Elemental Pleasure (16 page)

Then the car was in motion, bouncing as they sped out onto the street. She looked out the window, catching a fleeting glance of Preston and Lance running after her, their faces set in grim, dangerous lines. The man grabbed her, forcing her down with a knee on her back as the car turned a corner, taking it so fast it was on two wheels.

Preston and Lance were gone, out of sight. Carly was alone with her kidnappers.

*****

Preston stared at the street in shock. Carly was gone. It had taken only minutes for an already strange day to become a complete nightmare.

“Carly,” he said. “They took Carly.”

Lance was beside him, breathing heavily from running after the car.

“We’ll get her back. C
ome on.”

Together
,
they returned to the house at a run. Preston found his cell phone, which he’d dropped as the car pulled away. As he dialed 911 for the second time, he heard sirens in the dis
tance. He told the operator
they’d taken Carly.

“Did you see the make and model of the car?”

Preston
blinked. He’d been so focused on
Carly, on what was going on,
he hadn’t noticed anything about the car. “I don’t know. It was a dark color, maybe black.”

“Was it a large car like an SUV or a smaller car?”

Lance took the phone from his hand.
“It was a navy blue Ford Focus
. It’s a hybrid, meaning it’s a later model.
The license plate started with 6K
FT. I didn’t catch the last few, but I think I saw a rental sticker on the window.”

Lance
passed the phone back as a police
car pulled into the lot, lights and sirens on.

Preston stayed on the phone with the 911 operator as Lance spoke to the cops. It took everything he had to remain calm. He was shaking with adrenaline.

Lance, however, looked
composed
. He spoke to the cops in short, hard sentences, pointing toward the
street. The next minute they pee
led out of the parking lot, sirens blaring, taking off in the same direction the kidnappers had.

“More officers will be with you shortly,” the operator said. “Stay on the phone.”

“Let’s go.
” Lance headed for the stairs. “Hang up.”

Without questioning Lance’s directive, Preston said goodbye to the operator and followed the other man inside. While he could barely think, too shocked, angry and scared to focus on anything, Lance seemed to know exactly what to do.

When they w
ere inside, Lance bounded up to the second floor
.

“I can’t believe that just happened.” Preston followed him. “I can’t believe they took her. This must be a nightmare.”

“It’s not a dream. It’s too fucking real.” Lance’s voice was grim. “What did they say to you?”

“They wanted my laptop bag.”

“I saw you give them the case.” Lance started pulling on clothes while Preston stood in the doorway. “Carly tried to get it back?”

Preston nodded. “They’ll find her, right? I mean the cops were right behind her.”

Lance folded his arms. “Let’s work under the assumption that this was not a random act of violence. Whoever came here this morning was targeting you.”

“No.” Preston shook his head. “That’s crazy. No one would
attack me. I’m a chemist, for G
od’s sake. They must have been druggies looking for something to steal and sell.”

“First, you’re a chemist who just uncovered an embezzlement scheme. Someone has a motive to shut you up. Druggies wouldn’t have been driving a rented hybrid, and they would have asked for your wallet and phone too.”

“No one knows
about
the embezzlement but us.” Preston cursed when Lance raised a brow. “I
emailed the company president and
told him I wanted to meet with him, but it wouldn’t be him. The majority of his money comes from the company profits, same as mine. He’d have no reason to embezzle money from us that might hurt our productivity.”

“You emailed him?”

“Yes.”

“That makes it a bit more complicated.”

“What are you talking about?” Preston shook his head. “This is nuts. I’m going outside to talk to the police. They’re going to find her, bring her back.”

Lance dug into his backpack and pulled out a Toughbook laptop. “And you’re willing to bet her life on that? You’re sure this was random, and not a targeted attack on one of us?”

The cold ball in Preston’s belly solidified into ice. “No. I’m not.”

Lance nodded. “I know some people who can help us.”

“I thought you were a mathematician.”

“I am, but I’m a United States Marine
,
too. Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

There was a knock on the front door. “That will be the police,” Preston said.

“You deal with them.” Lance cleared a space on the desk and opened his laptop.

Preston turned to leave, then paused. Emotion made his throat tight. He didn’t turn to look at Lance. “We can’t lose her.”

There was a pause, then Lance’s hand dropped on his shoulder. “We won’t.”

*****

Carly landed hard against the door. Her face ached from where she’d been hit. After a wild, quick ride
,
they’d pulled into a parking garage. The shorter man used the stocking the other man had been wearing to bind her hands behind her after they dragged her out of the car. She heard police cars go by, and hoped—prayed—they would come rescue her. Screaming had resulted in the short man taking off his jacket,
then t-shirt, and using the tee
to gag her.

She sagged against the car door. Luckily
,
the wadded fabric tied around her face softened some of the blow.

“What the fuck are you doing?” The taller man freaked out, waving his arms, agitated, furious. “You kidnapped her!”

Carly studied them, trying to memorize their
faces. The taller man was blond
with a high forehead that showed a receding hairline. He looked as if he was in his early forties. The shorter man, who seemed to be in charge, had medium brown hair, a lean face, and tattoos on his shoulders, arms and back. She’d seen them when he stripped off his shirt and used it to gag her. He stood with his arms loose, almost like a boxer or fighter.

“I’m doing the job. You said a friend found out what was going on. Well, this must be the friend.” The short man motioned to her and Carly flinched.

“So you kidnapped her? What were you thinking? This was supposed to be simple. Get the evidence and get the fuck out.”

“No, this was supposed to solve
your
problem.”

“You’ve made it a bigger problem. We could go to prison for this.”

“
You were going to prison anyway
if I hadn’t helped you.”

“No, I wasn’t going to jail. And if I had
,
it would have been a nice white-collar prison. Kidnapping is a one-way ticket to the state penitentiary.”

Carly’s mind raced. Based on what they were saying
,
they weren’t random muggers who’d decided to kidnap her. They had gone to the condo for something…or
someone
…specific
ally
.

Preston.

The taller man
mentioned
white-collar prison. White-collar crimes were
things like art theft, bribery…
and embezzlement.

Could this be about what Lance had discovered last night? If so, they either worked for Preston’s company or had been hired by someone who did. But how could they know that Preston was on to them?

Either way, it sounded like all they’d really wanted was his laptop. What would they do when they realized they had the wrong computer? And why was she so stupid to have tried to get it back? Critical pieces of Nexus Six projects were on that laptop, but it wasn’t worth risking her life for.

“What are we going to do with her?” The tall man ran his hand through his hair.

“I have a friend. He’ll hold
her until we decide. You need to get back so you can do that computer thing.”

“Okay. We’ll do that.”

The short man grabbed Carly’s arm. She tried to pull away, not wanting to go anywhere with him, but he jerked her arm. She fell, but the man didn’t let go. Instead he dragged her, her bare knees and ankles scraping over the concrete until she managed to get her feet under her again.

He pushed her toward
a gold compact parked nearby. He popped the trunk and Carly panicked. She did not want to go in there. Carly kicked the man hard enough that he released her.

Turning, she ran for her life, sprinting toward the ramp that led to the next level of the parking lot. Midway down, she was hit hard from behind, the shorter man’s weight landing on her. Her cheek hit the ground and, for a moment, everything went dark. Pain radiated through her, stealing her breath, causing her teeth to clench. She waited endless moments for the pain to abate. When she opened her eyes, the world was spinning. She felt nauseous, dizzy, disoriented. Her head fell back, and she stared at the parked cars as she was carried—black, silver, gold, red.

There was a click and then she was lying some
place cool. She closed her eyes as the light disappeared, giving in, at last, to the glorious respite from pain that came with the dark.

*****

“The police just left and I called Nexus Six
.
” Preston walked into the office where Lance had set up his computer. The normally put together man looked rumpled and worried. “There’s a tracking system on her laptop, but it has to be on for it to function. They’re going to work directly with the police. I talked to the COO and she said that Carly had the working prototype for some new coding. That’s probably why she wouldn’t let the computer go.”

Lance didn’t look up from the screen of his own laptop.

“I should have grabbed her. I should have been able to stop this.” Lance didn’t dignify Preston’s worried rant with a response.

That same worry clawed at Lance. It was a familiar feeling—fear churned in his gut—but unlike when he was in a warzone, Lance had at least some control, some resources. He’d find her, no matter what it took.

“What did the police say?” he asked.

“They said it might have been random, that the guys might have been high on something and when they spotted me and my fancy car, they saw an opportunity.” Preston ran his hands through his hair. “I could tell they didn’t believe it, like you don’t. The COO at Nexus Six wonders if they kidnapped her for ransom. The detective is headed over to their offices now, waiting to see if they call.”

“Unlikely. They didn’t target her. She just got in their way.”

“I said that.”

“Did you tell them about your thing, the embezzling?”

“No. Because if you’re right, Zeesh, the company president, is involved, and having detectives go there would only make it worse.”

“Were there any sightings of the vehicle?”

“They saw it on Market, but lost it there. You were right, it’s a rental, and they’re still trying to determine who rented it.”

Lance nodded. His computer dinged.

“What are you doing?” Preston took a seat on the couch.

“Calling in a few favors.” He o
pened and decrypted the message that
was running through several protected servers on three conti
nents for security.
“Do you know a man named David Momens?”

“Yes. H
e’s the head of IT. Why?”

“Because he’s been monitoring your email.” Lance turned the screen toward Preston so he could point to the lines of code as he explained. “I ran a trace program on your email. That’s why I asked you to lo
g in. Every message
you send is going to the server, then to this account, then finally to the designated recipient. That account belongs to David Momens. The account itself is anonymous, but the IP address that’s using it is at an account registered to David.”

“Wait.
” Preston ran his hands through his hair. “David has been screening all my emails?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Preston held up a hand. Lance d
idn’t answer. He could see
Preston had put two and two together. “Because he’d need to know when, and if, we figured it out. I can’t believe this. David has been with the company since the beginning. He’s about to retire. I think his son even works for us.”

“Brian Momens.” Lance pulled up a picture of the younger man from a social networking site.

“Yeah. I don’t really k
now him very well
.”

“We’ll check him. Maybe his father is hiding the money in the son’s accounts.”

“You can do that?”