The steel door closed behind me as I walked with less effort than the night before. That didn’t mean I wasn’t sore as hell—I was. The bindings Dr. Dixon had placed on my chest helped my ribs, and at the same time, made breathing a bitch.
Who restricts your breathing and then emphasizes the need for deep breaths?
The most important change from yesterday was my arm. Whatever the doctor did worked. I now had full range of motion, and my fingers were more than ready to start typing away on my keyboards.
“Then you’d miss my smiling face.”
Patrick interlocked his fingers, placed them behind his head, and leaned back against his chair. “Word was that the queen said you wouldn’t be here until later.”
“I told the queen tomorrow. This is tomorrow.”
Patrick shook his head. “She said she specified after breakfast. It’s four in the morning.”
The overall sense of darkness that came with the kidnappings had lessened with my recent survival. There’s nothing like living through a shot to the chest to change a man’s perspective. That didn’t mean all was right with the world. We needed answers, and I was ready to find them.
As my lips curled, I went to the coffee machine, added a pod, placed a mug beneath the spout, and pushed the button. “I promised Araneae I’d wait until after breakfast.”
“And.”
“And...I ate a leftover mini-pie before leaving the apartment.”
Patrick scoffed. “Seems like a reasonable loophole to me. Are you sure you’re up to working?” He relaxed his arms and sat taller. “Because I could sure as hell use your input.”
Even with my bruised chest, his admission gave me a sense of worth, belonging, and importance. We all had our jobs, and there was comfort in knowing where each of us fit.
I’d been determined to be on the outside of this glass castle and face Maples. Even with the injuries I’d sustained, I wouldn’t trade what we’d done, but now I was back where I belonged. Back to where I knew I made the biggest difference. It was time to connect the clues we’d been given. “Tell me what you have.”
“First, your phone.”
Setting my freshly brewed cup of coffee on the desk, I shook my head. “I’m pissed. I’ve never lost my phone—ever. I figure it must have happened at Maples’s house.”
“It did and given that you were shot and without a pulse, I think you deserve a pass.” Patrick tapped a few keys. “Besides, I found it.”
A map of the greater Chicago area came up on the overhead screen. The signal was coming from southwest of the city. “That’s not Englewood.”
“No, but close.” He zoomed in and turned the image from a map to real-time satellite. The greenish hue was the night vision, giving the city an eerie feel.
“Where is that?”
“It’s the halfway house where the capos took Zella Keller, Maples’s daughter, and” —Patrick’s expression appeared as if he’d taken a big bite of a tart lemon— “son-slash-grandson.”
Yeah, that tidbit was more than a little disgusting. “She has my phone?”
“I’ve confirmed with the capos that they don’t have it. That leaves Zella at that location unless the kid is a technical wizard.” He didn’t even pause. “The capos took her phone from her when they seized her from Stephens’s house. They let her gather a few things and my guess is that she found yours. She kept it hidden. Once we figured all of that out, I instructed the Sparrows at the halfway house not to let on that they know she has it.”
“At least she couldn’t activate it.”
“You were right,” Patrick responded with a grin. “All of our phones are impossible to access without our retina scan. So basically, it was useless until I realized she had it. Once I did, I remotely wiped all the information within and began a program that reports everything she tries to do in real time.”
I sat at my desk and took a slow, deep breath. Patrick may believe I deserve a pass, but I would disagree. Losing a phone is a rookie mistake. I wasn’t a rookie in this world. “So she can’t access the internet or contact anyone. What is she doing?”
“Oh, she’s been trying all of the above,” Patrick said. “I’ve given her just enough rope to hopefully set us on a trail.”
“I thought the saying was enough rope to hang herself.”
Patrick shrugged. “That too.”
“Whom would she call? Or whom did she try to contact?”
“Well, it’s not the authorities. She’s called this number” —a string of numbers appeared on the screen— “six times and tried to send a few text messages. The calls didn’t connect, and the texts were intercepted.”
“Where does that area code go?”
“Would you believe Indiana?”
“What did she say?”
“Here it is,” Patrick said after a few more clicks of his keyboard.
“I NEED YOUR HELP. I THINK THEY KILLED DAD. THEY HAVE ME AND GORDY. YOU SAID TO ONLY CALL IF IMPORTANT. I DON’T WANT THEM TO KILL ME, AND I NEED TO GET GORDY TO A SAFE PLACE. CAN YOU TRACE THIS? I DON’T KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I AM.”
“She’s received an error message each time. Each message has been basically the same. Pretty soon the phone will die without a charge.” Patrick tilted his head toward my desk area. “I have you set up with a new phone. I was able to remotely switch all the storage on your phone and your cloud to this new one. Right now, your old phone is nothing more than our connection to Maples’s daughter.”
I took a drink of my coffee and considered Zella’s situation. As the warm liquid coated my tongue and throat, I mulled over the idea that we now had her kidnapped, as Lorna and Araneae had been. “If Lorna or Araneae would have had access to a phone, or thought they did, whom would they have called?”
“One of us.”
“Right. If the average person were taken and given access to a phone, whom would he or she contact?”
“If they believe they know someone who is capable of helping, they’d contact that person or persons. If not, I’d assume the police.”
Patrick’s train of thought was mirroring my own. “Now, Zella Keller is being held in an unknown place and she isn’t trying to contact the police or an emergency number. Instead, she’s trying to contact—”
“Someone she thinks will help,” Patrick interrupted.
“Who is that?”
“I can’t identify who, but I do have a where.”
We both looked up again at the overhead screen.
“Shit,” I said, “is that DC?”
“It is.”
“Who in the hell would Zella Keller know with a number linked to Indiana now located in DC?”
“That’s where I could use your help. I have the location of the device narrowed down to a city block, but that includes high-rise office and residential buildings.”
Putting my nearly empty cup on the desk, I sat forward and brought my computer to life.
As we both worked, I ran multiple searches. One was of the telephone number in question. Soon I was getting the last three months of data. The phone was a burner. Of course it was. However, it had been used with some regularity from around the country.