kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller) (21 page)

“There’s something I need to explain,” Tara added quickly, not wanting Kristen to think she was about to relay that her father had been found dead.

Kristen set her glass of orange juice down on the tabletop with a loud
clack
. “Please just tell us what this about, Agent Shores—”

“I can make a run to the store for a few minutes if you don't want me here,” Dave said, looking at Tara.

“Never mind, Dave. Stay here. Unfortunately, this involves you, too.”

After exchanging glances with Kristen, Dave eased back into his chair. He pushed his plate away and looked at Tara, who took the seat across from him at the table.

Tara looked at Kristen and said, “Three months ago, Lance helped an Asian biotechnology consortium kidnap your father. According to prearranged plans, your father was supposed to be released today, but the plans have changed.”

“He told them
I
knew where the
Tropic Sequence
was?” Dave nearly squealed. “Why the hell did he do that?”

Tara looked at Dave and said, “That's what he told them. I guess he didn't know what else to say. I came over here right away to make you aware of this threat. It is very serious.”

She turned to Kristen and addressed her questions: “From what I overheard, Lance made an arrangement with the kidnappers whereby they would receive a portion of Lance's share of your father's inheritance once he was declared legally dead. But because his yacht was found, the investigation has been reopened, suspending the declaration of his death at least for a while. So because Lance can't pay, they said they're going to hold your father longer, possibly to obtain information about something called GREENBACK.”

“Oh my God,” Kristen exclaimed, and she seemed to slump onto the table. “Lance is on his way over now. Don't tell him that you heard everything. I want to ask him myself what's going on and see what he says.”

Tara knew this was a sister's way of testing her brother's loyalty, to see if he would lie to her face, to plumb the depths of his deception. As a detective, she too had an interest in how Lance would respond. But for now she didn't want Kristen to dwell on such a deplorable act of familial betrayal.

“Tell me about GREENBACK,” Tara said. “What is it?”

“The global warming bugs,” Kristen said, turning her head slightly so that she could be heard. “Potentially worth billions. Even if they're not 100% effective, plenty of companies would pay millions to be able to tinker around with them—to continue experimenting where my Dad left off. Imagine the ability to control the planet's climate. GREENBACK's worth may be incalculable.”

“The kidnappers did tell Lance they may have to learn about GREENBACK from your father to offset Lance's inability to pay the agreed upon cash.”

At this Kristen started bawling. “He won’t tell them, they'll torture him!” she cried. Dave put an arm around her, trying to calm her down. And then they heard a knock at the front door, the creak of the screen door opening.

Lance walked into the living room.

…GAAA
39
TTCC...

Kristen wiped her eyes dry on her sleeve as Lance continued through the house into Dave's kitchen. Kristen and Dave remained seated at the table. Tara stood, hoping she looked somewhere between bored and professionally detached.

“Agent Shores! Wasn't expecting to see you here. Any news?” Lance asked.

Tara downplayed her presence. “I wanted to compare notes with Kristen on the
Tropic Sequence's
itinerary. Also, I want to be here when the samples from the sequencing lab come back,” she said, giving both of the Archer siblings a true statement.

“Well, I did but then I went to McDonald's real quick. Wanted to see if they really add those pineapples we were talking about. They do, by the way, but you don't have a choice about it and it makes the meal more expensive. What's with all the questions?”

Tara was disturbed by Lance's ability to lie convincingly on the fly. She’d seen career criminals who wished they were that smooth.

“Oh, that's funny,” Kristen said, “because I thought you had breakfast at the Hau Tree Lanai on Sans Souci Beach with two Asian men.”

Lance paled.

“What did you talk about?” Kristen asked. Tara watched Lance carefully; he was now a cornered animal.

“Oh, yeah, those guys. I did have a super-light breakfast, but I was still hungry after that so I went to McDonald's.” Kristen ignored the white lie and focused on the core of the matter.

“Who were those men, Lance, and what did you discuss?”

“Well, I didn't want to tell you about it because I know you brought me over here to look for Dad. But I figured since there wasn't much else I could do to help at this point, that I'd do something productive for me. So I set up a meeting with a couple of local real estate agents, to see what it would take for me to buy some property here. You know, because my divorce attorney says I may be entitled to a little more of the proceeds from the sale of our house—”

Even Tara was floored by Lance's continuation of the web of lies, and by how adept he was at spinning them. But Kristen could take no more. She rose like a shot, sending her chair skittering to the floor. She pointed at her brother, who backed up a step.

“Damn it, Lance! Do you know what you've done! You've thrown our father to the dogs. They're not going to let him live, don't you see that? They can't.”

Lance opened his mouth to speak, looked at Tara, made the connection that somehow she was behind this, and went to the refrigerator. Finding a few cans of cheap light beer, he cracked one and started to guzzle it. His sister watched him in complete disgust.

After finishing half the can, Lance said, “Dad won't give them the entire GREENBACK solution at once. He'll dole it out to them, a piece at a time while they test it out, so that they won't be able to get rid of him if they want to know more.”

No one spoke. Tara began to think about arresting Lance for the kidnapping of his own father. Lance put a hand over his face and kept speaking. “My life has been totally out of control for about three years now. I took desperate measures to try and get back on course, which have now backfired in a huge way.”

He sucked down more beer. Kristen picked her chair back up from the floor and slid it back under the table, a fierce gleam lighting in her eyes.

“Lance. I know you’ve had some problems—the divorce and all—you’re drinking too much—but I also told you I was there to give whatever support I could. Dad was, too.”

“He wasn’t. I did ask him for money a while ago, but he told me I needed to make my own. That I was the one who decided to have a family—at the expense of my own career, he said—and so I needed to be responsible for it.”

“You can’t really argue with that, can you? And even though he wouldn’t help you financially, I always said I would.”

Lance shook his head dismissively. “You couldn’t get me enough to pay for the lawyers I’d need to get my kid back from my ex-wife. Dad could have easily, but he didn’t want to. So I was incredibly mad, and I did what I did. I’m sure not proud of it, but I don’t want anything to happen to Dad, and so I’m coming clean now.”

“What exactly did you do?” Tara asked. Now was the time to pounce. She activated her voice-recorder.

“I contacted members of a biotechnology consortium who were fierce competitors with GREENBACK. They made it clear to me that they were willing to pay me some money in return for information about Dad’s science. But even the cash they offered me wasn’t that much. So I made a deal with them. I provided them with the
Tropic Sequence’s
itinerary around Hawaii, and some details about the kidnap and ransom guys on retainer by Alacra. Then I told them that if they kidnapped my father and just kept him hidden for a few months—without hurting him, I made that part very clear—that at some point he would be declared legally dead, lost at sea. This would also benefit them because they were racing to get their own global warming microbe technology patented and on the market before Dad did, so it bought them time.

“Then, since I’m listed on his will, I’d receive an inheritance of several million dollars. Out of that, I told the kidnappers I’d pay
them
a bonus of two million if everything went smoothly. It all seemed to be working, until Kristen found Dad’s DNA messages which led you to the boat. Since that new development keeps Dad from being declared dead, it also keeps me from receiving my share of the inheritance...which in turn means that I can’t pay the kidnappers.

“They’re not happy about this, and told me this morning that they will not be releasing Dad until they get their two million, and in the meantime they’ll be trying to get him to talk about GREENBACK.”

Lance stopped talking and brought the beer to his lips. Dave’s jaw could not have dropped any lower. Kristen’s eyes were wide open, wet with tears now. She grabbed Lance by the shoulders and shook him, the beer flying away and spilling down both of their shirts before the can clattered to the floor.

“Are you kidding me?” she asked. She'd already known from Tara that's what he'd done, but hearing him talk about it so matter-of-factly was too much.

Dave, who at first felt like he was intruding on some kind of family counseling session, continued to sit silently with his mouth open.

A full thirty seconds elapsed where nobody said anything. They could hear the ceiling fan squeaking in the living room. A small gecko scampered across the wall, high over the kitchen table. Then Kristen’s analytical skills kicked in, and she began asking Lance questions designed to test the veracity of his story. Perhaps he had simply cracked under the strain of recent events and didn’t know what he was saying, she hoped.

“So where is he, then—our Dad? Where is he being held?”

“I don’t know the precise location. It was a condition of the deal that I not know that. But he’s being held on a large boat—a yacht, probably—somewhere around the Hawaiian islands.”

Tara cut in. “If you don’t know where, then how do you know the boat is near Hawaii at all? Or that your father is even still alive, for that matter?”

Dave’s head swiveled back and forth between Kristen and Tara like he was at a tennis match.

“It was also part of our deal that I have proof of life before actually handing them the inheritance money. But now that they know I can’t pay, they don’t have to give me that proof. And they haven’t.”

Lance startled Kristen by beginning to cry. She had never seen her brother cry. She fought back tears herself as she thought about “proof of life,” which dredged up uneasy memories of her father’s K&R training, which she’d never been particularly comfortable with. But she had not yet exhausted her line of critical inquiry, and so she soldiered on, interrogating her own brother in the presence of an FBI agent.

“Why did you tell the kidnappers that Dave led us to the
Tropic Sequence
?”

“If I told them that Dad was sending us coded messages, or that we were helping the FBI look for Dad...” He left the sentence unfinished, shaking his head. “I
had
to say something when they asked me point blank how you knew where to look for the yacht. The only thing I could think of was to say Dave thought he knew where it was.”

Dave, who up to this point had remained a spectator, bolted to his feet. He took the two steps over to Kristen’s brother and grabbed him by the shirt lapels.

“Those bastards already tried to kill me
twice
, Lance! Once out on the boat with you, and the first time while I was diving with Johnson—who they
did
kill. Not to mention the boatload of slaughtered people we saw yesterday. And you had to make up a reason for them to come after me?”

Dave tried to shake a reply out of Lance but got nothing. Lance put a hand up on Dave’s shoulder to slow him—not really fighting back, but the beginnings of self-defense.

Tara yelled for Dave to stop, tried to separate the two men. But Dave was not letting go, and Lance was getting more forceful with his defensive tactics. Now he rammed the heel of his right hand into Lance’s left arm, knocking it off of his shirt. The move rendered Dave off balance for a second, and Lance used that second to kick Dave in the right knee. Dave was quick, however, and grabbed Lance’s foot with both hands. He began to twist it sideways.

“Stop it!” Kristen screamed. Neither of them listened to her. Lance clutched the edge of the kitchen counter for balance as Dave tried to land him on the floor by twisting and pulling his foot.

Tara was making a move to break up the two fighters when a shadowy movement outside the house’s back door registered in her peripheral vision.

…TTAT
40
CGAA...

9:15 AM

The kitchen connected to an adjoining laundry room, at the far end of which was a back door to the house
.
A curtain covered the window set into the door; through it Tara watched a silhouetted form grow larger. Her hand-to-hand combat training made it painfully obvious to her that neither man knew how to fight, but she did not allow this observation to break her concentration.