Page 81

Mike rattled off the address, and Wally quickly pulled up the information. “The house has turned over three times since 2010. Its current owner lists a Tennessee address for tax purposes, so it is probably a rental house. The assessment shows that it has two floors and an unfinished basement, three bedrooms and two and a half baths.”

“You think this is the place where they have Angel’s mom?” Jax asked.

“We have to hope it is,” he answered. “It’s certainly isolated enough. If I were planning a kidnapping, this is certainly the type of place I would choose to hide out. We have to assume whoever is inside is armed and dangerous.”

“I brought the sonic cannon just in case,” Mike said, giving him a thumbs up. “Locked and loaded.”

That broke the tension momentarily, and Wally chuckled. “Thanks, Mike. At least we have a weapon, even if it only knocks them down and makes their eardrums bleed.”

“Oh, their eyes will hurt like heck, too, and they won’t be able to see for a while, but only if I can get close enough to use it,” Mike added.

“Any advantage we have, we use,” Jax said, pulling over to the side of the road and stopping.

Angel, realizing they’d stopped, looked over with a questioning look. “What’s going on, Wally?” she whispered.

“We have an address where Sampson has stopped,” he told her softly. “Do you think that’s worth relaying to the cavalry?”

Her eyes widened before she gave a nod. “Excuse me, Ms. Kim, can you hold on a minute? I need to give you an address. And, if you would, please tell my dad to call me right away.”

Chapter Forty-Two

ANGEL SINCLAIR

Things were moving fast now.

I hung up and looked out the window. We’d pulled off to the side of a mostly deserted two-lane road. Another car suddenly drove past, did an abrupt U-turn and pulled off facing us on the other side of a dirt road before cutting their lights.

“Is that Bo?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

Wally quickly brought me up to speed with the recent developments. My heart began to beat fast, thinking my mom might be in the house, just yards away.

“So, Angel, what’s next?” Mike asked.

I blinked, realizing everyone was watching me, waiting. I was leading this operation, so it was time to pull it together.

“I talked to Ms. Kim,” I said. “She’s actually been in touch with my father. She’s on her way and bringing others. But because of this location, it’s going to take her time to get a team here. Hostage recovery takes a specific crew to handle things.”

I swallowed hard as I said the words. They might have found my mom, but by no means was she safe yet. “Ms. Kim said we did a great job tracking them to this location, and she wants full details later. But for now, she instructed us in no uncertain terms to stand down and wait for their arrival.”

“Exactly how much time until they get here?” Wally asked.

“I don’t know. She said she had to notify the FBI, and given the remote location of this house, it might be an hour or more.”

“And we’re just going to sit here and wait?” Jax asked.

A dozen thoughts raced through my mind. Candace Kim had been quite specific and insistent that we go nowhere near the house. I understood her concern. There were likely armed kidnappers and murderers in the house. We were kids and we weren’t trained to handle hostage situations. We had no weapons other than the sonic cannon. She was right. We’d done our part, or at least as much as we could.

Or had we?

My brain raced through idea after idea, discarding them all…except one. We didn’t have to storm the house, but we could observe. The truth was we had no actual intelligence that my mother was in there. We suspected it, but we hadn’t seen or heard her. If we could confirm to the hostage team that she was inside the house, and give them her location, that would help a lot.

“We’re not going to try and rescue my mother, but weareagents. That means we collect intelligence. We’ve got the laser mics in the trunk, so let’s get them out and confirm my mother is there, in what part of the house she’s located, where the kidnappers are hanging out, and any other information we can provide the FBI team when they arrive.”

“I like that call, Red,” Jax said opening the door and getting out. “I’m behind that plan all the way. I’ll go update the others.”

“I’m in, too,” Mike said. “I’ll get the mics out of the trunk.”

After they left, Wally looked at me pointedly. “You sure about this, Angel?”