“You found out where Sophie is?”
“I hung around the Side Street Grill after I talked to the bartender. Couple of valets came on duty around six-thirty. One of them saw a woman pass out in the parking lot last night, just about the time the bartender says that the redhead disappeared. The kid says it was dark, and he didn’t get a good look at the woman. He wouldn’t have thought much about it. Figured she was drunk. But he had his eye on the car these two guys helped her into, thinking you never know when something could be not quite right. It was a silver RV and he gave me a detailed description of it, including its performance capabilities and a license-plate number. After a little research, guess who I found out it belongs to?”
“Falcone?” Lucas asked.
“Sonny.”
“He stayed at the bar after she left.”
Tracker nodded. “That gives him an alibi. Might have been a perfect plan if he hadn’t used one of his family’s cars to drive her off in.”
“No one said he was Einstein.”
“Can we go after her?” Mac asked.
“We will,” Tracker assured her. And this time there wasn’t a trace of laughter in his eyes. Then he shifted his gaze back to Lucas. “My question is who Sonny thought he was kidnapping? She was wearing a wig and using Mac’s credit card last night. But she wasn’t wearing any kind of disguise when she went out with Sonny in D.C. And my man definitely saw him eat lunch with a blonde on Thursday.”
“Sophie might not have given him her real name,” Mac said, and the two men turned to stare at her. “Last weekend, when we were talking in the tree house, she told me that she wasn’t going to tell the next man she dated that she was Sophie Wainright. Her experience with Bradley Davis had really gotten her down. Then she got a call on her cell phone, and I had the feeling it was from someone she was already seeing. Could it have been Sonny?”
Lucas and Tracker exchanged glances.
“Could she have told this man that she was you?” Lucas asked.
Mac thought for a minute. “No, I don’t think that Sophie would have done that. I mean, she might have pretended to be someone else. But I don’t think…” She let the sentence trail off as she met Lucas’s eyes. “But then I figured she was really at that spa. And I can’t explain why she was wearing the wig and pretending to be me last night. I wish we’d never bought those foolish wigs. If we hadn’t, none of this would have happened.”
For a moment Lucas said nothing. He merely looked at her with an unreadable expression on his face.
“Look,” Tracker said. “None of this makes sense right now. All we know for sure is that someone snatched Sophie out of that parking lot last night.”
“Can’t we go to the police with that much?” Mac asked.
“Right now it would be tricky,” Tracker said. “Sonny stayed at the Side Street Grill until well after midnight. He can always claim that his RV was stolen.”
“And while he’s shielding himself behind his father’s legal team, something could happen to Sophie,” Lucas said. “You think she’s on the estate?”
Tracker waited until the waitress, a woman named Leona, had slapped down mugs of coffee and taken their orders. The moment she waddled back to the kitchen, he pulled out a hand-drawn map and spread it on the table.
“I took a little tour of the Falcone Vineyards this afternoon, along with thirty or so other tourists. Of course, I kind of got lost. Falcone’s security is pretty good, and they weren’t happy when they caught up with me. Before they did, I found the silver RV safe and sound in the garage along with six other cars.”
Pausing, he pointed to one of the boxes he’d drawn on the map. “This is the garage. The main house right next to it has three stories with decks on each level. There seem to be several guests staying there already and all have access to the cars.”
“Do you think Sophie is being kept at the house?” Mac asked.
Tracker shrugged. “I’m not ruling it out, but it’d be tricky with all the people around. What if she cries for help?”
Mac found Lucas’s hand and gripped it.
“The outbuildings where the actual wine is made are nestled together over here.” Tracker tapped a finger on the map closer to the highway.
“That’s even riskier,” Lucas said.
“Yeah.” Tracker took a quick swallow of coffee. “Too many people in and out on the tours. But there are places they don’t let the tourists into. The tents for the party this weekend are being built here.” He moved his finger in a straight line to a point halfway between the winery and the main house. “There’s going to be a lot of traffic to and from this point tomorrow and Sunday. But the house won’t be open to the public, only to a few invited guests.”
“And we’ll be among them,” Lucas said.
Both men stopped talking as the waitress placed heaping platters onto the table. Mac glanced down at the mountain of eggs, bacon and home fries and wondered where to begin. Lucas and Tracker reached simultaneously for the saltshaker. When their hands collided, Lucas settled for the pepper, and then they switched. Their movements were so smooth that Mac was sure they’d done this before. How similar they were, it occurred to her as she watched them sample their eggs, then reach for the ketchup.
“You’ve worked together before, haven’t you?” she asked.
Both men shot her a look of surprise.
“How do you know that?” Tracker asked.
Mac shrugged. “You’ve shared meals before, and you can practically finish each other’s sentences.”
Lucas looked at Tracker. “The doc has a sharp, analytical mind.”
“Welcome aboard, Dr. Lloyd,” Tracker said as he poured more salt on his home fries. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”
They even looked alike, she thought as she watched them attack the mountain of food. Each had the dark good looks of a Brontâue hero. Tracker’s edges were rugged, Lucas’s more polished. But both had a capacity for stillness, and both of them exuded that hint of danger. In Lucas, that threat of danger might be hidden under a more civilized veneer, but it was there, and it had never been more apparent than now when she saw him with Tracker.
Lucas Wainright certainly didn’t fit the profile of the man she’d thought she would fall in love with. She should be afraid of him, but she wasn’t. Perhaps because he had that other side too—that streak of boyish mischief that lay hidden beneath the surface. It was something that he didn’t share very often. She was sure he shared it with his friend Tracker. And he’d shared it with her. In spite of his harsh words, he must still trust her a little. She hugged the knowledge to her.
Tracker shoveled in a final mouthful of scrambled eggs, chewed and swallowed. “I’m betting that Sophie’s somewhere on the estate. There are apartments over the garage that I didn’t get a chance to check. Falcone’s security is top of the line. Electronic surveillance as well as human. The two who helped Sophie into the RV were probably part of his crew.”
“It might help if we knew who they thought they snatched in the parking lot last night,” Lucas said.
“Tell me about it,” Tracker said.
“The D.C. police think that there have been two attempts to snatch Mac here because of her research. So it’s probable that whoever took Sophie last night thinks they have Mac. When she wasn’t in her apartment on Thursday morning, they could have traced her eventually the same way we did.”
“Yeah. And they have every right to think they have Dr. Lloyd,” Tracker pointed out. “Sophie was registered as the doc and she was dressed up impersonating the doc. Plus she was using the doc’s credit card at the bar.”
“But if Sonny dated Sophie in D.C., he might have seen through her disguise last night,” Mac said. “In those wigs, we do look a lot alike. But if I was wearing the blond wig right now, you’d still know it was me.”
Lucas turned to her. “What are you saying?”
“Only that if Sonny thought he was dating me and had an inside track to my research, and he suddenly found out that Sophie wasn’t me…”
“He could have snatched her in the heat of the moment, so to speak, and he could be using her as a pawn,” Tracker said. “She’s got a point.”
“Looking at it objectively as possible, there’s only one fact we can be sure of. Sophie was taken last night in that silver van,” Mac said. “The rest is just theory. We won’t know if it’s true until we test it. Therefore, it’s only logical that you take me along to the party because that will give you so much more flexibility in solving the problem. If I have to, I can sign papers on the spot, give them what they want, and we can walk out of there with Sophie.”
Lucas stared at her. “But you don’t want to sign those papers.”
She met his gaze steadily. “Sophie wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for me. Everything you said to me in Florida was true. I did lie to you. I didn’t tell you the whole truth. If I had, she wouldn’t be where she is right now.”