The Hitman's Pregnant Bride: A Baby Romance (6 page)

W
hen Andreas got home
, the first thing he saw was the black box full of his passports. He felt like someone had punched him in the gut. She knew.

“Phoebe!” he called. “Baby, where are you?”

No answer.

He walked around the house, looking in the TV room where she liked to nap.

Then he went downstairs to the basement. He stared at the secret room. She’d seen the guns inside. He felt as if he might throw up, but he swallowed hard and forced it down.

He walked up to their bedroom. He found most of her toiletries gone and her closet mostly empty. Her huge suitcase, the one that he liked to tease her could house a family of five, was gone.

She couldn’t have gone far, right? He tried to control his breathing to calm himself down. He went back downstairs to gather up his black box. It wasn’t safe to leave that kind of thing just laying around. He put it back downstairs in his safe and locked all of it away agin. It was safe enough, or it had been before his wife had found it. It’d have to do for now. He would find a new hiding place once he found his missing wife.

He walked back upstairs to hear his cell phone ringing. He rushed to where he’d left it on the countertop.

HAROLD KAINE said his caller ID. He might as well face the inevitable. He couldn’t avoid her father. Phoebe was gone. He might need the old man’s help to find her.

When Andreas hit accept, the first thing out of Mr. Kaine’s mouth was, “What did you do?”

“Phoebe is missing.”

“What?”

“Is she with you? I need to know that she’s safe.”

“She’s not with me. She’s not at home?”

“No.”

He could hear Harold breathing hard over the phone.

“I want you to run a trace on her credit cards and phone, okay? We need to locate her last known location.”

“Easy. I’ve had a trace on her for years.”

Not a surprise. Andreas could hear tapping from the other end.

“The last time she used a credit card was at a gas station. Let’s go.” Harold rattled off the address of a BP station not too far away.

“I’ll see you there.”

Andreas hung up and got into his car, tapping the address into his GPS. He drove like the devil was behind him and parked in one of the parking spaces on the side of the gas station. As soon as he got out of his car, Harold was right there. Harold grabbed his collar with both hands.

“What’s going on?” Harold shouted into his face, his face red. “Where’s my daughter?”

Andreas bit back his sharp retort. He knew that Harold was overwrought because Phoebe was missing.

“Please remove your hands from my collar.”

Glaring, Harold loosened his grip and then finally let go.

“I knew you were trouble. I swear to God, if you’ve harmed one hair on her head…”

The moment was broken by buzzing coming from Harold’s phone.

Andreas watched Harold’s face go from red to white.

“What’s wrong?”

Harold held up his phone mutely.

Expect a call, Harold.

“Who wrote the text message?”

“Someone I wish I didn’t know.”

Harold went straight into the gas station. The kid behind the counter had milk-white skin, terrible acne, and blond dreads.

“Okay, kid, I want to see footage of the outside from the last four hours.” Harold flashed his FBI badge at the kid.

“You’re going to need a warrant for that.” The kid stood up straighter. Andreas noticed that the kid’s shirt had an image of a snake saying, “Don’t Tread On Me.” The boy was obviously libertarian. He might have very slender arms, but he also had a steel backbone.

“We should try something else. Call a judge, maybe.” Andreas said it out loud so that the kid knew that they were taking him seriously. He watched the kid’s chest puff out with pride.

Harold’s cell phone rang. He walked out of the inside of the gas station before putting the phone on speaker.

“Daddy?”

“Phoebe? Baby girl, where are you?”

“Honey, stay calm. We’re going to find you.”

But Phoebe wasn’t talking anymore. An elegant, smooth voice came through the phone.

“Hello, Harold. You have something very precious of mine that I want. I want it back. I’m sure that you can relate.”

P
hoebe must have fallen asleep
, because she woke up in her bed. She found a bathrobe, new clothes, and a bath kit sitting on a chair in her room. Someone had come in while she was sleeping.

Phoebe tried to calm her nerves. Freaking out over the violation wasn’t going to help her. She went into the shower with the bath kit to try to calm down. She knew that the stakes hadn’t been raised beyond intimidation, though they’d definitely scared her, but she was definitely shaken after the phone call that her captor placed to her father before she fell asleep. Was it yesterday or today? Phoebe couldn’t tell. There weren’t any clocks in her chambers.

She knew that Dad and Andreas were trying to find her, and she tried to take solace in that. They were both competent. They might be coming from opposite sides of the law, but between them, they should be able to find her. Phoebe had hope on her side.

She still cried in the shower, though. Her hormones and the baby made her sob quietly in her shower. What would happen if Odhran didn’t get the Crucible, whatever it was?

The strong vanilla scent of the bath soap was making her nauseous. She turned off the water so she could hurry out of the shower just in time to open her mouth and vomit into the toilet. She spat out the nasty taste in her mouth before going to the sink and rinsing her mouth out with water. She rummaged around under the sink for some mouthwash and used it to get rid of the taste.

H
arold got
into Andreas’ car without a word, leaving his own car behind. It was a federal vehicle, and there’d be trouble if anybody stole it from the gas station. Andreas’ car, a Tesla, was much faster in any case. Harold kept running his hand through his hair.

Andreas drove them back to the Kaines’ house. They sat there in the driveway.

“You want to tell me what’s going on? I want to know who took my wife.” For once, Andreas wasn’t the one in the hot seat. He wasn’t taking too much pleasure in it, but he didn’t have time for the normal games that he played with Phoebe’s father. “What does this guy want?”

Harold rubbed his face. “Too many people will get hurt.”

Andreas was pretty sure that it was exactly what he’d found when he was researching Harold, but he needed confirmation. Gritting his teeth, Andreas cleared his throat. He didn’t want to respond to Harold. His wife and child were more important than faceless strangers. When he could speak civilly again, he said, “My wife and child could get hurt if you don’t talk, Harold. Tell me what’s happening.”

The men locked eyes for a moment. For the first time, Andreas could see a glimmer of respect in Harold’s eyes.

Harold's hands flew to his head. "We should talk in the boat house. I've kept my wife away from everything that I do for this long. I'm not going to start getting her involved now, even with my daughter at stake."

"Where is it?"

"It's about an acre away from the house."

They got out of Andreas' car and went straight to the boat house at a jog.

"I hope my wife doesn't see us."

Andreas thought that it was strange that Harold was so concerned about appearances at the moment, but he understood the motivation to keep his wife away from the dirt that he got involved in.

"Where do you think that she could be?" They both went inside of the boat house, which had heating and cooling. The two of them took off their coats and put them on the coat rack by the door.

"When I had my people run a search for her, we realized that her cell phone was off of the grid. The last known location is that damned gas station."

"So the trail is cold?"

"I didn't say that."

'But there aren't any other leads?"

Harold stuttered for a minute, then he changed his mind. "That's right."

"What's the precious thing that he wants?"

"I can't talk about it."

"Are you joking? Fuck the fibbies. This is Phoebe we're talking about. Your daughter, you know? What kind of father doesn't ride to his child's safety when he has the key for her release?" Andreas closed his eyes and ended his rant. In a much calmer voice, he asked, "What can you tell me? Any information that you have is going to help on my end."

"What end is that?" Harold looked at Andreas. "I knew that you weren't really a chef."

"Are you even being real right now? You're not really in a position to judge right now. Tell me what Phoebe's kidnapper wants."

"I can't even discuss it."

Andreas punched the wall, breaking through the drywall.

"I'll pay for a contractor. Listen, even if you don't want to give this thing away, you've got to give me enough information for me to pretend to give it to him. I can trick him into thinking that we're coming to deliver it. We can extract Phoebe by myself, but I need to know where she is. Who is the smug bastard who has her?"

"I need booze." Harold went to the corner of the boat house. He got out two cold bottles of beer with twist-off caps. He threw one at Andreas, who caught it in one hand.

Harold opened up his beer and took a swig.

"I never liked you, you know. Not for a second."

Andreas didn't give a damn. He knew that it stressed Phoebe out, but he couldn't care less about what her old man thought of him.

Harold took another sip of his beer. "I know that you obviously love her. That's why I let you two marry."

Andreas held back a snort. Harold Kaine couldn't have stopped their marriage. Andreas would've taken her away before that ever happened.

"You get some points for loving her. She deserves that, you know? My baby girl deserves the best." Harold drained the rest of the bottle quickly, chugging all the beer down like a frat boy. "I should've stocked something stronger."

"Tell me what I need to know."

"Do you know about the levels of information in the federal government? Sensitive, confidential, secret, top secret, and then levels that I've never even heard of."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"What I'm about to tell you is sensitive, not confidential exactly. If you had an infinite amount of time, you could piece together the picture from old documents and newspaper articles."

Andreas bit back his retort. He wanted to tell Mr. Kaine to get to the point, but exploding again wouldn't serve any purpose. He could see that Mr. Kaine was very close to telling him what was going on.

"I need you to reassure me that this information won't get into the wrong hands."

Andreas looked Mr. Kaine in the eyes. "It won't."

Harold tossed his empty beer bottle into a blue recycling bin. Andreas bit his tongue, wanting to shake the old man. He was completely on edge and ready to save his wife, if only he knew where she was.

He wasn't expecting Mr. Kaine to walk out of the boat house.

A
ndreas quickly reached
into his pocket to pull out his smartphone. He had a way of storing encrypted images and videos, and he opened up the custom app that had been specially designed for the Agency.

He reached into Mr. Kaine's coat to get out his wallet. He took out his FBI ID and took a clear image of it with his phone, and he scanned the RFID with a special attachment on his phone that just looked like a Bluetooth connector.

He had barely put the ID back into Mr. Kaine's wallet and put the whole thing back into his pocket when Mr. Kaine walked back into the boat house.

"What I'm about to do is treason, do you understand?"

"Phoebe," Andreas reminded him.

Harold nodded. "Phoebe." He gave him a small blue folder. Andreas opened it and could see that Harold took out some documents before he brought the file to Andreas. There were neat blue tabs that were numbered down the side, and some of the tabs were missing.

He quickly scanned the contents of the file. It was just a bunch of numbers with redacted names. There was some kind of engineering consulting company that all the money was paid into. The biggest customer's name wasn't there, but his bank was listed. It stood out like a sore thumb among the big American banks on the list. This guy had his bank accounts in the Caymans. Andreas wasn't big on the white collar side of things, but he wasn't stupid. He knew people who could trace this kind of thing. With the right hacker, he knew that he could trace the transaction amounts and dates and come up with names.

Andreas closed the folder. "Thank you very much. Could you wait for me before you make a move? I'm going to do a little research and find the guy who has Phoebe."

Harold put his hand over his eyes. "I...I'm a law enforcement agent. I don't want to know what you're about to do, but I want you to get my daughter back. Is that clear?"

"I understand."

Harold took his hand away from his eyes. "I should go check on Sally...she's probably noticed your car in the driveway. I'll have her help me go back to the gas station. I'll be back in a minute."

Harold went back towards the house, which gave Andreas enough time to pull his phone out a second time and take pictures of every page of the file that Harold had given him. When he saw Harold walking back towards the boat house, he slipped his phone back into his pocket.

"Sally will take me back to my car. Are we done here?"

"Yes."

"Give me the file."

Andreas nodded, although if he hadn't had the foresight to take pictures of all of the information, it would've been utterly useless to just see it once. "Okay."

Harold's shoulders relaxed just a smidgen when he took back the file. Andreas knew that it had been compiled off the books, and therefore wasn't exactly under the FBI's purview, but giving information to someone he knew was a criminal was definitely hard for Mr. Kaine. Andreas needed to create that distance between them so that whatever mud Andreas got into didn't splash on Phoebe's parents.

"I'll check back with you late tomorrow with whatever I've found by then."

"Meet at the nearest Starbucks?"

Andreas knew which one he was talking about. The nearest Starbucks was within easy walking distance of the house.

"Yup." Mr. Kaine still wanted to protect his wife from what was going on. Mrs. Kaine wouldn't be worried about Phoebe being out of contact for a few days, but if it turned into a few weeks, she'd panic. Andreas needed to prevent that from ever happening.