“I know.” He put his hand on Ollie’s shoulder, and Ollie immediately shook it off and started pacing again.
Trevor sighed, frustrated and confused. “Come on, Ollie—oh! Fuck me,” he said as he realized what they’d all been missing.
Ollie stopped pacing and turned to face him. “What?”
“We’re too close. I’m off my game. You, too.”
“Dammit, Trevor. What are you talking about?”
“This isn’t about a ransom,” Trevor said, watching as confusion played over Ollie’s features. “It’s not about money at all. Not at the core.”
Ollie shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s about you, McKee. The ransom note was addressed to you. Not to her parents. And it’s no secret that you’re in tight with Stark. Whoever did this had to know that you’d be pulled in right away.”
Ollie went completely pale. “Me,” he said. “The sick bastard took her to punish me.”
* * * *
Within minutes, the team was assembled around the conference table, and Ollie was beating himself up for somehow being at the crux of this. He shot a quick glance toward Trevor, who met his eyes, then shook his head just slightly. The message was clear—this isn’t your fault.
Short and to the point, and it made Ollie feel a tiny bit better, if for no other reason than knowing that there was someone who had his back.
Their eyes held another second, then Trevor turned his attention back to the table and nodded at ASAC Horowitz. “Can you take a look at Ollie’s closed and cold cases?”
“Already on it,” Horowitz said, holding up his phone.
“I’ll call Charles,” Ollie said, referring to his old boss in Los Angeles. “See if anything rings a bell from one of my old cases here. But off the top of my head, I’ve got nothing.”
“And New York?”
“I’ll call the office there, too, but it seems more likely this would have originated here.”
“Agreed,” Trevor said. “But no stone unturned.” He held Ollie’s eyes again. “Whatever it takes, we’ll get her back.”
That warmth in his belly was back, and Ollie nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “We will.”
“You need to examine your personal life too,” Quince said, his British accent more pronounced since he’d just returned from a job in London and come straight to Stark’s house. He was former MI6 and an ex-member of Deliverance, a now defunct organization that had operated vigilante style, but with the primary mission of protecting and rescuing kidnapped children. Liam had also been part of that group, and Ollie couldn’t be happier they were both on the team.
“I have been,” Ollie assured him. “Honestly, no one rings any bells.”
“What about Courtney’s boyfriend before you?” Denny asked.
Ollie shook his head, doubting that would lead anywhere. “She had one serious relationship before me, and he’s married now. Courtney was even in their wedding. They’re close friends—Courtney, Bill, and his wife. But I’ll go see him. If she’d noticed someone watching her or was nervous about anything, she might have told him.”
Ryan leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Wouldn’t she have told you? After all, you’re with the FBI.”
“She would. At least I think so. But no stone unturned, right?”
“Oh, we’ve got something.” From the end of the table, Brax looked up. “A partial license plate.”
Thank God.
It wasn’t a resolution, but at least they were moving in the right direction.
“Hang on,” Brax said, tapping keys on his laptop. “Mr. Stark, can you dim the lights?”
Damien moved to the panel and did, adding, “But it’s Damien. Not Mr. Stark. That goes for all of you.”
“Roger that. Okay, look.” He gestured toward the giant LED screen that had been set up for the team. Black at first, then the video feed came into view. “This is the parking lot in Studio City at Laurel and Ventura. The area we’re looking at is right behind the Vons where her car was found after the 911 call was received.”
Ollie’s eyes were fixed on the screen. Someone—presumably the kidnapper—had put in a call to 911 just after midnight from a payphone outside of the grocery store, which was how the ransom note had been found in the first place.
“Here,” Brax said, and a graphic of a yellow arrow appeared on screen, indicating little more than a shadow. Then the shadow moved, crossing the visual field and coming into dim focus to reveal Courtney.
Ollie closed his eyes, fighting a wince. He knew what was coming. And soon enough, it did. A dark figure approached as she was about to open the driver’s side door. He got her from behind, his hand going over her mouth, and Courtney going limp in his arms.
“Chloroform?” The question came from Nikki, and he looked over to see that she’d joined them and was standing beside Damien, his arm around her shoulder.
“Very likely,” Brax said. “Keep watching,” he added as the perp dragged her out of frame.
“Well, shit,” Ollie said.
“Hold on.” Brax tapped some keys, the image shifted, and they had a view of another car as the kidnapper carried Courtney to a late model Honda, then shoved her into the trunk.
Ollie’s gut twisted at the sight. “Tell me you got a plate.”
“Only a partial,” Brax said. “But we have footage of the Honda driving west through the lot, approaching her car. Still only a partial, but it tells us that our suspect entered off of Laurel Canyon about that time.”
“When exactly?” Trevor asked.
“One-oh-four in the morning. No idea what she was doing at the grocery store that late.”
“She wasn’t,” Ollie says. “It closes at ten. She must have been coming in from across the street. There’s a little bar tucked away on Ventura Place. She goes there about once a week to meet a friend from college.”
“There you have it,” Trevor said. “Someone might have known that habit. Leah, you’ll take point interviewing the bar staff.”
“On it,” she said, shooting Ollie a sympathetic smile.
Next, he assigned Mario the task of going deeper into her work. “Poke through her files. Read whatever she was currently working on. Maybe she was trying to get out of doing fluff pieces. Maybe she was working on something investigative that took a wrong turn. Denny, you know what you’re doing.”
“Trying to track the car by that partial.”
“Got it in one.”
“That’s all good and well,” Ollie said. “But it doesn’t feel right. This won’t be about some article she was writing. The note came to me specifically, but anyone watching her would know we haven’t been close in years. Somehow, this is tied to my work.”
“What we know,” Trevor said, “is that we don’t know anything for sure yet, and so we’re covering all bases. You know the game, Ol.”
“I do.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“We’ll get her back,” Trevor said, his voice intimately soft. “And we’re definitely playing the Ollie card. You need to be in deep with that. Going over any intel we get from the firm or the Feds. Letting us know if anything is missing.”