Hostage Zero

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

This time, consciousness returned with a harsh shake.

“Wake up, kid,” a voice said. Kid sounded like keed. “Nap time is over. Time to open eyes.”

Evan Guinn had been vaguely aware for some time, he thought. He knew it was impossibly hot and that he wanted to roll over into a cooler spot, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. His limbs still weighed a hundred pounds apiece. So he’d just drift off again.

A harder shake this time, accompanied by a smack to the back of his head. “No more sleep. You wake now. Work to do.”

Work? Did he just say work? What kind-

Hands landed heavily on his shoulders. They grasped his arms and dragged him. For an instant, Evan was suspended in the air, and then he hit the hard ground.

“Hey!” he yelled, arms and legs scrabbling for traction. “Leave me-”

The surroundings didn’t make sense to him yet, but the reality of being lifted by his hair brought a certain focus. His attacker was a squat, beefy man not a lot taller than Evan’s five feet, four inches, but outweighing him by at least a hundred pounds. Without thinking, Evan threw a punch at the man. It was a girlie, roundhouse swing with no power behind it that wiffed.

The counterpunch, however-more an open-handed slap, really, or it would have broken something-landed full-force in Evan’s belly, a resounding whack that startled more than hurt. He tried to double over, but the grip on his hair tightened.

“Don’t be stupid,” the man growled. Stoopeed. “You make me hurt you, I hurt you. You do as I say, I be nice. Entiende? ”

Evan coughed twice and took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said. “Okay.” He thought he recognized the language as Spanish.

“Good,” the man said. “I let go then.”

It felt like having his scalp reattached. Evan used his fingers as a comb to straighten his hair. It was wet and greasy. “Who are you?” he asked. He heard the accusatory tone in his voice and braced for another smack. It didn’t come.

Instead, the man handed him a thick stack of clothes and said something he didn’t understand. Something about “ropas.”

Evan scowled. “What?”

The man repeated himself, shoving the clothes into his chest. “Put on,” he said.

“Why?”

This time when he shoved the clothes, a finger poked him in the same spot where the slap had landed. Evan couldn’t tell if he did it on purpose or not, but either way, it served as a reminder. He took them the way a linebacker takes a pass from a quarterback, a hand above and below the stack. They felt heavy.

The man held up his beefy hand, fingers splayed wide. “ Cinco minutos, ” he said.

You didn’t have to speak Spanish to get “five minutes” out of that.

The man turned and left, closing a flimsy door behind him, and leaving Evan alone. Suddenly, five minutes seemed like way too much time. The room-if that’s really what you could call it-was tiny, maybe eight feet square. The walls and floor seemed to be made of the same wide wooden planks, but the walls didn’t actually go all the way to the floor, leaving a gap of six inches or so. The room didn’t have a ceiling, really, just an elevated cap that looked like it was made of grass. The walls didn’t meet there, either.

Behind him, his bed turned out to be a wooden door nailed to sawhorses. That platform was the only object in the room, except for a bucket that had been shoved into the corner on the wall opposite the door.

Evan placed the pile of clothes on the plank and sorted through them. This couldn’t be right. “Hey!” he called. “Hey mister! Senor! ”

He waited a few seconds, and when no one answered, he tried again. With still no answer, he padded barefoot to the door and pulled it open. “Hey!”

Jesus, he was in the jungle! Five feet away, two men wearing camouflaged green uniforms jumped at the sound of the door opening and whirled, leveling rifles at his chest.

Evan yelled, wrapped his arms protectively around his head, and dropped to his knees.

Someone shouted, and heavy footsteps ran up to him. Again, he was lifted by his hair, and this time he was shoved back inside. He landed on his back and skidded.

“Don’t shoot me!” Evan cried.

“You crazy boy!” It was the same man as before. “ Loco! Crazy to escape.”

Evan brought himself to his feet, again adjusting his hair. “I wasn’t escaping!” he yelled.

“You escaping!”

“No!”

“Then why run outside?”

“I needed to talk to you!” Evan said. The fear remained, but anger swelled as well. “Look at those clothes!” He pointed at the pile on the plank bed. “They’re for winter!” Indeed, the man had handed him blue jeans, a turtleneck, and a heavy wool sweater.

“Yes. You wear.”

“It’s a thousand degrees.”

“You wear,” the man repeated. He held up three fingers. “ Tres minutos.” He turned to the door, then turned back and said something.

“What?”

He mimicked knocking on the door. “No get shot.” He turned to leave.

“Wait.”

His jailer turned again, annoyance blooming on his face.

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

The guard scowled. They weren’t communicating.

Evan went knock-kneed and bounced, the universal pantomime for needing to go. “Pee,” he said. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

The guard’s scowl turned to a grudging smile. He pointed to the bucket in the corner

Evan’s jaw gaped. “You’re shitting me.”

“ Si, ” he said, pointing again. “Sheet.” He closed the door as he exited, then shouted, “ Dos minutos! ”

The offices for Security Solutions occupied the third floor of the same one-hundred-year-old converted firehouse whose first two floors served as Jonathan’s residence. He resisted the pull of home as he walked to the public entrance and smiled at the security camera. There’d been some major renovations to this entryway in recent months, following some unpleasantness involving invaders who had let themselves in by hacking the security code. Now, every employee had to offer up a thumbprint and an encrypted card key to gain access, while security cameras verified each visitor’s identity before anyone could be buzzed in.

As the owner of the company, just the smile worked for Jonathan. The door hummed, and he pushed it open.

A rabbit warren of cubicles greeted him. In this front part of the office-everyone called it “the pit,” but he had no idea why-Security Solutions’ team of twenty investigators and their support staff took care of the public, legitimate side of their business, whose clients included some of the most recognized corporate names in the world.

Jonathan’s team was waiting for him in the War Room-the teak conference room in the Cave, Security Solutions’ executive suite, where the clandestine side of the business was run. Precious few in the company knew exactly what went on in the Cave, and that was fine. Even those who guessed knew to keep their mouths shut.

Boxers and Venice were seated around the table, as was the newest addition to the inner sanctum, Gail Bonneville. They each nursed a steaming cup of coffee. “Good morning, everyone,” Jonathan said.

Return greetings were more mumbled than spoken. The mood in the room was funereal, with all three of the others averting their gaze to anything but the three-foot-by-four-foot image of a sullen boy that glowed from the projection screen at the far end.

Jonathan had made it clear to Venice that until this case cleared, the image of Evan Guinn would be inescapable. It spoke volumes, Jonathan thought, that the only recent clear photo they had of the kid after four years in their care was this one, taken seven months ago at the school Christmas party. Resurrection House was supposed to be a home, for God’s sake. The fact that this boy’s life was so sparsely documented pissed him off.

The face staring back from the screen emanated a plain vanilla expression from a plain vanilla place. The smile was as bright as it’s supposed to be when someone’s taking a picture, but it was all teeth and mouth. The eyes showed institutional emptiness-the show-nothing-so-no-one-can-hurt-you expression of every young inmate of every prison: equal parts fear and resolution. The boy’s most striking feature was the long, wavy mane of white-blond hair.

With his own supply of caffeine in hand, Jonathan helped himself to the seat at the head of the table and rested his palms flat on the polished surface. “Look at me,” he said.

Their eyes rose to meet his.

“How’s Dom?” he asked Venice. If Mama Alexander was the soul of the House, then Father Dom D’Angelo was the heart. He and Jonathan had been friends since college.

Venice sighed. “He’s doing as best he can. Handling the children’s concerns is difficult, but the newspeople are being pretty brutal.”

“Fuckin’ reporters are gonna crucify everybody who has anything to do with the House,” Boxers said.

“They’re going to do what they’re going to do,” Jonathan said. He rubbed a hand through his hair and scratched the back of his head. Those who knew him well recognized it as a gesture of frustration. “We’re staying out of it. Ven, after this meeting, I want you to get Matt Baker and Anne Hawkins involved. Let’s let Dom concentrate on helping the kids to get whole.”

Venice made a note without uttering her usual condemnation of Jonathan’s preferred public relations and legal experts. Maybe even she recognized the need for the best of the best, despite the combined price tag of nearly two grand an hour.

“Who’s spoken with Mr. Stewart?”

Venice and Gail both raised their hands.

“He’s as sweet as ever,” Gail said. “He’s more worried about the kids than he is about himself.”

“But he doesn’t know about the kidnappings, right?” Jonathan hoped.

“I wish,” Gail said. “A reporter called his room.”

“Fuckin’ reporters,” Boxers repeated. “Why didn’t somebody intercept the call?”

“They are now,” Venice soothed. “Thanks to that call.” She looked at Jonathan. “Dig, it would really help for him to know that Jeremy’s okay.”

Jonathan shook his head. “I know it would, but we can’t afford the chance of a leak. Not yet. But Mr. Stewart is still on track to recover?”

“He’s still critical but stable,” Venice said. “But offline, the doctor told me that he’s past the point of major worries.”

“Thank God for that,” Jonathan said. He took a long sip from his coffee mug, and then caught the entire team up on what the last few hours had revealed. As he did, he rose from his chair and parted two paneled doors to reveal a whiteboard, on which he listed the salient points.

“So here’s where we are,” he concluded. “The driver, Jimmy Henry, was hired through some guy named Sjogren, who apparently has ties to the old Slater crime family through its new leader, Sammy Bell. That establishes a possible organized crime connection.” He jotted that point on the board.

“Isn’t that the same group that your father had all the trouble with?” Boxers asked.

“The very one,” Jonathan said. “But it doesn’t end there. There’s a government connection, too.” He deferred to Venice to relay her discovery about the gunmen’s backgrounds.

“There’s not a hard government connection,” Venice concluded, “but it sure smells like one to me.”

Gail Bonneville raised her hand. “I hate to be the slow one,” she said, “but you’re all talking like this makes some kind of sense. Government operatives attacking and trying to kill children. What am I missing?” Gail had cut her law enforcement teeth in the FBI, rising quickly through the ranks and ultimately snagging a leadership role on the Bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team out of the Chicago field office. A tumultuous end to that career had led to a gig as a county sheriff in Indiana, which itself ended as collateral damage to one of Jonathan’s earlier missions. Trim and athletic, Gail was to Jonathan’s eye movie-star beautiful. Her dark brown eyes matched her dark brown hair, and she carried an air of intelligence that seriously stirred his juices.

“Nothing ever makes sense at this stage of an op,” Boxers said. He had a dismissive way about him that frequently put others on edge.

Venice ignored the big man and looked at Gail. “It’s not completely outlandish when you think about it. Every child in the House has criminal parents. Some of those parents have run afoul of federal law enforcement. Many of them have run afoul of people whom federal law enforcers are looking to prosecute.”

“Okay, then,” Gail said, having clearly connected those two dots on her own. “So, pick one. You’ve got organized crime snatching the boys as retribution. Maybe. Let’s stipulate to that for the sake of argument. But why the feds?”

Jonathan watched his new protege with mixed feelings of admiration and desire. Gail’s strongest professional asset was her ability to process information and reach a well-considered conclusion in just a few seconds.

She continued, “I have a hard time believing that agents of the government of the United States are going to apply such resources to the kidnapping and murder of children. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“The government connection to Sean O’Brian is clear,” Jonathan said. “And frankly, the fact that there’s no information on the other shooter is also damned convincing evidence of Uncle Sam’s handiwork.”

Gail wasn’t buying. “Tell me organized crime, and I’m with you. Tell me government, and it just makes no sense.”

Jonathan loved the way her ears reddened when she became passionate about a topic. “Maybe the mob happened to hire the same shooters Uncle Sam uses from time to time. Wouldn’t that explain the link?”

Bingo. At least it was plausible.

Jonathan shifted his gaze. “Ven,” he said. “Catch us up on what you found about the parents involved.”

Venice pulled a file folder from her stack of meeting-prep materials and opened it. “Let’s talk about Frank Schuler first,” she said, spreading the papers out in front of her. She held up a mug shot labeled with the man’s name. “This is Jeremy’s father. He’s on death row here in Virginia for murdering his wife, Jeremy’s mother.”

Boxers made a noise like air escaping from a canister.

“She was cheating on him with a guy named Aaron Hastings. Schuler shot her. He maintained his innocence all the way through the trial, but the jury didn’t buy it. Unless a miracle happens, he gets the needle in nine days.”

She slid the Schuler papers back into their folder and opened another. She displayed another mug shot. No one would doubt the relationship between Evan and his father. They had the same light hair and blue eyes, the same angular features. “This is Arthur Guinn,” Venice said, “and here is your connection to the mob. He was an enforcer.”

“Hit man,” Gail said.

Venice tossed off a shrug. “If you’d prefer. He killed people for money and got caught.” She looked at her notes again. “He murdered an aide to then-Congressman Mark Levy from New York. Guinn said he was bent out of shape because of the congressman’s politics, but according to the record, the feds always suspected a connection to the Slater mob.”

Jonathan noted her satisfied smile as she delivered that last line. “Where do he and Schuler intersect?”

The smile went away. “They don’t,” Venice said. “At least not so far as I can tell. I don’t see where they’ve ever occupied the same state, let alone town.”

“There’s got to be a link,” Boxers said.

“No kidding?” Venice returned. “Golly, I wish I’d thought of that.”

Boxers reared back in his seat. “What the hell did I do?”

“You implied that Venice didn’t know how to do her job,” Gail said.

“I did not! All I said-”

Jonathan held out both hands, like a cop stopping traffic in both directions. “Nobody start,” he said. “Gail, I want you to interview both of these fathers. With their kids missing, maybe they’ll be willing to open up a little. Work with Doug Kramer if you get push-back from the prison guys.”

Gail jotted something in the speckled composition notebook that was as attached to her as her arm. “You bet.”

“That’ll get a little frustrating when you go to talk to Arthur Guinn,” Venice said. “I called the Illinois Department of Corrections to see what I could find out, and I learned that Mr. Arthur Guinn is no longer in the system.”

Jonathan stopped in mid-stride and turned. “What does that mean?”

“You tell me.”

Jonathan looked to Boxers and Gail, and saw no indication of a theory. “What did they say?”

Venice consulted her notes. “They said that there’s no immediate disposition of the case against him, but that he is no longer part of the Illinois system. When I asked him if that was double-talk for him being moved to someone else’s system, I got ‘I can neither confirm nor deny.’”

Jonathan saw where Venice was leading him. “You’re thinking witness protection,” he said.

She smirked.

“The feds want him to testify,” Gail said. “They must be going after Sammy Bell, and to get him to talk, they made him a deal.”

Jonathan liked it. He pointed to Venice and said, “I know Dom is swamped right now, but I need him to contact-”

Venice beamed. “I already talked to him,” she said. “You’re meeting Wolverine at one.”