The clear Texas sky full of shiny stars helped them pass through the brush quickly as they neared where they’d calculated the barn would be. They slowed their forward movement and slipped from shadow to shadow. If they could see clearly, Sly’s people would be able to spot them if they stood out in the open.

  Soon, the silhouette of a large old barn rose above the stubby live oak trees.

  The team spread out and inched closer.

  Mark had made his way down the rutted path and was just coming to the sentry, standing guard over the road in. He shouted something, and Mark stopped.

  Speaking in a clear, loud voice, Mark said, “I’m here to do business with Sly. Let him know Mark’s come to do him a favor.”

  A man standing in front of the barn ducked through the doors. Moments later, five men emerged. John could pick out Sly. He was the one with the swagger and attitude in the middle of the others. “Bring the thief here,” he called out.

  While the gang members’ attention was on Mark and Sly, John and the rest of his team moved in from all sides, surrounding the barn. Mac, Bull and Dawg would come in from behind the barn. If there was a door back there, they’d go through it and take out any opposition along the way.

  Rucker and John moved in from the east, hugging the shadows. The barn was so overgrown, bushes and small trees had grown up all around it. The team had no trouble reaching the structure without being detected.

  Meanwhile, Mark held out the bag of drugs. “I’m here to make a deal with you.”

  “What deal?” Sly demanded.

  “The drugs for the girl.”

  Sly crossed his arms over his chest. “How do I know you aren’t just holding up a bag full of flour, powdered sugar or cow shit for that matter?”

  “It’s the real thing.” Mark shrugged. “But if it makes you feel better, have one of your guys test it.” He set the bag on the ground and pulled out a brick of tightly packed powder.

  Sly leaned his head to the guy with all the piercings beside him. “Do it.”

  The man hurried forward, scratched off a little of the powder and touched it to his tongue. He straightened and nodded. “It’s real.”

  “Well, we still don’t have a deal,” Sly said. “I can just take it, shoot you and be done with this.” He raised his hand. In it was the gun he’d pointed at Collette recently.

  “This is just half of it. I’ve stashed the rest in the woods,” Mark said. “Give me the girl, and I’ll give you this and show you where the rest is. If your dealer is breathing down your neck for results, you’ll need every bit of the stuff.”

  Sly’s eyes narrowed in the starlight. “I could torture the information out of you.”

  “That takes time. And if your guys go too far, I’ll die and you won’t find the other half of your stash.” Mark wrapped the brick in the plastic bag and straightened. “What’s it to be?”

  “I don’t have the girl,” Sly said. “But I’ll take that bag.” He stepped forward, pointing the gun at Mark.

  “Where is she?” Mark asked. “I’m not giving you anything until you tell me what you’ve done with Hope?”

  “I told you. I don’t have her.” He laughed. “Never have. Last I saw her, she was running around that church parking lot, trying to get away from my men.”

  Mark frowned. “You’re lying.”

  Sly tensed.

  John motioned to Rucker. Rucker gave the hand signal for them to move in. They passed the signal down the line. When Rucker stepped out, they all moved as one, converging on Sly’s gang.

  Sly ran toward Mark. “Stop, or I’ll shoot him.”

  John rushed forward and grabbed the man’s hand. Sly struggled, bringing the gun down between them.

  When it went off, John froze, waiting for the flash of pain that accompanied a bullet piercing his flesh. It didn’t come. Sly’s eyes widened, and his grip on the gun relaxed. “I’m hit,” he said.

  John wrested the gun from his hand as the man slipped to the ground, a red stain spreading across his side.

  The rest of the gang threw down their arms and would’ve run off, but the Deltas had them surrounded.

  “Where’s the girl?” John demanded.

  Every one of the Sly’s gang shook their head as one.

  The man who’d tested the powder spoke out. “We don’t have no girl.”

  “Search the barn,” Rucker barked.

  Bull and Mac ducked into the barn. Moments later they came out. “She’s not here.”

  “Told you,” said the guy with the piercings. “We didn’t take her.”

  John pointed his gun at the man. “Don’t lie.”

  He held up his hands. “Ain’t lying. You know how hard it is to carry someone off on a motorcycle? You can shoot me, and I wouldn’t tell you no different. We didn’t take her. You’re wasting your time here.”

  The longer John stood there, the more he believed them. “We need to get back to the church.”

  Eight minutes later, the team and Mark were back in their trucks, heading to Killeen and the church. John slammed his foot to floor, pushing the truck as fast as it would go. “Text Hope’s mother. We’re on our way back. Without Hope.”

  They’d gathered the guns and left two of the team standing guard over them until the sheriff arrived to deal with them and the drugs Mark had left behind.

  Rucker left orders with Bull and Mac to shoot if anyone so much as twitched.

  When they arrived at the church. The police were packing it in. A couple of the cruisers had departed, and all the teens were gone except Ryan. Collette stood with him and another man.

  John drove right into the parking lot. No one stopped him. He parked and leaped out.

  Collette ran across the pavement and threw herself into his arms.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “She wasn’t there.”

  Tears soaked through his shirt. “She has to be somewhere. She can’t have disappeared into thin air.”

  “We’re missing something,” he said, looking over the top of her head at the parking lot, his gaze landing on Ryan’s truck at the far end of the lot. He turned to the teen. “Is that where your truck was parked when all this went down?”

  He nodded. “I shouldn’t have told her to run for it. It was too far.”

  John strode toward the truck. Ryan, Collette, and the man with her, followed.

  Collette made the introductions. “This is Pastor Graves.”

  “I came as soon as I found out Hope was missing.” He twisted his hands together. “I’ve never had anything like this happen at our church. It’s supposed to be a safe place for our children and families.”

  Something about where Ryan had parked pulled at John’s memory. He walked around Ryan’s truck. There was an empty parking space on the very end.

  “Was there another vehicle parked beside your truck?”

  Ryan frowned. “Actually, yes. A white van. The one Mr. Earles drives. But I don’t remember seeing him when we came out of the church or when the bikers were circling the lot.”

  “Is there another way out of the parking lot?” John didn’t wait for an answer, he strode past Ryan’s truck and noticed an impression in the grass leading away from the church to a dirt road. The dirt road led to the highway on the other side of the church, out of view of the parking lot and everyone who had been distracted by Sly’s gang.

  John’s pulse quickened. He turned to the pastor. “What do you know about Mr. Earles?” He started toward the church. “Where does he live?”

  The pastor shook his head. “Mr. Earles has been the janitor here for two years. He keeps a clean church and doesn’t talk much. When he first came to work for us, he didn’t have a place to live, so he slept in the church.”

  “Where?” John demanded.

  The pastor pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and led the way into the building. He turned away from the chapel and led them through the hallways to the back of the building. He opened a door into a large room where heating and air-conditioning equipment was housed. It was also used as a storage room for cleaning supplies and yard maintenance tools.

  In the far corner, a twin bed had been pushed up against the wall. Beside it was an old locker. The bed appeared clean and dust free, as if someone had made it that morning. Other than the locker and the bed, there wasn’t much else.

  John searched the large room. Its high ceilings were laced with pipes and electrical conduit. As he circled back to where the bed was located, he noticed the ceiling was lower in that section. He pointed to it. “What’s up there?”

  The pastor shook his head. “Nothing that I know of.”

  John walked around, looking up.

  Collette walked with him. She stopped and pointed to a string hanging down between two support beams. “What’s that?”

  John spotted what she was pointing at. “An attic access door.” He grabbed the handle and pulled down a set of folding stairs. He climbed to the top, pulled out his cellphone and used the flashlight app to illuminate the space.

  His gut clenched. “Holy shit.”

  “What?” Collette asked. She was halfway up the stairs behind him. “What’s wrong?”

  He climbed the rest of the way up and helped Collette into the attic.

  The room was fairly large with some old furniture and boxes pushed to the far corners. That wasn’t what had his heart pounding and his stomach tied in a knot.

  Lining the walls were pictures of young women. Among them were pictures of a familiar face.

  Hope.

  Collette gasped and pressed her hand to her mouth, her face blanching white. “Oh my God. He was stalking my little girl.”

  Chapter 13

  Collette held her hand over her mouth to keep from losing the contents of her stomach. The janitor she’d trusted with her daughter’s safety was a stalker.

  “He took her, didn’t he?” she whispered.

  “Looks that way,” John said. He moved around the room, studying every detail, from the photos on the wall to the large dog crates lined up. He dropped to his haunches and peered inside. “That isn’t dog hair in there,” he said. “We need to get the police up here.” He strode to the attic staircase. “Rucker?”

  Rucker and the rest of the team had followed them into the maintenance room and to the bottom of the attic stairs. “Here. What did you find?”

  “Get the police up here ASAP.”

  “Dash is already halfway there,” Rucker called out as he climbed the steps and poked his head into the attic. When he saw what was there, he swore. He emerged into the space.

  Collette had bent to look into the crates. As John had indicated, there were strands of hair in them. Long hair. One of the strands was dark, almost black. She glanced at the photos and spotted a young woman with long black hair and Asian features. Her heart pinched hard in her chest. What had happened to her?

  John pointed to other things that chilled Collette. Rolls of duct tape stacked neatly beside the crates. A can full of zip-ties. On one of the metal support beams, a metal hook had been welded into the beam. Dangling from the hook was a pair of handcuffs.

  The janitor had stockpiled cases of water, toilet paper and cans of soup.

  “As far as I can see, there’s no sign of blood,” Rucker said.

  Collette moaned.

  “Sorry.” Rucker waved around the room. “Think of that as a good sign. Maybe he isn’t…hurting his victims.”

  John leaned over a makeshift desk with a calendar of the current month. Numbers had been scribbled on one corner of the paper and erased. He shined his light closer. “Thirty-five thousand,” he murmured.

  Collette leaned close, studying the same numbers. Her gaze went to a date on the calendar from two weeks previous. She read the letters “ILE” with the number “2” beneath it. What did it mean?

  A yellow notepad lay on the desk beside the calendar with a pen next to it. The top sheet had been torn off in a hurry, leaving a piece of it behind. On the torn corner was the number 2.

  John bent over the pad.

  “What did it say?”

  “Not sure.” He was reaching for the pad when a voice called out behind him. “Don’t touch anything.”

  The officer who’d been in charge of the search for Hope came up the steps. “This is now a crime scene. Everything in this room can be considered evidence. Don’t touch anything, take anything or disturb the scene in any way.”

  Collette caught movement out of the corner of her eye.

  John reached behind his back and grabbed the yellow notepad, slipping it into his rear pocket.

  Something about that pad was important enough for John to disturb that piece of evidence.

  Collette didn’t care as long as they found Hope. She knew the statistics in abduction cases. The first twenty-four hours were critical. Hope’s life was in the balance.

  “What is all this?” Collette asked, drawing attention away from John.

  The cop stood in front of the photos, his jaw tight. “Did you see the article on the news about the woman who went missing two weeks ago?”

  Collette nodded. “A mother of two small children. She didn’t arrive at the daycare to pick them up.” She remembered the story. Her heart had gone out to the children. How frightened they had to have been.

  The officer pointed to the woman with the long dark hair and Asian features. “That’s her.”

  Collette nodded toward the pictures of Hope in the Sunday school classroom, riding her bicycle and leaning against the church door with her backpack looped over one shoulder. “That’s my daughter. Hope.”

  “We put out an APB on Mr. Earles’ van. If he’s on the road, we’ll find him,” the officer said.

  “What if he’s not on the road but at the airport?” John asked.

  “We notified the Killeen Regional airport security to be on the lookout for a white van and a man meeting Mr. Earles’ description with a teenage girl.”

  John touched her arm. “Come on, we need to leave the police to do their job.”

  “The Texas Rangers are sending in a crime scene investigator,” the officer said. “We’ll find your daughter.”

  Maybe, Collette thought, but would they find her soon enough?

  Collette backed down the attic stairs. John came down next, and Rucker was last.

  “Let’s go,” John said and strode out of the machine room, through the hallways and out of the church building.

  “Where are we going?” Collette asked straining to keep up with John’s longer stride.

  “The airport,” he said.

  “The police officer said they had that covered.”

  “The Killeen Regional Airport.” He handed the notepad to Rucker. “It’s not the only one around.”

  “Isn’t there a general aviation airport near Harker Heights?” Lance asked.

  John nodded. “It’s a hunch.” He ran for his truck.

  Collette threw herself into the passenger seat. Ryan and Mark dove into the backseat.

  “What’s happening?” Ryan asked.

  “Mr. Earles has Hope.” John said. “Ryan, do you have your cellphone?”

  Ryan leaned forward, holding out the phone. “Yes, sir.”

  “Look up the airport with the code name of ILE.” John pulled out onto the highway and turned north, heading for Harker Heights.

  “Those were the letters on the calendar,” Collette said.

  John dug the notepad out of his back pocket and handed it to her. “What do the indentions on that pad say?”

  She squinted in the light from the dash.

  “There’s a pencil in the glove box,” John said.

  “ILE is the designation for the Skylark Field Airport near Harker Heights,” Ryan called out.

  Collette’s pulse raced as she rubbed the pencil over the indentions on the pad. One by one, the letters appeared. ILE. The number 2 was on the torn top sheet on the pad. “Two?”

  John pointed to the clock on the dash. It read 1:53.

  “Two o’clock.” Collette leaned forward in her seat. “Can you make this truck go any faster?”

  A brief smile quirked the corners of John’s lips, and he pressed the accelerator to the floorboard. “Collette, call 9-1-1 and tell them you have reason to believe an abduction is taking place at the Skylark Airport.”

  Collette was afraid to be hopeful, but she had to be. Hope was her world. She couldn’t lose her.

  She wouldn’t lose her.

  They were on the interstate, flying at ninety miles per hour. The other members of the John’s team were right behind them.

  Lights flashed on the shoulder of the road, and a police car pulled out, falling in behind the line of Deltas.

  Collette placed that call to 9-1-1, adding that there were three trucks headed that way at a high rate of speed to get there before the victim could be flown out. She asked them to notify the ATC as well.

  John didn’t slow, didn’t stop. They had to get to the airport before the clock struck 2:00.

  John took the exit.

  Collette could see the airport on the other side of the interstate, the runway lights were lit, but she couldn’t tell if there was a plane landing or taking off.

  Another police car had joined the first.

  As they neared the airport, Collette spotted a small aircraft on the runway. “There!” she pointed. The craft was slowing to a stop. A white van pulled out of the shadow of a hangar and raced toward the plane.

  “That’s the van!” Collette cried.

  A chain link fence and hangars stood between them and the runway.

  At the next gap between hangers, John jerked the steering wheel to the right. He crossed a parking lot, blew through the chain link fence and out onto the runway.

  Three hundred yards ahead, a man carried a body over his shoulder toward the small jet. Steps were lowered, and another man leaned down to take the body.

  John’s headlights glanced off red hair.

 

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