Looking For Trouble (38 page)

"I locked it up already!" Jess yelled behind
her, but took off running anyway.

Wade looked at Denver, who was standing
there with a frown and asked, "What kind of car does Tamara drive?"
he asked shortly.

"White Toyota, I think...didn't really pay
attention, when she got here this morning. I think someone might
have dropped her off."

"Go ask the others and see if they know, do
you mind?"

"I'm on it..." Denver said then hurried up
the steps of the bus, and Wade walked swiftly toward the parking
lot.

Five minutes later, the whole crew was back
by the bus standing in a circle, because none of them had found any
sign of the baby or Tamara. Wade was on the phone with the police,
and Jess was laying on the ground curled up in a ball, wailing like
she was dying. That's what Wade wanted to be doing too, but he had
to keep it together so they could find their daughter. Jazzie was
kneeling beside Jess trying to comfort her, which was never going
to happen.

He saw Jess jerk, then she started
scrambling to get her hand in her pocket to find her ringing cell
phone, then she put it to her ear and answered it. A guttural wail
came from her that sounded like something deep inside her had just
died.

Wade ran over there and jerked the phone
from her hands, then said, "Who is this?"

"This is Ray Turner," the man on the other
end said smugly, then told him, "As I was telling your beautiful
girlfriend, I'm not very happy that all my bank accounts have been
frozen, because she felt the need to try and have me put in jail,
after all I've done for her."

"All you've done for her, asshole is make
her life a living hell, and steal her blind. She doesn't owe you a
damned thing, and if you wind up in jail, it's because you
belong
there."

Ray tsked into the phone, then said smugly,
"Well if you lose your little lamb, then it must be, because you
deserve
it."

A roar worked itself up from the bottom of
Wade's soul and erupted into the phone like lava from a volcano,
"
What the fuck have you done with my daughter?!?!?
"

"She's perfectly fine, a beautiful little
Angel
...and she'll stay that way, but I want my five hundred
thousand dollars that's frozen in those accounts, and I want it
now
, if you want her back."

Heat and bile burned Wade's throat and he
said rawly, "
Motherfucker
, if you touch a single hair on my
baby girl's head, there won't be a place on God's green Earth you
can hide. I will find your ass and I will make you
wish
you
were dead before I
kill
you."

"Oh, such big talk, from someone with such a
little brain...don't fuck with me, and you'll get your daughter
back. Get that money together, and call me back at this number when
you have it," he told Wade then the line went dead.

Wade crushed the phone in his hand and
wanted to throw it badly, but he didn't, because it was the only
connection between them and the sonofabitch that had their
daughter. The band members crowded around them for a group hug, and
Wade pushed through them when he heard sirens a short distance
away.

"Jess, I need that FBI guys phone number,
now
," Wade said, because he wasn't waiting around for the
local yokels to find his daughter, he needed bigger guns. Jess told
him the guys name, and he looked through her numbers and found it,
then called him.

When the man answered, Wade told him without
preamble, "You must've tipped him off by freezing the accounts, Ray
Turner kidnapped our daughter and wants the money in those accounts
in exchange for her."

The man on the other end groaned, then told
him, "There was a damned accident on the interstate and our guys
got backed up in it. I'm sorry."

"There's no
sorry
about it, I want my
daughter back, and you're gonna help me get her back," Wade said
forcefully. "Whatever it takes...
Whatever
. It. Takes."

"Of course we will, where are ya'll?"

"Jess's condo, and the Dallas P.D. is here,
so hurry up, before we have a cluster fuck here," Wade told him
then hung up the phone, and walked toward the police cars pulling
up to the curb by the bus.

Jess was still sobbing uncontrollably behind
him, but he couldn't console her, it wouldn't help anyway, she was
inconsolable, just like he was. Wade approached one of the
officers, who was speaking into a microphone on his shoulder, and
waited for him to finish then told him, "This is a federal thing,
so the FBI will be here in a few minutes."

"Oh, yeah? Who are you?" the man looked him
over, then met his eyes again.

"Wade Roberts, the kidnapped baby's
father...this is part of an investigation that the feds have been
working on involving Ray Turner. Turner is who kidnapped her."

"How do you know that?" the cop asked him
and pulled out a notepad to start scribbling.

"He just called us and
told
us he has
her..." Wade told him shortly.

"You know what kind of car he drives?"

"I have no idea, but the woman that actually
took Angel, might have been in a white Toyota, and no I don't know
the plate number. Her name is Tamara something...let me see if Jess
knows."

The cop eyeballed the freshly painted tour
bus at the curb, and grinned, "Jess Sparks?"

"Yeah, that's Angel's mother," he told him
and the cop grinned wider.

"I love her new song..." he said then Wade
growled and walked toward where Jazzie had Jess in her arms on the
curb.

Wade leaned down next to her and asked
gently, "Baby, do you know what Tamara's last name is?"

Jess looked up into his eyes and the depth
of the sorrow there took his breath away. He sucked in a breath and
ran a hand over her cheek, "You need to help me, sugar...we're
gonna find her, but you have to help."

She nodded then her voice was hoarse and
wobbled when she told him, "It's Tamara Young. I have the
application she filled out when I hired her in the
apartment...Jazzie can you go get it? It's in my bedroom in the
filing cabinet, top drawer."

"Sure...be right back," she said then hopped
up and sprinted to the condo.

Wade stood back up and turned back to the
cop and saw him writing again, "You got that?"

"Yeah, Tamara Young...and she was the nanny
right?"

"Can you run her name and see what kind of
car she drives?" Wade asked hopefully.

"If you give me an address, I probably
can...let's see what's on that application."

Wade looked around and saw other officers
interviewing the rest of the band, and then he saw five or six
black cars pull up into the parking lot one after the other, and
breathed a sigh of relief. The agents got out of the cars and
stalked purposefully across the courtyard toward them. Black cars,
black suits, black glasses, hopefully not black hearts too, because
from right here, they looked like clones, spit out of the
government agent machine in Quantico, Virginia, or wherever they
manufactured them.

Wade needed help from people who gave a
shit. He needed Beau, Gabe, Cole and anyone they knew and trusted
who could help them find Angel. When he saw Jess push up from the
curb and run toward one of the agents, she must've recognized, he
stepped to the side and made a quick call to Beau, and told him
what had happened. Beau was going to call Gabe and Cole, then see
if he could meet them in Dallas too.

Hanging up the phone, he searched around
until he found Jess again, talking to one of the agents, with
Jazzie by her side, and he walked over to them, and put his arm
around her shoulders. "What's going on?"

"We ran the address Jess gave us for Tamara
Young, and it's bogus, her name might be too, because that didn't
come up either."

"Shit...did you check her references, Jess?"
Wade looked down at her and asked.

She looked up at him with anger mixed with
misery in her eyes, and told him shortly, "Of course, I did. Every
one of the four references she gave me gave her glowing reviews..."
she said then her posture deflated and she added, "But that could
have been a set up too."

"How did Turner contact you?" the agent
asked.

Wade reached in his pocket and pulled out
Jess's cell phone and handed it to him. "He called on Jess's cell
phone, and said to call him back on it when we got the money
together."

"Well, maybe he's not as smart as he thinks
he is, then..." the man said and took the phone from him. "I'll get
one of our techs to track the phone he called from, if it's a
cell...if not, we'll have a landline address," he told them, then
walked quickly away toward a van with a satellite on top, which was
parked in the lot now too.

Jess turned toward him, and put her arms
around his waist, and her head on his chest, then she sobbed and
started crying again. "We've got to find her, Wade...I should never
have gone along with trying to put him in jail...I know how
slippery he is."

"You had to do it, Jess...don't blame
yourself for what that bastard did to you, and don't blame yourself
for him taking Angel...it's not your fault, sugar," he told her,
but Wade almost wished he hadn't gone looking for that trouble
either. He'd started the whole thing, and had a boatload of guilt
pouring through him too.

A few minutes later, he saw the agent come
out of the van smiling, and Wade's heart lifted a little, as he
walked over to them. "It's a cell phone and it's not a throwaway,
so that's good news. The tech is running the tower pings to try and
figure out where the last call came from...and the white Toyota?"
he said with a grin, "That's registered to Ray Turner, and we've
got the plates, so we're putting out an Amber alert, and BOLO. If
he's still driving it, we'll find him."

Wade heaved a heavy sigh of relief, then
asked, "Has anyone checked where he lives to see if he's there?" A
dumb question, but sometimes things fell through the cracks, if you
didn't ask.

"We've got agents staked out there, but he's
not there, and hasn't been there in quite a while from the looks of
the newspapers piled on the door stoop."

"He's been in Nashville, remember?" Jess
told the agent, then added "Your guys were going to pick him up at
Golden Bee today. The record company might have provided an
apartment for him...because he couldn't have commuted there, that's
for sure."

"You have an address for him there?" the guy
asked with lifted eyebrows.

Jess jerked her head off Wade's chest and
tensed up, then said, "No, but Mr. Zucker might. Maybe he knows the
woman Ray was seeing too, because that's probably who Tamara is.
She told me she wanted to become a country singer, so it would make
sense he'd introduce her to Mr. Zucker."

"Hot, damn, honey...that's brilliant. Let's
call Mr. Zucker," Wade said then gave her a squeeze, and pulled his
cell phone out of his pocket, and handed it to her.

Her hand shook as she took it, and then
looked up as if trying to remember the number, then she dialed and
put the phone to her ear. "Mr. Zucker? This is Jess Sparks, I need
your help."

When she finished talking to him, she
actually had a wobbly smile on her lips and told them, "The woman
is Bonnie Richards, but she sings under the name Tamara Young, and
he's looking up the address for the apartment where Ray was staying
and will call back in a few minutes."

Two minutes later the phone rang again, and
she handed it to the agent, so he could write down the Nashville
address for Ray. "Ya'll hang tight, I'm going call and get the
agents in Tennessee to this address, and see what we find."

Wade called Beau back and told him to hold
tight with the cavalry, until the feds let them know what they
found in Nashville. Beau was relieved to hear they had some leads,
and told him to call him back as soon as he got new
information.

After he hung up with Beau, Jess looked up
at him curiously, so he explained, "The Bowie Cavalry was on the
way, and I didn't want to make them head here if we need to go to
Nashville."

"Calling Beau was a great idea...he loves
Angel, and would do anything to help us."

"That's what I was thinking too," Wade said
and huffed out a breath to expel the automatic jealousy that
churned up his gut.

"Let's go back in the condo and wait...it's
getting hot out here, and I don't want you passing out on me," he
said and kissed her hair.

Wade fixed them iced teas and a plate of
sandwiches, then put them on the coffee table in case someone got
hungry. He knew he wasn't going to eat any of them, or anything
else, until they found Angel, but someone else might want one. The
whole crew was in the apartment now, along with several agents, and
local cops. He sat on the sofa beside Jess and pulled her onto his
lap. "You doing okay, baby?"

"I'll be doing okay when they bring my baby
back to me," she said in a trembling voice.