Chương 5
At a gray service door, Victor put a black wristband around her wrist.
It was too tight.
She complained.
He told her it would only be for a minute.
They entered a service corridor.
Then Victor saw someone.
Lily did not know who.
Victor became frightened.
He pulled her quickly around a corner.
She tried to go back.
She grabbed his jacket.
Her wristband caught on something and tore.
Victor took her into Claire’s suite, told her to stay there, engaged the privacy lock, and left through an adjoining service door.
Claire found Lily several minutes later after staff overrode the main door.
“Did Victor hurt you on purpose?” Ellis asked.
Lily thought about it.
“No.”
“Did he scare you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you why you had to hide?”
“He said, ‘Don’t let Claire see you.’”
Claire heard that from across the lounge.
Her expression hardened.
Ellis interviewed Victor separately.
Daniel could not hear the conversation.
He watched instead.
Victor spoke for nearly forty minutes.
Once he put his head in his hands.
Once he pointed toward Claire.
Twice Ellis left and returned with another officer.
Finally she approached Daniel.
“Mr. Kane says he believed Ms. Donovan was involved in a plan to abduct Lily.”
Daniel stared at her.
“Based on what?”
“A message he received.”
“From whom?”
“He won’t say.”
“Then arrest him.”
Ellis’s expression did not change.
“That isn’t how this works.”
“He lied to my daughter, put something around her wrist, took her through a restricted corridor and locked her in a room.”
“We’re aware.”
“Then what are we discussing?”
“We’re discussing whether he was committing an offense, attempting to prevent one, or both.”
Daniel looked toward Victor.
“He could have called me.”
“He says he did not trust your phone.”
“He could have called police.”
“He says he did not trust airport security.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Yes,” Ellis said. “It is.”
Daniel looked at her.
The detective was not defending Victor.
She was refusing to simplify him.
Daniel found that irritating.
Probably because she was right.
“What was in the message?”
Ellis showed him a photograph.
It had been taken through glass.
Lily sat in the lounge beside her silver suitcase, reading a paperback.
Tonight.
Before Daniel went downstairs.
Beneath the photograph were six words.
DONOVAN HAS THE GIRL. MOVE NOW.
Daniel read it twice.
“Who sent this?”
“Mr. Kane claims it came through an encrypted messaging service from the source he used while investigating your company.”
“And he believed it?”
“He says the source had been accurate before.”
“Claire didn’t have Lily.”
“No.”
“She was downstairs with me ten minutes before this.”
“We know.”
Daniel looked toward Claire.
She sat with her elbows on her knees now, broken sunglasses on the table beside her.
“So somebody wanted Victor to think Claire was taking Lily.”
“That’s one possibility.”
“And the tracker?”
Ellis’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“That’s where this becomes interesting.”
The device in Lily’s luggage tag was registered to a batch purchased two years earlier by Donovan Aeronautics for executive-security testing.
The batch had supposedly been destroyed after a vendor vulnerability was discovered.
Victor had signed the destruction certification.
Claire had approved it.
Daniel stared at the detective.
“So either Victor lied then—”
“Or someone retained devices without his knowledge.”
“Or Claire did.”
“Or someone wants us to believe she did.”
Daniel rubbed his face.
It was after midnight.
Lily had fallen asleep across two lounge chairs with Daniel’s jacket beneath her head.
The sight of her white sneakers extending beyond the blanket supplied by airport staff made the whole situation feel obscene.
Children should not become evidence.
Ellis sat across from him.
“You fired Kane because he was investigating unauthorized access?”
“I fired him because he refused to tell me who his source was.”
“Why did that matter?”
“I run a security company. Anonymous intelligence doesn’t become reliable because somebody says trust me.”
“But he was right about something?”
Daniel looked toward the windows.
Rain had weakened.
“He found access anomalies.”
“And you investigated?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“We traced them to a software migration.”
“Did you?”
Daniel looked back at her.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’ve spent twenty years listening to people tell me what investigations concluded. Sometimes they tell me what someone else told them an investigation concluded.”
Daniel felt irritation rise.
Then something colder replaced it.
His IT director had handled the review.
Evan Cole.
Daniel had known Evan for eleven years.
Best man at his wedding.
Godfather to Lily.
The man who had reset Daniel’s credentials in Phoenix.
Daniel reached for his phone.
Ellis stopped him.
“Who are you about to call?”
Daniel looked at her.
“My IT director.”
“Name?”
“Evan Cole.”
Victor stood so quickly that the officer beside him reached for his arm.
“No.”
Everyone turned.
Victor stared at Daniel.
“Do not call Evan.”
Daniel felt his stomach drop.
Claire whispered something under her breath.
Ellis crossed the room.
“Why?”
Victor looked exhausted.
“Because Evan is my source.”
Daniel did not understand the sentence at first.
Then he did.
And wished he hadn’t.
“No.”
Victor nodded.
“No.”
“Daniel—”
“No.”
Victor looked away.
Daniel stood.
Evan had held Lily in the hospital the day she was born because Daniel’s hands were shaking too badly.
Evan had taught her to ride a bicycle.
Evan kept a spare key to Daniel’s house.
Daniel felt suddenly stupid in a way that was almost physical.
All the systems.
All the protocols.
All the money spent teaching companies how to protect executives from strangers.
And he had given a key to the man who might have been watching his daughter.
“Where is he?” Ellis asked.
Victor looked at her.
“I don’t know.”
Daniel already had the answer.
“He was supposed to fly with us.”
Claire stood.
“What?”
Daniel looked at the empty chair near the bar where Evan’s carry-on had been sitting earlier.
It was gone.
May you like
“He texted me an hour ago. Said he was delayed at the office.”
Ellis asked for the message.
