He zipped the bag closed.
He was ready.
One last time he peered through the blinds to the FBI agents standing near their cars.
Useless!
He’d always known that if you want a job done right, you do it yourself.
As soon as Frick and Frack left for the day, he was outta here.
What if you’re wrong? What if Shannon Flannery has nothing to do with Dani’s disappearance?
Then he’d keep looking. Endlessly. Until he found his kid.
Chapter 5
Who was this creep?
Carefully, not daring to let on that she was awake, Dani cracked open an eye and studied her abductor. It was night, he was driving, the features of his face illuminated by the greenish glow of the dash lights, the big tires of the truck humming over the asphalt of the interstate.
She was scared, more scared than she’d ever been in all of her thirteen years, and a part of her wanted to fall into a bajillion pieces and cry aloud, wailing for her father. But she didn’t, wouldn’t give the jerk the satisfaction. Oh, she let him think she was even more terrified than she really was, just to make him believe that she wouldn’t fight back, that she was too much of a wuss to try and figure out a way to escape, but all the while her mind was working and she was intent on not letting her terror paralyze her.
No way.
She knew that if she was going to get out of this alive, she’d have to rely on her own wits and ability.
But she was handcuffed, her wrists bound together in front of her, which really complicated things.
She’d taken tae kwon do since she was four, had a black belt and won a lot of competitions. Sh
e knew how to ride a galloping horse bareback, shoot a .22 pretty straight, and her dad, who’d been with some elite army group, had even demonstrated to her where the vulnerable points were on a man if anyone tried to grab her.
But she’d been stupid, not on her guard when this jerk had nabbed her right outside the cybercafe. The cybercafe! Crap, she’d been an idiot. She felt her face burn with embarrassment. She’d always felt that she was fairly street-smart, that she could hold her own in almost any kind of competition or fight, but this…this weirdo had tricked her. She was convinced that he’d pretended to be BJC27, or had somehow found out about Dani’s e-mailing Bethany Jane Crandall. But how? She’d been so careful.
Now she felt like a complete and utter idiot.
But she couldn’t worry about that right now, not when she had to figure out how to escape. How she’d gotten into this mess was over and done with. She’d made a mistake—maybe even the blunder of a lifetime—but she wasn’t dead yet and she was working on a plan to free herself. She just hadn’t figured out all the details. And she wasn’t going to forget about the bloody knife she’d seen in the back of the van, the one that he’d hidden when they’d pulled over and he’d thought she wasn’t looking. Then there was the huge black trash bag stuffed to the gills—with something. She didn’t want to think there was a small body curled up inside the opaque plastic, or the remains of another child he could’ve nabbed.
She nearly gagged at the thought.
Please, God, help me.
She started to worry her lower lip, a habit that had started when her mom had gotten sick. Now she stopped the gentle gnawing and refused to show any sign of weakness or that she was awake. She had to lull this jerk into complacency.
Through nearly closed eyes, she studied his features in the eerie green glimmer of light. Straight nose, deep-set eyes, hard-as-steel mouth, a beard shadowing his jaw. He kept the speed between fifty-five and sixty. The radio was turned on to an all-news channel. She’d gleaned that the transmission was from a station in Santa Rosa, California, which made sense. She’d been keeping track of the mileage, casting glimpses at the odometer when she could, and she figured, from what she’d seen through the window, that she was somewhere in Northern California.
He hadn’t driven the easy way, though. Originally, he’d headed east, crossing into Idaho where, just after midnight on the outskirts of a tiny little town about forty miles from Boise, if the highway signs could be believed, he’d pulled into a long, rutted lane that led through tall, bleached grass and a straggly thatch of skinny, dead-looking trees. Grass and weeds had brushed the undercarriage and the van had bucked and bounced over rocks and potholes. The long drive had opened to a patch of knee-high yellow grass surrounded by a few desolate and obviously abandoned buildings.
He’d parked near a dilapidated garage with a sagging roof and boarded-up windows. After one swift glance in her direction, he’d climbed out of the van and there, in the weak moonlight, stretched. He was tall. Kind of muscular and she’d figured his age around thirty, maybe even close to forty.
She’d watched him approach the garage, all the while scrounging in his pocket. He had come up with something that glinted in the weak light. A key. Quickly he’d unlatched a padlock and the old doors of the garage had creaked open. He’d returned to the van, opened the back doors and pulled out his duffel bag, tool box and two boxes.
Oh, God, she’d wondered, did he plan on the two of them staying here? Her skin had crawled at the thought of spending any time alone with him in the neglected two-storied farmhouse that was, in her estimation, straight out of a horror film.
How would she get away?
Where would she go?