Nothing to Fear (4 page)

Randi looked up at the sight of them, her face still so pale. “You’re Ethan’s partner. Thank you for coming.”

“I served with Richard,” Clay replied simply. And that was all he needed to say. Marines took care of one another. Even when they no longer wore the uniform.

“Richard and I served with Clay during our deployment to Somalia, right out of the Academy,” Ethan explained. Stan’s spine stiffened. Stan had never understood Richard’s dedication to the Marines and it had become a source of division between the brothers. That it was a common bond Ethan and Richard had shared only served to widen the gap between Stan and Ethan. Richard’s death turned that gap into a chasm.

“Good old Semper Fi,” Stan said bitterly, tossing back what was left of his whiskey. “Hell of a lot of good all that brotherhood and devotion does him now.” He slapped the glass on the countertop and stalked from the room.

Randi closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Ethan squeezed her shoulder. “It’s okay.”

Clay crouched down in front of her chair. “Randi, who knew you’d be here on vacation?”

Randi’s eyes flew open at the implication. “Oh, God. It could be somebody we know.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “I don’t know. I can’t think.”

Ethan rubbed a comforting hand over Randi’s back. “You sit here and try to think of anybody that knew you’d be here, and more importantly, anybody that knew you’d be gone to Annapolis the last few days. I’m going to take Clay outside, then I’ll trace that e-mail.”

She flinched at the word outside, but nodded. “All right.”

Clay waited until they were on the path to the shed. “They got an e-mail? When?”

“Came through Thursday morning at seven forty-five from Rickman’s e-mail address. It said Alec was alive and reminded them not to call the cops. It came with an attachment.”

“It came from Rickman’s e-mail address?”

“Yeah. Her laptop was missing from her room. So was her digital camera.”

Clay shot him a sideways look. “And the attachment? Picture of Alec, bound, gagged?”

“Yeah. Taken at night against a background of trees that looked like northern pine.”

“Ethan, I know this boy is important to you, but this is a job for the FBI. You know it.”

Ethan knew. He also knew what was inside the shed. “Just wait another minute.” In another minute they arrived at the little wooden shed. “There’s no light inside.” He bent down to retrieve the flashlight he’d left next to the shed. “Use this.”

Clay opened the door and for a moment there was only the sound of the night wind and the waves gently lapping at the sides of Stan’s boat, moored at the dock. His partner shone the light around, lingering on the body inside.

“His name is Paul McMillan,” Ethan said quietly. “He was an architect in Baltimore. He and Cheryl Rickman planned to get married next Valentine’s Day.”

Clay switched off the light. “Any chance Rickman had anything to do with this?”

“We can’t rule it out, but it seems unlikely. Randi swears Cheryl would protect Alec with her own life and there’s been a hell of a struggle in one of the bedrooms. Lamps smashed, pictures knocked off the wall. There’s a slug in the bedroom wall. From the size of the hole it looks like it came from a nine mil.”

“The shotgun they used on McMillan is old and rusted, but they didn’t need too much accuracy for this,” Clay said grimly. “They wouldn’t have carried a weapon like that for themselves. It’s useless except in the way they used it. They planned ahead to leave McMillan behind, which means they knew he’d be here.”

“He was staying with Cheryl while Stan and Randi went away for their anniversary. If they were watching this place, they would have known McMillan was here. They took Alec sometime between Tuesday night at eight and Thursday morning at seven forty-five when that e-mail came through. Randi called Tuesday night and talked to Cheryl, told her to say good night to Alec. He doesn’t use the phone.”

Clay started walking and Ethan followed, stopping on the dock. “Alec’s deaf, right?”

“Among other things, yes. Alec got meningitis when he was two, barely a month after Randi and Stan got married. He almost died. As it was, it left him deaf and epileptic. He takes medicine to control the epilepsy. Randi says the bottles are gone from the bathroom. Alec had surgery for the deafness three years ago, when he was nine. They gave him a cochlear implant.”

“Explain,” Clay bit out. “In laymen’s terms, please.”

“In layman’s terms it’s a device that’s surgically implanted in the bone behind the ear. It gathers sound like a hearing aid, but instead of amplifying, it translates it into signals that the brain can interpret as speech and any other sound. Alec wears a piece behind his ear that does the gathering and translating. I found it in his bedroom closet. Without it, he’s completely deaf.” And unable to find help. Ethan grimaced. He had to stop thinking that.

Clay gestured at the air. “Where is this thing now, this . . . piece?”

“Still on the closet floor. I didn’t disturb anything. I thought we’d want to take prints.”

“Can Alec speak?”

“No. That was Rickman’s job—teaching him to use the device to learn to listen and speak. Alec isn’t very receptive to the device. He’s used sign language for a long time.” Ethan thought of the e-mails Alec had sent, complaining about the implant. “He said the implant was too loud, that the sound made his head hurt. The doctors told Randi that he’d get used to it. He hasn’t yet. He ran off his last three therapists.”

“He’s a bad kid?”

Ethan shook his head. “Stubborn maybe, but not bad. He’s thoughtful. E-mailed Richard every week when we were at the front. E-mailed me when I was in the hospital.” His throat closed and he cleared it harshly. “He calls me Uncle Ethan.”

“I’m sorry, Ethan. I didn’t realize you two were close.”

Looking out at the quiet water where he’d spent the best years of his childhood, regret surged, and Ethan sighed. “We should be closer, but when Richard died, everything just seemed to disintegrate, with Alec caught in the fray. We e-mail, but Stan never lets me visit him. I didn’t want to drive a bigger wedge between Stan and Randi, so I didn’t push it. I should have just visited Alec anyway.”

“Ethan, why does Stan hate you so much?”

Ethan grunted. “Good question. He says Richard never would have requested Afghanistan if I hadn’t asked him to, that he’d still be alive. But Richard wanted to go. He’d prepared his whole career for it. He spoke Farsi, for God’s sake. We needed him to decode communications. I think Stan hated me a long time before that, though. When we were kids they’d come down for the summers and we were the three musketeers. By the time we were teenagers, Stan’s interests were different from ours. Richard and I were headed for the Academy. Stan bought a motorcycle right out of high school and went cruising. Got into some trouble. A misdemeanor, I think. Nothing too big, but his parents were so disappointed. Stan buckled down in his father’s business and Richard and I went on to the Academy. Nothing was really the same after that. Stan saw me and Richard as his parents’ favorite sons.” Ethan shrugged. “And I wasn’t even his parents’ son.”

“Alec isn’t, is he?” Clay asked. “He’s not Stan’s biological son.”

“Not biological,” Ethan answered, again remember back ten years, to happier days. “When Stan met Randi, she was a single mom struggling to make it on a waitress’s salary. She’d never married Alec’s father. Stan married Randi and legally adopted Alec.” He sighed. “They were a happy family once, Clay. Really happy.”

Clay was quiet for a long moment. “Why did Stan and Randi wait so long to get Alec the implant? If he had meningitis when he was two, why’d they wait until he was nine?”

This Ethan remembered clearly and he’d already started making conclusions. “The surgery’s expensive, over fifty thousand dollars, and it wasn’t covered by their insurance. Stan and Randi didn’t have any money back then. Stan was working at his dad’s electronics store, barely making ends meet. We all worked to add to the savings account for Alec’s surgery, but Richard couldn’t afford to add much. He had a family.”

“Three girls, right?”

Ethan thought about them, the little girls that had been the foundation of Richard’s life. The little girls that would grow up without a father. The grief welled up, but Ethan pushed it back. “Yeah. Then Stan started growing his dad’s business, adding new stores. Made enough to get Alec the surgery.”

“And in the process made an enemy that hated him enough to kidnap his kid?”

“The thought occurred to me. Stan promised a list of his customers and suppliers.”

Clay nodded briefly. “Do you believe they’ll kill Alec if we call the cops right now?”

Ethan had expected the question, asked it of himself a hundred times since he’d agreed to help. “They’ve already killed one man. They don’t have a lot to lose. I know Stan and Randi believe it and I know there’s no way they’re calling the cops. If the cops or the FBI get involved, it’ll be because we called them. I couldn’t live with myself if Alec got killed because we did.”

“What about him?” Clay jerked his head toward the shed.

“McMillan? Stan needs to report finding him. He can say he found a suicide on his property. Maybe the locals will be able to find something on the body that will help.”

“Will Stan do it?”

Ethan pursed his lips. Tried to reconcile his memories of Stan with the man who’d stood on this very dock planning to use his boat to drag the body of an innocent man out to sea. “If he wants our help he will.”

Clay was silent another long moment. “Then let’s go trace that e-mail.”

Chicago, Friday, July 30, 10:45 P.M.

Dana stood in the shadows at the east exit of the bus terminal. It was the most inconspicuous place to wait if one didn’t want to be seen. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d waited here over the years, but never forgot the women she’d met here. The face of each one was indelibly stamped in her memory. They came from all walks of life, different backgrounds, places, ages. Their paths might never have crossed under normal circumstances, but these women didn’t live under normal circumstances. Too many had never even known normal circumstances. All had been battered, some worse than others. Most wore the evidence where it could be easily seen by anyone who cared to look. Their cuts and bruises would be treated and in time would heal.

The scars to their souls were much harder to treat. Some would find the strength to pick up and go on and others would not. It was as simple and as complicated as that.

Tonight she was to meet a woman named Jane Smith. Not terribly original as an alias went, but it would do for the time being. Jane was coming from downstate and she had a ten-year-old son. Erik was his name.

The children were always the hardest for Dana to personally deal with. The fear she saw in their eyes, the utter desolation. The defeat and the shame. The knowledge that regardless of what she personally did, each child would grow into an adult who would always carry those internal scars. This she knew all too well.

She straightened, watching. The bus had just come in and passengers were starting to trickle through the terminal. Old women, old men. A mother with her child. Dana watched them from the shadows, quickly determined they were not the two she sought. The mother smiled too readily, the child’s eyes were too bright.

Then she saw them. The woman was of medium height. It was hard to tell her build as she wore a pair of shapeless beige coveralls. Her head was down and she wore a baseball cap with a large bill. She held the hand of a thin little boy, tugged him forward. He stumbled a little and the woman all but lifted him to his feet.

Dana hoped the child’s sluggishness was due to the late hour and a long journey and not illness. The woman was looking around, her tension almost palpable. Dana stepped from the shadows and watched the tension ease. “Jane? Erik?”

The woman looked up long enough for Dana to see a heavily battered face before dropping her eyes back down to the ground. This woman had been beaten, and recently. But the child was of an even greater concern at the moment. He refused to look up when she called his name, but that in and of itself wasn’t unusual. What disturbed her was the intensity of his withdrawal, as if he concentrated on not making eye contact. She dropped to one knee, tried to hook a finger under his chin, but he jerked away, trembling, his thin shoulders hunched so hard. It was enough to break her heart. It always was.

“It’s all right,” Dana murmured. “No one will hurt you here. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.” She rose to her feet, lightly touched the woman’s shoulder, felt her stiffen. Even more lightly touched the woman’s chin, tilting her face up. Bruises and welts covered her face, both vicious and recent, but it was the woman’s eyes that made Dana flinch. In the dim light they appeared almost white. Quickly Dana threw off the chill and made her mouth smile warmly. “I’m Dana. Welcome.”

Wight’s Landing, Friday, July 30, 11:00 P.M.

Ethan sat down at the little desk against the wall and prepared to trace the e-mail while Clay checked out the upstairs. Working quickly, he networked his computer to Randi’s and opened the e-mail with its hideous attachment. On his computer, he ran software he needed to trace the e-mail.

“You do this a lot?” Randi murmured from the couch.

“Tracing e-mails? Enough.”

She got up and stood behind him, crossing her arms over her chest, hunching her shoulders. “Ethan, what exactly do you do?”

His lips quirked up at her hesitant tone. “Clay and I work with companies to improve their security. I make sure that hackers can’t get into their systems and steal information. And that they have surveillance on their employees to prevent theft as well.”

“You mean you help bosses spy on their employees.”

“Essentially, yes. A lot of our customers are defense contractors. Their secrets need to stay secret. Their government clearance and the country’s security depends on it.”

“What does Clay do?”

“He trains their security guards. Sometimes he trains police departments in small towns on use of assault weapons and personal defense.”