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Chapter Eighteen

WHEN MIKE PETERSON woke up he did so slowly. It felt like he was trying to swim to the surface of a lake that was heavy with sludge. He heard Frank’s voice, caught a glimpse of light in the room and opened his eyes, blinking. Vince’s voice cut through the din. “He’s waking up.” He opened his mouth, tasting sour spit in the back of his throat. He raised himself up on his elbows, trying to shake the drowsiness from his system. Frank and Vince were hazy silhouettes, and as they became more refined he made out a third shape as well.

“How do you feel?” Frank came into focus. “You okay?”

Mike shook his head and cast his gaze around the room. Vince was standing at the foot of his bed with a woman dressed in blue jeans and a wrinkled white blouse; she gave him an encouraging smile. He focused on the woman, confused. “Who are you?”

“This is Tracy Harris,” Vince said, stepping forward.

“It’s a long story,” Frank said, waving his hand in front of Mike’s face. “How you feeling? Woozy? Sick to your stomach?”

Mike turned to Frank, confused for a moment. “No.” Last night’s events swam back into focus and he felt a sudden emptiness in his stomach. Then it hit him suddenly, like a Mack Truck hurtling at eighty miles per hour. “Carol…”

He sat up, the room coming into focus now. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. “Where are we, what’s going on?”

“Easy there, fella,” Frank said. He took Mike’s shoulders and eased him back on the bed. “We’re in my motel room.”

“Frank called me last night and told me what happened,” Vince said hastily, looking nervous. “This is Tracy Harris… my girlfriend…”

The implications of what happened became implicitly clear to Mike; he’d flipped out over Carol’s disappearance, Frank had acted quickly and gotten him the hell out of there and slipped something in the glass of water he’d offered last night to knock him out. In the meantime, Frank had called Vince at home and—

“Hi, Mike, sorry to barge in like this,” the woman said, positioning herself in front of Vince as if shielding him from a potential verbal assault. “I know you guys had this agreement to keep all that was going on between yourselves, but I kinda got tired of being left out of everything, especially since the people you’re dealing with tried to kill me too. I think I have every right to know what the hell is happening, so I kind of invited myself along for the ride. Sorry to shock you like this, but that’s the short version. Want to hear the long version?”

Mike regarded her for a moment. She was standing in front of him, arms folded across her chest, waiting for his response. Her posture, her facial expression, the way she carried herself told him that she was strong-willed and wasn’t going to take no for an answer. On the other hand, Vince looked like somebody was going to hit him at any moment; he refused to meet his or Frank’s gaze. Mike sighed. “Christ.”

“Thanks for bringing Mike up to speed,” Frank said, his tone of voice suggesting to Mike that sometime last night the two of them had sparred verbally. Frank didn’t look too happy and he looked bone tired, too. “That’s it in a nutshell, man. She’s in.”

“Great, just great,” Mike muttered.

“I’m sorry,” Vince said, still looking sheepish.

Tracy ignored Vince’s meek demeanor. “This affects me as much as it affects Vince. I’m not trying to jeopardize anything. All I want is the truth.”

The truth. And what was that? Mike looked up at Frank, not even caring that Tracy Harris was in the fold now. Only wanting to know what had happened to Carol. And his family—hell, his son and daughter-in-law and granddaughter lived a mile away. What if the cult got them, too? “I don’t care,” he said. “I just want to know where Carol is. I’ve got to find her.”

“We will,” Frank said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’re gonna get started on that this morning.”

“What time is it?’

“Almost eight-thirty,” Frank said.

Mike nodded. He felt tired, drained, but that was most likely the effects of whatever Frank had given him to help him sleep last night. Strangely, he didn’t feel that over-powering sense of panic when he discovered Carol had been kidnapped. He felt a strange sense of calmness. Thank God Frank had been thinking quickly last night when he came to the house to get him; he’d been acting on pure emotion and there was no telling what might have happened if Frank hadn’t been there to restrain him from doing something stupid.

“Okay,” he said, closing his eyes to stave off the tension headache he could sense was coming. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You didn’t call the police, right?”

“Nope,” Frank said.

“Tracy knows everything?”

“I know everything,” Tracy said.

“Welcome to the club, Tracy,” Mike said. Despite his words, he felt bothered by Tracy being in the circle. Nothing suspicious had come up in her background when he had run a check on her a month or so back, but he always had the belief that the fewer people who knew what was going on, the better. Obviously that theory was shot to hell now that Tracy was in the fold. It looked like they were going to have to do the best they could with what they had.

“I’m trying to be as calm about this as I can,” Mike said, still closing his eyes. “I’m trying very hard not to completely lose it, so I am going to need all the help I can get. Okay?”

Tracy, Vince, and Frank nodded. Frank said, “Yeah, man, I hear you.”

Mike opened his eyes and looked up at them. His eyes burned; he supposed they were red with irritation. “I know this is going to sound shitty, but I have to go to the bank and check on that safe deposit box. That’s the only way I’m going to know if… if what I’m afraid has happened…”

“I understand, man,” Frank said. “We’ll get you there, pronto. And just to put your mind at ease, I think it’s safe. Bank regulations would not have allowed Carol or anybody else to access it if you’re the only signatory.”

“I know that,” Mike said. “But I panicked last night.” Mike looked around the room, still feeling a little disoriented. “Where’s my wallet?”

“In your pocket,” Frank said.

Mike felt his hip pocket, the reassuring bulge creating a calm feeling. He turned to Vince and Tracy. Vince still looked nervous but it appeared he was trying to live with the situation. Mike guessed he hadn’t been too happy about bringing Tracy into this, either.

“I think we should call William Grecko today,” Frank said. “Put the last part of our plan into action now.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Mike said. “But first, I want to go to the bank. Humor me on this, okay?”

Frank nodded as Mike swung his legs over the bed.

“I think we need to get out of this room and find another location,” Mike said. “Preferably somewhere busy, with lots of people around and a lot of cops.”

“Venice beach?” Frank suggested. The slight inflection of jovialness in Frank’s tone suggested he was joking, but the location was exactly what Mike was looking for.

“Perfect. Does everybody have their cell phones?”

Vince nodded. “Yeah, I got mine.”

“Turn it on,” Mike said. “Take Tracy and get a room in Venice. Then sit on the boardwalk and wait for us. Frank and I are going to my bank to check on my safe deposit box. Then I’m going to call—”

“Do you really think we should separate again?” Frank asked, concerned. “I mean—”

“We’ll be fine,” Mike turned to Frank. “We don’t even know if they’re responsible for what happened at my house. If they are, that means they’re going after our families, not us. Tracy, your family is from Huntington Beach, is that correct?” He dredged that information up instantly. He turned to Tracy.

“Yes,” she nodded, looking a little surprised. “My mother is. My dad’s from Monrovia.”

“If you’re in this, you’re in all the way. Do you understand?”

Tracy nodded. For the first time Mike detected a hint of nervousness in a face that, up till now, had been bold and defiant.

“Be honest with us and yourself if you want in,” Mike continued. “This isn’t some bullshit game. If I’d had any inclination that I was putting my family in danger six months ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. I wouldn’t have even gone through all the bullshit of setting up a false identity and investigating all this under a pseudonym. I erred on the notion that if I put that kind of distance between my real self and personal life and this other identity, that my family and I would be safe. I was wrong. If you want to get involved, there is the very strong possibility that you may be placing your family in danger. Do you understand?”

Tracy nodded, suddenly looking worried. She glanced at Vince, who put his arm around her shoulders in an encouraging hug. She turned back to Mike, straightening herself up. “Yes. I understand. And I want in.”

Mike nodded. “Okay.” He looked at Frank. “You got a tooth brush I can borrow? My mouth feels like a septic tank.”

“Go for it,” Frank said, motioning to the bathroom. “My stuff’s in there.”

“Thanks.” Mike stepped past them and paused briefly. “We’ll call you in a few hours and discuss what we’re going to do next. If you don’t hear from us by the end of the day, do what you can to drop out of sight completely. Disappear.”

Vince and Tracy nodded. They left the room as Mike brushed his teeth and freshened up quickly. Then he and Frank left the room for the Bank of America in Fountain Valley where he kept his safe deposit box.

THEY ONLY HAD to wait a few minutes for the bank official to wait on them. She was a small woman with porcelain features and waist length black hair. “Can I help you?”

Mike presented his pseudonymous identification. “I’ve got a safe deposit box I’d like access to.”

The woman smiled and typed into her computer. “Box number?”

“1356,” Mike replied.

The woman typed the number in the computer and waited. “Identification?”

Mike pushed his wallet across the desk. The woman looked at it, looked at Mike, then smiled. She reached into her desk for a set of keys. “Come with me, Mr. Costello.”

Mike motioned for Frank to stay seated and followed the clerk towards the vault.

The woman opened the vault with a key and escorted Mike in where the safe deposit boxes were. “Box 1356?”

“Yes,” Mike said. He reached into his pocket for his copy of the key, which he’d attached to his key ring. The woman took it, slid it into the lock, and opened it. She took out the box and handed it to Mike. The moment Mike took the box, he felt a sinking sense of despair. This should be heavier than it is, he thought.

“There’s a room around the corner.” The woman said. “Call me when you’re finished.”

“Thank you.” Mike followed the woman out of the vault and went to the room where he closed the door.

The box he’d gotten was the largest the bank had to offer. It was three feet long, four inches deep and seven inches wide. It was large enough to fit manila file folders and manuscripts in. Mike had stored two zip disks of information as well as three file folders of affidavits, notes, and photographs, among other things. His heart hammered in his chest as he opened the box.

For a minute it felt like his heart was going to stop. He stared into the box, not believing what he was seeing. He pulled the plastic top all the way off, running his hand inside. This can’t be, he thought. I was just here last fucking week!

The safe deposit box was empty.

Mike Peterson felt the room spinning. His stomach lurched, doing slow flops. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. It felt like he was going to be sick. Good thing he hadn’t eaten yet; still, it was probably his empty stomach giving him the jitters. But no, the box was empty; that was a cold, hard fact. He opened his eyes again, hoping his vision had been deceiving him but it wasn’t.

“Miss.” His voice sounded shaky, trembling. He stepped outside the room and caught the teller’s eye. “Miss?”

“Yes, Mr. Costello?” The woman approached him, a smile on her face.

Mike stood aside, conflicting emotions of fear and surprise and anger battling for position. “My box is empty. Who emptied my box?”

The woman looked puzzled. “Excuse me, sir?”

“I said my fucking box is empty!” Mike yelled. He suddenly had the irresistible urge to slap this woman, this bank drone, to take her by the shoulders and shake her, demand that she tell him who she’d let in here to take his stuff. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Calm down, he told himself. It’s not her fault, just calm down, calm down—

The woman was stunned. She opened her mouth, looked behind her towards the line of tellers, as if debating on whether she should sprint to safety then turned back to Mike. “I’m sorry, sir, I’m afraid… um…”

“The last time I was here,” Mike said, forcing himself to be calm and not go ballistic, “I deposited two zip disks and a file containing important documents. I also had several other files containing other documents. That was last week.”

“Do you share this account with anybody else?” the bank clerk asked.

“No.”

“And this is your box?” The clerk looked at the box, probably to verify for herself that, yes, Mike did have the correct key.

“Yes, this is the right box.” It was taking all of Mike’s willpower to not go crazy.

“Wait here a moment please.” The clerk left, heading across the bank.

Mike could only look into the empty box, his mind swimming with a thousand questions. Carol wouldn’t have been able to have access to this box even if I gave her a key. She’s not a signatory. If something had happened to me, it would have taken weeks for Carol to gain access to this box. That means somebody knows, they’ve known who I am for months, maybe even years, and—f

“Mr. Costello?”

Mike looked up. An overweight balding man with glasses wearing a white shirt, black slacks, and a dark blue tie had approached him. The man bore the official look and demeanor of the branch manager. “Can I help you with something?”

“Yes,” Mike said, holding the empty safe deposit box. “My box is empty and it wasn’t empty last week when I came in to deposit something inside it.”

“I see,” the bank manager said, taking a quick look at the box. “And you don’t have a co-owner or an executor to this—”

“No!” Mike said through gritted teeth.

The bank clerk returned with the sign-in card. The bank manager nodded at Mike. “The sign-in sheet should tell us something. Let’s see.” He ran his finger down a column. Mike placed the empty safe deposit box down on a shelf and joined them. “Ah, here we are. Three days ago.” Mike looked at where the bank manager’s pudgy finger was pointing and his heart leaped in his chest. This can’t be, he thought. This just can’t be.

“It appears you were in three days ago,” the bank manager said, his voice sounding far away. “There’s your signature.”

Mike stared at the sign-in sheet. Sure enough, the signature he used to sign his pseudonym, Matthew Costello, was identical to the one he had used all the other times. This signature was scrawled on a line halfway down the page, with a date of July 13, 1999, three days ago. Box number 1356.

“But that’s impossible,” Mike muttered. “I wasn’t here three days ago. I was back east.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure!” His mind reeled. Three days ago he was traveling to Philadelphia with Frank and Vince. He’d placed items in the box a day or so before, and sure enough, there was his signature verifying that. But three days ago—

“Sir?”

Mike looked up. The bank manager and the clerk were looking at him with worried, concerned expressions. The bank manager exuded the false concern, business-as-usual. “May I ask what you were storing in your box, sir?”

“No,” Mike said. He turned toward the empty box, his mind spinning crazily. “No, it’s…” They’d been here. They had gotten to his wife, had probably gotten to his family, and then they’d come to the bank and taken all the evidence. He’d thought that by adopting another identity he’d shield his personal life from them. Obviously they were more powerful than he’d thought. If there was any doubt as to the validity of this group now, those doubts were now gone entirely. There was nothing else to do. They had to go to Billy Grecko with what they had now. “…it’s nothing,” he said, as the sudden urge to get out of the bank propelled him out of the vault. He shouldered his way past the startled bank employees and threaded his way through other bank patrons, catching a glimpse of Frank still seated by the bank teller’s desk. Frank looked up with a startled expression on his face as Mike approached. “They’re onto us, we need to get to Billy, I need to find Carol,” he said, repeating the mantra to himself, feeling the blind need to find his family, to find Carol, to find Jimmy and Cathy and baby Kimberly and his other son up in Lake Tahoe. Oh God, suppose they’d gotten to his kids and his granddaughter too—

“Mike!” Firm hands gripping his shoulders. Mike started, looking up into Frank’s worried countenance. “You okay?”

“No,” Mike said, the need to get out of the bank strong. He looked behind his shoulder, saw the bank manager and the clerk looking toward them. “No, I’m not okay,” he turned to Frank. “Let’s get out of here.” And then he started walking toward the double-glass doors that spilled out onto Talbert Avenue.

“Mike!” Frank rushed after him, keeping pace with him. “What the hell is going on?”

“The Children of the Night is not some urban legend,” Mike said, heading to Frank’s car. “They’re very real and we under-estimated them.”

THERE WAS NO clear destination in mind. Frank simply got behind the wheel and drove the hell out of the bank’s parking lot.

Mike seethed beside him, part fury, part fear. “I should have been looking for Carol last night. I should have done something! Why didn’t I see this coming?”

“It’s not your fault,” Frank said, heading down Talbert toward the beach. “Neither of us knew this would’ve happened.”

“Well, we should’ve,” Mike snapped. He glanced at Frank briefly, then turned back to look out the window. “My adopting a separate identity wasn’t enough, and I thought it would be. They took everything. My files, all the backups I had saved to the zip disks, everything.”

Frank listened. This new development bothered him as much as it did Mike. Hell, it scared him. All the evidence they had was on those zip disks, contained in those manila file folders. All that was remaining was Frank’s laptop, which now resided in a secret compartment in the trunk of Frank’s car. Frank had sent Mike copies of documents via e-mail, and while he still had them on the hard drive, that wasn’t the point. For Mike’s safe deposit box to have been breached meant somebody knew about their investigation and had been following them for months. Maybe they’d known the whole time. Frank gripped the steering wheel, his mind racing. If they’d gotten to Carol, what about Brandy? If he and Mike had been followed this whole time, couldn’t it be possible that—

“I don’t know what else to do,” Mike said, breaking Frank’s thoughts. He was shaking his head, his features crumbling. “Carol’s gone and they’ve got the stuff, they’ve fucking got it! We’ve got to call the police.”

“For all we know the police might be in on this,” Frank responded.

“Well, what else are we going to do?”

Frank sighed. “I don’t know.”

They rode on in silence for a moment. “I’ve got to find Carol,” Mike said. “How… how are we going to do that unless…”

“If the police are in any way involved, the minute you call them they could alert whoever was responsible for abducting Carol,” Frank said, his eyes on the road. “Then they’ll get you. Then me. Then Vince.” He turned to Mike. “Then it really is over.”

“You fucking hypocritical piece of shit,” Mike muttered, his green eyes blazing with anger. “What about your family? Don’t you think they might not have already—”

Frank pulled the car over. They’d just crossed Adams Avenue and even though he pulled the car into a No Parking zone, he didn’t care. He put the car in park and turned to Mike, his own panic and anger rising. “I’ve put in a lot of time and I’ve risked my own life to get to the bottom of this shit. I don’t need you to jeopardize it by—”

“Oh, so now I’m the weak-link, huh?” Mike sputtered, his face red, leaning toward Frank. “You just want us to forget about our families, forget our loved ones and keep going so we can find out what happened over twenty and thirty years ago—”

“It’s not just about that!” Frank thundered, his voice so loud that it even surprised him. Mike stopped, eyes widening. Calm down, Frank told himself. Don’t blow up now, you need him, you need each other if you’re going to get through this, so just calm. The fuck. Down. “We knew what we were getting into when we started this,” he said, his voice straining with anger. “We knew the risks involved in not only our own lives, but our families. We went into this together knowing those risks. It was your choice to keep your wife and kids in the dark.”

“Bullshit!” Mike started again, looking like he wanted to leap out of his seat and throttle him.

“I’ve already sacrificed my own life,” Frank said, ignoring him. He tried not to think about this as he continued. “I know I’m never gonna see my wife or kids again. I took measures to protect them. Brandy knows something is going on, but she doesn’t know the specifics. Oh, she suspects, I’m sure she does. But I went out of my way to prepare for the worst. It kills me knowing I’ll never see them. I know that if I go back to my family I’ll be followed and they’ll be at risk and it doesn’t matter how many times I change my name to throw them off my trail. They’ll find me no matter what. They found Vince and his mother and they’ve found others. I don’t want to live like that the rest of my life, knowing they could strike anytime, anywhere, anyplace. That’s why I made the decision myself. That’s why I’m not going back to my family. As much as I want to see my kids again, to hold my wife in my arms…” Frank stopped, trying to control his emotions. He wanted to break down and cry. He wanted to smash something. He felt like he was going to explode. “I can’t go to the police,” he said, reigning his emotions in. “I don’t trust the cops more than I can throw them. If there’s even the slightest chance that even one cop is an insider—”

“Oh, and what are the chances of that?” Mike exclaimed.

“You know as well as I that they’ve infiltrated law enforcement,” Frank said. He heard his voice rising and he fought to control it. “Okay, maybe they’re not everywhere, but we can’t take that chance. Even if you get lucky and get cops that aren’t aware of the Children, they’re not gonna believe you. I mean, what are you gonna tell them?”

“What do you think I’m gonna tell them? I’m gonna tell them somebody broke into my house and kidnapped my wife!”

“Sure,” Frank said, on a roll now. “And you won’t say anything about us, right?”

“I’m not going to say anything about us.”

“And what’s going to happen if they get a detective that’s got half a brain, they’re eventually going to connect you with me and that’s going to lead them to what happened in Pennsylvania. And then what are you going to tell them?”

“I’ll figure that out if it happens,” Mike said. He slumped back in his seat, wearing a mask of defeat.

“Bullshit,” Frank said, leaning forward. “You’re gonna think about this now. You’re gonna come up with something more solid than that, because you are not gonna implicate me in this at all.”

Mike turned to him, the spark of anger still in his eyes. “Changing your mind then?”

“No. I don’t want you to go to the cops, but I can’t stop you, either.” Truth was, the more Frank talked and bluffed, the more he was putting himself in Mike’s shoes. If it were Brandy and his kids that had come up missing, he would want to call the police too. “If you go to the cops you don’t know me, and we’ve never met each other. You go to the cops and I am fucking out of here, you got me? I’ve not only never seen you, I’m not only over-the-hills-and-far-away, I don’t even fucking exist.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be too hard to fake,” Mike said. “They’ve got everything. There’s nothing at the house that’s going to lead to you, and even phone records aren’t going to turn anything up. I was careful of that.”

Frank regarded Mike for a moment, his demeanor cracking. The more he thought about it, the better calling the police was starting to sound. Worst-case scenario: even if they were caught for the fiasco in Lititz, maybe they could plead self-defense and expose these bastards. In the meantime, while Mike was contacting the police, Frank could contact Billy Grecko and turn what was left of their investigation over to him. Hopefully it would be enough for Billy to go to his FBI contact with.

That wouldn’t be enough, though. In fact, their best plan of action was to avoid the police. And Frank had to convince Mike that avoiding the police was the best course of action.

“You’re still going to need some kind of alibi,” Frank said, thinking out loud. “The police are going to want to know why you waited until today to call them.”

Mike glanced at him, looking wary. “Yeah, I suppose they are.”

“Let’s think about this a minute,” Frank said, forcing himself to stay calm and focused on the matter at hand. “If you’re going to contact the police, we still need each other. We also need to move the investigation into Billy’s hands. You got me?”

Mike nodded. “Yeah.”

“Here’s why going to the police would be a bad idea,” Frank said. “If you had booked our tickets under your name we could have come up with an excuse for you being out there pretty easily. Because we can’t do that, every other excuse you give them, like deciding you wanted to go camping or you took a drive out into the desert, are going to be suspect. How often do your kids drop in to see you or call?”

“Sometimes we can go a whole week without hearing from my son Jimmy,” Mike said. “My other son, Brad, lives up in Lake Tahoe. He calls about once a week. He usually calls on weekends.”

“When is the last time you saw Jimmy?” Frank asked.

Mike shrugged. “Four, maybe five days ago.”

“If Jimmy had decided to call or drop by between then and now, the cops would already be trying to get a hold of you. In fact, it’s very likely they would consider you a suspect in your wife’s disappearance should your kids get the police involved. Had the police shown up at your house before you got home, you’d probably be in an interrogation room now being grilled as a suspect in your wife’s disappearance and probable murder.”

Mike gasped at this obvious realization. Frank pressed on. “But your kids haven’t been in touch recently. Therefore, it’s possible we have anywhere from a few hours to a few more days before they do decide to call or drop by. We need to make the most of it.”

“But how?” Mike moaned. He buried his face in his hands, the frustration painfully obvious to Frank.

“That depends on where we want to go with this,” Frank said. “They’ve made their move, but they don’t hold all the cards. At least not yet. We have documents on my hard drive. My suggestion is we deliver my laptop to your friend Billy pronto and have him turn it over to his FBI contact.”

“But what if Carol is still alive? What if they’re holding her somewhere?

“Do you really think they would keep her alive?”

Mike’s face brimmed with tears. “What if they go after one of my kids… or my granddaughter…”

“Gimme their numbers,” Frank said. “I can check into that quite easily.”

“How?”

“Leave it to me.” Frank pulled a scrap of paper and a pen from the compartment between the front bucket seats. Mike rattled off two sets of phone numbers for his adult children, both work and home. Frank jotted them down. “Do either of them have Caller ID?”

“I don’t know,” Mike said. He looked haunted. Defeated. “Maybe.”

Frank’s mind was racing. “Let’s find a phone booth. It’ll be better if I place those calls from someplace anonymous. Once I can verify they’re safe, we need to deliver my laptop to Billy and then you and I really need to disappear.”

“Yeah.” Mike’s face was worn. It looked like he’d aged ten years.

Without another word, Frank waited until it was safe, then he pulled back onto the road and headed for a convenience store in search of a phone booth to place the calls.

“DID YOU TALK to them? Are they safe?”

Those were the first words out of Mike when Frank returned to the car. He climbed in and shut the door. Mike immediately began to pepper him with more questions. “You talked to them, right? What did you say? How did you—”

Frank cut him off. “I called Jimmy and your daughter-in-law at work and got their voice mails. I was able to zero out and get a secretary, who told me they were in meetings. So they’re safe.”

“What about Kimberly?” Kimberly was Mike’s granddaughter.

“I called the day care. Cathy dropped Kimberly off this morning. I assume Kimberly, Jimmy, and you and Carol are the only ones who have the authority to pick her up?”

“Yes!” Mike nodded. At the news that Cathy had dropped Kimberly off this morning, Mike looked visibly relieved. “What about Brad?”

“I was able to talk to him,” Frank said. “The minute I verified it was him, I told him I was a telemarketer trying to sell him insurance and he hung up on me.”

Mike rubbed his face. He still looked worried, still appeared scared, but hearing the news that his sons and granddaughter were safe had taken the bulk of the worry out of his mind. “So what do we do now?”

“I tried calling Jimmy and Cathy on their cell phones but my calls went straight to voice mail. Cathy must have a busy schedule. Her secretary said she had a meeting, then had to leave early to take Kimberly to a pediatrician appointment at ten o’clock. She must have left early for that because when I called the day care, they told me Cathy had already picked her up.”

“At least she’s safe,” Mike said. He looked at Frank. “I’m tired and I’m hungry. I know this sounds horrible, but I need something in my stomach. I’m fucking starving.”

Frank started the car. “Let’s grab a quick bite to eat and some coffee. We can lay out a plan over breakfast.”

Five minutes later, shortly after ten o’clock in the morning, they entered a Coco’s restaurant on Talbert Avenue and were escorted by a twenty-something female hostess to a table where they refueled.

And made plans.