Page 134 of Trace of Doubt
In the restroom, Marissa watched Aria wash her hands. “Hurry up.”
Aria stuck her hands under the air dryer. My sister kept her hand positioned inside her shoulder bag. No doubt her forefinger rested on the trigger.
An employee entered the restroom, and Marissa kept her focuson Aria. I caught the young woman’s attention and mouthedhelp. The girl rolled her eyes and entered a stall. Hope shattered. How would Denton and Mike find us?
If at all.
Or alive.
Marissa ordered us back to the car. Except Eli was nowhere in sight. She visually swept the area and cursed. “Coward. He always runs when he’s mad. But I’m not in the mood for his games.” She slid into the driver’s seat of the Toyota and pressed the engine to life.
Eli had abandoned us with the keys in the ignition.
82
DENTON
Radar surveillance and security cameras confirmed the helicopter had landed on the roof of a northwest Miami parking garage, obscuring the view of two fleeing cars: an SUV and a Lexus sedan. The camera footage showed Melissa, Shelby, and Aria had been on board the chopper, but we didn’t know which car or cars they’d entered before escaping the scene. The two bodyguards had disappeared... finding them could provide the info we needed.
Hours later, roadblocks were in place, but both vehicles had been found in opposite directions. One was abandoned near Coral Springs and the other south near Sweetwater. No cameras were in either area. An intentional and preplanned effort. We had no option but to rely on the public taking notice of a BOLO, which listed Shelby Pearce and Aria Stover as kidnap victims. We added Marissa Stover and possibly Eli Chandler and Feng Liu as armed-and-dangerous suspects.
The BOLO expanded to surrounding states, including public and private airports.
I paced the Miami FBI office. “Where’s Feng Liu?”
“In the wind.”
“True. My guess he’s in on this, and he and Marissa could have plans to leave the country together. Shelby and Aria serve as hostages, but what happens when their usefulness disappears? And where does Eli Chandler fit?”
“Denton, we know the answers. Marissa doesn’t leave survivors. Why are they traveling by car? Marissa could have left the country by now and is over international waters.”
Midafternoon, a call from the sheriff’s department from the western coast of northern Florida gave us a lead on a Toyota Camry. A McDonald’s employee claimed she saw two women and a teen in the ladies’ restroom who fit the description of the BOLO. One of the women had mouthedhelp. The employee’s manager had shared with the morning shift about a manhunt underway in the state, and the employee realized she might have encountered them. Police reviewed camera footage and spotted Eli pumping gas and the three women leaving the McDonald’s, then taking off in the Toyota. We had a partial on the license plate, but why had Chandler walked away leaving Marissa to drive?
Within twenty minutes, we’d boarded a helicopter and followed the license plate number. All the things I wanted to tell Shelby swirled through my mind. More than swirled but slammed against every cell of my tormented body.
Shelby would seize opportunities to free Aria, sacrifice herself if necessary. She’d look to Jesus for strength and try to persuade Marissa to give herself up. From what I’d discovered about Marissa, she’d murder repeatedly until someone stopped her, and I doubted Shelby could manage the task.
“Be prepared we might not find them,” Mike said. “Or they aren’t alive.”
“I can’t think about that. We’ll find them in time.”
Mike flashed a worried glance my way. Losing my fiancée was tough, but I wouldn’t survive losing Shelby.
83
SHELBY
Marissa took a single dirt road that led to a small, weed-infested landing strip. Obviously it was seldom ever used.
“Feng picking you up?” I said.
“For a better tomorrow.” She pressed in a number, and I gathered he’d been late leaving Miami. “Okay, honey, see you in twenty minutes or less. I’ll be looking for your plane.”
Dear God, help me find the right way to stop this.
“I’m ready for the truth,” I said. “Why set me up to take the blame for Travis’s murder?”
“We have time for a five-minute chat.” Marissa didn’t need prodding to talk about herself. “Think about it. I always got what I wanted by giving you ideas to feed your wild ways and by playing the good girl. I had everything before you came along. I chose to get even. I set you up time and time again, and you fell for it... Remember our sister games? When Travis took over a charity forAfrican orphans, I saw my chance to hack into the account and invest the money overseas.”
