“Yeah, sure, that would be great. Sorry about the call.” He moved some of his sweet and sour shrimp to Sierra’s plate, and she gave him some of the pork and hot pepper sauce.
“Don’t be. You have an important job to do, and I get to help with it.”
“That’s for sure.” He took a bite of her pork. “Hmm, this is good.”
She ate one of his shrimp. “Oh, I love this.”
“So the deal is the guy might know the man who sold him the boat. In that case, he can either give them up, which I suspect he won’t if he’s afraid they will retaliate, or he’s just as guilty as them in that he’s been working with them for a while. Or he’ll give you a false description to use to draw the sketch.” Adam took a bite of one of his shrimp.
“Okay, so it could be a waste of time for me to do this. Just like the one for Mr. Kinney was.”
“No. If they’ve lied and we can catch them at it, they can be charged with aiding and abetting. Sometimes, they’ll subconsciously give us features that do match up with the perp. Sometimes the opposite, so he might say the guy is tall when he’s short, has red hair when he’s really a blond.”
“Oh, that reminds me… With Mr. Kinney’s description, how tall was the carjacker?”
“Taller than Kinney, six foot one.”
“So he was taller by an inch, not two inches shorter. That really doesn’t sound like he was telling us the truth.”
Adam drank some of his water. “I know. But it’s still possible he was just confused after the injury. It’s one thing to have a traumatized witness who is trying their hardest to give you the real story. Another to deal with someone who is party to the crime in some way and doesn’t want you to find the perp.”
“Gotcha.” She sipped some of her water. “So why did you go into this business?”
“Both my parents were police officers, and they talked about the cases they’d had to deal with while we were eating our meals. I wanted to be one in the worst way. Once I joined the bureau, my dad and mom retired from the force. I was a policeman for a few years, and then I wanted to do something that I felt would really help in solving some of these crimes. So I became a detective.” Adam got another call and he let out his breath and answered it. “Holmes.”
“We have a kidnapping in process. We have an Amber Alert out now,” the officer told Adam and gave him the location and description of the car.
“That’s only a quarter of a mile from where I am. I’m on it.”
Chapter 11
Adam quickly paid for Sierra’s and his meals at the Chinese restaurant and said to her, “A fourteen-year-old girl, Melissa Baeyer, was grabbed at a shopping plaza just down the street from here. The car description was for a blue Ford sedan.”
As they headed outside, Sierra’s phone buzzed. She looked at the Amber Alert on her phone and frowned. “The license plate and description of the car used in the kidnapping of the girl is of my car.”
“Hell, your car isn’t here.” Not believing Sierra’s car had been stolen to commit a kidnapping until he verified her car wasn’t in the parking lot, Adam quickly called it in to Tori. “The car involved in the kidnapping of the juvenile is—”
“Sierra Redding’s car. We just got word.”
“Right. Stolen from the parking lot at the Chinese restaurant where we were having lunch.” Adam gave her the name of the restaurant and its location.
“I’m already on my way there to pick you up. Be there in a few minutes.”
“Tori’s coming to pick us up,” Adam told Sierra. She looked like she was ready to run down the street and find the car on foot if she had to.
“I can’t believe someone would steal my car and kidnap a child!” Sierra sounded as frustrated as he felt.
“I know. At least you were sitting with a police detective when it happened, so no one can accuse you of doing the deed yourself, if that’s any consolation.”
“It is. But only if we can find Melissa before anything further happens to her.”
“Amen to that.”
It seemed like it took forever before Tori showed up and stopped so they could jump into her car and take off. They listened to the radio as they headed in the direction where the car had been spotted. Adam began to get an eerie feeling about this when they ended up in Sierra’s neighborhood, only a block from her home.
“Go to my house.” Sierra gave the directions to Tori.
“Okay, so what am I missing? Your car is stolen, used to kidnap a child, and then what? Deliver her to your house?” Tori asked.
“There is only one person I can think of who would want me to take the rap for kidnapping a child. A guy I put in prison,” Sierra said. “Dover Manning.”
Adam recalled the postcard Sierra had received before she went on her flight to Texas, and he called it in to the boss. “Sir, we believe the kidnapping could be the work of the man Sierra testified against, Dover Manning. He was angry that no one believed he only saw a dog in her hotel room.”
“He’s in jail,” Adam’s boss said.
“Right. I told you about the postcard she got.”
“Hell, okay. Keep me informed.”
“Will do.”
When they reached Sierra’s house, Adam really had expected to see her car sitting in the driveway, but it wasn’t. He was praying that the kidnappers had pulled the car into the garage and the girl was inside, safe and sound. Tori parked in the driveway.
Sierra was getting out of the car, but Adam told her to stay. She gave him the pass code for her house and he headed to the house, Tori following behind him. As soon as he unlocked the door, he and Tori had their guns out and headed inside.
They found the girl gagged and tied to a chair in the dining room, her brown eyes wild with fear. Adam and Tori quickly showed her their badges, and then Tori began to untie her and pulled the gag off her while Adam searched the house for any sign of the culprits. He found a broken window in the laundry room, glass on the floor inside, and when he returned to the dining room, he saw that the kidnappers had torn up all of Sierra’s artwork. He felt sick for her, worried she would be heartbroken about it. Tori was already calling in that they had the girl at Sierra’s house, and she was unharmed.
Adam smelled a woman’s and a man’s scents that hadn’t been in the house before, and he was certain they belonged to whoever had kidnapped the girl. He checked the garage, but Sierra’s car wasn’t there either.
He also called in the situation, saying that the kidnappers were gone, the girl was safe in their custody, and the car was still missing.