Hunt evil, p.8
Hunt Evil, page 8
“You’re familiar with MacBooks, right?” I asked Rachel, speaking louder than normal to be sure she could hear me.
She nodded. “Yes. Go talk to the doormen and check the streets again. Don’t forget your phone. I want you back here as soon as we hear from her.”
“Oh, I’ll be around, don’t you worry. It’ll only take me max five minutes to get back here. I won’t go far.” I made sure I had my cell phone in my back pocket and that it had enough battery, then I put on a pair of sneakers and a jacket and headed to our elevator that would take me straight down to the lobby. As the car took me down, I checked out its insides. The buttons were actually positioned low enough for a child of Neera’s size to be able to reach them fairly easily.
Maybe she had managed to sneak out of the penthouse unnoticed. The distance from her room to the elevator wasn’t that great, only about twenty yards. She would have no problem covering that stretch on her own. James claimed to sleep so lightly that he always heard the elevator moving and he hadn’t heard the elevator last night. But maybe he didn’t sleep as lightly as he claimed he did. Maybe that had changed and he wasn’t aware of it.
Well, even if she had managed to get into the elevator and down to the lobby, I couldn’t see how three doormen and two security guards on duty could have missed her. As I reached the lobby and glanced out over the airy space with the marble floors, big plants, and gigantic painting on the wall facing the concierge desk, I noticed how the guy behind the desk was busy scribbling something on a calendar while the other guy, who was older, was in the middle of polishing his glasses with a handkerchief. The two security guards were near the sofas in the corner, in deep conversation. The first time I had gone down, there had been only one guard in place as the other had gone to have something to eat. Hmm. I supposed a little kid could have snuck past all of these guys if she walked near the desk and was very quiet. It wasn’t like she was tall enough to be easily seen from where the sofas were or from behind the desk. Given how all four men were distracted, they could have missed her exiting the elevator, even if I thought that to be unlikely.
I told the security guards they had to stop talking and pay attention to whoever entered and left the building every second of the day. They instantly stopped and snapped into position. When I got back upstairs, I’d tell Rachel to call the head of the security team and tell him we needed guards who were more professional and attentive.
I walked through the lobby and up to the entrance, shaking my head dismissively at George, the older doorman, when he asked me if I’d had any luck finding Neera. The third doorman who stood right in front of the sliding doors was not the same guy who’d been there at night. He was a nice-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair and a tan face.
“Hey, Don,” I said to him when he was done greeting the couple that entered the building.
“Hey, Mr. Friedman,” Don said and smiled pleasantly. “Did you find Neera yet?”
“No, she’s still missing unfortunately,” I replied with a dour expression. “I was wondering about the guy who’s working this area at night. Gene, I think?”
“Yeah, his name’s Gene,” Don confirmed. “What about him?”
“Does he smoke?”
He lit up. “Yeah, how did you know? He’s pretty discreet about it.”
“Just a lucky guess. Do you know where he goes to have his smokes?”
Don glanced around the street. “I think he just goes off to the corner and has one every now and then. He tells me he only goes when it’s very quiet in the building. He’ll be able to see who comes and goes into the building from the corner.”
I nodded. “Good to know. When did you take over for him this morning?”
“At eight. He’s here between midnight and eight. Loves the nightshift.”
“Thanks, Don,” I said and walked out of the building, deep in thought. I hadn’t considered the fact that Gene was a smoker. The doormen weren’t allowed to smoke at the entrance but had to step away to have a cigarette. Even if Gene thought he was fully in control of the entrance while smoking, chances were he wasn’t. All it would take for him to miss a small kid leaving the building was for him to look away for a few seconds. And he could easily have done that as he lit up. I could see how a small kid might have gotten past all these men unnoticed now—it wasn’t like a tiny girl often entered or left a building on her own—but not a tall adult. It was far easier to detect a large person like my mother out of the corner of your eye even if you were distracted.
Maybe Neera had left the building on her own after all.
19
When I returned to the penthouse a while later, having taken a walk around the block that took longer than I had anticipated, asking whoever I thought could have seen Neera if they had seen her, I got a text from Rachel. It arrived as I entered the elevator to our floor.
Where are you? You were supposed to be after five min! Jennifer just emailed, telling Larry that she has taken Neera hostage. Come back now!
I read the text again, just to be sure I had understood it correctly. Part of me didn’t want to believe that Mom had really snatched Neera. I pressed the Up button in the elevator, and the car started climbing the floors at a leisurely speed that drove me nuts.
The elevator dinged as it reached the penthouse, the door sliding aside so slowly I used my hands to try to move it faster. As soon as the opening was big enough, I burst into the apartment. Rachel was standing right in front of the elevator, holding the laptop against her chest, and we nearly crashed into each other. She stepped aside at the last second, thankfully.
“How long ago did you get it?” I half yelled at her.
“No more than five minutes,” she answered as we headed back into the sitting room. “I went to the bathroom and when I got back, it was in the inbox.”
“Show it to me,” I demanded and she showed me the screen with the email. There it was, saying the following:
Larry, I like the way you’re going with the story. Given how my life has changed, it works better than the original version. I should be able to have the rewrites for you in about a week. Obviously, you won’t tell anyone that I’ve been involved until after the movie premiers. Just FYI, I have a child with me now that I will kill unless you let me do the rewrites. The child’s name is Neera Friedman and she also happens to be my daughter. The next person I will kill is one of your daughters. Please confirm that you’re okay with this and there won’t be any need for collateral damage.
Cheers, Jennifer
Fury spread throughout my body as it dawned on me what Mom was doing, how she was outsmarting me—she was not only getting the movie made the way she wanted, but she was also getting back at me by kidnapping my sister in the process. She knew how upset it would make me that she involved an innocent kid in this mess. How unfair it was to Neera. Not that she cared. All that mattered was that she got her way.
It suddenly dawned on me that it was very unlikely that I would see Neera again unless the movie was in fact made now. If Mom found out that we had tricked her in order to get her to contact us, she would flip out, which surely would result in her killing Neera just to spite me. To show me that you didn’t fuck with her. She would always win in the end.
“Are you gonna track the email?” Rachel asked, abruptly shaking me out of my head.
I turned to look at her, realizing that we were still standing in front of the sofa when we should be sitting down. I nodded and sat down, getting to work. Maybe the situation wasn’t as bleak as I had feared; maybe we’d be able to get to her and rescue Neera long before Mom smelled something fishy. I doubted she already knew. I really couldn’t see how she had been able to figure out the movie production was all a ploy already. Yes, I nodded to myself. She had just taken Neera as insurance the movie would be done the way she wanted it to be made. She might not even bother to contact me to let me know she had Neera. It was enough that I would be worried sick my sister was missing. Not knowing added another level of mental torture, and Mom was all about causing multiple levels of pain.
I kept working the laptop, but as the minutes passed and I couldn’t seem to crack Mom’s IP address, I began to sweat. Pearls of it formed around my hairline and soon streamed down my face, dripping onto the screen. I straightened to make it stop and wiped the drops away with the edge of my sweater sleeve.
“How’s it going?” Rachel asked and gazed at me with a worried face. “Have you found her location yet?”
“No, not yet,” I replied, screwing up my mouth. None of the approaches that I’d used on several occasions to track people’s IP addresses worked and I was pretty good at it. In fact, I had yet to come across an IP address I couldn’t track, even ones that were supposedly untraceable from the Dark Web. What the hell?
You’re just not as good as you think, a voice in my head snarled. Now that she had Neera, Mom would obviously not email me from some IP address that could easily be cracked. She wasn’t that careless. What had I been thinking? I found my cell phone and called Steve.
He picked up on the second ring.
“What’s going on?” he said by way of answering.
“Mom’s been emailing, but I can’t find her IP address. If I forward you her email, can you give it a go?”
“Of course. Send it to me right now.”
I forwarded Mom’s latest message to Steve’s account, wondering whether I should tell him that Mom had abducted Neera. I decided that his time was best spent trying to find Mom, so I didn’t. He needed to use all his focus on tracking down Mom, not asking me questions about the abduction. Hopefully he wouldn’t bother to read the email’s contents before he got to work.
“Did you get it yet?” I asked him after fifteen seconds had passed.
“No,” he said, then, “Wait. Now I got it. Hang on and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Okay. I’m gonna put you on speaker and keep trying myself in the meantime.”
“Okay.”
Several minutes later, neither of us had found Mom’s IP address.
“Damn,” I exclaimed, frustrated. “I had no problem finding her IP address the last time.”
“Do you think it’s possible she wanted you to find her then?” Steve asked.
I hadn’t thought of that possibility. “I suppose that’s possible. But why would she do that?”
“To fuck with your head,” Steve answered. “It sounds like she’s succeeding.”
I gritted my teeth; what Steve had just suggested sounded exactly like something Mom would do. I closed my eyes and cursed inwardly. Why did I ever think I could outsmart her? It very much looked like the price I would have to pay for that was with Neera’s life.
I fisted my hand and slammed it on the coffee table so hard the laptop became momentarily airborne. Rachel let out a small yelp and steadied the computer.
“We can’t let her,” I said to no one in particular. “We have to get our hands on her before she kills Neera. She will kill Neera. It’s only a matter of time.”
“What are you talking about?” Steve asked from the phone that I had placed on the floor in front of the sofa. “Why do you say she’ll kill the kid?”
So he didn’t read the email then. I reached for the phone so that he would be able to hear me better and said, “Because she has her. She’s abducted Neera.”
“She has the kid?” Steve sounded shocked. “How the hell did she manage to make that happen?”
I sighed heavily, feeling suddenly small and helpless, like I had gone back in time and was only nine years old, not 19. “Your guess is as good as mine…”
20
“We have to get the authorities involved,” Steve said when I had finished updating him on the latest developments in the nightmare that was my life. “You do see how we have no other choice but to do that now, don’t you, Shane?”
I exhaled and felt like crying. How the hell did it come to this? How the hell did Mom once again get the upper hand? How could I have let it happen? But Steve was right; I couldn’t risk Neera’s life by not involving the authorities. Them tracking down Mom was her only chance for survival. I really didn’t think Mom’s IP address was untraceable to the FBI. One way or another, they’d find her.
“Yeah, I know,” I murmured, defeated. “As soon as I hang up, I’m gonna contact Shepard.” Shepard McHenry was the FBI agent in charge of Mom’s ongoing investigation.
“Do that right now,” Steve said. “Call me later and let me know what happens. I’ll have my phone on me.”
“Will do.” I hung up and speed-dialed Agent McHenry. He didn’t pick up, so I left a message, telling him it was extremely urgent that he called me back; I had information about Mom.
“We should have involved him right away,” Rachel said admonishingly, her hands on her hips. “I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you.” She huffed and shook her head. “It’s not as easy to find someone’s IP address as you think.”
“Maybe not,” I muttered, feeling like an ass. I wasn’t about to argue when what she was saying was true; the FBI had far more resources to track down Mom. I was such an idiot. What the hell had I been thinking?
My phone rang then. It was Agent McHenry, returning my call.
“Hello, Agent McHenry?” I said as I answered the phone.
“Speaking,” the agent said in that gravelly voice that always made me think of Sean Connery but without the British accent. “What’ve you got for me, son?”
I steeled myself as I got ready to give him an abbreviated version of what I had been up to lately, culminating with Mom’s abduction of Neera.
“Forward the emails to my account,” he said when I was done, “and I’ll have one of our tech guys find her. Then come down here with the computer. We’ll go from there.”
There wasn’t much I could do but to follow his instructions if I wanted to have a chance to save Neera, so I did.
An hour later, I walked into the downtown FBI field office building where Shepard worked. Obviously, I had left my gun at home for this meeting. Rachel had reluctantly stayed in the penthouse because she was feeling sick, only letting me go alone after having me promise repeatedly that I would tell the agents everything now.
If she didn’t know how much I cared about getting Neera back safe and sound, she probably would have forced herself to come with me.
Shepard McHenry was a large, black man with a face that matched the powerful, manly voice. He had weathered skin and a thick head of curly dark hair with only a hint of gray in it. As always, he wore an expensive-looking suit in some blue-gray color that seemed custom-made to his wide, muscular frame. He glanced up when I entered his small office. He motioned for me to have a seat on one of the chairs facing his desk.
“So, tell me, what were you thinking when you set this whole disaster in motion?” he asked me, eyeing me with hooded, dark, intelligent eyes. He held a pen with his big hands that he slowly twirled with his thick fingers.
I shrugged, feeling defensive. I thought he was exaggerating; my plan had hardly been a disaster. Except for the part when Mom had snatched Neera, it looked like everything was working out fine. But I knew better than to put my thoughts into words.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to say anything because a man with a carrot-colored crew cut stuck his head into Shepard’s office then. “We’re heading over there now. You coming?”
“No, you can take care of it without me,” the agent answered. “She’s probably gone by now. If it looks like she’s still there, call me and I’ll be down there ASAP. I need to talk to this kid right now.”
Carrot-top gave a curt nod, then retracted his head and disappeared. Shepard returned his attention to me.
“So, you were saying?” he urged me, one thick black brow cocked.
I guess I wasn’t let off the hook that easily. Sighing inwardly, I told him that I didn’t trust that the authorities wouldn’t screw up the operation. I had worried that someone would leak the truth to the press and Mom would know we were tricking her. I only had this one chance to get her.
“I mean, it’s like they say,” I finished, “too many cooks spoil the soup, right? I don’t think she took Neera because she suddenly found out the movie production is all a hoax. But now that it’s out in the open, I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time until she does.”
“She won’t hear it from any of my guys, that I can assure you.”
“Let’s hope so,” I muttered, more to myself than to him. “Where did you find her?”
“She was in Astoria, Queens, when she sent you the latest email. My team is heading over there now. We’ll know if she’s still there shortly. But if she’s as smart as I think she is, she will be long gone.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right about that.”
“The next time she emails Larry—assuming she’ll bother to do so again”—he gazed at me with a pointed look—“we’ll be able to get to her destination much, much sooner, which means the chance that we’ll be able to find her is much, much greater.”
“I’m sure you’ll hear from her again,” I muttered, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. The more I considered how stupid it was for me to have assumed we’d be able to get our hands on Mom on our own, the worse I felt. Obviously, the authorities could be there in literally a minute or two. All they’d need to do was to radio a nearby patrol car. Mom wouldn’t be able to get far in such a short amount of time, with or without Neera.
“Your sister’s life might depend on you being right on that one,” he said ominously.
“She will,” I said with more confidence than I was feeling.
