Chapter Seventeen

  “Sasha, um, where are we going?”

  “Wait, please.”

  “No, I think I want to know now.”

  Ericka had been prepared for the creepy sanitorium building. What she’d not been prepared for was the building adjacent to it.

  The building looked pre-nineteenth century. Smelled like it too. Musty odors from the thick hanging draperies or the fluffy, damp feeling carpet assaulted her senses. Allergy medicine would be a top priority when she arrived back at her house.

  “Why are we here?”

  “The other building has visitors.”

  They entered a dark room. From the light of the moon, Ericka could make out a silhouette of a man looking out the window.

  “They went in just a few moments ago. I followed them before I came here. Sensors are pinging like crazy.”

  Her father.

  He was still here.

  “What are they doing?”

  “It appears they are looking for something. Although, there is interference from the cameras so I can’t make out what they are looking for exactly.”

  “The manifest…” The word came from Ericka as the thought struck her.

  “Manifest?” Her father turned to face her.

  It was only their second meeting. Would they ever have a real moment, or would it always be like a covert movie scene?

  “The White Lily. We thought they were looking for the ship itself but instead they were just looking for where the ship is going.”

  “The manifest is in there?” Sasha pointed to the other building.

  “That has to be why they are there. Maria Petrov and her unknown male friend.”

  “Paulo.”

  “Paulo?”

  “That isn’t his real name.” Sasha dragged a file from an ancient metal desk in the room.

  The desk didn’t fit the rest of the décor. Two perfectly kept offices. She didn’t know what to expect anymore. Nothing here seemed to fit.

  Ericka lifted the file from the desk and scanned the contents. “Where did you get this? How did you know who to look for?”

  Sasha flashed a questioning look at Robert. He moved away from the window and Sasha took his place. It was if they were constantly speaking in some kind of code only the two of them understood.

  Not only did it creep her out, but it was also driving her mad! She needed answers.

  “Please sit.”

  Ericka looked at the couch. Spider webs hung in the corners of the wooden framework. The dark maroon fabric looked a lighter color, probably from the accumulated dust.

  “Or stand.” He seemed to really look at what she was seeing. He shuffled his feet. He looked at Sasha. He looked back and her. He took a look through the window to the other building.

  “Will you please get on with it? I only have so many days on this planet.”

  “Very well. Your mother as I told you before was brainwashed to believe that she was Maria Petrov, but then Maria died in the fire. The government decided it was too risky to use her at the moment and they placed her in an insane asylum.”

  She blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “That woman, over there, rummaging through the sanitorium with a man who believes he’s a mass murderer, but has never killed a single soul, that is your mother.”

  Ericka scratched a spot next to her eye as she tried to collect her wits. She even gave an awkward laugh. “What?”

  “Sasha, maybe you should try. She isn’t listening to me.”

  “Well, you aren’t telling it right.”

  “How could I not tell it right? That woman is her mother. She’s within her grasp.”

  They argued back and forth for several minutes as if she wasn’t even in the room. Part of her wished that she wasn’t in the room. Her mother was in the next building over. She’d pretended to be the captain of a ship that kidnapped people and took them back to hostile governments.

  That meant that she’d tried to have Andre and his son Eliott returned for their own execution.

  That couldn’t be right.

  Sasha’s warm hand grasped hers. Ericka lifted her head.

  “The best we can reason is that Paulo, another inmate at the asylum helped her break out a couple of years ago. That was right before Josef was taken out by Sloan and when the White Lily began to run again in more than a luxury cruise liner capacity.”

  Her mother had done all this to get away from Harry. She looked at her father and swallowed. She could blame him, but later. Right now, they had more pressing matters.

  “What are we going to do to help her?”

  “We tried at the docks to get her attention. For a brief moment it seemed like something clicked because she stopped, but then Paulo pulled her on and she went.”

  “And Paulo, this is his file?”

  “Yes.”

  Ericka flipped through the pages, but she didn’t really care what they said. Her mother was across the way in another building. She was right there. All she had to do was reach out and call her.

  One of her dreams was coming to a reality.

  “You can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “You can’t go to her. She has to be deprogramed first. Something could happen to her brain if it isn’t done properly.”

  “Is that why you’re here? You’re going to deprogram my mother?”

  “I’m here in this area to find my contact and get out of this place. My life is in danger and that puts your life in danger. But now that I’ve seen Morgan I won’t leave without helping her, but we must do it right.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  ****

  Greg grabbed the others and pulled them into the parking lot. “Heidi, you should go home.”

  “But I can help. I’m an officer.”

  He would have let her, but this was a top-secret mission, and he wasn’t sure it would be sanctioned.

  “I’m sensing that the answer to that is no.”

  “I think it would be better if you weren’t involved.”

  “So, you’re pushing me away to help Ericka again.”

  “No, I’m working a case.”

  “That Ericka is involved in.” She paused, made a twist one way then turned back. “You know, people told me that you had a thing for her, but I thought we had a connection. At least in the hospital, I sensed that you wanted to get to know me. Ever since then you’ve pushed me away. I get this feeling that you don’t really want to have anything to do with me.”

  “Heidi, it isn’t like that.”

  She smiled. “Please go do your job. Don’t bother calling me again to try and reconcile. There is no point.”

  Greg ran his hands through his hair as she sashayed away through the parking lot.

  Quinn’s large hand fell on his shoulder. “Let her go, boss.”

  “I guess I’m never going to have a regular life.”

  “You are, just not with Heidi Goodall. She isn’t the one for you.”

  He snickered. “And you know who is for me?”

  Quinn tilted his head and cocked his brow.

  “We are not going there.”

  “All right, fine. Can you at least tell me why we are out here in the humidity? My tie is starting to curl.”

  “I’ll take a guess, Ericka.” Maggie crossed her arms over her chest.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. Some news has come my way that I thought I should share.”

  “But you weren’t supposed to?”

  Quinn was sharp.

  “Exactly. But I feel like since Ericka has disappeared that I shouldn’t hold back anymore.”

  “Then get it over with before Fanny and Tristan are out here breaking up with us like Heidi did you.”

  Maggie didn’t pull any punches. He didn’t have the luxury of crying over a lost relationship at the moment apparently. In the long run his stomach would thank him. No more pizza for a while.

  He made himself refocus on the matter at hand. “The video footage that Blake and his team sent shows Maria Petrov and an unknown man getting on a stolen boat.”

  “We knew this.”

  “True, what you didn’t know is that Maria Petrov died years ago in a fire.”

  “What?” That made Maggie stand straighter.

  “The woman in the video is actually Morgan Taylor Craft.” He let that sink in. When they didn’t reply, he continued. “The man she is with escaped from a psychiatric facility and believes he is a notorious criminal trying to escape his country.”

  “Ericka’s mother is helping him?” Quinn had pulled out his phone and was already searching.

  “Not exactly. She went through a program that helped her believe that she is Maria Petrov. The programming put her in the same psychiatric facility. Her friend helped her escape and now she is doing the job we programed her to do. Only she has been doing it too well.”

  “So, she is unwittingly helping a criminal.”

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s been committing criminal acts?”

  “Yes.”

  Quinn stepped right into the answer. He sighed and rolled his eyes. When he settled, he said, “What are we supposed to do?”

  “We’ve been ordered to assist in finding them.”

  “What about Rochelle Rawlings murder? We’re supposed to be working that case.”

  Greg nodded. “We are doing both. The guy with Maria or Morgan or whomever she is, was one of the suspects. I found that out when the passport guy got back to me.”

  “But what about the kid in the video?”

  Greg shook his head. “We need to bring them both in for questioning.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Wow. Ericka’s mother. What is she going to think when she finds out?”

  Greg wondered the same thing. Would she be happy? Would she be upset? He wanted to be there for her, but he wasn’t sure how. It wouldn’t matter if they couldn’t find her.

  As soon as they did find her, he was going to put a tracker on her, so they never lost her again.

  ****

  With the car being so old and no traffic cameras in the area, the trail ran cold. Blake called in a helicopter to take them back to New York. Regina Shaw inserted herself into their group. Room was made for her to ride with them.

  Tito felt the warmth of her leg against his for the entire trip. He fought developing feelings all the way back to the city. Once they landed and an SUV escorted them back to the office, he was determined to ask Regina on a date.

  The helicopter was too loud for discussion and the SUV wasn’t private. The trip was long and boring, but he made it.

  They entered the office. The rooms were quiet. His father waited in the middle room that led to all the offices. He held out his hand and accepted introductions to Regina.

  “Nice to have someone aboard who knows what we’re dealing with.”

  “Of course. I’ll help anyway I can.”

  Dad directed his attention toward Blake. “I understand you got photos of the people we’re chasing.”

  Regina tensed. It wasn’t something Tito expected to see, but it was there. The jawline line was taunt. The hands were fisted. Why would she be concerned that they had pictures of the couple?

  “We do.”

  “Let’s see them.”

  Blake led the way to their office and pulled it up on one of the computers. Dad leaned forward and squinted. Then he straightened.

  “Those aren’t necessary.”

  “What?”

  “We got better pictures than that off the camera from the boat they stole. They left the boat at the New London Harbor. I’m surprised while you were gallivanting around the globe on the taxpayer’s dime that you didn’t see it.”

  “B-but—”

  “That is Morgan Taylor and that right there is a notorious criminal that we’re trying to identify by name.”

  “Did you say Morgan Taylor?” Where had Tito heard that name?

  “Yes. You heard that correctly. She’s been housed in a facility until she escaped a couple of years ago and went undercover, only she doesn’t realize she was undercover.”

  “How can that be?” Regina seemed breathless. The news took her by surprise.

  That didn’t seem unusual seeing as the Coast Guard believed they had the entire thing worked out and now it seems they didn’t.

  “Who do you work for again?”

  “I work for the Coast Guard.”

  “And they didn’t have this information?”

  Regina managed to shake her head. Tito knew his father was intimidating, but he was honestly stunned at how afraid Regina acted.

  “Well, then I guess we’ll let them in on our find. Now with that being said, Alpha Team has gone missing… again. Greg was informed of this information a couple of hours ago. My working theory is that he told Ericka, and she has gone rogue to find her mother.”

  Tito’s heart raced. That’s where he’d heard the name before. Morgan was her mother’s first name. She’d not remembered anything else except that.

  He couldn’t imagine how Ericka felt. Now she’d found both her mother and her father, and nothing was as she expected it to be.

  “We have a punk kid with a local gang in the box. He’s claiming to have killed Rochelle Rawlings to up his street cred or to get in the gang or some such nonsense. I want Burle and Blake to interrogate him. Tito, I want you to look for Ericka. You will have the most luck finding her with your unique connection.”

  “Could I tag along with Detective Santos?”

  Regina’s attitude seemed to suddenly change with the request.

  “Tito?”

  “Sure. That’s fine. I could use a second.”

  Nick was standing around like a third wheel.

  “Nick will go with you two. Everyone needs something to do. We aren’t getting paid to stand around.” Dad clapped his hands. “Chop, chop. Get out there and learn things. And you two with me.”

  Blake and Burle disappeared. Tito would have preferred Burle with him, but that was probably why dad separated them. However, truthfully, he believed sending Nick was an afterthought.

  “Let’s get going. My girl is thinking about cooking dinner tonight and I don’t want to miss it.”

  “What is she cooking?” Regina asked as she followed behind.

  “Tacos.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “What kind of person hides anything in here?” Paulo shivered.

  “A crazy person.” Morgan muttered under her breath.

  Something was oddly familiar about this place. There was a reason that she’d hid the manifest here, but she couldn’t remember what it was. Something about it felt like home. Familiar…

  Her heart raced. Sweat coated her palms. They entered the old office. Images flashed before her eyes. Then more and more. They went so fast her head began to spin.

  Her wrists. They hurt.

  She rubbed them.

  Her legs gave way, and she went to her knees.

  Visions of a screen hanging from the wall. Images flickering across the screen at a rapid rate.

  A young woman.

  A smile lit her face as a little girl ran forward and jumped into her open arms. A man sat in a lawn chair in the background. His legs were crossed, and a lit cigar dangled from his lips.

  Faster and faster the scenes progressed in front of Maria. The pain in her head increased. Her eyes burned.

  In the distance it seemed as if someone yelled her name…

  “Maria! Maria!”

  She blinked. Paulo leaned over her trying to pull her to her feet.

  “I think people are coming. We must hurry.”

  “Hurry?”

  “We need to find the manifest.”

  “Manifest…”

  She rose from her feet, her legs wobbled beneath her. She swallowed hard as she raced to a spot on the office wall. She felt the paneling and pushed. A small section popped open. She didn’t hesitate to put her hand inside. The shock was in finding nothing there.

  She grabbed Paulo’s phone that he’d used as a flashlight and shone it around the opening. “No, no, no! Where did it go? I know I put it here. Or-or, I mean, Maria put it here.”

  “You’re Maria.” Paulo said the words as he backed away from her.

  “Of course, I am. I mean, I think. I don’t know anymore.” She held her head. It pounded as if someone was hitting it with a drumstick.

  “There is no manifest, is there? You brought me here to trick me. What, are the cops going to jump out at any moment?”

  “No, no. I don’t think so.” The pain. It was getting worse.

  He laughed and ran his hands through his hair over and over. He acted extremely nervous and concerned about getting caught. Even if the cops found them, they couldn’t pin anything on them. They just drove a boat. They were agents attempting to thwart the plan of a dangerous criminal.

  A mastermind, really.

  Maria Petrov wasn’t bad. She was good.

  She was taking down her husband. He was evil. But he was dead. Sloan had killed him. Then Sloan took over and Maria helped him, but why?

  Maria was good.

  She was.

  “I’m sorry, Maria for whatever you’re going through, but I’m not sticking around to help.”

  “You’re going?”

  “I’m going. I’m free now. I don’t have the identity I wanted. The one that Shaw was supposed to provide me through Rochelle then I thought I took but didn’t, none of that matters. I’m in the United States and I’m not in jail. I’ll find something. It shouldn’t be too hard. With all the hackers taking people’s information and selling it, I’ll be fine.” He stood at the open door. “I wish you luck.”

  Then he was gone, and she was alone.

  She stumbled to the desk. The door pulled open easily enough. Even after all these years. Inside was a folded piece of paper. She took it out and laid it on the table. Her head hadn’t stopped hurting, but now she knew that she wasn’t crazy.

  The manifest was there in all its glory. Every trip the ship had been on. All the trips that were planned in the future. It was odd that the routes never changed. It was as if the route was preplanned so it could be watched.