Chapter 52

They'd been in the vehicle for nearly an hour now, but the drones had been in the air for less than twenty minutes.

Aaron reined in his frustration. These were large machines, but the range was limited, so some of Charlie team had raced down on an interception path north of Concord and launched from a point that would hopefully maximize range in order to be the most effective.

Judge Abbotsford and her husband were in lockdown with the rest of Charlie squad, who were taking no chances that this might be some sort of distraction.

Romano called. "Drones have located the cab."

"Where?" Aaron, Seth, and Black were watching delayed feeds from the satellite and cell phone data and knew they were within a few miles of the vehicle, but that was a few miles too far in Aaron's opinion.

"Rural road called Mill Lane."

"Send me the drone feed." Aaron wanted to tear out his hair in frustration, but this was good news.

"Roger that."

"Here." Black thrust ballistic vests he'd pulled out of the cargo area toward them in the front. He followed it with carbines and ammunition. Aaron geared up while he waited for Romano to patch him into the live feed.

"Where are you?" he asked Romano.

"Two clicks east of you, but we have a river we need to cross, so make it five to the nearest bridge. Novak is about ten clicks west."

The feed came through, and Aaron felt as if his heart was being removed from his chest with chopsticks. "It hit a tree?"

"Looks that way."

"Any sign of life?"

The camera panned out, and Aaron saw a house down a lane. Smoke coming out of the chimney.

"Not that we've seen yet."

He called Frazer on Hope's cell phone. "We have the cab on the drone feed."

"I see it. Parker patched me in."

Aaron shouldn't be surprised. "Any intel on properties around here that might suggest they're being used by Leighton or Leech?"

"We're working on it."

Aaron spotted it on the feed at the same time Frazer did. A helicopter sat on a helipad in a clearing north of the house closest to the crash site.

"Can we get a closer look at that bird?" he asked Romano.

"Sending the second drone down for a closer look. Let's see if we can get a tail number on this sucker."

"Can we get air support out here?"

"I'll see what we have in the area."

"Property is registered to Camden Corp. Alex is trying to trace an actual person, but it might be some sort of shell company so could easily be Leech." Frazer spoke to someone else on another line. "Okay, from hacking Colin Leighton's cloud information, Parker has discovered that Colin believes he's the son of one of Leech's victims, the second man to die, Richard Prince. Prince abandoned his pregnant girlfriend of many years and married his younger secretary, Lynette Lombardy, whom Leech later raped and smothered to death. Colin's mother apparently told him after the first trial against Leech fell apart. Colin was eighteen years old. He immediately began pursuing a career in law."

"So, this isn't a simple payoff situation. He's also after Leech?" said Kincaid.

"He deliberately volunteered for the position of Hope's intern, so he's been planning something for a long time, and we have to presume they are both targets." Aaron was furious they'd missed it. "Whatever his original intent, right now, he's got Hope and is presumably heading for Leech. We need to prepare for an immediate hostage rescue mission because Leech will not wait or keep Hope as a hostage once he knows we're nearby. He will kill her if he thinks he's going back to prison."

"And from our conversation with Eloisa Fairchild and reading his letters, I suspect Leech will do anything to avoid going back to prison," Frazer agreed.

Romano spoke over them both. "Hold. I see movement in the vehicle."