Fatal Error, page 18
A distorted ringing tone came from the radio. Her stomach churned when she realized what he’d done. Cunning. Again.
He had linked the radio to a phone. Likely a phone a long distance away. She gritted her teeth. The police would get a fix on the phone, but not the radio signal. Not her location.
She bit her lip. Enzo wasn’t a fool. She’d allowed herself to forget that momentarily.
The radio clicked and the ringing tone stopped. Someone had answered the phone. There were several moments of silence before Morris spoke. “Who is this?”
Ficarra flipped the large red switch. He spoke into the microphone. His voice came from the radio, distorted and harsh, filled with tremolo and echo. “You wanted proof of life.”
Ficarra held the microphone for her. “Talk to him.” He flipped the red switch back.
She took a deep breath. “Morris. It’s me.” Her voice was raspy, tremulous, tentative.
“Me, who?” Morris said.
She frowned. Cleared her throat. Spoke with as much strength as she could muster. “Jess. Jessica Kimball.”
“I need you to prove it.”
She looked from side to side. “We…we…I came to Rome three days ago.”
He “uh, huh’d.”
She breathed deep. What the hell could she say that wouldn’t educate or anger Ficarra?
Morris spoke. “Where did we meet face to face for the first time?”
She swallowed. “Um…Dallas.”
“Where in Dallas?”
She bit her lip. “A café…Café Bistro. We had coffee. And muffins. You arrived first.”
Morris sighed. “How you doing, Jess?”
She breathed out. Her shoulders fell. She felt as if she was on the way home. She could be. If she handled this well enough.
“I’m good. I’m fine. I—”
Enzo poked her knee with his gun, and held his finger across his lips. He flipped the switch to the distorted position. “The stakes have gone up. So has the price. Five million euros. Used notes. Unmarked. I will detect any residue on them. Five million. I will call tomorrow. Ten a.m. Then you can have the precious Miss Kimball back.”
“I can’t get that much money overnight.”
“Then try harder.”
“There’s a process. I have to—”
“Say another word, and she loses a kneecap.”
Enzo had a cool, hard face. His gun was steady against her knee. She didn’t doubt for a moment that he’d shoot her.
Seconds ticked by. Jess squeezed her lips together. Sweat ran down her forehead. The muscles in her leg knotted tight.
Morris grunted. “Where?”
Jess sighed.
“I will call you. Ten a.m.,” Ficarra said.
“I need to know.” Morris’s voice was level and calm.
Enzo kept a stony face. Seconds ticked by. Jess’s heart pounded. She forced herself forward, straining against the zip-tie around her wrists.
Ten seconds.
He adjusted his grip on his gun.
Fifteen.
She looked at Enzo.
Twenty seconds.
“Ten a.m. Tomorrow. I will be waiting,” Morris said.
Jess gasped. Her shoulders sagged. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead and dripped from the end of her nose.
“Put her back on,” Morris said.
“Tomorrow,” Enzo said, reaching for the off switch.
Jess leaned forward. “Please. Let me talk.”
Enzo held his hand over the power switch.
She licked her lips. “I…I think I can help them. Get the money.”
He breathed in and out. The air hissing through his nose. He withdrew his hand, and took hold of her leg, pushing the gun harder into the crook of her knee.
She swallowed.
He handed her the microphone.
Her heartbeat hammered in her throat. The gun pressed painfully into the back of her knee, but it was nothing compared to the pain a bullet would cause. What did it matter if he was planning to kill her anyway?
She took a deep breath. “Morris?”
Her voice buzzed from the speaker. Enzo flipped the switch, and her voice became normal.
“Morris?”
“We’re going to get you out of this, Jess.”
“Yeah. About the money. Talk to my magazine.” She took a deep breath, and locked her jaw tight as she spoke. “Talk to Collin Vanesota. He’s my boss. Or,” she swallowed, suppressing her trembling voice, “or Travis Madele. Five million is small change to them. They got me into this. They knew the risks. They can afford it.”
She paused. Her heart jumped hard in her chest. She took a shaky breath. “That’s Travis Madele, Travis, like you’d expect, and Madele, M-A-D-E-L-E. And Collin Vanesota. C-O-L-L-I-N, V-A-N-E-S-O-T-A.”
“Okay, Jess. Travis Madele and Collin Vanesota.”
“Promise me you’re going to talk to them.”
Morris grunted. “Promise.”
“They’ll get the money. It’s pocket change to them. They know what to do. They’ll rearrange things.”
“Okay.”
“Wake them up if you have to. They owe me. Big time.”
“I promise. I’ll talk to them. Don’t worry, Jess. It’s going to be all right.”
Enzo took the microphone, and flipped the switch. His distorted voice rasped from the speaker. “Five million euros. Tomorrow. No delays. No excuses.”
He pressed a button on the radio. The LEDs went out and the numerals faded. He sat still.
She looked at him, straight on, unblinking.
He grunted, and put away his gun. “You did well.”
He picked up the radio, and the rats, and left, barring the door with the wooden beam.
She closed her eyes, and rolled her head back. Beads of sweat ran down the side of her face. Her shirt clung to her back.
She had passed her message.
Enzo hadn’t noticed.
She blew out a lungful of air, and prayed Morris and Vanelli could figure it out.
CHAPTER FORTY
Morris hung onto the phone, straining to hear the last few whistles and pops as the call ended.
“Connection’s gone,” said Rosso, the fresh-faced guy, from behind his bank of equipment.
Morris sighed. He’d been quiet, firm, and reassuring on the call, but his blood was boiling. He took one more breath, and placed the handset back on the cradle. “We have to find her.”
Vanelli looked at him from across his desk, and shrugged. “Of course.” He leaned forward. “We will.” He gestured to a giant map on the wall behind him. “I have twenty men searching for Ficarra, reviewing the tapes, conducting interviews, tracing the route the car took. If there’s something to be found, we will find it.”
Morris nodded.
Rosso hammered on a loud keyboard.
“Bad line,” Morris said.
Rosso nodded without looking up. “They’re somewhere quiet. No car noises. No city noises. No jets traveling overhead.”
“Can the call be traced or not?”
Rosso nodded. “I have the phone number and location, but the radio…”
Morris frowned. “Radio?”
“Shortwave radio. Connected to a telephone. It’ll be miles from their real location.”
“You can tell all that?”
Rosso nodded. “From the sibilance. It’s a cheap set. Probably just held a speaker to a microphone.”
“Can the radio be traced?”
“Maybe. I just put feelers out to some people.”
“Feelers?”
“On the Internet.”
Morris’s mouth hung open. “What?”
“Amateurs. People into shortwave. They might have picked up the signal. Might get a direction.”
“Amateur radio? People still do that?”
Rosso glowered. “People still do.”
Morris closed his mouth. “Well. Right. Good.”
“Listen.” A speaker on top of Rosso’s pile of equipment squawked as he cued up a section of the phone call.
Morris’s voice came from the speaker. “I need to know,” his recorded voice said.
Rosso turned up the volume. Hissing and pops filled the room. Breathing. A rustling noise that could have been the poor line, or from wherever Jess was being held.
But there was another noise. Unmistakable.
Morris’s skin crawled. He looked at Vanelli, who leveled his stare in return.
Rosso nodded. “Someone, somewhere, is screaming his head off.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Morris waited in the lobby of the American Embassy until a heavyset man opened a plate glass door and beckoned him through, into the building’s maze of gracefully aged corridors. They walked in silence until they reached a room with a very smooth, metal door. The man typed a number on a keypad, and the door opened an inch. He pulled it fully open, the air hissing around its edges, and gestured for Morris to enter.
Inside was a circular table and a dozen chairs, all dark wood. A large paper shredder sat in one corner.
In the middle of the table sat an enormous gray telephone. The number keys were pale, like the keys from an old cash register. There were two comically large lights on top, one yellow, one red. A single wire ran from the side of the phone to the wall.
The man waved at the device. “Usual thing. Fully encrypted. You know the number you want to dial?”
Morris nodded.
“A secure number?”
“FBI in DC. They’re expecting me.”
“Have at it then.” The man backed out and closed the door. It sealed with a soft thump and a click.
Morris sat in front of the phone, lifted the receiver, and dialed his boss, the Assistant Director in charge of the FBI Dallas Field Office, Roy E. Ryans. The keys required a firm press and clicked loudly. The usual ringing tone followed by a series of beeps and buzzes took over, like an old dial-up Internet modem. The noises stopped, and his boss’s voice came on the line.
“Morris?” Ryans’ gruff drawl traveled clearly across the two countries and the Atlantic Ocean.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Fill me in.”
“We received the call from Kimball’s kidnapper.”
“Ficarra?”
“We believe.”
“Evidence?”
“Nothing positive.”
“Voice identification? Location tracking?”
“He used a scrambler. The Italians have recovered the phone he used, but it was connected to a shortwave radio.”
“Prints? DNA?”
“It’s clean.”
Ryans waited.
“The Italians are trying to track the radio signal,” Morris said.
“They had an airborne asset in place?”
“No. They…they’re reaching out to amateurs…they’re—”
“What?”
“Amateurs. On the…Internet.”
“Say what?” Ryans was born in North Carolina and despite his training, his accent often revealed his early childhood origins.
“It was all anonymous.”
“Anonymous? Nothing is anonymous if you’re prepared to look hard enough.” Ryans sighed. “And have they found anything?”
Morris said. “Not yet.”
Ryans hissed through the slight space in his two front teeth. Morris could almost see the spittle pushing through the gap. “What does the kidnapper want?”
“Five million.”
“Dollars?”
“Euros.”
“How long have we got?” Morris could hear Ryans tapping a pen against the desk.
“Eighteen hours. Twenty, maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Morris cleared his throat. “Someone was in severe pain in the background. On the call from Ficarra.”
“Kimball?”
“No.”
Ryans said, “I see.”
“We think it could be Wilson Grantly.”
“Connecting it to Enzo Ficarra.” He sounded closer to approval than a moment earlier.
“Yes.”
“That’s something, I suppose.”
“She also gave us some names.”
“Kimball?”
Morris uh-huh’d. “Two people from her magazine. She thinks they will pay the ransom. Said they owe her. I think she means for getting her into the situation.”
Ryans took a deep breath. “A lot of people got her into this.”
Morris rubbed his thumb against his forefinger absently. “Yes, sir.”
“Whatever. Too late for regrets at this point, Morris.”
Morris frowned.
“We don’t negotiate,” Ryans said. “Or pay off kidnappers.”
“The Italians are doing all they can.”
“If this goes south, the bureau isn’t going to come out well.”
“Sir—”
“Let me say that precisely.” Ryans raised his voice slightly. “We are not going to come out of it well.”
Morris clamped his jaw shut. “I’m not planning to let it go south.”
There was a long silence.
Ryans grunted. “Give me the names.”
“Travis Madele and Collin Vanesota. They work at her magazine. In Denver.”
“Spell the names.”
Morris read out the letters.
“Van-e-tossa?” Ryans said.
“Van-e-sota.”
Ryans hissed through the gap in his teeth again. “They have to be New Yorkers.”
Morris left the comment unanswered. That hissing sound drove him crazy. Besides, Roy E. Ryans thought any unusual names originated from New York.
Ryans huffed. “I’ll have them contacted.”
“We may have to go all the way.”
“Pay him off?”
“At least a sting.”
“Your track record for ops against this guy doesn’t make that an appealing option, Morris.”
“There are no appealing options.”
Ryans fell silent.
“We will need the cash,” Morris said.
Ryans grunted. “The embassy keeps a reserve for emergencies, but they may not have that much on hand.”
“Five million.”
“I know.”
“Euros.”
“Yes, Morris. I am aware you are in Italy.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“I’ll have to bring it up with the director.” Ryans paused. “Fifty-fifty chance he’ll approve.”
Morris sighed.
“I’ll get back to you about the magazine people. But one last thing, Morris.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t screw this up.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Jess brought her knees up to her chest and shivered. The skin around her nails had turned milky white and her fingers were shriveled. Her lips were cracked and sore, and her legs were numb from the hard bed. She shifted her weight, sliding on the plastic bag. She shuffled back into its center to keep the worst of the underground dampness from seeping into her clothes.
Her stomach growled. She swallowed back bile that edged into her throat. It had been mid-morning when she was in the hotel, but time meant nothing in the dark. She’d slept and woken and slept again. Her eyes had night adjusted long ago, but there wasn’t a glimmer of light to be seen. It was as black as she imagined a coal mine might be. A form of sensory deprivation, she supposed. Another of Enzo Ficarra’s small tortures.
She leaned back on the wall. Now she was not only at Enzo’s mercy, her life was in Morris and Vanelli’s hands, too.
She rubbed her rough lips together. It had been hours since she had conveyed the names. Morris would have checked at Taboo Magazine.
Her boss, Carter Pierce, would know the names were fake instantly.
But were the names enough? She hoped that Morris and Vanelli, working with Pierce, would find the anagrams, certainly. Would they find the houses before Ficarra killed Grantly? Before he killed her?
She bit her lip. There again, she wasn’t in the houses. She was half a mile away, in the woods, in a mine under a cabin. She sighed. It might be too big a stretch.
She licked her sore lips, and regretted it the instant pain ran through the cracks. She hung her head down. She had to think of Peter. She would get out of here. She would get out, and find him. No matter what happened, she wouldn’t let Enzo take away the one thing that mattered the most. Peter’s life.
She took a deep breath and focused again on getting out.
There was only one way out of the cell. Through the door.
Then she would have to negotiate the tunnel, the ladder, and the forest that surrounded the cabin.
But first, she’d break free of the zip-tie binding her wrists.
She flexed her arms.
She rocked back and forth.
Zip-tie, door, tunnel, ladder, run.
It sounded so simple.
Temptingly simple.
Frustratingly simple.
She looked around her cell. She knew its rough outline. She stood, heels and back against the wall, and shuffled around the edge of the floor.
Her fingers searched the rock walls until she felt the wooden doorway at the roughest place on the walls.
An abrupt change in direction of the old stone. Inconsequential to the men who had hewn the space from the rock decades earlier, but not to her.
She shuffled her back against the sharp corner, testing it with her fingers. She arranged her wrists on either side, the zip-tie straddling the corner, and ground the heavy-duty plastic against the centuries-old rock.
The stone grazed the palms of her hands, and banged against her elbows. She angled her body forward, giving her arms slightly more room to move. She worked the plastic against the rock.
Fine grit fell through her fingers. Her skin grew raw as the plastic grew rough.
It was slow abrasion, but gave her hope and strength of purpose.
And she would need all the strength she could muster, if she was going to fight her way out before this cell became her tomb.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Morris sorted through his change to find the exact coins for a coffee from the vending machine outside Vanelli’s office. The coins rattled as they fell through the slot.
