stop. Where are you now?”

“At Delphi. I talked to Alex Lovell, and she ran down some info for us.”

No answer.

Callie glanced around the lobby, which was busy with geeky-looking people hurrying to and fro. Some wore lab coats, others were in jeans and pocket protectors. Many carried cups from the coffee shop, which was where Callie had met with Alex just a few minutes ago.

“Sean? Did I lose you?”

“I’m here. What’d she say?”

“Alex traced the location of that Gmail user to an internet-café-slash-barbecue-joint in Latham, Texas. That’s in Marshall County.”

“Internet and barbecue?”

“Weird combo, I know. It’s a small town.”

“What’s there? Any address listing for a Mahoney?”

“I tried that. I tried the name Hurd, too, but no luck.” Callie stepped away from the traffic flow to stand beside the lobby windows. She put her phone on speaker so she could manipulate the maps app on her phone.

“So, what the hell’s in Latham? Why would Mahoney go there? I need a destination, and I need it ASAP.”

“I’m working on it.” She zoomed in on the map, scanning the various streets and highways. The town was so small, almost no businesses were labeled. There was a post office, a grocery store, a meat processor. On the outskirts of town was a taxidermy shop.

“There’s not much here,” she told Sean.

“I need a lead. Have you talked to Mahoney’s wife? She’s bound to know why he goes down there.”

“I haven’t talked to her. Last I heard, she wasn’t home, but Christine was trying to get her whereabouts from the maid who answered the door.”

“Shit.”

“I know you’re worried, Sean.”

He didn’t respond, but she could feel his anxiety coming straight through the airwaves.

“We’ll locate them, okay? Sit tight.” Callie glanced up at all the people bustling through the lobby.

Travis Cullen stood out. Broad shouldered, athletic. He stepped onto an elevator and turned around. His gaze settled on Callie as the doors slid shut.

“Sean? I need to check on something. I’ll call you right back.”

Callie stuffed her phone into her pocket and darted for the elevators, grabbing one just as the doors were closing. But it was headed up, of course, and she waited impatiently for everyone to get off on their various floors before she jabbed the button for the basement level where Travis worked.

She got off and jogged down the dimly lit corridor, accompanied by the pop-pop of gunfire coming from the firearms lab.

The door to the tool-marks lab was closed and locked, but Callie pounded on it anyway. He had to be here. She’d just seen him.

“Looking for someone?”

She turned around. Travis stood in the doorway of the firearms lab down the hall. He wore eye protectors and held a black pistol at his side.

“I need help.”

His brows arched.

“It’s urgent,” she added because she was obviously interrupting something.

He disappeared from the doorway, then reappeared a moment later without the gun or the eye protectors. In a few strides he was beside her, using his badge to swipe into the office.

“What’s the problem?”

“We’ve got a missing person. Two.” Callie didn’t have time to go into the whole story, so she jumped ahead. “That hunting knife you tested for us. You found human and animal blood on it, correct?”

He switched on a light and led her into the office. “The four-inch serrated blade, full tang.”

“That’s right. Any chance you know what kind of animal blood that was?”

He walked to a laptop sitting open on a counter and tapped a few keys. She hurried over to watch as he pulled up the report.

“Odocoileus virginianus,” he recited. “Whitetail deer.”