Shannon conceded his point with a nod. She finished her sandwich. “I’m staying up late to watch the lamest old movie I can find.”
Matthew grinned. He couldn’t have prescribed a better choice. “I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to do some reading. Does our host have an office in this place?”
“Second door on the left. The chair looks comfortable, the desk intimidating—it’s the size of a battleship.”
Matthew finished his own sandwich. “I’ll head downstairs, bring up my luggage and laptop and the rest of your things, see if there’s a current newspaper left in the rack. Do you want the security codes in case you have to get out of here for some reason?”
“You won’t be gone that long, and I’m tired of knowing facts like that.”
He found himself oddly pleased with her remark, the first sign her guard was coming down. “Go find your movie. Think of this as your first day of vacation.”
She laughed. “You know, I think it is.” She took the bag of chips with her and went to check out the entertainment system.
Matthew set up his laptop on the oversized desk, gathered his notes out of his briefcase, scanned his working lists. He called Ann. “Do I dare admit we’re now in Chicago?”
She chuckled. “We’ve got a conference room set up for Paul and Theo, with Adam York conferencing in. The case board is looking interesting. You’re welcome to come over. We only want to inundate you with questions.”
“I’ll let you four do the heavy lifting, thank you, and hang out here with Shannon. It’s a very nice place.”
“I can imagine. I haven’t seen the man’s home, but I know him. He’s a diplomat’s diplomat, meaning he comes in to smooth the feathers of ruffled bureaucracies. His patience is legendary. He’s tranquil while built like a Sherman tank. I can imagine his place has a feel of elegance and comfort. He lived among the Brits for quite a while, and their idea of proper protocol rubbed off on him.”
Matthew smiled. “Buried in that was actually a pretty decent description of his home. When he’s here, it looks like he’s in relaxation mode.”
“He’s a good man,” Ann added, then said, “I sent over an update for Shannon on her family and friends. Marriages, divorces, births, deaths—a lot has happened in eleven years.”
Matthew checked his email. “I’ve got it. I’ll print a copy for her. Thanks, Ann.”
“She’ll find it helpful, I think.”
“What else do you have for me?” Matthew asked as he found more paper for the printer and searched the desk drawers for a stapler.
“Paul heard back from her brother. Does tomorrow night, seven p.m. our place work for you?”
He would have liked to give Shannon another twenty-four hours before the meeting, but it would work. “We’ll be there around six thirty.”
“What Paul told Jeffery was that the FBI is determined to take advantage of the election press attention to generate more leads and would like to coordinate when FBI experts might speak at one of his press events. Paul basically laid out a reason Jeffery would want to make a priority of having this conversation. Not that Jeffery needed the nudge. He seemed pleased and eager to follow up on the offer. He’s speaking at a hotel near the airport tomorrow, gives a speech at five, and will come by here from there. He’s off to St. Louis later this week, so the timing worked out.”
“I like the approach. He’ll be in the right frame of mind when he shows up, thinking about Shannon and in a hopeful mood. Maybe that can help with the shock that’s going to land. I don’t like the idea of him getting on a plane so soon after he sees Shannon, though. I’d like to have a conversation with him the next morning if possible.”
“I checked his campaign schedule,” Ann said, “and he’s not slated to appear at any public events until Friday morning. It won’t be hard to convince him to stay in Chicago an extra day or two.”
Matthew could see the last pieces settling into place. “In forty-eight hours, what we’re dealing with is going to be a lot more complex. But at least all the important items will be in motion. Tell me about the case board.”
“Sure. We’re still drawing a blank on who arranged to have Shannon abducted,” Ann replied. “The cities where she mailed the packages to Adam tell us a few things about her travels, but they don’t give us much to work with on her whereabouts during the last eleven years. The good news is those five names and photos are generating a lot of aliases and places. We’re trying to sort out if we have any legal names in that list of aliases, see if we can get a handle on the larger family of smugglers.”
“Has Adam begun showing those photographs to the rescued kids?”
“He’s shown them to six of the eighteen children. All six had no problem picking out the five photos from a stack of images. Adam said the fact they are dead seemed to generate intense relief in the kids.”
“I’ll let Shannon know. At least part of this is ending well.”
“Shannon mentioned a fishing trawler in the Seattle area. I’ve been searching to find old mooring records, Coast Guard inspection logs. If she can remember the name of that boat, I think I can do something significant with that information.”
Matthew made a note. “I’ll ask. What else?”
“If Shannon sees her brother and decides to stay in town rather than immediately head back to Atlanta, I’d like her to come to a cookout. Paul and I will be there. Theo. She needs to meet us, and it’s the simplest icebreaker I can come up with. I’ll invite some others so it feels casual. Maybe Rachel and Cole, John Key and his fiancée, Ellie Dance. We’ll have it at Bryce and Charlotte’s place. One meal, she’ll put names and faces together for people she can trust in Chicago if she needs help. No pressure beyond a ‘Hi, nice to meet you. Do you want a hamburger or a brat?’ After that, we’ll see if she’s ready for a sit-down conversation.”
“When I think the time might be appropriate, I’ll ask her.”
“Ask me what?”
He looked over to see Shannon in the office doorway, putting a piece of candy in her mouth. “It’s Chicago,” he told her. “It’s soon to be summer. Friends are thinking about having a cookout.”
“Can I bring the potato salad? I’m good at making that.”
Matthew smiled. “Ann, put us down as good with the idea. Shannon’s bringing the potato salad. I’ll get one of those cheesecakes you like so much for dessert—the one that comes in that red-and-white-striped box.”
“Perfect. The day after she meets her brother. Say five p.m. I gather she’s joined you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll let you go for now. Ask her about the fishing trawler name. And tell her thanks on behalf of eighteen kids. What she did over the years was extraordinary.”
“Will do. I’ll call you back.” Matthew hung up the phone. “Planning to share those?”
Shannon held out her hand. “Depends if you’re into cherry-flavored sugar.”
He took three of the candies. “I’m ridiculously addicted to all things sweet. It’s arranged for you to see your brother tomorrow at seven p.m.”
She suddenly looked sick.
“Wear your pink dress. Don’t feel a need to say much.”
“Okay.” Her voice had fallen to a whisper. Even though she was facing him, he didn’t think she was seeing him. Her thoughts had taken her somewhere else.
He reached over to the printer and picked up the pages, stapled them. “Shannon.” He waited until her gaze focused back on him. “Ann gathered some info for you about what’s happened with your friends and family over the last eleven years. When you don’t know what else to say to your brother, simply ask him something about one of these people, let him talk.”
She took the pages. Took a deep breath. “I can do that.”
He circled the desk. “You’re going to be fine,” he said gently.
“He’ll want to know.”
Matthew would give anything to be able to crawl inside the coming meeting and make sure her brother rea
cted properly, said the right things, that Shannon had the courage to be in the moment and not retreat behind her protective wall. “You don’t have to tell him anything about what happened.”
“I can’t. Not yet.”
“Then why don’t you tell him the cops are looking at things first and would rather you not talk about the details with him. Tell him it’s better if he can say ‘I don’t know’ when the press asks him a question about you. Tell him there will be a time to talk, but you’re not ready to do so yet—however you need to word it. Redirect the moment back to a question about someone on that list and stay with the present rather than the past.”
“And if he asks why I don’t want to meet the rest of my family, my friends?”
He leaned back against the front of the desk. “You can say fatigue, the emotions of it all, are too much to deal with a larger reunion right now. That you’re in Chicago only briefly and didn’t want to stun the entire family with your return until you could spend more time with them. You need to spend a few days helping the police, and that will require some travel—”
“Will I be?” she put in.
Matthew smiled. “Whatever you need as an explanation, we’ll make that our plan for what we do next. Shannon, it’s not the end of the world if the meeting tomorrow lasts only twenty minutes before you feel like you need to leave. Seeing Jeffery is a step, that’s all. If it gets too stressful, all you have to do is say to me ‘It’s time,’ and we’ll step back, regroup, have another conversation with your brother in a few days, maybe by phone instead of in person. We’ll deal with this transition. There’s no list of things you have to accomplish when you see him. I think your meeting with Jeffery is going to unfold smoothly and be a joy for you both. I don’t think you need to be nervous, but I understand why you are.”
“It’s scary.”
“What is?”
“Losing my privacy. Being seen again. Knowing the questions are going to come at me in waves.”
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “I imagine it’s terrifying. But the thing about your brother is that he can keep this quiet—though that might not be easy since he’s a politician.”
She half laughed.
“But he can stay in the boundaries of what you want to have happen. Do you want him to tell others in your family you’re alive?”
“If he says anything to anyone, the news takes on a life of its own, and within hours it’s going to spill out to the public.”
“Probably.”
“What do you think I should do?”
He gestured toward the door. “Come on, let’s go to the living room and get comfortable. We’ll talk about it.”
Shannon curled up in the corner of the living room couch. Matthew delayed the start of the conversation long enough to find a can of cashews in the kitchen cabinet, retrieve the vegetable tray she’d been munching from earlier, place them on the coffee table. He brought in drinks. He knew that having something in hand to eat and drink could be helpful—could buy a few moments of time to get past hard topics when otherwise the conversation might end rather abruptly. Matthew took the other end of the couch rather than a chair.
“I see two security concerns,” he began matter-of-factly, “that arise from the news you’re alive, plus a more general one from the magnitude of the press and public interest your case will generate. The two specific concerns: someone paid to have you abducted. That person is a threat if they believe you have information which will point the cops in their direction. Second, those in the smuggling group have a vested interest in your not being able to testify against them. If they could do you harm, see you dead, they would do so. Do you see the same concerns?”
“Yes.”
Matthew rested his arm on the back of the couch, his body turned toward her, tried to read her rather closed expression. “Shannon, both these threats can be neutralized. You could give us the address where you were to be dropped off, and we could use it to identify who was behind your abduction. You could give us the names and identify photos of those in the smuggling family, so that we can locate them, bring law enforcement resources to bear, know who to watch out for in a crowd. The more information you hold back, the more likely it is that the individuals responsible for what happened to you will make trouble . . . or burrow into the shadows and become ghosts.”
“I have my reasons for why I haven’t shared that information yet.”
“Can you talk about those reasons?”
“I’d prefer not to.”
“How much time do you need before you think you might be comfortable sharing the information?”
She shook her head.
“Those security concerns come into play when it’s known you’re alive,” he said after a while. “If we ask your brother to tell no one you’re alive, not even your parents, we can buy another week or two. Is that enough to make this easier on you? There is security in silence.”
“That delay will cause Jeffery problems.”
“He’s a big boy. He can deal with it.”
Shannon pulled at a loose thread in the hem of her shirt. “A week or two may not change my dilemma. I know for a fact the people who held me are on the move and won’t be easy to find. Only a few times a year do they assemble as a group, typically in November and again around March. There are two places, one within half a day’s drive of here, and one on the East Coast where they often gather. Home bases, for want of a better description. They’d be deserted right now.”
“So if we want to arrest the majority of the group, if we don’t want them to realize what’s coming and scatter, we should wait until they reassemble.”
“That would be ideal. Yet it’s really not practical to wait that long. That internal family dispute and shooting last year started something that won’t be tamped down. Regardless of what I do, they’re coming apart at the seams. They might not hold together another year. And I suspect long before November, Flynn will be causing some chaos for his own reasons.”
“You said there are gravesites.”
“Besides the five members of the family, I know of seven. They’re . . . dispersed. Some are kids.”
It hurt to take a breath. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Shannon.”
She gave a jerky nod. “Before my time, but I heard the stories.” She looked over and caught his gaze, shook her head, and changed the subject. “There are stolen items that can be recovered stashed all around the country. There’s a long list of people the group dealt with that law enforcement should know about. But it’s not . . . helpful to turn law enforcement loose on what I know about this group yet.”
He thought she might have already told him why in what she hadn’t directly said. “You’re waiting on someone else to get clear of the group.”
“I wasn’t the only name on that cleanup list. I’m hoping someone else was also able to get out.”
“Is there anything I can do for you, somewhere I can check for information, a description or name I can follow up on?”
“I’ll get a call. I’ve been expecting it for a couple of weeks. They’re . . . late.”
“Can you tell me about that person?”
She shook her head.
“If you can’t talk more about the group yet, what about the address where you were to be dropped off?”
She lifted her chin and looked him in the eyes. “What if I give you that address, and cops end up doing something unthinkable like arrest my mother?”
He felt as if his heart were being squeezed. “You’re truly afraid the abduction originated within your family,” he breathed. “Did you overhear something?”
“I know someone paid to have me abducted. I know this group was dealing with child custody disputes in the years after I was snatched. I know they were to drop me off at a house I didn’t recognize, in a town I’d never been to before. And I know my parents later divorced. I have no idea what happened to set things in motion. I’m not sure I want to know.” She picked up the can of cashews a
nd moodily shook it, took a handful. “When they couldn’t drop me off and were angry about what to do, I heard them arguing, and some things didn’t make sense at the time. But later, as I watched kids being dropped off in custody disputes, I pieced together some of what it meant. Worst case, this did start somewhere in my family, possibly with my mother. And that’s—” she paused, shook her head—“inconceivable. But what if it’s true? What I would want for justice and what the evidence might cause to happen may not be . . . equitable in my eyes. I give you the address, this moves forward in unpredictable ways. I don’t know that I can take that risk.”
“You’re afraid of what the truth is going to reveal.”
“I can deal with the truth. What I can’t deal with is what might happen because of that truth. I don’t want to plunge my brother, myself, other innocent parties in the Bliss family into twenty years of further pain while we visit someone we love in prison.”
Matthew rested his head against the back of the couch, feeling the weight of that impossible box she found herself in. “You tell law enforcement the address, they learn who lived there eleven years ago, from that learn why you were taken and who paid for you to be abducted. You get answers. Those responsible get punished. Only you fear the punishment might land on someone you care about and be more than you want to have happen.”
“Maybe my mother had an affair, and it’s my natural father who lives in that house. Maybe someone paid, not to take me but to make me go away. Maybe someone thought they were protecting me by getting me out of Chicago. Maybe my parents were about to split in a nasty, bitter divorce and Dad was going to throw Mom and me out. I don’t know. But I won’t cause my family more harm by blindly giving law enforcement that address and hoping for the best. I can’t live with the possible outcome.
“There’s mercy and forgiveness and justice,” she continued, reaching for the drink he had brought her, “and I want—I think I deserve—to have some control over what that all looks like related to the person who put this abduction into motion. I paid for that right with eleven years of my life. If it’s a stranger, throw the book at them. But if it was from within my family . . . I simply can’t put blind justice into motion. I’m the one likely to be hurt the most by that outcome. It hurts me and it hurts Jeffery.