Jerry shook his head. "I don't know, that's the first time I've heard anything."

"As long as we're on the ride, Jerry, why don't you tell us everything you do know."

Ethan listened, his hands tightening on the steering wheel as Jerry recounted how William Connors had approached him nearly a year ago with a proposition. Ethan had figured out most of it, but his stomach tightened as Jerry filled in the gaps, describing what his cutting-edge biochip was capable of.

Toni shook her head. "You knew who had her, all this time."

"I had it under control," Jerry said, the streetlights flashing on his pale face as Ethan flew through a yellow light.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Both Ethan and Derek jumped as Alex's voice crackled over the headset. Alex cursed again, and there was a squeal of a car skidding, the roar of metal twisting and gla.s.s smashing as a vehicle hit something with devastating impact.

Then silence.

"Alex? Alex!" Both he and Derek were shouting into their mouthpieces. "Are you okay? What's the situation?"

A low moan, then, "I hit something big. I think it was a deer. Came around a sharp curve and the d.a.m.n thing jumped right in front of the car. I skidded out and smashed into a tree."

Of all the f.u.c.king luck. The woods in that area were thick with wildlife, everything from deer to jackrabbits to the occasional mountain lion. And now Kara's rescue was thwarted by f.u.c.king Bambi. "Are you injured?"

"The airbag smashed the NVGs into my face, but other than that I'm okay. Car's smashed to h.e.l.l, though."

Ethan slammed the heel of his hand into the steering wheel. Alex's car was wrapped around a giant sequoia, and Connors was long gone.

CHAPTER 15.

"W HAT ARE WE going to do?" Jerry asked, his panicky voice grating across Toni's nerves like a fork on a plate. She was strung tight, nerves frayed, as she sat in the pa.s.senger seat of Ethan's car. The sound of gunshots had made her blood run cold, fear spiking as she imagined Ethan lying in a pool of blood on the asphalt.

She'd almost cried in relief when she heard his voice, strong and firm and sure. The brief rundown of events was mind-boggling. Yeah, she'd been sure Jerry was up to something, but she never imagined this.

Now, once again, she had to fight from jumping into the backseat and pounding his face in for what he'd done to Kara. His very presence revolted her. Part of it was the smell. In other circ.u.mstances, she would have been delighted that Jerry had been so scared he'd wet himself, that fear coated him with acrid sweat. But in the close confines of the car, the stench of sweat and p.i.s.s made her gag.

As if the smell weren't enough, the thought of what might happen to Kara-what might already be happening-sent bile bubbling into the back of her throat. Name her a s.e.xual fetish and Toni could find an online community with hundreds of devoted members. That there were men out there willing to pay to sleep with unwilling virgins didn't surprise her.

She was horrified nonetheless. At what the victims went through. At what happened to them afterward. And what if they discovered Kara wasn't as innocent as they thought? What then?

She pushed the what-ifs aside. She had to focus on gathering every clue, every sc.r.a.p of information they could get if they wanted to find her in time.

Ethan ignored Jerry's frantic babbling as he instructed Alex to sit tight and call 911. "Don't tell them what you were doing up there," he said. "I don't want to bring the cops into this just yet."

"No cops. Good idea. I'll pay you," Jerry babbled. "If you get us out of this you can name your price."

Toni was appalled. Ethan was silent, and for a long, sickening moment Toni thought he was actually entertaining the proposition.

"You covered up your own daughter's kidnapping, and you tried to have Toni killed," Ethan said finally, his voice so menacing even Toni got chills.

"I didn't," Jerry protested. "It was Connors. I told him she was snooping around, but he's the one-"

"Don't try to logic your way out of this, Jerry. Whether or not you made the call, you instigated it. And if that wasn't enough, my brothers and I have spent a combined twenty-eight years in the military." Ethan stopped at a red light and turned to face Jerry. "Twenty-eight years defending our country against people who want to destroy us. People like that slimebag you sold your technology to. You really think there's enough money in the world that would get me to help someone like you get away with it?"

Toni wanted to kiss him and sing The Star-Spangled Banner.

Jerry's swallow was audible.

"Get one thing straight. We're keeping the police out of this for now because I don't want to waste time answering questions. But when Kara's back, safe and sound, I'll see to it that you spend fifty years to life locked up with a big burly-top named Bubba."

"Why are you turning?" Jerry asked when Ethan veered off Woodside and started heading south. "They were going this way."

"We need to get back to the office to regroup. Toni, when we get there I want you to find everything you can dig up on William Connors. Did you run his plates yet?"

She nodded. She'd been able to run them on her BlackBerry while she waited in the car for what had seemed like decades. "The car is registered to a Whitepoint Corporation, and the address is a P.O. box. Once I'm at the office, I can find out if it has a nav system or anything else to track its location."

They pulled up to the Gemini offices. The lights were on and the place was humming even at three in the morning. Toni took a moment to marvel at the contrast between her cramped, makeshift office and Gemini's s.p.a.cious, modern, beautifully decorated headquarters. Customers would walk in here and know they were dealing with the best of the best.

Ethan's older brother Danny greeted them. The man managed to look intimidating even though he was wearing baggy gym shorts and flip-flops, his left arm still secured by a sling. Even with a broken nose and two black eyes, he was as good-looking as his brothers. But there was something almost menacing about the oldest Taggart. First there was his size. Ethan and Derek were big guys, but Danny had at least two inches of height and twenty pounds of muscle on both of them. And then there were his eyes, steel gray, cold as a glacial river.

Toni swallowed hard and made a mental note to steer clear of scary Danny.

Danny took off with Connors's bodyguard while Ethan pulled Jerry into an empty conference room. Toni and Derek followed. She sat down at the conference table and opened her laptop. "Jerry, how did you communicate with Connors? If you have an e-mail address or a cell phone number, I might be able to trace his location."

Jerry shook his head. "We used those pay-as-you-go phones."

Toni swore. Cell phone calls were getting so easy to track, that the disposable cell phone had become the modern criminal's favorite mode of communication.

"And I deleted all the e-mails, all communication."

Toni shook her head impatiently as she logged in to the secure server where she'd backed up all of Jerry's files. "I was able to recover everything off your computer, every last fragment." People thought they could wipe out their digital tracks the way they wiped away fingerprints. "Just tell me where to look."

"There's nothing on my computer," Jerry said. "I've been using Kara's computer so nothing could be traced back to GeneCor."

"Her computer's at your house?" Ethan said, already heading for the door.

"It's at my office," Jerry said. "Middle desk drawer. You'll need my key card." He grunted as Ethan shoved him forward and dug around in Jerry's back pocket. Card in hand, he headed for the door.

"You're going alone?" Toni said. "Shouldn't Derek or someone go with you, since people were, you know, shooting at you before?"

The look Ethan gave her was pleased, if a little puzzled at her concern. "I'll be fine, babe. Back in a flash."

She bent over the keyboard and risked a glance at Derek to see if he'd noticed the small endearment. "Ethan can take care of himself," Derek said without looking up from his handheld.

Jerry's bound hands left damp marks on the surface of the mahogany table. His leg bounced hard enough to launch him into the stratosphere. "You're just going to sit there?" He looked over at Derek's screen. "What, you're doing e-mail? 'Hey, dude, how's it going?' My f.u.c.king daughter is missing and you're e-mailing your friends?"

Derek set down his BlackBerry and leveled Jerry with a look so harsh she expected Jerry to turn to stone. "I'm e-mailing pictures and descriptions of your buddies Connors and Smith to a good friend of mine at the FBI. With any luck, they'll stop him in Customs before he can make off with the means to build a supervirus."

"Oh," Jerry said, chastened. He licked his lips. "It won't work, you know."

Toni raised her eyebrow inquisitively.

"I modified the chips," Jerry said, almost beseechingly. "The seals on some of the valves aren't airtight. Without the proper level of humidity, they can't run their samples. The chips are useless."

"So no supervirus?" Toni said.

Jerry shook his head, looking smug at his ability to cover his a.s.s.

Toni's lips curled into a snarl. "Nice of you to grow a conscience at the eleventh hour, but that doesn't help us pinpoint Kara's location."

She got everything ready, then went to the kitchen and made herself a double latte in the espresso machine in the break room. Ethan still wasn't back. "Show me the deposits from Connors," she said as she called up Jerry's offsh.o.r.e account statements, unwilling just to sit and do nothing while she waited for Ethan to show up.

There were deposits from three different accounts, and Toni and Derek doubled up to try to track the source.

Toni had managed to link one account to a corporation headquartered in Dsseldorf when Ethan arrived with Kara's computer.

She pounced on it like a lion on a gazelle and immediately set to work, hooking it up to her own computer so she could start the data-recovery process. Ethan came over and removed her watch from her wrist. Toni barely spared him a glance. "Did you use a shredder program?" she asked Jerry.

Jerry nodded and gave her the name.

Most shredder programs worked by overwriting data with a pattern of zeros, though more sophisticated utilities used specific overwrite patterns. Fortunately, the program Kramer had used was relatively easy for Toni to work around.

Toni started the data-and media-recovery programs, limiting her search to files that had been deleted in the last thirty days to make the process go faster. She looked over at Ethan, her attention snagging when she saw he'd taken the back off her watch and was poking around inside. "What are you doing?" Her watch was a cheap digital model from Target, but hey, it worked, and she didn't want to buy another one.

"Cool your jets," he said, poised over the watch with a pair of tweezers. "I'm planting a tracking device in here. Don't worry. Your watch will work fine."

"Why do I need a tracking device?"

The look Ethan gave her was hard, exasperated. He held up his own wrist and nodded to Derek. "We all wear them, and with everything that's happening, I'll feel better knowing exactly where you are, okay?"

Toni didn't protest as he buckled the watch back on her wrist, inexplicably warmed by the idea that Ethan wanted to keep tabs on her. "I'm not the one we need to worry about," she reminded him as she turned her attention back to her excavation of Kara's computer.

It seemed to take forever for the program to churn through the gigabytes of data, but finally the photo-recovery program got a hit. Toni clicked to restore the image, then opened it up to view.

Jerry made a small, choked sound as he looked at the screen.

"Connors sent you this photo?" she said, nausea roiling her stomach as she stared at a mockery of a s.e.xy boudoir photo. But that was no lingerie-clad seductress giving the camera a come-hither look.

In the photo, Kara Kramer was dressed in a white, ruffled nightshirt, the hem pushed high enough to allow a glimpse of white cotton panties. Her blond hair spilled across the pillow and her eyes were wide with fear. Toni zoomed in on her face and saw a faint bruise at the corner of Kara's mouth.

Toni saw the terror in Kara's eyes and felt her throat tighten, her eyes sting. G.o.d, she was so scared. Had to still be so scared.

Ethan's hand rested on her shoulder, calming, bracing her. Toni pushed Kara's fear aside, disa.s.sociated herself, reminding herself it could have been so much worse.

At least, she thought morbidly, if they wanted her to stay a virgin, it's doubtful she'd been raped.

"Can you figure out who took it?" Ethan asked as she ran it through her EXIF viewer.

Toni scanned the data, unable to suppress the triumphant smile pulling at her lips. "I can do better than that. I can tell you exactly where it was taken."

Ethan, Jerry, and Derek all leaned in to see what she was talking about. "I'd love to say it's my brilliance, but it looks like Connors got a fancy new camera and didn't take into account all the special features."

A smile spread across Derek's face as understanding dawned.

"Someone clue me in here," snapped Jerry.

"Certain high-end models like the one Connors used to take this picture have a GPS device built in. Those," she said, pointing to a box on the grid, "are GPS coordinates."

Toni clicked open another Web browser window. And there it was, right there on Google Maps. Located off Skyline Boulevard, the serpentine roadway that wound its way along the ridge of the coastal mountains, the property was situated back from the main road.

Within minutes, Toni had gathered all of the information about the property. "It's a twelve-acre parcel with two main houses and three outbuildings. It was purchased two years ago by the Whitepoint Company, the same owner listed for Connors's Mercedes." She zoomed in on the satellite photo of the property. "The only road access is through the driveway, if you can call a two-and-a-half-mile road a driveway. It's guarded by a security gate, so you'll have trouble getting in. But the property borders open-s.p.a.ce preserves on two sides, and you can see where these hiking trails cross the property lines here and here." She indicated with her mouse. She looked at Ethan, who leaned over her shoulder, blue eyes sharply focused as he absorbed every detail on the screen.

"Got it." He turned to Derek. "Let's suit up. Danny, call Moreno. Since he lives up that way, have him do an a.s.sessment of the security situation, how many guards there are, what we're up against. And don't let her" he indicated Toni "out of your sight."

Her hackles rose and she pushed herself away from the table to follow Ethan and Derek down the hall. "There's no way I'm staying here."

Ethan ignored her as he and Derek riffled through a utility closet, gathering up enough ammunition to take over a small country.

"Ethan, I'm sick of your trying to leave me behind while you go save the world. Kara's my friend and this is my case, too."

Ethan spun around and caught her by the arm. Toni barely caught a glimpse of Derek's curious look as Ethan dragged her down the hall to his office and yanked her inside before slamming the door shut. He pushed her up against the door, trapping her with his hands on her shoulders and he pinned her with an icy-blue glare.

"Dammit, Toni, this isn't about playing hero or taking all the credit. This is about finding Kara and getting her out in one piece. And I can't focus completely on that if I'm worried about you getting hurt."

"You don't have to worry about me," she insisted. "I can help."

He leaned his head in, pressed his forehead to hers. "You don't get it. If you go with us, I'm going to want to keep an eye on you at all times. It was bad enough when I worried about you alone in the car, thinking someone might find you and you'd be helpless."

"I'm hardly helpless," she said, insulted.

"But you're not trained for something like this, either. Have you ever even held a gun?"

"No," she said sullenly. "But I could help you bypa.s.s the security system."

"Derek can do that. Bottom line, Toni, I can't be as effective for Kara if I'm worried about protecting you."

"I don't see why-"

"Because I care about you, Toni," he said, sounding like the words were being ripped from his chest. "A lot. Connors already tried to have you killed. What do you think he'll do if he sees you? The thought of anything else happening to you drives me f.u.c.king insane, okay? So let it go. You're staying here where Danny can keep an eye on you."

She laid her palms flat on his chest, pressing against the hard slabs of muscle. "You think it was easy for me, alone in the dark, no idea what's going on? Then I hear gunshots and think maybe you're dead-" her voice started to crack. "I can't just sit here, not knowing what's happening."

"I'll hook you up to the audio feed," he said, his voice gentling. "You and Danny will hear everything that's happening."

She knew he was right. She didn't know how to shoot, had no experience sneaking past guards and staging rescues. But she hated that she wouldn't be there herself, to make sure Kara and the other girls were okay. To make sure nothing happened to Ethan.