Worth Any Price Read online

  Realizing she had no idea how to handle whatever trauma her daughter had faced, and what she would need to do to deal with it, she lifted her high into her arms and managed with the help of the vanity to stand. She knew she wasn’t supposed to clean Kayla up, but she’d had to get the tape off, and now she had to give Kayla some water, regardless of the evidence destroyed by doing so. She filled a cup from the dispenser and helped Kayla drink it slowly. Then cradling Kayla in both arms, she made her way halfway down the steps to where the contents of her purse had spilled out. Spotting Kel’s card, she grabbed the banister and lowered herself until she could pick it up. Then she righted both her and Kayla and went back up the stairs to the master bedroom.

  Using the phone on her night table, she punched in the series of numbers Kel had scribbled under the main number. It rang and was instantly picked up.

  “Detective Vain.”

  “I have her Kel. He brought her back.”

  She had punctuated her terse words with a long sob and it was everything Kel could do not to break the cell phone he clutched in his hand into pieces.

  “Is she all right, Laura?”

  “I think so. She’s filthy. I just got the tape off of her mouth and eyes.”

  “We’ll be right there. Don’t touch anything else, don’t clean her up. We can get prints from that tape so leave it where it is, don’t do anything with it. And try not to touch her shoes or her clothing. And don’t talk to her about what happened. I have a child psychologist standing by to question her properly and to help her deal with this. My team will be there in less than twenty minutes. I’ll be a few minutes behind them, I have a lead on the video. I think I can get it off the web before too many people see it.”

  “Thank you, Kel.” Her words were heartfelt and sincere. The woman was truly grateful; grateful that he had taken her body and used it for his pleasure. He was humbled.

  He managed to choke out, “Hey, the worst is over. We’ll deal with the rest.” Then he disconnected and bolted out of his chair. In three minutes he was directing twenty men and coordinating the investigation.

  It was four in the morning before things settled down. Kayla had been given a sedative and the crime scene investigators had carefully photographed her before removing her clothing and bagging it for the lab. Kayla’s doctor had been summoned to the house as Laura refused to let Kayla be taken to the hospital. She had been checked by the doctor and found intact and unharmed, although moderately dehydrated and chafed where her wet clothing had been in contact with her skin for so long. The doctor recommended that Kayla spend a few days in the hospital to recover, but again, Laura refused. She knew what the press was like, and she knew what was truly best for her daughter, and that was to be at home with her.

  After Kayla had been examined, her mother rushed to bathe her and remove the excrement that caked her from her waist to well past her knees. An I.V. drip was started and now hung on a stand high above her head as she slept. The clear liquid would replenish fluids and nutrients to her depleted system. The drugs needed to calm her and allow for a full examination had taken their full effect. She was blissfully asleep, looking very much like a clown baby due to the red marks the tape had left around her mouth. Cuts and scrapes shone in the semidarkness where ointments had been liberally applied. And her once-long hair had been modified to just above her shoulders; the lab wanted samples, and it had been impossible to detangle anyway.

  Two cruisers were patrolling this particular section of Masonboro Loop while an undercover team was staked out around the perimeter of the house. The crime scene techs had been all over the place photographing and fingerprinting, doing electronic sweeps, but finally all the questions had been asked and everything picked through. The note that had been pinned to Kayla, and the scraps of tape, had been bagged and sent out and Kayla’s bedroom had been thoroughly gone over. They also had the ransom note Laura had thoroughly compromised. At first she hadn’t wanted to give it to them, but then she remembered the promise she had made. That she would do anything in her power to catch this madman and keep this horror from happening to someone else. But she did ask that they keep its contents private. Kel assured her that his department would, but realizing how many would have access, he stopped short of promising her.

  Kel could see the exhaustion on Laura’s face as they stood in the doorway of the master bedroom. Kayla was curled into herself in a tight ball, one hand tucked under her cheek, looking like the angel that she was. Kel knew that there was no way Kayla would be sleeping anywhere other than in her mother’s bed for quite some time, maybe even up until the day she was sent off to college.

  Kel stroked his finger down Laura’s arm to get her attention. She had changed and was wearing a white velour robe, she looked like a sad angel who hadn’t earned her wings. She looked up at him and he saw the glistening tears clinging to her lashes. She looked fragile and he wanted desperately to fold her into his arms and hold her.

  “You’re exhausted. You need to get some sleep yourself. I’ll let myself out. Don’t worry, nobody’s going to get in here again. We’ll see to it.”

  “They can’t stay here forever, Kel. Eventually they’ll have other places they have to patrol.”

  “For now, they’ll be here. Tomorrow I’ll arrange to have a friend who’s a security expert drop by and design a security system.”

  “I’m just going to sell the house.” Then after a moment’s hesitation, she added, “I was thinking about it anyway, it’s too isolated back here.”

  His eyes blinked wide and he took a step away as if to sidestep the Pinocchio-style peg that should be growing from her nose. “C’mon, you’re a Wyndham. You have more backbone than that. You love this house. I read all about it when you gave the tour the year you renovated it. It was your grandparents’ house and their parents’ before that.” His hand waved, encompassing the long hallway with its grand entrance foyer visible at the end. “You ordered the tile and the chandelier from Italy. I remember reading about the Murano panels and how long they took to make. You don’t want to sell the house. We both know that. Just make it more secure, get some alarms, a coded gate out at the road, better lighting, a few big dogs.”

  “I’ll talk to my brother, he owns a security company. But I don’t know when that’ll be, I don’t want to talk to him right now. He certainly is not going to be pleased with me. Neither are my parents.”

  “You got Kayla back. Nothing else matters. If you don’t want to ask your brother, I’ll get my friend to design and install a system for you. He owes me a few favors—I kept him from getting his ass in a sling quite a few times when we were in college.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice husky from emotion. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

  He gathered her into his arms and with great tenderness, pulled her close. She wasn’t wearing heels and his chin rested on top of her head. He chuckled, “Either way I answer that is liable to get me slapped. I could say you’re certainly welcome . . . anytime. Or I could say thank you!”

  She pushed softly against his chest and looked up into his eyes. Her wry smile charmed him. “You’ll be the first one I call if I ever need anyone to come to my rescue again.”

  He almost hooted out loud, but he bit his lip instead. She didn’t even realize what she’d just said, “come” to my rescue. He had certainly done that! He bent to kiss her on the cheek. “Get some sleep. By morning there’ll be reporters hanging out all over the place.”

  The instantaneous look of panic that flashed across her face made him want to pull her close again and shelter her from the inevitable. “We’ll keep them from coming up to the house. But whenever you decide to leave, they’re probably going to hound you, at least until you give a statement or agree to an interview. You might want to consider staying in and ordering your groceries deliver
ed for a while.”

  “And what about you, what are you going to tell the press?”

  “Certainly no details involving us. And unless you tell them, it could be weeks before they find out what went down.” Ouch, I hope she doesn’t think that was a pun! “Me, I’m going to track down the owner of that website. I managed to get us off the Internet pretty quickly but only because I know some great hackers, and fortunately I knew just where to find them in the middle of the night—they’re trustees in the New Hanover County Jail. I think we might get lucky on that score.” Damn, pun again! “Maybe only a few people have seen our show and hopefully they didn’t download anything to their hard drives.”

  She cringed at the thought of anyone seeing their performance, but she had already braced herself for it to go all over the world before anything might be done. It would truly be a bonus if Kel could stop it before that happened. “Whatever you’re doing, I really appreciate it. That video is not something I want my family and friends viewing if it can be helped.”

  “Mine, either.” He hesitated for a minute before turning away, then bent and brushed his lips lightly over hers. He was walking down the stairs before she could register the fact that he had just kissed her. A quick, fleeting kiss that said maybe things were not over between them. At the door he called up to her. “Lock the door behind me and try to get some sleep.”

  She walked into the bedroom just to touch Kayla’s face and to press a kiss on her cheek before going down to lock the door and turn off all the lights. The blue and white lights from the police cars were bouncing off the walls on the lower level and it was comforting to see them.

  A few minutes later when she slipped off her robe and climbed into bed, she noticed a little slip of paper by the base of the lamp. It said simply: “In the drawer, just in case. Kel.”

  She lifted herself up on one arm and pulled open the drawer. There on top of her romance books was a gun with another note. “Loaded. Safety off. Shoot to kill.”

  Chapter Six

  Kel drove straight to the motel where they’d had surveillance since early the previous afternoon. He had actually done one thing right according to his angry supervisor. He hadn’t been dismissed, suspended, or even taken off the case when he’d come clean with him. But other than the maid, no one had gone into room twelve until he and Laura had, which had been shortly after eight.

  It was now four-thirty in the morning and still no action. Kel gave the signal for the stake out team to go in. They were instructed to confiscate the TV and the camera, any tapes they could find, and to do a full electronics sweep of the area, being very careful to preserve any fingerprints on the casings of the equipment.

  While they were unhooking and unbolting the items, he sat in his cruiser and punched in the number and then the extension of the department’s computer genius, and his good friend, Mark Twiller. He’d spoken with Mark many times over the afternoon and then again in the evening. Just prior to arriving at the station, after having left Laura at the grocery store parking lot, he learned from Mark that the contents of the tape had been uploaded by remote to a website the kidnapper had standing by.

  Through a series of trial and error searches and with some assistance through intuition and dumb luck, along with a few of Kel’s trustee friends in prison, Mark had finally stumbled onto the website displaying the amorous action between Kel and the very lovely and shapely Laura Wyndham.

  Interestingly, the search perimeter “Room 12” had netted the final link that had led to the website and the feed. A pop-up labeled Green Door Videos had flashed on the screen, and just coincidentally, Mark had remembered that all the doors at the Jefferson motel were a different color. And sure enough, the door of room twelve was indeed green.

  The temptation to view the sordid scenes before erasing them from the web had been more than he could bear, but realizing he couldn’t afford to be caught watching the feed by Kel or anyone else for that matter, he had downloaded a copy to the hard drive and to his home unit using his deft finger magic. When Mark had received the signal from Kel telling him that Kayla had been safely returned, it took only a few minutes to delete Laura and Kel’s pornographic acting debut from the world wide web.

  When the phone on his desk began to ring, he knew it could only be one person.

  “Yes, Kel. I know I did a good job. Thank you. I told you that it would be child’s play once we found the link. But what a shame, hubba hubba, you two certainly did look fine!”

  “Get rid of it!” the voice on the other end of the line snarled.

  “I told you, I did.”

  “I mean the one you downloaded to the hard drive.”

  “Oh, Kel!”

  “Do it!”

  There were a few moments when neither said anything, but the click of computer keys could be heard over the line.

  “I did. It’s gone. Zapped into a trillion pieces and floating out there in cyberspace somewhere.”

  “I owe you, Mark. I owe you big time. Thanks for staying up for me all night and doing this for me. And for the department, of course.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ll put in for a pay back one day. Plus overtime, of course.”

  “Now give me the website info so I can track it to the owner.”

  “It won’t do you any good. It’s a camp-on site out of Vegas. Multiple owners, something like a co-op. Anybody with a charge card can upload to it. Once, twice, as many times as they want as long as everything can be shared. A lot of wankers upload images of women using beaver cams hidden in shopping bags, briefcases, and the like.”

  “You mean I have to worry about others having made copies?”

  “Yeah, but it’s the middle of the damn night, and there’s an awful lot out there to sift through. We probably pulled it fast enough. Though time will tell. But you can be sure he’s downloaded a copy.”

  “So there’s at least two.”

  “Two?”

  “You can’t fool me you sleaze bag. I know you have one.”

  “How can you say that?” Mark’s voice sounded wounded.

  “Because I know you, and because I know human nature. As easy as you could do it, it would have been too much of a temptation to delete it blind. Now just tell me I’m right.”

  “Aren’t you always?”

  “I want that file deleted.”

  “Damn!”

  “And I’m coming over there now to escort you home so I can watch you do it.”

  “You don’t trust me not to watch it?”

  “No, I most certainly do not. Get your shit ready, I’ll be there in three minutes.”

  “You’re a hard man.”

  “You have the evidence that I was. Hey, by the way, I got you a case of Dewar’s.”

  “You knew you’d have to have something to exchange?” Again his feelings sounded wounded.

  “Hell, I know you’ve got terrific blackmail material there and I really wouldn’t care so much if it were just me on that tape, but it’s not. So just consider the booze a gift, and a way for you to steer clear of any nefarious intentions down the road.”

  “I can’t believe you said that,” Mark said with a fake sniff as his fingers flew over the keys in an attempt to get his home unit to clone a duplicate of the file he’d already sent. The sudden loud pop coming from a can of soda being opened scared him out of his seat, and he turned to see Kel leaning in the doorway.

  “Three minutes, huh?” he asked with a raised brow.

  “Three minutes until I’m going to beat your sorry ass into pulp!” Kel said with a huge grin as he snapped his phone closed.

  “You win. Damn! I can never outsmart you.”

  Kel took a long sip of his drink and ambled into the room. “So, can you figure out from all this,” he
indicated the electronic equipment piled all over the room, “if the particular scenario we’re interested in was downloaded to anyone and if so, just who that might be?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s like file sharing, but it’s not a closed loop. If I hadn’t deleted it, the next time someone wanted to download it, they would have had to get it from someone else who’d already downloaded it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “Because you emphatically stated that my mission was to find it and get it off there tonight! And, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. He surely has downloaded it or at least seen it—after all, he returned the kid for Christ’s sake! And my home system is so well protected that they couldn’t get it from me, they wouldn’t have been able to get in there to leave a trail.”

  “So . . . when you downloaded it, did your system search and find his download?”

  “I don’t know. It could have.”

  “Jesus, Mark! We have a serial murderer here, wake up! I shouldn’t have to make these connections for you! Do your job!”

  “You’re right! You’re right!” he said as he swung his chair around and dropped into it. “Fucking A, just like I just said, you’re always right.”

  His curved fingers flew over the keyboard again as he alternately clicked the mouse and changed screens before letting out a loud sigh that made his lips rumble. “Nah, can’t get it. Whoever he is, he’s well protected, too. Shit. This could have been so easy if he wasn’t a geek.”

  “I wasn’t counting on it being easy. C’mon. Let’s go get that download off your machine. I’d hate for you to come up on charges for having porn on your system.”

  “It’s not illegal unless the victims are underage. Child porn this ain’t.”