Vanished(28)
He chose not to eat a donut for breakfast. From that simple decision, he avoided the chemicals and saturated fat. The ability to choose gave him power. Power over his health and weight. Thinking about every bite he put in his mouth made him strong. And kept his health and weight in balance.
He rarely turned on his TV except to watch the news. Sex, advertising, gluttony, noise. By hitting one button, he removed those aspects from his everyday life, uncluttering his brain. He didn’t need the excess crap pitched to him on television; he had important things to think about. It kept his mind calm and balanced. Why were so many people unable to push that button? Their lives would have been better for it.
A Christmas commercial danced across the television screen, and he changed the channel. It was impossible to avoid every cheap celebration of the season, but he tried. Christmas didn’t mean what it used to.
Most people looked away when a mother was dealing with a screaming child. He would always look right at her and smile. He remembered those days. It was a rite of passage for a parent to deal with a public situation. It was his way of acknowledging her pain and being thankful that he’d survived his son’s childhood. If you chose parenthood, you should experience the painful moments and the happy ones. You didn’t pick and choose what moments you wanted; you embraced it all.
And you had the right to be a parent. If someone took that right away, they should lose their right, too.
Balance.
It was so simple, so clear. Why couldn’t more people see the truth?
That boy who tried to steal two million dollars didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t his money. The police were right to stop it, and now the boy would be punished for fighting the natural balance.
His own personal gifts were the ability to see the natural balance and the brain to figure out the steps to restore it. He closed his eyes, studying the colors on the back of his eyelids. He would experience a green aura when things were good in his life. He didn’t actually see the colors; it was more like he felt them, breathed them. Right now things weren’t quite right; his aura seemed more of a muddled yellow. He knew what big step he needed to take to restore his life’s harmony, but he hadn’t found the right opportunity. But tonight there was a small step he could take. It would help get him through until he could take the final leap.
An eye for an eye.
He wasn’t a religious person, but there was truth and strength in those words. The phrase vibrated with power and precision.
They were words to live by.
14
48 HOURS MISSING
Ava closed one eye and focused on the figure in front of her. She slowly exhaled, then held her breath as she smoothly pulled her trigger over and over. She emptied her magazine and smiled at the paper figure full of holes in his chest.
Nothing was more relaxing than seeing those holes. With one swift movement, she swapped out her magazine for a second one on the table in front of her and filled the paper man with holes again, ignoring the hot shell that bounced off her neck and burned for a brief second. She welcomed the prick of physical pain. She laid down her weapon and listened to other weapons firing in the sheriff’s facility, her earplugs and hearing protection muffling the shots into soft thumps.
She’d had enough.
She’d felt the need to hit or shoot something this morning. She pulled off her eye protection, gathered her gear, and headed through the double sets of doors of the firing range and into its lobby. Her brain was clear and her energy renewed as she stepped outside and unlocked her bureau vehicle. She loved to shoot. She’d never had to pull her weapon on the job, but she relished her trips to the firing range. Some of the agents she worked with hated the mandatory qualifications with their service weapons. She’d seen both men and women sweat as their test day drew near. Not her. She loved it. And she was damn accurate.
She’d never touched a gun before she entered Quantico. The academy had taught her to shoot. Some agents never became comfortable with their weapon, but since the first day she’d touched hers, she’d known it was a skill she wanted. So she’d worked her ass off until her instructors were impressed.
Now she used it for stress relief. After the anxiety of waiting all day for last night’s ransom drop, she needed to blow off some steam. She was surprised she’d managed to sleep. She’d been wired enough to consider a run at two in the morning. The utter disappointment of the ransom drop had shaken the whole team. The late briefing last night had been overcast with anger. The agents were angry at the young man and the time and effort they’d put into the situation, only to have it go nowhere.
They felt like they’d been hurled back to square one.
She drove to the church, parked, and went in for the morning briefing. The blown-up ransom note was still on the whiteboard. No one had taken it down. Ava scowled at the note, a symbol of someone who had jerked the FBI around and pulled vital resources from the real investigation. Maybe the note should stay up; it would remind everyone to take every lead seriously and not get distracted. No one knew which tiny lead would find Henley.
But today was another day. Henley had been missing two full days, and it was time to find her and bring her home. Renewal and fresh determination swept through Ava.
She stood in the back of the small conference room, listening to ASAC Ben Duncan and Special Agent Sanford discuss the digital recording of the Portland Airport’s luggage pickup area. Sanford touched his laptop, and a grainy video appeared on the big screen at the front of the room. “Here’s what we got from the airport security cameras. If you watch this man, you’ll see him grab a black wheeled suitcase.” A yellow circle appeared in the video, highlighting a man in a baseball cap. He stood close to the baggage carousel, carefully watching each bag, occasionally checking the tag on a black bag. Every few seconds he scanned the growing crowd. He finally grabbed a suitcase after taking a hard look at the tag. He immediately extended the handle and headed out of the frame, the bag rolling behind him. A second video clip appeared, showing the man walking across the traffic lanes outside of baggage claim, heading for the parking garage directly on the other side. Ava squinted at the figure. Light baseball cap, simple black jacket, jeans, dark shoes. Was his hair gray or blond?
The video vanished. She waited for the next clip.
“That’s all we’ve got so far,” Sanford stated.
“What?” Ava was shocked. “What about inside the parking garage? Every inch of that place must have cameras.”
“We’ve gone through every angle twice. We can’t pick him up after that shot of him walking across to the garage.”
“What about at the pay station?” Another agent asked from the group. He was familiar, but Ava didn’t know his name. There were probably forty agents and local police squeezed into the small conference room.
“We’ve reviewed all the images from the pay station up to an hour after the incident. We haven’t spotted him. I’ve still got agents combing through video from the garage and pay station. We’re going through everything a third time and expanding the time frame.”
“How do you know that was Jake Callahan’s bag?” asked a local cop. “That guy looked at three other bags before grabbing one.”
“We don’t for certain,” started Duncan. A groan went up from the room. “Hang on a minute.” Duncan gestured in a “settle down” motion. “I’m not done. What we do have is Jake’s agreement that this looks like his bag, and another video of this guy coming in the doors from outside to grab a bag. He didn’t come from upstairs, where the passengers disembark, and no one else on that flight reported their bag missing.”
“Can we see that clip?” asked the local cop.
Sanford fiddled with his laptop on the table at the front of the room, and Ava watched their man with the cap stroll through the automatic spinning door from outside and take a position at the carousel.
“He knew exactly which carousel to go to and what time to stroll in,” said Sanford. “We put him at about six foot one and two hundred pounds. We tried to get a better shot of his face, but the cap is too low and the cameras are positioned too high.”
Convenient.
“His hair is gray, his shoes are black Nikes, and he’s wearing jeans.”
“No brand name on the jeans?” someone muttered, and laughter scattered through the group.
“Age?” asked Ava.
Duncan met her gaze and shook his head. “The hair suggests forty and up, but that’s not very precise.”
“He moves like he’s older,” she said. She scowled, not knowing why she thought that. There was nothing she could put her finger on to explain it.
Duncan nodded. “I agree. There’s a bit of a stiffness to his stride that suggests age. But it could easily be a past injury that slows his walk.”
“And the way he pulled the suitcase off the carousel makes him look older,” offered a Clackamas County deputy. “He pulled with his whole body, not just using his arm strength like a younger guy would, you know?” Several of the other agents nodded in agreement. Sanford ran the clip again, and Ava saw what the cop meant. The man didn’t simply lift the bag off the carousel, he lunged with it, using his body to lift and pull its weight.