Hostage Zero

Sjogren sighed noisily. “I. Don’t. Know.” He spoke as if to a slow child.

“What could he have given? You said he didn’t know anything.”

“Everybody knows something. In this case, he knows, for example, where the drop-off point was.”

“Where?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Good catch, she thought. “No.”

He smiled. “It’s the same spot where the kid was shot. Same spot where my guys disappeared.”

It dawned on her in a rush. “Somebody attacked them,” she said.

He acknowledged the possibility with his eyebrows. “That’s what I’m thinking. Jimmy Henry gave them just enough to figure out a big one.”

Brandy closed her eyes. “So, where do we stand?”

Sjogren made a show of crossing his arms and his legs. “Maybe we can find the guy that owns the camping gear,” he said. “If we do, I guess there’s a glimmer that we might be able to press him for information. Tit for tat. Quid pro quo.”

“Is it wise to bring another stranger into the loop like that?” Brandy asked. “I mean, just by asking the questions, you’re going to make him wonder…” She cut herself off in response to his overplayed look of patience. “Oh, of course,” she said, looking down. Answering questions would be the poor man’s last earthly act. “But you still have to find the body. Someone still has to take care of him. I still don’t understand what went wrong there.”

Sjogren grew uncomfortable. “Well, now, that’s interesting, too. We’re not looking for the kid’s body anymore. We’re looking for the kid. We think he’s alive.”

Brandy’s jaw dropped. “Oh, my God.”

“I pressed our friend Mitch Ponder on it pretty hard, and it turns out that Jenkins couldn’t bring himself to shoot a child. Instead, he carried the kid out into the woods and pumped him with an overdose of sedative. He thought it would take care of him. He fired a shot in the air for the benefit of the others, and they left.”

“This is what qualifies for ‘professional’ in your firm?” Brandy asked. She wanted to regain control of the conversation.

Sjogren drew his forefinger from the crook of his folded arm as if drawing a weapon from a shoulder holster, and he pointed it at her. “You’d best be careful throwing that word around, missy,” he said. His cheeks and forehead glowed red. “Until you’ve done some of the wet work you order, you ought to keep your judgments to yourself. I’ll make good what needs to be made good, but you need to remember that you and your boss are two different people. He crosses me, I might take it. You cross me, and I might just give you an inside look at the kind of work I do.”

Brandy broke eye contact.

Sjogren said, “I’m going to sniff around to find this tent-dweller. The fact that he moved out without packing tells me he knows something. My not-insubstantial gut tells me that if I find him, I’ll find the boy.”

“And when you do, will you…” She let her voice trail off, confident that he would catch her meaning.

“You can pull me off of this thing anytime you want,” Sjogren said. “But unless you do, I’ve got a job to finish. You want me to stop looking and just let the kid go?”

Brandy closed her eyes and inhaled. How could it possibly have come to this? “No,” she said, her lids still closed. “I want you to finish it.” The words seemed to come from someone else. Seven years ago, when she was graduating from Georgetown with her degree in political science, the thought of ordering the murder of a child would have been inconceivable. Now she’d just done it for the second time in less than a week.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jonathan entered the mansion at ten-thirty, feeling human again after a very long, very hot shower. The two hours of sleep didn’t hurt, either. Officially, the massive colonial-style behemoth held the administrative offices for Resurrection House and housed Venice and her family. Unofficially, to the rest of the town, it would always be the Gravenow mansion, Jonathan’s childhood home. He’d happily deeded it away at his first chance for the whopping sum of one dollar.

Its towering, wainscoted memories were worthy enough of forgetting that Jonathan rarely entered the place anymore. When he did, it was only for a very good reason.

He barely slowed as he strode the ornately inlaid foyer and crossed under the massive staircase to open the narrow door that led to the basement. Jonathan tried not to remember the days when the basement suites housed teams of servants. Back then, they all worked for Mama Alexander, who, with her daughter Venice, had qualified for better-ventilated quarters on the mansion’s third floor.