Distortion (Moonlighters Series) (30 page)

“You’re making a big mistake,” Miller said. Blood was oozing on his lip and cheekbone.

“I don’t think so. I think you and your thugs are the ones making the mistakes now. Take me to her before I blow out each of your major organs. And don’t test me, because I’ve been dreaming about doing it for years.”

Miller’s forehead glistened with sweat. “Go up another mile. Take a right onto a dirt road. You’ll come to a red mailbox. Take a right there.”

Jaw popping, Michael pulled back onto the street.

CHAPTER 57

A
mber and Steven cut the ties binding Juliet’s hands and put her in front of the computer, her feet bound. Then Amber sent Steven to the kitchen to make her something to eat. Amber had already figured out Bob’s password on the first account, but the security question had stumped her.

“Best Vacation,” Bob had listed as his hint.

Juliet knew that the sooner she gave them what they wanted, the sooner she’d have her kids back. She closed her eyes and tried to think.
Her
favorite vacation was the one they had taken to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee with the boys. They’d camped out on a lake and fished and boated and hiked. The place was called Dawn’s View Campground. Could the answer be Dawnsview?

She typed that in. That wasn’t it.

“They only allow four tries an hour, and then they lock you out,” Amber said.

The answer probably had something to do with his vacations
with Amber. Somewhere in the Bahamas, probably. “Why do you need me? Where did he go with you?” Juliet bit out.

Amber shrugged. “Nassau. Mexico City. Kuala Lumpur. Peru.”

Juliet swallowed the sour taste in her mouth. “Which one of those trips was his favorite?”

Amber’s lips grew thin. “He didn’t use those. I already tried them.”

Juliet hoped that meant that his adulterous paradise wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.

Juliet told herself not to care. Her children were depending on her to manage the next few minutes wisely and carefully. She racked her brain for other vacations. There had been the one they had taken to Hawaii on their tenth anniversary. They had rented a house on Kauai. Bob had spent their first day in Kilauea sleeping, but after that he’d done whatever she wanted. They had gone to Moku’ae’ae Island and watched the exotic birds, sat for hours watching the geysers at Spouting Horn, sunbathed at Waiakalua, snorkeled at Lawa’i Beach, hiked to Ho’opi’i Falls. One day they’d taken a helicopter tour over the Na Pali Coast. Juliet would never forget looking over at Bob as they hovered over the Wai’ale’ale Crater with its threethousand-foot waterfalls, seeing his eyes tearing at the sheer magnificence of the sight. He had smiled at her and kissed her. “These are the good days,” he whispered.

He hadn’t had Amber back then, had he? Maybe that was before his descent. Maybe some of what they had then was real.

If his favorite was Hawaii, what would the favorite vacation clue be? She typed in “Kauai.”

An error message came up again.

“That’s two tries,” Amber said, her voice growing sharper. “Think!”

Juliet tried. Maybe it was more specific. She tried to type in Wai’ale’ale, but the log-in screen wouldn’t allow apostrophes. She backed up and tried it without them. She typed in “Waialeale.”

Suddenly the beach ball began to spin, and Amber sprang to her feet. “It’s working! What did you type in?”

“Wai’ale’ale, without the apostrophes. It’s a crater in Hawaii, where we went together on a helicopter ride.”

Amber’s smile faded. She kept her eyes focused on the screen. The account came up, and Juliet clicked on it to open it.

All of Bob’s recent deposits were revealed in living color: $75,000 in May, $190,000 in June, $235,000 in July, $400,000 in August.

The balance was just over fifty million. How in the world?

Amber pushed Juliet out of her chair and took her seat. “Move. I can make the transfer to our accounts.”

Juliet went back to her seat against the wall, relieved that she’d given Amber what she wanted. But she’d said
accounts.
Plural. There were other hurdles yet to cross.

“Steven,” Amber called as she worked. “Tie her up again.”

Steven got a roll of duct tape and led Juliet to a chair. He bound her hands in front of her, then wrapped her ankles together. She didn’t fight, hoping this was just temporary until they’d transferred the money and needed her for the next account.

As Amber worked on making the transfer, Juliet said, “My children. Call your partners now. Tell them I did what you told me to do. Tell them to bring my children.”

“Shut up,” Steven said. “We’ll do it when we’re ready.”

Juliet stared at Amber. “If you loved him, why would you hurt his kids? You know he loved them.”

“Call it payback,” Amber said through her teeth as she typed.

“Payback for what?”

“Never mind.”

Juliet dwelt on that for a moment. What did she mean? Had Bob betrayed Amber in some way? He must have, if she’d been part of the group who’d killed him. What could have caused her to do that?

Steven walked across the room and stood behind Amber, looking over her shoulder. “That’s a lot of money.”

Amber looked up at him. “I told you I’m hungry.”

“You called me in here!”

“Well, go back. I haven’t eaten all day.”

Steven looked reluctant, but he went back to the kitchen. He glanced back over his shoulder as he left the room.

So Amber clearly didn’t want Steven to know how much money was involved. And that meant that Steven wasn’t intended to get this money, or not much of it, anyway. Miller had also kept him in the dark at the house, not telling him what was in the boxes he was helping load.

That must mean they paid Steven a set amount and had no intention of sharing Bob’s cash with him.

Amber whispered, “Yes!” and leaned back in her chair as her transfer of funds processed. “For a while there, I thought it was all gone. He almost lost it all for us.”

Juliet stayed quiet as Amber completed the transaction and navigated to another bank website. She used the same password and security question, and got in without Juliet. Juliet sat quietly until she couldn’t bear it any longer. “You said he almost lost it for all of you. How did he almost lose it?”

Amber didn’t answer for a long moment. Finally, she swiveled in her chair and looked at her. “He found out about the DEA probe and he wanted out. He threatened to burn the house down—close the accounts, give all that cash anonymously to some charity or something. He was going to cut his losses and dump everything.”,

Juliet frowned at her. “There still would have been a paper trail.”

“Right. We tried to tell him, but he was panicked. He was making bad decisions.”

“Then why is there a delivery on its way?”

Amber smiled. “So it
was
you. What did you do? Break into my car and steal my phone?”

Juliet didn’t answer.

“Doesn’t matter now,” Amber said. “Bob would have aborted that delivery, but we wanted to take it. Thanks to you, we had to abort anyway. But we’ve got all this.”

Juliet fought against the hope that Bob had had a change of heart, but she couldn’t help herself. Maybe it was about repentance. Maybe he truly hadn’t meant for it to go this far.

She thought back to his last days. He had been brooding, especially that Friday, but she’d thought it was about Holly moving again. Had there been a war going on in his mind? Had he been in over his head, fearing that there was no way out without going to prison?

Somehow, that helped her. It brought back a little bit of the real Bob, the Bob she’d thought she knew. Maybe his conscience had plagued him. Maybe he’d realized what he was doing to his kids and his wife. Maybe he realized how wrong this whole situation was.

Tears sprang to her eyes. That didn’t justify any of it. It didn’t make it easier to accept. But it was something she could tell Zach and Abe. That their father had cared about them. That he had tried to turn back.

Since finding out what he’d done, she had wondered if any of his Christianity was true. Had it all been a cover? A way to network and look honest?

Or had he truly loved Jesus, but found ways to compartmentalize the sin in his life as so many others did? Could he have been a Christian and still been involved in drug trafficking? Could he have truly loved God and still done something that would devastate so many lives?

The corners of her mouth trembled. “Did he talk . . . about his faith?”

Amber looked back at her, eyes narrowed. “Give me a break. What do you care? He cheated on you, lied to you.”

“I care about his soul,” Juliet whispered.

Amber laughed. “That’s priceless. So you’d rather he didn’t rot in hell?”

Juliet thought that over for a moment. Did she want him punished eternally for his crimes? No, the truth was she didn’t. She still loved the part of him she knew.

“I don’t want anybody to rot in hell. Even you. I just want to know what he chose. If he was backing out, maybe he’d come to the end of himself and realized he needed a Savior.”

Amber gave a disgusted laugh. “He said you were a religious Pollyanna. It made him crazy.” She executed the transfer, left that bank’s website, and found the next one. “I swear,” she said as she typed, “ever since Joe Hogan’s death, Bob was the most miserable successful person I’ve ever seen.”

Juliet couldn’t swallow. “Then . . . was he involved in Joe’s murder?”

“No. He didn’t know about it until it was done. It all almost ended then, and he’d barely gotten started.”

Relief flooded Juliet’s heart.

“That whole belief system did a number on Bob’s mind. It almost ruined everything.”

“It’s not just a belief system. It’s truth.”

Amber shrugged and focused on the computer. “Truth is different depending on who you’re talking to.”

“No, it’s not,” Juliet said. “There’s only one truth. You can disagree with the truth of gravity, but if you jump off a twenty-story building, you’ll find out real quick just how absolute gravity is.”

Amber gave Juliet a mocking look. “So are you seriously trying to convert me? Trying to convince me to leave the money alone so God won’t zap me?”

“God doesn’t zap people,” Juliet said. “He’s actually ready to forgive you. I don’t particularly like that aspect of God’s grace when it applies to someone like you, but I like that it applies to me.”

Amber shook her head. “He told me you were like this.”

“Like what?”

“That you would try to convert a mouse you found in your attic.”

So he’d mocked her. Why was she even surprised?

“He said you had a rigid sense of right and wrong. It messed with his head. That was part of his downfall.”

Maybe it was his salvation, Juliet thought. She realized she might never know in her lifetime if Bob was a true Christian or not—the evidence proved otherwise—or whether he’d repented and called out to Jesus to save him in those last days. But the possibility was something she could give her children.

But Amber had told her too much. Why was she talking so freely, knowing that what she’d told Juliet could condemn her? There could only be one reason.

Amber didn’t intend to give Juliet the chance to repeat what she’d said. They were planning to kill her and her children.

CHAPTER 58

M
ichael drove the van to the red mailbox, then pulled over and stuffed Miller’s mouth with a rag he found in the van, and duct taped his mouth. Miller’s eye was swelling and the skin of his face was scraped bloody. He seemed to have lost his fight, but Michael didn’t take his stillness for granted.

Using his Bluetooth earpiece, he called Agent Blue, praying she would answer. Miraculously, she picked up the phone. “Special Agent Blue.”

“This is Michael Hogan,” he said. “I have Leonard Miller, and he’s taking me to where Juliet is being held.”

There was a pause. “What do you mean, you
have
him?”

“We had an altercation,” he said in a level voice. “I wound up disarming him. Bottom line, I’ve got him bound. He’s leading me to where they are.”

“Michael, stand down. Tell us where she is and we’ll assemble a SWAT team.”

“The way you’re handling it, Juliet will be dead by then and so will her kids. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Tell me where you are.”

He gave her directions to where he’d left his car. “He said to turn at the red mailbox at the dirt road.”

“Be careful. If they see you coming—”

“I’m in his van. If they see me coming, they’ll think it’s him. But I plan to stay hidden if I can.”

“Wait out of sight until we get there.”

“How long will it take you to assemble a SWAT team?”

“A little while,” she said.

Of course. “Not good enough. If you don’t get here fast enough, I’ll have to do something. I’m not going to let them kill her.” He cut off the phone, looked at Miller. The arrogance in his eyes was maddening.

Michael would have liked nothing better than to blow Miller’s head off, but he had to stay focused. He turned at the red mailbox, then pulled down the dirt road slowly until he saw the house through the trees. Then he backed up into the woods until he wasn’t visible anymore.

Miller’s hands were still bound with plastic ties behind his back. Michael was sure he’d been working on them, trying to get his hands free, but Michael had bound him too tightly. He grabbed the roll of tape again and ripped off a long strip. Grabbing Miller’s hair, he pulled his head back against the headrest, then wrapped the strip of tape around Miller’s head and the headrest, rendering him immobile.

Miller tried to protest, but with the rag in his mouth the sound was muffled. Michael stripped off more duct tape and wrapped it around Miller’s throat and around the bars of the
headrest, around and around. Miller couldn’t move or speak, and if he tried to get away, he’d strangle himself.

Michael got out of the car, quietly closing the door behind him. He made his way through the trees until he could see the house. He raised his binoculars and studied each window. He could see movement beyond the glass, but he couldn’t make out any of it. He would have to get closer. He went from tree trunk to tree trunk, staying hidden until he was close to the house. Then he crossed the distance to the house and pressed himself flat against the wall in case anyone was looking out. He got under one of the windows and listened. He could hear voices, but they were muffled. No windows were open, and the air conditioner’s hum made it difficult to hear the people inside. He pulled out his phone, turned on the video camera, and raised it until the lens was slightly above the window ledge. He filmed for a few seconds, then brought the camera back down and played the footage. He saw Amber sitting at a computer and Juliet behind her, bound in a chair. Amber had a gun lying on the table next to her.