14

14
Thirty-Three

Nashville, Tennessee Monday, December 22 8:00 a.m.

T hey’d spent the night working the airport staff for clues. The limo had been found. A bullet hole had shattered the windshield. Taylor’s veil, tucked into the soft leather, was the only material evidence that she’d been in the car. Physical confirmation was under way-fingerprints being lifted, the car gleaned for blood. Anything that might tell the story of what happened before it arrived at the airport. The only concrete information they had was the bullet had come from the interior of the vehicle, not shot in from the outside. It confirmed that there was a struggle.

They were also looking for the phantom plane. Tracking an aircraft should be easy, especially in the post-9/11 era. But the Cessna seemed to have gone off course, not landing at its destination airport. The pilot had called in less than midway through the flight, telling the Fort Lauderdale private airstrip that he had a sick passenger on board and was turning back to Nashville. Nashville never heard from the plane after he left. There were no reports of planes going down along the Eastern seaboard. It would take hours to trace where the aircraft had landed-the tail number would have to be hand-matched to all incoming flights at all the airports. It would take some time for the FAA controllers to sort through the information.

It was a smoothly planned operation, designed to let the plane literally fall off the radar.

Baldwin felt sick to his stomach. He left the small terminal building and stood on the tarmac, staring north. There was a chance that Taylor was alive, hurt, needing him, and the thought made him want to tear out his hair and wrap his hands around the throat of whoever had stolen her from him.

Fitz sidled up to him, put a hand on his shoulder. Baldwin felt a rush of gratitude, coupled with a nagging sense that while he’d been very busy with his own personal demons at the thought of Taylor’s predicament, he’d conveniently ignored the four people who’d known her and loved her the longest, her team. The realization hit him like a punch to the gut and he turned to Fitz.

“God, man, I’m sorry. I’ve only been thinking about me, about how horrible this situation is for me. I know you love her, too. I’m sorry for being such an asshole.”

Fitz waved a hand in front of him. “Naw, don’t you go worrying about that. We’re all strung a little too tight right now, but no one’s pissed that you aren’t there mollycoddling us. We’re grown-up. At least, some of us are.” He grinned and nodded his head toward Marcus Wade, standing in plain view right inside the door to the terminal. Marcus was riding the staff at the airport, threatened to arrest them all if they didn’t cooperate with the investigation. He was leaning in, arguing, and the male agent behind the counter was visibly trembling.

Baldwin gave a tight smile and looked past Marcus. Lincoln was sitting in an orange plastic chair with his laptop perched on his knees, flying through cyberspace, looking for the plane. Baldwin felt certain that if anyone could find the tail number, it would be Lincoln.

Fitz gripped Baldwin’s shoulder once more, then smiled. “I’m calling Price, giving him an update. Anything you’d like to relay?”

“Just tell him to be prepared for an all-out onslaught the moment we find anything. I know the purse strings are tight at Metro. I’ll be putting some of my own capital into this investigation if need be. I don’t expect him to cover my parts. Let him know that.”

“Price won’t hear of that, Baldwin, you know that. He feels like you’re part of this team, even if you are FBI.” He flipped open his phone and left Baldwin on the freezing tarmac.

He’d almost left the Bureau, and was more than thankful that his boss, Garrett Woods, hadn’t let him go. It would have been difficult to manage the response to this incident with Taylor, the dead chauffeur, everything, if he didn’t have the Bureau as backup.

He still wanted to go out on his own, have a consulting firm that was free from the constraints of the government. Hire a couple of private investigators, do the work he wanted to do…

The thought shook him. A private investigator. He and Taylor had obviously been stalked. Someone knew every detail of the wedding plans, right down to the limousine company. He wondered if there was an unscrupulous member of the P.I. community who might have been on their tail. No sane P.I. would stalk a cop and an FBI agent. That was something that needed to be looked into.

His phone had four new messages, all from Garrett Woods, all wanting Baldwin’s attention for a matter outside the scope of the search for Taylor. Baldwin exercised a tiny bit of filial rebellion and chose not to address the phone calls just yet. Woods would tell him if it was vital that they speak immediately. In the meantime, he needed to stay completely focused on Taylor.