Next To Die Read online

  Shit. That wasn’t what Joe wanted to hear. “Thank you.” He hung up and dialed Penny’s cell again and got her voice mail . . . again.

  She always turned her phone on the minute she left work.

  Joe set the proposal aside, snatched up his car keys, and left the office.

  Veronica regarded him inquiringly as he marched through the outer office. “I have a personal emergency,” he told her. “Tell the XO and senior chief that I had to leave.”

  “Is something wrong?” she called after him.

  Some questions didn’t merit answers, and that was one of them. He breezed by her, riddled with doubts and fears.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Hannah marveled, glancing from the computer monitor into Rafe’s glowing eyes. “The caller is right.”

  At four o’clock that afternoon, the FBI had received a tip from an officer at Central Command who claimed to know what the four victims of the ricin murders had in common. They had all been investigated by CENTCOM for incidences involving friendly fire. It had taken Hannah and Rafe only two hours of research to verify that the claim was true.

  Rafe stroked his chin, and Hannah waited, struggling for the kind of patience he exhibited. “Perhaps we have our motive,” he suggested carefully.

  Hannah struggled to chase his thoughts. “As in . . . somebody thought these four men were guilty, even though three of them were found innocent of any negligence?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, we’re looking for someone in Central Command, maybe, who thought that these four officers got off too lightly?”

  “Perhaps,” Rafe conceded. “It’s a question of accountability. If our killer believes that leaders should be held accountable for errors made on the field of battle, then we have a motive. In that case, the killer is probably a military figure himself, someone with access to the investigations and the information coming out of them.”

  “An insider,” Hannah agreed, fighting to contain her excitement. “But he’s got to be emotionally invested in this issue to actually kill someone.”

  “Perhaps he’s a veteran who was a victim of negligent leadership,” Rafe suggested.

  “Or he lost a loved one in a friendly-fire incident.”

  “Ah,” said Rafe with a wag of his finger. “If that’s the case, then the killer was probably vocal before he became vindictive. His protests would have found their way into the news, prior to the date of the first murder.”

  Hannah turned to formulate a request for information from their analysts when the phone rang. When it was after hours, she ordinarily let her voice mail pick up. Something prompted her to take the call. “Special Agent Lindstrom.”

  “This is Joe Montgomery,” said a grim male voice. As she pictured Luther’s commander, the blood drained from her face. If something had happened to Luther . . .

  “Penny Price is missing.”

  Penny, not Luther. “Where—where was she last seen?” Hannah stammered, feeling guilty for her relief.

  “At the hospital when she left work an hour ago. She tried to call me from her cell phone. I heard a scuffle in the background and then a man’s voice.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Standing next to her car in the hospital’s parking garage.” He spoke with gunfire urgency.

  “We’ll be right there,” Hannah promised, sensing his desperation.

  As she hung up the phone, Rafe rolled wordlessly to his feet and reached for his coat.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Penny awoke in a room as cold as a tomb and scarcely more comfortable. The musty scent reminded her of a basement, but she couldn’t tell for sure, as her eyes were tightly blindfolded. She lurched upright, hearing the squeak of a metal bed, feeling the thin mattress beneath her. The coppery taste in her mouth brought back the memory of being chloroformed.

  The blindfold, which was knotted tightly at the back of her head, blocked out even a suggestion of sunlight. The strips that bound her wrists behind her elicited waves of panic that intensified as she struggled to free herself.

  She had to pee. Penny mastered the urge, crossed her legs, and forced herself to calm down.

  What’s going to happen to me? The terrifying question overrode her self-imposed calm. She rolled into a ball, shivering with bone-deep vulnerability.

  At last, the sound she dreaded reached her ears: the slow, calculating step of a heavyset man.

  A key scraped into a lock, which gave with a click. The door creaked open. Behind the blindfold, Penny detected a beam of light. Her captor shut the door and relocked it.

  For a nerve-fraying moment, he regarded her wordlessly. “Penelope Price,” he finally said, in a voice so devoid of emotion that it made her bones feel brittle.

  “Yes.” It would gain her nothing to deny the truth. He had her purse, her identification. Perhaps if she was cooperative, uncomplaining, he would let her live. But then she remembered the fate of her father and Eric, and panic spiked anew.

  At his approach, she shrank against the wall. She could sense him standing in front of her, close enough to kill her with his bare hands. “What do you know about the ricin taken from BioTech in July of 2002?”

  Was that all he wanted, information? “Eric Tomlinson sold it to pay his sick wife’s medical bills,” she divulged.

  “Sold it to whom?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The blow came out of nowhere. She landed facedown on the mattress with her left ear ringing. To her utter chagrin, she felt a wet warmth dampen the mattress under her hip. Oh, God.

  “Does that awaken any memories?” the steel-cold voice taunted. It sounded as if he reveled in her humiliation.

  Don’t cry. Don’t! She sensed that pleading and crying would gain her nothing. “No,” she answered, pushing herself upright. She was only human. “I’m telling the truth. I don’t know who bought the ricin.”

  “What does the FBI know?”

  Penny hesitated. How much allegiance did she owe the Bureau? “They think whoever bought the ricin is responsible for poisoning four military officers. It was in the news,” she added. “I don’t know anything more than that.”

  “What about Eric Tomlinson?”

  She licked her dry lips. “What about him?”

  “What did he tell you when he entered your home?”

  How he know about that? “All he said was that he hadn’t killed my father.”

  “Who did, then?” She could tell by the tone of his voice that he was mocking her.

  “You,” she said with sudden insight. A sharp-pronged rage rose up in her unexpectedly, too swiftly and fiercely to tamp down. She lurched to her knees, encountered a broad chest, opened her mouth, and bit her assailant as hard as she could.

  Yelping in surprise, he gripped her hair by the scalp and yanked her head back. “Fucking bitch!” he growled, flinging her backward so that her skull struck the wall and stars twinkled behind her blindfold.

  Penny collapsed, heart pounding, terrified that he would kill her now. What had she done? It took every ounce of self-control to keep from curling into a defensive posture. Better to play possum in the hopes that he left her alone.

  “Bitch!” he said again. “Shit!” With more mutterings, he wheeled away, presumably to stanch the blood she’d drawn and now tasted in her mouth. Before he was out the door, there came a buzzing noise.

  It took Penny a second to realize that the man’s cell phone was ringing. “What do you want?” he snarled.

  The faintest thread of a man’s voice reached Penny’s ears.

  “I told you, I’ve got it in hand.”

  The caller made some type of request.

  “What do you care?” the abductor demanded. “It’s Penelope,” he added, startling Penny by mentioning her name. “Penelope Price.”

  The caller’s incredulity was obvious, though Penny couldn’t hear his words. Whatever he said caused her abductor to return to the bed. She fought the instinct to cringe.

  “So what i
f she is?” her captor retorted.

  “—me, Ritter.” The caller’s voice was suddenly audible.

  Penny had a name now—Ritter. Why did that sound familiar?

  “—make the connection,” the caller continued. “You’ll need to get rid of her.”

  Oh, God! Penny gasped in horror. There was only one way to interpret his words.

  Ritter didn’t hear her gasp. He was busy bickering. “I thought you didn’t want me offing anyone; now you want me to?” he growled in disbelief. “You owe me another ten grand.”

  The caller responded in outrage.

  “Until I get the money wired to me,” Ritter countered, “she remains alive. If you piss me off enough, I’ll expose you myself.”

  “Damn you to hell, Ritter. . . . wire it as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” Ritter sneered. He swiveled from the bed and walked away, slamming and locking the door behind him.

  Oh, God. Penny lay on her side, quivering in terror. Ritter had been ordered to kill her. But why? Unless the caller considered her a serious threat. Nausea roiled up suddenly, making her heave and spit up bile. Her stomach was empty.

  She fell back and gripped the mattress, thrashing her head in denial. What would Lia do without her? And what about Joe? Would he ever realize how much she’d come to love him?

  “Would you like more coffee?” inquired Special Agent Valentino.

  “No, thanks,” Joe demurred.

  Both FBI agents and Joe sat at Penny’s dinette table while Ophelia paced from the kitchen to the living room and back again. Vinny stood against the pantry door, watching her with concern in his eyes. It was well past midnight.

  “How do we even know the kidnapper is going to call?” Lia wailed, her eyes puffy, her chin trembling. “How do we know he’s not just going to kill her, like he killed Eric?” Her voice broke on the word killed. Joe gritted his teeth.

  “Eric knew more than Penny does,” said Hannah, even as she scanned the security video from the parking garage. “She has limited liability.”

  Joe envied the agent’s ability to remain cerebral in this moment of crisis. She and her watchful sidekick had descended on the parking garage with the forensics team. They’d swarmed Penny’s car, commandeered the security video, and canvassed potential witnesses.

  But no one had seen anything suspicious.

  Like Hannah, Joe was trained to reason in desperate situations, to keep emotion from clouding his reason. But tonight, he couldn’t think, period.

  He rubbed his forehead, desperate to erase the unbearable thought that Penny could meet the same fate as Eric and her father. Penny, who’d overcome so many odds and still brimmed with optimism. Capable and generous Penny, who’d refused to pity him or even allow him to pity himself. If something happened to her . . .

  When had she stopped being just Penny, his kind and friendly neighbor? Flashes of memories, special moments spent with her since his return from Afghanistan, ran through his mind, but for the life of him, he couldn’t identify the exact moment he started caring for her.

  Penny had changed him, without ever once asking him to change. She had taken root in his life, and in the process, she’d made herself vital to him. How had that happened? He’d never found a woman he couldn’t replace. Forever was a concept he’d thought he’d embrace when he was done with the teams, when the most beautiful, intelligent, and witty woman strolled into his middle years and took his breath away. Penny hadn’t had that kind of effect on him. She’d stolen into his being with plain and gentle stealth. So how could he think of her and forever in the same breath?

  “Excuse me.” Joe pushed back his chair and headed for the door. He needed fresh air to clear his thoughts.

  “Joe!” Lia cried running after him. She caught him by the arm, forcing him to halt. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said anything about Penny being killed.” She hugged him hard, and he found his arms going around her. She was petite like Penny, with the same copper-colored hair. Oh, Jesus. What if he never held Penny in his arms again? His knees went weak as he broke out in a cold sweat.

  “She’s going to be okay, Joe.” Lia looked up at him with faith in her eyes and in her voice. “I know Penny. She’s tough. She can survive anything.”

  “Yeah,” Joe rasped, agreeing because the alternative was just too awful to consider.

  “Found it!” Hannah announced. “Here’s when the lights go out.”

  With a resurgence of hope, Joe released Lia. The two of them hurried to the kitchen to watch over Hannah’s shoulder. The video player was attached to her laptop. “Okay, look at this.”

  They held a collective breath as the second level of the brightly lit parking garage went absolutely dark. The camera panned the broad space, alighting on the flyover from the hospital. A woman crossing the flyover slowed her step. “Is that Penny?” Hannah asked.

  “Yes,” said Joe and Ophelia at the same time.

  A dot of light appeared from the left and bobbed toward her. The camera panned away, frustrating their view.

  “Someone approached her with a flashlight,” Hannah interpreted.

  Joe’s heartbeat bounced off his eardrums as the camera swung back. A shadowy couple moved across the screen, preceded by the beam of light. It illumined Penny’s car and then Penny herself. She had held her right shoulder to her ear as she reached into her purse for her car keys. The camera swung away again.

  “Damn it!” Joe cursed, shuddering with frustration.

  They waited again for the camera to turn. The beam of a flashlight did not come back. There was only a faint bluish glow and a single silhouette. The foursome leaned in.

  “What are we looking at?” Hannah tapped a key to magnify the image. Suddenly, in the glow of a phone’s display, a man’s face came into focus.

  Lia gasped.

  “Gotcha,” said Hannah, depressing a button to capture the image.

  An ice-cold shiver gripped Joe’s spine as he looked at the face of Penny’s abductor—the man who’d killed Eric and possibly her father, too. With his blunt features and short, silver hair, he struck Joe as utterly ruthless. “Who is he?” he demanded as Lia turned away to fling herself into Vinny’s arms.

  “I don’t know,” Hannah admitted. “But if he’s got a record, we’ll get an ID in no time.”

  “He looks familiar,” mused Valentino with a narrowing of his dark eyes. “I’ve seen that face before.”

  Joe’s hopes latched on to that statement. He dragged out a chair to sit down before his legs gave out.

  The creaking of the door jarred Penny from a shallow sleep. Adrenaline spurted through her bloodstream, making it impossible to play possum a second time. She wriggled into the corner of the bed. No, I’m not ready to die.

  Ritter said nothing. Over the awful silence, she thought she detected the chirping of a cricket. Was it still night? She’d lost all sense of time.

  As his heavy tread approached, she cringed, expecting the worst. He fisted her hair, yanking her head closer. To her astonishment, she felt him loosen the knot that kept her blindfold in place. As it slipped free, he shoved her back. She blinked, catching sight of his silhouette but little else.

  The room was black, with just the faintest suggestion of light framing the single window. Something metal gleamed in Ritter’s hand. Penny was blinded by a flash of light. In the next instant, he grabbed her hair again and tied the blindfold back in place.

  “What was that for?” she dared to ask.

  “A memento,” he answered cryptically.

  “What? You mean you take pictures of the people you kill? You are one sick bastard, you know that?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  She knew it wasn’t wise to incite his anger, but she was in a fighting mood. She would not be snuffed out without exhausting every option for survival.

  “Your pictures are going to get you caught one day,” she taunted.

  Her reward was a blow forceful enough to knock her senseless.


  Joe lifted his head off the table and wiped drool surreptitiously from the corner of his mouth. He realized he’d fallen asleep while Special Agent Valentino sat beside him, typing on Hannah’s laptop. “It’s morning,” said the agent without looking at him.

  A glance out the bay window revealed that it was dawn. The sky was the color of charcoal. Tiny flakes of snow pattered the windowpane.

  “How long did I sleep?” Joe asked, chagrined. Navy SEALs weren’t supposed to sleep while someone else did the work.

  “Just an hour or so. Hannah’s resting on the couch,” he added, hinting that they ought to keep their voices down. “Ophelia and Vinny have left for Portsmouth. She’s going to broadcast Penny’s disappearance on the morning news and plead for the public’s assistance.”

  Joe rubbed his scratchy eyes. “Any developments?” he asked wearily.

  “Actually, we’ve heard from our analysts,” the agent admitted with enough reluctance to make Joe’s heart stop.

  “And?”

  “We have an ID on the kidnapper.” He met Joe’s gaze at last, his midnight eyes inscrutable.

  “Tell me,” Joe demanded, bracing himself.

  “He’s Buzz Ritter, former state police officer turned mercenary. He’s wanted in fourteen states for assault, murder, theft, and embezzlement.”

  Joe swallowed against his suddenly dry throat. “How many people has he killed?”

  Valentino shook his head to convey the silent message You don’t want to know.

  “You think he’s going to kill Penny.” It wasn’t a question, because Joe already knew the answer, could feel it twisting his gut into knots. “Lia won’t be able to live without her.” He jammed trembling fingers through his hair. “Hell, I don’t know if I can,” he admitted with a humorless laugh.

  He would never have said as much to anyone but Penny. But the agent’s patient gaze made him confess, “When I came home from my last mission, I was a wreck. I wanted to crawl into the bottom of a bottle and stay there.” He shook his head. “Penny . . . I don’t know how she did it, but she dragged me out of that hole. She doesn’t deserve to have this happen to her,” he choked out.