Page 34 of Thorn

“We have no clues as to who she is or what she’s up to,” Nutsbe explained. “But David DuBois emphatically isn’t interested in returning to the United States. Whatever is going on, he’s married to it. I would also caution that the woman posing as Juliette DuBois could be a highly skilled, lethal entity, stay frosty as your team moves forward.”

There was a knock at the door.

The room stilled.

Thorn stalked over to look through the peep hole. There stood a man with their three duffels slung over his shoulders.

“Got it,” Thorn said.

The man laid their bags down and walked away. Only when he was well out of sight did Thorn crack the door, sweep his gaze along the hallway, and drag the bags back into the room.

After he found his seat in front of the phone with his teammates, Thorn told Nutsbe, “The housekeeper delivered the packages.”

Nutsbe lifted his head from his focus on the keyboard. “Good. Now that you have your computers. Let’s turn off the phone and get a computer booted up so you can see the details better.

Gage dug his computer from his duffle and brought Nutsbe back on line.

“I wanted Lynx to take you through the kidnapping tape.” Nutsbe tapped a key. “I just uploaded it into your files along with the best still photos we could cull from it, so you’ll be able to recognize the players if you see them. I’m working on identifying the assailants by name and country of origin, possibly organization, if I can get it. I’ll let you know if and when I track down anything concrete.”

A shaky video played on the screen. It was short, not even two minutes long.

“Okay.” They heard Lynx’s voice while the image moved back to the beginning of the video. “We know something odd must have been happening for this man, Gaston Claire, to start taping on his phone while he was out walking his dog. I’ll post his address, in case you want to talk to him. But I’ve read the police report. It basically says, he saw something weird, he videotaped it, and called the police. He has nothing new to add.”

“But you’re walking us through it,” Honey said, “because you saw something important.”

“Interesting at least. Slowing down the video, watch this part. There are two men, each with an arm bent at an angle as they face Juliette. Juliette’s expression shows shock and discovery as she looks at their faces. She knows who these men are. Her focus travels down to what we have to assume are weapons in their hands. And then, as she throws her head around to look back over her shoulder her expression changes to fear. That’s protective fear.”

Protective-fear. It was a fear that could turn deadly aggressive. It was a fear that made brains make quickly calculated reactions. Aggression wasn’t always the best way to keep everyone safe. Thorn had seen that look in mothers’ eyes so many times, on so many deployments. He could well understand why someone who watched this video would see Juliette’s expression and think that she was protecting someone.

Lynx moved the video forward a few more frames as she said, “She’s anxious for the person she’s searching out.” Lynx stopped the video. “This is who she wanted to protect. Her focus goes to this small child. The child is snatched away by an adult, who is, based on AI calculations, probably five-foot seven inches in height. That neighbor videoing shifts the child and adult out of the frame. The camera swings back to the men pushing Juliette into the car. They’re getting in. And taking off.”

“So some random kid was there and saw this,” Honey said. “He looks like he’s about three years old. That won’t help.”

“Random isn’t a given,” Lynx said. “We just know that the child was not placed in this car.”

“The child wasn’t mentioned in the police reports,” Nutsbe said. “I’m guessing…the adult in charge of that child made a grab and ran for safety. That adult probably has some more details about what happened just before the video was shot. The timeline between this event unfolding and our contract being signed is very short. I think our client simply made the call to include both female and child in the description because it was better to be inclusive to cover their bases.”

The screen showed Lynx and Nutsbe again.

“All right, so one of us needs to go down there and ask questions,” Honey said. “I think that should be me.”

“Copy, Honey,” Nutsbe agreed.

Lynx stretched out her hand to squeeze Nutsbe’s arm. “Thorn has to go.”

“I−”

Lynx cut Nutsbe off. “This needs to be assigned toThorn.” Her words were emphatic and were met with a shrug and a head nod from Nutsbe.

“We have the license plate and more information about direction of travel. From this point, our next piece of possible information is that at fifteen thirty hours a man called the police because his car had been stolen by a woman. He has no descriptors other than he knew it was a woman by size and hair length. Nothing else, just female. The victim of the carjacking had stopped by the side of the road to lend a hand after he saw that two men were off on the shoulder, jacking up their car.”

“Good Samaritan,” Gage said.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Nutsbe replied. “The spare tire in the disabled vehicle was dry rotted, and the two men gave the Samaritan a large sum of money to buy his spare or to go get them a tire.”

“What’s a large sum of money?” Thorn asked.

“That would be approximately three-hundred dollars.”

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