The Perfect Murder by Kat Martin

THIRTY-TWO

Griff shivered. There was no air conditioning and though it was burning hot in the tiny, airless bedroom, he couldn’t seem to get warm.

His eyes stung with tears. He wasn’t in the fancy hotel room anymore, that was for sure. Just a dirty old wooden shack out in the swamp.

At least he was still alive. He thought he’d be dead by now.

Just before the sun came up, Nolan had come into the room with two other men, big burly dudes who liked kids even less than Eddie. They had jerked his arms in front of him and bound his wrists together with plastic ties, tied his ankles, and stuffed a gag in his mouth. They’d put a bag over his head, lifted him off the bed, and dumped him into a laundry cart.

A rattling elevator took him down to the bottom floor. The next thing he knew they were loading him into the trunk of a car and slamming the lid.

He’d started crying then. Last night, he had pulled off Eddie’s ski mask and seen his butt-ugly face. When Nolan and his creepy friends showed up, they didn’t bother with disguises. He knew what they looked like. That was how Griff knew they were going to kill him.

He’d thought it would be over by now.

Instead, after what seemed forever but was probably less than an hour, the car pulled off the highway onto a bumpy road. He was sweating inside the trunk, so scared he was afraid he would wet his pants and embarrass himself. He could feel the car turning this way and that, following some kind of curvy lane. Out in the boonies, he figured, where they could dump his body and no one would ever find him.

Not even his mom and Reese.

His throat clogged up and his eyes watered.

During the uncomfortable ride, he’d managed to spit out the gag and scrape the hood off his head, but it was too dark in the trunk to see. When the car braked and finally stopped, he took a deep breath and gathered his courage. He wasn’t going to die crying and begging. No way.

Then the trunk lid popped open and he was surprised to see a dilapidated old cabin among the trees, mostly hidden by tall grass and thick green leafy foliage. The ground was wet and swampy, so the cabin sat on stilts a couple of feet off the ground. Through the undergrowth, he caught a glimpse of water slugging its way along an overgrown creek.

The two men lifted him out of the trunk. They were wearing guns but they didn’t shoot him, just carted him into the cabin, into a tiny bedroom that smelled like a dead rat or something worse, and tossed him up onto a saggy bed with a rusted iron headboard and creaky springs.

They didn’t say a word. He flinched when Nolan pulled his pocketknife, but the guy just leaned down and cut the plastic tie around his ankles and the one biting into his wrists.

“There’s no way out, so you can forget trying to escape. Even if you managed to do it, there’s nowhere to go.”

Griff glanced around. There were windows, but they were all boarded up. The only way out was the old plank door they’d come in through.

“Sooner or later, someone will show up with food,” Nolan said. “You need to take a piss, use the bucket in the corner.” Nolan walked out of the room and closed the door, latching it behind him.

So here he was, still alive. He wasn’t sure why until he heard Nolan say they needed him for something called proof of life during a phone call tomorrow morning. After that, they could get rid of him.

Griff closed his eyes, trying to hold back more tears. He figured they wouldn’t want blood all over the cabin, so they would probably take him out into the woods to shoot him.

He thought about what might happen once he was out of the cabin, but instead of getting more scared, his eyes popped open. It was thick and swampy out there. If they didn’t tie his hands and feet, maybe he could find a way to escape. He was a Boy Scout. He’d been camping more than once, and he wasn’t afraid of snakes. Well, maybe the poisonous kind. But he could figure that out as he went along.

If there was any chance at all, he had to take it.

It was better than just dying.

Kenzie and Reese went back to the Holiday Inn to wait for Tabby’s call. As they approached the door to the room, Kenzie heard voices inside. Hawk would be meeting them there, but there was more than one person speaking.

Reese eased her behind him and pulled his weapon. It surprised her how naturally it fit in his hand, as if he had held it dozens of times. After watching him with Eddie, everything she’d thought she knew about Reese had changed. He was harder, tougher, less forgiving. And yet he was still Reese, the man she was so desperately trying not to love.

Using his key card, Reese turned the knob and shoved the hotel room door open with his boot, taking a shooting stance as he surged into the living room.

Three semiautos drew down on him at the same time.

“So I guess we’re all a little on edge,” Chase drawled as he holstered his weapon. Hawk did the same.

Kenzie recognized the third man as Brandon Garrett, youngest of the brothers. Dark brown hair and eyes a lighter shade of blue than Reese’s, his complexion less swarthy, though his carved features were no less handsome. Reese had once mentioned that Bran was a highly decorated former special operations soldier.

Seeing the dark look on his face and the hard line of his jaw as he holstered his weapon, Kenzie didn’t doubt it.

Then he grinned and the impression vanished as if it were never there.

“I thought you were in Denver,” Reese said to him, gripping his brother’s shoulder in greeting. “What are you doing here?”

“Chase has been keeping me up to speed. The way things were going, I figured you might need some help. Got to Dallas just in time to catch the jet.” He walked over and pulled Kenzie in for a quick, hard hug.

“It’s going to be okay,” Bran said. “We’re all here now. We’re going to find your boy.”

Her eyes burned. “Thank you for coming,” she managed.

Brandon grinned. “Are you kidding? Stay in Denver and let these guys get all the glory?”

The words made her smile, his confidence easing some of the fear inside her. Reese looked at his brothers and emotion surfaced in his face. Then it was gone, his control back in place.

He drew Kenzie against his side, an arm possessively around her waist. “We’re waiting to hear from Tabby. There’s a chance she’ll come up with Griff’s location.”

Reese went on to give them the kidnapper’s names and explain what had happened at the casino. He told them about Eddie’s cell phone and that Tabby was trying to ping Nolan Webb’s location.

“We’re working on the assumption Webb is still with Griff. If he is, we may be able to find him.”

“Amen to that,” Chase said.

The men began to mill impatiently around the room, waiting for a call that could still be some time away—if it came at all.

Then Hawk’s phone started playing some country tune. He stepped away to take the call, and the lines of his face turned grim. He said something Kenzie didn’t catch and the call ended.

Hawk turned toward them. “That was a guy named Buddy Brackett, one of my informants. I put word out it was worth big money for info on Jeremy Bolt. Buddy says he knows where to find him, but I need to get there now.”

“Bolt’s our ticket to proving Kenzie’s innocence,” Reese said. “Add to that, he shot your friend. If you’ve got a line on him—”

“Go,” Chase finished, his gaze going to Bran and Reese. “We’ve got this covered.”

The edge of Hawk’s hard mouth curved up. “Yeah, looks that way.” He turned to Kenzie. “With luck, I’ll solve at least one of your problems.”

“Be careful,” Kenzie said as she had before.

Hawk smiled. “Yes, ma’am.” Pulling his pistol, he dropped the magazine to check the load, shoved it in with the flat of his big hand, and slid the gun back into the holster at his waist. “If you need my help, just call.”

“We’ll keep you posted,” Chase said. “You do the same.”

As Hawk’s big, muscular frame disappeared out the door, Reese kissed the top of Kenzie’s head, which didn’t go unnoticed by the men. “Anybody else here hungry?” he asked. “Because I’m calling room service and ordering something to eat.”

“Count me in,” Bran said.

Chase went to the desk and picked up the room service menu. “Pastrami on rye or burgers?”

“Both,” Reese said.

Kenzie realized food was just something for the guys to do to break up the waiting.

“I’ve got an idea.” She headed for the kitchen table, where she’d set up her laptop. “Eddie said DeMarco owns property all over the state. County tax parcel records are public. I’ll call the Houston office. Rick Holloway and his people in acquisitions deal with that stuff every day. He can get us a list of all the property DeMarco owns.”

Reese nodded. “Good idea. Real estate, oil well leases, Rick knows how to find out who they belong to. Even if DeMarco owns the land in the name of a corporation, Rick should be able to track it down.”

“It won’t give us an exact location,” Chase said, “but at least it will narrow the possibilities.”

The atmosphere in the room subtly altered as everyone got moving. Hawk was hunting Bolt. Food was on the way, and Kenzie had found a means of tracking down DeMarco’s property. If nothing else, it gave them something to do.

When the sandwiches arrived, there was plenty to eat, but the thought of food made Kenzie slightly nauseous. Reese must have noticed her reluctance. Opening one of the burgers, he put it on a plate and brought it over to where she was sat behind the computer.

“I know you’re too worried to eat, but you’ve got to keep up your strength.”

“I’m just... I’m not hungry.”

“Do it for me.” He held the burger out to her, and since she would do just about anything for Reese, she took a bite. It tasted wonderful and she found herself eating more, drinking some of the Coke he had ordered for her—the real thing instead of Diet because he said she needed the sugar. She managed to finish most of the burger and had to admit she felt better now that she had eaten.

The guys were just cleaning up their trash when Reese’s disposable rang. He picked it up and checked the screen.

“It’s Tabby.” He put the phone on speaker and Chase and Bran clustered around the table beside them.

“I got a partial location,” Tabby said. “No calls after the one to Eddie’s phone this morning but I was able to ping the tower closest to that call. It’s in the middle of nowhere, only limited cell service. There’s nothing around, no town, not even a gas station.”

“That’s probably why we couldn’t reach him earlier,” Reese said.

“He’s somewhere with no cell service,” Kenzie added.

“Or maybe Webb got antsy,” Bran said. “Destroyed the phone so he couldn’t be tracked.”

“It’s a possibility,” Tabby agreed. “But he could also be out there somewhere. It’s thousands of acres. Without service, there’s just no way to track him.”

“Send me the cell tower coordinates,” Reese said.

“Will do. The tower’s located southeast of Shreveport in an area called Loggy Bayou. You can find it on Google Maps. That’s all I’ve got.”

“Loggy Bayou. Thanks, Tab.”

“I’ll keep an eye on Webb’s phone. Let you know if his location changes. Good luck.” Tabby ended the call.

Kenzie’s heart was pumping with hope. There was a chance they’d found some connection that would lead them to Griff.

Reese’s intense blue eyes locked on her face. “You get anything from Rick Holloway yet?”

“Let me check.” Kenzie hurriedly checked her email, found an incoming message from Rick that included an attachment. “I’ve got something.”

“Now that we know the location of the tower,” Bran said. “Maybe Holloway’s intel can pinpoint a parcel DeMarco owns in the area.”

She clicked the attachment and Reese walked around to look over her shoulder. “Rick sent a list of properties the tax rolls show in DeMarco’s name. He’s working on the corporate info. He’s says it’ll take a while.”

“Tell him to keep at it,” Reese said. “Top priority. And we need tax assessor’s maps to locate the parcels he’s already found.”

“Hold on, I think that’s here.” Kenzie opened a second attachment, which included county maps of property in Louisiana that matched the parcels owned personally in Sawyer DeMarco’s name.

“Anything in Loggy Bayou?” Reese asked.

“Let’s see where it is.” She went to Google Maps, typed in the location, and the area popped right up. Amazing what satellite imagery could do. “There’s a lot of land out there. Tabby was right. It’s thousands of acres.”

She checked the property maps for anything DeMarco owned southeast of the city near the cell tower, and her hope deflated. “I don’t see anything he owns in that direction, nothing in Loggy Bayou.”

“Get back to Rick. Tell him to focus specifically in that area. Maybe DeMarco owns something in a corporate name.”

She nodded, sent Rick an email, which he answered right away.

I’m on it, his message read.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

Bran grunted. “My least favorite thing.”

“We sit back and wait,” Chase finished for him.

“Unless Hawk calls and needs help with Jeremy Bolt,” Bran said hopefully.

Reese stared at his younger brother and just shook his head.