Page 25 of Billion-Dollar Ransom

WHEN MIKE AND Nicky left the Schraeder estate, it was already dark. Even though FBI headquarters was in nearby Westwood, traffic was a slog, and they found themselves idling at way too many lights.

“That was a low blow, mentioning Kaitlin like that,” Mike Hardy said. “I should have warned you that Schraeder fights dirty.”

“I also think Schraeder has a mole somewhere on the task force.”

“Yeah, I heard Tighe ask you about the Santa Barbara job. Those two aren’t smart enough to have put it together that quickly.”

“Who do you think it is?”

“No idea. Another mystery to solve.”

“We went there for answers and came back with more problems,” Nicky said. “Yay us.”

“I’ll be honest, I don’t think it’s all bad,” Mike replied. “Maybe we can tap into some of Capital’s resources. Get them to do the scut work for us. They can afford to throw endless bodies at this thing.”

“That works only if we have open lines of communication,” Nicky said. “Haller and Tighe will play everything super-close to the vest, if for no other reason than to make themselves seem important to their rich client.”

“You forget how impossibly charming I can be when I really turn it on.”

“Are you turning it on now?”

Mike gave her his best boyish smile and raised his eyebrows suggestively.

“Great,” Nicky said. “Use that on Haller. Meanwhile, I’ll become besties with Tighe.”

“Ah, not Haller! That guy has a stick so far up his ass, I doubt he’s able to bend over and tie his shoes.”

“But you’re impossibly charming,” Nicky reminded him.

Mike grumbled, which was what he did whenever Nicky scored a point.

They were in constant contact with the command center all the way back to Westwood, but the day’s biggest break in the case didn’t come until they stepped onto the elevator in the garage, at which point both of their phones lit up with urgent updates.

The ride upstairs took only about twelve seconds, but to both of them, it felt like a dozen years.

The moment they stepped onto the sixth floor, a voice shouted from across the room: “Agent Gordon! You need to come over here and check this out.”

Nicky wound her way through the bodies crowding the Sandbox to face the main screen. Mike struggled to keep up with her.

Hope Alonso, the junior agent who was Nicky’s assistant, was speeding through the footage from the lone security feed that had captured the brazen daylight abduction of Boo Schraeder. Nicky had already watched it dozens of times.

“Is there something we missed?” Nicky asked.

“Yes,” Hope said. “It’s something everybody missed, because almost no one knew about it.” The assistant froze the playback just as Boo fell unconscious into the arms of her kidnapper. Then she tapped on the track pad, expanding the image of an area just above the back door leading to the salon.

Nicky saw it: a black plastic circle no bigger than a half-dollar fixed to the wall above the door. “A spy cam?” she asked. “Why didn’t the owner of the salon tell us about this?”

“The cam wasn’t placed there by the owner,” Hope said. “It was put there by the jealous husband of one of the customers. He suspected she was having an affair and that the boyfriend routinely picked her up after her hair appointments. The husband wanted to catch her in the act.”

“ Was she having an affair?” Mike asked with a devilish gleam in his eye.

“Husband didn’t say,” Hope replied. “But when the news broke about Boo Schraeder, he remembered his spy cam, which uploads the previous twelve hours of recording before auto-erasing. He emailed the file to us.”

“No doubt looking for a little reward money to ease his possibly betrayed heart,” Mike said.

“Bring up the video,” Nicky said.

A few taps brought up the feed from the spy cam. The lens wasn’t well positioned to capture the kidnapper’s face. Basically, all you could see were the tops of his and Boo Schraeder’s heads as they struggled.

But the view farther down the driveway revealed something shocking.

A witness.